Des Corrigan likes to tell people that, in his career in the Royal Australian Navy: “I sank a ship, paid one off and commissioned another”. He has scores of anecdotes from his eventful life at sea and ashore, but the sinking of HMAS Voyager in February 1964 looms largest. It is also the one he has spoken least about. For the first four years of their long marriage even his wife, Robyn, didn’t know Des had been on the Voyager. Now he’s about to turn 80 and has decided to break his long silence.

Des grew up in Melbourne and from an early age had an ambition to do an apprenticeship with the Australian defence forces. His mother was vehemently against the idea, however, but Des persuaded his father to give permission after Des turned 17. His birthday was on July 15, 1963, and by July 29 he was in the navy.

He graduated from recruit training school in October, after just three months of training. “We were the first intake to do three months instead of six, and I hadn’t started a trade,” he said. Most of the October graduates – 184 – were sent to the flagship of Australia’s navy, the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. Another 72, including Des, were posted to the destroyer HMAS Voyager. Of Des’s intake of 105 recruits, most went to Voyager. As Des recalls, he joined the Voyager at Williamstown Naval Dockyard on Melbourne Cup day in November 1963. Voyager left Melbourne and sailed to Sydney in January, 1964. For many of the new sailors, including Des, it was their first time at sea.

Both the Voyager and the Melbourne were completing major overhauls and refits. In addition to the large number of novice ordinary seamen, the Melbourne had a new captain, navigator and several new officers, and the Voyager also had a new navigator and some fresh watch-keeping officers.

The Australian Government planned to send both ships to South East Asia to support Britain in its efforts to shape the “decolonisation” of the Malay states. The Japanese had expelled the British from Malaya and the Dutch from Indonesia during World War 2, and the local populations resisted the return of their former European masters when the war ended. Indonesia gained independence first and its leader, Sukarno, was disliked by Western governments because he accommodated the locally powerful communist party and wished to remain “non-aligned” – a dangerous stance during the Cold War. America’s CIA devoted major covert resources to removing Sukarno, while also striving to ensure the material riches of Indonesia and West Papua would be available to US corporations. Britain was also fighting to keep a foot in the door in its former Malay colonies, especially in oil-rich North Borneo. Britain called on Commonwealth forces – including Australians – to put down the Malayan communists who had been its wartime allies against the Japanese. This conflict was known as the “Emergency”. Watching from Indonesia, Sukarno was deeply hostile to British machinations and to the 1963 declaration of the new nation of Malaysia. This hostility led to another conflict, dubbed the “Confrontation”.

“We were going up to join other Commonwealth countries in a show of force to intimidate Indonesia. We were also going to be guard of honour at the Tokyo Olympics, which we were looking forward to,” Des recalled.

When he first joined his ship Des was shocked at the state it was in. Still in the throes of its refit, the Voyager looked a mess. “There were dockyard workers in greasy overalls all over her,” he said. “People were welding. There were pipes hanging off everywhere.” Soon though, the ship was transformed and ready for sea. By mid-January it was in Sydney in exercises with other ships preparing for the coming 10-month tour of duty in Asian waters.

By February Des had been in the navy for barely seven months. He believes he may have been the youngest person aboard, but there were other 17-year-olds among a crew with many novices in its ranks. Before dawn on February 10, 1964, Voyager sailed from Jervis Bay, NSW, in company with the carrier Melbourne, spending the day in exercises, including anti-aircraft and anti-submarine drills. One task involved transferring mail from ship to ship, and Des recalls that event.

“This was the first time I had experienced this manouevre with a large ship while steaming close together,” he said. He and some other ex-recruits looked up from the deck of the relatively small destroyer at the towering bulk of the carrier beside them and felt a sense of awe and dismay.

After dark, they began preparing for another round of practice tasks involving aircraft from Nowra. The planes were to practice touch-and-go landings on the Melbourne’s deck, while the Voyager was to act as a rescue destroyer in case any planes had to ditch.

As the carrier manouevred to find the best wind direction to assist the planes, Voyager was tasked to follow instructions from the larger ship and to take up position as required. Many of the sailors on board had no real role to play in these exercises and busied themselves below decks. Des recalled going up on deck with a couple of mates, Graeme Fitzallen and John Clayton, and mucking about with oranges they’d got from the cafeteria. Both of those mates were very soon to be dead.

“I went down and had a shower then decided to go to the cafeteria to play tombola [bingo, more or less] as I was not on watch until morning,” Des said.

A game of tombola

When something went horribly wrong in communication between the two ships even those on deck had very little warning of the dire consequence. To this day there is no clear agreement about what happened other than the bare fact that the Voyager turned across the path of the much bigger ship. Some say it was a miscalculation. Others say the Voyager thought the Melbourne was matching its turn and that perhaps a message from Melbourne had been mucked up or misunderstood. Either way, by the time the officers on the bridges of both ships realised the danger it was too late to do anything about it. The Melbourne’s engines were ordered hard astern but the carrier didn’t alter course. The Voyager poured on the power and tried to turn away.

It was about five minutes to 9pm. The first thing anybody below decks knew of the danger was when a panicky voice came over the loudspeakers ordering them to “collision stations”. Moments later the announcement, even more panicked, was repeated. Some of the older hands might have known that this order meant to grab hold of some rigid structure and brace for impact. But to Des it meant nothing. He and others around him stood and looked at one another in wonderment.

“To that day I had not heard of that order and I would be reasonably sure that none of the other ex-recruits had either,” he said. They didn’t have to wait long to find out. The collision occurred at almost the same time as the second warning. [The correct order, apparently, would have been “emergency stations”.]

“I was lucky I was sitting on the port side of the cafeteria. That was the impact side. As the ship heeled over violently to starboard I fell on my back and found myself sliding head first to the other side of the ship.” After the initial terrifying sound of the impact the entire cafeteria went pitch dark. What Des and the other sailors didn’t know was that the entire bow section of the ship had been shorn away from the stern. Now lying on its side, this smaller portion of the ship would only remain afloat for another eight minutes. That was how long they had to escape.

Des heard crashing and scraping as furniture and fittings fell onto the men who had been on the starboard side and were now being crushed and trapped beneath the debris. Then, Des said, all went black as he apparently lost consciousness. When he came to he heard a voice yelling to “get up and get out of the ship”. “It was like I was in a dream, content just to lie there, with a table over my chest and a stool over my legs. I heard water rushing and thought of a lovely waterfall. It was only when I felt it around my ankles I realised I was in trouble.” But in the blackness nothing made sense. What was the floor was now a wall and so was the former ceiling, with all the cables and pipes exposed. “I found myself climbing the trunking on the deckhead. Somebody must have found one of the emergency lamps – as dim as a small torch – and when I looked around I saw other men doing the same as me, like they were climbing a cliff wall. I looked down to where I had just been and saw there was a lot more water there now. Tables and chairs and other debris was lying in a heap, like it had been dumped from a truck. There were men lying still, men groaning,” Des said.

Then he saw a man half hanging through a round hatchway calling out to people to go to him. “He was calling out to tell us that this was the way out. But to get to him I had to leave the trunking I was holding on to and jump over. He could see I was scared and he called out that he would catch me, that I wouldn’t fall. Then he told me that I if I wasn’t going to jump then get out of the way because others needed the chance. So I jumped and he caught me.” Des later found out the man was fitness instructor Pedro Rich, who was to be awarded a British Empire Medal for his life-saving efforts that night.

Tragically for many other men, Des said, it emerged that some of the safety hatches had been over-tightened and others had simply been painted over during the ship’s refit. Getting them open cost precious minutes when every minute was life or death.

Once he got through the hatch Des clambered over lockers, following other men to another hatch that led to the outside of the ship. He dragged himself through and sat on the outside of the hull, trying to make sense of what was happening. “Someone said get off the ship and get away from it before it sinks. I remembered being told in recruit school that a sinking ship can suck you down into the water. By this time the water was up to the hatch I had just come through. When I entered the water there was no splash, just a plop. On top of the water was a thick layer of oil. As Des struggled to swim away from the ship he quickly became coated with the oil, which he also couldn’t help swallowing. So, swimming and vomiting at the same time he heard men in the water shouting and asking what had happened. “Somebody said a merchant ship had hit us. It wasn’t until later I found out it was the Melbourne,” he said. “I heard somebody yell: ‘She’s going down’ and when I looked I saw the bow section pointing skyward. It looked like it was coming back up, with a lot of rumbling noises and water bubbling as air escaped from the ship. Then it sank like a rock and disappeared completely.”

Des got out of the Voyager at about 9pm. He didn’t have a life jacket and for the nearly two hours he was in the water he didn’t see any lifeboats or rafts. “There was a six-foot swell running,” he said. “From the top of the swell I could see the lights of the Melbourne. From the bottom of the trough I couldn’t see anything. The whole time I was thinking, If I don’t make it tonight my Mum will kill me.” He floated and trod water until a boat from the Melbourne picked him up. He’d been aware of other men in the water around him, and aircraft – including helicopters – were searching the area. When he was pulled into the boat he saw the other men: some naked, some nearly so, with just pyjama pants on. All were thickly coated with oil and many were vomiting repeatedly. Most were deeply in shock.

The cutter got to the side of the towering carrier, which had scramble-nets hung over its side and men holding on and waiting to help. “We had to wait until the swell carried the boat up, then grab the net before the boat dropped away again beneath us. We were weak from being in the water so long and we were slippery from all the oil. As they grabbed me I heard a bloke call out for help to get a grip on me.”

The sailors’ shirts had their names sewn onto them and Des had lost his in the water. Rescuers had found the shirt and concluded that Des was missing. That’s what they told his mother when she heard news of the disaster and phoned for information about her son. “On the Melbourne they told us that the families of all survivors had been notified that we were safe,” he said. “It wasn’t true”. It was only when his brother went to the navy base at Melbourne’s HMAS Lonsdale that Des’s family learned he was alive. While he was on the Melbourne he also learned that it was the carrier that had cut the Voyager in half – news that he and most of the other sailors struggled to absorb.

The Melbourne crew gave them blankets, and medical orderlies did their best to wipe off the oil. “We all looked like we had black eyes from the stuff,” Des said. “And a bloke came round with big needles asking if we had swallowed any oil. If you said yes they made you bend over and they gave you a shot of antihistamine.”

“One thing I remember,” he said, “was an old chief petty officer gunnery instructor named Taffy Lloyd who had served at sea during World War 2. His comment was that the Voyager was ‘the seventh bastard that’s gone from under me’.”

Aboard HMAS Melbourne Des discovered he still had his wallet with a sodden five pound note in it. He used the money to buy a carton of cigarettes from the ship’s canteen to share around with other survivors. Compared to many other men, Des got off lightly with little more than a few bruises and grazes. HMAS Melbourne had a small sick bay and many were treated there, while some were flown ashore to hospital in Nowra, NSW. The death toll from the disaster was 82, including a dockyard worker who had been aboard finishing off some jobs related to the ship’s refit.

Once the Melbourne docked the Voyager survivors were urged not to speak to the press. They were given new clothes, seven days “survivors leave”, an advance of pay and train tickets to their homes. “My ticket to Melbourne was for the Spirit of Progress,” Des said, “but I chipped in some of my own money and got a sleeper on the Southern Aurora”. He was to be disappointed a few weeks later when he went to draw his pay and was told he had none to draw. “The money they gave us when we came ashore was an advance of future pay, they told us.”

While he was in Melbourne on leave he got word that the mother of one of his drowned shipmates wanted him to visit her. “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t feel up to it. But people said I should think about her position, having just lost a son, and go to see her,” he said. “When I got to her place she was sitting at a table with a pile of sympathy cards. She picked up a handful and threw them at me, asking me why I was alive and her son was dead.” It was a horrible blow, exacerbating the feeling of “survivors’ guilt” that he was already starting to feel. “Blokes died who had wives and families and I was just a young single man. It felt wrong.”

His next disappointment came when he, like all the other survivors, was asked to make a claim for personal items lost in the sinking. He claimed the loss of items worth 70 pounds, but the navy reimbursed him only 48. “I was upset because I only claimed things I really lost – being young and naive, while I saw other blokes who claimed all sorts of things that we knew they didn’t have on board at all; and they got the whole amount.”

Other insults added up. “Because my personnel certificate was lost with the ship they no longer had a record that I had completed the swimming test the navy demanded,” he said. “I had to go and see a shore-based officer at HMAS Cerberus and I told him I’d done the test months ago. He said it wasn’t on file so I’d have to do it again. I told him I’d been on the Voyager and he yelled at me. He told me: “I don’t care if you were on the bloody Ark. It’s not on file so you have to do it again.” The officer was mean enough to stipulate that, instead of doing the test in the heated pool the navy had available, Des would have to do it along a pier in open water, wearing overalls.

“I don’t care if you were on the bloody ark!”

By this time Des said he was feeling quite resentful against the navy and this showed in his conduct. “They sent me to the chaplain and they told me they’d give me a discharge if I wanted one. But my mates said I shouldn’t go; that the navy was just trying to wash its hands of me. So I stayed.” Des got a tattoo on his shoulder, showing a sinking ship with the name “Voyager” beneath it. Some other sailors objected, however, and he went back to the tattooist to have the letters of the name covered over with laurel crowns.

Des’s next ship was the well-worn HMAS Quiberon, formerly a British World War 2-era destroyer, converted by the RAN for anti-submarine use. The old ship was due to be paid off in June 1964, so his time aboard was short, as the ship performed its last light duties off the NSW coast. He recalled stepping from his berth each morning into puddles of water. “She was an old ship and she took on water,” he said.

After the Quiberon Des was sent to HMAS Cerberus to spend three months studying for his trade. “They called me in and asked me did I want to be a cook,” he said. “I told them I didn’t want that. They asked had I considered it was good money, and it had the advantage that you’d be among the first ashore in port. I still said no, but they just told me: ‘that’s enough, cook. Dismissed.’ So I became a cook.”

If the Quiberon was meant by the navy as a kind of rest period, then Des’s next ship might be seen as a kind of apology. This was the Hobart, a brand-new American-built destroyer. “Some blokes in other ships were upset and said they should have been next in line for the new ship and they reckoned I only got the Hobart because I’d been on Voyager,” he said. Des and his shipmates were flown to the USA to learn about the new vessel, which was very different in many ways from the British ships the RAN had been operating. They underwent training in defence against nuclear, biological and chemical threats. When it was time to commission the Hobart, they travelled from the US east coast to the west via the Panama Canal before heading across to Australia. “We were in the US when Australia brought in decimal currency, so we missed that, but we’d been paid in American dollars and cents, so we were used to it. In those days the US dollar was worth about 86 Australian cents.”

The first stop in Australia was the Tasmanian capital city of Hobart where, to the annoyance of the crew, the official motto of the ship was changed from “Audacious” to the Latin “Sic Fortis Hobartia Crevit” (Thus in Strength Did Hobart Grow). This was the motto of the city of Hobart, and was apparently preferred by Tasmanian civic leaders but disliked by Hobart’s crew. “We thought changing it was disrespectful to the memory of the previous Hobart, which had served in World War 2,” Des said.

HMAS Hobart served in the Vietnam war, shelling shore targets. “We fired a lot of shells,” Des said. The ship would sneak among the islands in the Gulf of Tonkin to bombard targets in North Vietnam. The ship had to reload with fresh ammunition every two days, and getting the heavy shells and cordite stowed was a big job in which all crew members were involved. Hobart was often shelled by shore batteries and was straddled by shells a number of times. “Their gunnery wasn’t very good, thank God, but we had shrapnel landing on deck more than once”.

During this time the Hobart was witness to a disaster on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which caught fire, costing 134 sailors’ lives. “It was a hell of a mess,” Des said. “We sent our doctor over, but the Americans told us to keep away in case our ship was damaged too.” For its work with the US Seventh Fleet the Hobart received a US Navy commendation.

After his stint aboard Hobart Des spent time ashore at HMAS Lonsdale, Melbourne, where he met his wife, Robyn, who was serving with the navy in a stores job. Next he joined HMAS Parramatta and was due to head back north but was prevented by a medical problem. After surgery he arranged a swap with a cook aboard the troop transport ship HMAS Sydney, where he took the role of captain’s cook. “The Sydney was called the Vung Tau Ferry“, Des said.

From the Sydney Des next had a stint ashore at HMAS Cerberus before finally quitting the navy in 1972. He had some jobs cooking, then joined Melbourne’s Peninsula Ambulance Service where he worked for 12 years. After that he worked on drilling rigs, briefly as a cook but then as a safety officer, off Darwin and Western Australia. In 1990, when Des became tired of returning on leave from the warm northern climates to chilly Melbourne, he and Robyn moved house to Lake Macquarie. “Robyn was a Newcastle girl. She’d grown up in Georgetown,” Des said, “so that worked well for us.”

All this time, in the background, the vexed question of compensation over the Voyager disaster was swirling around. Des said he had been led to believe that he was not entitled to compensation because he was serving in uniform and because the planned deployment of Voyager to Asian waters was effectively war service.

The disaster had spawned two royal commissions, neither of which was able to definitively explain the event but which generated enormous controversy. Ultimately, in 1992, Des received a significant compensation payout from the Government. In 1996 he retired and he and Robyn moved into a retirement village at Bolton Point, Lake Macquarie.How some of the survivors of the Voyager disaster came to receive significant compensation payouts – albeit extremely belated – is a remarkable story in itself.

The chain of events apparently began in 1981 when one of the survivors, former Voyager chief coxswain Robert “Blue” Palmer, visited solicitor James Taylor in the town of Myrtleford in country Victoria. His visit to the lawyer had nothing to do with Voyager but the subject was mentioned. When told that no survivors appeared to have received any compensation, Taylor expressed surprise. Survivors had been told that, under the Repatriation Act, they were ineligible for compensation and had no right to sue the Crown for negligence. This was long considered to be the case under Australian law.

In 1982 the High Court ruled in the Groves case that an airman injured because of the negligence of a fellow serviceman did have the right to sue the Commonwealth. In 1983 Taylor contacted barrister Brian Thomson QC who recommended requesting the Commonwealth waive the Statute of Limitations, which would have prevented legal action because of the amount of time that had passed. The Commonwealth agreed to the waiver and in 1985 Blue Palmer was awarded $220,000 in damages. Another survivor received a $250,000 out of court settlement, prompting more claims from more survivors.

Des recalls being contacted by Jim Taylor and going to see him at his Myrtleford office. “He interviewed me and I filled in a form and agreed to join the action,” Des said.

The Government, however, changed its stance and began invoking the Statute of Limitations after all. A series of hearings and appeals followed as the Government fought a bitter rearguard battle to avoid further payouts. It ultimately failed, however, and by the 1990s the High Court cleared the way for remaining survivors to be paid out. Des said he was grateful to Jim Taylor, the country solicitor, who fought his matter to the end. “I know the case took a big toll on Jim, but he stuck to his guns and won it for us,” he said.

Like many other survivors of the Voyager sinking, Des continues to be affected. He has an aversion to dark, enclosed spaces (like movie theatres, for example) and avoids crowds. He isn’t bitter, however. “All things considered I had a good career in the navy, and afterwards.” But it has taken him many years to be able to talk about that terrifying night at sea in February 1964.

POSTSCRIPT: Amazingly, the Melbourne was involved in a near-identical accident in the South China Sea in 1969, when the US destroyer Frank E Evans passed in front of the carrier during anti-submarine exercises. The destroyer was cut in half, the bow section quickly sank and 74 US sailors were killed.

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Newcastle schoolboy’s shipwreck story