Australia: Collision Stations!

On a calm and darkling sea last week the 20,000-ton aircraft carrier Melbourne, flagship of the Australian navy, was engaged in night maneuvers off Jervis Bay, 80 miles south of Sydney. Half a mile astern cruised the destroyer Voyager, acting as rescue ship should any of the Melbourne’s planes go into the sea on takeoff or landing. Both ships were blacked out except for running lights and red masthead lights.

At 9 p.m. the big carrier reversed course, and it became the Voyager’s duty to maneuver until she was once more astern of the Melbourne. The destroyer’s captain, Duncan Stevens, 42, somehow placed his ship right across the Melbourne’s bows. Taken by surprise, Stevens had only time to cry “Collision stations!” before the carrier, traveling at top speed of 22 knots, smashed into the destroyer’s bridge, cutting the Voyager in two and trapping most of her crew below deck.

One Voyager officer was walking along a corridor when the Melbourne’s bow knifed through a few yards behind him, and he was swept out through the hole left by the collision. Another officer was drinking coffee in the wardroom when he was suddenly engulfed by water. “I swam to the surface,” he recalled, “and found I was still in the wardroom. I got out through a slit in the side and found myself in the ocean, with its surface covered by a six-inch layer of fuel oil.” Ten men trapped in the forward section finally forced open a jammed escape hatch and, as they scrambled free, heard men behind them screaming to get out and thrashing in the water-filled hold.

Of the Voyager’s 321-man crew, three—including Captain Stevens—were pulled dead from the water, and another 79 were missing and presumed dead. It was the worst peacetime disaster in the 54-year history of the Australian navy.