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‘Unknown’ Sydney Sailor Named After 80 Years

‘Unknown’ Sydney sailor named after 80 years

TRIBUTE: Of the many tragic tales of war at sea, none hits closer to home in WA than the loss of HMAS Sydney and all 645 crew on the evening of November 19, 1941.
On  November 11, Sydney left its homeport of Fremantle for Singapore escorting SS Zealandia to the Sunda Strait where it handed the troopship over to HMS Durban on November 17.
Sydney then turned for home, but never made its scheduled arrival in Fremantle on November 20. It disappeared, seemingly without a trace.
The crippled remains of the Australian light cruiser and HSK Kormoran that sank with her off Carnarvon were discovered in 2008, ending decades of conspiracy theories about how the flagship of the Australian navy was defeated by the disguised German raider.
Some still believe war crimes were committed by the Kormoran sailors (with the possible help of a Japanese submarine) and that military authorities covered it up, the claims sparking several inquiries, media interest and questions from families and friends of lost Sydney sailors. For a generation of Australians left without answers or a final resting place, the loss of all hands on Sydney seemed incomprehensible.
Of the 397 crew on Kormoran, 317 survived, rescued at sea (204) and at Red Bluff (46) and 17-Mile Well (57) where Carnarvon locals (population about 300) handed them over to military authorities.
Remaining Kormoran crew still meet in Germany every year to commemorate and honour the sailors on both sides. Most of Sydney’s crew were from NSW and Victoria, 91 from WA.
‘Bitter Victory – the Death of HMAS Sydney’ author Wes Olson told StreetWise very few, if any, of the original ‘participants’ are still alive.
“The 75th anniversary of a wartime event is normally the last hurrah for surviving participants, as once young men would be in their nineties,” he said. “In the case of HMAS Sydney, there were no survivors. The last of the men who left Sydney before her fatal encounter with HSK Kormoran passed a few years ago. So the 80th anniversary of Sydney’s loss is very much one for the descendants of the lost men, and others who wish to remember and honour their sacrifice.”
Mr Olson said the 2008 discovery of both wrecks provided closure for widows and descendants of Sydney’s men.
“The location and condition of the wreck revealed the German account of Sydney’s last battle was essentially accurate. More importantly, the wreck represents the final resting place of all but one of Sydney’s complement of 645 officers and men.”

Unknown Sailor

THOUGH no one on Sydney survived, at least one sailor escaped the battle and died at sea before his liferaft reached Christmas Island on February 6, 1942. Buried in the Old European Cemetery overlooking Flying Fish Cove, he was the only crew member from Sydney to have been laid to rest.
The young sailor suffered a horrific shrapnel wound to the head, which probably caused his death immediately or soon after the fiery encounter off Carnarvon.
A canvas shoe stamped Australian Government issue and bearing the name McCowan or McEwan also was found in the raft. Both were on Sydney. The shoe did not belong to the unknown sailor.
The grave site of the ‘Unknown Sailor’ was found and its remains exhumed in 2006. At the time, DNA technology was unable to establish a match with relatives of Sydney crew.
That is, until now.
On the 80th anniversary of the Sydney sinking the Federal Government has announced the unknown sailor as Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark. He had two older brothers, his father was a grazier and his mother descended from Scottish immigrants who arrived in Victoria in the early 1850s.
Born in New Farm on January 28, 1920, th
e 21-year-old accountant from Brisbane was a good swimmer and yachtsmen. He also was engaged to a Brisbane girl before he joined HMAS Sydney in August 1941 after completing anti-submarine training in Sydney.
Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Mike Noonan said AB Clark was representative of the many young lives lost in the battle: “Solving this World War II case involved specialists in DNA analysis, forensic pathology and dentistry, ballistics, anthropology, archaeology and naval history.
“His long voyage is complete. May he rest in peace.”
For most of the 1990s and early 2000s, this science and defence affairs writer at The West Australian carried the ‘baton’ for reporting on one of the worst maritime tragedies in WW2. This was a big responsibility given the sensitivity in the public and among families who gather each year, including at Monument Hill in Fremantle, to remember their loved ones’ ultimate sacrifice.
After leaving the paper in 2005, three years before the discovery of Sydney and Kormoran, while teaching journalism at Curtin, this author embarked on a two-year honours degree at Murdoch to explore the challenges media face when covering shipwreck discoveries, including HMAS Sydney, and recovery of human remains and other cultural materials. As part of the honours degree, a Sydney blogspot was set up at http://sydneysearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-would-like-to-see-ship-found-in-my.html to report on the subject and subsequent search for and discovery of the warships and unidentified sailor from Christmas Island.
Clark’s badly decomposed body, possibly one of two or more Royal Australian Navy sailors to have escaped the battle, washed up in a liferaft or Carley float at Christmas Island three months after Sydney and Kormoran sank.
As detailed in the honours blogs, residents buried his remains in an unmarked grave after they held a solemn ceremony and military escort including a Sikh policeman who sounded the Last Post.
Dressed in a bleached blue boiler suit, the corpse had its arms outstretched and the flesh stripped from its face and right arm. During the autopsy, Christmas Island harbourmaster Reg Smith noted the Carley float had a bullet hole in its wooden decking while remains of another were found in the kapok filling.
Clark’s remains were buried in an odd-shaped coffin that measured about 1.2m by 980mm by 500mm deep.
With a Japanese attack imminent, forces having seized the island on March 31, Captain Smith sailed to Perth with the autopsy report and part of the float, both of which were destroyed or lost after they were handed over to military authorities.
A ballistics analysis of the remains ruled out speculation Clark was shot in the head by German sailors in motorised boats. Tests revealed the fragment embedded in the sailor’s skull was not a small calibre firearm round, but probably a piece of shrapnel.

Discovery

IT took 45 days to find Titanic in 1985. Today, searchers can cover the same area in two days using 21st century technology.
Finding Sydney was described as looking for a row of 10 houses in a search area from Wanneroo to Mandurah and inland to York.
Looking for the 171m long by 17m wide wreck, Sydney searchers covered a defined area of about 1800 square nautical miles (about 2.5 times larger than the ACT), about 120 nautical miles from Steep Point in depths of between 2300m and 4200m.
Kormoran, which was scuttled after the fiery battle with Sydney, was found near 26 degrees south, 111 degrees east in 2560m of water.
Its wreckage consisted of several pieces of hull among a dense debris field located in the northeast section of the search box, about 150km west of Shark Bay.
HMAS Sydney was discovered a few days later in about 2.5km of water 240km south-west of Carnarvon, just 12 nautical miles from the Kormoran wreck.
One of the curious media claims addressed by the honours degree were made after images of a sailor’s shoe were published in The Australian under the headline that human remains had been found (opposite). Skeletal material has been found on other wrecks including Titanic and Batavia, but bacteria and sea life would have quickly broken down the bodies of dead sailors and most of the belongings they had on them when the ship sank to the seabed where the calcium carbonate in bones would have dissolved as temperatures dropped under crushing pressures.

Sydney sailors from Fremantle included Arthur John Andrews, 28; Clifford William Cookesley, 21; Roy John Courtis, 21, son of William and Irene, of South Fremantle; Malcolm Murray, 29, whose parents John and Maggie lived in Beaconsfield; Ronald Morisey, 22; Adolf Heinrich Gerhard Rippen, 22, whose parents Peter Adolf Heinrich and Hannah Jane Rippen lived in Hilton Park; Malcolm Godfrey Nicholls, 22, whose parents Henry Stephen and Aurora Elvira lived in South Fremantle; and North Fremantle-born John Harris Williams, 21, whose parents Richard Ernest and Mary Elizabeth also lived of South Fremantle.
With the identity of the Unknown Sailor now revealed, Mr Olson said: “His 644 shipmates are still at sea. He, however, made it home. Sydney’s story and the memory of her men will never fade, nor the years condemn … we will remember them.”
Additional stories of WA’s military and maritime history at www.streetwisemedia.com.au – Fremantle’s independent online magazine.
– by Carmelo Amalfi

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