Oscar helps track man overboard

By Graham Davis

Oscar, the Royal Australian Navy’s well-known man overboard rescue mannequin put HMAS Melville on the right track recently.

Melville was called to search for a passenger who had gone overboard from the Spirit of Tasmania II in Bass Strait last month.

“We put Oscar, fitted with a satellite datum buoy, into the water at 7.55am and monitored which way he drifted,” LEUT Sarah Turner, Melville’s navigator and the tactician for the search, told Navy News.

“We calculated a new datum, alerted two other ships and soon afterwards three life rings which had been thrown overboard during the night, were found. “Our calculations were spot on.”

The incident began on the night of Thursday, March 18.

The Spirit of Tasmania II was north of Devonport on a Bass Strait crossing. A man was seen to go over the ship’s rail and into the sea.

Life rings were thrown after him and the ship stopped and turned to commence a search.

The Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Canberra was notified and contacted Maritime Headquarters in Sydney to ask if HMAS Melville could join the search and become the surface command vessel.

The 3.25am alert saw CMDR Brett Brace turn Melville, then on her way to Devonport, north-west.

The warship arrived in the general search area at 7.55am relieving Spirit of Tasmania and joining two other civilian vessels.

CMDR Brace was the nominated surface search commander.

Four helicopters and a fixed wing plane joined the search.

For the remainder of the day, these elements scoured hundreds of square kilometres of ocean.

The ships encountered 30-knot winds and a sea state of three to four. Melville recovered the floating life rings. The passenger was not found and the search was cancelled at 7.30pm when darkness fell.

Melville was involved in survey work near Flinders Island when she was contacted and asked to become involved in the search.

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