Talks at the Memorial
HMAS Sydney - 60 years on
presented by Peter Stanley on Monday 19 November 2001 beside the Roll
of Honour at the Memorial.
Transcript
Sixty years ago today HMAS Sydney met the German raider, the Kormoran
off the coast of Western Australia. Both ****ps were destroyed after a
battle lasting less than an hour. As a result of that engagement 723
men lost their lives, 645 of them from Sydney: the ****p's entire
complement.
The loss of Sydney was not the most significant maritime loss in
Australian history. That would occur in July the following year, when
over a thousand prisoners of war and internees died when the
Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine. Nevertheless,
the loss of Sydney is the most intriguing and shocking in Australian
naval history. Unlike the sinking of the Montevideo Maru, it has never
been forgotten.
As a result, in addition to the fourteen pages devoted to the event
and its aftermath in George Hermon Gill's official history, no less
than eight books - one published this year - and many articles have
been devoted to explaining this mystifying event. They include Michael
Montgomery's 1981 Who Sank the Sydney?, Barbara Winter's 1984 HMAS
Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, Tom Frame's 1993 HMAS Sydney: loss
and controversy, Wes Olson's Bitter Victory: the Death of HMAS Sydney,
published this year.
In 1997 a Parliamentary investigated Sydney's loss and claims that the
truth has been in some way covered up. It concluded that the orthodox
account was feasible and that do***ents had not been deliberately
destroyed. It rejected various theories proposed relating to the event
and recommended that the search for the wrecks of both Sydney and
Kormoran should continue.
And so do the arguments. A conference this week in Perth will consider
technical evidence relating to the ****ps' possible positions. So much
has been written that a doctoral thesis has recently been completed
evaluating the competing interpretations and reaching conclusions
which will ensure that the controversy will not die. (I should explain
that the thesis is not yet examined and for reasons of academic
probity I can say no more of the interpretation its author offers.)
I've been interested in the loss of the Sydney for twenty years,
though I don't pretend to be an expert. I've read the books and have
listened to the arguments, and I have to confess to being perplexed
about why the sinking of Sydney should remain a subject of perennial
fascination. What draws people to pick over this particular event? Let
me suggest four reasons.
First, that it was so complete. The entire ****p was lost with all of
its complement. The only item to be recovered was the Carley float on
display in the galleries below us. Sydney is the only Australian unit
ever to have been totally destroyed.
Second, it is regarded as both unexpected and unlikely. Australians
think of war as happening in faraway places: this happened just a few
hundred kilometres off Carnarvon. That is shocking. Even more, the
Kormoran was a converted merchant ****p: It seems impossible that it
could destroy a modern war****p like Sydney. (In fact, of course,
though unarmoured, Kormoran was itself armed nearly as powerfully:
this was no David and Goliath fight.)
Third, the complete loss of Sydney meant that the only surviving
evidence of the battle is German. This has fostered a suspicion in
many minds that there must be something fishy in the German
explanation. The sudden and shocking loss has prompted strenuous
searches for countervailing evidence from Allied sources, the absence
of which only exacerbates fertile speculation.
Lastly, from the moment Sydney was found to be overdue in arriving at
Fremantle rumours and stories have circulated. These have tended to
cast doubt on the official explanation. They have encouraged a view
that at its most extreme claims that the truth has long been known but
has been concealed by official vested interests concealing
incompetence if not skullduggery. Indeed, the more strenuous the
denials the more suspicious are those believing that a long-standing
conspiracy exists.
Historians feed on controversy and are sustained by divergent
interpretation. You might think that as a professional historian I
find this continued debate stimulating. On a technical,
historiographical level, I do. The numerous works on the Sydney-
Kormoran encounter and its aftermath constitute a rich case study in
how we can use the evidence of the past to reconstruct and understand
it. It reminds us that history is im****tant emotionally and not merely
intellectually, and that we go to great lengths to locate evidence, to
establish facts, to argue interpretations and to justify theories.
Today, though, I don't feel the excitement of debate and the
stimulation of opposing theories. Gathered as we are at the Roll of
Honour, by the names of the 645 men of Sydney, I would like to propose
that our focus this morning should not be to engage in further
polemic.
Our focus ought to be instead on that fact of loss and its impact on
Australia and its people. The impact of Sydney's loss began even
before the Naval Board confirmed that the ****p has been sunk. During
the tense days after the ****p had been re****ted as overdue the
government and the navy between them managed, by botched censor****p,
to fuel rumours that the ****p had been lost. Sydney's loved ones were
apprehensive even before 27 November, when they received telegrams
informing them that someone had been posted missing. Many have lived
with a lurking feeling of uncertainty ever since.
Though in due course all those families received telegrams confirming
that a man had been presumed dead, the uncertainty surrounding the
action has left many dissatisfied by the official explanation.
Paradoxically, the steady stream of books and articles has done little
to allow them to come to terms with their loss. Claims of conspiracy
and cover-up continue to unsettle children and grandchildren, rippling
through the generations with a message that the Navy, governments,
history and historians are not to be trusted. At its extreme this
unease fosters a suspicion that 'they' know but will not say, that the
plausible but unsubstantiated orthodox explanation conceals a more
uncomfortable truth. The consequence is, for example, the ludicrous
claims that a Japanese submarine was implicated in the battle, a claim
that induced the Memorial to X-ray the Carley float to establish
whether any Japanese bullets were in it. There were no Japanese
bullets inside it.
In recognising this anniversary the editorial staff of the Memorial's
magazine, Wartime, discussed what we should do. Should we encourage
further speculation or should we help our readers to use the
anniversary to come to a resolution of consensus about the event? We
decided to consult three authorities on the episode.
The experts were Dr (now Bishop) Tom Frame, the only living
professional historian who has published on this subject, Mr Wes
Olsen, author of the most recent book, and Dr Mike McCarthy of the
Western Australian Museum, who is in close contact with those
interested in the case. We asked them to respond briefly to three
questions: whether German evidence was reliable, why no Australians
survived, and whether a search for a wreck was necessary. I won't
detail their answers here (Wartime is available from the Memorial
Shop). But I will allude to interesting differences in the three
authorities' responses to the final question.
Both Wes Olson and Mike McCarthy regard the search for a wreck as
desirable. Dr McCarthy thinks that while the wreck itself might yield
little evidence he believes that the search is a sign if goodwill
toward a constituency whose most concerned members remain sceptical of
official bona fides. Wes Olson believes that locating the wreck will
at least give bereaved families the consolation of knowing where loved
ones lie. Tom Frame, weary perhaps of the continuing disputation over
the case, disagrees. He argues that even if it can be found it could
tell us little, and will not help families come to terms with their
loss.
For my part, I accept that the fascination with Sydney will probably
never end. New scraps of evidence, new interpretations and inflections
based on re-readings of it, even new technological developments (which
might locate the wreck), will fuel further theories and explanations.
As the historian Peter Geyle said (during the Second World War and
while interned by the Germans) history is an argument without end, in
which successive generations reach new understandings based on their
particular concerns and needs.
Indeed, the loss of the Sydney and the disputation it fostered
emphasises why this Memorial is im****tant to Australia and its people.
The Memorial conceived by Charles Bean represents the point at which
the need to remember meets the need to understand. Mourning demands
explanation and understanding prompts remembrance. Here, today, we see
how the two are inextricably intertwined.
Sadly, though, I do not think that this huge endeavour that the loss
of Sydney has generated will produce what so many people so deeply
desire. Bereaved families and former ****pmates understandably seek
closure, resolution of their doubts and fears; the consolation of
knowing with certainty where and why a man died. Unfortunately but
unavoidably, I do not believe that we are ever likely to see any
definitive conclusion. Finding the wrecks, for example, while
satisfying, will surely prompt a fresh outbreak of hypothesising. I do
not believe that we will ever get a definitive explanation: Peter
Geyle's aphorism is that the argument will never end. Those who seek
certainty and the hitherto elusive definitive explanation will always
remain unsatisfied.
For that reason, I am inclined to live with uncertainty, to accept
that we will never know, but will always mourn. Today, standing by the
names on the Roll of Honour we should I think turn from the largely
speculation which has fostered so much divisive debate on this
subject. Today at least I believe that we should move towards an
acceptance that whatever we might debate those 645 Australians - and
the 78 Germans who died close by them - deserve to be remembered.
Thank you
http://www.awm.gov.au/events/talks/sydney.htm
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