- Author
- Thomson, Max
- Subjects
- History - general
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 1989 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Any wartime night at sea was long. Men came off watch with their eyes ‘sticking out like organ stops’ after four hours of trying to pierce the gloom in never-ending vigilance and the search for lurking dangers.
As the war progressed and ships came to be fitted with Radar to penetrate the night darkness, convoy steaming dispositions became more assured and with so much less of the drama that evolved in pre-Radar days when bridge, deck and crow’s nest lookouts were the only night-time ‘eyes’.
It was always something of a relieved ship’s company that turned-to for the obligatory dawn action stations and the satisfaction of seeing the night gloom give way to the first glimmers of daylight with an assurance that the ships in company were still in position.
Yet there was a fascinating compensation for those Navy men — appreciated properly all these years afterwards. Ultimately, after prolonged periods away, their ships returned to Sydney as the fleet base. A run ashore was top priority but when men were confined on board as ‘duty watch’, they found that even a middle or morning watch was, in retrospect anyhow, quite a memorable experience. Aboard their ship lying in Farm Cove adjacent to where the Opera House now stands or shackled to a buoy in the naval anchorage off Garden Island or in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney Harbour by night presented a spectacular scene of great contrast for men more accustomed to nights at sea under rigid blackout conditions. Despite the wartime brown-out and the lack of the towering skyscrapers that dominate today, Sydney by night was always a spectacle, especially for those aboard ships lying in the harbour with the full grandeur of the scene totally surrounding them.
Trams as well as trains rumbled over the harbour bridge in those days, with the ever-present ferries scurrying back and forth plus the arrivals and departures at all hours of the great convoys of troopships, transports, tankers and their Navy escorts.
The break of dawn, viewed from a warship lying in the harbour, represented a special memory for those privileged to have seen it. As the lights on all sides faded and the first rays of sun picked up points of significance around the harbour, the city itself began to stir into its wartime frenzy of activity; culminating a little later with the armada of warship’s own boats and charter craft that operated the shuttles from Man-o-War Steps and other key points to return libertymen to their ships after a night’s run ashore.
Today tourists galore pay top dollars to enjoy the harbour’s night-time scene from positions of luxury high around the harbour foreshore. Sailors of the fleet certainly did not have that touch of luxury aboard their stark steel warships, but they did have an experience which, all these years afterwards, has come to be regarded and appreciated for the unique opportunity it represented under Sydney’s wartime conditions.