1st August 1990, Operation Awkward, Jervis Bay, Australia.

Operation Awkward is an exercise for the Navy, which involves divers attacking ships at anchor. Basically, the divers swim to the ships place limpet mines in strategic places on the hull of a ship and then swim home before the devices explode. This of course is all carried out without the ship's knowledge of divers in the water.

The Australian Navy is always proud of their divers being able to take out at least one of the New Zealand ships during this exercise. However, on this particular occasion, we had decided to cheat a little by having our own divers in the water at the same time.

The best time to attack a ship is about 20 minutes before a watch change in the small hours of the morning. Our divers were stationed at forty-meter intervals around the ships waterline keeping an eye out for any unusual activity in the surrounding area. To facilitate comfort, the divers were changing position every 30 minutes and being replaced every ninety. The first sign of any uninvited guests arrived at around 0320. Two dark shapes were noticed heading towards the stern of Canterbury. Immediately, three of our divers, in contact by lengths of line between each other, headed towards the stern. The three divers, LS Toby Nash, PO Gary Giles, and myself, submerged just aft of the stabilizers and headed straight for the ships rudders. Being one of the most important parts of the ships maneuverability, the rudders are often one of the first targets a diver wants to damage.

Once we arrived at the rudders, we waited for our prey to arrive. The next thing we know our contact line is being pulled with an amazing amount of strength from somewhere forward of us. Nash cut his line with his utility knife and proceeded to swim forward to find out what the hell was pulling us. Giles and myself got a great ride as we tried in vain to steady ourselves against the rushing of water around us. Once steadied and on some sort of controllable path, I cut the line between Giles and myself. The tension of the line slackened immediately and the two of us surfaced about 100 meters to port of the ship.
"What the fuck was that?" yelled Giles.
"Buggered if I know, but it can't have been one of us." I replied.
We didn't get any more unwelcome visitors that night.

Later on that day, the Australians told us that they spotted two or three Great White Sharks in the water the previous evening and had decided not to go ahead with a planned assault. Of course we never told them about our waterline sentries either.

3rd August 1990, Jervis Bay, Australia.

Capt. Franklin docked us successfully at Jervis Bay for refueling and stores before calling the ships company to attention for an important announcement. That announcement being that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had invaded Kuwait in the Middle East and that Canterbury, along with HMNZS Wellington was on immediate standby for deployment. However, as we had not yet completed our sea trials, the possibility of deployment was rather low. In the tradition of the Royal Navy a Splice the Mainbrace was ordered by the Governor General of New Zealand on behalf of the Queen. A Splice the Mainbrace being an extra issue of rum for all junior and senior rates on board. Unfortunately the RNZN had stopped the daily tradition on the 28th of February that year so only one tot was up for the having.