HMAS IBIS

Built at Montrose Shipyard Ltd in Scotland for service with the Royal Navy, HMS SINGLETON, was acquired by the RAN to become HMAS IBIS. In general her service followed the same in-company path as her five RAN sister ships.

 

As a unit of the 16th Minesweeping Flotilla IBIS joined in the search for old WWII US mines around the coasts of New Guinea and Bougainville. Tragedy intervened, and on the night of Feb. 10, 1964 IBIS became one of the ships setting out from Jervis Bay to search for survivors of the VOYAGER-MELBOURNE collision just 20 miles offshore.

 

Like her sister ships IBIS also did tours of duty during the Indonesian Confrontation period, acting as an anti-infiltration patrol vessels out of Borneo and Singapore.

 

The 375 ton British ‘Ton’ Class coastal minesweepers were a particularly successful design and 119 of the little ships were built, with more than 30 eventually being acquired by Commonwealth and foreign navies. IBIS is seen in this undated photo carrying two 40mm bofors weapons, which indicates that it is taken before the ships of this class were converted to minehunters in the 1970s, when one bofors gun was removed.

 

The wooden hulls of some of the re-named Bird Class vessels in the RAN eventually suffered deterioration in the warmer Australian waters, and a form of fibre glass sheathing was not entirely successful. Only two of the six ships, TEAL and CURLEW, had any extended lives after they were finally laid up from naval service.

 

HMAS IBIS was broken up in 1984.

 

Photo: Christopher J. Howell Collection, Bluff, NZ, and kindly sent on disc for the Unoffical RAN Centenary 1911-2011 Photostream.