Miscarriage Of Naval Justice?

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 4

Miscarriage Of Naval Justice?

One Minute of Time; the Met-bourne-Voyager Collision. By Vice-Admiral Harold Rickling. C. 8., C.8.E.. D.S.O. A. H. and A. W. Reed. With illustrations. charts, diagrams and appendix. 235 pp. Still fresh in the memory of all who read their newspapers : is that disastrous collision off Jervis Bay, New South Wales, on February 10. 1964. when the Australian destroyer Voyager cut across the bow of i the aircraft carrier Melbourne and was sliced in two. Eightytwo of the Voyager’s personnel, including Captain D. H. Stevens and his bridge officers, perished. Among the shocked readers was Vice-Admiral Hickling. then sitting in his Turangi fishing lodge beside Lake Taupo. New Zealand. As a retired officer of the Royal Navy once involved in a similar collision he could understand better than most what happened in those moments of agony. But as a naval officer with 35 years’ experience in peace and war he found he could not stomach what happened in the weeks and months that followed. He read everything he could find about the proceedings of the Royal Commission set up by the Australian Federal Government, and as he did so he became increasingly convinced that rank injustice was being done to the officers and ratings on the bridge of the Melbourne, in particular to Captain R. J. Robertson. As a naval seaman fully cognizant of naval procedures, he was revolted as the commission developed into a trial in search of a scapegoat, though no charges had been laid. So, having procured a transcript of the Royal Commission (5.000,000 words), a copy of the report of the commissioner, Mr Justice Spicer, and other relevant letters and documents, he set about writing this highly critical book. If his analysis of events and his conclusions are correct, political expediency was paramount over justice, and the part played by the Federal Government led by Sir Robert Menzies, lately retired, did not redound to its credit. There is a tang of salt about this book. There are no wasted words as words are used with the skill of graphic simplicity. Where Vice Admiral Hickling deems it necessary he has no hestitation is reinforcing his argument by drawing on his own experiences, but from the general reader’s point of view the deviations are not unpleasant, and he soon finds himself back on the attack with the admiral’s probing pen. Vice-Admiral Hickling contends that a Royal Commission was quite the wrong vehicle for the investigation of the disaster, that the proper course was an inquiry by the Australian Naval Board,followed, if necessary, by a court-martial, and that neither the commissioner nor the array of civilian Queen's Counsel were qualified to understand the problems and traditions of naval ship management.

This was a service matter the author contends and should have been investigated in accordance with naval traditions, without dramatics, by qualified service officers fully acquainted with naval procedures and customs.

The author maintains that the commission transcript and its questions and answers show the civilian lawyers often completely "at sea” where the technicalities of ship manoeuvres were concerned. and were prone to make red herrings of trivialities and to smear the reputations of innocent people. The admiral-author finds that, though no charge was laid against him, it was clear from the trend of the proceedings that Captain Roberson was being sought as a scapegoat by the Government and naval authorities because of the political repercussions of a series of previous naval mishaps He notes that the captain was never at any stage asked to discuss his report with the members of the Naval Board, and that the Government retained Queen’s Counsel to represent various parties before the commission, but persisted in declining that facility to Captain Robertson until forced to do so when the issue was raised in Parliament. A few hours after the collision and the heroic rescue work of the Melbourne’s crew Admiral Becher arrived aboard. In respect of the collision he then told Captain Robertson “there was nothing you could do.” It is pointed out that the admiral did not

repeat this opinion before the commission. The book criticises the Naval Board for removing Captain Robertson from command of the Melbourne, though the commission’s report absolved the Melbourne’s bridge of blame (Captain Robertson resigned from the service rather than accept a shore post and its implied shir), and it criticises Sir Robert Menzies for refusing to reveal the contents of a Naval Board report based on a consideration of the commission’s report. But after all this, after giving every cogent reason, clearly argued, why Captain Robertson was not to blame, after getting the reader completely on his side. ViceAdmiral Hickling produces a devastating anti-climax. In the meantime the Melbourne, under another command, had been proving itself in a S.E.A.T.O. exercise. Vice-Admiral Hickling says that if he had been handling this post-commission matter he would have approached Captain Robertson in a more tactful way—but he would not have piit him back in the Melbourne: he would have offered him the post of assistant naval attache in Washington pending appointment as commodore in charge of three guided-missile detroyers to be bought from the United States.