So that was the end of the Trafalgar story, right?
She made her final entry into Devonport last year, and was formally decommissioned. The White Ensign was lowered for the final time. Her ship’s company went their separate ways.
Well, not entirely.
More than two months after the decommissioning – three after the boat made her way up the Hamoaze under her own steam for the last time – she still has three-quarters of her normal crew.
Even by the summer, half of her usual complement will still be aboard. It will be 2011 when the final chapter of the Trafalgar story can be written.
The decommissioning process is driven by how quickly her nuclear reactor cools down.
The reactor was shut down when the boat came alongside for the last time, since when she has been hooked up to naval base power supplies.
“It’s not like a ship where you just switch off the main engines – you’ve a reactor to look after,” said weapon engineer officer Lt Cdr Wayne Stafford.
“There’s no difference in the way we treat this boat in disposal than we do when they’re operational – that’s why we keep crew on board for such a long time.”
For that reason there will be sailors aboard Trafalgar perhaps for as long as 18 months after decommissioning as the reactor is allowed to cool down naturally.
Only then will she join the other decommissioned nuclear boats, beginning with Dreadnought up to R and S boats, awaiting their fate in Devonport and Rosyth.
But tending to the reactor is only one part of a lengthy process which will see the heart and soul ripped out of Trafalgar.
“It’s like putting your best friend to sleep – the lads have built up this fantastic machine, kept it going, built up this wonderful camaraderie. Suddenly, you’re ending all that,” said Lt Cdr Dave Rostron, marine engineer officer for the paying-off process.
The paintings and trophies which could be found in the ward room (including a note from Nelson to Emma Hamilton) are being returned to the Trophy Store in Portsmouth.
Deeps looking for ‘mementoes’ of their time aboard Trafalgar will have very little chance.
If he’s lucky, CO Cdr Charlie Shepherd might keep the nameplate on his cabin door, otherwise pretty much everything else is put back to use around the Fleet.
The gym has been dismantled and taken to another boat. The echo sounders now operate in HMS Tireless. Turbulent, in the middle of a maintenance period, has been earmarked for a fair bit of kit; the telegraph indicators have gone, so too the speed indicators, and the periscopes will soon be removed.
The communications suite is as modern as anything in the Service (Trafalgar was the first boat to send an e-mail while deployed), and the command system is cutting edge, so they’ll both prove useful elsewhere.
All around Trafalgar’s control room there are empty slots where machinery once hummed.
“It is a horrible feeling seeing people coming in like vultures, grabbing this and that,” said LET(WESM) Tony Dymond.
AB(WS(SM)) Jamie Tyrer added dolefully: “You see her disappear piece by piece.
“It’s a weird feeling of winding-down rather than constantly winding-up for your next deployment.”
The ‘vultures’ have a set menu to work to. A ‘de-equip’ list is produced detailing which parts go where.
As well as Trafalgar’s permanent fittings, there are some 7,000 spare parts squirreled away around the boat. Each one has to be accounted for, then packaged and returned to naval stores so that another submarine can use them if needs be.
There are also more personal acts of decommissioning.
Since 1993, Trafalgar has enjoyed the freedom of Lancaster – the ship is affiliated to the Red Rose county town, as well as the neighbouring resort of Morecambe.
With the boat’s demise, so the freedom scroll was returned.
For the final time, the submariners marched through Lancaster then enjoyed a civic reception before handing back the scroll to mayor Roger Sherlock.
Sailors were invited to watch Morecambe Town demolish Bournemouth 5-0, but there’s a more permanent reminder of the boat’s links with the resort: Stone Jetty – one-time site of a breaker’s yard – is now Trafalgar Point.
Civic leaders had toyed with naming a plaza in the submarine’s honour. Sadly, another settlement had already beaten them to creating a Trafalgar Square…
With the final tallies signed off, we can now say that Trafalgar travelled nearly 200,000 miles on the surface and more than 500,000 beneath the sea during her career.
She sailed into and out of her home port of Devonport on more than 250 occasions, dropping in on more than 50 ports overseas.
On a standard three-month patrol, her periscope watchkeepers walked more than 16 miles in a small circle as they scoured the ocean’s surface.
The boat’s nuclear reactor has produced enough power to support a town the size of Swindon (population 155,000) for 26 years.
Trafalgar’s two electrolysers produced enough oxygen from water to support 300 humans for a lifetime – the equivalent output of 900 mature oak trees.
As a by-product, the same electrolysers produced enough hydrogen on each three-month patrol to fill the Hindenburg airship (200,000 cubic metres or 7,000,000 cubic feet).
During each patrol some 2.5 million litres of fresh water were produced by her osmosis plants – enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
In excess of two million meals have been cooked in the boat’s galley since 1983, and in that time the men of Trafalgar have seen off 700,000 sausages, nearly 300 tonnes of potatoes, 80,000 steaks on Saturdays and fish on Fridays, more than 100 tonnes of curry and 5,000,000 cups of tea.
A typical patrol lasted 90 days, limited only by the amount of food Trafalgar could carry. By reverting to ‘fleet rations’ (smaller portions) she could extend patrols to 120 days.
And just under 3,000 sailors have served in Trafalgar since her launch; around 500 of them have had the pleasure of living in the ‘bomb shop’, or weapon storage compartment – the room where the torpedoes and missiles are kept, and the torpedo tubes loaded.