UNDER PRESSURE

“Theoretically, we are 15 minutes from the start of Armageddon. That’s the time it would take between us receiving the firing signal from the prime minister and the nuclear warheads being launched.”

It’s an unbelievably tense atmosphere aboard HMS

Resolution, a nuclear submarine patrolling deep under the North Atlantic armed with more firepower than all the bombs dropped in World War II combined. The year is 1985, the Cold War is still hot and nuclear confrontation seems scarily imaginable.

Richard Humphreys pulls no punches in his frank account of this claustrophobic, man-made environment in which he served for five years. He traces his experience from the early days of training to living full-time on “what is effectively a giant, elongated – if beautifully streamlined – steel tin can”, vividly describing the pressures it exerts on both one’s mind and body. There is a near-fatal collision (“the submarine’s propeller screams over the top of us no more than 50 feet away”), visceral descriptions of the havoc 90 days without natural light plays on the body, and even an insight into the extraordinary chefs who keep a crew of 140 fed with no fresh air in around 15 square feet.

It’s a dangerous world. On 16 November, 2017, the Argentinian submarine ARA San Juan suffered a complete loss of power, sinking to the ocean depths, before finally imploding under the intense water pressure. This book is born out of that tragedy and “for the brave men and women who at any given moment are patrolling the world’s waters, keeping their silent vigils”.

HarperCollins, £9.99;

ISBN: 978-0-008313-07-4