Naval Historical Society of Australia

Preserving Australia's Naval History

You are here: Home / Archives for HMS Dryad

HMS Dryad

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

“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.

Success & Failure – The Story of the Torpedo Gunboat

ORIGINALLY THERE WERE THIRTY-THREE BUILT, comprising five classes in all. They were the torpedo gunboats of the Royal Navy, a smaller but faster variant of the traditional cruiser, but capable of mounting a powerful armament of guns and torpedoes. All ships entered service between 1887 and 1895, but by the dawn of the new century, active service proved performance beyond anything but satisfactory.

The five variants, Rattlesnake, Grasshopper, Sharpshooter, Alarm and Dryad classes, all experienced trouble with their boilers, curtailing their designed speeds. During the naval manoeuvres of 1893, one naval writer commented on the torpedo gunboats which participated. ‘The majority of these vessels are complete failures . . . They are increasingly breaking down and their speed at sea constantly falls short of their normal speed on paper by as much as 30-40 percent.’ Despite these failures the vessels proved to be excellent sea boats and by the mid 1890s were being employed as scouts in naval manoeuvres, as it had been realised that as catchers of torpedo boats they were practically useless.

Most were eventually re-engined to remedy the speed defect, and in the Alarm type, one vessel, HMS Speedy, was fitted for Thornycroft’s own water tube boilers from the outset. The survivors of the Sharpshooter, Alarm and Dryad classes eventually saw service during the Great War as minesweepers and in this new guise provided useful service to the fleet.

HMS Rattlesnake, the first torpedo gunboat accepted into service, was built by Laird and completed in May 1887. She was a 550 ton vessel mounting an armament of one 4 inch breech-loading and six 3 pdr. quickfiring guns, as well as four 14 inch torpedo tubes. The latter were mounted via bow and stern fixed tubes and one trainable tube on either beam. Four reloads were carried, one for each tube.

Rattlesnake was originally ordered in response to the Russian war scare and was not sold until 1910. Although she was the pioneer of this type of vessel, Rattlesnake proved to be about the best of the entire group. However, her designers imagined that a slight reduction in displacement coupled with the same 2,700 horsepower would give better results.

They therefore ordered the three-ship Grasshopper class which followed the prototype torpedo gunboat into service during the year 1888. This group proved to be very much like their predecessor, although sea performance attained was not as satisfactory. Each vessel carried 80 tons of coal, giving a range of action of 2,800 miles at 10 knots, economical speed. Yet although the three vessels had advantage over torpedo boats in the matter of seaworthiness and radius of action, the Grasshoppers were sadly deficient in speed. All three vessels were decommissioned during 1903-1905.

The failure of the three 1887 boats to go any faster than Rattlesnake had the immediate effect of rousing the Admiralty to solve the speed riddle. Accordingly in the autumn of that year the keel was laid of a new torpedo gunboat. This third group, known as the Sharpshooter class, numbered thirteen vessels in all, thus becoming the largest class numerically to be built. At 735 tons and mounting five 14 inch torpedo tubes, two 4 7 inch and four 3 pdr. guns, they displaced over 200 tons greater than the Grasshopper type. Despite the hopes of their designers the class could not achieve the designed 21 knots, with some boats reaching only 17 knots. During construction four vessels were allotted to the colonies, with Assaye and Plassey going to India and Whiting and Wizard to the Australian Station. The latter pair were renamed Boomerang and Karrakatta respectively on 2nd April 1890, and both completed by Armstrongs in February 1891.

The Australian pair arrived in Sydney during September 1891, with the five cruisers of the Auxiliary Squadron, HM Ships Katoomba, Mildura, Ringarooma, Tauranga and Wallaroo. Normal practice was to keep only one torpedo-gunboat in active service with regular rotation with the other. The total cost of Boomerang and Karrakatta and the five cruisers, including armament, was £853,977stg to the Australian colonies, with a further £120,000stg annual maintenance and wages. Boomerang and Karrakatta eventually returned to Great Britain and were sold on 11th July 1905.

During their initial years in commission, the Sharpshooter class suffered many mechanical failures, and as well their hulls were structurally weak, unable to stand the strain of rough weather. The failure of these boats to excel the Rattlesnake and Grasshopper types was a bitter disappointment to the Admiralty. During fleet manoeuvres of 1890 several of the vessels were outrun and in the case of Rattlesnake taken prisoner by the torpedo boats she was supposed to hunt down and destroy.

Facebook