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Captain Terry Morrison has taken over command of HMAS Canberra, the Royal Australian Navy's flagship, succeeding Captain Ashley Papp.
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Captain Morrison becomes Canberra's fourth Commanding Officer, and comes from his position as Director Destroyers, where he was in charge of the Hobart Class project.
At the changeover ceremony, Canberra’s Executive Officer, Commander Brett Westcott, “welcomed the new and farewelled the old” commanding officers.
“As you might expect, Chief of Navy puts considerable effort into selecting all his Commanding Officers," Commander Westcott said.
“I can only guess at the process for selecting the CO for his capital ship, but as has been demonstrated by the respective biographies of both Captain Morrison and Captain Papp, it is a selection made with scrutiny."
Captain Papp completes his command after serving over two and a half years in "one of the most demanding seagoing command positions in the Navy".
“We have been blessed with exceptionally experienced and tactically proficient officers,” Commander Westcott said.
“In the case of Captain Papp, I have to acknowledge his experience as he relinquishes command.
“I’ll not list all his sea postings, but I'll highlight that having commanded HMA Ships Brunei, Choules and Canberra, he’s spent nearly seven years of his career commanding ships at sea.
“In his two and a half years in command, Canberra has steamed over 53,000 nautical miles (nearly 100,000 kilometres) and has been underway for over 5800 hours.
“In the course of that time, there has been 22 port visits, several extended maintenance periods, one docking and one cracking deployment. You have embarked thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles,” Commander Westcott said to Captain Papp.
