Warship: Life In The Royal Navy (Ch5)
Move over, Hornblower. Midshipman Kate Humble embarked on a classic naval adventure, as she joined the crew of a Royal Navy frigate as a cook and ended by defeating the Russkies.
A three-day excursion aboard HMS Iron Duke, to make a film below decks for Warship: Life In The Royal Navy, turned into a two-week sea chase, battling gale force winds, after the ship was sent in pursuit of a nuclear-capable Russian sub.
‘I seem to have spent 30 years looking for badgers and now I have graduated to being a submarine hunter,’ she announced, glowing with excitement.
Channel 5 loves an escapade at sea, whether that’s Jane McDonald on a floating holiday village or cruise ship killers on The Good Ship Murder.
But producers couldn’t have wished for a more dramatic turn of luck as Kate boarded the Iron Duke in the Humber estuary last September.
The first day went much as expected, as she helped out in the galley, chopping veg for dinner, and sweeping up in the messroom.
Inspecting the supplies, she exclaimed, ‘Wow, you’re completely self-sufficient.’ Good thing, really, because it would be inconvenient if the ship had to order takeaways from Deliveroo.
The first hint that this was more than a P&O ferry with Harpoon missiles came when Captain David Armstrong remarked: ‘In the past 12 months, we’ve escorted 25 Russian ships through UK waters.’ Providing an escort, he added, wasn’t as friendly as it sounded.
Hosts JJ Chalmers and Kate Humble were given unprecendented behind the scenes access to the Royal Navy in the documentary
Kate Humble was dropped in the deep end when a Russian sub with the capacity for carrying nuclear missiles was heading for the English Channel
Next morning, an alert came over the ship’s comms. A Russian sub with the capacity for carrying nuclear missiles was heading for the English Channel. Bobbing on the surface, it was clearly in mechanical trouble — leaking diesel and possibly in danger of exploding.
‘If it were to break down and sink on the south coast,’ the captain pointed out, ‘that would be an environmental catastrophe.’
He had a point: a wrecked sub laden with atomic weapons, in the middle of the busiest shipping lane in the world, might be a bit of a nuisance.
The frustration for viewers was that so much of the story was classified info and had to be omitted.
Was the Iron Duke in radio contact with the Russians? Did tankers and container ships have to be diverted? We weren’t able to find out.
To add to the tension, Storm Amy blew in and whipped up waves like mountain ranges.
‘I feel like I’m in with the grown-ups and I’m not grown up enough,’ yelped Kate. But she did herself credit.
With the ship pitching and rolling like a fairground ride, and a nuclear holocaust-in-a-can chugging along off the port bow, plenty of presenters would have spent the voyage doubled over a bucket.
But experiences like this don’t happen often in a career, and Kate was clearly loving it. Badgers are going to seem terribly tame after this.
