kookaburra
07-08-2009, 03:51
After WW11 the many of the 56 RAN-commissioned Bathurst Class corvettes were left laying at the reserve fleet dolphins at Athol Bight and Corio Bay at Geelong in Victoria. Some were listed for disposal and scrapped, and some were sold. On March 5, 1952 four of the 650-ton vessels were presented as gifts to the Royal New Zealand Navy, and somewhere within that gesture it was agreed that they would retain their Australian town names.
Thus they became HMNZs Echuca, Inverell, Kiama and Stawell.
The first-named, Echuca, M252, appears to have seen little service and was laiud up the following year.
Stawell, M348, was active for seven years before being decommissioned on July 4, 1952, but the remaining pair Inverell, M233, and Kiama, M353, had long and useful lives as RNZN training vessels,until paid off respectively in 1976 and 1974. By 1979 the last of these vessels had been sold for disposal and scrapped in Auckland.
We've had a number of excellent pics of HMNZS Inverell particularly on the 'Warships of New Zealand' thread. In RAN service, churned out by Australian shipyards at the rate of one and two a month at the height of wartime, , photographs of the Bathursts tend to look more sea-worn and sometimes a bit ratty. Nonetheless, they gave arduous and often valiant service, as demonstrated on the RAN section thread.
The peacetime RNZN corvettes had their four-inch gun replaced by bofors, and the sweeping gear removed for an additional deckhouse aft to accomodate 30 trainees. Thus, always smartly presented - as always seems to be the case with RNZN ships - they always appear somewhat more substantial and rather more built-up than the wartime ships.
Serving almost quarter of a century in the RNZN, the latter pair must have been familiar to all or most trainees passing through the RNZN from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Some more photos of them [unfortunately I'm missing any of Echuca's short service in the dear old Shakey Isles]:
Thus they became HMNZs Echuca, Inverell, Kiama and Stawell.
The first-named, Echuca, M252, appears to have seen little service and was laiud up the following year.
Stawell, M348, was active for seven years before being decommissioned on July 4, 1952, but the remaining pair Inverell, M233, and Kiama, M353, had long and useful lives as RNZN training vessels,until paid off respectively in 1976 and 1974. By 1979 the last of these vessels had been sold for disposal and scrapped in Auckland.
We've had a number of excellent pics of HMNZS Inverell particularly on the 'Warships of New Zealand' thread. In RAN service, churned out by Australian shipyards at the rate of one and two a month at the height of wartime, , photographs of the Bathursts tend to look more sea-worn and sometimes a bit ratty. Nonetheless, they gave arduous and often valiant service, as demonstrated on the RAN section thread.
The peacetime RNZN corvettes had their four-inch gun replaced by bofors, and the sweeping gear removed for an additional deckhouse aft to accomodate 30 trainees. Thus, always smartly presented - as always seems to be the case with RNZN ships - they always appear somewhat more substantial and rather more built-up than the wartime ships.
Serving almost quarter of a century in the RNZN, the latter pair must have been familiar to all or most trainees passing through the RNZN from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Some more photos of them [unfortunately I'm missing any of Echuca's short service in the dear old Shakey Isles]: