HMS Duchess (D154): Loaned to Australia After a Deadly Collision

Woolston-Built

HMS Duchess was built by John I. Thornycroft and Company at Woolston, Southampton, her keel laid on 8 July 1948, launched on 9 April 1951 by the Countess Mountbatten of Burma, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 23 October 1952, a Daring-class destroyer displacing 2,950 tons standard, capable of 30.5 knots, and carrying six 4.5-inch guns alongside Bofors anti-aircraft guns, torpedo tubes and a Squid anti-submarine mortar.

Duchess was part of a much larger programme that never fully materialised: sixteen Daring-class destroyers were provisionally ordered in 1944, but only eight were ever completed, the rest cancelled once the war that had prompted them was over. Her own hull was notably all-welded rather than the mix of riveting and welding still used on some of her sisters, a modest but genuine step toward more modern shipbuilding methods.

The Last Ship Out of Port Said

HMS Duchess served initially with the Home Fleet, taking part in the coronation celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, before joining the Mediterranean Fleet between 1954 and 1956, conducting exercises and anti-smuggling patrols off Cyprus and serving as plane guard during the Suez Crisis.

HMS Duchess holds the distinction of being the last Royal Navy vessel to leave Port Said at the end of the crisis, departing on 22 December 1956, a fitting final image of Britain's military withdrawal from the operation.

She underwent a major two-year modernisation refit between December 1958 and January 1961, before resuming Mediterranean Fleet operations, and from 1963 was assigned to the Far East Fleet in response to the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation.

Loaned to Australia After Tragedy

HMS Duchess's transfer to Australia arose directly from the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the Royal Australian Navy. On the night of 10 February 1964, during flying exercises some twenty nautical miles off Jervis Bay, the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne struck the destroyer HMAS Voyager at 8.56pm, her bow slicing into Voyager just behind the bridge and cutting the smaller ship clean in two. The bow section, where many of the crew were trapped, sank within ten minutes; the stern section stayed afloat until after midnight. Of Voyager's 314 men, 82 were killed.

Two Royal Commissions picked over what had gone wrong. The first, in 1964, controversially found Melbourne's own command team partly to blame despite a lack of supporting evidence, prompting her captain, Ronald John Robertson, to resign rather than accept what amounted to a demotion; he was widely seen at the time as a scapegoat. A second Commission, opened in July 1967 and reporting in February 1968, absolved Robertson entirely and instead found that Voyager's own captain, Duncan Stevens, had been medically unfit to command: not, as had been alleged, through drink, but through a duodenal ulcer and a confidential prescription for amphetamines.

Britain's response came within days of the disaster. The offer to loan HMS Duchess to the Royal Australian Navy was made on 18 February, just over a week after the collision, and accepted on 25 February.

The initial loan ran for four years at no cost for the ship herself, though Australia covered operational expenses and any modifications.

She was formally handed over on 19 April 1964, with the handover completed on 8 May, when she commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy as HMAS Duchess under Captain I. M. Burnside.

Confrontation and Vietnam

HMAS Duchess, the former HMS Duchess, participated extensively in the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, earning the battle honour Malaysia 1965-66, and went on to escort the troopship HMAS Sydney, nicknamed "the Vung Tau Ferry" for carrying thousands of Australian troops to and from Vietnam across some twenty-five voyages between 1965 and 1972. Duchess herself provided that escort on six of those runs, including Sydney's very first trooping voyage on 27 May 1965 and her sixth and final one on 22 May 1971, a substantial personal contribution to Australia's military commitment in Vietnam even if the ferry service itself outlasted her part in it.

The loan was extended to April 1972, before Australia purchased the ship outright from the Royal Navy for $150,000 (Australian) on 18 August 1972, formally ending her status as a loaned vessel.

A Training Ship and Retirement

HMAS Duchess arrived at Williamstown Naval Dockyard on 5 January 1973 for conversion into a training ship, work that removed her combat systems and installed educational facilities, completing on 14 August 1974 when she replaced HMAS Anzac as the Royal Australian Navy's dedicated training vessel.

She conducted midshipman training cruises throughout Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific waters until being replaced by HMAS Jervis Bay in September 1977, and was decommissioned on 23 October that year.

HMAS Duchess was sold to Tung Ho Steel for scrapping on 7 May 1980, departing Sydney under tow for Taiwan on 9 July, closing out a career born in postwar Britain, forged at Suez, and ultimately built around three decades of significant service to Australia's own navy.