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You are here: Home / Archives for Australian Navy / HMAS Moresby I

HMAS Moresby I

Letters – The Pathos of Palawan

June 27, 1998

As usual Max Thomson has entertained us with an interesting story ‘The Pathos of Palawan’ (Vol. 19, No. 1, (January) 1998).

Although not part of the main story, he touches on the Surrender Ceremony at Koepang, Timor on 11th September, 1945. The number of ships taking part in this operation were more than the article states.

G. Hermon Gill in Royal Australian Navy 1942-1946, page 693 states that the following HMA ships were present: Moresby as senior ship, Horsham, Benalla, Echuca, Parkes, Katoomba, Warmambool, Kangaroo, Bombo and the Dutch ships Abraham Crijnssen and Van den Bosch. In addition HMA HDMLs 1322, 1324 and 1329 were present.

My main concern in drawing attention to the variation is to point out that Fairmile class ships were involved. So often they are ignored by historians.

It is for this reason that their history is being written.

The instrument of surrender at Koepang was signed aboard Moresby by Colonel Kaida, the local Japanese army commander. It was accepted by Brigadier Dyke AIF.

Obituary: Geoffrey Ingleton 1908-1998

June 27, 1998

Geoffrey Ingleton
Geoffrey Ingleton

One of Australia’s foremost maritime historians, Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Ingleton RAN (Ret.), who has died aged 89, was also an accomplished marine artist and etcher, and a fine cartographer.

Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton was born in Baimsdale, Victoria, and at the age of 13 entered the Royal Australian Naval College, then situated at Jervis Bay. After being commissioned as a lieutenant, he was assigned to the hydrographic service and served in HMAS Moresby surveying waters to the north of Australia.

Ingleton is best remembered through his many writings as a historian of early Australia. But he was also a superb craftsman of marine models and was commissioned to build two large models of the First Fleet vessels Sirius and Supply. Both of these fine models can be found in the Powerhouse Museum.

His etchings of the very early contacts Europe had with Australia evoke the rigours of life in colonial Australia. His marine etchings, and portrayals of early Sydney life were grounded in exhaustive research and knowledge. Ingleton’s major resource in these endeavours was a very extensive private collection of books, manuscripts, maps and paintings on early Australia, including many rare and original editions. He was a passionate collector of books and manuscripts, most of his library having been sold by the Sydney auctioneers Lawsons in a series of sales throughout the 90s.

At a sale held in December 1991, a very rare copy of the album Australian Views of the North-East Coast, with 13 lithographic prints and dating from about 1847, sold for $20,000. The original ship’s log of the Alligator, dated 1838, brought $16,500. A signed letter by Matthew Flinders to J.W. Croker, then the First Secretary of the Admiralty, dating from 1811, sold for $5,000. Reporting the sale of the Ingleton library in 1991, the Herald noted soberly that “unlike some of the high-flying entrepreneurs whose paintings have glutted the art market, Mr Ingleton is not selling out of necessity.

“As he notes in the catalogue preface, this section of his library had grown considerably over the years, and now, at the age of 83, he feels it’s simply time to sell. Mr Ingleton, who began collecting around 1926 while serving as a midshipman in England, said that he regards the extremely rare books relating to the explorer Phillip Parker King as the high points of the sale“. “I kept them to try and do a biography on the life of King‘ he said. But he was exhausted after finishing his biography of Flinders,” the Herald, 1991 report noted.

Astonishing though his library was, Ingleton’s own writings were themselves exemplary. Among the books he wrote, or compiled, were Charting a Continent, a history of the surveying and mapping of Australia’s coasts and his magnum opus, Matthew Flinders, Navigator and Chartmaker, the final portions of which were written during a period of declining health. To the public, he is probably better known for his third book, True Patriots All. Its subtitle said it all – News from Early Australia as Told in a Collection of Broadsides Garnered and Decorated by Geoffrey Ingleton.

Published in 1952, the book was described by a Herald reviewer as “admirable“. It set out in excruciating detail the often-appalling conditions of convict life in early Sydney. “As a result, the white-washers and ‘good-old-days’ addicts will probably not find this book acceptable reading“, the Herald said. “Those who wish to learn something of Australia’s early days cannot afford to miss it, however, for it is a major contribution to Australiana. It is an item for collectors“.

The Bulletin was not so sure. “Mr Ingleton’s book“, said the reviewer, “diverting as it is in Newgate-calendar style, fails in balance, since it paints mainly one side of the picture and not always the most interesting one“.

True Patriots All and Ingleton’s many historical articles in the Herald and elsewhere helped to increase awareness of our past. His illustrations for a private edition in 1949 of Robert D. FitzGerald’s Heemskerck Shoals are regarded as his major artistic work. The edition, one of Australia’s finest private press printings, was sold to subscribers for the impressive sum of £35; The Bulletin called it magnificent.

Ingleton married first, in 1935, Josephine Weekes (marriage dissolved); they had two children who survive him – a daughter Michal (better known as the author Kelly King) and a son, Nicholas. In 1953 he married Nan Furness, the poet, who also survives him.

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The Last Chapter of HMAS Moresby II

March 7, 1998

The first page of the last chapter has just turned over as 1997 will be the final year for HMAS MORESBY (II).

She is due to pay off in November after 33 years of dedicated service. She was built in 1964 at the State Dockyard Newcastle as the first Australian purpose-built survey ship. The quality of her design and build have been proven in the long life and effective service she has given over the years. The milestone of steaming one million miles was reached in October 1992 and since then the ship has steamed a further 120,000 miles.

HMAS MORESBY. One of the Royal Australian Navy's quiet achievers seen departing HMAS STERLING on another north-west survey season. The Newcastle-built Hydrographic Survey Ship celebrated her 25th birthday on March 6, 1989. Photo: Navy Public Relations (WA)
HMAS MORESBY. One of the Royal Australian Navy’s quiet achievers seen departing HMAS STIRLING on another north-west survey season. The Newcastle-built Hydrographic Survey Ship celebrated her 25th birthday on March 6, 1989.
Photo: Navy Public Relations (WA)

MORESBY has been based in WA since 1974. However as most of the WA survey work has been completed she is often deployed further afield. During 1996 she circumnavigated Australia – only the fifth time the ship has done so in her 33 years. A visit to Sydney during this deployment was only the third time the ship had been in Sydney since leaving in 1974 (the visits were the Navy 75th Anniversary in 1986, once in 1995 and last year).

HMAS MORESBY I was originally a converted British O-class anti submarine escort (HMS Scipio) built in 1917. She was commissioned into the RAN in 1925 after being converted for hydrographic surveying after WW1. She was still serving at the start of WWII. As well as survey work in PNG, Torres Strait and the Barrier Reef, she spent twenty months working as an ASW escort again, before returning to survey work in PNG waters. Of particular note are the surveys she conducted under the guns of the Japanese in Milne Bay on the north-eastern coast of PNG. Another highlight was the signing of the Japanese surrender of Timor onboard MORESBY at the end of World War II. MORESBY I was finally paid off in 1946.

The current MORESBY (and FLINDERS) will be replaced by two new Hydrographic ships being built by NOEA in Cairns. The first ship LEEUWIN will be delivered in mid 1998 followed by MELVILLE a year later. They will be the same size as MORESBY but with a crew of only 45 – a significant reduction from MORESBY’s 130. The reduction is mainly due to the use of modern technology and automated systems, as well as the transfer to shore facilities of some maintenance responsibilities.

During her final chapter in 1997 MORESBY will be surveying off the North West Cape, a deep draught route in Investigator Strait in the approaches to Adelaide, and some work in Bass Strait. In the final deployment in the second half of 1997, MORESBY will return to northern waters to continue the major survey effort in the waters north-west of Darwin. She will return to her home port at HMAS STIRLING in October to prepare for decommissioning in November.

Biography of Lieutenant Commander R.W. Rankin RAN, and the loss of HMAS Yarra

September 11, 1994

“In the early morning of the 4th March, 1942 the following ships of the No. 2 Fleet were cruising in the area Latitude South 12° 15′ Longitude East 1100 10′; “A” Class Cruisers ATAGO, TAKAO and MAYA, No. 4 Destroyer Squadron, ARISHI and NOWAKI. They sighted two enemy transport vessels under the escort of two light naval vessels which were; attacked by gunfire and sunk. None of the Japanese ships suffered any damage” ((HERMAN GILL, G. – Royal Australian Navy, 1939-42; Australian War Memorial, 1957.)). So concluded the brief Japanese report on the sinking of HMAS YARRA. YARRA, and the small convoy she was escorting, was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Robert William Rankin, RAN, and on that fateful day in March 1942 his actions and that of the Ship’s Company of YARRA brought about what is regarded by many as the finest action in Australian Naval history.

Robert William Rankin was born in the central New South Wales town of Cobar on 3 June, 1907. He was the second of three children born to Jack and Florence Rankin. Jack Rankin was a clerk whose father had emigrated to Australia in the early 1850’s and settled in the Central West of N.S.W. ((DUFFY, C.J. – “Rankin of YARRA”. Biographical address delivered by Monsignor Duffy to meeting of Naval Historical Society, February 1972.))

When Robert was seven, his father enlisted in the AIF and served overseas for the duration of the war. Most of Rankin’s education was at the state school in Merrylands, a suburb of Sydney, until he was awarded a bursary to Parramatta High School in 1920. However in 1920 Rankin sat for and passed the RAN College entrance exam.

Some weeks later Rankin was advised that he was one of the eleven successful candidates to enter the College at Jervis Bay in 1921. This small intake was characteristic of the post World War I Navy. The Royal Australian Naval College had been created in 1913 and intakes had normally been of 25 to 30 boys. However by the early 1920s the demand for post war disarmament and reduction in funding for the Navy combined to limit the 1921 entry to only eleven boys.

One of the 1921 entry recalled in 1980 his arrival at RANC:

“In February 1921, we eleven chosen new cadets (at 13 years of age) assembled at Sydney Central Railway Station and took a train to Nowra, a journey of about 90 miles. We carried with us only the essentials we had needed in the journeys from our respective states to reach Sydney and to catch that train. A cadet whose home was in Sydney (such as Rankin) had only the clothes he was wearing. At Nowra we were met by the College charabanc (car). It was about 10 p.m. when we arrived at the College at the end of the 23 mile drive from Nowra, assembled and were “welcomed” by our Term Officer who told us that he would be father and mother to us; we filed past the doctor: “No Complaints” and were herded to our dormitory. Next day we were issued with all our clothing; we arranged our gear into our sea chests in the approved manner, and were ready to begin our Naval Service.” ((GATACRE, G.G.O. – Report of Proceedings. Nautical Press and Publications, 1982.)) The parents of boys entering the College were required to complete an Indenture Form for their sons, stating that the boy would make the Navy his career, and serve until at least the age of 30. If a boy wished to leave the Navy during his training his parents would be charged 75 pounds for each year of training that the boy had completed.

Shortly after arriving at the College it was alleged Rankin was in trouble because of his religion. His father, Jack, was a Presbyterian, but whilst he had been overseas in the AIF his children had been baptized and confirmed into the Catholic faith. Rankin was questioned as to why he had misled the Navy by stating he was a Presbyterian on his entrance papers but now professed to being a Catholic. Eventually the problem was resolved when it was realised that his father had filled in the entrance papers and had incorrectly put down his own religion instead of that of his son.

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Lieutenant-Commander R.W. Rankin of HMAS Yarra

June 12, 1993

On 14th August, 1992, shortly after HMAS CRESWELL’S annual Passing Out Parade, Miss Trish Rankin presented her father’s medals to Captain C.S.H. Harrington, RAN, Commanding Officer of HMAS CRESWELL.

Fifty years previously in March 1942, Miss Rankin’s father, Lieutenant Commander R.W. Rankin, RAN, was killed in action whilst in Command of the sloop HMAS YARRA. Ironically Rankin had assumed command of YARRA in February 1942 from Lieutenant Commander W.H. Harrington, RAN, the father of CRESWELL’S Commanding Officer.

Rankin Memorial
Rankin Memorial

The YARRA was a veteran of actions in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean theatres of war. In 1942 she was engaged in the desperate attempts to stem the Japanese tide of invasion in South East Asia.

In early March YARRA departed the island of Java as escort for a convoy of five vessels bound for Australia. At 0630 on 4th March, Australia was only four days steaming away when the convoy encountered a Japanese task force of three cruisers and two destroyers.

Rankin ordered the convoy to scatter and turned YARRA towards the enemy in a vain attempt to delay them long enough to allow the convoy to escape. YARRA was out-gunned and outranged as the cruisers stood off and sank the convoy one by one. By 0800 only YARRA was left; drifting helplessly after shells had wrecked her engine room. Two of her guns were out of action and many of her men lay dead or wounded.

Lieutenant Commander Rankin ordered “abandon ship”. Shortly afterwards a salvo of shells hit the bridge killing Rankin and all on duty there.

Thirty-four men were able to get away from the blackened hulk of the YARRA; however, the effects of wounds and exposure took their toll. On 9th March a mere 13 of YARRA’S ship’s company of 151 were rescued by the Dutch submarine K11. None of the ship’s officers were amongst the survivors.

Rankin entered the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay in 1921 and graduated in 1924 with the prizes for engineering and mathematics. He was also a keen sportsman being awarded his colours for rugby. After specialising in surveying he spent several years in the survey vessel HMAS MORESBY.

Lieutenant Commander Rankin’s medals include the 1939-45 Star, Atlantic Star, Africa Star, Burma Star with Pacific Star Clasp, 1939-45 War Medal and Australian Service Medal.

These medals will go on display in the College Mess along with Lieutenant Commander Rankin’s sword, which had been previously donated by his widow, Mrs Molly McLean.

Rankin also has the honour of one of the new Collins class submarines being named after him.

 

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