| Fire-ball, (fr. bombe): a bomb-shell, or grenade, with fire issuing from a hole in the top. (Parker's Heraldry) - used in some RANAD badges. The "fouled anchor" denotes the Navy. |
This website contains historical information about Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Armament Depots and the Armament Supply Branch of which they were part.
To provide an historical context, it also contains information about:
Of the Armament Depots listed below, only two now perform their original function; much of their distinctive technology and workplace culture has now disappeared. This website has been compiled to record some of their history before it passes beyond memory.
The term "Armament Supply Branch" is used in the broadest sense to refer to those organisations that, during the 20th century, were responsible for the provision of ammunition and weapons to the ships of the RAN. It includes Navy Office organisations such as the Naval Ordnance Branch and its successors plus the various field organisations such as Ordnance Depots, Armament Depots, Weapon Equipment Depots, Mine Depots and Torpedo Depots.
The page on the RAN Armament Depot Sydney provides an historical overview of depots located in New South Wales.
"These pages are dedicated to all those assistants (armament), storehousemen and women, laboratorymen and women, horse drivers, motor vehicle drivers, lightermen, deckhands, coxswains, examiners, artisans, armourers, artificers and tradesmen and women whose labour, often under primitive working conditions, supplied and maintained the ammunition and weapons of the Royal Australian Navy during most of the 20th century. Their names rarely appear in the historical record, but they were a foundation on which the achievements of the Armament Supply Branch rest. "
Brisbane, Queensland (Armament Depot)
Byford, Western Australia (Mine Depot/Armament Depot)
Darwin, Northern Territory (Torpedo Depot)
Darwin (Frances Bay and Snake Creek), Northern Territory (Armament Depot)
Fyansford, Victoria (Mine Depot)
Garden Island, Western Australia (Armament & Weapon Equipment Depot)
Garden Island, New South Wales (Weapon Equipment Depot)
Garden Island, New South Wales (Gunmounting & Torpedo Depot)
Jervis Bay, New South Wales (Armament Depot - planned, but not constructed)
Kingswood, New South Wales (Armament Depot)
Maribyrnong & Somerton, Victoria (Armament Depot)
Newington, New South Wales (Armament Depot)
North Sydney (Neutral Bay), New South Wales (Torpedo Depot)
North Sydney (Neutral Bay), New South Wales (Torpedo Establishment)
Pinkenba, Queensland (Torpedo Depot)
Preston Point, Western Australia (Torpedo Depot)
Spectacle Island, New South Wales (Armament Depot)
Sydney, New South Wales (Armament Depot)
Swan Island, Victoria (Mine Depot)
Allowing for some special pleading (it was, after all, just 5 days since the Japanese surrender), and the writing style of the time, Ball's paper comprehensively described exactly what a Naval Armament Depot of the mid-20th century did.
All RAN Armament Depots included workshops for repairing, maintaining and assembling ammunition. Until comparatively recently, these were known as "laboratories".
The term "Sydney Ammunition Pipeline" came into use during the 1980s as a convenient way of denoting the complex of storage and maintenance depots and transport routes that terminated at naval ships moored at the Man of War anchorage ammunitioning buoys in Sydney Harbour.
The Sydney Ammunition Pipeline
In January 1853, Henry David Thoreau was in the vicinity when a gunpowder mill near Concord, Massachusetts, blew up. On the ground shortly after, he described the scene in his Journal, concluding with the observation "Put the different buildings 30 rods apart and then but one will blow up at a time."
Armament Depot Layout, Quantity Distances and Explosives Classification
An SOS was sent from the ship, to which HMAS Quickmatch and HMS Cavendish responded; Quickmatch recovering the survivors and Cavendish attempting to fight the fire. By the time Woomera sank a head count had shown that two ratings were missing.
When Clark first arrived at Newington, the storehouses were still under construction and much ammunition was field stored under tarpaulins or corrugated iron sheets.
The US Navy Magazine at Newington
"On April 22nd 1947, at a General Meeting of Depot employees it was resolved to inaugurate a fund, by voluntary subscription, to be known as a "Food for Britain Fund" for the purchase and despatch of Food Parcels to Armament Depots in England."
Affiliations with the Royal Navy and Admiralty
According to a report of a NSW Supreme Court case published in the Sydney Morning Herald of 30 April 1946, an area of 1100 acres at Kingswood was requisitioned by the Minister for the Army under National Security Regulations in October 1942 for a US Army chemical weapons depot.
US Army Ordnance Depot, Kingswood
Wadmiltilt - a strong woollen cloth covering used to shield gunpowder barrels during transport, or the floor of a laboratory whilst handling loose gunpowder.
"Because of the war demands of the Royal Australian Navy, a tremendous expansion has taken place at the naval armament depots in Sydney. This expansion is proceeding rapidly. More than £100,000 has been spent in the construction of magazines and ammunition storehouses ... ."
Some pioneers of the Armament Supply Branch, who arrived early and stayed late:
With the RN Eastern Fleet base in Ceylon under threat, the Admiralty decided to relocate the gun and ammunition reserves for the Fleet to Australia, and these were soon on the water.
The Experience of War at Sydney - 1939 to 1945
The Australian Navy's armament supply organisation was largely civilian-manned from its inception. Immediately after World War 2 proposals were put forward for the future training of executive officers of the RAN Armament Supply Department.
A Course of Instruction in Armament Supply
The transfer of Spectacle Island from the Royal Navy to the Royal Australian Navy in 1913 coincided with the creation of the RAN's Naval Dockyard Police branch. From that time until the island ceased to be involved in ammunition logistics during the 1990s, security was provided by a Naval Dockyard Police complement.
Spectacle Island Magazine c. 1900-1920. Image courtesy of the Mitchell Library
State Library of NSW - Call number: PXA 635/837
Berry's Bay, Port Jackson, New South Wales
Dawes Battery, New South Wales
Georges Head Battery and Chowder Bay Mining Depot, New South Wales
Military Barracks Powder Magazine
Spectacle Island, New South Wales
The Board of Ordnance was present in the Colony from 1836 until 1850, but as there were still Imperial troops in Australia until 1870, there remained a need for Imperial business to be performed by a Colonial organisation.
Ordnance Stores and the Ordnance Storekeeper in the Colony of New South Wales
Abner Brown departs the Colony after his "delicate affair" is exposed leaving unpaid a bill owed to the Sydney Gazette newspaper. Is this Abner Brown, known also as Battery Brown, the Ordnance Storekeeper?
"Battery Brown" and His "Delicate Affair"
Do, Mr. Bombardier, thy business mind.
Fill thy shells with ammunition of other kind.
Abner Brown, Impartiality and "Blossom" the Cow
"On Thursday 4 March 1875, a deputation from the Sydney and suburban municipalities and the Sydney Chamber of Commerce met with the Colonial Secretary to urge the removal of the gunpowder magazine to some safer place than Goat Island."
The 1875 Storage of Gunpowder Board
"Officers in charge of magazines will be required to know exactly where each article is stored, so as to be able to find it at once when required on the darkest night."
The Gunpowder Acts of the Colony of New South Wales
There has never been a large-scale explosion, of the type that devastates an entire neighbourhood, at an explosives facility in Sydney. However smaller-scale accidents have occurred from time to time, and the Bridge-street explosion in 1866 may have been a major tragedy had it occurred during a week day.
An Explosives Accident Scrapbook.
"The proximity of the magazine to the place from whence the flames aspired, was, in itself, a circumstance so dreadful, as not to leave a moment to decide."
"One of the most awful and imposing spectacles which has occurred since the conflagration of the Three Bees about 20 years ago, was witnessed on Saturday in the harbour of Port Jackson."
The "Ann Jamison" Blows Up at the King's Wharf.
On the evening of March 4 in 1866, a shipbroker's office at no. 17 Bridge Street, Sydney was devastated by the accidental explosion of two bottles of nitro-glycerine.
By 1882, and with the prospect of an imminent transfer of Spectacle Island to the Royal Navy, magazine space at Goat Island was insufficient for the task at hand so reliance was placed on the use of hulks for storing merchant's powder.
"The prettiest sight of the whole spectacle on Saturday was the explosion of a torpedo beneath a little doomed boat moored for the purpose. It was one of the colonial-made torpedoes, manufactured in Sydney under contract with the Government ..."
The New South Wales Torpedo and Signalling Corps
Permission given by MAPCO : Map And Plan Collection to reproduce portion of an 1836 Plan Of Sydney With Pyrmont is gratefully acknowledged, as is the use of material derived from the National Library of Australia's Trove database, and the National Archives of Australia. Thanks also to Peter Dean, for services rendered. Other individual acknowledgements are given on the page where the material appears.
This website has been selected by the Australian War Memorial to be archived in perpetuity in the National Library of Australia's Pandora archive. It is also archived by the Internet Archive (use the Wayback Machine to search for URL http://users.tpg.com.au/borclaud/index.html).
If you can contribute photographs, information or personal stories to these pages - or just want to make contact - please email the author, who is a former member of the Armament Supply Branch. Email borclaud @ tpg.com.au
