- Author
- Book reviewer
- Subjects
- WWII operations, Book reviews, History - post WWII, Royal Navy
- Tags
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- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- December 2023 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
The Yachties. Australian Volunteers in The Royal Navy 1940-45. By Janet Roberts Billett. Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd., North Melbourne Vic. 3051
In 1940 the Royal Navy anticipated a shortage of the officers required to replace losses, and for the many ships either building or taken up for war service. This led to a request to the Dominions for the ‘Enrolment in the Dominions of Gentlemen with Yachting, etc. Experience for Service as Officers in the RNVR [Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve]’. This request was agreed to by the Australian Government and advertisements were placed in selected newspapers inviting candidates to appear before selection boards in each state.
The volunteers, who became known as ‘the Yachties’, were recruited in two categories: ‘A’ Class candidates between 30 and 40 years of age with a knowledge of navigation equivalent to the Yachtmaster’s (Coastal) Certificate for direct commissions in the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RANVR), and ‘B’ Class candidates between the ages of 20 and 30 for entry in the RANVR as seamen with opportunity for appointment as officers. A total of about 500 volunteers was enrolled, and they sailed for Britain between September 1940 and May 1942.
The first group of 71 volunteers (15 ‘A’ Class and 56 ‘B’ Class) received no pre-embarkation training before sailing for Britain in SS Strathnaver. Subsequent groups received three weeks of basic training at Flinders Naval Depot before sailing. Once in Britain the ‘A’ Class candidates received three months training ashore at the RNVR training establishment HMS King Alfred, while the ‘B’ Class candidates completed a three-month course at HMS Collingwoodbefore being drafted to sea. Four Yachties, serving in HMS Hood after their time at Collingwood, were lost when Hoodwas sunk in action with Bismarck in the Denmark Strait.
Most of the ‘B’ Class Yachties were commissioned and many Yachties achieved command. They served with the Royal Navy, often as the only Australian onboard, usually in coastal forces or in escorts on the North Atlantic Convoys and from 1942, increasingly in combined operations. A few examples suffice to show the breadth of the Yachties’ service. At least seven Yachties took part in the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe during which Doug Gilling survived the sinking of HMS Berkeley, Harry Brownell was killed in action and Patrick Landy was taken prisoner. Lieutenant Bill Wallach took control of the main (3-pounder) gun on ML 270, which led the port column during the raid on the lock caisson at St Nazaire, and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for shooting out the searchlight illuminating HMS Campbeltown during her final approach. Others served on the North Russian Convoys, in motor gunboats running agents to and from occupied France or with Combined Operations Pilotage Parties carrying out pre-invasion beach reconnaissance. Many Yachties served in combined operations and took part in the D-Day landings.
One group of ‘A’ Class officers was not sent to HMS King Alfred but were asked to volunteer for ‘Special Duties’, for which the Admiralty required ‘officers of outstanding courage, enterprise and initiative for special duties ashore’. Ten Yachties volunteered and were sent immediately to HMS Vernon at Portsmouth for training in ‘Rendering Mines Safe’. The Luftwaffe dropped many large and powerful ground [sea] mines by parachute in harbour approaches and against land targets where they were intended to explode with devastating effect. Disarming these mines, which were sometimes booby trapped to explode if dismantled, was a difficult and hazardous undertaking. Taken as a group, the Yachties rendering mines safe was the most highly decorated group of Australian servicemen.
With the war at sea against Germany considered almost won in late 1944, many of the Yachties were repatriated to Australia where they served with the Royal Australian Navy against Japan, usually in less responsible positions than those held while serving with the Royal Navy. About 1500 Australians served with the Royal Navy during the War, of whom some 500 were Yachties. These men had travelled to the far side of the world, been away from home for between two and five years and played significant roles in the Allied victory. Their service, however, did not fit easily with the narrative of the Australian war at home against Japan and they found their service quickly forgotten. A book about the small group who had rendered mines safe – Softly Tread the Brave by Ivan Southhall – was published in Australia in 1960, but the Yachties were otherwise ignored.
The London Naval Officers’ Dining Club, a group of Australian naval officers who had met at Australia House while in London during the War, met annually in Melbourne starting in 1948, and Yachties formed more than half the membership. Contacts were maintained and extended through these meetings and three Melbourne Yachties compiled a list of 467 names with details of the volunteers’ service. In 2002 former Yachties Lieutenant Keith Nicol and Lieutenant Commander Clive Tayler asked Janet Roberts Billett to write the story of the Yachties, and that was the genesis of this book. In her own words, ‘The research for this book … was an exercise in oral history as there was a paucity of material on this subject.’ She interviewed 20 of the surviving Yachties and three widows – no mean task as they were scattered across the continent.
The book begins by exploring the concept of ‘Gentlemen Yachtsmen’ and what that meant in 1940 in the context of English and Australian societies. This is followed by a chapter on the Mother Country: the Yachties belief in the importance of the survival of the Mother Country and the Empire, and their desire to serve in the prestigious Royal Navy before the outbreak of the Japanese War. This is followed by chapters describing the experiences of Yachties in different theatres of war, an aspect that could have been overdone but is handled carefully and provides an insight into as many incidents as possible without becoming repetitious. There is also a chapter on ‘Officers and Gentlemen’, which explores this concept in terms of the British class system of the time, how it was seen by the Yachties and how they were perceived by the British public and by the Royal Navy (the answer is ’favourably’ in both cases).
The Yachties is extremely well written and is a serious history by an author with a sense of obligation to present and preserve the memory of those who volunteered for the Yachtsmen Scheme. There are 296 end notes, a comprehensive bibliography, and useful appendices. This is an important book about the previously almost unknown and ignored story of some 500 young Australians who served Australia and the Mother Country with the Royal Navy in some of the bitterest sea battles of the war. It is unfortunate that Doug Gilling, the last known surviving Yachtie, ‘crossed the bar’ shortly before the book was published. The Yachties deserves a place in the library of anyone who cares about our naval history during World War II and about those 500 young men of the RANVR who volunteered to serve with the Royal Navy.
Reviewed by Robert Buxton