The Volunteer - National Maritime Museum

The Voyage of the
Ping Wo
The Ping Wo (‘Equitable Harmony’ in
Mandarin) was a flat bottomed river steamer
of 3105 tons, built in China in 1922, which
had operated on the Yangtze River between
Chongqing and Shanghai before she found
her way to Singapore.
How and why she arrived there in 1941, I
have been unable to discover. She was
requisitioned in December 1941 by the Royal
Navy and used to tow the destroyer HMAS
Vendetta, which was refitting there, to
Australia at 3 knots. She was then
commissioned by the Royal Australian Navy
in May 1942 and operated throughout the
Pacific War in a variety of roles.
In 1946 the RAN planned her return to the
pre-war owners and it was in April that year
that I had my first sight of her in Sydney
Harbour. I was one of a Royal Navy party
drafted to take passage in her to Hong Kong,
and as we boarded her the C.P.O. of the
regular RAN crew opined that it was very
unlikely we would complete the voyage. Given
that she had been described as a ‘clapped out
rust bucket’ by her first C.O. it was easy to
understand his pessimism, and mine! Our
sailing was delayed for 11 days till a cyclone
passed and we finally left on 20 April. It
would take much more space than I have here
to detail all the incidents encountered on the
voyage, but this brief narrative includes some
of them.
A severe leakage in our water tank developed
immediately and we put into Brisbane for
repairs. We then sailed, first to Townsville
and then on to Thursday Island off the tip of
NE Australia. We had to anchor every night
as the bridge compass developed a fault,
and there were obvious navigational
problems proceeding through the dangerous
Barrier Reef.
After an interesting stay at Thursday Island,
where I met some pearl divers, one of whom
had lost a leg to a shark, we wallowed across
the Gulf of Carpentaria to Darwin in a heavy
swell. The noise of the sea smashing up
against the sponsons was an unpleasant
accompaniment to our progress,
compounded by water flooding into the after
-hold through a cargo door on the waterline.
To our relief a shipwright on board was able
to cement the door, but soon after this our
steering gear broke down and we had to
drop anchor for the night 50 miles from
Darwin while repairs were effected. Darwin
itself at that time was a small town, still with
heavy bomb damage left over from Japanese
air raids in 1942.
Our progress from there across the Timor
Sea was interrupted when a rating on board
developed acute appendicitis and we had to
turn back, racing for 7 hours at 12 knots to
meet the cruiser HMS Euryalus, which had
fortunately just left Darwin for Sydney and
which sped north at her maximum speed. As
our normal designed speed was a rarely
obtained 10 knots it felt as though Ping Wo
would be shaken to pieces in this dash
which, however, had a happy outcome with
the rating having a successful operation after
being transferred to Euryalus.
Our passage through the Flores Sea was very
scenic, with a long string of volcanic islands
visible, some rising to 5000 feet. Many shore
navigational lights in these waters were still
missing at this time and as a result one night
we nearly ran aground on an island.
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