One size fits all

                        

                                       

HMS DOLPHIN

              

HMS Dolphin home of the First Submarine Squadron.

It was built on the sight of Fort Blockhouse. Following the burning of Portsmouth during the Hundred Years War, money was set aside in 1417 to provide protection for the harbour. A blockhouse was first built on the Gosport side of Portsmouth harbour in 1431 after authorisation by Henry VI. The defences were upgraded in 1495 and was armed with 5 guns.

The blockhouse was replaced in 1539 by an eight-gun battery under the orders of Henry VIII after his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The first firing of the guns is believed to have occurred during the Civil War. The guns were aimed at Southsea Castle after Parliamentary troops had captured it. The aim was not good, however, and the cannon ball landed in St. Thomas' Church in Old Portsmouth.

The original fort is believed to have disappeared by 1667 when Bernard de Gomme installed a 21 gun battery for Charles II. But in 1708 the fort was rebuilt on an irregular trace. Upgrading was done at the turn of the 19th century, and again in 1845, from which time most remains date. The site was considered obsolete by the 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, and it was turned over to the Royal Navy in 1905, where as HMS Dolphin shore-establishment, it was the home of the submarine service for years. In 1992, it was announced that the submarine fleet would be leaving HMS Dolphin and moving west to the HMNB Devonport. The last submarine left HMS Dolphin in 1994 and the submarine school remained till 1999. HMS Dolphin was formally transferred in 1998 and became known as Fort Blockhouse.

The site is open for tours in September as part of the Heritage Open Days scheme. With the closure of Royal Hospital Haslar to serving Service Personnel, Fort Blockhouse is now known as Support Unit Fort Blockhouse and staff support many lodger units.

I was billeted in what was once the stables, I don’t think they had changed much since they were originally built, the accommodation was third rate and as such I paid nothing for the right to sleep there. They were still endearingly called, The Stables. Many a night I fell asleep hearing a horse whiney and was quite sure the faint smell of fresh hay and not so fresh dung was still there. After twelve weeks and a lot of scrubbing I knew it was all in the mind!

The training for this course was called “part one”, it was twelve weeks long and quite intense, when the course started I had no idea how a submarine worked, it had never crossed my mind! The first thing they taught us was the physics behind displacement of water and the effects of pressure on the hull of a submarine or “boat”, as it was referred to by the inhabitants.

The course was interesting and it was well organised with testosterone flooded practical days, Team building days away from the blackboard and books. These included crawling through a blacked out wet tunnel wearing breathing apparatus trying to find a soaking wet dummy also with the added responsibility of finding a particular valve to isolate the water ingress, fire fighting an oil fire in a mock engine room and escaping from a sunken submarine. The latter was the most exciting but also it was the most dangerous.

HMS Dolphin is famous world over for its Submarine escape facility, when I first used the tower in the seventies I thought how old fashioned everything looked but that was because I had never been on a Submarine before, I was impressed by the professionalism of the Tower staff who walked about in white towels barking orders, the discipline was intense as I soon found out was necessary. The tower was over a hundred feet high, full of water with compartments on the side of it at thirty and sixty feet. The main event was a submarine escape compartment at the very base.

The escape tower training lasted about a week and the classroom work was to provide several scenario’s in which it would be necessary to escape and the procedures that would have to be followed in which to save as many lives as possible. I was taught the effect of carbon dioxide when under pressure, how to try and reduce it, how to prepare for a rescue, how to make a safe ascent to the surface with an immersion suit and also how to affect the same but without one. 

The immersion suits were all hung up at the base of the tower and I passed them every day on my way to class, I expect I was probably fully grown at that time but I remember thinking that the suits would only fit people who were over six foot six tall and have size fourteen feet, they were huge, I think it was my first experience of one size fits all.