COMPENDIUM ESSAY: Boys and Battleships - 20 pictures from a torrid 20th Century romance.

5488. The kid with big ears, skinny legs and dangerous footwear has borrowed his Dad's old fashioned bike without mudguards to get here. His shock-haired blonde mate has got his sister's Malvern Star. Words fail - one can't express what a total, complete abandonment of all pride it would take from him to do that: for a boy in the 1950s to get on a girl's bike like that in public.

 

Well, at least it hasn't got a basket on the front. But notice how he's a little abashed, disadvantaged, and standing back fractionally, at the HMAS ANZAC [II] sentry's approach. The other boy is completely happy and at ease within himself, thinking about what it would be like to get a bayonet in the guts.

 

By the look of both of them, one would say they're Tigers barrackers from Richmond, or Swans followers from South Melbourne. Anyway, the circumstances show they really HAD to get here.

 

Boys and battleships in the 20th Century, one of the strongest attractions known to man. One that lingers on.

 

This is not actually a battleship - it's a Battle Class destroyer. But anything grey with guns. The fascination filters down.

 

It's just a guess, but we would say this is late February 1954, the Royal Visit, with ANZAC being one of the ships that escorted the Royal Yacht GOTHIC into Melbourne to pick up the Queen and Duke, who were arriving there by air. The destroyer had itself carried them on earlier stages of their visit, to the Great Barrier Reef. So, more notions of gallantry, loyalty and romance.

 

Now battleships, if not destroyers, are obsolete. Yet they were, and remain, the most complex pieces of machinery ever devised and built by Man. For a boy in the mid-20th Century it was as if their power, their pomp and their ceremony - along with the concepts of pursuit, rescue, escape , and duel at sea - were all conceived to grip, and trap a boy's imagination, whole generations of boys, somehow imbued with a Code.

 

Not the worst one, either. Like battleships, it may have been left behind. But it would never let them go.

 

BOYS AND BATTLESHIPS:

 

Pic 5400. The EMDEN blown to pieces all over again, in the Brisbane River, Ca. 1920

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6590347289/

 

Pic 5: NZ schoolboys pass judgment on RAN battle group, Aotea Quay Wellington, Feb. 25 1950.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3808277228/in/photostream

 

Pic 66. Greeting USS Mullany, Newcastle NSW, early 1950s.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3814840441/@N05/6603620429/

 

Pic. 154: Barefoot boy sees HMAS MURCHISON tied up, Nov. 1950, Kings Wharf Newcastle, NSW.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3847230373/

 

Pic 2224. Boy, bike, and HMAS CULGOA, Newstead Point Park , Brisbane 1950s.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4711214335/

 

Pic 4885: Boys, bike, and HMAS AUSTRALIA [II], Newstead Point Park, Brisbane, May 24, 1954.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6124243624/

 

Pic 2585: Boys, young and old, view carrier HMAS VENGEANCE in the Brisbane River.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4842313115/

 

Pic 244. Taken by Dads to see corvette COOTAMUNDRA, Newcastle NSW Ca. 1950.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3875076130/

 

Pic 245. Boys and Dads survey COOTAMUNDRA tie up Kings Wharf Newcastle NSW.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3875144596/in/photostr...

 

Pic 2586, Short pants wave to HMAS VENGEANCE, Fremantle, March 3, 1953.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4842929145/in/photostr...

 

Pic 1604, the boy at the ferry rail, and HMAS AUSTRALIA [II] Ca. 1950.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4550350302/

 

 

Pic 5410. Kookaburra in first long pants, with HMAS QUICKMATCH, 1958.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6603620429/

 

Pic 1459: The Dead Boy views HMS ENCOUNTER. Brisbane, 1910

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4481324901/

 

Pic 4473. Boys consider grounded HMAS BARCOO’S situation, Glenelg SA 1948.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/5688748130/

 

Pic 139: Altar boys view VENDETTA, funeral voyage of PM Joseph Lyons, April 11, 1939.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/3844176265/in/photostream

 

Pic 2096: Street kids salute VAMPIRE visitors in Saigon

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4684350182/

 

Pic 1117. The bike brigade gathers for LEANDER, Princes Pier Port Melbourne, 1938.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4366944763/

 

Pic 6134. Boys, one on bike, admire Fairmile B ML825 at Williamstown. A.C. Green.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/7683487168/in/photostream

 

Pic. 3212 HMAS STUART [I] and HMAS WATERHEN bring boys with their bikes to a dock at Williamstown.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/5119464570/

 

Pic 6489: Youngsters on Fremantle dock in May 1949, with HMAS AUSTRALIA [II] .

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/8467593730/in/photostream

 

 

The end.

Done