Sharing Stories

Survivors and other war veterans are often reluctant to share their memories of conflict with others. There can be a feeling that warfare can be so different to normal life that people won't understand. But given a few pints of ale, most will swap a story or two with their old comrades. Sharing stories can help out any old demons, so please feel free to contact this site and share any story (of any type) you have relating to Conveyor with the public or in private with other comrades. 

Here is my story...

Stories

Atlantic Conveyor - The Doctor's Tale

New Recruit - Royal Navy Reserve

I’ve always been fascinated by ships and the sea. And, whilst studying medicine at Dundee University, I joined Tay Division RNR as a seaman, where I weekend-sailed aboard the unit’s battered and unstable minesweeper, HMS Upton. I’d wanted to learn to dive at university but couldn’t afford the gear, so I welcomed the opportunity the RNR gave me to earn some much-needed cash whilst training to become a naval diver. 

When the RNR unit found out I was a medical student, they promoted me to sub-lieutenant and sent me on a shortened two-week course at Dartmouth to learn how to be an officer. By then, I knew I was immune to seasickness, and afterwards I had great fun in rough weather helping out on the minesweeper’s swaying bridge when others fell ill. 

I had other adventures too. One time, I was sent to Gibraltar to shadow the medical officer and somehow ended up standing in for the ill logistics officer in a NATO exercise simulating a blockade of the overseas territory. On another occasion, I joined a frigate rehearsing her defences against simulated air attacks by real aircraft. 

I met my future wife, Christine, in Dundee. By March 1982, we were married and had a beautiful one-month-old baby girl named Helen. I had already decided to transfer to the RN and had just completed my New Entry Medical Officer’s (NEMO) course when the Falklands War began. 

A Temporary Crewmember

When the war started, I immediately volunteered for a seagoing appointment.  My request was promptly rejected by the medical appointer who was pursuing the sensible course of only sending his more experienced personnel to join warships heading south.

Later, in the face of dwindling options, he relented and sent me back to Plymouth to help with the conversion of a container ship called the SS Atlantic Conveyor. My task, was to do whatever I could to help prepare the vessel for transporting Harrier aircraft. My appointment was to be a holding position until the appointer could assemble a highly-skilled team of surgeons and aviation specialists to take over from me. The team would, of course, need the equivalent of an operating theatre onboard…

After showing my face at the ship, I dropped in on the port admiral’s staff to try and find out what Conveyor was likely to be doing when we reached the Falklands. There, I learned that the ship’s primary task was to deliver additional Harrier jump jets and their aircrew to the two deployed aircraft carriers, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible, so Admiral Woodward, the Task Force Commander, would have sufficient airpower available to support forces endeavouring to recapture the islands from the Argentine invaders. 

Critically, MoD planners had determined that the only way to transfer the Harriers to and from Conveyor at sea would be to fly them on and off the ship, which explained the huge metal reinforcing plates I’d seen welded to the ship’s fore and aft decks. One of the responsibilities of the ship’s medical team would be to support flying operations onboard, as if she were a true aircraft carrier. 

That said, in the days since Conveyor had been taken up from trade, the MoD had found additional uses for her. She was to transport helicopters that would be similarly flown on and off. She would be equipped with aircraft repair facilities, and her roll-on, roll-off cargo decks would be packed with stores to be carried to the front line. Once she’d delivered the Harriers and dropped off the stores, it was thought she might be used as a helicopter support ship, a hospital ship, or even a prison ship.

I was taken around Conveyor, which was already busy with dockyard workers hammering and welding — to be shown the numerous decks of accommodation in her aft upperworks and the vast cargo holds down below. On the vast forward deck, I was introduced to the dockyard foreman, who was dressed in white overalls and armed with a clipboard. He informed me he could make any alterations I required, within reason, but that we had around 10 days before the ship was due to sail.

The scene brought to mind the beginning of one of those old war films where a mismatched group of personnel are thrown together to undertake a secret mission. Except, this time, I wasn’t watching from the comfort of my sofa. For the moment at least, I was in the thick of the action, and it was exciting.

Conveyor's Conversion

Ken Dunn, a Leading Medical Assistant and the only other member of the medical team currently assigned to the ship, found me and showed me the two-bunk sickbay on the third deck up, port side, which was equipped with a medicine cabinet. Luckily, he was well-versed in medical paperwork, and I was happy to delegate him to draft equipment request forms for me to sign. 

But then, what did we need? I thought back to the new entry medical course where we’d had lectures on aviation medicine — and also to the seafaring novels and military magazines I’d avidly read as a child. Conveyor’s Harriers and helicopters would be flying on and off an unfamiliar vessel, so we’d need to prepare for possible accidents and crash landings. 

As the responsibility for medical alterations currently lay with me, after studying the ship’s plans, I decided to fit the deck-level forward officers’ saloon with cabinets of dressings, drugs and stretchers so it could act as a first-aid clearing station for any medical emergencies on the main deck.  We’d upgrade the sickbay into a ‘mini-hospital’ where minor surgical work could be done. I also realised crew working in the bowels of the ship would be at risk if the ship was torpedoed or came under fire, so we’d need to think about where best to place first-aid boxes and stretchers there too. 

Ken informed me that warships were normally allotted stores according to their class. So, on the basis that the ship was being altered to carry a deck full of aircraft, I set him on applying for whatever scale of stores an aircraft carrier normally had. 

Whilst he prepared the paperwork, I looked into modifying the sickbay. Finding there was nothing readily available, I took a dockyard party to salvage what we could from old warships lined up on their moorings, waiting to be scrapped. We wrenched an examination couch from a frigate and acquired overhead lights along with a selection of metal cabinets to bring back to Conveyor. 

The equipment was fitted soon enough, but we then ran into a snag when I noticed an egg-timer’s worth of powder had fallen from the deckhead to form a small pyramid on the pillow end of the new operating table. Investigation revealed it was asbestos, which required the compartment to be sealed off and cleaned out.

Conveyor’s conversion work proceeded at a pace ,with frantic banging and clattering coming from every part of the ship. On finding out about the bombs that were going to be stored on board, I was reminded of vivid black and white images of exploding munitions ships I’d seen in WWII Magazine as a teenager, along with a recollection that the first thing to go when merchant ships were hit was usually the communications. With this in mind, I asked for a series of wind-up field telephones to be run between the bridge, the ‘hospital’ and the new deck clearing station. These were to be used rather than the ship’s telephones for passing reports when closed up at flying or emergency stations.

I asked for help from the port admiral’s office in getting hold of the medical records of those posted on board, but didn’t get very far because no one was certain who would be sailing with Conveyor, and the requests would all take far too much time to process. Rapidly reaching a dead end, I tried instead to ensure people joining the ship would at least have had their blood group checked in case we had to transfuse anyone. I didn’t make much progress with this either, so I ordered equipment to do the blood group testing at sea. 

There was bad news on other fronts, too. Ken’s medical equipment request had failed at first base. Conveyor didn’t appear on the Navy List of ships, so she wasn’t entitled to receive any stores at all.  As a result, I had a long heart-to-heart telephone conversation with a supply officer in a depot somewhere, where I described a little of what the MoD wanted us to do. He explained the rules of the game and, after a lot of haggling, he agreed to treat Conveyor as a frigate for accounting purposes — providing we resubmitted corrected paperwork.

In the second week, the appointer contacted me to let me know there would be no surgical team coming to relieve us after all. He wished me luck and told me he was confident I would do a good job. Medical friends offered to put Christine and baby Helen up in Plymouth. Thankful for this, I went back to fetch them so we could make the most of the off-duty time available before the ship sailed. 

A Mad Rush!

After I’d been confirmed as a member of NP1840, the port admiral’s office found me a couple of other jobs ‘just to keep me busy.’  On discovering I'd qualified as a ship’s diver in the RNR, they made me Conveyor’s Diving Officer and tasked me with assembling all the gear I would need to run diving operations from the ship. 

In addition, based I think on the notion that as a recent university graduate I’d be used to writing stuff, I was made the ship’s Public Relations Officer (PRO). For this, I was lent an Olympus OM2 camera and given an hour’s training on how to use it so I could take pictures of the crew going about their business. The brief was for me to pen uplifting stories of the good work the lads had been doing at sea for publication in their local newspapers back home.

The frantic couple of weeks in port ended with a herculean effort to stuff as many war stores onto the ship as possible. Ken White, the naval party air engineer, who had been acting as technical liaison with Conveyor’s civilian crew found himself having to deal with trainloads of gear and car parks full of lorries that would arrive without warning or any loading plan. Anyone who could help, including members of nearby establishments and even helicopters, were called in to help the overstretched crew cram all the materials on board.

Amongst the goods lined up in the vast cargo decks were small boats, airfield vehicles, gas tanks, a portable runway, a tent city, containers, bombs, missiles, electronic equipment, and every conceivable thing the invasion forces might need.

In fact, for many years afterwards, accountable items that went missing ashore were often written off as having been ‘lost on the Atlantic Conveyor.’

Everything that could be done had been done. But, time had now run out. Conveyor was to leave port with no military radar, no usable weapons, or chaff launchers — Any safety concerns about the scattered distribution of munitions and loading of kerosine on top of bombs would need to be addressed later. 

On Her Majesty's Improvised Secret Service

The day before we sailed, I received an improbable telephone message that the admiral was so impressed with my efforts, after being thrown in at the deep end, he would like to pay for a ‘run ashore.’  Given my family circumstances, I wasn’t keen, but was eventually persuaded that it would be in everyone’s interests if I just went along with the idea. That evening, I was duly picked up by a man from the navy press office in a staff car and whisked around a few pubs where we drank half a pint and moved on.. 

We ended up at the ‘Brown Bear’ (now demolished) just outside the dockyard walls, where my host was pleased to discover a man propping up the corner of the public bar. Taking me aside, he explained that the man was a journalist he wanted to introduce me to. Once we got talking, I was to slip a few exaggerated details of Conveyor’s capabilities into the conversation. The idea being to trick the journalist, and thereby the press, into thinking he had tricked an inexperienced young officer into revealing secrets about the new ‘secret’ ship. 

When I enquired whether it might be easier just to issue a press release, I was told the problem was the press would then think they were being fed propaganda (which, of course, they were).  It turned out the reason for this slightly ‘cunning plan’ was to encourage the media to report that we had somehow conjured up the equivalent of a WWII merchant aircraft carrier. If the Argentines could be convinced by the report then it might add to the pressure for them to withdraw their troops from the Falkland Islands without a fight.

Unfortunately, when it came to the interview, the journalist showed no interest in me whatsoever. His focus had been on a dockyard fire earlier in the day, and by the time we reached him he was too drunk to pick up on my increasingly obvious clues. Eventually, though, we persuaded him to let us have his notebook so we could write down everything he needed to know. 

Out of view of all this, the naval engineer had been asked to investigate why newly added fixings and heavy-duty support chains for Conveyor’s stern ramp were preventing it from closing properly. With a return to the dockyard out of the question due to time constraints, he arranged for a couple of small pieces of the aft deck to be cut away to solve the problem and make the ship seaworthy. 

The Journey South

When the air display in Plymouth Sound was over, the militarily blind and defenceless floating bomb that was Conveyor left Plymouth disguised as an aircraft carrier. 

After we set sail, I quickly discovered that the military and civilian members of the crew were used to operating in different ways. Whilst the merchant seamen were used to a few people in control of the ship, the military command structure on warships was strictly hierarchical and much more complex. On the first day at sea, the two crews held separate lifeboat drills using the same boats. I lightly joked about this afterwards with the two captains —  and they may have seen the funny side.

One of these, Ian North, Conveyor’s civilian master, was a fine character with a bushy white beard who certainly looked the part of a gritty old salt. I was not the only one impressed to find he’d served on a ship torpedoed in WWII. He was full of stories and oozed experience in every word, yet was modest and approachable. He had a knack of putting people at their ease and turned up on the bridge every day with a cartoon he’d drawn in order to put a smile on people’s faces. He demonstrated his skill early on when taking Conveyor alongside the tanker Grey Royer to refuel at sea for the first time

On passage across Biscay, a few of the experienced civilian hands who’d previously sailed on Conveyor took me deep into the ship’s holds to share a few beers and listen to what they claimed was a crack in the hull creaking in the heavy seas. Whether true or not, it was a pleasant interlude in what was turning out to be a hectic schedule.

Of more concern for the aircraft maintainers was the aviation fuel sloshing back and forth in the massive fuel tank which was seen to be spraying out from a vent all over nearby helicopters. Worse than that, the container’s end wall was suffering such a pounding it looked as if the fuel was going to burst out. This emergency was dealt with by adding constraining bands to the fuel bags and shoring up the ends of the containers with timber to stop them from collapsing. 

As far as the medical work went, we spent our time sorting out the stores, trying to establish the crewmembers’ blood groups, eeking out the two-person testing kit, and training up a first aid team with simulated casualty exercises all over the ship. It was my medical version of timing how quickly cannons could be loaded in preparation for battle.

At this stage, most people on board were fairly relaxed about the state of the campaign, thinking of it as a ‘phoney war’ that would probably end up in a prolonged standoff. Opinions changed when we put in at Freetown on 2nd May for fuel and heard about the huge loss of life resulting from the sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano. All onboard realised the Argentines were unlikely to let that blow pass unanswered.

There was no shore leave at Freetown, and on 3rd we left. The next day, we heard about the destruction of the modern destroyer HMS Sheffield by a single French-built Exocet missile. The news convinced the last of the sceptics on board that we were heading into a real war. Despite this, there was a great deal of excitement and optimism on board.

On the 5th May, we arrived at Ascension to join warships, Fleet Auxiliaries and other requisitioned civilian ships of the amphibious landing group waiting to travel southwest for the Exclusion Zone. 

With most of her helicopters de-bladed, wrapped up and stashed out of the way, Conveyor now had room on her deck for her most important cargo. One by one, fourteen Navy and RAF Harriers landed on the forward flight deck. Each was then moved back to make room for the next arrival. Once shut down, the aircraft were allocated places on the increasingly crowded main deck and secured with chains to stop them from moving when Conveyor was underway. 

Conveyor was amongst a convoy of ships that set off from Ascension for the Falkland Islands Exclusion Zone on the 7th. The newly arrived Harrier aircrew and maintainers all had to be squeezed into Conveyor’s accommodation, and the ship suddenly seemed very crowded indeed. They also all needed to be entertained whilst off-duty, and I was given an additional role as the ship’s film officer. 

My responsibility here was to find a film to show in the canteen each night. The task wasn’t as easy as it may sound because although we had a projector, we didn’t start with any films and had to beg, steal or borrow them from other vessels. In this, I was aided by the crew of the remaining active helicopter on our aft flight deck, who did the bartering when making deliveries.

The Exocet Threat

During this time, there was much talk about what the defenceless Conveyor might do to avoid the dreaded French ship-killing Exocet missiles that had already done away with the modern destroyer HMS Sheffield. 

The missile could be launched from an aircraft 30 or so miles away and would then sea-skim at 10 miles per minute, under inertial guidance (ie on autopilot) adjusting its course in the wind, towards where the pilot had spotted an aircraft-carrier-sized ship. After flying through any chaff sewn to confuse it, the Exocet would turn on its homing radar in the last few seconds of flight to find where its target had manoeuvred to in the 3 or so minutes since the missile’s launch. 

The MoD had constantly been updating its advice to the Carrier Group about how to respond to an Exocet attack. Admiral Woodward discussed the latest guidance with Captain Layard, and he in turn briefed Conveyor’s bridge officers, including me, on our defence plan, such as it was. Like the two aircraft carriers, Conveyor was to turn end-on to an Exocet threat to make her as small a radar target as possible. Putting her bow to the missiles was out of the question because of the cluster bomb magazine, kerosene store and fuel tanks on deck. Instead, she would turn her stern to the missiles and if an Exocet came for her, it was thought her reinforced stern ramp (the reinforcement had been to allow heavy vehicles to cross it when open) might act a bit like armour plating.

Battle Orders

On 25th May, we received our battle orders. These were to take the Conveyor into San Carlos Water overnight and to allow small ferries, our helicopters and the landing craft we had stowed in the hold to rapidly get the portable runway, bombs and the rest of the stores off. If necessary, the ship was to be beached stern first.

It came as a surprise when I received a message saying I was to be ready to help out if there were mines to be cleared from the shallows and remember thinking the campaign must be in desperate straights if they were going to rely on anything I might have picked up as a medical student diver. 

If Conveyor managed to unload and get out before the Argentine raids started up again in the morning, she was to be used for tactical air support. In case it all went wrong, we were each issued with a summary of the Geneva Convention rights for prisoners in case we were captured.

Later, we received (false) news that the Argentian aircraft carrier and her escorts had broken out and were heading our way. I recall that despite this we were all surprisingly optimistic. Any fears we had about the forthcoming operation were hidden in excited talk of yet again achieving the technically impossible. Although we had absolute faith in Captain North’s skill in getting us in and out, anyone who’d toured the vast decks full of equipment and munitions below, and knew of the effort required to load them all on in harbour, would have realised that despite our best efforts we were unlikely to have emptied her holds by dawn. Aware of this, more than one crewman took note of thick bits of metal to hide behind should the bombs start falling.  

The afternoon of 25th May was spent transferring cluster bombs and stores to nearby Hermes by helicopter and preparing the ship, her helicopters and the embarked aviation equipment for the overnight rush into San Carlos Water. Ammunition and squadron stores were piled up on the aft flight deck ready for transfer. Elsewhere, merchant crewmen busied themselves finishing off the repainting of Conveyor's white accommodation block in battleship grey to try and make the ship less obvious. 

A few minutes later, there was a jarring thud that reverberated all through Conveyor and felt to me like the ship hitting some obstruction. The ship’s engines stopped and shortly afterwards Captain Layard’s voice came over the tannoy warning us to ‘hit the deck’. There was another bang then the cabin lights went out.

As I lay on the deck, my heart pounding, I wondered if we were under air attack and, if so, where that thick bit of metal to hide behind had gone. I also realised the authors of WWII magazine had been right about electrical power being one of the first things to be lost. 

Pulling myself together, I rang down to my team for a progress report, and Ken told me they were clear so far. 

I buzzed the bridge, but there was no answer. With no idea what had happened other than the ship had been seriously damaged, I decided to discard my own plan and made my way down to the main deck where I thought I might be of more immediate use. When I arrived at the clearing station, I found the stretchers had been set up as emergency beds, but there were no casualties. I handed out injectable morphine and we ran through drips. There was a strong smell of smoke and we could hear the background rumblings in the cargo decks below.

Casualties

Above the noise of explosions in the holds beneath us, we heard raised voices and sudden calls for the doctor. I went to investigate the source to find screaming coming from a hot smoke-filled compartment below an open hatch. A man was there partially dressed in a firesuit and I was told by the second officer that they had been trying to rescue a civilian mechanic trapped in the engine room.

My mind whirred. Although my training said I should keep myself available, there was a man in severe pain and I was the best person to deal with it if we could get to him. Also, I couldn’t really ask anyone else to risk putting on heavy gear when we could all be cast into the water at any moment.

Now, bathed in an increasing smoky haze, I looked at the thick fire suit and wondered if the breathing apparatus was similar to the diving gear I was used to. But, whilst I was shouting out above the din, asking how to use it, the fire-suited man dressed up and headed off and I cowered behind him. This was third Engineer Brian Williams who received the Queen’s Award for Gallantry for his efforts on that evening.

We were driven back by the heat and smoke and any thoughts of trying again were immediately banished by an order to seal all hatches to the cargo decks. The First Officer was going to try and douse the raging fires below with CO2. We heard the drenching systems activate, but the explosions in the ship's belly continued unabated.  

Despite all our medical preparations, we’d been beaten in an instant. 

[I later heard of another trapped below who managed to escape and jump overboard]. 

Upset and startled by our failure, I returned to the dark confines of the clearing station where my team was waiting on a deck that was rapidly heating up. The thumps, whistles and bangs of detonations from below were now occurring every few seconds and a thickening pall of smoke hung in the air. 

There was more clamouring in the corridor and calls for the doctor. This time three men who had been working on the aft deck ditching ammunition over the side were helped along to us after having been overcome by smoke. Two seemed dazed but otherwise unharmed, but the third was choking and breathless. I concentrated on him, giving oxygen which soon brought him round. I followed this up with an injection of anti-inflammatories. 

After we’d put them under observation and oxygen as required, we found ourselves waiting in an increasingly hazardous situation knowing the fires were out of control and wondering when the flames would reach the magazine and the next explosion would be the last. I tried to put historical images of HMS Hood (the WWII flagship) and ammunition ships suffering that fate out of my mind. 

Thinking about it, we had no idea whether the ship was still under attack or even under command, because we were receiving no information. After checking our casualties again, we started telling each other exceedingly bad jokes to keep our minds off what was going on all around. The ship was dying and it was difficult to see how any of us could possibly survive.

Soon, the deck underfoot became so hot our shoes started to melt and I abandoned our position, moving us out into a nearby corridor. I was just thinking about trying to mount the numerous levels to the bridge to find out what was going on for myself [again, not wanting to risk sending anyone else high into the superstructure] when a stream of crew members dressed in survival suits and anti-flash hoods, emerged from another dining room where they’d been waiting.I stopped a few to find out what they knew. They said the order to abandon ship had been given. 

Kim Slowe, the pilot, landed his aircraft and embarked the ten men he had room for. Finding he had more lift available, he took five more. Now seriously overloaded, he flew the short distance to Hermes, only to find he was denied permission to land on her flight deck. Having insufficient power to hover, he set down anyway. 

Back at Conveyor, Prince Andrew brought his Sea King helicopter in after the Wessex had gone and took off the remaining men from the forward deck.

Escape

In the dark corridor outside the baking casualty clearing compartment, I was feeling immense relief at the slim chance of escaping the nightmare. As we started helping our casualties into their survival suits and life jackets, I noticed several other crew members shuffling towards the accommodation block exit weren't properly dressed for the cold water and I urged them to put on warm clothes from emergency lockers and to sort out their life jackets.  Some did, others simply pressed on.

At this point, it dawned on me that it would be better for our main smoke victim not to have to take to the cold water. I remembered having discussed this very problem with Mike Layard in the past and having agreed that we would put any injured in lifeboats and lower them down rather than requiring them to swim for rafts. 

With no one to ask about this, I informed my team I was going to take a look at the nearest lifeboat two decks up on the starboard side. Now dressed in my once-only survival suit with my life jacket over the top, I pushed my way out into the flame-lit dusk and headed up the external accommodation ladders.

When I got to the lifeboat, to my dismay I realised two things. Firstly, it was going to take me ages to work out how to swing the boat out and lower it and secondly, when I looked over the side, I saw flames leaping out through holes in the side of the ship and people in the water directly under where the lifeboat would fall. Cursing at my foolishness, I gave up on the idea and clattered back down the steps to find my way blocked by crew milling on the smoky deck waiting their turn to go over the side and down the rope ladders, looking for all the world like aliens out of a horror film. 

By the time I made any progress back to the clearing station, I could see the corridor was empty and my team must have already gone. Feeling utterly useless, I joined the end of a line leading to the side. As I started down the ladder, I could see the ship’s side glowing red in places round about whilst elsewhere there were jagged holes. The long descent down the high side was going to be a lottery that might end any moment in a hail of flame and metal. 

I’d climbed down the sides of numerous ships in the past when setting out on a dive and kept my mind on maintaining steady progress towards the water. But, two-thirds of the way down I unexpectedly came to the end of the ladder [I found out later this had been cut when HMS Alacrity had briefly come alongside to play hoses on the flaming side.] With no other option available, I checked below then crossed my arms and ankles as a good diver should, and let go. 

Into the Life Rafts 

The next thing I remember is being under the water and seeing the surface above me. My instinct and training took over and I swam upwards. On getting my head clear, my immediate concern was the risk of being slammed against the ship’s side by the considerable swell. This was overtaken by a realisation that my supposedly watertight once-only-suit was rapidly filling with water and I was starting to sink. My life jacket was inflated, but it wasn’t holding my head clear, so I blew air as much air into it as I could until there was enough buoyancy for me to start paddling.

Ahead was a depressing sight. The liferafts which had been crammed together on the side of the accommodation block had fallen and inflated but the lines had tangled on the way down and now looked like so much knitting. This left the rafts clumped together with only the outer ones accessible to those in the water. I slowly made for the nearest available entrance, trying to conserve some strength, and clung on to the rope looped around the raft’s side. After stopping for a breather, I tried to climb over the threshold but found my flooded suit made me too heavy. Someone climbed over me and I fell back. Then, luckily, someone inside noticed me and a pair on the entrance hauled me in. 

I soon found myself in the bottom of the raft with gathered water slopping about my face along with other beached whales. After finally extracting myself, I realised I was freezing cold and fell in the water again whilst trying to tie on a rope thrown down from HMS Alacrity. After an age finding it difficult to motivate myself, I slowly climbed the frigate’s scrambling net with people shouting at me to cut my balloon of a suit. Thankfully, I had no knife as, at this point, the water in my suit was probably supporting my circulation. At last, I rolled over the top and must have lost consciousness.

HMS Alacrity

I next remember being down below with others from Conveyor. Most were lost in thought, looking exhausted. Some were crying. I was relieved to find that Ken, the smoke victims and the first-aiders had all made it on board. I reported to Captain Layard who was making a list of survivors. He asked me to help work out who had been lost [12 died].

So I ambled off to look for the frigate’s medical team (pleased to have a job to do) and found them trying to resuscitate those who’d been fished out but were unresponsive. There followed a blur, during which I was told later I was a bit like a man possessed, in some cases desperately trying to revive those for whom there was no hope. 

The survivors were eventually split up and taken to messes where Alacrity crew members did the only thing they could think of and plied them with strong drink. Later that evening, there was another air raid warning and as Alacrity’s crew closed up as normal they found dazed Conveyor crew members wandering around already dressed in survival gear ready to go over the side. The survivors were reassured and held back.

Alacrity’s captain (Chris Craig) later told me that Conveyor’s survivors were such a miserable and depressing lot he wanted to get shot of us as soon as possible. He had a ship to fight and needed to preserve morale on board.

British Tay

We stayed on Alacrity for a day before being transferred, via Hermes, to the tanker British Tay for the journey north. It was then we received letters that hadn’t reached Conveyor. In one written after Conveyor had been reported damaged, Christine said for the week up until writing the letter, she and the staff at INM hadn’t been able to find out any information about where I was. She said that if I was given the chance to come home, I was just to take it.

The arrival of the letters coincided with a signal asking Conveyor’s officers to volunteer to return to the front line because we were all desperately needed. In my case, although my stupid instinct was to volunteer, I re-read Christine’s letters, thought of my family and decided to go home. In the event, no one put his name forward. In my medical view, Conveyor’s survivors had made the right choice. They needed rest and respite before they would be fit to face the trauma of war again. 

The night before we arrived at Ascension, the crew of the Tay organised a party for us. Everyone drank far too much and one unfortunate seaman decided to go for a dip in the ship’s swimming pool, which unluckily for him was empty. When I examined him, I could see he’d probably broken his collarbone, so I lashed him up as best I could.

At Ascension, we were given a debrief and pointedly told not to believe any rumours put about by unscrupulous journalists that Conveyor had been used to shield the carriers from the Exocets. It had been an unfortunate accident of war. She’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ken, ever conscientious, prepared papers for me to sign explaining that I’d lost all the medical equipment on board as well as a projector.

For my part, I was interviewed by the BBC with Helen screaming her head off throughout. So, I just hugged my beautiful girls tightly. The interview was hopeless, but ironically the image of it, randomly captured by a photographer through a bus window, took on a life of its own and was later used in Channel 4’s images of the war to represent a survivor.

Shortly after returning home, I found my pay had been stopped. There followed a bizarre interview with an apologetic young lady in the pay department at HMS Centurion who regretfully informed me I’d been killed in action. [There had been a mix up with another Brooks apparently]

On being granted leave, Christine and I visited the widow of one of the civilian ship’s crew I’d tried to resuscitate. I was appalled to find she’d been told very little about her husband’s death, so I set the matter right as best I could and promised to see what I could do to get help for her. Whilst away, I started to experience symptoms of the mental trauma I’d suffered. One night, at my parents’ house, we were woken by fireworks in a nearby field. Before I knew it, I was out of bed and dressed, ready to go over the side with Christine trying to calm me down.

On 21st June, the MoD convened a Board of Inquiry to look into the reasons for Conveyor’s loss. The purpose was to discover what more could have been done to save the ship after she had been hit. I was not the only one to think the members of the board were out to find fault with the crew and I found the whole experience oppressive. 

Suffering from what I now realise was survivor’s guilt, I didn’t give a good account of myself.

[As it turns out, the Board considered the efforts of Conveyor’s medical department to have been admirable and a template for future conversions - though no one ever mentioned it]

In July, after attending the Conveyor remembrance service in Liverpool, I started looking into why 50% of the once-only suits had failed in action but was informed this was a matter for the Board to consider in due course. 

With navy medics in short supply, my turn for seagoing duties soon came around again and I was packed off to the Falklands - this time on a frigate, HMS Phoebe. At daybreak on the day Phoebe first came within sight of the Falklands, her captain called me up to the bridge so I could get a first glimpse of the land I’d fought for. Over the next months of the deployment, I had a few opportunities to go ashore on the islands and to meet the people and I felt that helped a lot.

PTSD Symptoms

I knew I’d suffered PTSD, and at that time, I was certain admitting such ‘weakness’ would count against me in the RN. Thankfully, that attitude has long gone. 

Anyway, I embarked on the self-treatment of giving lectures about Conveyor each year to the medical candidates on the NEMO course until the memory held no power over me. Nevertheless, my experiences on Conveyor changed me and I threw myself into all sorts of challenges to prove myself (to myself) physically and mentally. A single Conveyor reunion occurred a year after the sinking, but the event was so dismal that it was never repeated.

Research into why the Exocets hit Atlantic Conveyor 

Eventually, apart from raising a glass each year, I thought little more of the sinking. 

That is until one year a BBC reporter, looking for a new voice, asked me for an interview. In preparation, I went through my old notes and carried out a little research online to find out what historians had made of it all.

It was then I came across the stories about Conveyor having been attacked with Exocets on her way into San Carlos Water which I knew was wrong because Conveyor had still been with the carriers when the Argentine planes had arrived. 

The most detailed source I could find was Admiral Woodward’s book, ‘100 days’, where he gave an account of the attack. He’d worked with a co-author to make the book an exciting read in the style of an old fashioned naval adventure story. He described how the two Argentine pilots had attacked from the northwest and aimed their Exocets at the outlying frigate Ambuscade. The frigate deployed gun chaff which successfully attracted the Exocets away to their left. The missiles flew on, rescanned for targets and despite Captain North having turned Conveyor’s stern to the missiles, they locked onto her and hit her port quarter. 

I also found a heavily redacted copy of the Board of Inquiry Report into Conveyor’s loss which seemed to say something different. Within it, was the record of an order sent from Hermes to Conveyor at the start of the attack for my ship to immediately turn to port onto course 040. 

As I knew the attack had been from the northwest, if true, this manoeuvre would have left Conveyor side-on rather than end-on to the Exocets, making her a very large hard target indeed. Worse still, I couldn’t find any evidence historians had noticed this. 

Which was right, Woodward or the Board of Inquiry? If she’d been turned side-on, then why?

By now, I was an experienced PhD level research scientist and decided to use my modest skills to try and find out what had happened. Not having the full facts, I didn’t mention anything about Conveyor’s odd manoeuvre to the BBC interviewer but instead amused her with the tale of the Brown Bear.

To investigate the incident, I read published British and Argentine accounts, contacted witnesses directly or through ships’ websites and trawled through the naval archives at Kew where I found ships’ logs, Cabinet Minutes, and declassified reports. I also sought advice on Exocet behaviour from British and international experts, including those in Chile, who were familiar with the technology of the time. I also corresponded with the Argentine pilots.

You’ll find the results of my investigation on this site.