PARTNERS OF ROYAL NAVY PEOPLE

Have you ever wondered what it's like to have a partner in the Royal Navy? Now you can find out, via the Royal Navy Museum. In June and July I recorded 18 interviews with partners for the museum's web-based resource and the archive. They include:

• wives of submariners and men on surface vessels from the 1950s to today
• a member of a gay male civil partnership
• a male partner of a naval woman. He copes with the kids while she's at sea
• naval personnel from the Caribbean, which is one of the new places where the navy recruits

Images, and extracts from their stories, will soon be available on-line within the Family Matters section of Sea Your History at http://www.seayourhistory.org.uk/

And you can listen to entire interviews by visiting the Royal Naval Museum, Historic Dockyard, Portsmouth, PO1 3NH. Phone 02392 727 562. http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/index.htm . Make an appoinment, to be sure the information is ready to be accessed. It's just being processed as I write.

What interested me most in recording the interviews? It was finding out about the way wives were so incredibly supportive of seagoing husbands. I can't see how the Royal Navy could survive without this dedicated back-up.