Rod Sawford (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A silly response from the member for Fisher, but of course you would expect that. It is a man called Sir William Rooke Creswell. He came to this country in the 1850s, and he took command of the South Australian colonial ship Protector. Of course that was at the time when Australia was very fearful of being invaded by the Russians and built forts all around the coastline. Two of those forts are in my electorate—Fort Glanville and Fort Largs. One is now a historic museum and the other is a police academy.

In the period after Federation, we had naval ships here but they were under the command of the Royal Navy. William Rooke Creswell managed, against the wishes of the Royal Navy, to amalgamate those forces. He convinced the British authorities to do so, and so began the Royal Australian Navy.

You would have thought someone of that merit would be appropriately remembered in this country and you would think they would be appropriately remembered in perhaps my electorate of Port Adelaide, where he commanded that ship, the colonial ship Protector, which served in the Boxer Rebellion and in the First World War. I think it was scuttled off the coast of Queensland, and it is an absolute tragedy that that occurred. But we do not remember him. We just do not remember him.

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