NSW: Voyager disaster still a mystery

AAP General News (Australia)
04-14-2004
NSW: Voyager disaster still a mystery

Forty years after the sinking of HMAS Voyager, military experts remain unsure about
the exact causes of the naval disaster.

But they believe the incident was a turning point for the Royal Australian Navy.

On the night of February the 10th, 1964, the destroyer HMAS Voyager collided with the
aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne in Jervis Bay, southern NSW, killing 82 men.

TOM FRAME, the Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force and author of Where
Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy, describes the incident as a watershed for the Navy.

He says it took the loss of Voyager to demonstrate the consequences of complacency
and the perils of over-confidence in command at sea.

Bishop FRAME has made his comments at a Sydney Institute gathering this evening.

Two royal commissions in 1964 and 1967 brought about changes within the Navy such as
new signalling procedures, emergency equipment operations, survival at sea training and
new medical standards.

AAP RTV sh/nf/wz/rp

KEYWORD: VOYAGER (SYDNEY)

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