Sophie Has asked that if anybody from the Association  intends going to the Funeral, could they please advise her by email at sophs.jordan@gmail.com in order that they can cater accordingly..

Message from Paddy's Daughter Sophie received this morning.

Dear Bruce,

Many thanks for your kind letter regarding the tragic loss of my dear father, Peter Jordan.
Nancy, Michael and I have been so touched by the overwhelming flood of sympathy and support that we have been receiving and we would love to meet many more of Dad's old acquaintances if they would like to come to the funeral.

It is to be held at Stoke Climsland Parish Church, Cornwall (small village to the north of Callington) next Friday (6th June) at 2pm. My father loved this little village and we feel it is fitting for him to be remembered here as it overlooks the Tamar valley which he loved dearly. The Bun Fight will be held across the road in an hall where Dad used to listen to live jazz once a month with close friends. The bar, of course, will be opened immediately but there will be an hours delay before meeting family as we would like to escort him to the Crematorium in Bodmin.

I take great comfort in knowing that Dad died peacefully, doing what he loved to do best. We shall all miss him more than we can imagine but we thank you again for your supportive words.

Kind Regards


Sophie Jordan
Peter's daughter

Please click on the link below which will take you to a map of the venue

From Bill Hyde who served on Dreadnought as an Engine Room Mechanician during the whole of the Core change at  Costa de Rosyth

Re Radiation and Asbestosis

For those of you who don’t know me from my time on the Dreadnought, I was the Mech who was the responsible for the reactor system and the reactor compartment for most of the first refit.  It was part of my duty to enter the reactor compartment to carry out inspections and vet procedures etc.  During this period of the refit, up until the reactor went critical and the reactor compartment was closed, I had to regulate my reactor entries and therefore my radiation doses every month so that I was not burnt out by the end of the year.  This meant that my radiation dose rates were often verging on the maximum.

It was also part of my duties on other ships (not Dreadnought) to use blue and brown asbestos to pack boiler cocks and other such valves.  The mechanical Tiffs and Mechs used blue and brown asbestos no one else on the ships as far as I was aware used this.  Of course there were many cases where the Mechs, the Stoker Pos and often the stokers were required to strip lagging and replace it when repairing steam leaks.  This asbestos is white asbestos and you are right Ken Proctor, we did walk around in clouds of it even on the good ship Dreadnought but she was a good boat and didn’t have many steam leaks.  She was Yankee designed remember which meant she had mainly welded joints.  Of course the Royal Navy never learnt any lessons from any one, Daring Class destroyers were probably the worst. They used spiral wound gaskets on steam joints and you got at least one steam leak every time they warmed through the steam range which meant the removal of lagging and the inevitable asbestos clouds.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not making light of the case, what difference does it make if it is white or blue if it kills you. 

Bear with me now why I run through some of my own health problems and I hope at the end of the diatribe I’ll get my thoughts through to you.

In the mid nineties I found that my knees didn’t work very well anymore.  They didn’t like to bend like they used to and to this day I have the same problem with my hips.  So what do you think was cause of that then?  Well I reckon it was caused by all the rugby I played in the navy and for a long time after I left it, compounded no doubt by all the times I dived under the Dreadnought and off the seawall at Rosyth Diving School in the dead of the Scottish winter.

In 1989 I had a mini stroke which really set me back for a time but I think you can say I’m over it now.  That was caused; all most certainly, by high blood pressure and arrhythmia which was in turn was cause by all the beer I used to throw down my neck after the same rugby matches and the social circle I moved in.  It’s called living your life. 

Two years ago during one of my check ups with my heart consultant he told me. ‘He thought I was now going along nicely now.  I was fine. We just have to keep an eye on your breathing because of the scarring on your lungs so you still need to do regular visits.’ “What scarring on my lungs.” I didn’t know I had scarring on my lungs.  He told me that they showed up in my last three x rays and asked if I had worked with asbestos? ‘Yes.’ was my reply.  ‘Well that’s it then.’ was his reply.  So there you go then, now I have asbestosis.  Bloody! Doctors!  Bloody! Useless I say. 

About twelve months ago I went to see another consultant because of a rash around my ankles and after a long series of blood tests I was diagnosed with polycythaemia, a blood cancer which means I have too many red corpuscles.  Mind you the consultant neglected to say I had blood cancer, I only found out when I read the instructions in the box of pills he had prescribe for me.  This is the same guy who was feeding me pills to cure my gout which he assured me was a common complaint suffered by people with polycythaemia.  He was very surprised when I next saw him and I told him my gout was no better.  “Oh!” says he.  “Take your sock off let me have a look.”  “Um! You don’t have gout; you have in-growing toenails.”   Makes you think why I paid all that money into the National Health for all those years.  Why didn’t he ask me to take my sock off and have a shuffty before he gave me the pills?

For the past two years or so I have been visiting yet another consultant (I told you it was a long diatribe, stick with it my nearly finished) about my skin.  It appears I have skin cancer also.  I have to go every now and again to have a maligerant mole or some such lesion cut out.  Now! I can not say that this was caused by the amount of radiation I was subjected to whilst working on Dreadnought; it certainly wasn’t the sunshine in Rosyth.  It was always raining there as I recall.  Most probably my skin cancer was a product of my fair skin and blond hair when I had hair.  I have more hair on my chin now-a-days than I have on my head which is incidentally where most of my skin cancer occurs.

I was going to tell you the story about my piles which I reckon I got from my service in diesel boats but that’s probably too much information and so I’ll skip it.

So now you know some, but not all of my health problems.  Not bad for a sixty-nine year old who slowly crumbling to bits before your very eyes.  It’s only the pills that are keeping me alive.  When the missus and I go dancing (no jiving or rock-en-roll, I can’t do that anymore) on a Thursday afternoon I rattle like a pair of maracas.  So what has brought me, and probably half of you who are reading this, to this sort of half life where we can’t do the things we used to do, where the mind is willing but the flesh is definitely weak? Well it was our lifestyle.  For instance during my working day on Dreadnought I wasn’t over worried about radiation  I’d leant about it on the Nuclear Long Course, I knew it could affect me but I didn’t loose any sleep about it.  Bear in mind, we were the first crew to refit and refuel a nuclear sub in Europe; we were the pioneers, the guinea pigs so to speak.  I for one didn’t bother too much about the reading on my QFR (if you gave it a sharp rap on the end you will find that you could zero it anyway) foolish I know but we were young and we thought we were invincible.  It’s just the same in the services today.  You do what you have to do to get the job done.  One small point about radiation, very early in the seventies the authorities reduce the amount of radiation allowed to one tenth the amount that us early guys were allowed to get.  We were all products of our time and the victims of the life we were forced to lead and I for one wouldn’t have it any other way.  I had a good time when I was in the navy, it made me what I am today and I made some true friends who I still keep in touch with to this day.

So what to do if you have any of these nasty ailments such as arthritis, cancer asbestosis and even piles and you reckon it was caused by your service in the RN, then get in touch with the Veteran’s Agency (google it) and fill the forms in.  I did.  Ok! I didn’t get a fortune but that wasn’t the fault of the Vet’s Agency that was fault of a miserable Scotsman named Gordon Brown who couldn’t care less about the Armed Forces.  I won my case for my blood cancer and my so called asbestosis but failed on my arthritis but I live to fight another day.  When the day comes and I have to use a motorised shopping trolley to actually go to the shops I will have another go.

A comment here may help, I have my radiation records and I don’t believe a word they say and anyway I can’t do anything about it now.  Surprising enough all the people I have spoken to about them were not that interested. 

 How do you live with what you have knowing you may not that many years to live some of you may asked?  Well you just do.  We all have to die sometime.  I know my health is getting worst as the months, or years, go by and only yesterday I nearly collopsided when I had to dash across the road for a bus.  When the weather permits the wife and walk along the prom at Morecambe often going to the supermarket around a mile and a half away and I think to myself I wonder which one will stop me today, will my knees tell me to give over or my heart rate or my lungs or even my skin fall off?  I don’t know.  Let me say that I am not dead yet.  I may be classed as a 40% invalid but I by no means immobile, I get around, where there are quite a few I see who do not and think to myself, “there by the grace of god go I”.  If my scarring or asbestosis (what ever) stays steady and the pills keep control of the cancer maybe I will be still be able to attend a few reunions yet.  And suppose I don’t, then I have had a good life I still have some truly good friends and my seed, so to speak, has been passed on by my two sons and my two granddaughters.  What more can a man ask?  I would supposed that most of you-like me-would do it all again.  I don’t regret one bit of it.  Not even when that Jock hooker bit my ear in the scrum and I, with one well aimed punch, spread his nose all across his face, which meant he was an ugly looking bugger for the rest of his life.

I’ll see you all at the next reunion and the one after that and even the one after I hope.

Bill Hyde