by James Philip
“I didn’t realise Valiant was so far advanced, sir,” Simon Collingwood remarked, turning to the older man at his elbow. Both he and the First Sea Lord, Sir David Luce were dressed in mufti. The Furness Peninsula was a secure zone guarded by a company of the Lancashire Fusiliers but beyond the high fences and the roadblocks, the surrounding countryside was notoriously lawless. The Morecombe Bay airburst on the night of the October War had wrecked the towns along the coast. Farther south the ruins along the south bank of the Mersey had spawned a world of warring gangs and prevented the re-opening of the Liverpool docks. A new road had been driven around the city and Manchester had become the administrative capital of the North-West; but outside of the Vickers’s Yards it was unwise to walk around in uniform without bodyguards, and most supplies and personnel reached the fortified Furness Peninsula via sea or by air. Something drastic would have to be done about the regional security situation but that was for another day. The two men had arrived by helicopter an hour ago to begin their inspection of the new Director of the Bureau of Submarine Construction’s fiefdom.
“If the local security situation wasn’t so difficult at the moment we’d be even further ahead,” the First Sea Lord replied flatly.
“When I talked with the Prime Minister,” Simon Collingwood said, “she indicated that the Program here was to be the Navy’s number one priority. What does that actually mean, sir?”
David Luce guffawed. There was something implacable in the younger man’s quiet, respectfully voiced question. He was not the sort of man to stamp his foot or to stand on his rights, or to use the Angry Widow’s name in vain but he had been given a job to do and he was going to do it come what may!
“The Royal Navy has only two priorities, Rear-Admiral,” he retorted amiably, “to prepare for war, and to fight wars. The SSN program is an integral part of both.”
Although he did not care for the ambiguous sophistry of this reply, Simon Collingwood said nothing while he continued to survey the yards.
Margaret Thatcher had been a revelation.
She had talked to him about how pleased she had been to finally get out to Malta; and about how she admired the ‘spirit of the islanders’. And then she had got down to business. In low tones – they were cocooned in the forward part of the passenger cabin of the British Overseas Airways Corporation Boeing 707 within feet of a dozen flapping ears – she had started to tell him ‘what needed to be done’ for Britain to be ‘great again’. In no time at all he had wanted to wave a Union Jack!
The funny thing was she had made a huge point of telling him that she had obtained the permission of the C-in-C Mediterranean, Flag Officer Submarines, the First Sea Lord and of the Secretary of State for Defence, William Whitelaw, to ‘speak privately and confidentially to you about the future of the Royal Navy’. It seemed she had a horror of politicians going over the heads of her senior military advisors; possibly because without the support of those same men no government could function in the current ‘situation’.
‘Something will have to be done about the law and order situation in the Lake District,’ she had declared.
‘If we seriously plan to replicate what the US Navy is doing, Prime Minister,” he had explained, diffidently at first. ‘It might help if I explain to you how they go about their business.’ He had spent time in Groton, Connecticut in preparation for his role in project managing the building of the Dreadnought. While he had been in America he had taken the opportunity to tour several of the other facilities crucial to the American SSN program.
‘By all means.’
“The US Navy contracts the Electric Boat Company, and others, to build its nuclear boats at Groton, Connecticut and elsewhere in three or four dedicated sites but that’s only a part of the project. I’ll stick with the example of the Electric Boat Company because that’s probably the biggest contractor when it comes to building hunter killers like Dreadnought. The Electric Boat Company has major facilities at Quonset Point, Rhode Island where the boats are fitted out, and a huge design and engineering operation at New London, Connecticut. The US Navy is so deeply integrated into the activities of the Electric Boat Company, and the other major contractors, that a lot of the time you can’t tell the Navy from the Company; but, and it is a big but, the Electric Boat Company is responsible for the final design, engineering development, building and fitting out of its boats. The Electric Boat Company makes its shareholders rich; but the US Navy gets SSNs in the water. Moreover, most of the time they get their boats in the water on time. Most of the time but not always, because we are talking about applying state of the art, constantly evolving technology and that is always going to challenge timescales.’
‘You’re telling me that we need to nationalise Vickers?’
‘No, Prime Minister. That would probably be the kiss of death to the whole project. If we want new SSNs in the water as soon as possible, and for our existing ones – well, just the one at present – refitted and modernised as required within timescales consistent with the Royal Navy’s real world operational requirements, we can’t afford to let contractors squabble, hoard secrets and technology, or refuse to share relevant experience with each other that we, as a nation, have already paid them, through the nose, to acquire.’
‘I don’t understand where this is going, Admiral Collingwood?’
‘You are asking me to do the impossible, Prime Minister,’ he had confessed. ‘Worse than that, I suspect that you will probably ask me to do it quickly. That is not a problem. That’s what the Navy does. It tries to do the impossible, with or without the resources, quickly because we work for the Queen and the Government of the day calls the tune. All I am asking for is, for once, for the cards to be stacked in my favour.’
‘Specifically?’
‘If we are going to build our future undersea fleet at Barrow-in-Furness the Navy must own the whole peninsula. Whoever is running the show must be God. If you don’t like the way God is running the show you can sack him at any time. But somebody must be in command of the whole thing and you must let that person get on with it. This thing has to be run like the Manhattan project was run in the forty-five war. All or nothing.’
‘You want to be God?’ Margaret Thatcher had smiled and amusement had flickered in her blue eyes.
‘No, Prime Minister. Actually, I’d much prefer to be just another minor deity. Ideally, back at sea with my own command.’
Margaret Thatcher had quizzed him for over two hours on how he would go about building one to two nuclear submarines every year for the next ten years, preferably without bankrupting the country. At several junctures she had requested clarification of general technical engineering and shipbuilding issues. At one point he had reminded her that these were exactly the sort of issues best left to professionals. Notwithstanding, she had gone on asking questions, as was her right.
‘Thank you,’ she had said as the Boeing 707 began to bleed off altitude over the Home Counties on the approach to RAF Brize Norton. ‘You may be right about the need for a God at the heart of things. We shall see. Is there anything I can do to help you personally in the meantime?’
That was one of the oddest moments of Simon Collingwood’s life.
He had not hesitated.
‘Prior to leaving Malta I proposed marriage to a young lady who has charge of two young children. Maya, Yelda and Yannis were among the refugees Dreadnought rescued off Cyprus. Maya was good enough to accept my offer of marriage. However, Maya and the children are stateless and there are certain administrative hurdles to be overcome before they can join me in England. Nothing that can’t be sorted out but I have been warned the red tape is...’
‘They must join you in England as soon as possible!’ The Prime Minister had cried enthusiastically. ‘You have no idea how it cheers one up to hear such a happy story. It is so hard to remind oneself sometimes that despite everything, there is good in the World!’
Simon Collingwood had been horribly embarrassed, lost for words.
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br /> ‘I shall speak to the Home Secretary immediately we land!’ The Angry Widow had declared triumphantly.
Was that only yesterday?
He stared at the Valiant’s still open pressure hull.
Valiant and Warspite were twenty feet longer than Dreadnought, essentially slightly enlarged versions of the first Royal Navy nuclear boat in most respects other than their propulsion sets. In place of Dreadnought’s Westinghouse S5W reactor, the new boats would have Rolls-Royce pressurized water reactors and an innovation that no US Navy SSN yet incorporated, two Paxman diesel-electric generators to enable genuinely silent running. In comparison with the latest ‘noisy’ American SSNs the Valiant class would be like ghosts.
“Did you really tell the Prime Minister you wanted to be God?” The First Sea Lord asked suddenly.
“Not exactly, sir,” Simon Collingwood grimaced. “I just said that somebody ought to be. God, that is.”
Chapter 34
Easter Monday 30th March 1964
Married Quarters, Kalkara, Malta
Rosa Calleja did not usually attempt to rise with or before the dawn to begin the painful process of preparing herself to face the new day, even though she was beginning to feel a little bit guilty taking advantage of her sister and brother-in-law’s seemingly inexhaustible good intentions. When she had been discharged from the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women she had dreaded the prospect of having to return to her parent’s home Mosta. Her mother and father had made no bones about their conviction she had married beneath herself when she married Samuel Calleja. Worse, they were happy to carry on muttering darkly about the circumstances of his disappearance – Sam still had not been officially declared ‘deceased’, nor could he be for at least a year – within the hearing of the immediate Borg-Cantera clan.
Her personal situation was further complicated by the fact that while she had been incapacitated in hospital the Admiralty Dockyards had transferred its housing stock to the Royal Navy. In the way of these bureaucratic exercises, there were always winners and losers. Rosa had discovered to her intense chagrin that she was a loser. Since she was no longer the wife of a Maltese citizen who was actively engaged on ‘vital defence-related work’, the Naval Housing Board had written to her advising her that as she had alternative accommodation – a letter from her father confirmed that she had the option of living in her parents household – it, the NHB, had no further obligation to house her and had consequently given her four week’s notice to vacate the property in which she had lived during the two–and-a-half unhappy years of her married life.
Among the perks enjoyed by established dockyard workers suddenly threatened because of the recent radical shake up of the Admiralty Dockyards of Malta, the most valued and most closely guarded had always been free or heavily subsidised housing. What the Royal Navy now regarded as disproportionate ‘largesse’ in this respect was the very thing which had under-pinned the status of the dockyard workers of Malta as the blue collar elite of the archipelago’s work force. While the new regime was not intentionally Draconian – or at least it did not seem unduly so to an outside observer – it tackled head on the sanctity of generations-old working practices and customary privileges, and signalled that in future, nothing was sacred. The fact that the wages of equivalent local trades had risen to match the generally higher rates paid to the new men flooding into the docks from England had done little to reduce tensions, and feelings were running high. The rapid and systematic re-allocation of the Admiralty Dockyard property estate primarily designed to help to address the problem of quartering and billeting the ever-growing number of officers and men permanently based on the archipelago, and to accommodate the influx new workers and their families was symptomatic of the unwelcome wind of change blowing through the islands. Inevitably, discontent among the still mainly Maltese skilled labour force in the Admiralty Dockyards was simmering, sparking sudden spasms of industrial unrest. In some corners the anti-British mutterings and protests of the years before the October War had begun to re-surface.
“I’ll get that!” Rosa cried when there was a knock at the front door. She had heard the car in the road and had limped half-way from the kitchen to the door before the visitor had knocked.
Rosa had entertained unworthy mixed emotions when Marija had first suggested that she and Peter might apply to live in her house. Now she hated herself for having had those bad thoughts. Nothing that had happened to her was Marija’s fault, and Peter Christopher and everybody she had met from his ship treated her like some little princess horribly and unjustly vilified in her hour of grief and loss. If HMS Talavera’s crew had enthusiastically taken Marija to its heart, it had rowed to Rosa’s defence no less energetically. An ill-advised disparaging remark about Rosa’s officially ‘missing’ husband in the hearing of a Talavera was likely to result in fisticuffs, treated as a heinous slur on the honour of their ship. The Talaveras – many of them veterans of the Battles of Cape Finisterre, Lampedusa and the ‘saving of the Enterprise’ – were aggressively proud of their ship, their dashing young captain and the two ‘beautiful’ young women who occasionally honoured them with their company. Among the Talaveras Marija and Rosa were very nearly honorary members of the destroyer’s crew.
Rosa had been afraid that her new friendship with her sister would be eclipsed by her marriage and had been rendered briefly speechless when Marija had sat her down and explained, patiently and a little anxiously, that she would be much happier convalescing in surroundings that were familiar to her. It was likely, Marija had told her, that as soon as HMS Talavera was ready to go back to sea, Peter would be away for ‘days and weeks on end’. Marija was not looking forward to this; although she could hardly pretend she had not known what to expect marrying a destroyer captain! In any event, she and Rosa would keep each other company and hopefully, cheer each other up from time to time. Rosa had wondered how the arrangement – by its nature temporary – would work in practice.
No newlyweds needed a chaperone!
However, having got used to the idea that every now and again it was inevitable that she would stumble, literally because of her still healing broken leg, upon the lovebirds with their hands all over each other unselfconsciously practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the last fortnight had been among the happiest of Rosa’s life. Perhaps, the happiest. Not least because of the charming, entirely respectful and very proper occasional solicitations of a certain Lieutenant Alan Hannay.
The handsome young officer whose broad smile greeted her when she opened the door had lost only a little of the svelte, perfectly groomed and always on show air of the man who, until a few weeks ago had been Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s Flag Lieutenant. Rosa still did not know the full story because Marija was very discreet about these things, but it seemed that Alan Hannay, knowing that HMS Talavera had vacancies in her Wardroom after the Battle of Lampedusa had persuaded Peter to put a word in for him, and like magic a few hours later he had become the destroyer’s Purser and Supply Officer. Within days he and everybody else on the Talavera had distinguished themselves in the fight to save the USS Enterprise, and thereafter Alan Hannay had become one of Peter’s loyal band of brothers.
“What a lovely surprise,” the man exclaimed, his face brightening. “I confess I didn’t expect to see you today. What with us having such an early start, what!”
There was the sound of movement upstairs.
“Morning, Alan!” Peter Christopher called down the stairs. “I’ll be with you in a jiffy! Come in and have a cup of tea!”
“Aye, aye, skipper!” The visitor called back jovially and followed Rosa towards the kitchen. “I’m a bit earlier than I thought I’d be,” he told her. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. It’s jolly good that we’re finally taking the old girl out to sea again today but we’re all a bit miffed we aren’t heading off with the Fleet to Cyprus tomorrow.”
“Everything has gone so quiet,” Rosa replied, cautiously exploring the boundaries of her rapid
ly blooming friendship with the dashing young naval officer who had first entered her life after her husband’s disappearance and the tragic death of his friend, Lieutenant Jim Siddall. “Perhaps, the terrorists in Northern Cyprus will just surrender when the Fleet arrives?”
“I jolly well hope so!” The man chortled. “Can I help with anything?”
Rosa’s look instantly put him in his place. She poured his tea into a mug. Peter and his officers, who seemed to be in and out of the house and this kitchen all the time, much preferred mugs of tea or cocoa, hardly any of them drank coffee from choice.
Peter Christopher made his entrance.
“I’ve lost my cap,” he explained, stifling a yawn.
“It is on the small table in the front room,” Rosa informed him. She poured a second mug of tea.
“I thought I heard you getting up,” Marija announced, greeting her sister-in-law with a passing half-hug. “Hello, Alan,” she beamed at her husband’s Supply Officer. She was dressed in her pale blue nursing smock. “Rosa has an appointment at Bighi,” she explained. “They are going to x-ray her ankle to see if the plaster can come off today.”
“So soon?” The man asked, looking to Rosa Calleja.
“We shall see,” the woman murmured, dropping her eyes.
“Good luck, anyway.” Alan Hannay had heard that Margo Seiffert, the newly appointed Medical Director of the Malta Defence Force ran a civilian orthopaedic clinic two days a week at Royal Naval Hospital Bighi. “How will you get there?”
“It is not far. We will walk and limp and if that doesn’t work out we’ll get a bus!” Marija gently chided her guest. If she had learned anything from her own experiences, tough love worked much better than molly coddling an invalid.
Alan Hannay laughed and shook his head.
Marija was positively glowing.
Rosa walked with him to the car; giving the newlyweds a chance to complete their lengthy and very tactile ‘farewell’ routine.