Flashback: When stunning ship crest returned home

Orders had come that “brightwork” on the cruiser, which was being transferred to the Australian Navy to become HMAS Shropshire, was to be painted over so it would not glint in the sun and give the ship’s position away to the enemy.

“I thought ‘they’re not going to paint that, it’s too good’. There were only two screws holding it on. I whipped it off and took it to the blacksmith’s shop – I was ship’s blacksmith. I wrapped it up and kept it in a special locker,” said Roy, speaking from his home in Melbourne, Australia, back in 1998.

He was to keep HMS Shropshire’s solid brass, chrome-plated ship’s crest in “safe custody” until he left the ship in November 1946.

“I thought ‘nobody has missed it so far. I will take it with me.’”

It was, he felt, a beautiful souvenir, and one which he kept in his garage for decades, but not hidden away, as he would take it to shipmates' reunions in Australia and so on.

Originally it had been in the Quartermaster's lobby of the cruiser.

But as he turned 80 in July 1998, his thoughts turned to what would happen to it when he, in his words, pegged out.

And he hatched a plan to return it to Shropshire.

In fact, because of the cost of travel, originally he offered to post it, but Salopians rallied round with offers of help in a campaign led by Craven Arms businessman David Evans, and supported by the county's Royal Naval Associations, to bring Roy and his wife Dorothy over from Australia.

It took a bit of organising, but to cut a long story short it all came good on Wednesday, April 14, 1999, when Roy brought some Aussie sunshine with him as he returned this piece of local naval heritage to its "rightful owners" in a ceremony in the grounds of Shrewsbury Castle.

It was received on behalf of the county by the Vice Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, Simon Kenyon-Slaney.

As Roy waited to give yet another interview, this time to Australian television, he said: “We thought it was going to be a simple ceremony, handing it over to the mayor or somebody like that. But all this has taken the wind out of our sails. I’m not a public speaker by any means, especially with an Admiral of the Fleet being there — when I’m a Petty Officer blacksmith.”

Among the guests at the presentation ceremony was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Michael Pollock, who lived at Churchstoke.

Afterwards the crest was paraded through the town and the admiral took a salute at the Guildhall.

Roy was a survivor from HMAS Canberra, which was sunk in 1942. The British Government decided to transfer HMS Shropshire to the Australian Navy as a replacement.

He was one of 192 key personnel – survivors from the Canberra – who paved the way for the transfer, and was the last of those “originals” to leave HMAS Shropshire, serving four years on her. In all, he served 41 years in the Royal Australian Navy.

HMS Shropshire herself was completed in 1929 at a cost approaching £2 million.

On the crest's handover the intention was that it would be shared in turn by the county's RNA branches before going on display at Shropshire Regimental Museum.

After going on display at the branches, there was alarm when it suddenly disappeared – apparently through some breakdown in communication – but happily it turned up again and was handed over to the museum in September 2000.

As for HMAS Shropshire, she was broken up in 1955. A London class cruiser, her principal armament was eight 8ins guns. Her complement was 700 and one of her officers while in Royal Navy service was a young Prince Philip.

In Australian service the cruiser fought in the Pacific, and was involved in a number of key actions, emerging unscathed at the end of the war to be present at the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.

Incidentally there is a question mark over whether the crest which Roy took all those years ago was the main ship's crest, which would surely have been considerably larger – and no doubt immediately missed.