HMNZS Waiho – story of Able Seaman, Jack Matthews who served on HMNZS Waiho – – JCs Royal New Zealand Navy Ships and New Zealand Defence, Also other World Defence Updates

Adventures in a Minesweeper

by Brian Eastwood

Able Seaman, Jack Matthews

Former Able Seaman, Jack Matthews, does not have any real regrets about joining the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1944. “Ok” says the old sailor, “There were a few hard times and often rough seas, but I was 18 years old and altogether it really was a great adventure.”

One regret he does have was caused by an accident when he had been in the Navy for only five weeks. Stationed at “HMNZS Tamaki”, a naval training centre on Motuihe Island in the Hauraki Gulf, he was helping shift a cutter across the island when the boat rolled over him and broke his left leg.

Jack ended up in the Navy hospital and it was nearly three months before he got back to the island. His original class was an overseas draft destined for England. Some joined big warships in the U.K. with all of them eventually making it home again. Jack was too late to join them and missed the trip of a lifetime.

At the finish of another six weeks of training he was sent from “HMNZS Philomel” to join “HMNZS Waiho”, a new 135 feet, coal burning, steel minesweeper trawler of 612 tons all up. Based in Auckland they spent their time sweeping their area off the north-eastern coast from Bay of Islands to Coromandel. “Waiho” was armed with a 12-pound gun, two machine guns and depth charges. She had a crew of 26.

Castle class minsweeper trawler Waiho

Jack remembers,” We would anchor somewhere for the night, perhaps Urquharts Bay in Whangarei Harbour, and set off at 7-00 in the morning to sweep for maybe twelve hours. We often spent the night at one of four anchorages we had at the Great Barrier.” Each trip would last for up to two weeks.

“The Captain, Lieutenant W.S. Laurie, and his officers really had to know their navigation. It could be a complicated business,” says Jack.

The minesweepers usually worked in a team of six or eight ships, side by side, in an area up to twenty miles out to sea. There was no room for error if their kilometre long trailing cables were not to tangle. And they had to sweep and note the area correctly. If a mine was hooked the vanes at the end of the cable automatically cut the mine”s cable.

When each area was swept a row of “Dan Buoys” was laid to show the zone cleared. The last row of buoys was left to show them where to start next morning.

In fact Jack”s ship never came up with a mine because the area was swept continually after RMS Niagara was sunk off Whangarei Heads in June 1940. It was then realised that German raiders had laid huge minefields at harbour entrances all around New Zealand. Jack explains, “Our job was to always keep them clear of more mines.”

The Navy is traditionally known as the Silent Service because they say little about their operations. That is especially true of the minesweeper ships. It was not a glamorous job, but a sometimes dangerous, difficult task, efficiently and well done.

Jack Matthews was demobilised from the Navy in late 1945 after the war ended, returning to his job as groceries manager at Farmers Trading Company in Dargaville. He then took over management of the Trading Department at Northern Wairoa Dairy Company where he stayed for 26 years, retiring in 1987.
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