- Author
- Ricketts, D C
- Subjects
- Ship histories and stories
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- June 1978 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
While in Hong Kong, we were given a complete refit. The work was done by Chinese dockyard workers, and I have never, in my time at sea, seen such wire splicing. I could splice wire, but these men could finish and splice while I was getting ready to start.
While Psyche was in Hong Kong, turbulence in China had led the authorities to fear for the safety of the European population in Canton. The Royal Navy decided to send a gunboat up river to evacuate them, and I was ordered to join its crew. So the gunboat Moorhen was commissioned, and sailed for Canton, coming under sporadic fire en route: It was then that I received my one and only war wound, when a bullet hit the plating close to me, and the nickel shell hit me on the side of the face and went through to take a tooth out.
In some places, especially on turns, we often went close to one or other bank and on one occasion, an old Chinese man threw mud at us, but a burst of machine gun fire over his head sent him scurrying for his life.
About halfway to Canton, we met a mission steamer which had aboard most of the Europeans who wanted to leave Canton, so we returned to Hong Kong, and the Moorhen was paid off, and we returned to HMAS Psyche.
While we were in Hong Kong, Admiral Anstruther was posted elsewhere, and until he left, the new Admiral flew his flag on the Psyche, which is something the RAN should be proud of, that an Australian ship should have been, if only for a day, flagship of the China Station.
After a period of patrolling the northern coast of China, when we went as far as Japan, we were sent back to the Indian Ocean and went to patrol round the Nicobar Islands.
During our wanderings in the area, we experienced a number of adventures and saw some unusual sights. At one time, a ship – I think it was the Warwickshire – was mined not far from Colombo (the mine had probably been laid by the German raider Wolf).
We were not far from the spot where she went down, when we saw something on the surface about a mile away, and we circled it slowly to examine it. It looked to be about eight feet long and five or six feet wide, and floated well out of the water – a dirty white colour, with weeds and barnacles growing on it.
We closed it and opened fire with rifles, and could hear the bullets ricocheting away from it. We then fired at it with three pounder guns, and the little shells burst on it, but did no damage; so we fired a four inch gun at it, and the second shell split it open, and we lowered a boat and went to examine it. It turned out to be a huge turtle, which appeared to have been dead, and kept afloat by gases inside it.
Once we sailed close to where a terrific fight was going on between a Sperm Whale and a huge Squid. The whale was enormous, and the squid had terribly long tentacles, which it seemed to be trying to use to cover the whale’s blow hole to suffocate it.
Back in the Indian Ocean, the round of visits to different ports went on.
Ackyab was interesting to me, because it was there that I saw in a bazaar some Australian apples and a feeling of nostalgia came over me, and I just had to have an apple, which was woody and bitter to taste, having probably been in cool storage for some time. But it was an Australian apple, and brought a bit of our country to one who was, in years, still a boy.
Calcutta was a contrast of big buildings and hovels.
The Hooghly River is tidal, and the ships had to be moored head and stem to avoid swinging with the turn of the tide, and disrupting normal river traffic.
The river is holy to Hindus, and they disposed of the bodies of their dead in the river, and it was a daily job to go over the side with a boat hook, to push the bodies clear of the moorings.
Our ship was in Singapore in 1916 when there was a mutiny by some of the Indian troops, and the ringleaders were shot on a parade ground not far from Raffles Hotel.
Singapore was the first and last eastern city HMAS Psyche visited during her tour of duty. En route home from Singapore it seems Psyche nearly had a run-in with the formidable German raider Wolf, which was heading for Singapore with the intention of mining the seas around the island.
In the dark south of Singapore, Wolf passed a British cruiser, which didn’t spot the German raider. Psyche’s course was a little too southerly to fit in easily with Wolf’s reported sighting; still, she was the only British cruiser in the vicinity.
Psyche was short on coal, and called at Portuguese Timor’s main town, Dili, to refuel. If the heavily armed German raider had known how short of coal Psyche was, the little cruiser would have proved an easy prey.
We returned to Sydney after two and a half years away, and were met by girls shaking money boxes, collecting for the War Chest. We asked to be allowed to get ashore before we were asked for any money.
Although it was a necessary job that HMAS Psyche carried out, it was also a pretty thankless one. Throughout her tour of duty, the ship was never really free from sickness, and once, Psyche had to be called to Singapore for an inquiry into certain incidents aboard. The continual bouts of sickness reduced the number of stokers fit for duty at a time when the weather was bad and efficient work was needed in the stoke hold. The urgency of the situation later led to discontent and some display of indiscipline.
In July 1916, sickness reached a peak, when 77 crew were in hospital ashore, in Hong Kong, and another 41 were on the sick list aboard ship.
Her final relief from those hot, sickly waters that she had patrolled for so long, only came when American warships joined the war effort. The British were then able to send out HMS Suffolk to take her place, and Psyche made a slow trip home.
It had to be a slow trip home – her bottom was so foul that she could only maintain 75 per cent of her normal speed.
She arrived back in Sydney on September 28th, 1917 – two years and 43 days after she had last left Sydney.