For most of us, a Royal Australian Navy warship is a hulking grey shape tethered to a wharf away from the public. Viewed from afar, the ominous profile of radar domes, antennas, missile launch systems and naval guns of varying sizes emanates power and purpose. Other than that, our experience of Navy is confined to some impossibly white uniforms parading around on Anzac Day and the occasional, grey-faced mandarin pontificating on defence strategy.
Our world is changing. The problematic relationship between an increasingly unilateral United States and a rising China continues to destabilise our region. Australia, Japan India and Korea drift off to the margins of the strategic backcountry. This means Australia’s various regional relationships are much more important than ever.
After 5 days as a guest on board the Anzac class frigate, HMAS Stuart (“The Tartan Terror”), I realised that our grey ships serve 2 purposes: they present a military presence and a diplomatic platform. A reception on board a Royal Australian Navy warship tied up at Tanjung Priok in Jakarta will foster important personal relationships more easily than parking a RAAF Globemaster on the runway at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport.
My 5 days on board Stuart was spent at sea off the coast of Western Australia. It was an opportunity afforded to relatively few of us. I saw Stuart as a military asset, of course, but spending time with the officers and crew it was easy to see how well they would conduct a diplomatic mission.
My utterly inappropriate touring suitcase clattered across the gangway and onto 1 Deck where I was welcomed aboard by the commanding officer. I was then escorted by the hosting officer along 1 Deck to my “rack” - a moderately claustrophobic lower bunk in a cabin near the Wardroom which I shared with the very patient and hospitable navigator. Showers and the ‘heads’ were just around the corner.
I was issued with a cap (not allowed in the Wardroom!) and a set of ‘cams’ loaned from the ship’s store. I no longer stuck out like a sore thumb and I came to appreciate the comfort and the robust utility of a uniform.
Prior to joining the ship, I’d assured the captain and my escorting officer that I didn’t get seasick. And, I’m relieved to say, I didn’t. I was surprised, however, to learn that from time to time quite a few sailors do. The weather was pretty good when I was on board but it did get “a bit lumpy” on day 3. Personally, I loved the movement, especially when in my rack, drifting off to sleep. I did note the Velcro belts that ran across my bunk, presumably to keep the occupant strapped in when the sea was a bit more “lumpy”. During the day, I learned to alter my gait so I didn’t slam too often into either side of the passageways as I made my way around the ship.
At the risk of this reading like a “puff piece”, I was quickly and genuinely struck by the goodwill and morale that ran across the decks and through the passageways like a warm, gentle current. I was greeted in ways that caught me off guard - and this was quite some time before the younger members of the ship’s company put together “I was only 19” with this grey-haired, bearded bloke who was still agile enough to get up and down the ladderways.
In the mess decks and passageways, there was a palpable camaraderie built around shared purpose, capability, mutual trust and pride. I was struck by how deeply, but intuitively, each sailor understands what the ship means—not just as a defence asset but as a collective, almost human, identity. Every fitting, every polished brass plate, every procedure has a sense of stewardship and history about it. You don’t just work on a Navy ship; you belong to her. And she to you.
Conversations in the Wardroom, the Chiefs’ mess and the junior sailors’ mess ranged from home and family to the cricket, the music industry, on-board roles and the latest maintenance task. I held up my end of the conversations but I tried to listen more than I spoke. The banter was endless, the humour wry and dry and the mutual respect genuine. In an increasingly fractured world, I was privy to a culture of service, trust and mutual dependence that was profoundly reassuring.
A significant number of the ship’s company are women - officers and sailors alike. It was very clear to me that gender equality here is not a self-conscious, confected policy statement. It’s just how things work. On the bridge one morning the officer of the watch, another officer of the watch in training and the person at the helm were all women.
Romantic notions of life at sea are quickly dispensed with. Stuart's operational schedule includes continuous damage control training cycles to prepare the entire ship’s company for the unthinkable. Sustaining a hit will mean compartmental flooding, fire, smoke, possible exposure to toxic gas and the horror of trapped shipmates. The only defence is training—training so regular and rigorous that it leaves no room for hesitation. It was only after the first drill that I became aware of all the emergency equipment fixed to the walls of the passageways: axes, wooden and steel braces, hoses and fittings and fire extinguishers of varying sorts. I watched as young sailors emerged from a disciplined chaos to become firefighters, medics, engineers and damage control teams in a heartbeat.
Shipboard communications are referred to as “pipes” - announcements squawked throughout the ship via horrid metallic speakers. During the drills, scenario updates were piped through the ship, cascading one into the other, compounding the emergencies with frightening speed. These drills aren’t theatre. They’re necessary preparation for events that most of us would rather not imagine.
No one panicked. No one complained. The professionalism was absolute. When “end of exercise” was piped, everyone went back to their normal duties, resuming their posts as if nothing had happened.
One afternoon, in the junior sailors’ mess, I sat in on a professional training session on the legalities to be observed when boarding a Suspected Irregular Entry Vessel (SIEV). As is often the case with the law, some of it was unhelpfully ambiguous. “Well, on one hand - blah blah blah but on the other hand - blah blah blah”. Rather, it seemed to me that these boardings would call more on intelligence, discipline, judgement and humanity. I was reminded again these qualities are often uncomfortable bedfellows.
A naval warship is a very complicated bit of kit. The technology I was allowed to look at is quite extraordinary. Over and above the sophisticated, computerised ship control, propulsion and weapon systems, the 5-inch gun on the foredeck boasts an automatic, rapid-fire system capable of firing around 20 rounds per minute, accurate over the horizon 12 kilometres away.
But seamanship is an art as well as a science. On the last afternoon I found myself on the bridge wing while the captain “took the con” to bring Stuart alongside. With another warship berthed behind us and the need to line Stuart up with the bollards on the wharf, this was a “parallel park” on steroids. About 110 metres long at the waterline and displacing 3600 tonnes fully laden, bringing Stuart alongside wasn’t made any easier by a lateral drift, courtesy of the Fremantle Doctor, WA’s famous afternoon sea-breeze. With calm, confident authority, the captain issued a series of measured instructions to the engine room, the helm and the 2 tugs on the port side, simply on the basis of what he could see and feel. "Port ten… steady… engines dead slow ahead…."
There was no computerisation, no handheld devices, no AI - just astonishing seamanship and ship handling. I was reminded of a conductor leading an orchestra, power and subtlety working in harmony. A nod here, a correction there, voices low and steady. The frigate nestled against the wharf as lines were tossed and the gangway secured.
I disembarked reluctantly, the asphalt strangely solid and unmoving beneath my feet. I walked away and, before rounding the corner, I looked back at the grey warship in the late afternoon light. Pretty well the entire ship’s company had formed a “daisy-chain” to restock Stuart prior to going back to sea in a couple of days.
At sea one night, the captain invited me onto the bridge wing to look at the stars, diamonds glimmering against an inky blackness: a rare moment of stillness. Our conversation was wide-ranging, thoughtful and intelligently explorative. Out there at night, where the sky meets the sea, it’s hard not to be humble. Life shakes itself into perspective.
After 5 days at sea, I came to understand that Australia’s sea-lanes and maritime interests, as determined by politicians in Canberra, are held fast by people who keep watch while the rest of us sleep. Their professionalism, quiet pride, wry humour and ability to engage warmly with strangers reflect the best of what Australia can be.
In an uncertain world, getting more uncertain by the moment, we are in good hands, strategically and diplomatically.
I will never look at a grey ship in the harbour in the same way ever again.