SS Barossa
SS Barossa was a steam bulk carrier built in Scotland in 1938 for the Adelaide Steamship Company of South Australia. In 1942 she was burnt out in the Japanese bombing of Darwin, but she was raised and repaired. In 1949 she was the focus of a watersiders' strike in Brisbane, which as a result is sometimes called the "Barossa strike".
In 1964, the Adelaide Steamship Company merged its interstate shipping fleet with that of with McIlwraith, McEacharn & Company, and Barossa was renamed Cronulla. Later that year she was sold, and registered in Hong Kong. In 1965 she was sold again, and registered under the Panamanian flag of convenience. In 1969 she was damaged by a typhoon. She was declared a total loss, and scrapped in Hong Kong.
Building and launch
Between 1937 and 1939 the Caledon Shipbuilding & Engineering Company in Dundee on the Firth of Tay built a series of cargo steamships for Australian shipping companies to use in the coastal trade between the different states and territories of Australia. Yard numbers 362 and 363 were launched in 1937 as and Beltana for the Adelaide Steamship Company. Yard number 371 was launched in 1938 as Kooringa, a slightly enlarged version for McIlwraith, McEacharn & Company. Slightly larger again was yard number 370, which was launched in 1938 as Barossa for the Adelaide Steamship Company. In 1939 Caledon launched two more ships to the same dimensions as Barossa: yard number 374 as Bundaleer for the Adelaide Steamship Company, and yard number 380 as Barwon for Huddart Parker.Lady Galway launched Barossa in Dundee on 28 February 1938. She was the wife of Henry Galway, a former Governor of South Australia. There was a strong south-westerly wind, which drove the uncompleted ship about down the Firth of Tay. VA Cappon's tug Gauntlet took her in tow, but was unable to make headway with her against the wind. She was joined by Cappon's tug Mentor, and the Dundee Port Trustees' tug Harecraig, and the three together succeeded in towing Barossa back to Caledon's fitting-out jetty.
Description and registration
Barossas lengths were overall and registered. Her beam was, her depth was, and her draught was. Her tonnages were ; ; and. Whereas Bungaree and Beltana were tweendeckers, Barossa differed in having a single deck. She had four holds, each long by wide, and each with a hatch wide. Her total cargo capacity was. Each of her cargo hatches had four derricks to speed the loading and discharging of cargo. They comprised seven pairs of five-ton derricks; one pair of ten-ton derricks; and, for her Number 2 Hold, one derrick able to lift up to 25 tons. She had a raked bow and cruiser stern. Amidships she had a superstructure between holds 2 and 3 that included her bridge and berths for her deck officers. Between holds 3 and 4 she had a superstructure over her engine room, which included her single funnel, and berths for her engineer officers. Berths for her crew were in her poop, aft of hold 4.Barossa had a single screw. John G Kincaid & Co of Greenock built her main engine, which was a three-cylinder triple-expansion engine. She also had a Bauer-Wach exhaust turbine, which drove the same propeller shaft via a Föttinger fluid coupling and double reduction gearing. The exhaust turbine was for fuel economy. Older ships on the Australian coastal trade typically burnt about 40 tons of coal a day. Barossa was designed to maintain on only 22 tons a day. The combined power of her reciprocating engine plus turbine was rated at 390 NHP. The tunnel for her propeller shaft was "submerged" beneath hold 4, to protect it from damage when unloading cargo.
AWA made her wireless telegraphy equipment. Her call sign was VLKY. She was registered in Melbourne, and her UK official number was 159574.
Delivery voyage
Barossa successfully made her sea trials on 28 April, and two days later left Scotland for Australia in ballast. Captain WF Lee, the Adelaide Steamship Company wharf superintendent at Port Adelaide, was her Master on her delivery voyage to Australia. AWA designed her W/T set to have a range of a few hundred miles. However, as she crossed the Indian Ocean, Barossa exchanged W/T signals with Applecross wireless station in Western Australia, at a distance of more than. On 16 June Barossa arrived in the Spencer Gulf of South Australia. She loaded ironstone at Whyalla for BHP, then sailed via Newcastle, to Sydney, where she arrived on 24 June. Once she had arrived in Australia, Captain D Morrison relieved Captain WF Lee as her Master. In the first week of July she made further sea trials, on which she achieved a speed of over a measured mile.1938 crew dispute
In November 1938 there was a labour dispute aboard Barossa. 12 of her crew were Seamen's Union of Australia members, but the others were non-union men. The union members reported that they were "in fear of their lives. They were threatened with bottles and iron bars". One seaman claimed that when the ship was in Townsville, Queensland, a non-union man had entered his quarters and threatened to throw him into the sea. Two witnesses corroborated his report, and the seaman said that a pair of his seaboots had disappeared. Another union member also reported that items of his clothing had gone missing. After Barossa reached Port Pirie, South Australia, one of her firemen reported to police that a cornet worth £A 15 and clothing worth £A5 had disappeared from his possession, and that his bicycle had been damaged. At Port Pirie the tug Yacka retrieved clothing of crew members from under the wharf, including a pair of the fireman's trousers.The union members asked Captain Morrison to replace two non-union firemen with union members. Morrison refused. On 19 November, Barossa completed discharging cargo at Port Pirie, and was ready to sail, but eight of the 12 union members left the ship and refused to sail. The dispute delayed sailing for 18 hours. Morrison replaced the men who had left the ship with eight non-union men, and she sailed at 04:20 hrs on 20 November. The local shipping master, AM Bickers, deemed them deserters, and revoked their licenses for three months. The local representative of the seamen's union, AJ Jeffery, said that "these men had lawful and reasonable excuse" to leave the ship, and that the union would appeal on their behalf to the deputy director of Navigation in Port Adelaide.
Bombing and salvage
Barossa was in Darwin, Northern Territory on 19 February, when hundreds of Japanese aircraft attacked the port and town. Incendiary bombs hit her and set her on fire. Her crew, helped by tugs, tried unsuccessfully to fight the fire. Accounts differ as to what happened next. News reports published in August 1945 say that she was listing heavily; but her crew beached her to stop her from sinking. A report that the Royal Australian Navy published in 1959, and republished in 1962, says she was towed into midstream, anchored, and left to burn herself out. Her back was broken; her superstructures were burnt out; and some of her equipment was destroyed; but her engines and boilers survived undamaged. The Adelaide Steamship Company's senior engineer, Mr Arthur Rich, with a volunteer skeleton crew from Port Adelaide, surveyed the damage, and spent 12 months salvaging her with what remained of her own equipment. A tug came from Sydney with emergency equipment, but Barossa reached Sydney under her own power, accompanied by the tug.The reports published in August 1945 said that Barossa was bombed on an unspecified day in March 1942. The reports do not specify the day, and the Japanese attacked Darwin on several days that month. However, reports published later in 1945, and the RAN report published in 1959 and 1962, all say that she was hit in the first Japanese air raid, which was on 19 February 1942. A report published in 1947 is goes into detail, saying that "The first three bombs to fall on Australian soil landed in the shallow water on the shore side of Barossa, quickly followed by three direct hits on the wharf, a direct hit on Neptuna, a direct hit on Barossa, and a near miss on Swan."
1949 demarcation dispute
On 19 November 1948, the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration ruled by a majority vote that some types of work in ports could be done by workers who were not members of the Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia. In the second week of January 1949, Barossa reached Newstead Wharf in Brisbane carrying 980 tons of pig iron from Whyalla in the bottoms of her holds, with 2,056 tons of steel products from Port Kembla, New South Wales stowed on top. Watersiders started unloading the steel products, and then on the evening of 13 January, they reached the pig iron in her Number 4 Hold. Employers wanted to use tipper trucks to take the pig iron from the ship to a dumping area inside the dock gates, as this would be the most efficient form of transport. But the drivers of the trucks were not WWFA members. They were said to be Transport Workers' Union of Australia members, although on 17 January the TWUA denied this.The use of drivers who were not WWFA members led to a demarcation dispute. When the first load of pig iron was hoisted from Barossa and lowered toward a truck waiting on the quayside, a gang of 15 watersiders refused to handle it. The Chairman of the Waterside Employment Committee, Mr Boyd, immediately dismissed the gang. On 14 January, three more gangs of 15 men each refused the same instruction, and Boyd suspended them for 48 hours. On 15 January, Boyd dismissed another gang of 15 men for refusing the instruction, but two other gangs continued to unload steel products from Barossa. On 16 January, a representative claimed that the dispute was a "Communist plan". The WWFA's Brisbane branch secretary, Ted Englart, said that his union would allow "non-registered labour" to drive trucks from the quayside direct to the foundry, but if the iron was dumped within the dock gates, it should be done by WWFA members. Barossa was scheduled to leave Brisbane on 18 January for Gladstone, but could not do so until her 980 tons of pig iron was discharged.
On 17 January the executive committee of the WWFA's Brisbane branch gave the employers an ultimatum to stop using unregistered labour by 17:00 on 18 January. Otherwise, on 19 January the branch would hold a mass meeting, at which it would recommend that members vote for all 2,200 watersiders in the Port of Brisbane to go on strike. Also on 17 January, three more gangs of 15 men each were dismissed for refusing to unload pig iron from Barossa. That raised to 105 the total number of men dismissed since 13 January. On the morning of 18 January, another four gangs of 15 men each were dismissed for refusing to unload Barossas pig iron. This raised to 165 the total number of watersiders suspended, and left Barossa idle for the rest of the day. Later that day, the Waterside Employment Committee met for two hours to decide whether to authorise the mass meeting. Its two WWFA members were in favour, but its two representatives of the Association of Employers of Waterside Labour were against. The chairman was Mr Boyd, who used his casting vote to deny permission for the mass meeting.