![Circa 1920: HMAS AUSTRALIA [I] off Man O' War Steps, Sydney - and the incidence of mutiny in the RAN - NSW Govt. Printer, SLNSW. | by Kookaburra2011](http://live.staticflickr.com/4034/4537799070_546d774a4d.jpg)
Kookaburra2011
Circa 1920: HMAS AUSTRALIA [I] off Man O' War Steps, Sydney - and the incidence of mutiny in the RAN - NSW Govt. Printer, SLNSW.
1559. In 1919, when the eight-year-old RAN was enduring the problem of a mutiny on its flagship, that great but unassuming man John Rushworth Jellicoe - Fleet Admiral, Viscount Jellicoe - arrived in Australia on HMS NEW ZEALAND, HMAS AUSTRALIA's sister ship.
Jellicoe was in the course of a world cruise preparing his postwar report on the future of the Dominion navies, but while he was here Prime Minister William Morris Hughes siezed on the opportunity to ask Lord Jellicoe whether he thought young Australians were amenable to naval discipline.
With great good sense, and maybe some real insight into the democratized and egalitarian Australian character, Jellicoe replied that he believed Australians could accept discipline provided the reasons for that discipline were explained to them so that they could understand it.
The story is told in naval historian Tom Frame and economic historian Kevin Baker's book 'Mutiny!: Naval Insurrections in Australia and New Zealand' [ Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2000]. In that book, the authors say "Since 1916 there have been more mutinies in the Royal Australian Navy than in any other navy maintained by an English-speaking nation' - a claim quickly challenged by an Australian War Memorial reviewer, who maintained that it was not backed up by evidence, but reached by adding mere disciplinary hearings and conscientious objection claims to the figures.
The figures are hopelessly confused anyway. Despite the stern Articles of War, mutiny is an almost taboo subject area, covered up in many cases and confused by differences of interpretation. In the modern era, one man's mutiny [usually the COs or CXO's] is another man's industrial problem.
The authors Frame and Baker seem to have chosen 1916 from which to date their claim of the RAN's revolting record, because that is the year in which RAN mutinies first occurred or were dealt with. The people concerned were stokers, again, on the obsolescent Pelorus Class cruiser HMAS PSYCHE, and almost 200 members of the famous RAN Bridging Train, the most decorated RAN unit in WWI, an engineering unit whose men had been among the first in, and were certainly the last out of Gallipoli.
On HMAS PSYCHE stokers refused duty after a period of monotonous tropical patrol duty in the Bay of Bengal when bad food and appalling conditions had seen the ship riven by illness. At one point almost half her crew were admitted to hospital in Hong Kong, and after a hearing in Singapore the old cruiser was withdrawn from active service.
The RAN Bridging Train mutiny occurred on the Greek island of Mudros in January 1916, when an administrative foul-up caused the men not to be paid for a long period. Despite complaints the problem was left unattended, and trouble erupted when the men then learned that their families in Australia had spent Christmas 1915 without their family component payments. That is, the families had been left throughout Christmas without money.
During WWI a mutiny also took place at sea on the armed sloop HMAS FANTOME on July 26, 1917. On a vessel also riven with illness - 107 of her crew had been hospitalized in Hong Kong - the trouble erupted when her CO Acting Commander Tobias Jones RN, a notorious disciplinarian, decided they all needed 'smartening up' and added drilling on the quarterdeck to everyone's duties when they returned to sea. Jones had previously been cautioned for caning a boy seaman [physical punished was outlawed in the RAN]. When some men refused the drilling duties and stokers joined in support, it resulted in courts martial being held at Singapore at which 12 men were sentenced to two years jail with hard labour.
It's not possible to be comprehensive here, but we'll look at a few other issues in WWII, and comparable incidents within the Royal Canadian Navy - the RAN's closest match - with coming photos.
This photo: NSW Government Printer Collection, State Library of NSW [Mitchell Library]. The photograph has appeared in the April 1984 issue of 'The Navy' magazine, the periodical of the Navy League of Australia, and other sources.
A two-part COMPENDIUM of 100 HMAS AUSTRALIA [I] images on the Photostream begins at pic NO. 5476, here:
www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6785541017/in/photostr...
Circa 1920: HMAS AUSTRALIA [I] off Man O' War Steps, Sydney - and the incidence of mutiny in the RAN - NSW Govt. Printer, SLNSW.
1559. In 1919, when the eight-year-old RAN was enduring the problem of a mutiny on its flagship, that great but unassuming man John Rushworth Jellicoe - Fleet Admiral, Viscount Jellicoe - arrived in Australia on HMS NEW ZEALAND, HMAS AUSTRALIA's sister ship.
Jellicoe was in the course of a world cruise preparing his postwar report on the future of the Dominion navies, but while he was here Prime Minister William Morris Hughes siezed on the opportunity to ask Lord Jellicoe whether he thought young Australians were amenable to naval discipline.
With great good sense, and maybe some real insight into the democratized and egalitarian Australian character, Jellicoe replied that he believed Australians could accept discipline provided the reasons for that discipline were explained to them so that they could understand it.
The story is told in naval historian Tom Frame and economic historian Kevin Baker's book 'Mutiny!: Naval Insurrections in Australia and New Zealand' [ Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2000]. In that book, the authors say "Since 1916 there have been more mutinies in the Royal Australian Navy than in any other navy maintained by an English-speaking nation' - a claim quickly challenged by an Australian War Memorial reviewer, who maintained that it was not backed up by evidence, but reached by adding mere disciplinary hearings and conscientious objection claims to the figures.
The figures are hopelessly confused anyway. Despite the stern Articles of War, mutiny is an almost taboo subject area, covered up in many cases and confused by differences of interpretation. In the modern era, one man's mutiny [usually the COs or CXO's] is another man's industrial problem.
The authors Frame and Baker seem to have chosen 1916 from which to date their claim of the RAN's revolting record, because that is the year in which RAN mutinies first occurred or were dealt with. The people concerned were stokers, again, on the obsolescent Pelorus Class cruiser HMAS PSYCHE, and almost 200 members of the famous RAN Bridging Train, the most decorated RAN unit in WWI, an engineering unit whose men had been among the first in, and were certainly the last out of Gallipoli.
On HMAS PSYCHE stokers refused duty after a period of monotonous tropical patrol duty in the Bay of Bengal when bad food and appalling conditions had seen the ship riven by illness. At one point almost half her crew were admitted to hospital in Hong Kong, and after a hearing in Singapore the old cruiser was withdrawn from active service.
The RAN Bridging Train mutiny occurred on the Greek island of Mudros in January 1916, when an administrative foul-up caused the men not to be paid for a long period. Despite complaints the problem was left unattended, and trouble erupted when the men then learned that their families in Australia had spent Christmas 1915 without their family component payments. That is, the families had been left throughout Christmas without money.
During WWI a mutiny also took place at sea on the armed sloop HMAS FANTOME on July 26, 1917. On a vessel also riven with illness - 107 of her crew had been hospitalized in Hong Kong - the trouble erupted when her CO Acting Commander Tobias Jones RN, a notorious disciplinarian, decided they all needed 'smartening up' and added drilling on the quarterdeck to everyone's duties when they returned to sea. Jones had previously been cautioned for caning a boy seaman [physical punished was outlawed in the RAN]. When some men refused the drilling duties and stokers joined in support, it resulted in courts martial being held at Singapore at which 12 men were sentenced to two years jail with hard labour.
It's not possible to be comprehensive here, but we'll look at a few other issues in WWII, and comparable incidents within the Royal Canadian Navy - the RAN's closest match - with coming photos.
This photo: NSW Government Printer Collection, State Library of NSW [Mitchell Library]. The photograph has appeared in the April 1984 issue of 'The Navy' magazine, the periodical of the Navy League of Australia, and other sources.
A two-part COMPENDIUM of 100 HMAS AUSTRALIA [I] images on the Photostream begins at pic NO. 5476, here:
www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6785541017/in/photostr...