HMAS Swordsman

Gordon was a 12 tonne ‘turnabout’ 2nd class torpedo launch, ordered in February 1885, and built at the J S White & Co shipyard at Cowes, Isle of Wight, for the Victorian Navy at a cost of £3250. Its hull was constructed of mahogany, and it had a double rudder configuration with one forward and one aft to aid in manoeuvrability.

It was shipped to Melbourne, Victoria as deck cargo, on board the SS Angerton, leaving Gravesend, England on 22 December 1885 and arriving in Melbourne on 11 February 1886. The vessel was named in honour of General Charles George Gordon who had been killed at Khartoum, in the Sudan, in January 1885.

Bishopdale was a Royal Australian Fleet Auxiliary Dale class freighting tanker that saw service between 1937 and 1959. As a freighting tanker, its main role was to move large quantities of fuel (up to 11 600 tonnes of mainly furnace fuel oil) from oil refineries to Royal Navy fuel depots. Between 1942 and 1945 it served on loan to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) with a mixed crew of RAN and Merchant Navy personnel.

It was built by Lithgow’s Ltd of Glasgow and launched on 31 March 1937. After completing its sea trials in June 1937, it conducted its first delivery voyage in July of that year; a run from the West Indies to Gibraltar. Further freighting voyages were conducted during the next 2 years which involved taking on bulk fuel at the Anglo-Persian Oil Company refinery at Abadan, Persia and delivering the cargo to Royal Navy fuel depots in Gibraltar, Port Said and Singapore. Its crew throughout most of its service were British officers and British Indian sailors.

Following the outbreak of war in September 1939 Bishopdale was allocated to the West Indies station as a tanker for RN ships operating in that area; keeping watch on German merchant ships in neutral ports particularly in the United States of America. It was here that the tanker had its first contact with the RAN when it re-fuelled the light cruiser HMAS Perth, at Kingston, on 2 January 1940. Perth was on loan to the Royal Navy during September 1939 to February 1940 and its ships company also took the opportunity to practice their boarding party drills onboard Bishopdale while the cruiser was re-fuelled. The tanker remained on the West Indies station conducting the routine but essential fuelling of warships until early January 1942.

In mid-January 1942 Bishopdale was ordered to sail via the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean and refuel the battleship HMS Warspite in the vicinity of Henderson Island (part of the Pitcairn Island Group). Warspite was transiting from Vancouver to Sydney on its way to join the British Eastern Fleet in Ceylon. Bishopdale arrived in Sydney on 6 April 1942 and was subsequently loaned to the RAN for service in the Pacific Ocean. It maintained its Merchant Navy ships company but RAN personnel (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship, gunners) were placed onboard to operate the ships defensive weapons consisting of a 4-inch gun on its quarterdeck, a 12-pounder gun forward and several Oerlikon 20mm anti-aircraft guns. The DEMS gunners were employed as deckhands, when not conducting their naval duties, and this included duties such as lookouts, handling lines when ships came alongside to refuel, upper deck maintenance such as chipping rust and painting and also operating the ships motor boats.

During April-August 1942 Bishopdale was based at Noumea, New Caledonia refuelling RAN and US Navy warships operating in the south-west Pacific, including HMA Ships Canberra and Hobart on their way to the Allied landings at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. On 5 August 1942 Bishopdale sailed from Noumea, proceeding to Brisbane to replenish its bunkers. While transiting the Havannah-Boulari passage, east of Noumea, it strayed off course and struck an Allied mine in a defensive minefield protecting the passage. Fortunately there were no casualties but the tanker was forced to return to Noumea. Temporary repairs were made allowing Bishopdale to sail to Sydney for docking and the subsequent repairs took several months to complete.

Repairs were completed in January 1943 and Bishopdale returned to its duties providing fuel to the RAN. It departed Sydney on 3 February 1943, as part of a convoy heading north, and berthed in Darwin in mid-February to replenish the fuel storage depot in that port. After completing this task it returned to Queensland waters in March; via Port Moresby where the fuel depot ashore was replenished.

Swordsman was one of 55 S Class destroyers built for the British Admiralty under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program of the First World War. It was completed in 1919 and shortly afterwards was gifted to the RAN, along with ships of the same class Stalwart, Success, Tasmania and Tattoo, and the flotilla leader, Anzac, as replacements for the RAN’s obsolete River Class destroyers.

It commissioned into the RAN as HMAS Swordsman at Devonport, England on 27 January 1920 under the command of Lieutenant Commander C E Hughes-White DSC RN. It sailed for Australia on 20 February in company with Success, Tasmania and Tattoo and arrived in Sydney on 29 April via Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Suez, Aden, Mumbai, Colombo, Singapore, Surabaya and Thursday Island.

In September 1920 Swordsman assisted in the search for the missing schooner, SS Amelia J, which disappeared between Newcastle and Hobart in August. The schooner was last seen off Jervis Bay on 5 September. The search was later extended to include the missing barquentine, SS Southern Cross (with a crew of ten), which had also disappeared after departing Williamstown for Hobart on 10 September. The search was further extended on 23 September when an Australian Air Corps (the forerunner of the RAAF) De Havilland 9A biplane, ironically also involved in the search for the 2 missing vessels vanished. No trace of Amelia J and its crew of twelve was ever found, while wreckage from Southern Cross was later found on King Island. The aircraft, and its 2 crew members, also disappeared with trace.

Postwar cuts to defence spending saw a number of RAN vessels decommissioned and Swordsman was one of those affected. It decommissioned at Sydney on 6 September 1922 and placed into reserve. It recommissioned as the destroyer flotilla leader on 4 August 1926 and subsequently served the remainder of its seagoing career in eastern Australian waters. Swordsman decommissioned again on 21 December 1929 and was once more placed into reserve. It was eventually sold for breaking up on 4 June 1937.