Electing to surface to a submarine’s periscope depth in wartime, wondering what enemy threats or targets might or might not be present and hopefully visible during an immediate and rapid 360 degree scan is clearly both nerve wracking and exciting. Having once been afforded the opportunity to make a scan, in peacetime needless to say, I can report that it was pure excitement for me as, hands on the grips, I made a very slow complete rotation of a British WW11 era, diesel electric powered sub’s periscope.

With diesel electric power becoming passé, the first British nuclear powered submarine HMS Dreadnought was launched to great fanfare in my home town of Barrow-in-Furness, North Lancashire (now Cumbria) at the Vickers-Armstrongs shipyard as it was then known (now BAE Systems) in 1960 and commissioned in 1963. We even had a pub in the town with a ‘Dreadnought Bar’ where, as an underage teenage patron, I learned to drink copious amounts of very weak draught beer I.D. documentation in those days being unknown in the UK. The legal drinking age was eighteen. I was fifteen and still in high school – the Barrow County Technical School for Boys – and only boys. Feminine equality and emancipation was a long way off in 1957. Country wide post war, the draught but not the bottled beer was legislated by the British government to be between 3 and 3.5% alcohol by volume. This deliberately low concentration to “keep the working class masses happy and thus less likely to be troublesome”. (I am not making this up it was official government policy and thinking.) It was thus cheap as well as virtually tasteless. It was also aimed at keeping us relatively sober with shall we say, mixed results.  It took about seven or eight imperial pints for significant i.e. passable inebriation to set in. (Eight pints being a gallon of course or, if you will, about four and a half litres.)

Fast forward many years, given their inherent clear and present danger so to speak, a voyage in a submarine would not be my first choice of tourism centric maritime transportation. Stumbling upon just such an opportunity I decided to put caution aside and take my chances. After all, what calamity could possibly ensue aboard a sub stationed at the West Edmonton mall in land locked Alberta, Canada? (I was in Edmonton on business honest!).  With over eight hundred stores and services the mall was and still is the largest mall in North America. My pulse did quicken some as I and twenty three other would be submariners waited to board via a very large and hopefully water tight hatch near the stern, this accessed across an overhead gantry under which was what appeared to be a very small pond minus any sign of ducks. The ‘pond’ turned out to be but a small part of the world’s largest artificial underground lake! Who would have thought?

A plaque near the entrance to the “Deep Sea Adventure Submarine Experience” showed that about ten years prior, four identical craft had been custom built for the mall in Vancouver, British Columbia and that they had been ocean dive tested. They were real albeit tourist oriented submarines not some fairground carny’s pretense of same. At the time, the mall owned more submarines than the Royal Canadian navy! While I was wondering just how rigorous Canada’s legislated safety requirements for mall specified submarine technology had been when they were constructed, an announcement was made. Would we all please board and take our seats as our vessel had been prepared to dive.

Surprisingly, at least to my perspective, there were indeed twenty four seats in the small and cramped sub. They were all quickly filled by our coterie of would be fresh water submariners and the hatch was closed. Oddly, there didn’t appear to be anyone ‘driving’ nor for that matter was there anyone aboard other than we passengers. Was this robotics gone too far? Not at all. All four subs were securely mounted on a track in line astern. What could possibly go wrong notwithstanding there was a complete absence I noted of life jackets? Details, details. 

Some time was taken over the on-board intercom system to assure us that the four boats had been built to stringent safety requirements for use specifically in the mall as tourist submarines. Hence the many seats and the large windows at each one. (Good luck finding a conventional submarine of any size short of a bathyscaphe with even one window and for sure it will not be very large). Next over the intercom came the order, intended recipient unknown, dive dive dive! Nothing happened for about thirty seconds and then all hell broke loose. At least it seemed that way as an extremely loud sound of rushing water filled our tight and constraining space. We slowly descended as water appeared at first level with the bottom of the large windows. It soon rose up and past the windows as we continued our descent. We were indeed underwater and underway. We leveled off and started our circuit of the as noted ‘largest man-made lake in the world.’  

The water was very clear. Large colorful fish, dolphins, giant turtles and sharks suddenly appeared milling every which way. Yes indeed, they were real. Next a shipwreck came into view. We were pleased to see it was not that of a mall submarine. More assorted sunken wrecks along with ‘treasure’ suddenly seemed to be everywhere. The voyage took twenty-five minutes at which time we surfaced and the water gradually receded from the windows. We ‘de-subbed’ as it were, back on to dry Alberta land all of us I am sure more than happy with our unusual ride/voyage.

There are across the world legitimate and commercially successful free voyaging and diving fully functioning tourist submarines. All for sure with skippers and crew. (and yes, life jackets!) I am not aware of any having serious accidents however given my druthers, underwater I am inclined to favour scuba for which I am qualified and/or snorkeling for which everyone is qualified assuming that is, that they can swim.

To see video of the Edmonton mall subs and learn of their eventual decommissioning and fate go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU5pTZpWYEc 

POSTSCRIPT:

With respect to my earlier alluded to peacetime experience of scanning a submarine’s periscope, as a civilian how and where did I come to have that opportunity? I was about seven at the time and the British royal navy sub’s captain was holding me up to the scope his hands somehow supporting me and providing the not insignificant rotational force. The boat (subs are always referred to as boats never ships) was moored to a dock in Barrow. The submarine was open for public viewing. I could see giant and not so giant working crane after working crane all of them designed to move multiple tons of ship building steel, lead, iron, etc as readily as they might handle bales of hay. 

In my minds eye I can still see those cranes precisely as viewed by my then very youthful eyes through the (binocular and magnified) scope’s eye piece box and it’s lenses and mirrors. Included in the scan was a view of the yard’s then biggest crane which was visible and dominating from most all locations in the town of about 60,000 people. As a kid I marveled that it could lift 250 tons. These days that same shipyard, has a crane that can lift 24,000 tons! It can lift and to some extent move, entire ships including e.g. Britain’s current active duty nuclear powered subs. All but three of Britain’s combined active and retired nuclear subs were built in Barrow which by the way, is about ten miles from the UK’s fabled and world class Lake District National Park. (think Wordsworth, Coleridge & Southey.)  

As stated, Edmonton’s ‘Deep Sea Adventure Experience’ is no longer there. After about twenty years, the four subs were taken out of service and scrapped. Demand for the ride was no longer there. Each sub weighed 38 tons and was broken up into one ton (1000kg, 2205lb) pieces. Our Canadian navy’s current fleet is also by coincidence, precisely four in number. Procured already well used, they are very aged and long outdated ex-British royal navy diesel electric boats. Good luck finding any of them dive serviceable. In fact they have been plagued with myriad ongoing problems from day one of the purchase and as of now, April 2021, none have gone on an operational cruise for over three years! To date they have cost us over a billion dollars. At least we did not buy the mind-blowingly expensive British nuclear powered subs touted by our Conservative government (there’s a fiscal oxymoron) in 2011. We would by now have been talking trillions of dollars spent to date. 

To see video of our submarines just search video of Canada’s submarines. Youtube has lots of it.