Claire and David Real Engagement Story

Both my fiancé and I are in the Royal Navy. He is on a submarine based in Scotland and I’m on a ship based in Portsmouth. I had been at sea for three weeks before finally visiting his port in Scotland and out of pure luck, my ship ended up being berthed opposite his. The next day, a carefully masterminded plan was put into operation involving his submarine and all its personnel, a magazine of nuclear missiles and a batch of heavily armed Royal Marines. I was escorted outside by my Captain (who was well in on the act) to witness a supposed training evolution on my fiancé’s submarine (as you can imagine, I was ecstatic – it was Saturday morning and I just wanted him to finish work so we could go shopping!!). Before I knew what was going on, armed Royal Marines were swarming everywhere (because of the risk of terrorist attack) and a whole host of people arrived on the top of the submarines with binoculars (I later found out that all the people inside the submarine were watching me on the periscope).Slowly, one by one, the missile hatches creaked and groaned open, each one with a different letter on (by this stage, I seemed to be the centre of everyone’s focus and I started to realise what was going on!!) until it finally said “MARRY ME?”. I then reached for the signal projector and flashed back “YES” using old-fashioned flashing light. I could not believe what had just happened. The whole submarine was in on the act, as were the key players on my ship. Everyone had seemed to be very interested in keeping me amused all morning so I would not disappear. I had been watched arriving back on the ship through the periscope of the submarine, so they knew I was there. All in all, the whole evolution had been very carefully planned – a full military operation because of the risk of opening the hatches and exposing nuclear missiles!