COmmissioning crew HMAS Goulburn I
CHIEF PETTY OFFICER STOKER MECHANIC ROBERT (BOB) JOHN PEMBERTON 21259 RAN
Bob Pemberton was born in Scarborough NSW on the last day of December 1918. He was the son of Peter and Annie Pemberton. He enlisted in the RAN as a Stoker 3rd Class in October 1936 and commenced a twelve year engagement two months later on his 18th birthday, being rated Stoker 2nd Class that day.
In May 1937 Bob joined the Light Cruiser HMAS Sydney and the ship would become his home for the next 14 months. He was rated Stoker on his 19th birthday. In July 1938 Bob was selected to become part of the commissioning crew of HMAS Sydney’s sister ship HMAS Hobart. Hobart’s crew would travel to the United Kingdom in the HMAS Albatross, a Seaplane Carrier which was being transferred to the Royal Navy as part payment for Hobart. The men arrived in the UK in September and joined Hobart the following day.
Bob would serve on Hobart until January 1941, seeing active service in the Indian Ocean and in the defence of British Somaliland. Whilst on Hobart he was promoted to Acting Leading Stoker and later confirmed in rank in June 1941. He would post off Hobart on the ship’s return to Australia in January 194, and he was assigned to HMAS Penguin to join corvettes building in the Sydney area. The Australian Government was building 60 Bathurst Class Corvettes, 56 of them to be manned by the RAN, and with so many ships building, experienced stokers like Bob were desperately needed.
On the 28th of February 1941, Bob commissioned HMAS Goulburn at Cockatoo Dock in Sydney, serving on the ship until March 1942. Within months of commissioning, Goulburn was in the Far East. The ship took part in the defence of Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), and after the fall of Java the ship escaped to Freemantle arriving there with only nine tons of fuel remaining. Two weeks later Bob rejoined HMAS Hobart and was promoted Acting Stoker Petty Officer, a promotion confirmed on Hobart in May 1943. Bob was probably onboard Hobart when it was torpedoed in July 1943 causing extensive damage, as there is an annotation on his SC that he received a full replacement of his kit, probably lost when his mess deck was flooded.
His postings after Mid 1943 are indecipherable, however it appears he was on HMAS Latrobe in 1944. He was promoted Chief Stoker (Temporary) in February 1947, confirmed in July of that year. His rate changed to Chief Stoker Mechanic in August 1947, and he discharged end of engagement in January 1949.
Bob married twice, the second time to Lucy Edna Dawson in 1947. The couple lived on Sydney’s Northern Beaches at Dee Why and Harbord, Bob working as a carrier, and later as a shopkeeper. In the late 1970s they retired to Macksville on NSW’s Mid-North Coast.
Lucy Pemberton passed away in 1985 at Nambucca Heads NSW and Bob in Ravensthorpe WA on the 21stof May 1990. His body was cremated and his ashes were interred in a Memorial Wall at Laverty’s Funeral Home in Macksville NSW.
Sources
Service Record - Australian National Archives
Nominal Roll - Department of Veterans Affairs
