HMAS Gladstone (J324)

HMAS Gladstone
History
Australia
Namesake	City of Gladstone, Queensland
Builder	Walkers Limited
Laid down	4 August 1942
Launched	26 November 1942
Commissioned	22 March 1943
Decommissioned	16 July 1956
Reclassified	Training ship (1946)
Honours and awards	Battle honours: Pacific 1943–45 New Guinea 1943–44
Fate	Entered civilian service in 1956, scrapped in 1983
Badge
General characteristics
Class and type	Bathurst-class corvette
Displacement	650 tons (standard), 1,025 tons (full war load)
Length	186 feet (57 m)
Beam	31 feet (9.4 m)
Draught	8.5 feet (2.6 m)
Propulsion	2 × Yarrow boilers, 2 × triple expansion steam engines, 2 shafts, 2,000 hp
Speed	15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph)
Complement	85
Armament	1 × 4-inch HA gun 3 × 20 mm Oerlikons 1 × Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun (installed later) Machine guns Depth charges, chutes and throwers

HMAS Gladstone (J324/M324), named for the city of Gladstone, Queensland, was one of 60 Bathurst-class corvettes constructed during World War II, and one of 36 that were initially manned and commissioned solely by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).^[1] Built by Walkers Limited, the ship was commissioned in 1943.

Gladstone initially operated as a convoy escort between Queensland and New Guinea. On 18 December 1943, the ship was part of a convoy that ran aground on Bougainville Reef; the corvette was able to refloat herself and sail back to Brisbane, but remained in port for repairs until January 1944. She resumed convoy duties, first back in Queensland waters, then she was relocated to Milne Bay in April 1944. In January 1945, she was redeployed to Morotai. After World War II, Gladstone was involved in the Japanese surrender of Timor at Koepang, performed surveillance in the Lesser Sunda Islands, and transported Netherlands East Indies soldiers from Darwin to Timor, then spent the next ten years attached to Flinders Naval Depot as a training ship.

The corvette was paid off in 1946, then purchased by the Port Phillip Sea Pilots Association for use as a relief and accommodation ship. She was renamed Akuna (sometimes referred to as Akuna II) and registered in Melbourne. Akuna began operations in mid-1958, but was made redundant in the 1970s by the move to high-powered launches, and was sold to a private owner in 1973 or 1974. Conflicting reports mark the next few years of the ship's operation, until she was sold in 1978 to a new owner, who used her to rescue Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand under the auspices of Food for the Hungry International. The ship was re-registered as a Panamian-flagged private yacht under the name Akuna II in 1980, around the time a former United States Air Force pilot began scamming families of personnel missing-in-action after the Vietnam War with claims that he would use the ship to rescue US prisoners-of-war that may still have been interred in Vietnam. Akuna II was not used for that purpose and actually spent the time moored in Songkhla, before she was towed to Bangkok and scrapped in 1983.