HMS Revenge: The Submarine That Held Its Breath for Eight Weeks

The Last of the Four

HMS Revenge was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, laid down in May 1965, launched on 15 March 1968 by Lady Law, wife of Vice Admiral Sir Horace Law, and finally completed on 4 December 1969, the last of Britain's original four Resolution class ballistic missile submarines to enter service, following Resolution, Repulse and Renown.

Her construction reportedly ran well behind schedule, with the Ministry of Defence said to have considered shifting the unfinished boat to Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow to speed things along, though this specific detail rests on a single published source rather than independent confirmation.

Once complete she carried sixteen Polaris ballistic missile tubes alongside six torpedo tubes, crewed by 143 officers and ratings split across two rotating crews known simply as Port and Starboard, a structure designed to keep a boat like her at sea as close to continuously as possible.

Into the Silent Service

Revenge sailed to Port Canaveral in Florida in May 1970 for a month long work up and missile test firing programme, successfully test firing a Polaris missile that June before returning to begin her first operational deterrent patrol that September, based at HM Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, under the 10th Submarine Squadron alongside her three sister boats.

Over the following two decades she went on to complete an eventual fifty six deterrent patrols, each one a silent, months long exercise in simply being ready, unseen and unheard, an entire career built around the paradox of a weapon whose greatest success was never having to be used.

Eight Weeks of Silence

Revenge's most remarkable moment came in June 1978, on a covert deterrent patrol, when a serious steam leak erupted in her turbo generator room, described by one crew member present as a sudden roar like a jumbo jet taking off.

The standard, safest response to such a leak would have been to shut down the reactor and surface, but doing so would have blown Revenge's cover at sea and, by extension, compromised the entire principle of a continuous, undetected nuclear deterrent.

Instead, her crew improvised a way to keep the propulsion plant running at reduced power by diverting parts of the ship's domestic hot water system, then maintained strict radio silence for a further eight weeks to complete the patrol as though nothing at all had happened.

Leading Mechanic James McWilliams was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for working close to the leak itself to help isolate it, and five further members of the propulsion department received commendations for brave conduct, though the full story of what had actually happened remained classified for around forty years afterwards, a particularly striking example of quiet, largely unrecognised courage kept deliberately out of the public record for decades.

Blacked at Faslane

Barely a month later, in July 1978, Revenge found herself at the centre of a rather different kind of drama when civilian workers at Faslane and the nearby Coulport weapons depot took industrial action during a public sector pay dispute, effectively blocking her preparations to sail on her next patrol.

The Defence Minister at the time, Fred Mulley, ordered service personnel to take over the affected work themselves, including the loading of Polaris missiles, closing the sites to civilian labour until the dispute passed.

Declassified American diplomatic cables from the period show Washington watching the standoff closely, concerned about Britain's ability to maintain its contribution to NATO's nuclear posture, with officials noting that Britain was committed to doing whatever was necessary to keep a submarine on deterrent patrol regardless.

A Test Firing Off Cape Canaveral

On 10 June 1983, submerged around thirty miles off Cape Canaveral and commanded by Commander Ian McVittie, Revenge fired two Polaris missiles as part of a periodic verification exercise. The first, launched shortly after eleven that morning, malfunctioned during its second stage of powered flight and had to be destroyed by range safety officers, while the second, fired a little over an hour later, flew successfully.

All four Resolution class boats were progressively converted during the 1980s to carry the improved Chevaline warhead system, with Revenge's own conversion generally dated to 1988, the last of the class to be upgraded, though it has not been possible to fully reconcile this later conversion date with the 1983 test firing described above, and this small chronological tension is worth flagging honestly rather than glossing over.

Retirement, and a Long Wait

HMS Revenge was decommissioned in May 1992, and somewhat surprisingly, given that she was the youngest hull in her class, she was the first of the four Resolution class boats to be withdrawn from service, ahead of Resolution in 1994, Renown in 1996, and finally Repulse that August, whose decommissioning formally marked the end of Britain's Polaris era.

One source has suggested her early retirement was due to a weakened hull structure, though this specific claim could not be corroborated elsewhere and should be treated as unverified rather than settled fact.

Revenge remains today laid up afloat at Rosyth Dockyard in Fife, one of around twenty decommissioned Royal Navy nuclear submarines still awaiting final disposal under the Ministry of Defence's long running Submarine Dismantling Project.

The first stage of that process, the removal of low level radioactive waste, was completed on Revenge in 2020, though the more involved second stage, removing the reactor pressure vessel itself, had not yet begun on any boat as of the most recent reporting available, meaning Revenge continues to sit quietly at her moorings, still only partway through the long, expensive process of being taken apart for good.