In this episode Alistair chats with Commander Will King, the Captain of a Royal Navy warship.

 

The conversation was recorded onboard HMS Montrose in the Gulf during the crisis with Iran. Moments earlier we had exited the high risk zone, having escorted three commercial tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

 

For Cdr King and his crew, it was the end of a long, hot and extremely tense deployment.

 

We spoke about the events of one evening in July when his warship came close to firing on Iranian naval vessels - it would have brought the two countries close to war - and more generally the challenges of leadership on a ship at sea, for many months on end: morale, discipline and bravery.