Feb. 22, 1955: Cruiser HMAS HOBART [I] and one of the most muddle-minded episodes in RAN history - Cyril Renwick Collection.

6800. Let's pause first and look carefully at this wonderful old industrial photo of the 7,150 tons [standard]--9000 tons [full load] Modified Leander Class cruiser HMAS HOBART [I] and her dockyard setting. The subject of a botched and eventually abandoned modernization project, the cruiser sits high in the floating dock at the State Dockyard, Newcastle [NSW], which was opened in 1942 for wartime work on the bones of an old dockyard and engineering company closed in the 1930s. The second dockyard itself eventually closed in 1987.

 

As seen here the dockyard stood on Dykes Point in Newcastle's Hunter River estuary, and there's a gorgeous bucket dredge and two tugboats on the lower left; also a rickety old observation post of some kind on the wharf in the foreground.

 

In fact, as Photostream followers will know, we have had many superb industrial shots of this the utterly muddled and costly project, but we think this one is undoubtedly the best of them. We found it in the online image archives of the late and celebrated Hunter region Economics professor and researcher Cyril Renwick [1920-2010]. It is likely from a sequence of images taken for the Newcastle Morning Herald in early 1955, eight months before the project was abandoned, after more than three years work and the expenditure of one million pounds, a huge sum in those days.

 

Laid down as HMS APOLLO at Devonport in Aug. 1933 and commissioned in Jan. 1936, HOBART [I] was not actually that old when planning for this started in 1950 - 14 years old. A veteran of WWII she had been hit by a torpedo in the Coral Sea on July 20, 1943, and had already undergone substantial re-building at Cockatoo Island as a result, returning top service in the last year of the Pacific War.

 

HOBART served on for two more years after the war ended, mainly on Occupation duties in Japan, but was finally placed in reserve in Dec. 1947.

 

By 1950 the Cold War was becoming ever-more ominous, and the RAN was looking for a modern cruiser to escort the two aircraft carriers it was bringing into service. Faced with difficulties finding a suitable cruiser [which we don't find reasonable - the New Zealand Navy managed to obtain three Improved Dido Class cruisers from the Royal Navy] a somewhat half-baked decision was made to modernize HOBART. What followed was a fiasco in muddled thinking in the Navy planning offices.

 

We've written about this in many Entries - not always getting it right [we'd always somehow assumed that industrial troubles at the dockyard, rife on the Australian waterfront in those days, was the main problem]. But the problem it seems was indecision, and changing decisions, and circumstances, in the Navy.

 

We're going to let an extract from Wikipedia take up their version of the story of what happened "... In 1950, following the failure to find a suitable new British cruiser design, and a dollar shortage preventing the purchase of US vessels, it was decided to modernize HOBART and use her as a stop-gap aircraft carrier escort until the Daring Class destroyers entered service, after which she would serve as a troop convoy escort to the Middle East in the event of a future conflict.This planned role changed in 1952 following a series of financial cutbacks and the realization that the Battle class destroyers were suitable carrier escorts; instead, HOBART was to replace AUSTRALIA [II] as the training cruiser. She was taken to the Newcastle State Dockyard for modification.

 

During 1953 and 1954, further reductions in the RAN saw one carrier taken off active duty for use as a training vessel, eliminating the need to return HOBART to service. Other options for reactivating the cruiser were explored, including conversion to a guided missile ship, but by April 1955, all proposals were abandoned. Despite the conversion work to date having cost £A1 million, the modification was cancelled..."

 

While Wikipedia are not foolproof, we've found their work on the RAN and defence issues generally has almost always been both good and thorough, and this is as cogent an explanation for the HOBART muddle as we have found.

 

What is certain is that the part-modernized HOBART never went to sea under how own power again. Towed back to Sydney by one of the fleet tugs in Dec.1955, she was placed in the reserve fleet at Athol Bight again. As we have seen here on the Photostream many times, she was eventually sold and towed off for scrapping by the Mitsui Corporation in Japan in 1962.

 

Photo: from the Archives of Professor Cyril Renwick [1920-2010] it appears in the State Dockyard Newcastle sequence of the Cultural Collections of Newcastle University, available on Flick, here:

 

www.flickr.com/search/?q=State%20Dockyard%20Newcastle%20

 

A two-part COMPENDIUM of links to the Photostream's 100+ HMAS HOBART [I] images begins at Entry NO. 5464, here:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6734070483/in/photostream

Done