Under Pressure: Life on a Submarine
Based on the first-hand experiences of a man who served on a submarine during the Cold War, Under Pressure is the shockingly candid, visceral, droll and incredibly entertaining account of what it’s like to live in one of the most extreme man-made environments in the world.Richard Humphreys did not grow up near the sea, but in the heart of Britain. Attempting to join the Foreign Legion at just 17 years old, leaving for Marseille little to his parents’ knowledge, it was an unexpected epiphany which told him that a career under the sea was for him. He ended up serving in the Royal Navy submarine service for over 5 years from 1985-1990, at the end of the Cold War when skirmishes with Russian subs were still frequent. Underwater, hidden away from the eyes of the world’s media, was where the Cold War was at its hottest.This thrilling book depicts the astounding circumstances of someone who finds themselves living in deep underwater. It is not written from a military point of view, although some of that will of course come into it, but it rather concentrates on how it feels to live in this extreme environment – a world without natural light, surrounded by 140 other men, eating the same food, breathing the same air, smelling the same putrid smells, surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable. It is a book which takes its cues from the likes of Scott Kelly’s Endurance and Skyfaring by Mark Vanhoenacker, both New York Times bestsellers, which shine light on hitherto unexplored professions and allow readers glimpses into worlds they would otherwise never experience.Covering the disorientation of never knowing your exact location, the claustrophobia of bunking with 140 other men in a 430ft x 33ft steel tube for months at a time, and the effort needed to stay calm in an environment which offers no space or natural light, Under Pressure is an honest and gritty portrayal of one of the most unique ways of living known today.
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Names of Royal Navy personnel have been changed to protect privacy.
Mudlark
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by Mudlark 2019
FIRST EDITION
Text © Richard Humphreys 2019
Illustrations © Tom Hughes 2019
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers
Cover illustration © Neil Gower
Photographs courtesy of the author except where indicated
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Richard Humphreys asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008313050
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008313081
Version: 2019-09-03
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008313050
‘Submariners themselves were regarded as not quite the thing – smelt a bit, behaved not too well, drank too much. They were regarded as a sort of dirty habit in tins.’
Admiral Sir John Forster ‘Sandy’ Woodward, One Hundred Days, 1992
Contents
1 Cover
2 Title Page
3 Copyright
4 Note to Readers
5 Dedication
6 Epigraph
7 Contents
8 Author’s Note
9 Diagram of Polaris Submarine
10 Polaris Submarine Hierarchy
11 Glossary
12 Introduction
13 1 Beasting
14 2 HMS Neptune, Faslane
15 3 The Bomber
16 4 Alongside
17 5 Work-up
18 6 Coulport
19 7 Before the Off
20 8 Set Sail
21 9 The Dive
22 10 A Brief Tour
23 11 No Time
24 12 All the Time in the World
25 13 Downtime
26 14 Booze
27 15 Snadgens
28 16 Porn
29 17 Familygrams
30 18 Showtime
31 19 Under the Lights
32 20 Cut Off
33 21 Racked Out
34 22 Food, Glorious Food
35 23 The Day Job, the Night Job, Repeat
36 24 Letters from the Grave
37 25 Captain Is God
38 26 To Launch or Not to Launch
39 27 Homeward Bound
40 28 Off Crew
41 Acknowledgements
42 About the Publisher
LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter
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I switched off the radio, made my way slowly up the stairs, shut the bathroom door and shed a tear. It was 16 November 2017, the day after the Argentinian submarine the ARA San Juan went missing in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina. At first, in those early days, it was unclear what had provoked the accident or what fate had befallen the crew, whether they might somehow still be alive beneath the waves. But then, with time, the cause of the tragedy became clear. An electrical malfunction had short-circuited the battery, which led to a complete loss of power for the old diesel-powered submarine. The San Juan had then sunk to the ocean depths, before finally imploding under the intense water pressure. The entire crew of 44, which included the first female submarine officer in the Argentine Navy, Eliana Krawczyk, had perished.
