Ships
- HMAS Voyager (D31) In command when she grounded at Betano, 23 September 1942
Lieutenant Commander Rupert Cowper Robison, of the Royal Australian Navy, took the destroyer HMAS Voyager (D31) to sea in 1942 with a Distinguished Service Cross already earned. As first lieutenant of the destroyer Stuart he had been in the night action off Cape Matapan in March 1941, and the cross marked that service in the Mediterranean. He was a working commanding officer of one of the old V and W class destroyers Australia had taken over from the Royal Navy, not a newly made captain learning the ship.
He assumed command of Voyager on 6 January 1942, while she was still in refit, and had her back at sea in March. For the months that followed she ran escort work along the southern and western coasts. The destroyer had already spent a long war under earlier commanding officers, among them James Morrow, before Robison was ordered north. In the middle of September 1942 she was sent to Darwin for a passage to Portuguese Timor.
The Australian and Dutch guerrillas of Sparrow Force were still holding out in the hills and needed men and stores. Voyager left Darwin in the early hours of 22 September carrying about 250 soldiers of the 2/4th Independent Company, some fifteen tonnes of supplies, and eight army barges. The landing beach was Betano Bay, on the south coast: a steep shore with deep water close in, reefs toward the eastern end, and no navigational marks off the sand. Robison closed it on the evening of 23 September.
The soundings fell away sharply as the ship neared the beach. At 1828 he anchored about two and a half cables offshore, and a minute later the soldiers began to climb down into the barges. A strong set carried Voyager parallel to the beach and in toward the sand, while loaded craft lay close over the port propeller. For about a quarter of an hour Robison kept that engine stopped, unwilling to turn the screw with men in the water beside it, and tried to swing the stern clear on the starboard engine alone. At 1850 the stern took the ground. He was in command when she grounded at Betano on 23 September 1942. Barely half an hour had passed since the anchor went down.
Through the night and the next morning the crew and the soldiers tried to haul her off. A kedge anchor was laid out, and depth charges, torpedoes, and other heavy gear went over the side to lighten her. The sea piled sand around the stern and the screws. By noon on 24 September Robison accepted that Voyager would not come off without help from seaward, and the work turned to getting stores ashore for the force on Timor. Japanese aircraft found the stranded ship that afternoon. Her guns shot down a bomber, but a fighter escort escaped to report the position, and a later strike by bombers and fighters left the destroyer beyond repair. Charges were fired in the hull that evening. Early on 25 September Robison and one of his sailors set the wreck alight so the enemy could make no use of it. The corvettes Kalgoorlie and Warrnambool later took Voyager’s company off the beach.