RANCA NSW
HMAS LISMORE J145
Namesake: City of Lismore, NSW
Builder: Morts Dock
Laid down: 26 February 1940
Launched: 10 August 1940
Commissioned: 24 January 1941
Decommissioned: 3 July 1946
Battle honours:
Indian Ocean 1941–44
Sicily 1943
Pacific 1945
Okinawa 1945
Fate: Transferred to RNN
Netherlands
Name: Batjan
Commissioned: 3 July 1946
Reclassified: Frigate (1946)
Decommissioned 1958
Displacement: 650 tons (standard),
1,025 tons (full war load)
Length: 186 ft (57 m)
Beam: 31 ft (9.4 m)
Draught: 8.5 ft (2.6 m)
Propulsion: triple expansion
engine, 2 shafts, 1,750hp
Speed: 15 knots (28 km/h;
17 mph)
Complement: 85
Armament: 1 × 4-inch gun,
3 × Oerlikons
(later 4, later 2),
1 × 2-pounder gun
(installed later),
Machine guns,
Depth charges
chutes and throwers
Extract from Corvette magazine
HMAS LISMORE by “Spud” Murphy
Courtesy Anne Murphy daughter of A B Harold Murphy
After escorting many convoys in the Indian Ocean HMAS LISMORE was due for a re-fit and in March 1944 was sent to Port Elizabeth in South Africa, a Dominion of the British Empire at that time. The ship’s crew should have only been away from the ocean for a number of weeks but due to unforeseen delays the re-fit process lasted for 3 months.
A.B. Harold Murphy described the nature of the delay when interviewed by Ed Stokes for the Australian War Memorial in 1991, saying:
South Africa took three weeks to decide to come into the war and then it was a split decision that they would do it on a voluntary basis. So most of the volunteers in the forces, but not all, were of English speaking stock. There were very few of the Afrikaner community. But on the other hand, in the Afrikaner community there was a movement which was very pro-German and anti the British or the Allied cause.
The firm that did our re-fit was a typical marine dockside ship and Repair Company and all of its English-speaking employees had gone off to the war leaving only Afrikaners. And there were problems with the re-fit. Things went missing, things took too long, and we were quite convinced that they were carrying on minor sabotage and delaying tactics to keep us from going to sea.
Meanwhile, the crew were made very welcome and billeted in private homes and taken for tours and rides around. An indication of how strange we were - we were really something exotic, I think , to the locals - typically one or two men (sailors) would be walking down a street in Johannesburg and a lady would come along with a little boy and she'll say: 'Oh, pardon me, sailor, would you let my son touch your collar?'.
So it was paying tribute in a way that was embarrassing really, but an indication of how we were regarded - highly regarded.
Before the ship was finally dispatched to Durban to go into dry dock, some of the sailors found that the fountain outside the Town Hall satisfied their desire to be surrounded by water. (See copy of poem below)
It seems that lips are sealed but wouldn’t we love to know more about the frolickers.
Who'll come for a swim, who'll come for a swim,
Who'll come for a swim with me?
In the goldfish pond
ten paces fromThe Town Hall in P.E.?
Lilies and reeks and assorted steeks
And fish both young and old.
A nice green lawn to roll upon
And the water's not too cold
"I'll have a go," says the stoker P.O.
Out on a bit of a spree,
And it wasn’t long before pond was thronged
With Lismore's ship's company.
The Lord Mayor screamed and tore his hair,
The police with fear did cringe
All P.E. stopped to wonder and stare
At mad Aussies on a binge
By tale and word the news was spread
From Hills Kraal to Walmer
To come to town and see the fun
Of the Wallabies from Down Under.
And many a night the cry was heard,
"The Aussies are at it again,
The fishpond's full of a thundering herd
"And the answer came back "What again?"
We've sailed far and near without much beer,
And we've seen quite a bit in our roaming,
But nothing we do will ever better our fame,
What we gained in P.E. through our bathing.
So.Who'll come for a swim, who’ll come for a swim
Who'll come for a swim with me?
In the goldfish pond ten paces from
The Town Hall in P.E.?
Extract from Corvette Magazine January 1990
HMAS LISMORE Association
Will be holding its Annual Reunion at Lismore NSW. The Annual Meeting and Dinner will be on 24 April 90 and on 25 April the Anzac March will be followed by lunch with the Naval Cadets at TS LISMORE.
Extract from Corvette Magazine July 1993
Harley Sawtell ex Lismore reports:
Anyone who ever ventured into the wireless office in Lismore, would no doubt have noticed a voice-pipe in the deck-head above the operator. Suspended within and extending from the voice-pipe was a light rope to which was attached a cylindrical metal container, measuring approx. 5 x 20 cm. The container was reasonable heavy and hung some 25 cm from the deck-head where it swayed with the motion of the ship.
The uninitiated may well have come to the conclusion that it was some sort of new-fangled metronome or that the motion of the sea might be recorded from its movement, or maybe it was cleverly devised to put the sparker to sleep. But it was none of these things. Its purpose was to convey signals received and those requiring transmission to and from the bridge. It was just another of those smart, state-of-the-art engineering innovations which were the hallmark of corvette design and this one, in particular, no doubt did speed up the transmission of signals and, more important, saved sparkers getting wet in bad weather.
It did, however, have some flaws, the first being, there was no warning device to commence operation and this required the sparker, on receipt of a signal, to place such signal in the container, stand, and yell up the voice-pipe, "Bridge". In due course, the signalman on the bridge would haul the container up through the voice-pipe by the attached rope. The signalman, after extracting the signal, would gently lower the container and it would resume its secondary role of measuring the ship's movement and mesmerizing the sparker.
So the scene was set for the young "macca" telegraphist to enter the saga. It so happened that on the previous watch, the container had been hauled up to the bridge and not returned. Of course, the inevitable urgent signal was received and the young sparker had no option but to stand up and yell through the voice-pipe for the return of the container.
This brought no immediate response and a sense of urgency entered into the yelling, which was becoming more vocal and strident by the second with the sparker standing up to his full height with his face close to the voice-pipe and giving it all he had. Of course his obvious urgency produced the inevitable result. The container was not lowered gently, but was dropped like a stone, catching the sparker on the forehead, splitting his brow and knocking him into tomorrow.
Extract from Corvette Magazine October 1994
A DELAYED CONFESSION
Ken Wyndham (ex Lismore) thought that, as the statutory period must surely have expired after nearly 50 years, it was time for him to come clean about what many may have thought was caused by a tidal wave. He says:
"It has been said that a corvette would roll on wet grass, but never having seen a corvette on wet grass, I do not know whether this was true or not. However, I do know that a corvette can roll quite well even in harbour on a calm night and secured to a wharf. I have not only seen this happen, I caused this to happen.
It was December 1945. Our old ship was at Darwin. The war had ended four months earlier and we were enjoying an easy lifestyle. When alongside at night, only one or two hands were on watch. Their most important duty was to tend the mooring lines, to take in the slack or to ease off, as the tide rose or fell. Darwin tides rose and fell on a grand scale, from memory, something like fifteen to twenty feet.
It was the middle watch and we were moored starboard side to. All seemed to be in order, but at about 1am (two bells to the pusser types) the ship developed a list to port, only slight at first, but quickly becoming worse. The cause was not hard to find. The tide was going out fast and I had neglected to slack off one of the waist lines. To complicate the situation, the line had jammed on the bitts, having been incorrectly laid by someone (not me, of course).
Something had to be done quickly or the line would part, or even worse, HMAS Lismore would soon be hanging from the wharf like a hat from a peg. So I started to cut through the eye-splice where the line went round the bollard. Even before the second strand was cut, the remainder parted and the ships' starboard side dripped three or four feet and she rolled and rebounded a coupe of times before settling on an even keel.
No one rushed out on deck, least of all the Officer of the Watch. Perhaps they thought it was a tidal wave, or knowing who was on watch, accurately guessed what had happened. To avoid trouble, they damaged line had to be repaired. At Flinders I had been taught how to do all the usual knots and splices, and had forgotten most of the, but I could do a neat eye-splice.
The job took some time, constantly looking over my shoulder for approaching trouble, but I didn't forget to keep slacking off the other lines as required. Then all the small pieces of rope ad other evidence of guilt were carefully swept up and dropped overboard. My only worry was that the eye-splice was obviously new. So I obtained some old grease from under an Oerlikon mounting and finished off by rubbing in a small amount of dust. Dust or dirt of any kind was impossible to find on an immaculate ship like HMAS Lismore, so I had to walk across the wharf to the road to get some.
Everything was in order when I handed over to the morning watch. No awkward questions were asked and I have never told anyone - until now. "
Extract Corvette Magazine January 2000
A dreadful day in the life of a corvette
Reg Lewis, ex Lismore has set down his memories of the rescue of survivors of the troopship, Yoma, in the Med on June 17, 1943 and we reprint it courtesy of the Lismore newsletter.
The North African campaign had just ended with the surrender of Rommel's Afrika Korps and we had escorted a convoy from Alexandria to Malta, returning via Tripoli, where we picked up a convoy which included several loaded troopships. Our escort group was led by HMS Shoreham, a pre-WWII sloop, four Australian corvettes, Gawler, Lismore, Maryborough and Ipswich, several RN corvettes and two small motor minesweepers, which were wooden craft built just prior to war. The two minesweepers were stationed at the rear of the convoy, probably for rescue purposes.
We had been steaming for two or three days, when I entered the mess-deck after the morning watch and sat down for breakfast. Almost immediately I heard the familiar "rap" against the ship's side - an explosion. Then the action station gongs had me racing to my action station on the minesweeping deck, manning the phone connection to the bridge.
I looked over the convoy and was sickened to see one of our charges already beginning to sink. It was stationary, with its stern rising to a perpendicular position and it presented an eerie sight as the ships in the convoy steamed past, seeming oblivious to the situation. The victim soon disappeared beneath the surface and we altered course, together with Gawler and the two motor minesweepers, into the area of the sinking.
Our engineer officer, Lieutenant Cameron, was standing near me and I can recall him saying: "We're going to have a lot of survivors vomiting from the effect of fuel oil - prepare to see a mess."
The name of the ship was the Yoma and they were only able to launch one lifeboat, but there were rafts, men and pieces of debris scattered over a large area of water. The lifeboat was crammed with survivors and it came alongside our minesweeping deck they (mostly French) swarmed aboard in disarray and they appeared to have no thought for the remaining survivors in the water.
The boat was abandoned and Sub-Lieutenant James gave me permission to man the boat and I was immediately joined by four other crew members. I can remember Bluey Bodin and Shorty Paulin, but cant remember the other two. Perhaps if they are still with us they will tell us who they were. It was a large wooden boat, very heavy to row.
We picked up men until there were no more to be seen and we had a fair load. I can remember number of lifeless bodies floating beneath life jackets, but had to concentrate on rescuing survivors. I thought of the hundreds of families somewhere back at their homes who would be receiving the sad news resulting from this tragedy and found that distressing.
The life jackets carried in Yoma were obviously the type that fitted over the upper part of the body with a kapok-filled cushion at the front and back. They had tapes which were tied around the waist, but if the front was not held down firmly when jumping into the water, they would act like a hangman's noose, breaking the neck of the wearer and did cause many deaths. My draft was drilled with these when I took passage on SS Tanda from Sydney to Colombo to join Lismore. Tanda was later lost between Colombo and Bombay.
At one stage of the rescue, Gawler's whaler came close to us and I saw my brother Gordon hard at work. I called out to him and he got quite a shock hearing my voice coming from the old lifeboat.
An American liberty ship, obviously steaming in ballast, was pulled out of the convoy and came back to help with the rescue, so we put our load of survivors onto the ship and found our way back to Lismore. When I saw the crowded decks, I was glad I had done that.
We gave warm clothing to the survivors - jumpers, burberrys, anything that would help. Later an approach was made to the RN at Alexandria for replacement of these items, but we were told our generosity was our bad luck. What a marked difference I found later in the war when dealing with the Americans while I was in Burnie.
I was working in two watches at the time as we still had only four operators, so after snatching a bite to eat, I went up to the bridge for the afternoon watch. We worked alternative hours - on the Asdic set and as a bosun's mate. Performing the latter duty presented a real battle to move around the ship in the crowded conditions, pushing past men here and stepping over others there.
Lismore and Gawler left the scene and sailed full ahead for Derna, which we reached early in the afternoon. With 389 survivors and some dead our upper decks were certainly crowded. It was fortunate that we did not meet with any more action before they were put ashore. Gawler was in a similar condition. At Derna the survivors were ferried by RAF air-sea rescue launches.
The total numbers of lives saved was 1350, but it was said there were about 1700 in Yoma, including the ship's crew. A soldier told me there was a Dutch army unit in the hold where the explosion occurred.
Whether Yoma fell victim to a torpedo or one of the floating mines we used to see during daylight hours - and hoped to detect by our Asdic at night - is not clear to me. Mines returned a small pip-like echo to our a/s transmission and we relied on these to dodge mines during dark hours.
Working in two watches prevented us getting much sleep, with frequent "action stations" due to air raid warnings. Also we were required to work part of ship during forenoons and I was grateful to our signals branch, "Mitch", "Fargo" and Dave Wythes for ensuring we did not drip off to sleep in the a/s box.
Like most shipmates, I hoped I would never again be involved with the loss of a troopship.
Reg Lewis