The story so far.... Barrow's 295th submarine.
On Trafalgar Day 1960, Her Majesty The Queen named Britain's first nuclear submarine . To read the story, click on the PDF icon .
HMS Dreadnought - The new phase.
An event no-one can remember or seems to know about!
In Oct 2019, the association was contacted by a Jim Berg stating that he had come across an engraved bowl with references to USS Skipjack. It seems the bowl had been presented to the Commanding Officer and crew of USS Skipjack in appreciation for their hospitality and nuclear training.
Jim Berg's connection to the bowl is simple curiosity. He found the bowl buried in a box at an antique shop and thought it was cool and loves to research these types of things.
Of course the more he dug around for some history, the more interesting it became. The year the bowl was made is 1906, the same year HMS Dreadnought (the battleship) was commissioned. It seemed to him that was by design and not a coincidence that Lt I Cochrane selected a bowl from 1906 to be engraved.
HMS Dreadnought, the battleship, was commissioned in 1906. The silver bowl that is engraved is dated 1906.
The USS Skipjack (S85) was commissioned in 1959 and HMS Dreadnought (S101) was commissioned in 1960.
It is possible that Lt I. Cochrane RN who commissioned the submarine trained on the USS Skipjack? Perhaps this was a personal thank you from him to the officers and captain of USS Skipjack. The 1906 date of the silver dish may have been intentional.
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Having looked through the "First Five Years" booklet I found the following:
In 1959 ( so the book of wisdom tells me) the Commanding Officer designate, Cdr B.F.P Samborne and a party of Nuclear technicians went over to the states for some “hands on training.” Those that went to the USA spoke of trips to New York and Boston and of having to cross the state line to Rhode Island because of the liquor laws – those who served in New London were accommodated at the US submarine base, where they were called aliens (that must have been Groton) initially but very soon became accepted. Those who went to the West coast had Hawaii as a base to visit the Panama Canal. It was reported that on one boat, a barber refused money from the Brits because he thought the Brits were poorly paid. Commander Samborne heard of this and increased their Local Overseas Allowance which obviously went down well.
So reading between the lines this can only be seen as a good will and thank you gesture from Lt Cochrane RN. I’m wondering that the barber may have been on USS Skipjack.
A big thanks to Jim Berg for sending this information to the association.
He would like to know what to do with the bowl??