The Second HMS Manchester Association

10th November 2025

Shipmate!

Welcome to the 24th edition of "The Buzz", the 2nd HMS Manchester Association's own views and newsletter. We sincerely hope it meets with your approval. If this is the 24th edition to come your way, we greatly admire your fortitude and good taste and much appreciate your continued support! Please, please keep it up - things will get better, honest! The arrival of this edition of "The Buzz" also marks the point of where 2MA moves into its 25th year.

Twenty Five Years? Where has all that time gone? If you discount the amount of time the ship was in Major Refit / DED and on that wretched world cruise, we have been in existence as long as the ship was actually operational!! Is this all remarkable? No! Is it a miracle? Yes!

So, how did 2MA come about? It's all down to one man…..Dan Daly!....and this is how it all happened. Dan was a career matelot, attaining the rank of WO1, and was due for release in 2001. To celebrate his departure he laid on a special lunch for a few oppos in the WO,SR and SNCOs Mess, HMS Nelson, on the same day as the weekly meat raffle.

We stood at the bar, and spoke at great length before the suggestion was put forward that we should see if we could arrange a gathering of those who served onboard circa 1986-1990. The suggestion was unanimously agreed! We further agreed to gamble £50 each (£105 in today's money) to start the ball rolling, and we opened a bank account to record our expenditure. Alyson was roped in to be Temporary Acting Local Secretary (a position she still holds) on account she can type at one thousand words a minute - as opposed to the ten, including spelling mistakes that I can achieve on a good day!, and we were up and running. We then embarked on a track and trace exercise to see who we could find.

Later, we agreed to have no annual subscriptions and 2MA would be free to join and free to leave. To this day 2MA is funded by generous donations, and any profit from the annual re-union and raffle ticket sales.

We opened up the association to anyone who had served onboard, be it Officer, Rating or Royal Marine irrespective of rank or rate. Furthermore, we decided there would be no President or Chairman positions, just Stevie and I as "The Organisers"! If we like an idea we go for it, if one of us has reservations we don't. If we need assistance on any particular objective we rope someone in to help us. As a consequence we have never had a cross word in 25 years. We live 82 miles apart and phone, text and emails are a nigh on daily occurrence, even when Stevie is sunning himself in Greece!

Well, that's that out of the way, and time to formally welcome five new members who have chosen to discard their street cred, leave themselves open to abuse and join our motley band. Welcome! Here's what they have told us about themselves by way of introduction. Sadly, two are Global vets!

Ken (Nobby) Clarke - Nobby joined the Pusser in 1978 as a MEM(L) and in a 43 year career he went to sea on Blake (79-80), Glasgow (80-81), Repulse (83-84), London (93-95) and the ship named after the city at the west end of the River Mersey. As a reward for returning from the world of sun dodgers, he joined warship wonderful in January 1987 until April 1990 during which time he picked up his second hook, and returned again in May 1992 - March 1993. Keen on Rugby and Golf, Nobby lives in a city not popular with native Pomponians!