HMAS Voyager

1964

Jervis Bay, HMAS Melbourne, eighty-two Location: Tasman Sea, off Jervis Bay, New South Wales · Coordinates: 35.00°S 151.00°E · Casualties: 82 · Survivors: 232 · Depth: 120 m · Cause: collision — Cut in half by the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne during night flying exercises at 20:56 on 10 February 1964. Voyager was serving as plane guard; both ships' watch officers misjudged a turn. The forward section sank in ten minutes with most of the sleeping crew aboard. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: destroyer · Daring class · Tonnage: 3,560 tons · Crew: 314 · Flag: Australia · Launched: 1952 Royal Australian Navy destroyer, on plane-guard duty for the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne during night exercises in the Tasman Sea. Cut cleanly in half at 20:56 on 10 February 1964 when the two bridges both misjudged a turn. The forward section went down in ten minutes. 82 dead, including the captain and most of the wardroom. The first of two Melbourne night-collisions; five years later USS Frank E. Evans was cut in half the same way in the South China Sea. The Vessel HMAS Voyager (D04) was a Daring-class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney on 12 February 1957. She was 118 metres long, 3,560 tons full load, armed with six 4.5-inch guns in three twin turrets, two 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, and five anti-submarine torpedo tubes. Her designed speed was 34 knots on twin-shaft Foster Wheeler geared turbines. The Daring class had been developed from the British Royal Navy's late-war Daring-class design, with modifications for Australian operational requirements. Three Daring-class destroyers were built for the RAN at Cockatoo Island between 1951 and 1959: HMAS Voyager, HMAS Vendetta, and HMAS Vampire. The three ships were the principal Australian destroyer force from commissioning through the 1970s. Her commanding officer in February 1964 was Captain Duncan Stevens, 42, a career Royal Australian Navy officer with 18 years of service. Stevens's appointment to Voyager had been somewhat contentious within the RAN: he was known among his peer officers as a competent but sometimes unpredictable commander, and his appointment to command the RAN's largest destroyer class had been the subject of internal debate that was not made public at the time. The Disaster HMAS Voyager's manoeuvre in response to Melbourne's turn into the wind produced a collision that has been the subject of ongoing Australian naval historical debate for 60 years. Voyager, instead of manoeuvring to maintain her plane-guard station astern of Melbourne, turned sharply to her port and placed herself directly across Melbourne's course. The timing of Voyager's turn was such that Melbourne's stem struck Voyager amidships at approximately 20:56 on 10 February 1964. The collision broke Voyager in half at Frame 48. Her forward section, still held together by her bridge and forward gun turret structure, capsized to starboard and sank in less than 10 minutes. Her after section, which had contained her main engineering spaces, sank more slowly: approximately 2 hours after the collision. The rapid sinking of the forward section trapped the majority of her crew in the compartments that had been forward of Frame 48. 82 of HMAS Voyager's 314 crew died in the collision. Captain Stevens was among the dead; his body was recovered from his bridge. 232 were rescued by HMAS Melbourne and the second destroyer HMAS Vendetta. The rescue operation continued through the night of 10-11 February 1964.