November 2023

FROM: Stephen Farnham via TCA website enquiry.

On completion of my time aboard HMS Theseus in 1956, anchored in Portland Outer Harbour, I was sent to Hythe in Southampton Water, to join a skeleton crew on board the INVERMORISTON before she left to join the MSS squadron in Harwich Harbour.

At the time our C.O. was Nicholas Walters and the Coxswain Nick Carter.

Leading Seamen Dusty Miller and Snowy Parker were in that crew but my closest colleague was Wally Waltham, the Officer’s Steward.

Also doing their National Service at the same time were Dutch Holland and T. Spellar.

Now, at 87 years of age, I am interested to see if any of these names are still living.

I believe that our Captain Walters left the Navy and became a solicitor in Norwich, also in Norwich was Nick Carter, who went there to work at the Navy Recruiting Office. I think he ended up working as a caretaker for a large company in Norwich.

So anyone out there still going strong, please send me an E-Mail at

We have checked with TCA Membership List but unfortunately none of the names Stephen has given appear on it.

Perhaps some of the names may ring a bell with TCA members as “friends of a friend” ?

 However I, too, was on THESEUS in Portland in 1956 doing Basic Training as a Pre-National Service RNVR Ordinary Seaman, so Stephen and I have exchanged a few dits about that cold winter and bedding down in the hangar, sometimes with the lift stuck open … Editor