Fishy stories

Regarding your Looking Back page of

June 12 about Soviet planes and football on the common, I have memories of both because In 1955 I had just left school and I was playing for a team called Salutation in their second XI.

Playing on Southsea Common was not very popular with players. Most rode bikes those days so we would arrange the bikes behind the goals to stop wayward balls as there were no goal nets.

Players would not do sliding tackles on the stony ground, goalkeepers would go the whole game without making a diving save of any note – hands, elbows and knees would always get cut, grazed as studs did not grip very well on the shingle like pitch. My football came to a end when I reached 16 in the February I started out in the fishing industry.

By March, I was at a place called Novaya Zemlya off the Russian coast. It was very remote and we would be of interest to Soviet aircraft and occasional gunboat. The aircraft were not jets but more like training planes that would go round and round us for a long time.

The rust buckets that were Soviet warships would come very close to us when trawling. We would only be doing 5 knots but they would pace alongside of us.

One amusing thing occurred when a crew member, using a megaphone, from the gunboat said: ‘Hello English man! Moscow Dynamo, three, Wandering Wolves, one.’

The Cold War for trawlers that fished off Russian coast was sometimes a bit exciting. If you ever needed to go into port they would be very helpful but search the ship for any surveillance equipment. It was not unheard of for a trawler to carry a passenger for a

'let’s look and see' type trip. These were RN, usually of lieutenant commander rank. The ship I was on was called the Rodney she was painted battleship grey (unusual for a trawler), her sister ship was the Revenge later to become Radio Caroline.

I think the Soviets would be quite interested in some of the goings on.

We would even take aboard, from Norway, civilians, no questions asked on docking in the UK. JR Porter Windsor Road, Waterlooville