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    Driving Ambition: Memoirs Part One
    Driving Ambition: Memoirs Part One
    Driving Ambition: Memoirs Part One
    Ebook135 pages1 hour

    Driving Ambition: Memoirs Part One

    By Charles Wylie

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    About this ebook

    This is the first half of the tale of an urchin from the slums of London who had an impossible dream: to command (to 'drive') one of Her Majesty's Ships.
    It take us through forty years across the world to the Mediterranean, to the Far East, to the Caribbean, the Pacific Ocean, the USA and Canada, and into the Arctic, through World War Two and the Korean War, a meeting with Marshall Tito, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and glimpses of the oceans of the world, from flat calm to mountainous seas. It tells of involvement in a mutiny on board a British warship, promotion from the Lower Deck to the Wardroom, experiences in a troopship, warships from minesweepers to an aircraft carrier, and experiences in 33 submarines from ancient relics of WWII to Polaris Missile boats. It does not hide incurring the official displeasure of the Commander-in-Chief. We see events from the First Cod War, the Fastnet Race and the Round The Island Race as well as a chess match against a former Champion of France.
    For the romantics there is falling in love, marriage, starting a family and building a happy home life, before going on to on to the magical moment when ambition is fulfilled.
    Part Two follows on from this to tell of causing the British Ambassador to be called into the Kremlin. It can only get better from thereon: and so it does.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles Wylie
    Release dateApr 2, 2014
    ISBN9781311236333
    Driving Ambition: Memoirs Part One
    Author

    Charles Wylie

    Charles Wylie is a professional British seaman and an amateur dinghy and yacht sailor. He is the luckiest man on the planet, being husband to Jean, father of four, grandfather to nine and godfather to ten. Poetry is a hobby, together with sailing, chess, Scottish Country Dancing, languages, and a variety of other pursuits. He is tickled pink to have been headhunted at the age of 78. As a seaman he had visited all the continents in ships by the age of 21 at over 50 ports and had survived his destroyer being bombed in the Korean War when only just 17 years old. He attributes a reasonable command of the English language to his education at Taunton's Grammar School in Southampton, which set him up for life in four short years. He is particularly grateful to the Royal Navy for its having been a father figure and a source of immense pride for over 65 years. The navy promoted him 10 times, but because he started as a Boy Seaman that means he achieved only the modest rank of Commander (happy with that.) His naval friends (to whom he pays equal respect) range from Able Seamen to Admirals.He is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, a Freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.His poetry was written for himself (and occasionally for family or friends) and is published now after many years of friendly badgering by dear ones. Self-publishing through Smashwords was chosen because he is confident that no modern publisher would want to publish his generally old-fashioned rhyming and scanning verses.Charles is a happy man, much blessed.

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      Book preview

      Driving Ambition - Charles Wylie

      Memoirs - Part One - by Charles Wylie

      Smashwords Edition

      Driving Ambition

      Copyright 2014 by Commander C G Wylie OBE FCMI Royal Navy

      Cover Design by Jeremy Taylor

      Cover Photograph by Charles Wylie

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

      This book is not available in print.

      Driving Ambition

      The first part of the life of an urchin

      By Charles Wylie

      Written at Nigel’s and Ian’s request.

      Dedicated to Jean with eternal gratitude.

      Every man has, sometime in his life, an ambition to be a wag.

      Samuel Johnson

      What others are saying about 'Driving Ambition'

      (Prior to first publication)

      What have you done all your life?

      -A rude friend.

      Have you done anything in your life?

      -Another rude friend.

      You must be joking

      -An even ruder friend.(They're all naval officers, of course)

      You won't really publish, will you?

      -My wise wife.

      Please send your own comments to: c.wylie986@btinternet.com

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      eBooksByCharlesWylie

      What others are saying about 'Driving Ambition'

      Cover design

      Introduction (intended to be read)

      Chapter 1 -The 1930s (Childhood and wartime)

      Chapter 2 -The 1940s (Grammar School and the Royal Navy)

      Chapter 3 -The 1950s (Far East, Korean War, Med, Tito, USA, Cod War, Upper Yardman, Marriage)

      Chapter 4 -The 1960s (Family, Malta, Navigation, EAGLE, VANITY, ARETHUSA, Dagger N, Faslane - To sea in 33 submarines)

      Chapter 5- The Start of the 1970s (ANTRIM, PWOs, Ambition achieved - first warship command)

      For 1973 to 2014 - See Volume 2 'Fill The Cup'.

      About the AuthorEmailAddress

      Introduction (intended to be read.)

      Phot: HMS COMUS - a World War Two 'CO Class' Destroyer, refuelling off Korea.

      The first words spoken by my captain on the morning of 23rd August 1950 were FULL AHEAD BOTH ENGINES. HARD A-STARBOARD. Lieutenant Commander RAM Hennessy, LVO DSC, Royal Navy, had been awakened by the Action Stations alarm. As he climbed the stairs to the bridge he was looking up and aft and could see two Russian-made Ilyushin 2 Fighter-Bombers, in North Korean colours, diving from astern, raking the length of the ship with machine-gun fire and rockets and releasing their bombs. His call saved the ship and all but one of the ship’s company of 186 men. Luckily, the bombs exploded in the water alongside.They both caused damage, and one of them blew a big hole in the side. Two weeks after my 17th birthday I was not amused.

      Phot: Number 1 Boiler Room. This was done by a bomb that missed; we were lucky.

      If it were not for the Captain, and Leading Stoker John Bannister in No. 1 Boiler Room, whose resourcefulness earned him the Distinguished Service Medal, there would today be no Wylie family. God bless them both.

      That is the story as I remember it. The captain’s official Report of Proceedings (RoP), written just afterwards, is more accurate. I found it at the National Archives on 17 Mar 2010.

      The United Nations Organisation had passed a resolution on the 27th June 1950, three days after North Korea invaded South Korea on the 24th, which led to a full scale war on the Korean peninsula, with the involvement of British armed services. It was a bloody business, now largely forgotten by the world at large, in which many thousands of people died.

      Leading Stoker Jim Addison died in the Boiler Room instantly. It has always irked me that news of this event, tragic for the dead man and his family, occupied a mere column inch in a national newspaper. Even today, the news of yet another soldier dying in Afghanistan takes less than fifteen seconds to report on the radio. (See my poem ‘A Band of Rain’ dated 18 Nov 2010.)

      A little after the incident my first letter to The Times was published, saying that if I was old enough to fight in the Korean War 10,000 miles from home, I was old enough to vote without having to reach 21 years. Later, the age limit was reduced to 18.

      The purpose of these scribblings (after requests by Nigel and Ian) is to record some events of my life for my family before I’m too gaga to do it. It may also be of some interest to some friends, so I’ve kept this in mind. Forgive me if there are any bits left unintelligible to those not initiated into the mysteries of naval jargon. It is not a proper biography; (the reader should expect little professionalism in the production.) It is merely a collection of anecdotes and an outline of events in the life of a lower working class boy with a driving ambition (it is a convention among naval officers to speak of ‘driving’ a ship when in command.) If readers cannot find something they remember, it may be worth looking at my poetry, short stories, letters and other writings, in which some events have been recorded.

      Whatever I write, the part that is the family tale will be only half complete, and I earnestly hope that Jean will write the other half, particularly since she deserves 90% of any credit we may deserve for the successes of our four (eight) children and nine grandchildren.

      For those who asked, I can’t say where my posh accent came from – I was certainly a right little Cockney tyke as a boy. I suppose it’s true to say that someone’s accent is less revealing of his background than it is of where he’d like to go.

      Chapter One - The Nineteen-Thirties

      (Childhood and wartime)

      Born in Islington on 11 Aug 1933 to Laura Louise Wylie, I never knew my father (his name was not Wylie: that name came from an earlier involvement.) He was a total mystery to me until later in my life. My mother had the difficult task of raising alone an illegitimate child (socially we would have been an utter disgrace if anyone had been able to confirm what people suspected.) My father was a public figure with whom my mother had had an affair. The little bastard’s existence was concealed from his father’s family, and, as far as I know, I’ve always been able to fulfil my own commitment to save the family the potential distress. He died relatively young, but I’m pretty sure he sent an allowance to my mother until I joined the Royal Navy (RN.) When I saw his photograph on display, among distinguished colleagues, I was astonished by the likeness; it was quite eerie. I’ve also seen film of him conducting public business; seeing some of my own gestures in someone long dead, although well-understood as a natural hereditary process, gave me a most peculiar feeling. Because he was a man of considerable talents, and I was a boy whom my mother thought conspicuously lacked them, I fear I was a grave disappointment as a son. That must have been hard for her.

      The address on my birth certificate is 20 Mildmay Grove, which is in Islington, but I think we moved from there to a nearby house when I was an infant. My early childhood is not remembered as a

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