Ships
- HMAS Nestor (G02) Captain from 3 February 1941
George Stewart, whose full name was George Scott Stewart, was born at Colac, Victoria, on 28 December 1902. He joined the Royal Australian Navy as a cadet on 31 December 1915 and rose through the regular sea ranks: midshipman in 1920, lieutenant in September 1924, and lieutenant commander in September 1932. He was promoted commander on 31 December 1938. By the time the Second World War was underway he had spent his adult life in the permanent service, and sailors who served with him knew him as Big Bill.
On 3 February 1941 he commissioned the N-class destroyer HMAS Nestor, pennant G02, at the Fairfield yard on the Clyde. The ship had been ordered for the Royal Navy, laid down in July 1939 and launched in July 1940, then manned by Australia as one of five N-class destroyers allocated to the Royal Australian Navy. Much of the company was made up of reservists who had been training in British ships. Through the rest of that month Nestor worked up in the winter Clyde, running gunnery, anchor, and degaussing trials and moving between Greenock and the Holy Loch.
She then joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow. In the late winter and spring of 1941 her work was convoy escort in the North Atlantic, patrol, and screening the heavy ships. In the first days of May, still under Stewart, Nestor was with the 6th Destroyer Flotilla when the flotilla captured a German weather ship in the Arctic.
That command lasted only a little more than three months. Heavy drinking by Stewart and two of his senior officers brought the ship to a standstill at Scapa Flow. The sailors shut themselves below and refused duty until the three officers were taken off, and Royal Marines came aboard to remove them. Stewart's appointment ended on 14 May 1941. A court martial held in the depot ship Tyne on 2 June 1941 sentenced him to lose a year's seniority, dismissed him from Tyne, and severely reprimanded him. After brief temporary arrangements, Commander Alvord Rosenthal took command of Nestor on 20 May. The destroyer's later record, from the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck through the destruction of the submarine U-127 and the ship's own loss off Crete in June 1942, was made under those successor captains.
Stewart was given another destroyer the following year. From 5 June 1942 he commanded the Royal Navy ship Porcupine. On 9 December 1942, during that appointment, a U-boat torpedo struck her in the western Mediterranean and broke the hull in two. Both halves remained afloat and were towed into port. His command of Porcupine continued until 19 January 1943.
He returned at once to Australian destroyers, commanding HMAS Quiberon from 21 January to 1 July 1943 and again from 27 August 1943 to 29 May 1944. After the war he held one short further seagoing appointment, HMAS Napier, from 21 September to 26 October 1945. He retired on 1 January 1947 and died at Hordern Vale, Victoria, on 31 January 1965.