Going Home to Wales: HMS Glamorgan Visits Swansea
A Royal Navy destroyer could visit a remarkable number of ports during a commission. Years later, many of them merged into little more than names on an old programme or entries in a battered diary. Swansea was different. It was not remembered because of any great naval operation or dramatic incident, but because it perfectly illustrated how differently the same visit could be viewed by the men serving aboard the same ship.
Like many Royal Navy warships of the period, HMS Glamorgan had an adopted community ashore. As the Welsh County-class destroyer, she naturally enjoyed close links with Wales and her visits attracted considerable local interest. Civic receptions, parades and official welcomes formed part of the relationship, strengthening the bond between the Service and the communities that proudly regarded the ship as their own.
For the Welsh members of the ship's company, returning to Swansea genuinely felt like going home. There were more than a few aboard and, as was often the way on the lower deck, many cheerfully answered to the nickname "Taff". None appeared to mind in the slightest. They were good sailors, proud of their ship and justifiably proud that she carried the name of their own county.
The rest of the ship's company viewed the visit rather differently.
There was certainly nothing against Swansea itself. The Welsh were widely respected aboard ship and no one begrudged them their homecoming. It was simply that destroyers had a habit of putting ports into perspective. Once a sailor had experienced runs ashore in the Mediterranean, almost anywhere else in Britain struggled to compete. Faced with the choice, most would have preferred to be heading south rather than steaming around Land's End towards the Irish Sea.
Such thoughts were not disloyal; they were simply practical. Operational programmes were determined by the needs of the Service, not by the preferences of the ship's company. Whatever Pusser required was where the ship went.
For one young rating, the greatest concern had little to do with civic receptions or official ceremonies. Because the ship was alongside in Britain, the obvious question was how to get home on leave. Reaching Manchester from South Wales on a Friday evening without an absurd diversion through London was far from straightforward. Before online journey planners and frequent inter-city services, arranging a weekend's leave could become an operation in its own right.
While civic dignitaries prepared speeches and local newspapers anticipated the arrival of their adopted warship, at least one sailor found himself studying railway routes instead. It was a reminder that the importance of a port often depended less upon where it was than upon where a man hoped to be by the following morning.
As was so often the case, the weather also had its say. Before the visit, Glamorgan had been operating in the Irish Sea when worsening conditions prompted a move into the shelter of Milford Haven ahead of an approaching gale. Programmes were always liable to change. The sea had little interest in carefully prepared schedules.
When the visit finally took place, Swansea welcomed her adopted ship with all the ceremony expected of the occasion. Bands played, sailors marched and civic hospitality was offered with evident pride. The occasion mattered to the city, just as it mattered to the Welsh sailors serving aboard.
For everyone else, however, it remained another of those curious contrasts that characterised life in the Royal Navy. The same visit could be a homecoming for one messmate, an enjoyable run ashore for another and, for someone else entirely, little more than the place from which an awkward train journey home had to begin.
Perhaps that was the quiet success of the adopted ship scheme. It allowed local communities to see the Royal Navy at close quarters, while reminding the sailors themselves that a ship's company was drawn from every part of Britain. A single destroyer might represent one county officially, yet her upper deck and messdecks reflected the whole country.
By the time the dockyard gangway had gone out and HMS Glamorgan was once again at sea, Swansea had already begun to assume its place amongst the many ports visited during a busy commission. Yet, unlike so many others, it remained memorable—not because of the ceremony ashore, but because it revealed something timeless about the people who served aboard her.
Rn-E-129: The Buzz on the Lower Deck
Primary source: RN-006
RN-E-128
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