Despite these dispiriting observations, Conley observed that the Upholder class did have some commendable features. They handled well underwater, had a very quiet acoustic signature and they had an excellent fire control and sonar suite. Indeed, in the realms of war-fighting capability, they were a real improvement upon the Oberons. Unfortunately, these advances, which might be expected of evolving submarine design backed by the Royal Navy’s experience of submarine operation, were offset by other constraints such as poor equipment accessibility and confined accommodation spaces which seemed to have put the clock back a generation. Moreover, with only two modestly powered diesels, they lacked power generation capability and Conley was driven to conclude the design as ‘very disappointing’, and that there was much evidence that the Procurement Executive had not adequately scrutinised the VSEL contract specification. Somewhat counter-intuitively, he pragmatically appreciated that the acceptance process would largely be confined to ensuring the shipbuilder had built the submarines to the contract criteria.
In April 1992 Conley was at the Cammell Laird yard for the launch of the last of Upholders, HMS Unicorn. On a sunny spring morning, to the loud cheers of the remaining few hundred shipyard workers and their families, the submarine slid gracefully into the Mersey following a moment’s anxious pause after the traditional bottle of champagne had struck the hull. The occasion marked the final launch of a vessel — any vessel — from the yard of Cammell Laird, ending a history stretching back 165 years. It was also probably the last dynamic launch down a slipway of a submarine from a British shipyard. Future submarine ‘launches’ would be achieved by gently lowering the vessel into the water using a huge lifting assembly known as a synchronised ship lift.
In the interim, Unseen and Ursula had been accepted into service after final trials in the Clyde. The acceptance formalities with the shipbuilder were completed onboard each of the boats in a very subdued atmosphere. Conley and his team were only too aware that many of the shipyard managers and workers aboard for the trials would be made redundant when they returned to Birkenhead.
In June 1993 Unicorn was commissioned in a very empty shipyard. It was Gordon Howell’s swansong in shipbuilding, as he would not be returning to Barrow. At the commissioning lunch in the boardroom, surrounded by the paintings and the other memorabilia of what had been a great shipbuilding company, each of the guests was presented with a small crystal bowl. It was engraved with the words Semper Commemoranda Unice Optima — ‘Always remember they were the best’.
The Upholders were all paid off by 1994 and in due course were sold to the Royal Canadian Navy. They have since proved very expensive and difficult to maintain and operate, even making the headlines. When, in October 2004, the Chicoutimi (ex-Upholder) was crossing the North Atlantic, she took a considerable quantity of water down the conning tower whilst on the surface in rough weather. This caused a serious fire in which one man was killed. The cause of the fire was eventually discovered to be the fitting of the wrong type of watertight bulkhead electrical cable sealing arrangements: when saltwater came into contact with the seals they combusted.
Aside from the Upholders, for Conley and his team there was much more important business to deal with. HMS Vanguard, the first of the new Trident submarines, was approaching commissioning and there were many problems to address. In the event, perhaps the biggest challenge he and his team would confront would be getting the Trident submarine project and the Ministry of Defence to accept there were any problems in the first place.
As a junior captain, he soon recognised that CNSA had limited leverage in getting the MoD to accept there were problems and to allocate resources to fix them. Perversely, his organisation was part of the Procurement Executive, yet was responsible for approval of the organisation’s output in terms of delivering ships and submarines and their equipment to the standards and criteria set by the Naval Staff in the MoD. This was made more difficult by the frequent weakness of the MoD’s vague or opaque detailing in their specified requirements. These could read like a wishlist, rather than hard and fast criteria, allowing fudging by either the PE or contractors.
Although throughout this appointment Conley was to be supported by an enthusiastic and very energetic boss, Commodore Stephen Taylor, he was not a submariner and in effect CNSA proved to have limited influence upon the Trident project. The latter was headed up by a senior naval constructor, who in turn reported to the Chief of the Strategic Systems Executive (CSSE), Rear Admiral Ian Pirnie. Admiral Pirnie had a daunting remit as he was responsible for all aspects of the Trident project, including the procurement of the missile systems and the construction of the requisite shore facilities.
Soon after taking up his post, Conley and his team visited VSEL and toured the Devonshire Dock Hall where there were three Trident SSBNs in various stages of construction, Vanguard, Victorious and Vigilant. Boarding Vanguard, Conley was immediately disappointed by her layout. Designed by the Ministry of Defence itself, the highly significant decision had been made to reduce the hull length by wrapping the forward and after ballast tanks around the pressure hull, reducing the hull diameters at either end. This was instead of adopting the precedent of the United States Navy’s Trident SSBN in which uniform pressure-hull diameter was maintained throughout its length, with the ballast tanks attached at either end, thus creating much more internal space. There had been reasons for constraining overall hull length in context of the costs and the feasibility of the modifications required to the Barrow dock system to handle the Trident boats; there would also be an additional expenditure of building bigger shore facilities to accommodate longer hulls, but this appeared to be a case of cutting the head off the horse to fit it into the stable. The resulting non-uniform hull diameter, in addition to constraining layout design and adding complexities to the construction, ineluctably produced cramped propulsion spaces with very difficult machinery access. Indeed, Conley assessed the engine room as even more congested than Valiant’s, all of which, when combined with the complexities and space constraints of the other machinery spaces, would increase the cost of through-life upkeep and increase crew stress when maintaining and repairing engineering plant.
However, there was nothing Conley and his team could do about the SSBNs’ layout other than press hard for improvements to the crew mess deck areas, which had been completed as dining halls, as opposed to the submarine practice of doubling as recreational spaces. In fact, there was no provision of any recreational space where individual members of the ship’s company could relax in peace and quiet away from their crowded mess decks, particularly when meals were in progress or movies were being shown. This facility had been called for in the Naval Staff requirement but had been missed in the design. The project management conceded this deficiency and agreed accordingly to adapt redundant space in the missile compartment; they also consented to the mess decks being improved. These were small triumphs for Conley and his team, but they would make a lot of difference to crew comfort during long patrols.