For this young man on National Service, his time served for Queen and country became another memorable chapter in his life. Tony Hammond, born in 1930 at Worthing, served an apprenticeship in a Littlehampton boatyard before joining the Royal Army Service Corps Water Transport in the 1950s.

One thing in particular made Water Transport stand out from other RASC companies and that was the fact that the other ranks wore flat caps, explained Tony. Not the nice soft ones that the commissioned officers sported but ones reminiscent of the 1914 -18 war. Thinking back that's probably where they came from! The Army uniform in the 1950s was absolutely terrible, and once you got into a working unit you gave it a little 'personal tailoring'. The only way that you could press any decent creases into it was to shave off all the nap, which was of course a chargeable offence.

Army life on the IOW was a complete contrast to the totally unreal situation at Aldershot, although still a training company all the trainees were old hands who were taking advanced courses, and were a mixture of regulars and national service.

Fort Victoria, where I was stationed, was built in the mid 1800s as a defence for the western approach to the Solent, the walls being about six foot thick, and my billet was a gun emplacement with a curved roof and a large slit in the wall through which the gun used to protrude, and boy was it cold!

There were three separate training centres within the fort: Seamanship, Navigation and Marine Engineering, each course consisting of classroom studies and practical time afloat. My first few weeks were spent learning the Army way of doing things, followed by promotion and a class of a dozen potential marine engineers for me to instruct. The time spent afloat was the most enjoyable part of the course, with frequent trips to the mainland, Beaulieu being top of the list. There was also a fair bit of skiving, and on one occasion a lot of excitement.

These were the days when porpoises were a common sight on the south coast, and quite often we would spot them in the Solent and move in for a close look. On a return trip from Lymington we spotted what at first sight appeared to be a couple of porpoise just lying on the surface.

As we closed in it became apparent that what we were looking at was in fact a very large basking shark, now heading in our direction. Quite suddenly our launch seemed very small indeed. This enormous fish took a liking to our boat and surfaced right alongside with its huge tail within easy reach.

We stopped our engine and the pair of us drifted along together for several minutes before it lost interest in us and, with a sudden flick of its powerful tail, shot into the depths of the Solent. It hit the headlines a few days later when it decided to patrol the shallows of Bournemouth beach where it really did cause a commotion.