We could take the heat then — we had no choice!
FOLLOWING reports of the latest Royal Navy frigates breaking down in the Persian Gulf, how interesting to read about aircraft carrier HMS Victorious’s air conditioning and overheating problems in the Sixties (Letters). HMS Rhyl was a 25-year-old frigate deployed to the Gulf of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz during troubles in the Middle East in 1981. Life on board was tough; we didn’t have the luxury of air conditioning and had been sent there for the six hottest months of the year. Throughout our deployment, we had just two weeks in port, spending 13 days in Mombasa. We did have one overnight in Sudan, but it was when Ramadan was being observed, and if you were lucky enough to get ashore, you couldn’t purchase so much as a cup of tea. At my workplace, the temperature lingered at 148f for several weeks and I remember my plastic uniform hat melting on my head. At one time it was so hot that the passageways above the engine room deck tiles melted, leaving the whole passage exposed to the bare metal, which buckled under the extraordinary heat. The ship’s fresh water system couldn’t cope, which resulted in water rationing, to the dismay of the ship’s company. We erected a makeshift pool from canvas on the mortar deck, which supplied some relief. The galley fridge couldn’t cope, which resulted in an outbreak of food poisoning, and the only ice-making machine broke down. The laundry had to be temporarily shut down, so the ship’s company walked around in dirty clothes and washed in salt water. If you got to sleep at all, you knew that after getting dressed at 7am you’d be soaking wet with sweat by 07.05. Some of the crew became so ill they had to be flown off to an SAS facility in Oman. We just got on with it and no one complained. After watching a recent episode of the Royal Navy School TV documentary, I found myself wondering if the modern Navy would cope as well as we did in those days. If you brought a bar of chocolate on HMS Rhyl in the Middle East in 1981, you didn’t eat it, you drank it.
STEPHEn gRIFFIn, Portsmouth.