In July 2000 (yes, almost 26 years ago), the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) Director of Naval Platforms, Gordon Macdonald, spent two days with his team assessing a novel “stern landing vessel” (SLV), the 35-metre Deepwater used for beaching and extracting 472 tonnes of sand dredged up and stockpiled ashore.
Mr Macdonald witnessed first-hand the beaching and loading of the sand using the two crewmembers, each driving a Caterpillar 966 front end loader, while the vessel held her position perpendicular to the beach with the two engines idling in astern, wind and tide on the side.
The draught of course increased by over 1.2 metres during the one-hour loading cycle, but the design was so unique that the extraction from the beach was a simple change from astern to ahead with both engines and the aft part of the hull slid easily down into deeper water.
The SLV design made more money and was more flexible in tasks it could achieve.
Mr Macdonald issued an official letter at the time to the designers of Deepwater, which said that the RAN would consider these designs as they were clearly superior in head sea capability and deadweight.
Thirty-five metres is a jump point in manning, but similar length bow landing craft only can carry 240 to 260 tonnes of bulk cargo on deck in smooth waters. Also, the owner of Deepwater, Denis Hughes, immediately took on Seatransport’s innovative SLV design because it made more money and was more flexible in tasks it could achieve.
The skipper of Deepwater was Harry Mclean, who took project cargo of 300-tonne transformers on a 96-wheel trailer, loaded by three prime movers in tandem from the George River near Mascot Airport in Sydney to a field in Ballina in northern New South Wales. And he did this five times!
He also took a project cargo of kit homes to a remote spot on the Loyalty Islands east of New Caledonia, where a fat-tyred forklift took the kits over the sandy beach to the site where a unique resort was being established.
Deepwater then took all the equipment including road rollers to Lord Howe Island for the runway extension. She undertook several other tasks in the New Caledonia area but unfortunately was caught out in a cyclone where Harry Maclean felt quite safe even in eight-metre seas.
It was references like these that helped Seatransport finally get its SLV design in to the home stretch of the Defence White Paper in 2013.
Unfortunately, the Labor Prime Minister at the time, in the usual habit of running out of other people’s money, slashed the defence budget including that of the SLV. So this design was then assigned to a shelf in the overstaffed offices of defence procurement.
A local design group has sold its design to 47 countries, but it is difficult to become a prophet in your own land.
Luckily for Seatransport, the US maintained an interest in SLVs right through the Covid-19 pandemic, and has leased a 73-metre SLV from Sealease, a sister company of Seatransport.
I’m telling you this as the Australian Government has just a few weeks ago, awarded a AU$1.1 billion (US$770 million) contract to local shipbuilder Austal for the construction of a series of bow landing craft. Isn’t that just incredible?
When the defence procurement teams have continually monitored “world’s best practise” and commercial operators are using 20 of them in the region, this is bewildering. A local design group called Seatransport has sold its innovative design to 47 countries, but it is difficult to become a prophet in your own land according to the Book of Proverbs.
Richard Marles should be dismissed as Defence Minister.