Glad you got my e-mail, regretfully I have nothing of my navy days all my personal possessions were lost in transit at sea when I was working for the Overseas Development Authority - they were lost somewhere between the UK and Fiji, I worked in the Gilbert & Ellis Islands (Central Pacific) Malawi, Kenya and Ecuador 13 years in total.   I am now retired.

As I said I joined Yarmouth during her construction and outfitting at John Browns, there were five of us in The 'Jimmy' (No1), Engineer Officer, CERA, myself and another ERA - we lived in digs.

Just down the road was the Yarrow shipyard where the Rothsay was being built, she was a few months behind us in construction.   In those days the pubs in Clydebank shut at 9 pm and 10 pm in Glasgow, so we had an arrangement with the pub just outside of John Browns main gates that we would hold a private darts match once a week, after hours, with the small crew of the Rothsay.   This was all very legal, the Jimmy held the licence, the police would come in for a 'quick one' and check the licence, then we could play darts up to midnight - great fun.

The ship's first commission took us to the far east, we were making a grand tour, all points east including Japan etc. then we were bound for Australia to be followed by South Africa until trouble in the Gulf, the ship steamed non-stop from Hong Kong to the Gulf when Iraq threatened to invade Kuwait.   The ship made a number of RAS during the voyage and our mail was dropped by aircraft to be picked up by the seaboat, something unusual at that time.

We did an 18 month commission out the far east and on our way home we got past Gibraltar bound for Plymouth - just three to four days from home when were told we had to go to Londonderry to carry out exercises with the Americans because at that time the Yarmouth had the most advanced submarine detection equipment in the navy, not a very happy ship with families waiting for us in Plymouth, mine had come down from the north, I think we docked two or three days late.

Yarmouth was Captain (F) a bit over staffed with a full captain, commander and Jimmy etc.   Of course we had Cdr (E), Cdr (S) all the way down, however it was a very happy ship with no real problems, the officers and crew got on very well together.   My job apart from engine room watchkeeping was in charge of outside machinery, refrigeration, air-conditioning (only for officers and the ops room) motorboats, main diesels, etc., etc.

From what I can recall the gunnery system was a brand new system with computers etc (1959 style computers!).   The electrical equipment was located just aft of the gun turret on the main deck and was designed and installed by Marconi, however during our sea trials in the Med off the island of Gozo, which was the gunnery range for ships in those days, the guns couldn't fire within five miles of their target.    Yarmouth immediately returned to Plymouth where Marconi had to rip out all the electrical systems and replace it.   You may recall that about that time (1960) certain defence contractors were ripping the government off which created a big scandal, this was one of them, but kept very quiet.   Marconi had, apparently, fitted the old prototype range equipment without certain modifications etc., they were required to replace everything.

The ship sailed through a typhoon in the China Sea where a number of American ships were lost and some of our own ships were damaged, particularly the carriers   On our immediate arrival in Hong Kong Naval Architects came onboard and found several large cracks where the upper deck joined with the bridge superstructure, just aft of the turret.   These defects were quickly welded up.

I haven't cast my mind back like this for some time, I will have to try to recall some other episodes of life onboard the old Yarmouth.

One final story, the four ringed skipper was a man called Hewlett, he earned the name of 'hard over Henry Hewlett' because you could almost guarantee every lunch time he would put the ship hard over and everything went flying.

 

All the best

Don Carlin

This page was created prior to Don's death by Dusty Miller, I feel it should remain intact as it was then, another page has been created in Don's memory in our memorial pages view by clicking on the poppy