The sailor’s body was found on a life raft washed up on Christmas Island, three months after Sydney was sunk by German raider Kormoran in a battle off the WA coast in November 1941, with the loss of all 645 lives.
More than 80 sailors from the Kormoran also died at sea.
The full West Australian article is here.
At a speech delivered on 19 November 2018 to mark the 77th anniversary of Sydney’s last battle, Lt-Cdr Desmond Woods called for help in identifying the sailor who served on board the light cruiser. Since the article was published eight descendants of those on board have made inquiries and have been sent DNA kits. Others who want to help can contact Greg Swinden. seapower.centre@defence.gov.au
Lt-Cdr Woods’s speech is below.
Much like the resting place of Sydney until the wreck was discovered in 2008, the sailor’s identity has remained a mystery.
With a commemorative event to take place at the Dome of Souls in Geraldton, where the sailor is buried, Lt-Cdr Woods renewed calls for assistance from the public, including those descended from the Sydney crew.
Monday, November 19, marks 77 years since the HMAS Sydney II sunk off the Geraldton coast in 1941. A commemorative service was held to honour the 645 lives lost.
Speech at the HMAS Sydney Commemorative Service. Geraldton Memorial. 19 Nov 2018. Lieutenant Commander Desmond Woods, RANR:
Distinguished guests Ladies and Gentleman, Members of Ship’s Company of Training Ship Morrow, thank you for the honour you do me in asking me to guide our reflection on this 77th anniversary of HMAS Sydney’s last battle.
Australia is a land full of sacred places which date back to the dawn of human settlement of this continent. This Dome of Souls Memorial is a very new sacred place. It is imbued with grace and spiritual energy and ethereal beauty by those who designed it, the sculptors Joan and Charlie Smith, and by those who built it. This ground has been hallowed by those tens of thousands who come here every year to reflect, and to read the names on its Roll of Honour.
In May 2009 it was recognised as a National Memorial. It is attracting pilgrims and visitors from all over Australia and from across the world. All those who played a part in its construction and maintenance deserve our collective gratitude. That includes, but is not limited to, the Rotary Club of Geraldton, whose members started the project in 1998, and provided so much of the financial support.
We have learned, and confirmed, so much about Sydney’s last hours since the Finding Sydney Foundation discovered her final resting place in March 2008.
All those who worked so long and hard over decades to mount that expedition deserve the gratitude of the nation. Some of them are here tonight.
David Mearns led a team that found the evidence confirming the sequence of events described by Kormoran’s crew after they were rescued and in the years that followed. We now know with a high degree of certainty what happened on this day in 1941.
What was unknowable for 66 years is now, to a very large extent, known. We know what happened and we know where Sydney lies. That is the information that bereaved families needed for some enduring comfort and closure on their family’s tragedy.
The Navy too needed to solve the mystery of Sydney’s resting place. When this was finally known Navy took the families to lay wreaths where their men, our sailors, perished. HMAS Sydney (IV) fired a gun salute over HMAS Sydney (II). Navy also remembered, with a wreath in the sea, the 81 German sailors from Kormoran who did not survive the battle or her subsequent scuttling.
A national service of remembrance was conducted for her ship’s company in St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney on 24 April 2008 where the greatest in the land laid wreaths. The cathedral’s bell tolled 645 times for the dead. We remembered that those who perished included six airmen from the Royal Australian Air Force, nine sailors from the Royal Navy and four civilian canteen staff.
While preparing this address I went to the Australian National Maritime Museum and looked at the large projected images of Sydney, as she is now, on the sea floor, and as she was. These photos are profoundly moving. As you know, her bow is detached from the hull and is at a distance of 400 metres from the rest of the ship.
We can see the blast and fire damage from the rain of 65 anti-tank shells from Kormoran which destroyed Sydney’s bridge killing her captain and his officers. They were fired in the first moments after Kormoran struck her Dutch colours and revealed herself to be a heavily armed German raider. Many salvos of 15cm, or six inch, armour piercing shells then exploded within the lightly armoured cruiser.
The torpedo which struck between A and B turrets halved Sydney’s fighting capacity as it knocked out four of the eight six inch guns of her main armament. It may have killed outright the men in the forward shell magazines and those in the two turrets above them manning their guns. All of A turret and half of B turret’s roofs were blown away by shellfire.
We can see that in B turret and on the stern’s X and Y turrets the gunners opened their sighting ports between the guns so that they could see their target and return fire under local control.
It must have been clear to them that the gunnery officer and his team, high up and exposed behind the bridge, in their control tower were dead.
It was those heroes in X and Y turret who, without further orders, and probably without electric power, moved their turrets manually and fired shells into Kormoran and set her engine room ablaze. Their guns are still trained to port at low elevation reflecting the short range of the battle.
These few valiant young gunnery ratings turned what would otherwise have been a devastating and bitter defeat into a costly victory. Despite being in mortal danger, they calmly returned fire until their ship, ablaze amidships, turned away from the equally stricken Kormoran.
We can see from Sydney’s wreck that her torpedo tubes were deployed and two torpedoes were fired by brave men on the upper deck, exposed to the lethal fire coming from Kormoran. Perhaps these men were cut down while trying to aim and launch their last two torpedoes. We will never know. But it is true to say that if ever a ship died fighting then Sydney did.
Not surprisingly, given the damage we can see, no signal ever came from Sydney’s wireless telegraphists to tell the Naval staff ashore that she was fighting for her life.
We can only guess at the heroism shown by those who survived the onslaught of over 400 shells. With the command team dead or dying it would have been surviving senior sailors and junior officers who would have taken charge of the efforts to save the ship.
When the two ships moved out of range of each other and battle ceased, Sydney was still steaming slowly, but she was reported by the Kormoran’s captain as being down by the bow and listing 10 degrees. Her course would have brought her and her survivors here to the safety of Geraldton.
It must have been a desperate and losing battle to keep the burning cruiser afloat and for her engineers to keep her moving and to get her rudder back under control.
Teams of men would have been simultaneously fighting fires and controlling flooding, lit only by emergency lamps. But without power to provide electric pumps for hoses, in a burning and flooding ship, it would have been an impossible challenge.
If the surgeons and sick berth attendants survived the shellfire they would have been operating unselfishly trying to save wounded men’s lives by emergency lights. Stokers in the engine and boiler rooms were keeping her shafts turning slowly to give her the ability to move at all, which she did for over four hours after the battle ended. That was an unseen act of heroism.
We know that the torpedo which tore a hole under her forward turrets so weakened her that hours later, around midnight, the bow broke off. Within minutes the rest of Sydney’s hull filled with seawater and she plunged to the bottom, carrying the living and the dead.
She was far from rescue; her terrible situation was unknown ashore and she had no means to ask for assistance. Her swift end may have been a merciful release from further suffering for many of her wounded men who were beyond saving.
We can see that all her water tight doors on the upper deck are open. At the last moment some men, still able to move, may have opened then and escaped into the sea. At least one reached a carley float where he later died.
The sad truth is that Sydney’s surviving crew could not have known that her gunners had finished Kormoran’ career of destruction. But that is what she had done and sinking the German navy’s disguised raiders mattered greatly in 1941.
Kormoran had been at sea for nearly a year and her Captain Theodore Detmers was determined to sink 100,000 tons of shipping and was on track to do so. It was Sydney’s gunners that saved the ships he would have sunk in 1942 and the men who would have died.
Also, Kormoran still had a full war load of 346 very effective sea mines when she was abandoned and scuttled. Those were intended by Detmers to sink ships. If he were fortunate a mine would detonate against the hull of troop ship, tearing it open to the sea and drowning many hundreds of Australian and New Zealand soldiers on their way to war. Thanks to Sydney’s gunners those lethal mines were only used by Kormoran’s crew to scuttle their doomed raider instead.
The news of Sydney’s loss, with all her ship’s company astonished and grieved Australians in equal measure.
It seemed so inexplicable that none of her crew had survived. It defied explanation. Sydney’s victorious career in 1940 epitomised the fighting Navy to the Australian public. She was our first RAN cruiser to be lost. Within six months two more would be sunk in battle.
The RAN lost 1740 of its sailors serving in Australian and British ships during the Second World War.
All of those allied seamen, including their 30,000 brothers in the Merchant Navy, who died at sea serving the world’s cause, deserve our respect and gratitude. We remember that they had families who loved them, mourned them and missed them. Many had children and descendants who never knew them. Some of you are here with us this evening
As darkness falls on this beautiful memorial we can remember with quiet respect all those who fought and died for Australia to keep this island continent a place of peace and freedom.
We do not forget the women from that greatest generation, both civilians working at home in the war effort, and those serving in the armed forces, including nurses who were correctly called, ‘beyond all praise.’ Australia’s women worked so hard and suffered so much to bring us victory and peace in 1945 after nearly six years of war. We honour all those women. We can see one of them here at this memorial representing them all – a mother, who looks out to sea, eternally on watch, hoping for her sailor son’s return to her.
Here is an epitaph written for all the lost sailor sons by the mother of one. She wrote:
They need no dirge, for time and tide fills all things, with tribute unto them. The warmth of a summer sun, the calm of a quiet sea, the comforting arm of night, the generous soul of nature and the power of a seabird’s flight.
Blow golden trumpets blow, mournfully for all the golden youth and shattered dreams that lie where God has lain his quiet dead for all the world to see, upon an alien ocean bed.
This evening we can also remember with love and gratitude those whom we knew; those who fought and survived the war at sea, on land and in the air and came home.
We can cherish those who are still with us. Their generation’s legacy to us is our life long liberty. We owe them our remembrance. Let this evening’s Last Post and Reveille sound out over the sea for them all.
Lest we forget
Narrative
(5 Minutes)
As you know the sailor who escaped Sydney and died in a carley float is now buried here in Geraldton. Navy would like to positively identify him and put his name on his headstone. My colleague Commander Greg Swinden, historian at the Seapower Centre Australia is still working with Sydney ship’s company descendants to make that identification using DNA evidence. If there is anyone here who would like to assist with that I can put you in touch with him.
In early 1941 Sydney returned to her namesake city from the Mediterranean after sinking the new Italian fast cruiser Bartolomeo Colleone on the 19th July off Crete. That is well remembered. What is less well known is that in defeating the Italian ship Sydney saved three British destroyers from being sunk and their crews from very likely death.
HMS Hasty, Hyperion and Hero were south of Crete on anti-submarine patrol when they were sighted by the two modern cruisers Bartollemeo Colleone and Banda Nere which outclassed the small British ships in firepower, range and speed.
The destroyers turned and fled at high speed towards their only hope, Sydney and her accompanying destroyer Havoc. They signalled their position to Captain John Collins on the bridge of Sydney and asked him to come to them at his best speed. The captain of Hyperion signalled to the other two captains: ‘don’t look now but I think we are being followed! ’
Then the Italian cruisers’ shells started falling close. All three destroyers were about to be hit and stopped by shell fire. After that they would be dead in the water and easy targets. At that critical moment, weaving for their lives, they sighted their saviour, Sydney.
Hyperion’s captain later wrote:
For those of us expecting to be sunk, Sydney was the most welcome sight in the world. She came towards us at full speed with her battle ensigns streaming and all eight guns firing at our pursuers. At that moment I could have kissed an Australian sailor!
Sydney’s gunners stopped Colleone with a shell in her engine room and then kept firing into her. The four British destroyers raced in and sank the crippled ship with torpedoes. Captain Collins ensured that 555 of her sailors were saved from the sea.
Sydney that July day saved the lives of at least 430 Royal Navy sailors. When Sydney returned to Alexandria harbour Admiral Cunningham, the Commander in Chief came out to the ship and boarded her to congratulate John Collins and her ship’s company on a fine victory. Then as she entered the harbour she was greeted with cheers from sailors lining the decks of the whole British Mediterranean Fleet. Many Australian flags were flying from the Australian destroyers berthed there. The signal of congratulation sent to her from HMAS Stuart read: “Whacko Sydney.”
That is the image of Sydney at war I believe that we should keep in our minds. We can picture this fine ship and the men who served in her – surging into the attack, battle ensigns flying, lit by the morning sun, guns firing to defend the weak and engaging the enemy at long range and at the first opportunity.
When Admiral Cunningham learned of Sydney’s loss he signalled the Australian Naval Board saying: this fighting ship was an inspiration to our own forces and a standing menace to our enemies. The Australian Naval Board replied to Cunningham: Sydney counted it an honour to serve under your command. She will rise again.
HMAS Sydney has risen again. In 1947 the Navy commissioned the Aircraft Carrier Sydney (III) into the fleet. She was operational off Korea and later made regular voyages to and from Vietnam carrying the Australian Army and its heavy equipment. The fourth HMAS Sydney was a missile frigate which was commissioned in 1983. She gave long and valuable service and in 1991 during the First Gulf War defended American carriers from attack.
The fifth HMAS Sydney is a new air warfare destroyer. She has been built and has been launched and is fitting out in South Australia. She will be commissioned into the fleet in 2020 and has a long life ahead of her.
Each of these ships named Sydney has carried all the battle honours that have been won by their predecessors starting with Sydney (I) that sank Emden. That battle honours board carries the words: Kormoran 1941.
We can safely say that the spirit of the cruiser Sydney and the men who served her whom we remember here tonight has never died, and has, as predicted in 1941 risen again. That spirit will always rise whenever a warship named Sydney is serving in the Australian Fleet, and is on watch for us all as she prepares to fight and win at sea.
