- Author
- A.N. Other
- Subjects
- Ship histories and stories, WWII operations, History - WW2
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- HMAS Forceful
- Publication
- December 2023 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
The coal burning steam tug Forceful was built by Alexander Stephen & Sons of Govan in Scotland in 1925 for the Australian based shipping company MacDonald, Hamilton & Company (later part of the P&O Group). She sailed from Glasgow on 21 December 1925 under Captain Makepeace with a crew of 13 and soon encountered severe weather in the Bay of Biscay. While capable of 13 knots, passage speed was reduced to 8 knots to conserve fuel. She continued her voyage via Suez to Colombo, Surabaya and Townsville before reaching Brisbane, after a voyage of 76 days, on 7 March 1926.
Regarded as one of the most powerful and finest vessels of her type, she was a well-known feature on the Brisbane River, berthing ships and engaging in salvage duties off the Queensland coast. For two years during WWII she served in the RAN as HMAS Forceful, based at Fremantle and Darwin.
In September 1970 she was taken out of service and laid up but shortly afterwards acquired by the Queensland Maritime Museum who kept her in operation for trips along the Brisbane River until 2006. She then went on display with the museum’s fleet of ships. Unfortunately, time has caught up with this gallant vessel and after nearly a century of service the museum has been forced to admit that they can no longer afford the increasing costs of her upkeep and she is expected to shortly be put up for disposal and be scrapped.
We should be remiss if we did not acknowledge HMAS Forceful’s time under the White Ensign with the following informative paper taken from our archives. The author’s name is not supplied and attempts to find him or her have so far been unsuccessful. Should any of our readers have further knowledge we should be pleased to know.
‘A word of approbation to H. in due course would not be out of place.’ This was the RAN Naval Board First Naval Member’s comment on 18 November 1942 in a Report of Proceedings. Admiral Sir Guy Royle’s ‘in due course’ was attended to promptly. On 25 November a Naval Board commendation was on its way to Lieutenant Ernest Hutchison.
These commendations are rare. Yet this one went to an RANR(S) lieutenant for his scant ten days in command of the tug HMAS Forceful on an uneventful passage from Fremantle to Darwin – one chapter in the wartime career of the vessel from leaving Brisbane on 22 December 1941 to its return, having circum-navigated the continent, to be paid off in August 1943.
On 4 December 1941 Forceful had become the second Brisbane tug in two years to be chartered by the British Ministry of War Transport. Coringa had sailed almost two years earlier in January 1940 to add to the honours earned in three years of service in World War I as a rescue tug. That was not to be. Within six months the vessel was lost off Ireland with half of its crew. Forceful was intended for service elsewhere– in the Mediterranean.
The tug’s builders had rated its crew at 15: master and another officer, two engineers, a cook and offsider, and nine others. When Forceful left on 22 December the usual Brisbane crew of 14 had been augmented by a radio operator and an extra stokehold hand.
The route taken was different from Coringa’s north-about one. Since the Pacific war’s stunning initial attacks, Japan’s swift advance meant Forceful prudently steered southward on its course for Fremantle.
In a 1999 interview Captain Thomas Langford’s widow Mary recalled that he was master for the 23-day voyage to Fremantle and for its brief civilian service there before he returned to Brisbane. In the files of the Queensland Maritime Museum the then Mate T.A.Davidson stated that, before leaving Brisbane, a structure was added to increase coal capacity to 200 tons, thus almost doubling the usual 93.5 tons in the bunker and 9.5 in the coal hatch. This was for the long legs of Fremantle to Colombo and Colombo to the Middle East. Davidson believed Forceful’s intended role was to clear the port of Tobruk of ‘… ships sunk all over the place.’
Fremantle was reached on 14 January and approval for Forceful’s departure was revoked. However, other Australian tugs did serve in the Mediterranean. Two small diesel Halvorsen-built tugs were lost within six months of Forceful’s retention: HMS Vixen at Tobruk on 17 June 1942, and HMS Vision at Mersa Matruh the next day.
Shipping traffic at Fremantle increased as the enemy pushed southwards. Still civilian manned, Forceful became an examination vessel from 24 to 30 January 1942. On 31 January the RAN requisitioned the tug and then, on 16 February, commissioned her as HMAS Forceful. English-born LEUT George Duck RANR(S) assumed command with LEUT Stanley Haines RANR(S) as First Lieutenant.
The Navy Lists record Forceful as ‘Tender to Leeuwin [Fremantle’s shore establishment]’. There is little mention of the tug in available records, except the Navy List of July 1942 discloses that Warrant Officer C. Brannigan joined the ship and the brief RAN ship history tersely states ‘… the tug performed general harbour and towing duties.’ Its only entry in Leeuwin’s War Diary is on 20 October, ‘… HMA Tug Forceful departed Fremantle for Darwin.’
One month before, on 22 September, 44-year-old English-born LEUT George Good RANR(S) had replaced LEUT Duck in command. The 28-year-old Scot LEUT John Sinclair RANR(S) had taken over from LEUT Haines the previous month. Yet for the voyage to Darwin, LEUT Ernest Hutchison DSC was in command. The temporary command was not the only unusual aspect of the voyage, the subject of Forceful’s sole Report of Proceedings.
Forceful reached Darwin on 31 October 1942, eight months after its devastating first air raids on 19 February, and eight days after the tug HMAS Wato, the oldest vessel in the RAN, had left for Port Moresby. The Navy List now identified the tug as, ‘tender to Melville [the Darwin shore station],’ and listed the officers as LEUT Good and LEUT Mornington-Smith RANR. Official mentions of the vessel at this time, as in Fremantle, are confined to only a few entries in Melville’s War Diary.
This Diary records ten air attacks of varying strengths on the Darwin area during Forceful’s service there. As well, the fight was being taken to the enemy on Timor by air
raids and by sea in support of the Australian Independent Companies harassing the occupying force. The War Diary laconically reported the tug’s contribution as ‘… in addition to harbour duties’ Forceful helped salvage an aircraft, rescued an aircrew, and stood by for rescue duties. The last were during evacuations of Timor after increased enemy pressure from August, the grounding and destruction of the destroyer HMAS Voyager in September on a supply run; the loss of the corvette HMAS Armidale on another Timor mission in December led to destroyers taking off the guerrillas. HMAS Arunta retrieved the last group on 8 January 1943.
The 2005 recollections of Laurie Crowe flesh out some details. Laurie and three other ABs joined the tug on 2 December 1942, a month after its arrival in Darwin. By then the peacetime crew of 14 had swelled to 24 – 17 men slept in hammocks in the forecastle with another five in the deckhouse. The captain’s cabin was on the portside under the bridge with the first lieutenant to starboard.
The ‘general harbour duties’ of Forceful’s few appearances in Melville’s War Diary were not quite the same as those the tug had performed in peacetime in the Brisbane River. While agreeing that ‘… our duties were mainly assisting shipping to berth and to leave’ Laurie Crowe pointed out a special hazard. The wreck of Neptune lay close to and parallel with the main wharf, making assisting ships there tricky. Extricating a Liberty ship grounded behind the wharf during an air raid after it had tried to slip out unassisted was another unusual harbour duty.
Two further regular tasks were towing a coal barge to refuel the two vessels operating the port’s boom defence gates and, every three months, towing the targets for the regular firing practice for Darwin’s warships.
The RAAF aircraft salvage assistance on 27 March 1943 was a little further afield, at Point Charles on the north-western edge of Cox Peninsula, west of Darwin.
Four months earlier, before Laurie’s group joined, on 4 November 1942 Forceful had rescued the six survivors of an American B-26 that had ditched 65 km west of Bathurst Island. During a raid on Dili enemy fire had put one engine out of action and, when the remaining engine gave out, the pilot ditched into the sea. The turret gunner was the only crewman not to survive the impact and the other six, including the RAAF co-pilot, Sergeant John Simms, spent an uncomfortable night in a life raft until, at 6 a.m., ‘… Forceful approached through the misty morning air, picked them up, and returned them safely to shore.’
This was not Forceful’s only involvement in Timor operations. Laurie Crowe recalled ‘… whenever a destroyer went over there Forceful would leave Darwin ten hours before to stand by while the destroyers were there.’ The official history noted that only for Arunta’s final evacuation the tug ‘… was stationed north of Bathurst Island for sea/air rescue duties.’
Between 12 April and 6 May 1943 Forceful operated from Thursday Island supporting the strengthening of Macarthur’s left flank by towing lighters and pontoons to Merauke for a wharf and water transport. The missions were not without incident with once a towing line wrapping around an anchor cable and, on another occasion, a top rudder gudgeon having to be repaired by the crew at sea. Nature also weighed in on another trip. Returning to Thursday Island the tug was pounded by a cyclone with strong winds and heavy seas flooding the mess deck and forepeak. As well, scalding spray from water coming down the vents and bouncing off the boilers meant the stokers had to protect themselves by donning seaboots and oilskins.
Forceful left Darwin for Brisbane in August 1943. The Queensland Maritime Museum’s Brian Martin and Rod Macleod wrote of it towing a disabled landing craft on its last Navy voyage. Laurie Crowe remembered he was on the helm when Forceful tied up near the Story Bridge on 29 August. Six weeks later, on 11 October, the tug paid off and was returned to its owners.
Forceful’s Navy service spanned only twenty months of the six-year war. Commissioned over two years after hostilities began (but less than two months into the Pacific conflict) the vessel paid off almost two years before the end of the war. The answer to the question of why the Navy service was so short is not obvious. Yet it’s possible the vessel was returned to its owners and service on the Brisbane River for a very simple reason. By June 1943 shipping arrivals in Brisbane were four times greater than in 1941 and in the next year the figure rose further. Forceful’s contribution to the war effort was probably greater at home in civilian colours than in the Navy at Fremantle or Darwin.
But the reasons for the Navy Board commendation for the Fremantle-Darwin transit are more difficult to fathom.
Ernest Hutchison, the ‘H’ of the First Naval Member’s ‘A word of approbation to H in due course would not be out of place’, was a 50-year-old Lieutenant RANR(S). Melbourne born, but a West Australian resident, he was serving in Intelligence at HMAS Leeuwin when appointed to his brief command of Forceful. Subsequent appointments were mainly in shore postings in the west and he was discharged on 26 March 1947.
Hutchison’s RAN Record of Service notes, ‘Previous service with Royal Navy during hostilities 1914-18.’ On 4 September 1918 he had transferred to the RANR ‘…to be Discharged Shore on date following arrival in Cerberus from UK.’ His appointment was terminated in 7 January 1919, one month before he gained his merchant marine master’s ticket.
In a December 1948 letter in The Navy Hutchison threw some light on his early merchant navy service. ‘I served in that vessel [the three-masted sailing ship, Ben Lee] for some considerable time about 40 years ago trading between Australia, the west coast of South America and Europe.’ He would have been at that time in his late teens, and this is possibly where he acquired his tattoos, an Australian flag on his left arm and a kangaroo on his right.
His 1917 RNR service on the Q Ship Penshurst brought recognition. A Mentioned in Despatches came ‘… for excellent spirit and perfect discipline on the occasion of an action with an enemy submarine 2.7.17.’ Another MIDcame for efficiency in action against another submarine ‘… on 19.8.17 and afterwards in bringing the ship safely into harbour in her waterlogged condition.’ The honours culminated in the award of the Distinguished Service Cross for his ‘very plucky’ actions which saved lives in the Christmas Eve 1917 sinking of HMS Penshurst (LEUT C. Naylor) in action with U-110. These actions possibly contributed to the Naval Prize Fund payment of £5895 entry on his record.
Newspaper articles of the late 1930s identify Captain Hutchison as a West Australian fisheries inspector and he commented in the Report of Proceedings on his experience ‘… on the NW coast of WA.’ So, it’s reasonable to assume his merchant and Royal Navy experience, as well as local knowledge, qualified him for the Fremantle-Darwin command which he assumed only a month after LEUT George Good had taken it up with LEUT John Sinclair as his First Lieutenant. Then, on 31 October, immediately after arriving in Darwin Hutchison returned command to Good who later showed his blue-water competence by taking Forceful into the Timor Sea and to Thursday Island and Merauke. Why then did Hutchison replace him on the transit?
There was an ominous sentence near the end of Hutchison’s Report: ‘A separate report will be submitted covering Lieutenant J. Sinclair RANR(S).’
Sinclair, a 28-year-old Glaswegian, was sentenced three weeks later ‘… to forfeit 3 month’s seniority, dismissal his ship, and severely reprimanded for misbehaviour in Fremantle while attached to HMAS Forceful.’ Six months further on, on 21 May 1943, Sinclair’s appointment was terminated and he was discharged.
Sinclair’s ‘misbehaviour’ was not specified. Perhaps general problems with the crew? Laurie Crowe had heard that he and his three companions were drafted to the tug to replace crew members who had ‘played up’ on passage to Darwin. Had crew misbehaviour been associated with Sinclair’s in Fremantle?
Contrary to Crowe’s impression, Hutchison had glowingly described the crew’s performance on passage. He assessed the engine room and stokehold personnel as ‘… all experienced men [who] performed their various duties accordingly.’ Some of the seamen, he reported were ‘… inexperienced, but they certainly made up for this by enthusiasm’. Commenting on the leave granted in Port Hedland he stated ‘All hands went ashore neatly turned out and their appearance and behaviour were certainly a credit to the service.’ He went on, ‘This latter comment can also be applied to their behaviour throughout the whole of the voyage.’ Such detailed praise seems unusual. Did it follow less than creditable behaviour before?
Forceful made the 11-day voyage alone through areas of recent enemy activity. True, it was armed with a 20 mm Oerlikon and a .303 Vickers machine gun as well as two PAC (Parachute and Cable) Projectors, but these would have been little defence against any enemy sea or air attack. The PACs, particularly, inspired little confidence. The projector sent a steel cable to less than 200 metres in the air where a parachute opened to slow its descent. It was then hoped an enemy plane would fly into the cable and crash. Crews believed the hope was a faint one.
Four days into the transit, north of Carnarvon, these defences were manned when an aircraft, which turned out to be a friendly Anson or Hudson, circled the tug. As the ship made a complete circle ‘… to keep guns trained on target’ the messdeck flooded and dinner slid off the galley stove. Since Hutchison reported that overall ‘… the ship’s cook did an excellent job’ this sole casualty was the only culinary disappointment of the voyage.
During a five hour stop at Carnarvon and ten hours at Port Hedland local labour loaded stores and water, and spared the crew the onerous task of coaling ship.
An unusual aspect of the voyage was that, en route, Forceful passed through and logged, ‘as instructed,’ 14 previously allocated positions. Lettered A to L, the time of passing each one, except for position H which was unable to be reached because of contrary weather, was logged. The report made no comment on these positions.
All in all, this 11-day transit of a tug through positions ‘as instructed’ under a First World War decorated voyage-only captain who subsequently received a Naval Board commendation instigated by the First Naval Member added a touch of mystery to Forceful’s brief Royal Australian Navy career.
By Editor:
This illuminating paper was discovered in our archive but to date we have been unable to find the author. Any further information would be greatly appreciated.