Kookaburra2011
Nov 30, 1945: WWII RAN Victualling ship M.V. CHARON, Simpson Harbour, New Britain - AWM.
866. The 3,600 tons [gross] M.V. CHARON was built by the Caledon Ship Building & Engineering Co at Dundee in 1936 for a joint venture between the Blue Funnel Line subsidiary Ocean Steam Ship Co. and the West Australian Steam Navigation Co, which were running a service operation between Singapore and Western Australian ports in the 1930s. On coming into service in 1936 she became fully owned by the Ocean Steam Ship Co. when the WASN Co. pulled out of the hotly contested trade.
CHARON and her sister ship GORGON, had strengthened hull bottoms which enabled them to call at ports where they were required to settle on the mud at low tide.
A modern ship when war erupted she was requisitioned by the Australian Government on March 18, 1942, having taken part in the last convoy to Java.
Armed with a four-inch gun on the stern and smaller weapons, she appears to have retained a mainly merchant marine crew, and was not formally commissioned into the RAN. However she did extensive service with the Australian military forces, making more than 30 victualling voyages between Australia and the large forward base at Milne Bay, New Guinea during the Pac ific war.
In the photograph above, after the war's end, CHARON is seen bringing a cargo of live sheep into Simpson Harbour, New Britain for the Army units re-occupying Rabaul.
It is one of a series of photographs, with others showing Army men mustering the sheep on horseback ashore.
Returned to her owners soon after CHARON remained a familiar sight in West Australian ports throughout the 1950s, servicing the Singapore run again. She was scrapped in Singapore in 1965.
Photo: Naval Historical Collection, Australian War Memorial, it appears in Ross Gillett's book 'Australian and New Zealand Warships 1914-1945' [Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1983] p222.
Nov 30, 1945: WWII RAN Victualling ship M.V. CHARON, Simpson Harbour, New Britain - AWM.
866. The 3,600 tons [gross] M.V. CHARON was built by the Caledon Ship Building & Engineering Co at Dundee in 1936 for a joint venture between the Blue Funnel Line subsidiary Ocean Steam Ship Co. and the West Australian Steam Navigation Co, which were running a service operation between Singapore and Western Australian ports in the 1930s. On coming into service in 1936 she became fully owned by the Ocean Steam Ship Co. when the WASN Co. pulled out of the hotly contested trade.
CHARON and her sister ship GORGON, had strengthened hull bottoms which enabled them to call at ports where they were required to settle on the mud at low tide.
A modern ship when war erupted she was requisitioned by the Australian Government on March 18, 1942, having taken part in the last convoy to Java.
Armed with a four-inch gun on the stern and smaller weapons, she appears to have retained a mainly merchant marine crew, and was not formally commissioned into the RAN. However she did extensive service with the Australian military forces, making more than 30 victualling voyages between Australia and the large forward base at Milne Bay, New Guinea during the Pac ific war.
In the photograph above, after the war's end, CHARON is seen bringing a cargo of live sheep into Simpson Harbour, New Britain for the Army units re-occupying Rabaul.
It is one of a series of photographs, with others showing Army men mustering the sheep on horseback ashore.
Returned to her owners soon after CHARON remained a familiar sight in West Australian ports throughout the 1950s, servicing the Singapore run again. She was scrapped in Singapore in 1965.
Photo: Naval Historical Collection, Australian War Memorial, it appears in Ross Gillett's book 'Australian and New Zealand Warships 1914-1945' [Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1983] p222.