HMAS Perth returns Stanley’s plastic boat, which was adrift for three months

There has been a fierce rivalry between Australia’s armed forces for more than a century, but nothing is quite as satisfying as the sense of satisfaction that comes from returning an infantryman’s amateur fishing boat when you find it 1,000 miles away in the crocodile-infested waters of the Top End.

In one of the most intriguing discoveries from Australian maritime surveillance, the ANZAC-class frigate HMAS Perth has been used to recover and retrieve the equivalent of a large tin object that had become stuck on a reef 800km off Darwin.

There is a lot of unwanted plastic floating around in the ocean these days. And that’s not to mention the recent unannounced arrival of small boats in the north, forcing authorities to rescan the seas.

So it makes sense to remove the waste from the water where possible, rather than breaking it up with the 50 cal, as that just creates more waste.

But what are the chances that the Navy will find your plastic boat three months after you lost it and 1,000 miles from where you dumped it?

“Warrant Officer Class Two (WO2) Carl Stanley was fishing with his mates on 26 April when engine trouble left them stranded almost 100km from Dundee Beach in the Northern Territory,” the MoD said.

That would be Dundee beach, famous for its crocodiles, BBQ prawns and attractive menswear. No chance of embellishment here.

“A commercial fishing vessel picked up the soldiers, but WW2 Stanley could only watch as his Polycraft Frontier, nicknamed Plastic Fantastic, capsized and sank out of sight,” the MoD complained.

“The tow line broke, so one of us dived into the water to attach a heavier line, but as we did so the line snapped and the skipper of the fishing vessel shouted, ‘He’s sinking, we must leave him,’” WO2 Stanley was quoted as saying in the official account of the story.

“We thought it would float because it is a plastic hull, but that was clearly not the case.”

Or, of course, it did float, because it clearly didn’t go to the bottom to grow barnacles. It ended up on a reef and was discovered, quite coincidentally, around the same time as Exercise Pitch Black, which is assembling all sorts of flying detection and targeting platforms in Darwin.

But the problem with a real plastic boat (they are not exactly cheap) is that they generally do not end up in strange places. And then there is the question of whether there were crew members and what happened to them.

“Chief Master and Chief Petty Officer Glen Nipperess said while it was unusual to recover a boat for an Anzac-class vessel, after some reconnaissance and planning they decided it could be done,” the MoD said.

Well, Anzac Class ships are generally designed to sink stuff, not tow junk home.

“Once we realized it was usable and could be towed, we put a plan together and once that was all in place, we went out there, hooked it up to the RHIB (rigid-hull inflatable boat) and recovered it,” he said.

The Department of Defense won’t say, but a reasonably priced plastic outboard boat isn’t all that smart. And the boat was covered in barnacles. And presumably no people were reported missing, so it would have been worth doing a proper intelligence check, and maybe a forensic swab.

“The rumours were quickly quashed when (HMAS) Perth’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Gemma Casserly, received an email from an excited WO2 Carl Stanley,” the MoD said.

Casserly said WO2 Stanley (that’s the Army boatswain without a boatswain) had received a call from Maritime Rescue Australia, “who had cross-referenced the registration.”

“He sent me an email saying, ‘Hey, I heard you might have my boat on your boat, can I please have it back?’” Casserly said.

The Defense Department says the plastic boat “was returned to its much-relieved owner at Kuru Wharf on July 29, along with a fictitious invoice for the costs incurred during the salvage.”

The amount of the theatrical claim was not disclosed, but it gives plastic boats a whole new value.

“When the commanding officer came, he asked if I had the invoice,” said WO2 Stanley, the reunited boatswain.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Stanley.

“A few scratches, but that’s it. It’s plastic, it’s obviously extremely robust. It also bounced along the reef for who knows how long,” Stanley said.

“I think it’s convinced some of the Navy guys to buy Polycraft boats now.”

Maybe. And maybe not just sailors.

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