Merchant navy transfer to RAN

[timbo]

I am a Royal Navy medal collector and researcher in England. I have recently acquired a set of WW2 medals to Gordon S Miller, a trimmer who joined the Merchant Navy in October 1939. He was born in Melbourne in 1918. What I cannot understand is that all his medals are named to the M N but the last ship he served on was HMAS Colac , a mine sweeper. How is this possible ? Any help or explanation would be most welcome. Kind regards Tim

 

[Redlands18]

Deleted, sorry wrong national archives

https://www.navy.gov.au/history/feature-histories/australian-corvettes

HMAS Colac was a Bathurst class Minesweeper and while that was there official designation, they are far more commonly referred to as Corvettes.
Hope this has been some help and good luck with your search.

 

[alexsa]

I am a Royal Navy medal collector and researcher in England. I have recently acquired a set of WW2 medals to Gordon S Miller, a trimmer who joined the Merchant Navy in October 1939. He was born in Melbourne in 1918. What I cannot understand is that all his medals are named to the M N but the last ship he served on was HMAS Colac , a mine sweeper. How is this possible ? Any help or explanation would be most welcome. Kind regards TimView attachment 48049

Good day

I expect he transferred across to reserve service. The Australian War Memorial is usually useful for this information noting this reference has been used in the past to develop lists of service personnel coming from particular towns and does provide some history.

australian war memorial records - Bing

Post script ...

DVA's Nominal Rolls

DVA records have him as a trimmer on the Colac as his last ship and still have him as merchant navy. This could be data transfer issue.