Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration2.32)

I joined the Navy in 1964. A more important event had happened to me in 1963, because I'd met this girl, who actually I had married in 1965. She had left the Navy in 1963, before I had actually joined the Navy. So right from the word go I was familiar with the thought of women being in the Navy and knew quite a lot about what they did. They had an important role in communications and a whole lot of other things that were supportive and ashore. But nevertheless were important, and indeed actually the CO of my first proper ship, HMS Puma, was an aviator, a distinguished naval aviator, whose wife had actually three times more hours flying than he did, which was very unusual in those days, but she'd been flying liberators across the Atlantic all through the war, and so it was pretty familiar territory that women had been doing things around the periphery of the armed services, indeed my mother had. I'd always been brought up by my father that there was no difference in the equality of the sexes and I'm just amazed that actually it's a thought that doesn't seem to all together carry true even now, but my father was very forward looking. So it was completely natural as far as I was concerned that women were important parts of life and the administration of the Navy, but on the other hand it was completely inappropriate, because I hadn't stopped to think about it, for them to go to sea. And I suppose that view was alive and well certainly throughout the 60s and I think probably throughout the 70s as well, and it all started I think probably to change around about the early to mid 80s.