A book which once belonged to the library of the Daring Class destroyer HMAS Voyager , sliced in two and sunk with the loss of 82 lives, after it collided with the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, off Jervis Bay, on February 10, l964, has surfaced .
Published by Frederick Muller Limited, London, the 1956 book is entitled Mysteries of the Sea, by Robert de la Croix, translated from the French by James Cleugh, a collection of maritime disasters , including a strange account of the celebrated Marie Celeste .
It bears one Voyager library stamp and four others of the R.A.N. Education Service Ship's Library , non-fiction section .
The rarity was recently brought to Townsville by Darwin resident Bob White , his early schooling received in the Queensland city , who had a Navy friend , with whom he had played football in Darwin ,who had been aboard the Voyager and died in the collision which took part during a night-time manoeuvre .
The friend had been running the Navy Oil Fuel Installation at Stokes Hill Wharf , Darwin, but had to do sea time duty from time to time , and that was how he came to be aboard the destroyer , a victim of Australia's largest peacetime navaL disaster.
White said Navy ship library books were often "dropped off " back about the l960s and possibly exchanged. When they became superfluous they were disposed of in various ways .This was how he had possibly obtained the book.The Voyager stamp had made him keep it for sentimental reasons.
There were two Royal Commissions into the disaster , a navigational error blamed for the collision. In the second investigation it was revealed the Voyager captain , Duncan Stephens, had a drinking problem . There were claims of a cover up .
The Minister for the Navy from l964 - l966, responsible for dealing with the ramifications , was Fred Chaney senior , later Administrator of the Northern Territory, 1970-l973.
