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HMAS WORT – the story behind the cartoon

By Ian Hughes

Ian Hughes, a.k.a. HMAS Wort, at work on another cartoon for Navy News.

The resemblance between the cartoon vessel HMAS Wort and the Navy’s retired Ton Class Minesweeper HMAS Ibis, is not accidental.

Apart from Vietnam, the most colourful 12 months of my 12-years in the RAN was spent aboard HMAS Ibis patrolling the coast and inland waterways of Borneo and the Malacca Straits during the Malaysian/Indonesian confrontation.

That year aboard Ibis was how I imagine being cast in a successful sitcom would be. I mean, the real Navy was out there some place, but we weren’t part of it when we weren’t alongside.

To continue the sitcom analogy, some of the episodes would bear the following titles:

• Milk Container Overboard (and the four-hour sea-search for it).
  
• The Big Target Shoot (and how only two Bren Gun rounds found their mark after a 500-yard range broadside of everything on board from 40mm Bofor to .45cal. hand guns).
  
• The Big Shell Tanker Shoot (how emptying a Bren Gun magazine across the bows of a small oil tanker will bridge all language barriers and make it heave-to).
  
• The Big Wave (the spectacular effect bow waves, from a minesweeper at 14 knots in a narrow river, has on native canoes).
  
• Action Stations (contact bearing red, 300 degrees, range: 200 yards. ILLUMINATE! We light up the sky with mortar flares and train our armament on a hostile, enemy palm tree bobbing down the port side).
  

And so, the early years of the HMAS Wort cartoon strip were influenced largely, by my time in Ibis.

The scope for interesting and humorous plots for each cartoon strip seemed (at the time) to be endless.

However, over time with little feedback, I wondered if the new sailors still used the old jargon or could identify with Navy routines of that era.

In a light-hearted bid to test a past editor of Navy News, LCDR Kevin Pike, on the currency of the cartoons’ language and behaviour of its characters, I suggested he arrange a berth for me on one of HM’s ships to allow me to update myself. I am sure he would have given this request a huge priority.

I don’t know whether the jargon, customs and routines of the Navy today have changed much since the 1960s and 70s, but I would like to think it doesn’t matter as long as its traditional good sense of humour hasn’t.

The first cartoon strip submitted for publication in 1981 was drawn in pen and ink on cartridge paper and about three times larger than the printed size.

The cartoons I prepare today are still hand drawn, but are scanned into my computer. The dialogue is typed into the scanned word balloons and colour is applied. The finished articles are then emailed to the editor.

My apologies to the WRANS for the bias towards men in most of my cartoons. Women didn’t go to sea in ships in my day and therefore, I cannot imagine PC situations that would be apt for inclusion.

I do have a soft spot for the WRANS however, as my wife of 33 years was the Chief of Navy’s
(Admiral V.A.T. Smith) driver in 1969.

The memories I have of my Navy service are fond ones. If I could, I would do it all again.

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