Just in Case HMS Glamorgan Was Home
Life alongside in a home dockyard followed a rhythm quite different from that experienced at sea. Although HMS Glamorgan remained a warship with duties to perform, the urgency of operational deployments gave way to maintenance, routine inspections and preparation for the next period away from home. Ships' companies caught up with correspondence, repaired equipment and, whenever duties permitted, took advantage of the opportunity to go ashore.
Even so, there was an unmistakable sense of order. Every movement through the gangway was recorded, watches were maintained and the Quartermaster remained a familiar figure, quietly controlling the steady flow of people coming and going. News travelled quickly aboard a ship, and unusual events travelled faster still.
Telephone calls were among the rarest interruptions to daily routine.
In the early 1970s there were no mobile telephones, no text messages and certainly no convenient way for families to contact sailors directly. Anyone wishing to speak to a member of a ship's company first had to discover where the ship was berthed, make contact through the dockyard and hope that the intended recipient could be found. It was not impossible, merely inconvenient enough that it was usually reserved for matters of genuine importance.
For that reason, an announcement over the ship's tannoy requesting that a junior rating report to the gangway telephone was seldom taken lightly.
One afternoon in 1973, while HMS Glamorgan lay alongside in Portsmouth between deployments, that announcement echoed unexpectedly through the ship.
Its recipient happened to be in the showers.
The immediate assumption was that something must have happened at home. There seemed little other reason why anyone would go to such lengths to establish contact. Soap was hastily rinsed away, a towel wrapped around hastily, flip-flops found with equal haste and the quickest route to the upper deck taken with considerably less dignity than determination. Metal ladders, hatchways and wet feet have never been an ideal combination, but they were negotiated with remarkable enthusiasm.
Reaching the gangway only brought further confusion.
The Quartermaster, whose responsibilities included supervising access to the ship, appeared to be suppressing a smile. Whatever message awaited on the telephone, his expression suggested it was rather less alarming than the anxious dash from the shower had anticipated.
He simply indicated the telephone.
Waiting at the other end of the line was Pop.
There was a moment of complete surprise.
Telephone calls from home were unheard of. More remarkable still was the fact that Pop was not telephoning from Manchester but from Portsmouth itself. He explained, in his typically matter-of-fact manner, that he was working in the city with two colleagues, both known simply as Pete. Their employer had work in the Landport district, and when volunteers were sought to drive the company van south from Manchester, Pop had readily accepted the task.
Only afterwards did the true reason become apparent.
Somewhere he had heard that HMS Glamorgan might be in Portsmouth. No one had guaranteed that she would be there. There had been no means of checking before setting off, nor any certainty that the ship would still be alongside on arrival. Nevertheless, the possibility alone had been enough.
He volunteered for a round trip of roughly five hundred miles simply because there was a chance he might see his stepson for an evening.
Character is often revealed most clearly in the things people consider unremarkable.
Pop never presented the journey as a sacrifice. There was no suggestion that he expected gratitude, nor any hint that he regarded the effort as exceptional. To him it seemed perfectly natural. If work happened to be taking him within reach of Portsmouth Dockyard, it would have been strange not to see whether the ship was there.
Only years later did the scale of the effort become fully apparent.
Finding a Royal Navy ship in a busy naval base was no simple matter for a civilian unfamiliar with dockyard routines. Somewhere along the line enquiries had been made, questions asked and directions followed until eventually someone had been able to arrange a telephone call through the dockyard. It was an exercise requiring patience and persistence, qualities that Pop possessed in generous measure.
The conversation itself was refreshingly uncomplicated.
Would it be possible to meet later?
The answer scarcely required thought.
Better still, duty had smiled kindly that day. There would be no watchkeeping commitments preventing a run ashore. Fortune had conspired to place both men in Portsmouth at exactly the right moment.
A meeting place was quickly agreed.
Near Portsmouth Guildhall stood two neighbouring public houses, the Waterloo and the Nine Elms. Pop immediately recognised the location. It transpired that the Nine Elms had become something of a local for the building team during their stay in Portsmouth. There was no need for complicated directions after all.
"Bring Pete and Pete with you," came the invitation.
It was exactly the sort of arrangement that required no further discussion.
Once the telephone had been replaced, there was barely time to explain matters before excitement spread through the messdeck. News of an unexpected family visit travelled quickly. Within minutes several messmates had volunteered themselves for an evening ashore, partly to meet the mysterious Pop and partly because any opportunity to visit a welcoming Portsmouth public house in good company was seldom declined.
The Quartermaster's smile returned as the small party prepared to leave the ship.
Perhaps he had already guessed how the afternoon would unfold.
Leaving a warship alongside in Portsmouth possessed its own familiar rituals. Names were checked, movements recorded and, after passing through the dockyard gates, the atmosphere changed almost immediately. Naval routine gave way to the bustle of a city that had lived alongside sailors for generations. Uniformed ratings mingled with dockyard workers, shoppers and commuters as though this meeting of civilian and naval life had always been perfectly ordinary.
There was another feature of Portsmouth Dockyard that old hands often remembered with amusement.
The cats.
Every large dockyard seemed to have them. Portsmouth certainly did. They appeared perfectly at home among the workshops, warehouses and quaysides, darting confidently between people who scarcely gave them a second glance. On that particular afternoon they seemed almost as quick as the sailors making for the dockyard gates, eager not to waste a minute of unexpected leave.
The walk into the city was short, but anticipation made it seem shorter still.
Few sailors received unexpected visitors hundreds of miles from home. Fewer still discovered that someone had undertaken such a journey simply because there was a possibility of sharing an evening together.
Looking back, it is tempting to regard the gesture as extraordinary.
Pop almost certainly did not.
To him it was merely the obvious thing to do.
That quiet practicality perhaps explains why the memory has endured for so many years. Affection was seldom expressed in grand speeches. It revealed itself in actions instead: accepting a long drive without complaint, making patient enquiries around an unfamiliar dockyard and finally telephoning a warship in the hope that a young sailor might happen to be available.
Those efforts succeeded.
Ahead lay an evening of darts, cards, laughter and the easy companionship that could spring up when sailors and civilians found themselves around the same bar. It would become one of the happiest memories of a Portsmouth draft and, before the week was over, would also give rise to a family story that remained gloriously unresolved for decades.
But that belongs to the next chapter.
Tug Wilson Part 3 - An Evening at the Nine Elms
Primary source: RN-002
RN-E-116
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