Having completed my National Service with the Royal Army Service Corps,September 1949 saw me back in the Dockyard, still with the Naval Stores Department but, despite the automatic promotion (on account of age) to the dizzy heights of Storehouse Assistant, I was keeping my eye open for an opportunity to improve. My first place of employment after leaving the Army was at the Inward Shipper, South Yard. This involved working at the Transit Shed which was a huge metal building of two floors separated from the sea wall by the road and the concrete "apron" upon which the shed stood.

Road transport vehicles would unload when backed up to the apron, whilst ships would be relieved of their cargoes by electric cranes of the luffing type running on steel rails. The internal rail system also served the Transit Shed. The cargo ships of the time were Royal Fleet Auxiliaries (RFAs), which travelled the world, Robert Dundas, Robert Middleton and C620, which travelled the coastal routes to and from Belfast, Rosyth, Portsmouth, Portland, Sheerness, Chatham and Pembroke Dock mainly. The large RFAs were mostly employed bringing back stores from the depots and Dockyards soon to begin closing down or transferring to the governments of the newly independent countries of the Empire.

Stores were therefore flooding in from places such as Colombo, Malta, Alexandria, Simonstown, Freetown and the like. The Naval Store Department still had staff stationed at these places, as well as at Gibraltar, several Australian, Canadian and New Zealand locations, there were even staff on the Atlantic coast of the U.S.A. RFAs Fort Langley, Fort Constantine, Fort Beauharnois, and Bacchus all took part in these activities, being offloaded at Devonport, some alongside at South Yard, others elsewhere at North Yard.

The Bacchus and Fort ships (twenty of these all told, I believe) were pretty big by the standards of the late forties and early fifties; each had five holds to be emptied and a team of store assistants would be allocated to check the cargo as it was unloaded or landed. There was very often some overtime available, which was welcomed by most of the other assistants, particularly those with families to look after. I preferred not to work overtime, there being better ways of using the evening than perched on a packing case at the bottom of a hold or stood on the Transit Shed apron in the pouring rain telling lorry drivers where to go. (Where to deliver, that is !)

Among the items being unloaded would very often be private effects belonging to people terminating their overseas service and travelling back to UK by more luxurious transport; sometimes there would be a number of private cars among the private effects. Supervision of the unloading operation was carried out by a "master stevedore" with a group of "slingers" and they would have been on a course to learn how to deal with the various items to be lifted out of the hold. In the temporary absence of the slinger, the strops, slings, cargo nets and wheel appliances for cars would be put in place by the store assistant who had not been on a course but learned how to do it by watching. Mistakes happened from time to time and I remember a net full of suitcases and other private effects once being dropped into the river Tamar at South Yard. A diving team had to be employed to recover a valuable ornament which was heavy enough to take its suitcase to the bottom.

With a combined staff of about twenty people unloading one ship there was plenty of room and opportunity for humour to creep in. One assistant on the wharfside had found himself a large, empty packing case to stand in during heavy rain and suddenly found himself and the packing case being picked up and swung about in the air. Just for fun, of course. On the same day a rather elderly assistant who should have been listing the package numbers of cases being landed finally gave up trying to see through his rain-splattered spectacles and jotted down on the voucher "One lorry load of packing cases gone to North Yard ".

On January 1st 1950 I became a diarist; for some reason I kept fairly accurate details of what I did with my life, both at work and at other places. Having recently (in 2002) re-discovered two old diaries, it is possible to present some statistics, as follows. I visited the snooker club (about a mile away from home) on no less than 225 occasions during 1950; this includes morning visits, particularly on Saturdays when my itinerary would take in the Corporation Public Baths near the snooker club for a shower (no shower or bathroom at home at that time - just a tin bath), and a few Sundays. Evening sessions were most numerous, but a "session" would sometimes be just one frame of snooker prior to walking on to town.

Twenty one Sunday mornings saw me helping out the local dairyman with his delivery round (he was the proud possessor of a Jowett "flat-four" van, battleship grey in colour and bone-shaking in the extreme). In the Dockyard I worked on "Robert Dundas" (4 days), "Fort Constantine" (14 days), "Euryalus" (2), "Ocean" (12), with one-day jobs on "Victorious" and "Wave Conqueror". I moved again to the Transit Shed on 30th May, having spent some six months at E8/E13 Store which supplied the fleet with soap, grease, detergents, horse-hair, damage control items, torpedo lubricants and dental items.

On 15th June, during a stint working on RFA "Fort Constantine", I somehow managed to sprain a wrist (or so I thought at the time). Four days later the surgery people pronounced it to be a cracked bone in the thumb and encased the wrist in plaster, which they did not remove until 10th July. I remained at work, probably because we were working an hour's overtime daily which was useful but which did not interfere too much with the evening's activities.

E8 /13 Store backed on to the Blacksmiths' Shop and the blacksmiths always had a supply of boiling water available for tea -making. We in E8/13 Store always had supplies of hard and soft soap available, also Rosalex, a very much sought-after hand cream or cleaner. It was considered more efficient to walk half the length of the building to arrange a brew-up than muck about with standing the kettle on the horizontally placed electric (double claybar) fire; the fire was more useful in its toast-making capacity.

In addition to the main building, E8/13 also used storage space in the "Tunnel Vaults". These were lockable spaces cut into the natural rockface of the railway tunnel where the north-south main (but single track) line branched off into Morice Yard. Canisters of lime and bales of horse hair were stored at the tunnel vaults among other bulky or infrequently-required items. An unusual property of horse hair was that when it had been sent to the contractor for "teasing and curling" it came back heavier than when it left us - by about five per cent; I have never yet found out why this should be so.

Somewhere along the chronological path I served some time at the Paint Store, in Morice Yard; the storehouseman went on to become a high-ranking civil servant at Naval Stores Headquarters (Bath). Stock at the Paint Store included half hundredweight buckets of paint such as normal grey for ships' hulls, red lead used as a primer, boot-topping for underwater protection and buff for the upperworks of harbour craft. At the other end of the scale were very small tins (less than a quarter of a pint) of various bright colour paints for identifying pipe runs within the ships' compartments. These were very popular with storehouse staff; "Valuable and Attractive" (V & A) items were represented in the Paint Store by books of gold leaf; this commodity was kept in a safe, issued under very strict circumstances and was used for the railings around naval establishments such as RN Barracks. I recall that all the gold leaf was produced by a manufacturer in Lymm, Kent. Behind the store was a space big enough to use for practising so-called cricket during lunch hours. Almost big enough, anyway; long-stop had to do his fielding on the roof of the inflammables hut.

Timber Store, although sounding by its title as if it was akin to a common commercial retail shop was, in fact, a store which required the staff to practice a lot of technical expertise. In addition to sawn and planed timber there were many species of raw timber to be looked after carefully, quite a few needing special treatment such as prolonged seasoning before being issued.

Douglas Fir was one such species; the stock was floated, in the form of rafts held together by rope and 3" staples at Trevol timber pond. Six months after being rafted, all the lengths (forty feet in some cases) of nominally 15" x 15" would have to be separated, turned over through 180 degrees and re-secured for further periods of six months. Lignum Vitae, a very hard, heavy wood used for boat bows (or crooks) had to be sunk into mud for seasoning and each piece would have a floating tally (or label) attached to it giving dimensions, date immersed, contract number and so on.

Storage of steel plates (mainly for ship work) involved outdoor racks at South Yard where they were stored mainly in the upright position, on edge. Some of the 2" thick plates were as long as 25 feet, their widths ranging between 3 feet and 10 feet. Each needed to be identifiable and removable without too much mechanical pushing and shoving. Plates with a thickness of a quarter of an inch or less were stowed flat but every plate had to be coated in order to minimise the formation of rust.

The heavier plates would be hoisted by steam crane running on the railway tracks with one or two steel wire rope strops being attached to the plate with clamps, these being screwed on by huge eyebolts tightened to the plate by crowbar. All the big plates had their dimensions and description painted on the end most accessible.

The best thing about issuing steel plates was that the weight of each was easily determined, the basic fact being that a steel plate one inch thick weighed 40 lbs to a square foot, thus one measuring 25' x 5' x 1" would weigh two and a quarter tons - useful to know if the customer wanted three delivered and the lorry to be loaded was only a five tonner. Yes, mistakes of that nature did sometimes happen; as one of the bosses used to say - the man who never made a mistake never made anything.

Similarly an 8' x 4' x 1/8" sheet weighs 160 lbs. Even the pattern number of a sheet or plate could also be recognised mentally by its dimensions - 8040125, the 125 being a decimalised 1/8". So there's nothing really new about the metric system after all ! Additionally, a single suffix letter would identify the type of steel involved, for example mild, high tensile, armoured or other.

Whole books have been written on the subject of the storekeeping of oil fuel but not until much later in life did I need to find out much about it. The standard joke was a question reputed to be part of the Storehouseman's Examination. "If you were in charge of an oil fuel depot and you noticed a fire break out beside one of the tanks, what steps would you take ?" ( No prizes for guessing the answer !)

No 1 Store (a three-storey building) housed a huge number of various widely differing items, including nuts, bolts, rivets, flags, bunting, model ships and aircraft, hand tools, asbestos, welding rods, non-ferrous metal in various forms, etc etc etc. Each floor, from the mezzanine up, had blastproof sliding doors (relics of the Air Raid Precautions of WW2) and what was referred to as a brow; opening the sliding door of each brow gave access to a horizontal steel "I - bar" on which travelled an electrically operated "jinny". The jinny was used for loading and unloading the contents of vehicles backed in at ground level. More or less everyone was capable of operating these jinnies, which made them cost effective to run.

In the middle of the building was a "well", which was basically a gap in the mezzanine floor big enough for vehicles to back in and unload boxes or other packages not big or heavy enough to warrant use of the jinnies. There were two pedestrian lifts, usually complete with operators, but not necessarily if someone was in a bit of a rush.

No 4 Store at Morice Yard had housed the MT Spares for a number of years when I joined its staff early on in my career with the Superintending Naval Store Officer's Department (S.N.S.O). The building itself was very old, fitted throughout with sash windows; at the top level it was possible to step out of any window on to a parapet which formed a walkway all the way around. Three sides of No 4 Store could be entered at ground level; the fourth side (one end) was built up from foundations in the river bed. On the parapet, overlooking the river, generations of occupants including French prisoners from the Napoleonic wars had inscribed their names and other information on the soft leaden roof material. I have no hesitation in mentioning that I added my name in 1944, as soon as I started my stint in the building. In 1949 I returned there and made my way up the wooden staircase; I got out on to the parapet at the seaward end and was delighted to find that my signature was still legible. Today a tarmac road, replacing the ancient railway from North Yard to South Yard, has cut No 4 Store off from its former prime position as an excellent angling venue.

The only other Store I can recall spending time in (nearly said "working" just there) was E10 Bedding (Second Floor of No 1 Store). Very little to recount about E10 except that items of bedding returned by ships and establishments were temporarily stored in SNSO railway vans until being sent out to contractors locally for the laundering process. On return from the contractors all bedding was stowed in E10 Store which, at the time I worked there, was the only store supervised by a female storehouseman, if that's not a contradiction in terms.

In June 1952, obviously having got fed up with writing in diaries, I took part in a written examination for entry into the "Clerical Classes of the Home Civil Service". This was specifically for "candidates who have completed a period of compulsory National Service". There were five subjects to be tackled: English, Arithmetic, General Knowledge, Current Affairs and Intelligence. I only scored 58% for Current Affairs, (because I wasn't caught up in any at that time ! ), but I was the only candidate of the two hundred and two who sat the exam to score 100% at any subject (arithmetic). Successful candidates numbered 122, of which I managed to come in fifth. The unsuccessful candidates probably became managing directors of commercial firms or high-ranking politicians.

On the appointed day, 22nd November 1952, I reported to the Expense Accounts Officer (EAO) to commence my new job. The Payroll Sections were accommodated in temporary (!) huts erected on a bombsite in Fore Street, alongside Woolworth's temporary premises; all this just outside the original Fore Street Gate of the Dockyard. On the other side of Fore Street a similarly huge bombsite acted as a car park, the US Navy having previously been based there in Quonset huts during 1943-44. The remainder of the EA Department was scattered around the Dockyard, mainly in South Yard. Its main task at that time was the payment of wages to the industrial workforce, about 10,000 strong, I think.

I was allocated to a table staffed by six ladies (Clerical Officers), one of whom was designated a "group leader" and was responsible to the Head of Section (Higher Clerical Officer) for the work of the group. Each Dockyard employee was identifiable by a five-digit pay number which appeared on his clock card. He clocked in and out on a regular basis and his pay was calculated on the strength of his attendance each week. The job on which he was employed at any particular time was noted by a person known as a recorder, who was also on the staff of the EAO. Each recorder was responsible for keeping work records of up to fifty or sixty workpeople.

The work of the Payroll groups was calculation of the cash to be paid to the employee and apportioning the amounts to be charged to each job, which could be production, repair, work in progress, manufactures or other category. At the end of the week, the man (or woman) received pay in a sealed envelope, the accountants got a record of how much had been spent on each category of work and there were various other items of information produced which I don't recall now and didn't understand much about at that time.

Most of the work in Payroll had to be turned out to a very closely-knit timetable, although in between times there would be bouts of waiting. Lots of different happenings could upset the schedule - bad weather, transport problems, industrial action (or inaction), sickness among the staff or power cuts. In 1952 traffic jams did not often have any effect on staff attendance because there were not many cars about. For quite a while I was the only one in the group who drove to work (in my Ford Ten Saloon !).

One other disruption of schedule centred on Woolworth's, next door. From time to time they would obtain and offer for sale a shipment of tinned fruit or other luxury item; news of such an event would circulate around the Expense Accounts office like a forest fire and there would be surreptitious exits of people (mainly the married women) sneaking off to make the most of such an event - yes, as long after the War as 1952 certain types of food were still looked upon as luxuries.

All weekly-paid industrial workers received cash to the exact penny; not until years later did payment by cheque, payment to the nearest pound and payment into a bank account come about. Every Friday morning a team of Clerical Officers (COs) such as myself would gather together in the Cash Office to count out the money and insert it into the pay envelopes, which were then sorted into individual recorders' boxes for issue to the men.

Some of us COs had to stand in for recorders and carry the boxes to the clocking stations. We travelled in RN vans and each was accompanied by an armed MOD policeman. It often amused me - a 23 year old - having to be protected by an armed policeman nearing his retirement age who needed assistance, because of rheumatism or other disability, to climb into the passenger seat !

Life went on normally for eight months or so, but I was appalled to be told suddenly that I was to be transferred away from Devonport to a place I'd never heard of - Admiralty Storage Depot at Risley near Warrington (which at that time was in Lancashire - it is currently part of Cheshire). This was terrible news for me but even worse for the rest of the family. My mother was not by any means in the best of health and my sister had a two year old son to take care of. I enquired whether there was any way in which I could get out of the transfer but I was informed that there was no such thing as an appeal against the move. Being relatively new to the Civil Service, and this information coming from a man four grades up the seniority chain, I had no option but to go to Risley if I wanted to stay in the CO grade. I did consider reverting to my previous grade of storehouse assistant, but all the advice - from family and friends - boiled down to Risley.

I was met at Warrington railway station on 14th July 1953 by a messenger and driver and the journey to Risley in an RN utilicon only took ten minutes or so. The depot was a huge collection of prefabricated huts and other, larger buildings all served by a steam-heating system carried through six-inch pipes in overhead fashion. There was also an internal railway with several miles of standard gauge track and a built-in station handling goods and passengers. The local staff members caught trains from Warrington, Leigh and other nearby places; arriving inside Risley Depot; they were then ferried around to their places of work in Bedford articulated passenger buses, the first time I had seen this variety of Bedford.

Those of us whose normal residence was outside Lancashire were accommodated inside the depot in blocks of ten or twelve individual rooms; each block contained ablution facilities and all the blocks were connected to a large central building which sported separate rooms for reading, television (black and white, of course), table tennis, dancing, snooker and a well-stocked bar. It was not unusual for life to go on well into the early hours, and not only at the weekend. In addition to the indoor activities there were tennis courts and cycle tracks inside the perimeter fence and ample green space.

Early on in my work at Risley, with more time to study the regulations, it became clear to me that, due to circumstances at home, I was entitled to be treated as having the same responsibilities as a married man obliged to work away from home. This was discussed by me with the welfare people and confirmed by the Cashier. It brought a most advantageous allowance of nine free rail or other travel warrants per year between Risley and Plymouth.

It also enabled me to be included on the welfare list of people awaiting an allocation of a house in which to install the rest of the family in the Risley area. By now the situation at home had settled down anyway and I was able to keep on top of repairs and maintenance by taking a few days leave with each railway warrant. I didn't need to use any leave locally at Risley because it was only a bus ride to places like Manchester, Liverpool and Blackpool, although it was not compulsory to go to such dreadful places. The buildings of Warrington, in particular, were almost black with the grime of many years, and parts of Manchester were similar.

But life at the Club was very enjoyable with all the available facilities and the people at the Club and the locals who travelled in to work daily were all very good to get on with.

My work at Expense Accounts, Risley concerned material - the depot held millions of pounds worth of it, mostly in the field of electronics. By now, computerised accounts were beginning to take hold and consumption of paper increased proportionately. In simple terms, where a ship had previously listed its requirements of everyday items such as soap, tools, hardware, timber, etc by hand, in ink, on a paper form, a telephone call to Naval Stores HQ now released a torrent of single-item vouchers being sent to depots for the supply of electronics. Rather primitive electronics, the Navy was still using valves for communications equipment, with transistors as yet a forthcoming attraction.

Regardless of the cost of a single item, (ranging from thousands of pounds for a complete radar set down to one penny for a resistor), every single voucher had to be put through the accounting process so that our lords and masters at Westminster could be informed of the current financial state of the naval storekeeping business. Also, of course, there was the usual annual stocktake which required a total valuation, involving thousands of calculations on desktop machines fitted with a roll of paper and a handle, similar to what the corner shop used. Overtime was virtually unlimited and was more attractive to Club inmates than to the locals who had more enjoyable things to do and less time in which to do them.

Back to the "Admiralty Risley Club" as it was officially known, where "The supply of intoxicating liquors shall be permitted between the hours of 12 noon and 2.30 pm and 6 pm and 10 pm on weekdays, and between the hours of 12 noon and 2 pm and 7 pm and 10 pm on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday." Roughly interpreted, this meant that the hardened drinkers were blotto most of the time; a few lived at the Club permanently especially to enjoy the drinking facilities. Although Rule 18 stipulated that " No . . . . drunkenness shall be permitted in the Club . . . . ", two or three members thrived on a lifestyle of only being sober occasionally (i.e. whilst at work).

One day I received a telegram from my fiancee still at Devonport beginning with the words "From one CO to another . . . . . . ". This told me that she had received the result of her promotion interview and was now joining the same grade as myself; not only that, but she had secured a posting to Admiralty Storage Depot, Risley. I was able to arrange some time off and went to meet her as the Plymouth train rolled into Warrington Station. This was a big improvement all round, for both of us.

In August 1953 examination time came round for Clerical Officers who wished to become Executive Officers; the venue for the exam was the YMCA Hall, in Warrington. I came away from it at the end of the two days thinking that I had not answered the written questions very well. I was surprised to learn, in October, that I had reached the qualifying standard and would be invited for an interview in due course.

The interview took place at Exchange Building, Liverpool at 3.30 pm on Wednesday 28th October 1953 and the panel did not by any means ask me the right questions; how could I be expected to know how many readings an Act of Parliament goes through before it becomes law ? That was the first question and the rest were just as bad; I could only manage to come in 199th out of the 2,001 who had sat the written exam. On the combined total of written work and interview I dropped to 216th place; still qualifying, but one of these frequent attempts to cut down the number of people working for the government took place, with the result that there was a limited intake from the 1953 examination and my services were apparently not yet required in the Executive Officer grade.

But, life goes on and I continued using the available free travel warrants to Plymouth and back but no longer travelling on my own, which was a big improvement.

1954 turned out to be a more eventful year than some of those preceding it; I heard unofficially from a lady who served on the Welfare Committee that my name was now third on the waiting list for allocation of an Admiralty house in the Risley area and that within six weeks or so two houses were to become available. I put it to my family that the way would soon be clear for them to move to Lancashire, but they did not wish to move. So I informed the welfare people that, due to changed circumstances after such a long delay, I wanted to take my name off the waiting list. This was easily arranged and the supply of travel warrants dried up overnight; I considered that the Admiralty had got off lightly in return for transferring me away from Devonport in the first place.

Margaret and I arranged for the banns to be read in Warrington and in Plymouth and we were married at St Barnabas’ Church, Plymouth on 10th July 1954, travelling back to Risley afterwards. We had arranged to live at 25 Red Lane, Appleton on the Cheshire side of the Manchester Ship Canal. Public transport was very reliable in the Warrington area at that time, the only occasional hiccup being when a ship wanted to use the canal. At such times, dozens of staff would be affected because "the bridge was up"; there were several such bridges !

After a while we were allocated a house on the Admiralty estate at Cadishead; the house was ideal for our purposes, with a nice stretch of garden which was covered in snow at the time we moved in. The garden was still covered in snow when we moved out six weeks later so we were never able to see it in its glory.

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The 1954 examination for would-be executive officers had taken place on 10th and 11th August at the YMCA Hall again. Not until November did I receive the table of results showing that I had passed at the top of the list of 362 candidates. This was little short of unbelievable - certainly unforgettable - and when I passed the paper over to my immediate boss, he made a wonderful announcement about it, having called all the staff to silence first. It was quite a good feeling to be (as Reg put it) "top of the whole world". I think that having been recently married accounted for the improved exam performance!

Reg himself was later the recipient of congratulations when he became a father at the age of seventy-three !

As a result of the interview which formed part of the exam, I lost my "first" position and dropped to second, the man who took over "first" having come up the list from eighth. I expressed a wish to stay with the Admiralty, preferably with Expense Accounts or with the Naval Store Department. I was issued with a rail warrant for travel from Glazebrook Station to Chatham via Manchester (London Road) and Euston ( you certainly see the world, working in the Civil Service !). I started work at Expense Accounts Department, Chatham in mid-March 1955, and Margaret resumed work with Naval Stores, also at Chatham. Among other changes in our way of life was an increase in my salary of 56 per cent.

We travelled back to Plymouth in our Ford 8 about fortnightly, the journey via the Hog’s Back and A 30 taking about eight hours each way. We were living at Gillingham (32 Stuart Road) near the Jezreels Tower. One weekend we decided to go to London, but gave up after two hours in a traffic jam on the main road from Rochester, about two hundred yards from our flat.

On 12th May we attended a "Club Night" presented by the Expense Accounts Social and Athletic Club held at the Royal Marine Association Club, 7.30 pm till 11 pm. I don’t think we stayed that long because what I remember most about Chatham is the virtual absence of anything to do in the evenings and the Club Night must have been packed to the point of discomfort and overflowing. I also don’t recall any "athletic" people; I could never find a football team to play for or even to train with.

We attended the third day of Royal Ascot on 14th July 1955 in order to get away from the Medway towns for a change and we could easily have ended up in a mortuary somewhere, which is what happened to several people who were leaning on a metal crowd barrier when it was struck by lightning. The lightning was accompanied by torrential rain and, as we drove home dejectedly in the Ford 8 there were places on the road where the flood water was lapping around our feet inside the car. I think the lightning tragedy happened at about four o’clock because my official Ascot programme for the day (still bearing the damage caused by oil and water from the floor of the car) shows that I backed the winner of the 3.45 but did not place any bets on the 4.20. Some fortunate bookie that day went off with my winnings totalling 4s 6d, which I didn’t collect due to the chaotic circumstances.

Life in the Dockyard at Chatham was fairly tolerable, with my wages section on one of the upper floors of an original building just inside the main gate. The ground floor of the same building housed the Dockyard Police canteen which was licensed for the sale and consumption of alcohol. This made it a popular spot at lunchtimes for those of us who would gather there prior to lunch at our own canteen fifty or sixty yards down the road.

Life in the town of Gillingham was not quite so tolerable, with Margaret and I both having families in Plymouth and not being full of enthusiasm for living at Stuart Road. After about four months I mentioned to my immediate boss - a man who came to work every day dressed in what I would call an almost Dickensian outfit, complete with stiff collar and bow tie - that I would not be averse to a transfer to Devonport if such a move was possible. Within a few days, certainly not more than a week, he arranged for me to swap places shortly with an EO who was unhappy at Devonport because of its distance from London.

By the end of August 1955 we were back in Plymouth, staying with Margaret’s parents whilst looking for somewhere to live. Not until 1985, just before my retirement, was that Chatham-to-Devonport transfer mentioned again by my current bosses; it was then mentioned as one of the reasons for my lack of promotion over the last thirty years ! This did not come as any surprise to me because I had in fact been offered promotion on several occasions but preferred to stay in the same grade in the same place - Devonport. What did surprise me was the manner in which my conversation with the Chatham Higher Executive Officer thirty years previously was quoted back to me almost verbatim; that’s the way the Civil Service has always worked, I suppose - keep accurate records.

My life in the Dockyard progressed as usual and Parker Road was a very convenient place to live - close enough to the shops and far enough away from the Yard. My first section at Devonport was "Ships' Accounts" where I had a staff of three ladies and three ex-Chief Petty Officers RN. We all got on well together - a blend of experience, expertise, knowledge and innovation - and, of course, there was me. The ex-RN lads, approaching pension age, were all good for a laugh and they had answers for everything.

One very important annual statement of account had to be forwarded to the Admiralty and we kept on having to alter one or two of the figures time after time using ink and eraser; there was no such thing as Snopake and typewriting was not suitable. I thought I would have to own up and obtain a replacement blank document, but these old salts advised me to include a footnote saying "Where the hole is should read 2,251,836". This was hilarious and everybody, except myself, fell about laughing. It then transpired that they had somehow managed, in typical CPO fashion, to get hold of a replacement document and had written it up faultlessly, ready for me to sign and send off. Cost me a round of drinks, but that was money well spent.

A longish spell on Material Section came around and this involved the valuation of thousands of different items, making totals under about sixty four headings. The prices were obtained from Rate Books, contracts, Admiralty Letters, computer printouts (beginning to creep in), Professional Valuations and "estimated values" in extreme cases. The whole lot had to be arranged on another very important annual document called a D323 and the amount of work involved was colossal. I had a staff of about fifteen, with additional volunteer bodies who just needed the overtime for what was a truly boring, monotonous task. Very similar work to what I had started out with at Risley in 1952, but this time I was responsible for the whole exercise being arranged, staff allocation, interim reports and final presentation.

I was kept busy as the Sunday football secretary for the Expense Accounts (later Finance Department) team which required a good bit of expertise in keeping the financial situation under control and arranging fixtures and pitches. All our home games were played at Manadon Naval College, mostly on the sloping pitch. I was also captain of the team but not the selection committee; the team picked itself - those who turned up played. We even had spectators once in a while.

Another move in the Expense Accounts took me to a Wages Section with a staff of eight ladies. They were a mixture ranging from old and experienced to young and trendy and this was to be my first attempt at supervising such a mixture. They also ranged from unambitious and eccentric to "Is there anything else you'd like me to file away, Mr Roberts, . . . ?"; (this from the one wearing four-inch heels and mini-skirt - blue jeans had not yet taken a grip on the daily fashion parade of the female staff).

Pay day for the industrial (or blue-collar) workers was traditionally, as far back as I could remember, on Friday; dockyardies, bus drivers, building trade - always Friday. With the arrival of computerisation, this was changed to Thursday. Initially the trades unions did not approve and there was a lot of bad feeling generated but after a while Thursday pay day was firmly established in the Yard. Pay day for the workforce was also work day for the non-industrials in the Wages Sections, who were responsible for counting the money out, inserting it into pre-printed envelopes, arranging "prompt" payments for workers leaving the Dockyard in search of better pastures, "lifting" cash out of made-up envelopes for various official reasons and many other activities.

The morning started with fetching the total payroll from the bank; on a Public Holiday week this could amount to more than a million pounds sterling and those of us allocated would be driven to the bank in police cars, accompanied by armed police, to collect the sacks of cash. In all the best security films and programmes the number one piece of advice was ". . . .vary the route between bank and point of delivery as far as possible on a weekly basis . . . ." The difficulty at the Dockyard was that the cash convoy only had to travel about two hundred yards from the bank in one-way Marlborough Street to the payroom just inside Fore Street Gate.

Next the contents of the sacks would be counted to ensure accuracy and, once in a while, there would be a discrepancy. All the banknotes would be brand new and it didn't take long to iron out any slight problem. The payroll list of names and "Yard Numbers" was split into hundreds of smaller lists so that each part would cover a hundred or so industrial workers. The staff "laying up" the wage packets would count and sign for the total amount of cash required to fill the envelopes listed. As well as banknotes they had to count the coins also, an earlier group of staff the day before having calculated to a penny how many of each denomination of coin would be necessary to service the envelopes on each list - this was known as "coining" the payroll.

Having serviced the envelopes and with no cash left over, it was then OK to spread the envelopes out with the sticky flaps all pointing one way and run a moist sponge along the lot, prior to sealing each envelope by hand pressure. This might sound a complicated method of preparing pay envelopes, but all the staff (especially the ninety per cent who were female) were well trained and worked at lightning speed, making very few, if any, mistakes. The envelopes for each part of the payroll were then put into the appropriate "recorder's box" for distribution at noon.

Manufactures Section was staffed by only three or four people and I managed to get away from it before very long. The work consisted of keeping track of money spent on the manufacture of items for use within the Naval service, ranging from the building of complete equipment such as steam catapults for aircraft carriers to the supply of wooden packing cases at the Carpenters Shop. In between these two extreme examples would be huge metal castings made at the Foundry. Although most of the processes were very interesting to watch, the accounting itself was a little monotonous and I asked for a move.

The move, when it came fairly soon, saw me take over the Repayment Section (or Claims , as it was known internally - much easier to write, type and say). Basically, Claims consisted of sending out bills to customers of the Dockyard and there were four separate types of customer: Account H 1, staffed by one lady, dealt with claims rendered against other departments of the Admiralty like Armament, Victualling and Naval Stores. H 2 concerned other Government Departments - Air Ministry, Ministry of Food, Ministry of Public Buildings and Works (MPBW for short), Home Office and so on - similarly dealt with by one staff member; two people looked after H 3 claims against Foreign and Commonwealth customers, whilst H 4 kept one person occupied with claims against firms and private individuals.

One man, additionally, was responsible for Canteen Accounts at various Naval establishments and he was nominally on the staff of Claims, as was another who, when not actively issuing stationery items for an hour a day, would roam around places outside the Dockyard reading "Gas, Water and Electricity" meters; this took him to outlying, sometimes obscure, locations such as Staddon Fort, Thanckes Oil Fuel Depot (OFD), Johnson Terrace OFD, Radford Woods OFD and Turnchapel Wharf Cable Depot. All the meter readings were transformed into claims (or invoices, as they were known) and posted to the occupants of the various residences, some of whom were Admiralty employees. It was not unusual during a rare summer for the meter reader to be unable to read, or even find, the meter due to the height of the grass or weeds. He would render an estimated invoice on such an occasion, based on previous meter readings.

H 1 claims against other departments ceased to be raised after I had been in charge for a year or two - not that I forgot to raise the claims, but because someone in high Admiralty places decreed that the system which saw Admiralty departments charging each other for work, supplies and services was a bit wasteful of the taxpayers' money.

In the case of H 2 Other Government Departments using Admiralty facilities, of course, we just had to get the money back. Whereas H1 and H2 claims more or less recovered the costs of labour, material and services plus 5% for the paperwork, H3 and H4 customers paid 15% extra for the paperwork; not only that, but they paid an additional 15% for "Research and Development" (R&D) on claims involving electronic material and labour costs. Thus H1 and H2 claims (or bills) were straightforwardly compiled, while H3 and H4 needed some thinking about.

The Commonwealth states, when they purchased and took over unwanted RN ships, also took over all the forms, documents and books of reference on board; thus they could easily look up the prices of naval store items in the Catalogue of Naval Stores (formerly known as "the Rate Book"). Obviously , due to the various additions applied in raising the claim, an item listed in the rate book at a price of £100 could well be shown as something approaching £150 when the time came to pay up.

Our principal Commonwealth customers at Devonport were India and Pakistan, both of whom had naval headquarters in London. As the take over of a particular ship ("Brahmaputra" and "Vikrant" come easily to mind) progressed and any associated refit work neared completion, a semi-permanent office staff would be set up locally by the "customer" country to deal with paperwork face to face rather than in writing or over the telephone. Lieutenants recently promoted on the strength of transfer to a "new" warship would then visit Claims Section with Rate Book tucked under the arm and a briefcase full of claims , with the intention of haggling, bazaar fashion, over the difference in price. Goodness, gracious me, this called for great diplomacy all round, but I don't recall ever coming to blows !

The Dockyard was not permitted to take on work which could be carried out by commercial firms, but galvanising was an exception; the nearest competitor in the business was a firm in the Bristol area. So the galvanising plant at North Yard took on virtually all the galvanising work in Cornwall and Devon, most of it passed on by local metalwork firms. The charge made for the galvanising process was based on the weight of metal to be treated and the local firms charged their customers in the same way but at a higher rate per hundredweight. This was an easy way of making a profit because they only needed to deliver the article to North Yard, leave it for a few days and collect it again. Few of the customers knew that they could have cut out the middle man by dealing direct with the Dockyard. The Planning Department didn't publicise their service on the grounds of "the devil you know". . . .

Some H4 customers of the Dockyard were required to put down a deposit in excess of the estimated cost of the work, any overpayment being adjusted afterwards. Anyone hiring an expensive machine or item of equipment from the Yard was required to insure it for its full value, producing the insurance certificate when applying.

These rules, regulations and arrangements were all put in place because of past experience on the part of the Admiralty, but problems still managed to arise. There was a time when a contractor entered a successful bid at auction for a scrap boiler of uncertain weight, the boiler being situated somewhere at North Yard and available for collection. A commercial articulated vehicle was arranged by the purchaser, driven into North Yard and parked alongside the boiler. A Dockyard electric crane was moved into position and steel wire strops placed around the circumference of the boiler at each end, ready for lifting the boiler on to the articulated. A wave of the hand from the chargeman and the crane driver started the loading operation; a loud click and a flash and a fuse had blown inside the cab of the crane. The chargeman, an experienced supervisor, advised the crane driver to fit a stronger fuse; this was done and this fuse also blew. What the crane driver said at this point has never been accurately recorded, but a crane of larger capacity had to be brought to the scene.

The boiler, apart from being of an unknown weight, still contained an unknown quantity of water, but the second crane did the trick and loaded the boiler on to the road vehicle, which set off for its destination. Having reached St Levan Road Gate the driver carefully executed a sharp right turn and the boiler fell off into the road. It stayed there, I think, until the next day, when specialised loading equipment was brought down from Avonmouth to rectify the situation. The boiler presumably arrived at its destination eventually.

My part in all this was to calculate how much of the buyer's deposit was returnable to him; unsurprisingly by now it was a rather large red ink figure. As in all cases where the Dockyard expenditure exceeded the deposit received from the customer, I had to report every detail in writing to the Treasury Solicitor in Whitehall. The size of the deposit was always decided by the people at the Planning Department, not the Expense Accounts, so it wasn't my problem.

There were, of course, red faces all round inside the Dockyard and quite a few insurance claims outside of it. Traffic, including bus services, had to be diverted and police were kept busy. But there was one clear winner in this dreadful sequence of events; that was the landlord of the Avondale public house, outside of which the unfortunate event happened. His business must have bucked up no end with the unexpected influx of sightseers for a day or two.

H3 -Foreign and Commonwealth - customers provided most of the challenges and unexpected situations and also quite a few acquaintances. Most customers arrived as and when expected whilst others were the subjects of weather conditions, accidents, even tragic occurrences. I made a whole lot of friends from many different parts of the world during my work with H3 customers. The straightforward arrival of a ship on a visit to Devonport would not normally create any problem for the staff of Claims Section, but there were other arrivals which caused all kinds of problem.

Under normal circumstances we would be notified of the impending visit of a ship by a memo from the Admiral Superintendent of the Dockyard a few weeks in advance of its arrival. The Naval Store Department would arrange for any supplies required by the visitor - such as fuel, fresh water, motor transport, maybe a few items of Naval Stores off the shelf, while the professional departments would make plans for any minor repairs to be carried out. If the ship was to be moored in Plymouth Sound, the Captain of the Port would arrange water transport for crew members to come ashore and for tug assistance and pilotage if necessary.

In the fullness of time, Claims Section staff would assemble the chargeable costs of the ship's visit, I would set off on a road and/or river trip to the vessel and present the claim for payment. Depending on the type of visit (operational, routine, NATO exercise or whatever) and any conditions attaching to the particular country owning the ship, I would be presented with payment by cheque or by signature on the claim document. A quick cup of tea or coffee, disembark before the brow was removed (or before the last boat left) and get back to the office. No problem.

However, problems were occasionally known to arise !

Ships mooring up to C or D Buoys just inside the Breakwater could only be reached by hitching a lift on either a Port Auxiliary Service (PAS) motor fishing vessel (MFV) leaving from Flagstaff Steps at North Yard with items for the visiting ship or the hourly MFV (known as the liberty boat) which came and went from Millbay Docks; but not always on the hour ! In bad weather it was not unusual for MFVs to remain tied up at either place, although the skipper would always make an exception for the Claims representative.

Inside the Yard, visiting ships would be moored alongside at 5 Wharf, very often outboard of one or two RN ships which acted as hosts. This was much easier from a Claims point of view, partly because the host ship would have a linguist interpreter who could communicate whatever I wanted to say, although, as time went on, I learned enough of most languages to make myself understood. "Beer" is a fairly universal word in many languages.

Looking through the mass of paperwork which has cluttered up my roofspace for fifty years, I see that during my ten years with Claims Section I dealt with ships from Belgium, Netherlands, France, Portugal, United States, Canada, Libya (Yes, "Sirte" and "Susa" on 21 April 1969), Norway, Finland, Germany and Denmark. The only language difficulty I ever encountered was on board a U.S. Navy ship when I was at Chatham (1955); I was below deck in "Officers' Country" dealing with a Naval Stores problem and asked to be told when the ship was ready to cast off so that I could go ashore. When I had finished and went back on deck, Chatham was receding into the distance. The U.S.N. kindly put me ashore at Sheerness, whilst en route to Hamburg .They even arranged a U.S.N. staff car to get me back to Chatham.

With my previous experience of the U.S. Navy at Queen Anne's Battery and Shapter's Field, I knew how to get on well with members of the visiting American crews, officers and ratings alike. Each ship carried a "Disbursing Officer" who dealt with the payment of bills, and a Storekeeper who looked after the cigars, cigarettes and tobacco. No alcohol was allowed on U.S.N. ships but on one of the USNS vessels (the equivalent of an RFA) the Storekeeper didn't mind me bringing some aboard the day after he had passed me £50 for that very purpose. He also sold me quite a few cartons of cigarettes (Pall Mall) and he didn't have any use for fifty quids' worth of Green Shield stamps which came with the Teachers' Whisky. So we got on well.

On another USNS vessel the officers and crew wanted to lay on a party for some of the local orphans and I managed to lumber myself with fixing up a children's entertainer for the event. All went well and everyone was pleased, including the storekeeper who not only rationalised his stock of Pall Malls but put a letter in through his commanding officer thanking me for my efforts. My boss, the Finance Manager, was not overly impressed (he never was); his reaction bordered on "What did you finagle to set this off ?" I thought it was not politic to tell him that I also got a little rake-off from the agency who supplied the entertainer.

USS "Wasp" was a huge aircraft carrier which, I think, came to Devonport to repair some storm damage. On board the "Wasp" I was most surprised to find that escalators, up and down, were not confined to city centre shops or underground tube stations; some surprise. This would have been in 1970. When it came to collecting the cheque in payment of the claim the Disbursing Officer did his best in checking my figures but was obviously more at home using a calculator; I could instantly and mentally convert £ s d into dollars and cents because, at that time, the pound was worth $2.40, therefore the British penny equalled an American cent. It took the best part of an hour and a half for the transactions to be completed, forcing me to drink several cups of American coffee to wash down the doughnuts and other unusual items.

On board the N.R.P. "Almirante Pereira Da Silva" (Portuguese Navy) I was surprised to find the bulkheads of the wardroom neatly decorated with wallpaper of a colourful floral design. Another surprise was that the ship's Accounting Officer had no access to any official money, Portuguese or otherwise; a claim for £1,248 worth of furnace fuel oil was beginning to burn a hole in my pocket. A piece of diplomacy was called for here, with Portugal being Great Britain's oldest ally. I pretended that the claim was simply a stores voucher to check on the quantity of oil supplied and, finishing my glass of wine with as much decorum as possible, I promised to call back later and discuss the bill. A quick phone call to Admiralty solved the problem; because the ship had been diverted to Devonport without warning, it would be OK to break the rules and send the claim to the Portuguese Embassy. I requested, and received in ten minutes, a signal from Admiralty confirming this arrangement. Back on board the wine flowed again; I don't believe "Senor" Accounting Officer was fooled for one moment.

One thing I liked about the Netherlands ships was the fact that virtually all the crew could speak English and that, as soon as British people entered a wardroom or mess-deck, the senior crew member present would rap on a table top and announce the fact, whereupon all ensuing conversation - even between Dutchmen only - would be switched to English.

The Royal Canadian Navy provided me with several anecdotes, some humorous in retrospect, others I could have done without.

HMCS "Cape Scott" was an auxiliary, similar to the RFAs which support the RN ships. Having met up with the Supply Officer and having partaken of some Canadian coffee and cookies, I was interested to learn that when the RCN adopted the new "Maple Leaf" ensign earlier in the ship's commission, he had not been informed of the requirement of a new ensign until twenty four hours before the official date and time. Panic stations ! (an old Canadian saying). He was responsible for supplying the new ensign and did not have one on board. He asked me not to spread it around but said the ensign currently flying was cobbled together on board by a couple of crew members. Well, I haven't spread it around for thirty eight years; don't suppose he or his navy will mind at this time. The last Canadian ensign of the former design had been framed and put on display as an official exhibit by the time "Cape Scott" arrived in Devonport.

At the end of the "Cape Scott" visit on 25th October 1965 I went onboard to collect payment of a claim totalling over £16,000. The Supply Officer detailed two men to check the calculations and proceeded to remove bundles of banknotes from the safe. Last-minute activities prior to leaving port were in full swing with crew members coming in and going out, conversations being shouted to and fro; in short, not an ideal place to count out money and settle a claim. In any event, payment in cash was most unusual for such a large amount and I telephoned for a police escort. This duly arrived, but I was asked to travel in the police vehicle with the cash and let a police officer drive my car back to South Yard. This didn't strike me as a particularly good idea. The police instead agreed to stay behind me as I drove my own car with the wooden ex-ammo box stuffed full of cash on the rear seat. After about five minutes the police car disappeared from my driving mirror due to road works and I didn't see it again.

Arriving at South Yard I passed the cash over to the Cashier, whose staff started checking it straight away. By the time I got back to Claims Section he was on the phone saying that there appeared to be a surplus of £500. This he confirmed the following morning. I suggested that a signal be sent to "Cape Scott" asking the Supply Officer to check his sterling balance (he also had supplies of several European currencies in his safe), but the Admiral Superintendent instead sent a signal saying that an excess of £500 had been received.

The Supply Officer, in the meantime, had been feverishly counting his balances and discovered the deficiency. He went up to the bridge for some fresh air and was met by the yeoman brandishing our signal. Relief all round on the bridge (he subsequently told me). He arranged for a reply signal to be sent asking us to forward the £500 as a high value package to the RCN's Grosvenor Square office. "Cape Scott" arrived in Rotterdam on 27 October when he was able to phone London and ask his colleague there to send the package of money to Oslo, Cape Scott's next port of call. Unfortunately, our Cashier had sent a crossed cheque instead of the expected bundle of banknotes; RCN ships did not run bank accounts at the time, so the crossed cheque had to be posted from London to Rotterdam, where the Supply Officer was able to cash it when he changed guilders back to Canadian dollars !

…

When the Dutch cruiser "Rotterdam" paid a visit to Devonport in September 1970 it fell to me to arrange a football match at the Brickfields between the ship's PO's Mess and Finance Department. "Rotterdam" won the match 2 - 1 but the Finance team were not disgraced in the beer-drinking contest when eight of us returned on board. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking in Dutch, I had a good scriptwriter and I don't think I let the side down. The PO's Mess audience could, of course, have been laughing and applauding a speech in Dutch totally different to the one I had jotted down in English !

A group of six Dutch minesweepers occupied 8, 9 and 10 Wharves on April 30th 1971 and, as usual I drove up there (in my Jag, of course !) to bid them welcome, present the claims for payment and check out the beer. As soon as I was ushered into the PO's Mess I was handed a glass of spirit, which surprised me a little because it was usually Amstel or Heineken. "No", they said, "Today is Queen Juliana's Birthday - nobody drinks her health in beer !" Not wishing to be in a minority, I agreed and cautiously drank the spirit (no idea whatsover what the glass contained !). Over to the next minesweeper, moored alongside, and a similar conversation took place -"Queen Juliana's Birthday, - no beerrr !" I will gloss over the happenings aboard the next four minesweepers; it seems that no one had forgotten the Queen's birthday and I still believe there was a deliberate plot, from ship to ship, to make the Finance Manager's representative forget that he was supposed to be collecting cheques. I drove home to lunch, a bit later than usual, very, very carefully at about four o'clock.

In 1961 I made the first of two football tours with Greenbank United to the Netherlands, the second being in 1963. All who went had a very enjoyable time including the wives, who seemed to spend most of their time shopping, and the supporters who finished the tour as experts on Dutch lager. The voyage back to Dover took its toll on the latter, who decided not to go for a third tour, should there ever be one.

Returning to my work in the affairs of the Dockyard, HMCS "Kootenay" suffered a disastrous engine room explosion which killed nine men and badly burned others. She was brought alongside at 10 Wharf and, as usual, I went aboard soon after she tied up and I noticed an impatient looking queue of seamen forming around the Electrical Department's fitter as he was installing a telephone. Without interrupting his work I obtained the information that he only had instructions to connect the normal quota of telephones which, for the use of the crew, was two. With a crew of almost two hundred ratings, it was apparent that "Kootenay" needed more than two phones on this disastrous and emotional occasion.

I went ashore again and drove over to the Electrical Department where I managed to obtain the assistance of a fellow football player who happened to be a supervisor of one of the telephone installation parties. I explained the circumstances at the ship and he quickly recognised the urgency; by the time I got back to the ship four additional telephones were being placed in position and the queues were moving much more quickly.

Reporting back to my boss by phone I was able to spend the rest of the day on "Kootenay" and assisted the ship's staff with transport, funeral arrangements, times of trains to London, telephone numbers, black armbands ( thanks to the ladies of the Colour Loft at Morice Yard ) and various other bits and pieces.

Some three weeks later the Admiral Superintendent of the Dockyard received an official letter from the Captain of "Kootenay" thanking him for all the work and assistance rendered by HM Dockyard staff during the emergency repairs. I was mentioned by name in the letter and I had to explain to Finance Manager how this had come about. Well, I explained some of it !

During 1963 I received the result of an aptitude test designed to discover which of the people in my grade were suitable for brainwashing as computer programmers. The result indicated that I was bang in the middle of the group eminently suitable; those at the top of the list were too clever to be programmers, while those at the bottom were too stuck in their ways to make the grade. I declined the offer of a move to the programming society, preferring to stay with straightforward bill-collecting from various foreign navies - far more interesting and rewarding.

Occasionally I was called before a promotion board who basically wanted to know whether I had yet changed my mind about serving the department other than in the Plymouth area and as regularly as clockwork I would say "No, thank you" preferring to live a settled existence with my family, all of whom put up with me rather well. It was quite interesting to attend these promotion boards on average once every eighteen months, just for the free trip to The Smoke which backed up my opinions about stopping in Plymouth.

I kept my eye on the situations vacant as publicised in the official papers, including Admiralty Fleet Orders, which were later renamed "Defence Council Instructions" but retained their size, shape, colour and format. Someone probably became knighted for that splendid piece of work.

As a result of reading the sits vac I applied to become Editor of "Devonport News", the Dockyard's own newspaper, but I think I lost out on that because I was already supplying a fair percentage of the contents including articles and photographs. I was also not wanted in the job of Assistant Industrial Welfare Officer, although I considered I could have been instrumental in sharpening up the workforce a little at that job.

Another course I was sent on was entitled Senior Supervisors' Course; this was an absolute waste of time and resources. So much so that it was the last one to be held under that heading. The whole thing was discontinued, partly as a result of my disapproving comments on its nature and content. "Public Speaking", on the other hand, I found very useful when I became Hon Secretary of the Peverell Park Road Allotments Association and, concurrently, the Editor of "Buzz", the Finance Department's house magazine (of which more later, for those readers who have not by then succumbed to intense drowsiness). Meetings of the Plymouth Mineral and Mining Club also provided opportunities to practice semi-public speaking.

The tanker Torrey Canyon was moving at 17 knots when she was accidentally driven on to the Seven Stones Reef early in the morning of 18 March 1967, complete with 117,000 tons of crude oil from Kuwait which should have been delivered to Milford Haven. A Dutch salvage crew was put on board and the Ministry of Defence allocated the name "Mop-Up" to the biggest oil pollution clearance operation ever mounted at that time. The Navy Department subsequently assembled a fleet of ships, Naval and commercial, the extent of which would not be surpassed until fifteen years later when the Falkland Islands were invaded by the Argentinian armed forces.

I first got to hear about "Mop-Up" at 4.30 pm when I was summoned into the presence of the Finance Manager and instructed to attend a meeting being held straight away at Maritime Headquarters (MHQ), Mount Wise. It was due to be a high-powered meeting of local service chiefs deciding among themselves how to clear up the oil pollution caused by the grounding. I was told to take notes of what was decided ( for later costing purposes ) should there be any Dockyard involvement. "Do not, under any circumstances, take on any accounting tasks which would normally be dealt with by the RN", was the final instruction to me.

Arriving at the meeting I was dumbfounded to see the number of high-ranking uniformed officers from the Army, RN, and RAF. The highest ranking civilian was a Mr Iain MacDonald who would not surface again in my experience until such time as he solemnly announced on television the losses of ships in the Falklands conflict. He was a top-notch civil servant from Whitehall. The chairman of the meeting was a Commander RN, henceforth referred to as Staff Officer (Operations) or "SOO".

I checked in with the Chief Petty Officer who was announcing the names and functions of people arriving at the meeting and was surprised to hear him tell the chairman that I was the one he had been waiting for - "the Finance man". I swiftly disabused SOO of any notion that I was the answer to his accountancy prayers and put him in touch with the Finance Manager, who agreed to attend the meeting and arrived in fifteen minutes, by which time the number of people at the meeting had grown to more than twenty.

The meeting went on until 8.30 pm and most of us then went home to find out what the news media had for us on the subject of Torrey Canyon; the officer types went to the Mess for the rest of the evening, I imagine. At this juncture, very few people other than those at the meeting had any idea of the immensity of the operation. which would become a national and international front page subject for many weeks.

My new but temporary job required me to keep as accurate a record as possible of the costs incurred by the whole Navy Department - service and civilian. Within a couple of days a pattern began to emerge of quantities of oil detergent received, stored (in 45-gallon drums), issued and sprayed on polluted areas both ashore on the beaches and at sea. The Dockyard departments were kept busy manufacturing the spraying equipment and installing it on HM ships.

Civilian ships, including fishing boats and trawlers, were chartered on a daily basis to load up with drums of detergent, carry them out to sea as far as specified areas (determined from the daily aerial photographs) and then spray the surface oil until the detergent had been used up. I believe the going rate per vessel was £75 per day and there were about thirty vessels at times.

More Whitehall warriors began to arrive and more meetings were organised; the most senior V.I.P. to grace MHQ with his presence was a Permanent Under-Secretary of State by the name of Foley. He promised to "cut through red tape" and declared that "no one will lose out financially - let's get the oil mopped up !" Promises, promises, but I never saw him actually do anything whilst he was at MHQ. Operation Mop-Up kept my nose to the grindstone day after day (including Saturdays and Sundays) with the exception of Good Friday, when I managed a quick trip with my four-year-old son to the Pennycross Stock Car Racing Stadium before returning to work two hours later.

Back in the Dockyard, the most senior of my staff had been promoted to sit at my desk and run Claims Section, which she was more than happy to do, thanks to the temporary salary increase. A young clerical assistant had been promoted to fill the gap left; she also was over the moon about the increased salary. I was accompanied at MHQ by a young executive to assist me with Mop-Up; he worked the same hours as I did, i.e. very long ones, and he was paid overtime.

Not until the heat died down after about three or four weeks did I discover that, although I had been promoted on a temporary basis, I could not be paid overtime because overtime was not payable to the grade I was now working in (Higher Executive Officer); something called a "long hours gratuity" was meant to cover odd hours of overtime worked on the higher grade. The only thing odd about the hours I was obliged to work was the fact that they often lasted until 10 pm or, on one occasion, well after midnight.

Like a fool, I thought it would all be sorted out in due course, with a reappraisal of the salary arrangements ("No one will lose out financially - let's get the oil mopped up !" - Foley). But it never was sorted out and I was seen off - hand over fist. My one-man contest versus the Admiralty dragged on and on, with no success. The Admiralty could not and would not stray from the rigid path of the salary regulations, even though we were now more than halfway through the twentieth century, with canvas no longer in fashion as a means of propelling ships around the world.

Operation Mop-Up was terminated at the end of April with, for my assistant and I, a couple of car journeys around the parts of the Cornish coast most affected by the Torrey Canyon disaster, tying up loose ends with the locals and local authorities. During this tour I was told that a bit of fiddling was engaged in by some of the fishermen when spraying. Rumour among the locals was that they took the drums of detergent out to sea, punctured them, poured away the contents anywhere and carried on fishing for the remainder of the day, before writing up their claims for £75.

My temporary promotion had not turned out to be the lucrative job that all the hours of overtime normally would have made it, but I did get the basic promotion increase and the mere pittance of the long hours gratuity, and it dawned on me one day that I would be able to claim "time in lieu of overtime" for the additional hours I had put in. This turned out to be the finest possible solution because for many months afterward my many bosses (all of whom recognised the effort I had put in to the "Torrey Canyon" and were sympathetic to my cause) never argued about the "time in lieu" of which I took an hour or two almost every week. In any event, I was the only one in possession of the true record of the time I worked on that job.

In view of my experience in setting up a system for dealing with tri-service oil pollution accounting, I was offered a promotion (Higher Executive Officer) if I was prepared to move to Portsmouth, where another oil tanker had spilled some oil. I believe it was "Pacific Glory" or some such name. The promotion was to be permanent and would require me to be based at Portsmouth, but having to travel to the location of any major pollution incident anywhere in British waters. The offer was made over the telephone and my reaction was to ask for it in writing, following which I would respond to it in suitable terms after careful consideration. I think the senior officer putting the offer to me correctly diagnosed my lack of enthusiasm for the job, coupled with a desire to say "You must be joking" in acceptable written phraseology. There was no follow-up to this offer, either by telephone or in writing.

In May 1969 I had a slight disagreement with a Canadian (RCN) Supply Officer, the only such disagreement I can remember with any of our visiting foreign or Commonwealth navy people. HMCS "Gatineau" was moored up at 5 Wharf for two or three days and the final bill included charges for tugs and pilotage on the way in and on the way out, as usual. Captain of the Dockyard (CD) always laid on these services in case of unforeseen difficulty - bad weather, Torpoint Ferry problems, etc. But the Supply Officer (quite correctly) said that although the tug and pilot attended the ship movement on the way in, they had not been required to assist in any way. I amended the bill on the spot and arranged with CD's man for the tug and pilot not to attend the outward movement at all. End of disagreement.

The old-established engineering firm of Willoughby's operating from Millbay, where they had the use of the only local dry dock outside the Dockyard, unexpectedly closed down in June 1969, throwing more work on to the Dockyard Engineering Department with, of course, a knock-on effect at Claims Section. Willoughby's were, until then, always keen to take on commercial work not really wanted by the Dockyard and it came as a surprise when they closed.

1970 was a very busy year for me to get through, with a total of sixty-four ships to visit, Navy Days meetings to be attended and the Tall Ships Race being arranged, as well as the civic "Mayflower 70" functions, all of which had to be followed up in case of Dockyard involvement, with information being received from the most unlikely sources.

Local newspapers sometimes referred to events having taken place or which were due to take place involving Dockyard or Navy costs; no one mentioned these costs via official channels, but it was part of the journalists' job to fill the newspaper and part of my job to find out the details. One such news item stated that more than one hundred mentally-handicapped children travelled up the Tamar in a Dockyard launch voluntarily paid for by the crew of HMS "Tyne". This was certainly news to me and I followed it up. Knowing that the Finance Manager kept a close eye on the local press, I brought the news item to his attention, whereupon he grudgingly let it go with "no further action". If he had heard it from any other source he would have wanted to know why I had not raised a claim.

When visiting Millbay to talk with the Tall Ships Race officials, I had to be a little circumspect in the subjects to be discussed. Upper Finance management, aware of the vast amount of press coverage for this international event, warned me not to mention the fact that the deposit required would have to include the rental of the buoys and moorings occupied. With press reporters around every corner, it would have been very difficult to say anything about the bill or about the deposit because there was little to be charged for apart from buoys and moorings.

The Finance Department Sports and Social Club paid me a great honour at Christmas 1970 by inviting me to be the "after dinner speaker" at their 17th Annual Dinner and Dance. I presume the reason was that I had done my humble duty by arranging and conducting my version of a television show called "Criss Cross Quiz" for the members at the Civil Service Club. I could also claim to have rescued the house magazine "buzz" (no, not a proof-reading error - "buzz" never had a capital "B" - one of its idiosyncrasies) from relative obscurity to a point where it became so popular that Finance Department people in other dockyards and at Bath HQ were prepared to pay money for it, whereas all Devonport staff members got a free copy. Personally I was delighted to accept this honour, following in the footsteps of such people as a former Dockyard Welfare Officer, a highly-placed trade union official and an Assistant Superintendent of Police (retired). Apart from the honour attached to the invitation the meal and drinks were free !

The Criss Cross Quiz was repeated ( with some new questions ! ) in 1972, I organised the Social Club's Annual Children's Party in 1975 and on 2nd February 1978 (after three weeks of handing over to the new occupant) I departed from Claims Section and made my way up six or seven floors to take over Personnel Manager's Section, which only needed half a day's handover. The job here was to write memoranda giving instructions to other departments (Captain of the Port, Production Manager, Yard Services Manager, i.e. all except Finance Manager and Principal Supply and Transport Officer, who took their instructions from their own Headquarters branches).

The instructions told the recipients when to get their bids in for next year's finance allocation, when to put in requests for next year's fuel supplies, what hours to work, how to obtain tickets for the next launching ceremony, when to knock off for Bank Holidays, what style of clothing to wear at the Admiral's party next week (lounge suit, uniform, with or without medals, come as you are or whatever). Every document had to be numbered with at least ten characters, subdivided into three blocks separated by two oblique lines (now referred to as "forward slashes" on the Internet, I believe.) In short, the job was the exact opposite to the one I had just left and within two weeks I was looking for a way out.

The way out was offered to me by the reigning Finance Manager who had been asked to recommend for Internal Audit (yet another department reporting only to its own HQ, this time at Basingstoke) someone with knowledge of stores, finance, ships and establishments. He was prepared to put my name forward, but only if I wanted to transfer; he pointed out that it would mean spending time away from Devonport but only in short stretches. The way he put it to me was that he thought of it as putting in a poacher to do a gamekeeper's job.

He thought I would handle the work with ease and that I would find it interesting and rewarding. He also thought I had done well to put up with Personnel Manager's Section for more than five months. So I became an auditor.

The Internal Audit office was at South Yard, in a bungalow which had formerly been a police station; there was a cell or cage down in the cellar, with steel bars across the tiny window. The bungalow was situated just inside the old limestone-built Dockyard wall at what was previously Fore Street Gate. At the end of WW2 a plaque commemorating the part played in victory by the Polish Navy - Marynarka Wojenna - was cemented into the wall, to the right of the gateway itself which had been built during the horse and cart era. In the late forties the gateway was widened and the Polish memorial was removed and re-cemented into the wall outside Albert Gate.

General auditing involved two main documents; the D.A.P. (detailed audit programme) and the I.C.Q. (internal control questionnaire). The DAP listed the paperwork which needed to be examined, the checking process which was to be carried out on it and any physical action such as stocktaking, identification, packaging, etc. The ICQ consisted of a list of questions to be asked when interviewing the persons being audited. On completion, the audit report would be written up and passed on to the audit supervisor, who might ask for a few items to be enlarged upon or clarified or re-examined, before he himself added observations and despatched the completed paperwork to HQ.

After more than thirty years of employment in the Navy Department, mainly the Dockyards, I was fairly conversant with the working methods of people in most grades, from the shop floor worker up to the line manager, most of whom were experienced and/or well supervised. It therefore did not take me long to write in the answers to 75% of the questions, followed by an interview with one or two people to obtain the remainder. This gave me plenty of time to attend to important tasks like completing claims for travelling and subsistence allowances.

Even short journeys within the yard attracted payment of travelling allowance; if a claim was not rendered it could be inferred that the journeys in connection with the audit task had not been undertaken, therefore the audit itself had not been completed properly. HQ expected as high a degree of accuracy to appear in claim mileage figures as in the audits. The two people with whom I worked were long-serving experts at interpreting the rules and regulations on this subject and I learned very quickly. The most fruitful audits in this respect were those which required journeys to locations from which it was not possible to return on the same day.

Taunton was a wonderful place to go on a daily basis to carry out an audit; the Automobile Association's mileage guide (which formed the basis of all Civil Service mileage claims) showed Taunton as being 75 miles from Plymouth. Seventy five miles was also the distance laid down in MOD(N) instructions as the maximum for daily travel. We used to call it "A Smile a Mile", driving to Taunton. More than 75 miles meant an overnight stay (with subsistence allowance instead of mileage). In 1978 I travelled to Taunton daily for four weeks, likewise in 1980, but by 1981 someone at HQ had tumbled to the facts of the matter and we all had to stay for four separate weeks during each Taunton audit ( a case of "who audits the auditors ?" ). However, it's an ill wind……..as they say, and I pitched a tent at a nearby farm, which was much more enjoyable than bed and breakfast (quite apart from the obvious). Even better, the farmer wanted his milking shed re-wired and I was able to apply my expertise successfully; he supplied the cash for materials and tools and I strung it all together. It took me about sixteen Ken-hours. So I got paid for working evenings, camped near the farmhouse for nothing and was given a subsistence allowance by the MOD and a sack of apples from the farmer to boot, not to mention a hearty great breakfast daily.

The same sort of arrangement had happened on one of my earliest audits - at Chatham in September 1978. The bed and breakfast lady was having trouble with washing machine, vacuum cleaner and a faulty socket. In three evenings I managed to rewire the whole of the ground floor (again, successfully). There was nothing wrong with the two electrical items after all. My accommodation was then supplied free of charge and she later phoned me at home offering a free weekend for two in Chatham at Christmas time. Chatham ? At Christmas time ? Margaret and I tactfully declined this very kind offer !

Going back to the actual auditing procedure, there were several different types of interviewees. There were some who welcomed the chance to talk about their work because they were proud of the way they kept it shipshape; there were others who would complain that their work could never be up to date because they had too much to do. A third type of person gave as little information as possible and resented any kind of intrusion into their working lives. After a relatively short period of experience it was possible to identify the type as soon as the interview commenced; like any other job, you win some and lose others.

A man in charge of a store which housed huge newsprint-sized rolls of paper used in cartography had no access to wheeled fire-fighting equipment and even if he did, would have had no chance of getting it into the store because the aisles were too narrow. He defended this situation by declaring that it was OK because there had never been a fire. At a territorial Army depot the warrant officer responsible for answering the audit questions revealed that the NCO who was in sole charge of receiving, storing and issuing small arms ammunition (thus breaking one of the basic tenets of storekeeping) was, as a matter of interest, married to an Irish lady.

At a Royal Marines Commando base, the NCO providing answers to my questions and assisting me with a specimen stocktake of small arms ammunition "rectified" a deficiency of fifty rounds of 7. 62mm on the spot by writing out a back-dated issue voucher which he endorsed "expended in Northern Ireland". That's another type of interviewee who did not need to be argued with - he was more than six feet tall, built like a bus and had hands like coal shovels.

One man who really got himself into the entanglements was the Engineer Officer at a South Wales salvage depot; he did not wish to be audited and said he did not need to be audited. He apparently was too busy getting the target ship ready for sea and thought the auditors ought to be put on board it when it was towed out into the Bristol Channel to be fired at. He was heard to say that auditors lived in a world of their own and had no right to meddle in other people's work. There was no need for him to make remarks of that nature even if one of the auditors was my immediate boss, so we decided to turn him over a bit, if at all possible.

While I was doing a partial stocktake of the machinery items at the depot , I discovered a Rover 2000 cc car engine in pieces on the floor of a Nissen hut. Obviously it was in the middle of an ongoing repair job and, knowing that there were no RN Rover cars allocated to the depot, I listed it as a surplus item, recording its serial number for good measure. When the audit report went in the Rover engine stuck out like a sore thumb and the Engineer Officer would have had to explain it to his boss so that the boss could explain it to us, by which time we were all back at Devonport having a good laugh about it. The story was that he was working on the engine using his own material, in his own time at weekends, and the space taken up by the engine was not needed for anything else; the officer in charge of the depot said it was an arrangement made with his predecessor's predecessor and that he didn't know about it until our report arrived. A likely story. We all had many a good laugh out of it, anyway.

A systems audit of an MOD Police detachment revealed quite a few irregularities, also a fluorescent yellow jacket which subsequently became very useful when shifting horses in the fog or darkness at Shaugh Prior. The D.A.P. required me to examine, among other things, the Small Arms and Ammunition Register. This turned out to be quite entertaining. All the items were supposed to be checked and counted three times a day, i.e. at every changeover of personnel. Checking through the current register, I found that, understandably, the stock of ammunition did not vary from one week's end to the other; after all, Mr MOD Plod did not normally carry a gun, much less fire one. Turning over one page, however, I discovered that the number of rounds held in stock of one calibre decreased by a hundred from one shift to the next and from one page to the next. Subsequent daily entries showed the lesser number of rounds for weeks afterward, indicating to me that no one ever really checked the stock but merely copied the last entry blindly. Or, in this particular instance, incorrectly. By bringing this ongoing error to the notice of the Duty Sergeant (quietly) I came into possession of the jacket described above. Minus its "POLICE" panel, of course !

Examination of the "Found" register showed a large number of transistor radios listed as "found" but very, very few had been returned to the rightful owner. In this case there was no clerical error, the items being correctly listed, but it was demonstrated to me that the privately-owned and unclaimed radios were all powered by Government batteries, thus there was little chance of anyone asking for them back.

Whilst in the company of a senior police officer near the beginning of this audit, an old friend of mine, from Naval Store days, entered the office in the company of a detective constable; he was helping the police with their enquiries on a case which was later to show him as a suspect. "Hello, Ken !", he said, "What have they got you for ?" Slightly embarrassing.

Audits of ships' accounts were always interesting and entertaining because there was usually something unexpected liable to turn up. On board a frigate I got halfway through an audit when a steam pipe joint started to leak a little just above the desk I was using. I carefully put the documents in a neat pile on the adjacent desk and went off to report the leak to the engineering staff. By the time I managed to find someone and got back to the cabin, the steam had promoted itself to water and sprayed hot water over the paperwork. That audit had to be abandoned. Rain stopped play, so to speak.

One of the sea-going RMAS tugs at Devonport became due for audit and the only time available on board was the day she was going out on sea trials, following a refit. Foolishly, my colleague and I agreed to do the business on board while the trials took place. No one told us that the trials included full speed manoeuvres or that a force eight gale would manifest itself. The tug only went as far as Cawsand Bay for the trials, but the experience of being tossed about within a very limited space and what felt like the ship being about to capsize was something that neither one of us would wish to repeat. It was the nearest I ever got to sea-sickness.

A much more pleasurable journey was a trip aboard HMS "Hecla" from Devonport to Bristol. The weather stayed fine for the whole two day voyage and the unusual method of approaching the city centre of Bristol was far more comfortable than driving along the A38 - M4 - M5 and was much quieter than using a Bristol City Transport bus.

The Falkland Islands were invaded early in the morning of 25 May 1982 by Argentinian forces. By the time I got to work at 0815 one morning the Audit Office had been invaded and occupied by a small squad of Royal Marine Commandos. They had forced the lock on the door to get in, they had forcibly opened the steel cupboard to obtain writing paper and they had removed the lock on the telephone because, they explained, they were preparing arrangements in connection with the loading of the "Atlantic Conveyor". (Our phone was always locked overnight because it was a direct dial instrument for "outside" numbers.)

I was the only one due in on that particular day, the other two people being away somewhere on an audit job. I managed to persuade the RMs to let me have our phone back for a few minutes and then reported the situation to HQ, telling them that any normal work would be out of the question for the rest of the day at the very least, probably longer. I started making myself useful by brewing cups of tea and coffee all round, then used my expertise as a former Naval Stores man to short-circuit the procedures for obtaining those odd items which normally take six weeks to arrive.

Exeter Store Depot in particular were very much on the ball, also Wrangaton and Turnchapel; everybody thought it was a good idea to get the ship loaded as soon as possible. The audit centre became a hive of activity for once and I finished the day feeling as if I had done a good day's work of some real value instead of shuffling paper around. Little did we all know that the ship would take the whole cargo, with the exception of one Chinook helicopter, to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean as soon as she arrived near the Falklands.

The RMs were able to vacate our office by lunchtime the following day, having worked most of the night, and office life returned to normal. I got on with writing a report about the unusual circumstances and the boss signed it and sent it off to HQ. It was obvious that the armchair aristocrats at Bath had absolutely no idea of the situation building up at what they always quaintly termed the "outports" of Devonport and Portsmouth; the HQ staff of most Admiralty departments tended to look upon the dockyards as a pain in the neck interrupting their activities. TV was their only source of information but TV seldom conveys the atmosphere of a live event as it is played out for real; this I had learned fifteen years earlier, with the Torrey Canyon disastrous oil pollution.

At the conclusion of the Falklands War in mid-June 1982 it was good to be able to welcome the surviving ships back and cheer the crews as they came ashore. Every time a ship tied up alongside I always managed to be there; the tugs pumping jets of water into the sky, the dockside packed solid with people waving flags and streamers, we even had the Red Arrows welcoming back HMS "Arrow". Plenty of us lined our cars up as free taxis to take families home; in my case auditing got a very low priority in the day's programme every time a ship came in.

As soon as 3 Commando Brigade got back to Coypool I made it my business to take a couple of days off work and drive down to see the returning heroes. I knew they were back because yes, I was one of the thousands of Plymothians who occupied the verges and flyovers of the A38 to cheer and wave flags at the hired coaches bringing them back from wherever it was they disembarked (Southampton, I think). The following day I went into Coypool and spoke to the Colour Sergeant who normally arranged for people to man the various stores, ledgers, etc for audit. I told him I'd come to audit the books, to which he replied "They all went down in the Atlantic Conveyor !".

Everybody fell about laughing at this, and, over a cup of coffee, I let on that I was not really on duty and had just dropped in to see them. The briefcase was just a ploy to get past the MOD Plod on the gate. More laughter, and we moved on to the pub. In 2001, following the presentation of new colours to 40, 42 and 45 Commandos on the Hoe, I was told by an ex-marine who called on me to obtain a copy of my video cassette of the event that the story of the auditor who wanted to see the books which had gone down with the "Atlantic Conveyor" was still going the rounds some five years after the Falklands War had finished.

It was the 3 Commando Air Group at Coypool which took me on my first helicopter (or "cab") trip; the machine was a Gazelle. The invitation to a ride was supposed to be for the two auditors, but the other auditor was on leave. Looking for someone to occupy the spare seat, I managed to get my daughter Sally a ride. Theoretically there was radio communication with the two crew members; but actually there was a bad connection and he advised me to spit on the connector. This did the trick and we were able to converse as we were flown up the A38 as far as the Torbay turn-off, then over to East Cornwall, down the Tamar, along the front of the Hoe and back to Coypool. Sally had to be shown on the flight plan as the other auditor - Air Group were not allowed to take two members of the same family in one helicopter.

August 1983 saw me travel on board RFA "Regent" in company with another auditor to carry out several aspects of audit en route to Gibraltar. We were due to get back to the UK by air, on a Britannia flight. The voyage started by "Regent" heading out into mid-Atlantic, there to meet up with several other ships to take part in a NATO exercise. Having assembled into whatever formation had been laid out by MOD(N), "Regent" was "torpedoed" and "sunk" within twenty minutes. Apparently we had been showing a light or two, but I don't think we auditors were to blame.

This might have set some kind of a record in audit circles; we had to continue an audit of a ship said to be lying on the sea-bed and we had not even been supplied with waterproof pens, paper or diving suits. During this voyage I took advantage of an offer from the skipper (who obviously wanted a good audit report for his departments) of a flight in the ship's helicopter. It didn't take me long to say "Yes, please" because it was one thing going for a joy ride in a cab from Coypool but this was to be an operational flight delivering stores to HMS "Invincible" in what was known in the Navy as a "vertrep" (vertical replenishment).

Altogether this trip took more than an hour, with the aircraft touching down on the flight deck twelve times. Before the initial take-off the two crew members gave me instructions about how to avoid appearing in the casualty list, should there be a crash. The pilot said that if we had to ditch I was to kick the red button which blows the door off and start swimming. ( I didn't like to spoil his day by telling him that I can't swim ). The cargo handler petty officer, who struck me as having to be really expert in giving the pilot instructions how to place the load gently on deck, told me not to wait for him in any ditching - he would already have jumped. This proved to be a very interesting hour's ride, followed by some aerobatics which were not successful if the pilot thought he could make me bring up my lunch. However, we still managed to arrive at Gibraltar on time, but the ship was not allowed to moor alongside due to the live missiles and ammo forming part of the cargo. Transport to and from town therefore had to be by harbour craft.

Gibraltar was a most interesting place to visit and we could have done with several days more. There was a unique method of disposing of unwanted private cars - they were stored at a fenced and locked car park and periodically the car park was emptied by rolling the cars down the almost vertical cliff into the Mediterranean Sea. We were fed and accommodated at HMS "Rooke", the shore base. The flight back was to Luton airport by Britannia Airways, the aircraft having to avoid Spanish air space because of the political situation.

My final audit at Taunton Hydrographic took place in mid-September; By now it was far less unbearable and that was my final "travelling" one, followed by a succession of local audits including Airwork Ltd at Roborough Airport; I think they supplied either the training aircraft or the instructors for the RN officers to obtain their wings. By now I was becoming involved in some wrangling and bickering with the new man who had taken over as Senior Accountant in the audit office. He had formerly worked for a civilian company in the Pacific somewhere and had only just started with the Civil Service. Obviously he was facing a long, arduous change of routine but tried to give the impression that it was the Civil Service which would have to alter its ways.

He and I were frequently at loggerheads, mostly over simple things which, building up, made time spent in the office a little unpleasant. I think the situation began to get to me when he started telling me to get a "correct" Dockyard car park permit - one for South Yard. Mine was for North Yard which also allowed me to park at South Yard, whereas South Yard permits were not valid in North Yard. He kept on and on about it, eventually putting the instruction in typewritten form so that he would be able to show his superiors in Basingstoke HQ what a bad influence I was on everybody else. (Apart from the typist, "everybody else" in the office outranked me). He was not to know that I had been partly responsible for assembling, writing and promulgating the parking regulations for the whole Dockyard. This was when I served at Personnel Manager's Department four years previously and therefore I knew a bit about car parking and permits.

Now that I take a retrospective look at the parking situation, I see that I didn't get any "tickets" at all until I started driving to work in my ten year old Jag, which was ticketed three times in eleven months during 1971. I then did not get any tickets for six years, but I suppose a beige Morris 1100 did not attract as much attention as a Jag in British Racing Green. The blue Cortina scored three tickets from 1981 - 83, but this period included the Navy's return from the Falklands War when South Yard car park was badly congested with the surviving RAF Chinook helicopter and several Argentinian Pucara aircraft, all of which had to be carried away on trailers and these items took up a lot of space in the car park. My last ticket went to the yellow Cortina in February '84.

Portsmouth turned out to be a terrible place to get from and to for auditing, often due to car problems but sometimes to bad weather. My first trip, on 14 January 1985, was typical of all the subsequent ones. I was awakened at 0400 by one of my daughter's horses breaking the fence down to gain access to the garden (no double glazing to keep out the noise at that time). By the time he allowed us to catch him and put him back where he belonged it was 0730 which is when we discovered that the mains water pipe was frozen solid. Not until 1000 did I commence the journey to Portsmouth.

On the return journey, three days later, I experienced my worst driving conditions ever. As far as Ringwood the snow kept coming, but the road was negotiable. From there to Dorchester, the road was frozen under the snow and needed great care; the Dorchester - Poole - Bridport - Axminster roads were even worse and at one point I felt the car bounce off a pretty substantial hedge. Fearing damage to the bodywork but unwilling to get out to look, I drove on, with the weather improving towards Exeter. The Plympton junction on the A38 had to be manoeuvred around rather than driven but the worst bit was almost within walking distance of home. I arrived at 8.15 pm, after a five and a quarter hour journey. There was no damage to the car bodywork after all.

On the next trip to Portsmouth - 4 February - the starter solenoid failed at Dorchester on the way up, and the engine had to be started under the bonnet every time for the rest of the week. On the return trip, in heavy rain, the screen wipers failed (also at Dorchester). I managed to get under the roof of an open-sided shed to effect a temporary repair but the man in charge didn't wholly approve of repairs to electrical motors being carried out in close proximity to petrol tanks and it took me an hour; I arrived home at 4 pm, the journey having taken five hours.

Off to Portsmouth again on Monday 11 February, and the bonnet blew off completely ten miles away from Pompey on the M27 motorway. The replacement (on Wednesday) cost me £10 from a hard-to-find scrapyard. Only four and a quarter hours were wasted on driving home on the Thursday, without any mechanical problems for once.

Three consecutive weeks at Portland was next on the bill (or Bill ?) but the travelling conditions were relatively calm on each trip. Thanks to the absence of any further "travelling" audits for a while, I was able to make some discreet investigation into the possibility of an early retirement within a year or two. I spent quite a lot of time on the telephone and dropped in at the homes of several of my Naval Stores friends who, being older, had already taken the plunge, and early retirement began to look like a viable proposition for me. I kept my tentative plans to myself as far as the audit management staff were concerned, but started getting down to investigating the nitty gritty of "life after retirement".

My last full-sized audit was on board RFA Fort Grange from 1-16 October '85 at North Yard and my day of retirement from the Dockyard arrived on 31 October 1985. I had already completed, signed and sent off to MOD (N) seemingly dozens of relevant documents (including a special retirement issue of the Official Secrets Act, additional to the one I signed in 1944). I got the clearance ticket from Loan Tool Store, I returned the anti-nuclear tablets (what the yardies called suicide pills) and finally yielded my coveted North Yard car parking permit as I drove out through Fore Street Gate. A short drive to the Brown Bear, a few drinks with the typist and two auditor friends, and that was the end of my MOD (Navy) experiences.

Ken Roberts' National Service

Ken Roberts and the first Land Rovers

Ken Roberts and the Plymouth Blitz

Kitty to the Cape A journey through Cornish Mining History. 

Landscape of a Legend. The Mines of Redruth and Camborne. 

West Devon Riding Club

Plymouth Mineral & Mining Club

Lionel Beck's Army Service

SEND E-MAIL TO KEN ROBERTS    

 

 

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