The Voyager Disaster was Australia’s greatest peacetime military disaster.

It occurred in 1964 at Jervis Bay on the Eastern Coast of Australia. Melbourne was an aircraft carrier; Voyager was a destroyer.

Melbourne was conducting manoeuvres at night. Ironically, Voyager was only there for safety reasons! It was there to collect any men overboard. Despite their name destroyers are relatively small, while aircraft carriers are huge.

The two warships collided, the aircraft carrier cutting the destroyer in half. 82 people were killed, including everyone on the bridge of the Voyager.

For the Royal Australian Navy this was highly distressing. Two Royal Commissions of Enquiry into the disaster followed; the only time in Australian history there have been two Royal Commissions into the same issue.

Captain Duncan Stevens (known as “Drunken Duncan”), who was the skipper of the Voyager, has been widely blamed for the incident. Some weight has been placed on the fact that he ordered a triple brandy shortly before the collision. It was also suspected he was unwell. However, despite the two Royal Commissions, no clear answer has ever been found. I suspect the captain was not at the helm, and the person steering the ship was unexperienced and got confused between port and starboard.

Initially, the government refused to pay workers compensation to the naval personnel who had died on the grounds that servicemen were not entitled to workers compensation. It was not until the 1980s, following a High Court precedent, that the government of Bob Hawke caved in and started paying compensation.