My father was an enlisted seaman with the Royal Australian Navy in the
1960's.  He specifically remembers an incident where many of the
ships' crew came down with 'food poisoning' while being hosted at a
'special' dinner in the South Pacific.  All seamen (whether affected
or not) were administered with 4-6 'horse sized' pills (my Dad's
words!).  4 days later the ship was moved out of the port and away to
sea.  At a particular time on this day ALL crew were told to go below
decks (in particular, below the water line).  They were told that the
navy were testing out a 'wash down' system on the ship which would be
used to cleanse the ship after any chemical attack.  They had to stay
below decks for some hours.  My father has always thought this odd,
and under the Freedom of Information Act requested his naval records. 
They do not indicate ANY period of sickness / food poisoning or the
administering of these 'horse pills'.  Further, his records are
mysteriously 'blank' for the period he believes he was in this part of
the world.  My question is in two parts:
a)  Does such an 'experiment' raise alarms with anyone?  (especially
considering the apparent lack of paperwork involved?)
b)  Are there any other ex-enlisted personnel who remember such
activities, (in any country) and if so do they have any of their own
concerns or subsequent illnesses?

Dear Lovesgrand, 

Regarding your second question, I am in doubt if many Australian
ex-enlisted personnel who read "Google Answers" and would be able to
tell you from their own experiences. A better (and free of charge)
option, might be to post this part of the question in Google Groups,
in which discussions regarding Australia are administered:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&group=soc.culture.australian

Good luck.

Similar sounding tests of chemical weapons were conducted by the U.S.
military in the 1960's under the code name "Project Shipboard Hazard"
-- a search on this term will turn up lots of recently-released
information that may be of interest to you and your dad.  One such
link can be found at:

http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/current_issues/shad/shad_intro.shtml

which begins as follows:

"Project SHAD

Project SHAD, an acronym for Shipboard Hazard and Defense, was part of
a larger effort called Project 112, which was conducted during the
1960s. Project SHAD encompassed tests designed to identify US
warships' vulnerabilities to attacks with chemical or biological
warfare agents and to develop procedures to respond to such attacks
while maintaining a war-fighting capability. An accompanying article
supplies more details of the tests."

Good luck in your efforts to uncover the secrets of the past.