The RAN and the RNZN have a rich and still evolving history of working together in war and exercising together in peace. The history of the white ensign in Australasian waters dates back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century when the naval bases in Sydney and Auckland were both part of the Royal Navy’s Australian Station.

But the naval story of both nations goes back further to 1769-70 when Lieutenant James Cook, RN, charted both islands of New Zealand and the East Coast of Australia and brought these new lands to the world’s attention and consciousness. The fragmentary chart of part of New Zealand’s east coast, drawn by Abel Tasman in 1642, was completed in painstaking detail by Cook as he circumnavigated both Islands and discovered the Strait which separates them. New Holland’s East Coast was charted for the first time by Cook. ‘Terra Australia Incognita’ was much less unknown when Cook had made his mark on both sides of the Tasman Sea.

Cook’s 1769-70 voyage is the historic fault line between the isolated pre European Pacific as it was, and the connected world we still know. But had Cook lost his ship and his life when Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef in 1770 his detailed and accurate charts of both islands of New Zealand would have gone to the bottom with him. Cook’s voyage would be a footnote in a quite different version of the history of the two countries. He would have been remembered among the Maori tribes of New Zealand that he had met but then his fate, like that of La Perouse in 1788, would have been unknown for many decades. It might have taken another generation and another cartographer before New Zealand’s true geography was known to the world. Likewise, it is doubtful that a convict settlement at in New South Wales would have been established if Sir Joseph Banks, who proposed the idea, had drowned with Cook. Although it took the next 17 years for the proposal to receive the necessary political impetus, the idea was finally approved in 1787 and the settlement established the following year under Governor Arthur Phillip.  Cook’s saving of his ship and his precious charts had a profound impact on what happened next to Australia and New Zealand.

The next naval officer after Cook who intervened in New Zealand’s history in a major way was the wise and humane Captain William Hobson, RN. He was faced with barbarity in an ungoverned land where whalers and sealers were preying on the Maori tribes in the Bay of Islands with impunity. Hobson encouraged the Maori chiefs of both islands of New Zealand to sign a voluntary treaty with the British Crown which, in theory, made it possible for a peaceful passage of sovereignty to Queen Victoria without changing life as the Maori lived it on their own ancestral lands. His intentions were honourable. His aim was to protect both Maori and British residents from growing violence and the depredations of many nationalities arriving by sea intent on plunder, lawlessness and exploitation of the Maori tribes they met.

In 1840 at Waitangi, in the Bay of Islands, Hobson exercised a level of governmental responsibility on behalf of the British Colonial Office which no modern ‘four ring’ Captain will ever be given in modern times. In this age of instant communications from senior leadership, both military and political, such scope for independent action is unimaginable. Hobson was not specifically instructed from Whitehall to make a Treaty with the tribes he met. He was told to solve the problem of internecine tribal warfare and violence against resident British subjects. As a sensible naval officer he did what he thought needed to be done, which was to bring British law through treaty making to the chaos he saw around him. In the process New Zealand became, without much forethought, a colony of Queen Victoria’s ever- expanding British Empire.

Other colonial powers sought new territories in the South Pacific. Importantly for the future unity and sovereignty of the new British colony, Hobson had made clear to a ship load of French settlers who arrived in the Bay of Islands (and had bought land in the South Island from a Maori tribe living there) that they could make their settlement but would be living under British sovereignty with a magistrate enforcing the English common law. Hobson assisted the French settlers ashore in the Bay of Islands, cared for their needs, while sending his fast frigate HMS Herald with a resident magistrate on board to where the French owned land at Akaroa, near modern day Christchurch. When the French arrived they found that they were British subjects. That was the end of French settlement plans for ‘Nouvelle Zélande’ and the possibility that the two islands might belong to London and Paris respectively. Both islands of New Zealand became a single crown colony, which was no longer to be administered from New South Wales but had its own Governor and elected legislative assembly. New Zealand owed its new found colonial existence and its territorial integrity to the Royal Navy and this dedicated officer.

Hobson’s years in the tropics and the strain of his duties as New Zealand’s first Governor caused him to have two strokes, the second of which proved fatal. By the time of his death in September 1842 a start had been made on settlements in Auckland and Wellington. Like Arthur Phillip in Sydney William Hobson adapted his naval training and experience to the challenges he faced and succeeded where others would have failed.

When Hobson’s plan for a peaceful future between Maori and Pakeha broke down irretrievably in the 1860s the British government moved its nearest military and naval assets to New Zealand from Australia to engage the Maori tribes resisting encroachment by land-hungry settlers on the Waikato river south of Auckland.

The flagship of the Australian Squadron, HMS Orpheus based in Sydney, was to be used as a trans-Tasman troop transport. The heavily laden corvette struck the sandbar at the entrance to the west coast port of Manukau Harbour on February 7, 1863. Over the next day she was slowly beaten to pieces by the incoming tide and heavy surf. The tragedy cost the lives of 189 British and Australian sailors and Royal Marines out of a complement of 259 on board. The loss of Orpheus remains the worst maritime tragedy in New Zealand’s history. Some of those who drowned were very young and agile Australian born midshipmen who were last seen clinging to topmasts as the ship rolled over in the breakers. They drowned as their ship was broken up under them within sight of land. This was a very preventable tragedy caused by the failure of the Flag Officer of the Squadron, Commodore Sir William Burnett, RN to heed urgent semaphore signals from the shore warning him that Orpheus was standing into danger by attempting to sail around the wrong end of the ever-shifting Manukau sandbar.

Notwithstanding this disaster the Royal Navy continued to provide the British Army with riverine transport, supplies and artillery for attacking fortified and defended Maori positions. It is doubtful if Maori resistance to the invasion in the Waikato area could have been overcome without what we would now call amphibious capability. Many locally recruited Australians served in RN ships during this campaign.

In the 1880s, when Britain and Russia once again came close to war over Afghanistan, Australians and New Zealanders living in coastal cities felt threatened by the Russian fleet and installed heavy shore artillery to defend their cities from an unexpected early morning bombardment. There is no evidence that the Russians were ever a real threat. As one British naval historian, Andrew Lambert, has pointed out if the Russian Navy had ever shelled Sydney or Auckland the Royal Navy would in return have levelled St Petersburg, and the Czar knew it.

READ MORE

• Wayne Mapp: Reflections on the implications of AUKUS for New Zealand’s Navy
• New Zealand could be the big winner of AUKUS fallout
• The Five Power Defence Arrangements: time for the ‘quiet achiever’ to emerge
• AUKUS: New Zealand labelled 'a joke' after nuclear-free stance blocks Australia's nuclear-powered submarines

But the legacy of this fear of attack from the sea is that HMAS Watson, on the South Head of Sydney harbour still has its 8-inch ‘disappearing rampart’ guns, and in Devonport on the North Head of Auckland harbour and at Tairoa Head near Dunedin identical guns are also still in place, still waiting for the Russian Pacific Fleet. They are mementos of an era when a blue water approach to defence of Australia and New Zealand was impractical due to the lack of capital ships on station capable of defending the coastal cities of Australia or New Zealand. However, none of these expensive guns ever fired a shot in anger.

In the first decade of the twentieth century both nations bought a capital ship. The New Zealand people agitated for the government to borrow the money to buy the Royal Navy an Indefatigable-class battle cruiser, named for their country. This was partly for general Imperial defence and also in the forlorn hope that she would be employed on the China Station and available if New Zealand was ever threatened. The school children of New Zealand put their pocket money together to buy the ship’s bell and the government borrowed the money in London to make the purchase. It was not paid off till after the Second World War. Like HMAS Australia this battle cruiser was a source of great patriotic pride. She visited New Zealand on a tour of the Dominions in 1913-1914. She was at sea in the Pacific the same year that HMAS Australia steamed into Sydney harbour to provide the Australian Commonwealth with some much needed 12-inch fire power of its own.

In August 1914, while the RAN’s bluejackets were yet to deal with Germans in New Guinea, New Zealand troops occupied German Samoa and its wireless station. It was the first German territory taken anywhere in World War One. The troops were escorted by HMAS Australia, the only available battle cruiser in the Pacific capable of defeating Admiral Graf von Spee and his powerful East Asia Squadron had they decided to defend the Kaiser’s colony against the New Zealand landing.

HMS New Zealand and HMAS Australia collided on 22 April 1916 in a North Sea fog off Rosyth. [1] Owing to her absence from the North Sea while under repair Australia just missed the Battle of Jutland fought 31 May- 1 June. Her place as flagship of the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron was taken by New Zealand under the command of Admiral David Beatty. The RN battlecruisers took on Admiral Hipper’s ships and lost three ships to internal magazine explosions caused by impressively accurate German shelling and poor ammunition handling. This disaster famously provoked Beatty to remark ‘there appears to be something wrong with our bloody ships today’. Had it not been for the collision in April the equally vulnerable HMAS Australia would have been at Jutland.  These lightly armoured battlecruisers with 12 inch guns were later described by Churchill as ‘egg shells armed with hammers’. What would have been the consequence for the young RAN if the flagship Australia had come under a fire from German shells? Would it have meant her destruction and that of her RAN and RN ship’s company of 1000 men and boys?

 In 1951 RNZN frigates fired their 4-inch guns at North Korean targets ashore with considerable success, just as HMAS Murchison did.

HMS New Zealand was in action at the Battles of Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank and Jutland, the three fleet actions in the North Sea. She was subjected to German shellfire without erupting in flames. Sailors on board attributed her good fortune during these actions to the protection afforded by the Maori flax piupiu (skirt) and greenstone tiki given to her commanding officer, Captain Lionel Halsey, RN, when the ship was in New Zealand on her tour of the Dominions. The prophesy by the cloak’s Maori donor was that the ship would be in action within a year and she would be hit, but would suffer no casualties provided that Halsey wore the tiki and piupiu into action.

With one small exception the Maori prophesy came true. Under Captain Halsey New Zealand had survived the first two battles unscathed. In the Battle of Jutland, with a new captain (John Green) in command she was hit on one turret, but sustained no casualties. Captain Green, a portly man, wore the tiki but, unable to wear the piupiu, had it hanging near to him in his conning position.  Without such prophetic protection Australia might not have been so lucky had she been at Jutland!

In the years between the wars RAN ships called regularly at New Zealand ports to show the flag and to enjoy New Zealand hospitality. New Zealand largely manned its own division of the RN with assistance from British officers and key ratings. When war returned in 1939 HMS Achilles‘ running fight with the Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate gave rise to the same swelling of national pride in New Zealand as Sydney’s sinking of the Italian cruiser Bartollomeo Colleoniwas to provoke a year later. The enduring mental image we have is of the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles racing in under fire from Graf Spee’s 11-inch guns to fire 6 -inch broadsides at the pocket battleship and draw German fire away from the crippled and burning heavy cruiser HMS Exeter. This is one of those epic moments in naval history which will live forever in the minds of those who admire raw courage at sea. Not surprisingly, after this brilliant and successful action, and as an acknowledgement of the growing capability of New Zealand to man warships of its own, the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy was reborn as the Royal New Zealand Navy in October 1941.

READ MORE

• Defence Force launches new Southern Ocean patrol vessel project, price tag $300m+
• Options for SOPV for the RNZN
• Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel Project
• Future Royal New Zealand Navy

The RAN and Australia’s tragedy when Sydney was lost to the German raider Kormoran in November 1941 is echoed in the tragedy of HMS Neptune, the Leander class cruiser, sunk in a minefield in the Mediterranean. On the night of 19 December 1941 Neptune ran into a newly laid Italian minefield off Tripoli, and sank with the loss of Captain Rory O’Connor and more than 750 of his officers and men. One hundred and fifty of these sailors were New Zealanders training to take the ship into the RNZN. Just one man was rescued by an Italian torpedo boat, after five days in the water. This was a devastating blow to the young RNZN and to the whole nation. The RNZN memorial just inside the gates of the naval base at HMNZS Philomel recalls the tragedy. It reads:

This memorial commemorates 352 officers and men of the Royal New Zealand Navy, Royal New Zealand Naval Reserve and the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve who died in all parts of the world during the Second World War and who have no known grave; the greater part lost their lives at sea, but some died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese. Nearly half of those commemorated went down with H.M.S. Neptune in 1941.

In the war in the South West Pacific there were many acts of endurance and gallantry by RNZN warships. Like HMAS Hobart, HMNZS Leander was torpedoed during the battle for the Solomon Islands; 28 ratings were killed. As with Hobartit was only superb damage control, leadership and courage which saved Leander from flooding and foundering. In 1943, New Zealand naval trawlers, Kiwi and Moa, rammed and sank a Japanese I-class submarine after a surface battle off Guadalcanal.

By the end of the war there were over sixty RNZN ships in commission. The three cruisers HMNZ Ships Gambia, Leander and Achilles fought in the British Pacific Fleet with HMA Ships Shropshire, Hobart and Australia. When the cease fire signal arrived on board Gambia, announcing the end of the war with Japan and the cessation of hostilities, the cruiserwas engaged in defending herself against die-hard Japanese kamikaze aircraft with the help of RN Fleet Air Arm Seafires. Not surprisingly Gambia ignored the signal she had just received and kept firing until she was safe. Consequently, she is credited with firing the last shells of the whole war!

The RAN/RNZN cooperation at sea continued after 1945. New Zealand’s six ex RN Loch class frigates all deployed to Japan and the Far East on a regular basis. In 1951 RNZN frigates fired their 4-inch guns at North Korean targets ashore with considerable success, just as HMAS Murchison did.

The RNZN also played a part in the long-running Malayan Emergency in support of the RN and RAN’s blockade preventing weapons getting to the communist terrorists ashore from the sea. It was a thankless task but eventually a successful one.

New Zealand continued to operate cruisers on permanent loan from the RN until 1963. In succession the three Dido class cruisers, Black Prince, Bellona and Royalist regularly exercised with the RAN’s aircraft carriers and destroyers ‘up top’ in the Commonwealth Strategic reserve. But these fine-looking World War II gun platforms were never designed for the steamy heat of the tropics and lacked the means to make them comfortable for their large ship’s companies. Their aging engineering plant meant that as time went by they spent more time alongside than at sea. It was rumoured at the time, that Royalist’s longevity was not improved by the determination of her captain to cross the Tasman at high speed in a ferocious gale so that he could be back in Auckland in time to see an All Black test match.

In 1948 the RAN first loaned and then gave the River class frigate HMAS Lachlan to the RNZN. Four Bathurst class minesweepers followed three years later and two of them Inverell and Kiama, together with Lachlan, sustained the RNZN’s training and inshore hydrographic surveying roles for a generation. Lachlan surveyed the waters that Cook had first sounded in Fiordland and the Marlborough Sounds, confirming that his 1769 charts were substantially accurate.

In the new decade, just commenced, the two navies will continue to share responsibility for the vast maritime domain that surrounds both countries.

In 1973 the New Zealand (but not the Australian) government decided to protest publicly about the continuation of French nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere over Muroroa atoll. The decision was made to send two RNZN frigates as witnesses to the tests and to collect evidence of the radiation released. The RNZN did not have the ‘legs’ for the vast distances of the Pacific unaided and depended on an RAN tanker, HMAS Supply, to allow the frigates Otago and Canterbury to wait off Muroroa to make their protest when the bombs were detonated. It was Supply’s fuel which kept the frigates on station. This gave a whole new meaning to ‘passing the ANZAC spirit’! The French gave up atmospheric testing shortly afterwards and eventually ceased testing nuclear weapons under the porous coral atoll as well.

During the Falkland’s war in 1982 it was an RNZN frigate which relieved an RN frigate on patrol in the Persian Gulf allowing it to head back to Gibraltar and then south to the area of operations.  The RNZN relayed UK Ministry of Defence signals for the South Atlantic Task Force through HMNZS Irirangi on the high volcanic plateau of the North Island.

The RNZN made a significant contribution to the security of the Gulf at regular intervals since Gulf War One in 1991. The black kiwi funnel badge on an RNZN frigate has been a welcome sight whenever it has appeared assisting in these constabulary, anti-piracy and counter-narcotics operations in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

In 1990 at Bougainville aboard HMNZS Endeavour the first Peace Accord was signed between the warring parties.  The frigates Waikato and Wellington waited nearby.  During the INTERFET Operation in 1999-2000 the RNZN deployed the frigates Canterbury and Te Kaha and the tanker Endeavour off East Timor. They made a significant and useful contribution as did the whole of the New Zealand Defence Force.

New Zealand deployed both to INTERFET and to RAMSI in the Solomon Islands a larger proportion of its total uniformed manpower than did the Australian Defence Force. As a diplomatic tool in the Pacific the NZDF in general, and the RNZN in particular, has demonstrated that New Zealand sailors and soldiers, many of whom are Maori, have considerable skill in making themselves first acceptable, then welcome and useful in Pacific Polynesian and Melanesian Island states.[2]

In the new decade, just commenced, the two navies will continue to share responsibility for the vast maritime domain that surrounds both countries. New Zealand probably has more nautical miles of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) per head of population than any other nation with a navy.  The protection of remaining Southern Ocean fish stocks is becoming a strategic imperative of great international significance. Simultaneously both countries must face up to significant challenges in the Pacific where good governance cannot be assumed and where China’s commercial and strategic interest in the region grows more apparent every year.

The ever-present threat from sea level change and devastating hurricanes in the Pacific makes it vital that the Australian Defence Force and New Zealand Defence Force remain interoperable and ready and able to bring relief, and if necessary evacuation,  to the scattered, low-lying islands of the water hemisphere where Pacific Island friends rely on external assistance at times of crisis.

Shared maritime doctrine, training and exchange of personnel and political will to keep modernising the fleets are the keys to keeping the relationship at sea mutually beneficial. Regular exercising together is essential if short-notice operations are to be successful. For that reason RNZN sailors and junior officers were embarked in RAN frigates for Middle East deployments from 2012 onwards. RNZN staff officers have worked with RAN counterparts in Combined Task Force 150 conducting Maritime Security Operations outside the Arabian Gulf for the last two decades.

After a long period when Australian Defence Force operations were mainly focussed on the Middle East the RAN has now re-engaged with the Pacific and South East Asia. In 2019 a group of 15 RNZN officers and sailors embarked in the LHD HMAS Canberra for three months as part of Exercise Indo-Pacific Endeavour. They visited Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.

The RAN’s three amphibious ships, Canberra, Adelaide and Choules, with the RAN’s three new Hobart Class Air Warfare Destroyers, have transformed the ability of both navies to engage in significant operations for combat or humanitarian purposes, or any combination, both in our neighbourhood and out of area. Large helicopter carriers are national assets with an international reach well suited to the vastness of the Pacific. The RNZN will undoubtedly continue to exercise and operate with these large amphibious ships in pursuit of common aims in the decades ahead. The RNZN’s contribution of an ANZAC Class frigate to the RIMPAC exercises continues to be a high point of New Zealand’s engagement with the USN and the region. The integration in 2017 of a frigate to a USN Carrier Strike Group is a testament to the RNZN’s growing interoperability with the USN.

READ MORE

• Options for the NZDF and RNZN 2nd enhanced Sealift vessel
• Why do I think the Endurance 170 LHD is a good choice for the RNZN.
• Other LHD operations
• Ship to Shore : Amphibious Support Ships in The The Asia-Pacific Region

Just where, when and under what circumstances the RNZN and RAN will operate together again to achieve their governments’ strategic intentions is unknowable. But given the political and climatic volatility of the region we live in that they will be so used is not much in doubt. Both governments understand that in the water hemisphere a modern, flexible maritime projection capability is not optional but central to national security and prosperity. The two nations’ navies are bound together by far more than shared naval history, important though that is. They work, exercise and plan together because they are more capable of shaping the strategic geography of this part of the world together than either could do unaided by the other.

The RNZN is completing a period of rebuilding and restoration after a period of lean years. Both its ANZAC class frigates Te Mana and Te Kaha, built in Australia, are being refitted, upgraded and given a midlife extension which will see them serve for another decade. The RNZN has been appropriately equipped with Offshore Patrol Vessels for both blue water Pacific operations and its vital EEZ resource protection role.  New Zealand maritime zone contains some of the largest and best stocked remaining fisheries on the planet. Many are far from the coast and need to be patrolled and defended against increasingly bold deep sea poachers. That is a task for the RNZN’s OPVs that has no time limit.

As the RNZN prepares to celebrate it 80^th birthday in 2021 it is rebuilding so that it can continue to live up to its vision statement, The Best Small Navy in the World. The RAN is fortunate to have this force multiplier available to enhance its larger capability. The RNZN is fortunate to have the RAN available to provide scale and opportunity for multi ship joint maritime exercises and operations just a short distance away across Tasman Sea, known to both navies as ‘the ditch’.

The ongoing story of the Black Kiwi and the Red Kangaroo has solid foundations in the shared history of the two nations and navies in peace and war. It is important for both the RAN and the RAN, and their Australian Defence Force  and New Zealand Defence Force sister services, that joint maritime interoperability is maintained and enhanced in peacetime so that whatever hostile entity comes at either country over the sea or under it in the decades ahead can be detected and if necessary engaged and defeated. The RAN and the RNZN, even combined, will never be the largest navy in this region. That fact requires that the two navies must be able to demonstrate continuing cutting-edge lethality.

The shared history of naval endeavour from 1769 to the present shows that in peace we shape our shared regional strategic geography and, if required, in war we must be able to ‘Fight and Win at Sea’.

[1] Nowadays when Australia and New Zealand collide it is called the Bledisloe Cup and the result is usually much the same as when the ships did! Australia comes off second best.

[2] One senior British officer after working with New Zealand troops in East Timor is reported as  \commenting admiringly of his time with the NZDF: the Maori army is every bit as good as the Gurkhas, and they bring their own officers and we don’t have to pay them!

Lieutenant Commander Desmond Woods, RAN. Desmond Woods joined the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1974. Since then he has served in the Royal Navy, the British Army and the RAN as an Education Officer, teaching naval and military history to junior officers.  From 2003 – 2010 he ran the Strategic Studies Course and Naval History induction at the Royal Australian Naval College before joining the staff of the Australian Command and Staff College.

He was the Military Support Officer to the Defence Community Organisation in Canberra for two years before working the RAN’s International Fleet Review in 2013, followed by a year as Staff Officer Centenary of Anzac (Navy) and two more as Chief of Navy’s Research Officer.  After being a Heritage Research Officer at the RAN’s Seapower Centre in Canberra he became the Navy’s Bereavement Liaison Office in which role he is still serving.

He is a Councillor of the Australian Naval Institute and the Australian Institute for International Affairs (ACT), a member of the United Services Institute (ACT) and is a regular contributor of naval articles and book reviews to Australian and international naval historical journals.