Navy
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
15 Dec 2002
Last Tuesday a attended an impressive ceremony on board the HMAS Manoora berthed at Garden Island. This ship is capable of carrying about 400 soldiers as well as helicopters or tanks and trucks and landing them across the seas, and was in fact the vessel which picked up the refugees from the Tampa last year.
The reception was hosted by Rear Admiral Raydon Gates and was an annual tribute to the Australian fleet.
Communities without memories or traditions are not communities at all, and the Royal Australian Navy, which began as the Commonwealth Naval Force in 1901 and developed from the various colonial navies, has grafted its own traditions onto those they inherited from the Royal Navy of Great Britain.
Many years ago a visited H.M.S. Victory at Portsmouth, the flagship used by Lord Nelson at the great naval victory of Trafalgar which saved England from Napoleon's revolutionary army. A was struck by the small space between decks, between floor and ceiling.
Tradition has it that when Elizabeth a visited the fleet in the sixteenth century it was too constricted to stand to toast her as she dined. To this day, a was told, the toasts in the British and Australian navies are delivered while the speaker sits.
a have some acquaintance with army ceremonial but this was my first acquaintance with the "Beat to Quarters" and the Ceremonial Sunset. A small detachment of guards performed the ceremony and a marvellous band provided music and singing.
The "Beat to Quarters" belongs primarily to the drummers and has been played for many centuries, since the days of sail which first brought Europeans to Australia, so that the ship's company would man the action stations and prepare for battle. The music is well suited to its task.
The "Beat to Quarters" acknowledges with gratitude the courage and sacrifice of the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy during eight decades of service in war and peace.
Every evening at sunset in navy establishments at sea or on land the white ensign, the Australian flag, is ceremonially lowered. On Tuesday evening the hymn "The Day thou Gavest Lord is Ended" was sung beforehand, accompanied by a volley of shots. Exactly at sunset the flag was lowered, folded and taken away to be flown again on the following day.
During the ceremony a thought of the new dangerous situation Australia confronts after the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001 and the terrorist bombing in Bali on October 12, this year.
a also thought of the 15,000 good people who demonstrated against the threat of war a couple of Sundays ago. Nobody wants war, but few of us, least of all our national leaders, could be pacifists.
War has been a regular feature of history and this will continue. Because of the flaws of human nature and the lessons of history, a democracy like Australia needs armed forces just as we need a police force. The main aim is to protect Australian citizens by preventing others from attacking us. One principal arm of a fighting force is to act as a deterrent.
We can be tempted to take the United States' power for granted. It would be a much darker world for us where there was no democracy with either the capacity or the intention of opposing terrorists.
Modern technology has increased human destructive capacity enormously and today these guerrilla forces regularly act independently of any government. Suicide bombers can now destroy many people as well as themselves. In the future an individual might be able to detonate a biological or chemical weapon, perhaps even a small atomic device. Now is the time to act against them.
The Australian Government has a moral obligation to increase our capacity for defence against terrorism and aggression. We should be grateful for those fellow Australians brave enough to undertake these tasks, and think of the eight ships of the R.A.N. with 856 personnel away from their families on Christmas Day.
Without them, and the power of the United States of America, our life would be very different.
