RANCA NSW
HMAS MARYBOROUGH J195
Namesake: City of Maryborough, QLD Builder: Walkers Limited
Laid down: 16 April 1940
Launched: 17 October 1940
Commissioned: 12 June 1941
Decommissioned: December 1945
Battle honours:
Pacific 1942
Indian Ocean 1942–44
Sicily 1943
Fate:
Maryborough paid off in December 1945, and was sold to the Australian General Trading & Shipping Syndicate on 9 May 1947, who renamed her Isobel Queen. For years she was berthed near Victoria Bridge, Brisbane but never sailed under her own power after sale by the navy. She was later sold for scrap in Brisbane in 1953
Displacement: 650 tons (standard),
1,025 tons (full war load)
Length: 185 ft 8 in (56.59 m)
Beam: 31 ft (9.4 m)
Draught: 8.5 ft (2.6 m)
Propulsion: triple expansion engine,
2 shafts
Speed: 15 knots (28 km/h;
17 mph) at 1,750 hp
Complement: 85
Armament: 1 × 4-inch gun,
3 × Oerlikons
Extract from Corvette Magazine October 1989
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Laying of Maryborough's keel, a big reunion during April 1990 at Maryborough is planned.
Already 77, including wives, plan to attend, but we expect many more. Contact secretary Harry asap.
BE IN IT, FELLOWS
Extract from Corvette Magazine April 1990
Barney Ogle ex Maryborough has this to say:
Issue 36 gives a well-earned accolade to Les Wood as being helpful. Let me advise you that Leslie James Wood was always helpful from the time he was a second class stoker, perhaps of 17 ½ or 18 years of age.
HMAS Maryborough was the last corvette to successfully retreat from Singapore due to its slow convoy, which caused Commander Cant to issue the famous signal recorded by Lew Lind in his book, “historical Naval Events of Australia, day-by-day”.
March 6, 1942:
The minesweeper HMAS Maryborough signalled the old coal-burning Dutch ship General Verspik –
“Get all those bloody passengers into the stoke hold”.
One of those passengers was Charles Moses, erstwhile manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Moses used to walk to work over the Sydney Harbour Bridge where I met him one morning, introduced myself and recalled the incident. To which he replied: "Yes, that bloody Cant saved my life, but cost a stone in weight".
Anyway, we got to Fremantle and the media invaded us just at the end of the morning watch, which saw Stoker Wood emerge from the engine room, tired, greasy, sweaty, emaciated, as sweatband of old rags around his forehead - a perfect target for a press reporter.
Only two of the Maryborough crew heard Les’ press interview, Harvey and I, but within 24 hours, Australia had shuddered at the horrors of bombs exploding port and starboard of the boiler room whilst Leslie and his stoker mates coolly adjusted the valves as they rode the plates beneath the water line. It was one of the greatest dits I have listened to in a lifetime and was headlined: Terror in Bomb Alley.
Funnily enough, Les Wood’s story, when it appeared in the Eastern States, was the first knowledge my family had that Maryborough was still afloat. We had been reported missing.
Extract from Corvette Magazine April 1991
PLUM DUFF & BOTULISM by Brian Ogle ex HMAS Maryborough
In Maryborough, Leading cook Cecil North and his assistant “Dingie” Bell, stood in their galley and the sweat ran down their chests. It flowed over ripe bellies and was dammed by the bands of white underpants, which were all the clothing they wore.
With one hand Northie wiped sweat from his face leaving a rim of salt under his eyebrows; with the other he took a handful of flour from a newly-opened bag and squeezed it with his fist. When he opened his hand the flour did not spring and expand but limp and sterile as proof of its advanced age. From this material, he had to bake the daily bread, the Christmas duff and the currant buns promised for the stand-easy break.
The ship was on the old royal Navy repayment system. Each sailor was allowed one shilling and nine pence per day for food, which was partly fossicked from local traders.
They had purchased 30 dozen eggs which were delivered in native baskets. Now the age of the fruit of the hen may be proven by application of Archimedes’ principle. If an egg be newly-laid, it will sink to the bottom of a pail of water thus displacing an equal volume of liquid and raising the meniscus in the bucket. When aged, egg rises to float and this displaces nothing.
Sixty per cent of the native eggs not only rose, they shot up to the top of the bucket like corks. But in those days of food shortages such provender could not be ditched but was laid aside for scrambling. Even a rotten egg offered more nourishment than, say, tinned beans. Cookie North could suffer the smell when he disguised bad eggs with lots of pepper, salt and tinned tomatoes and scrambled the mess, but in no way would he be able to raise a cake with them.
The cooks had no fresh meat even though the ship had bought frozen mutton in Bombay. When first was thawed out, it turned out to be the well-clawed and scarred relic of a mountain goat. The stench was so unbearable that the whole shipment was ditched overboard into the Indian Ocean.
Informed opinion was that the animals had be caught and slaughtered in the Himalayas, transported across India by oxcarts and eventually frozen in Bombay.
The Lords of the Admiralty had signalled all ships about the possible problem of botulism inherent in vegetables tinned in Palestine. Bean, beetroot and tomatoes had been canned in re-cycled Pabst beer tins of which there were millions available due to the late entry of the American forces. Palestine caused problems even before the advent of Yasser Arafat.
Salads were the sensible food for a tropical Christmas, but again no luck. Fresh tomatoes and lettuce were also taboo. They were fat, juicy, red, crisp force-grown on raw human manure.
The dilemma of Leading cook Cecil North and “Dingie” Bell was in the year of Our Lord 1943 – and it was centered in HMAS Maryborough.
HMAS Maryborough and HMAS Gawler were anchored at Kilindini base which is at Mombasa on the equator on the east coast of Africa at the mouth of Uganda River. The Uganda is sister to the Limpopo and equally great, grey and greasy. Hot as Hades and steamy as a dry cleaner’s workshop.They were two Australian corvettes, both recently attached to the Mediterranean fleet and over the years to many other fleets, convoys, mine-fields and invasions. Collectively 1300 tons of worn-out ships and 200 fed-up sailors.
For Maryborough, it was the third equatorial Christmas in a row, (1941 in Singapore, 1942 at Addu Atoll). The Lords of the Admiralty intended that they follow their sea anchor to Portsmouth to prepare for D-Day in Europe but the ship was clapped out. So, they were working their way south to Durban for refitting.
However, based on the Portsmouth rumour, the ship’s company had decided to blow all its money on a traditional Christmas dinner to be enjoyed in the cold climate of England. In order to impress their families, they had had printed in Port Said a card containing a slap-up menu which had been posted home to Australia weeks before.
Now in Mombasa, Cookie North cursed the flour, the Navy, the ship, the officers, the crew and the heat as he surveyed what other ingredients were available from which to provide a substitute Christmas dinner.
In the circumstances, they did a marvellous job. By doubling the quantity of compressed yeast they raised the buns and with lots of spice made them edible. For dinner they made a pie of bully beef and tinned meat and vegetables and Trafalgar Squares smothered and sweetened with blackcurrant jam and a dish of boiled custard. The crew had its issue of navy rum and cold lime juice and reflected on what might have been. And they lay in the river with steam in the boilers. and it was hot.
At 4pm they were to proceed to Durban convoying a 10,000-ton British India line transporting 500 Italian POW’S. Durban. Civilisation. Food. Grog. Leave. Females.
On Maryborough, all hands closed-up for leaving harbour. The coxswain at the wheel, the cable party on the forecastle. The captain rang for steam on the winch. Then rang again. The answer via the voice pipe was not traditional: “Ye’ll nae get steam frae me. We’re staying here until they send me back to Dundee”.
Jock the engineer had cracked up. Too old, too long away from home, ever increasing responsibility and a lot of scotch whisky. He had cleared the boiler room with a well-wielded kingdick spanner. The first lieutenant started down the ladder with a gun but Jock’s spanner was aimed too true and too fast for argument.
Signal flags were hoisted. Signal lamps flashed. Dits an dars left the wireless room. The British India liner drifted outside the boom. HMAS Gawler drifted into the boom.
At the change of the watch between the dogs, Jock capitulated.Too late.
If ever you chance by Mombasa, look to the rocks on the south. The hulk of the liner is still rusting there. She drifted on to the rocks and settle permanently.
All promotion stopped that Christmas Day in 1943. Except for Jock, they found he was carrying a tumor of the brain as well as the whisky, and his promotion was as high as the heavens.
Courtesy The Weekend Australian 25/26 December 1982 & CORVETTE (QLD)