Assignment on HMS Prosperine

I, I became an officer, I guess I was commissioned in, some, sometime in April or May of 1941, and because my mathematics was so terrible, my navigation was likewise terrible. And so I thought I must do something that, that doesn't involve navigation or doesn't commit me to doing navigation. And at that point, the admiralty was looking for volunteers for mine disposal and so I thought, "Well mine disposal is something I can do." And so I was sent for a, a three-day course to HMS Vernon in Portsmouth, which was the torpedo and mining school, and shown how to disarm all kinds of mines; our own and the German mines. This was really a crazy thing for me to do because I hardly knew how to use a screwdriver. Anyway that's what I did. And I was appointed to HMS Proserpine, I would call correctly pronounced "Perserpine" but of course the navy mispronounces all their classical names, which was the fleet base at Lyness in the Orkneys on Scapa Flow. And there I shared the mine disposal responsibilities with a very nice Glasgow salesman whose, whose Scottish accent was so ferocious, you almost needed a translator to know what he was talking about. Anyway, the two of us shared this job and so we went out and disarmed mines; they would wash ashore whatever.