Leaving Gibraltar behind us in the morning sunshine, we sailed eastwards into the Mediterranean Sea. There had been a dampening of spirits among Bulwark's crew following the harbour death, although there had been no reduction in the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by the shore parties; everyone seemed to share the tragedy of the drowning, even me and I hadn't known the dead seaman from Adam. The shared 'down' didn't last long though and once at sea the talk in the mess soon turned to our next run ashore, which would be at Malta and the inter-mess games championships that would take place over the coming weeks.

We sailed along in sight of the North African coast and as we progressed 845 Squadron practised their flying, lifting off various pieces of kit from the flight-deck to carry it ashore. Seeing the 'paraffin parrots' heading off with a Land Rover or 3 ton Bedford truck slung beneath it was another new experience for me. I guess I'd never thought about it before, but using the Wessex V helicopters in this way was obviously the quickest way of getting 42 Commando's transport ashore in times of need. Great fun to watch of course, but despite the best efforts of the ship's company we weren't treated to anything being lost in the oggin!

It was said that a Naval helicopter pilot's life expectancy in the early 1970s was around five years actual flying service. That's not to say either the aircraft or the pilots were substandard, but there did seem to be a lot choppers lost at sea. It was also common for returning helicopters to pile into anything standing proud of the flight-deck, including the various radio masts.

The four aerials for the HF kit I was working on with Budd Abbott were situated in two pairs spaced some fifty feet apart and on either side of the after end of the flight-deck. These were whip aerials that stood around twenty feet high under normal circumstances. When the aircrew were playing with their choppers we had to lower the whips to their horizontal position: they worked perfectly well in either attitude. The flight-deck immediately adjacent the whips was cross-hatched white and red as no-go areas: when we were transmitting to stand too close to one of those whips meant risking radiation burns. The power of our transmissions was capable of sterilising any healthy fertile man foolish enough to stand within twenty feet of a whip. Just occasionally one would short to earth and produce our very own lightning show!

Off duty life at sea was mix of playing games, reading books, watching whatever film was being shown in the junior rates dining hall, laughing called the 'Ritz', writing letters home, listening to Radio Bulwark, the ship's own radio station, or sleeping.

There were thirty two of us in 5E2, the mess being divided into two main 'living' areas and one side row. The main living spaces had four tiers of three bunks, with a central isle around two and a half feet wide. This meant that potentially thirty one of us could be squashed into a space meant for twelve if we were playing communal games (at least one man would always be on duty so would be missing). Obviously we didn't often all get together en masse because it just wasn't practical. More usual would be to find one bunch of guys playing cards in one main area and another bunch playing something else in the other. In 5E2, the something else tended to be one of the Navy's favourite games: uckers.

For the uninitiated, uckers can be likened to ludo with teeth; it's played on an identical board. The rules of the game are many and varied and like ludo, the aim is to get your men home first. It can be played either as four singles or two pairs: the partners game is far more intricate and a whole lot more fun, but you do need to know your partner's game and work out a series of calls that indicate to him and him alone what moves you want him to make. Heaven forbid you should put your partner in a state of mixi-shit or get the poor bugger blobbed up behind the opposition!

5E2 mess had its share of characters so was no different to any other mess in that respect. The main characters included a Lancashire lad, Colin 'Rosie' Rose, who was the hairiest man I've met, Michael 'Wiggy' Bennett from Yorkshire with his sense of humour drier than any tinder and constant badgering of Rosie, Simon 'Kenny Evershite' Everett, our very own mad radio star and the best equipped Leading Hand on the ship (and probably Britain!), Joe 'Father' Caulfield, killick of the mess and 'Dad' to everyone and Charlie 'Flaps' Daniels because he was simply mental; the rest of us made up the numbers and fitted in where we could.

One of Kenny Evershite's claims to fame was his ability to lay his manhood on a standard size cribbage board and have it hang over either end: talk about hung like a donkey!

Back to the games. It was traditional in 5E2 to draw lots for uckers partners and when the time came, I drew Wiggy Bennett. Wiggy happened to be the mess uckers singles champion and I was obviously a disappointment to him when our names came out of the hat together. He took me to one side, peered down at me with a dour Yorkshire expression and said “Ah fookin' 'ope yer brighter than yer look Taff!”

I'd only played uckers twice in my life and now here I was needing to keep my end of things ship shape and Bristol fashion, or let an expert down. I watched other people playing when ever I could and jumped into every game with a spare seat. I also practised with Wiggy of course and quickly found I was an uckers natural. My game tended to be a ludo clone, but it was effective.

Wiggy and I demolished all comers and it was said around the Radio Department that no-one could ever remember seeing Wiggy Bennett smile so much: he knew a good thing when he saw it did Wiggy and had his eyes on the big prize. Bulwark had stooged about for eight days between Gibraltar and Malta, by which time it had become obvious that in the uckers stakes, Wiggy and Taff were the team to beat. So it came to pass that the mess-deck's newest member became one of the mess's representatives in the annual Bulwark Uckers Doubles Championships.