They dined on fillet of beef washed down with fine wines, staged ribald theatrical productions to help break the monotony of lurking for months in the depths of the ocean and looked forward to weekly “familygram” bulletins from home.
The extraordinary, secret, sometimes bizarre life of the men who spent months at a time onboard Britain’s Polaris nuclear deterrent submarines is being revealed in a new exhibition at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
Exhibits range from the intriguing – including an officers’ mess menu and play programmes – to the thought-provoking and downright scary, such as a training model of a Polaris missile and the keys that would have been used to unleash the weapons, each with a range of 2,800 miles and an explosive power eight times that of the atomic bomb dropped at Hiroshima.
The permanent exhibition – Silent and Secret – is being unveiled on Friday at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Hampshire, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first patrol of the first Polaris sub, HMS Resolution, on 15 June 1968.
Just as the Polaris programme was dogged by controversy, the exhibition has attracted criticism from anti-nuclear protesters who fear it may glorify the technology and be used as a propaganda tool by those who back renewing its successor, the Trident system.
The museum has made preparations for protests but insists it is simply telling the story of a piece of recent history – and playing a part in the Trident discussions.
Dominic Tweddle, the director general of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, said: “As well as acknowledging the role of the deterrent, it is important that the exhibition reflects the current debate on the renewal of Trident missiles. The museum will not tell the visitor what to think, but will leave them to form their own opinion.”
The exhibition explains how in the 1950s the UK’s deterrent was delivered by the RAF’s V bomber nuclear strike force, but improvements in radar and surface-to-air missiles made the aircraft vulnerable and the response was to build four Polaris submarines, each armed with 16 missiles.
A crew of of 143 officers and men, divided into two sections – the port crew and the starboard – spent three-month patrols at sea, always ready to launch their missiles within 15 minutes.
Though the submarines were taken out of service in 1996, there is no access to the four vessels, which are laid up in Rosyth dockyard in Fife, Scotland. Instead their story is told through objects and documents.
Hardware on display includes a training firing panel from which an officer would have monitored missiles as they were prepared and launched. In a glass cabinet nearby is a copy of a prayer written by Mike Henry, one of the Polaris commanding officers: “Give us the will, but never the wish, to obey the order to fire. But O Lord, if it be thy will, grant that order may never need to be given.”
The tiny glimpses into life onboard may prove to be the most interesting to visitors. On one August evening in 1979, while the Americans and Soviets were undertaking tests of nuclear weapons in Nevada and Kazakhstan, a menu reveals that officers in the wardroom mess on HMS Resolution were tucking into trout and beef followed by baked Alaska, plus sherry, beaujolais and Cockburn’s special reserve port. The menu does not reveal if this was a special occasion or regular fare.
As well as through food and drink, morale was maintained with theatrical performances. A programme for a play called A Deep Distraction staged by the “Polaris Players” has survived. An instant camera illicitly smuggled onboard captured an image of a submariner dressed in women’s clothes for another theatrical production.
However, some elements of life onboard were austere. The bunk beds in which the men slept look tiny and the only communication with family were weekly 40-word telegrams known as familygrams. Often even senior crew members had no idea what part of the world they were in during patrols.
George Malcolmson, a curator of archives and images at the museum, accepted not all would approve. “Polaris does divide opinion. There are strong views on both sides but as a museum we shouldn’t shy away from difficult subjects.”
Kate Hudson, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said she planned to visit the exhibition. “CND has a very powerful track record on protesting about Polaris,” she said. “There was huge opposition across the country. Vigils were held and questions asked in parliament.
“Fortunately Polaris is very much a thing of the past. If this exhibition treats it as such without making false claims that it maintained British national security, it will be interesting from a historical perspective.”