- Author
- Swinden, Greg
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories
- Tags
- None noted.
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 2022 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
By Greg Swinden
Jan (Julian) Adrian Stockwin was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England on 15 January 1944. His initial education was at an English grammar school where he performed poorly: at age 14 his father enrolled him in the Indefatigable and National Sea Training School for Boys, located in Wales. The school trained boys for service in the Merchant Navy and Royal Navy. Stockwin later stated he had developed a love of the sea due to his uncle Tom Clay, who had been a seaman serving in square rigged ships and had, according to family history, sailed around Cape Horn in the Cutty Sark.
Julian joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice artificer on 11 January 1960, but when his family migrated to Tasmania he was permitted to transfer to the Royal Australian Navy, doing so on 27 June 1960 and was allocated service number 42397. He undertook his apprentice shipwright training at the RAN Apprentice Training Establishment HMAS Nirimba located at Quakers Hill in Western Sydney. As part of this training he undertook short periods of service in the shore bases HMA Ships Creswell, Rushcutter and Waterhen, attached to the base workshops. His ‘graduation project’ was working on a naval whaler (a 27-foot clinker hull sailing vessel). These wooden vessels were in use in RAN ships up until the 1970s and could be sailed or rowed.
He completed his four-year apprenticeship and was promoted to Naval Shipwright 3rd Class, colloquially known in the navy as a ‘chippie’, in December 1963. Julian joined the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne on 13 January 1964 and was on board when the carrier collided with the destroyer HMAS Voyager, on the night of 10 February 1964 during routine flying training exercises off the NSW south coast. Voyager sank with the loss of 82 lives and the carrier was badly damaged, needing several months in Sydney’s Cockatoo Island Dockyard for repair. Julian states that on the night of the collision he was part of the boat’s crew searching for survivors while other chippies were involved in damage control on board Melbourne, shoring up the aircraft carrier’s badly damaged bow.
Melbourne was ready for service again in mid-May 1964 and following work-up embarked the Carrier Air Group and deployed to Southeast Asia to undertake exercises as part of the Far East Strategic Reserve. Port visits were conducted at Manus Island, Subic Bay, Hong Kong, Singapore, Pulau Tioman and Rabaul before returning to Sydney in earlySeptember. Exercises off the Australian east coast took place later in the year. When off watch Julian enjoyed playing a horn in the ship’s band but admitted he was very much an amateur musician.
In 1965 Melbourne again deployed to Southeast Asia, in company with the tanker HMAS Supply and the destroyer escort HMAS Parramatta for exercises and visits to Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand. In June 1965 Melbourne was part of the escort for the fast troop transport HMAS Sydney taking the first Australian troops to South Vietnam. The carrier returned to Sydney in late June but deployed again in September and escorted Sydney, with additional troops embarked for service in South Vietnam, to the South China Sea before returning to Sydney in October, via Port Moresby, Rabaul and Bougainville. Julian Stockwin was by now an Acting Naval Shipwright 2nd Class (Petty Officer) and on 11 October 1965 transferred to the tanker Supply, but following Christmas leave he was granted a free discharge from the RAN on 29 January 1966.
After leaving the navy at 22 years of age, Stockwin worked at the Purdon and Featherstone shipyard in Hobart, Tasmania. This firm operated a major slipway for wooden boat construction and repair. Julian was a voracious reader from a young age and recalled the joy of visiting the public library in Basingstoke and obtaining his first junior library card; with the works of C.S. Forester (the Hornblower series) amongst his favoured reading. He later studied psychology and Southeast Asian culture at the University of Tasmania and conducted some post-graduate work in cross culture psychology. He worked as a teacher for two years, practised as a psychologist and met his wife to be Kathy.
In the 1970s Julian and Kathy travelled to South East Asia and later resided in Hong Kong where he became involved in the manufacture and design of computers and software development. Julian also joined the Royal Navy Reserve as a naval control of shipping (NCS) officer. As a Lieutenant he was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1988 New Year’s Honours List for services as a Naval Control of Shipping Officer and on 28 September 1993, as a Lieutenant Commander, he was awarded a Royal Navy Reserve Decoration (RD) for 15 years of naval service. He also later received a number of service and campaign medals from the Australian Government for his service in Southeast Asia during 1964‑65.
Julian and Kathy travelled to England in 1990 and he continued as a computer software designer. In 1996, after completion of a major software project for a NATO merchant shipping exercise, he decided to embark on another phase of his life and commenced writing maritime fiction. His main effort has been the Thomas Kydd series with the first book published in 2001 (and now having reached 26 books) detailing one man’s journey from pressed man to admiral in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. He has also written The Silk Tree and The Powder of Death. He currently resides in Ivybridge, Devon with his wife Kathy.