HMAS Voyager

The Vessel

HMAS Voyager (D04) was a Daring-class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney on 12 February 1957. She was 118 metres long, 3,560 tons full load, armed with six 4.5-inch guns in three twin turrets, two 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, and five anti-submarine torpedo tubes. Her designed speed was 34 knots on twin-shaft Foster Wheeler geared turbines.

The Daring class had been developed from the British Royal Navy's late-war Daring-class design, with modifications for Australian operational requirements. Three Daring-class destroyers were built for the RAN at Cockatoo Island between 1951 and 1959: HMAS Voyager, HMAS Vendetta, and HMAS Vampire. The three ships were the principal Australian destroyer force from commissioning through the 1970s.

Her commanding officer in February 1964 was Captain Duncan Stevens, 42, a career Royal Australian Navy officer with 18 years of service. Stevens's appointment to Voyager had been somewhat contentious within the RAN: he was known among his peer officers as a competent but sometimes unpredictable commander, and his appointment to command the RAN's largest destroyer class had been the subject of internal debate that was not made public at the time.

The Voyage

On the evening of 10 February 1964, HMAS Voyager was operating with the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne in the waters east of Jervis Bay, New South Wales. The exercise was the RAN's annual anti-submarine warfare training operation, combining the carrier Melbourne and her air group with Voyager and Vendetta for coordinated anti-submarine screen training. Voyager's specific role in the exercise was as plane-guard destroyer: her station was to steam in the wake of Melbourne during aircraft launching and recovery operations, positioned to rescue any aircrew whose aircraft crashed during take-off or landing.

The plane-guard station required Voyager to position herself approximately 1,500 metres astern of Melbourne. During aircraft launch and recovery, Melbourne would turn into the wind at 22 knots to provide the airflow for fixed-wing aircraft operations; Voyager was expected to maintain her plane-guard station relative to Melbourne throughout the turn.

The evening of 10 February 1964 was clear, with calm seas and a moderate easterly breeze. Melbourne began her turn into the wind at 20:52 for the first recovery of the evening, preparing to recover her embarked DHC-3 Otter light aircraft. Voyager was assigned to maintain her plane-guard station at 20:52.

The Disaster

HMAS Voyager's manoeuvre in response to Melbourne's turn into the wind produced a collision that has been the subject of ongoing Australian naval historical debate for 60 years. Voyager, instead of manoeuvring to maintain her plane-guard station astern of Melbourne, turned sharply to her port and placed herself directly across Melbourne's course. The timing of Voyager's turn was such that Melbourne's stem struck Voyager amidships at approximately 20:56 on 10 February 1964.

The collision broke Voyager in half at Frame 48. Her forward section, still held together by her bridge and forward gun turret structure, capsized to starboard and sank in less than 10 minutes. Her after section, which had contained her main engineering spaces, sank more slowly: approximately 2 hours after the collision. The rapid sinking of the forward section trapped the majority of her crew in the compartments that had been forward of Frame 48.

82 of HMAS Voyager's 314 crew died in the collision. Captain Stevens was among the dead; his body was recovered from his bridge. 232 were rescued by HMAS Melbourne and the second destroyer HMAS Vendetta. The rescue operation continued through the night of 10-11 February 1964.

The Legacy

The Royal Commission on the Loss of HMAS Voyager, known as the Royal Commission into the Loss of HMAS Voyager and Related Matters, was the largest and most prolonged military inquiry in modern Australian history. The first Royal Commission (the "Voyager Commission") was conducted by Sir John Spicer from September 1964 through February 1965 and found that the primary responsibility for the collision lay with Captain Stevens for an improper manoeuvre from Voyager. The Commission's findings were controversial and contested.

The second Royal Commission (the "Voyager II Commission") was conducted by Sir Jacob Burton and Sir George Lucas from 1967 through 1968 in response to continuing public dispute about the first Commission's findings. Voyager II produced additional evidence indicating that Captain Stevens had been suffering from undisclosed medical conditions (specifically, a peptic ulcer for which he had been taking prescription medication that had produced cognitive side effects) that had affected his command performance on the evening of the collision. Voyager II also identified command-culture issues within the Royal Australian Navy of the 1960s that had permitted Stevens's appointment to Voyager's command despite concerns about his judgement.

The combined Voyager I and Voyager II findings produced a significant political crisis in Australia. The RAN's senior officer at the time of the collision, Rear-Admiral Alan McNicoll (the Chief of Naval Staff), was progressively removed from operational decision-making responsibility through 1968. The Australian Minister for the Navy, John Gorton, became progressively more publicly identified with the Voyager question through the late 1960s, eventually becoming Prime Minister of Australia in January 1968. The Voyager Royal Commissions are cited in Australian military-political historiography as one of the principal events that shaped the governance of the Australian military through the remainder of the twentieth century.

The wreck of HMAS Voyager lies at approximately 120 metres depth in the Tasman Sea, approximately 35 kilometres east of Jervis Bay. The forward section and the after section lie approximately 400 metres apart on the seabed. The site is a protected war grave under the Australian Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 and is designated a protected heritage site by the New South Wales government.

The 82 dead of HMAS Voyager are commemorated at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and at the HMAS Voyager Memorial at Jervis Bay. The name HMAS Voyager has been carried by one subsequent RAN vessel: HMAS Voyager (II), a shore establishment; the name has not been given to a subsequent RAN ship. Five years after Voyager's loss, a second near-identical accident involving HMAS Melbourne occurred, when Melbourne cut USS Frank E. Evans in half in the South China Sea on 3 June 1969, killing 74 U.S. sailors. The repetition confirmed what the Voyager Royal Commissions had identified: HMAS Melbourne's plane-guard operation carried an irreducible risk of destroyer collision that the carrier's crew and the destroyer crews could not eliminate despite training and procedural reforms.