HMAS Melbourne (1945)
|
|
HMS Majestic (R77) was the lead ship of her class of aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy. She was laid down by Vickers-Armstrong Limited at Barrow-in-Furness in England on 15 April 1943 as HMS Majestic and launched on 28 February 1945. Construction was suspended in May 1946 but when it was decided to acquire two aircraft carriers for the Royal Australian Navy in 1947, work was resumed in 1949. On 28 October 1955 she was renamed HMAS Melbourne in a ceremony performed by Lady White, wife of the then Australian High Commissioner in the United Kingdom, Sir Thomas White and commissioned in the Royal Australian Navy.
Melbourne was an unlucky ship. She collided with the destroyer HMAS Voyager off the south coast of New South Wales which sank with the loss of 82 lives on 10 February 1964, and with the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans which sank in the South China Sea with the loss of 74 of her crew on 3 June 1969.
Melbourne paid off on 30 June 1982 and laid up at Sydney, was sold to China United Shipbuilding Company Limited in February 1985 and broken up in the port of Dalian in China where she had been studied to help design a Chinese aircraft carrier.
See HMS Majestic and HMAS Melbourne for other ships of these names.
References
- Royal Australian Navy history of HMAS Melbourne (http://www.navy.gov.au/spc/history/ships/melbourne2.htm)