Throughout Australia's history there have been moments of national shame. The Voyager Royal Commission was one of them.
HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager collided off Jervis Bay on the night of February 10, 1964, with the loss of 82 crew. It was the greatest naval disaster in Australian peacetime history.
The royal commission resulted in protecting those responsible and persecuting those who were not. Reputations were left in tatters.
A new book, John Jess - Seeker of Justice, looks at the role of parliament in the Voyager tragedy.
Federal parliamentarian John Jess was one of the few willing to speak up at the time. "I find myself in an awkward predicament. I feel like a small rowboat with or without a rudder in the midst of a couple of large fleets," he said.
It was thanks to his efforts that a second royal commission, in 1968, exonerated the Melbourne's captain, John Robertson, from blame.
But Jess later described both Voyager royal commissions as "the greatest injustices carried out in Australian service history".
In John Jess - Seeker of Justice, his daughter, Elizabeth McCarthy, has gone one step further and totally re-examined the first royal commission, particularly pages of transcripts that were prohibited from publication.
Her investigation sheds new light on the collision and she even offers a reason for the incident that has never previously been put forward.
- John Jess - Seeker of Justice, $29.95, at bookshops.
