VOYAGER INQUIRY Former Captain Tells Court Of Deductions

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30442, 16 May 1964, Page 13

VOYAGER INQUIRY Former Captain Tells Court Of Deductions

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, May 15. The commander of the aircraft-carrier, H.M.A.S. Melbourne, Captain R. J. Robertson, today told the Royal Commission inquiring into the Voyager disaster he had decided after calculations that the destroyer had turned about 45 degrees to starboard shortly before the collision.

In an early report the turn was about 30 degrees, he had said.

Captain Robertson was being questioned by Mr L. W. Street, Q.C., for the interests of the late Captain D. H. Stevens, of Voyager. Asked what he had seen which led him to believe the Voyager turned to starboard, Captain Robertson said: “I saw a ship at about six cables turning to starboard.” Mr Street: What degree was this turn? Side Visible Captain Robertson: About 45 degrees. I formed that opinion when we drew the first chart about a week later. Her starboard side was visible and the turn had to be worked out from what 1 saw of Voyager that night. Captain Robertson said the figure of 30 degrees had "come into my head” some time during the night of February 10—the night the Melbourne cut the Voyager in two with the loss of 82 lives. He said he had never regarded the figure as being accurate. He told Mr Street he had discarded his original view, recorded in his reports, that the Voyager had slowed down when she turned to starboard. This was one of many ob-

servations of events he had discarded, he added. Captain Robertson said when he saw the Voyager alter to starboard he could not say at what speed she was travelling. Mr Street then suggested to Captain Robertson that his diagram of the courses leading up to the collision was a “conglomeration” of what he saw, what he had been told by people outside the court, what he had heard witnesses say, and his own attempts to reconstruct what had happened with expert advice he had received. Captain Robertson said he could not agree it was the “mixture” suggested, only some of it. i Speed Slowed On the night of the collision he had thought the Voyager slowed to about 15 • knots because of what he ob- ‘ served, he said. Subse- ! quently, and now, he believed this was not so. Mr Street: Your present evidence that Voyager was . not down to 15 knots was not an observation, but because you have worked it out? Captain Robertson: 1 thought she was doing 15 knots because of my observations. Now I think she was doing more than that because of my deductions from my observations.

In earlier evidence today, Captain Robertson told of the lighting of the Melbourne during the exercise on Feb-

ruary 10, and was questioned on the times signals between the two ships were exchanged.