Guy Griffiths
1146
HMS Repulse
HMS Revenge
HMS Vivian
HMS Shropshire
HMAS Sydney
HMAS Melbourne
01

01:00:33:10

Q: First of all you could just - we'll just start at the beginning and get a bit of an overview of your life and career. Can you just start by telling me where you were born and where you grew up?

A: I was actually born here in Sydney, but I grew up in the Hunter Valley. My father had a vineyard up in old Rothbury which is near Pokolbin and I

01:01:00:12
spent my first really sort of 12 years up there. At one stage, around about 1935 I imagine, my parents were worried about what to do with the boy and somebody suggested that I join the navy. I wanted to do engineering. I was mad keen on mechanical things that one has on the farm and the vineyard and crushing equipment and so on. So I eventually sat the

01:01:30:08
examination. I was very fortunate to get in in early 1937. In fact we joined college in January '37. There were 17 chosen out of some 470 or 80 applicants from around the country. So one was very fortunate and I spent four years at naval college and then went to sea at the end of 1940 and went across to England in the merchant ship. Firstly across to New Zealand and then across the Pacific and the Atlantic in a merchant ship, a

01:02:00:17
Shaw Saville ship, the Karamea and went to England and the ship we were due to join was the cruiser [HMAS] Australia but of course deployment from the time we were appointed at the end of '40 to the time we got there in early February '41 she was then down on the Cape on the way back to Australia. So they looked around where to send five Australian midshipmen and they decided on the battle cruiser [HMS] Repulse which at the time was in Greenock

01:02:30:10
and due to escort a convoy south. So we joined Greenock I think it was about 4th March '41 and then we stayed in, we worked around Gibraltar and Freetown for a while and then came back to the Clyde towards the end of May and then we took part in the chase of the battleship Bismarck in late May '41. We joined the home fleet which was led by Admiral Tulley and

01:03:00:12
in the [HMS] King George V, the new battleship. There was the carrier [HMS] Victorious, also a brand new carrier and ourselves and we chased the Bismarck. At that time of course she had sunk the [HMS] Hood, the [HMS] Prince of Wales had been damaged ahead of us and so on but Repulse which had been built in 1916 was getting very short on fuel and the old boilers were chewing up too much oil and fuel so we had to withdraw from the chase

01:03:30:14
and we went across to Newfoundland for refuelling and then went to Halifax and escorted convoys back. Then I think in August/September we went to Rosyth for a while. In August/September we once again escorted a convoy south taking stuff to the Middle East and we worked off the east coast of Africa for a while working out of Durban and Mombasa. Then eventually when they deployed the Prince of Wales and Repulse to

01:04:00:10
Singapore we arrived in Singapore in early December '41 and of course the Japanese came into the war on the 8th December our time, this side of the dateline and we sortied out with Prince of Wales and four destroyers. Unsuccessful trip so to speak. In brief we were sunk on the 10th and came back, the survivors were brought back to Singapore and then the

01:04:30:02
midshipmen were lucky. We were moved out of Singapore the following day on the 11th December in the cruiser [HMS] Exeter and were sent back to Colombo. Our captain, Captain Tennant who survived, said that the midshipmen ought to get on with their training and they wouldn't commit, they wouldn't contribute much to Singapore and I think of course he was absolutely right. And in a way I think he probably saved our lives at that time. We didn't get taken prisoner or end up a prisoner of war. So after

01:05:00:19
that I joined, we joined, there were four of us out of the five, we lost Bob Davies in Repulse, he went down. He's got a story. And then we joined the battleship [HMS] Revenge which was in Trincomalee Harbour as a guard ship. We spent about five months in Revenge or six months, end of December '41 to about May '42 and then we went back to England for training and we spent

01:05:30:10
the last half of 1942 in England for training and I was in the old destroyer HMS Vivian working between Rosyth and Sheerness on east coast convoys and then in April/May '43 the cruiser [HMS] Shropshire which had been given to Australia by the UK to replace the [HMAS] Canberra which had been sunk at Savo Island in August '42 and we commissioned in Chatham

01:06:00:09
dockyard and I stayed in that ship, we of course came down to Australia and we worked in the south west Pacific with the US [United States] Seventh Fleet all the way through to the Philippines and Borneo and so on and eventually ended up in Tokyo Bay for the signing of the surrender. So I stayed in Shropshire right through that last two years of the war, quite active time. Now at the

01:06:30:13
end of that I was sent back to England to do a specialising course, a specialist course to become a gunnery officer which I did for 15 months in England ashore, scraping away the cobwebs on the brain because it gets a bit rusty. I then spent two years ashore in England on what we call exchange service. I then came back in the middle of '49 in HMAS Sydney,

01:07:00:09
our first aircraft carrier. I took passage. I wasn't a member of the crew. And came back to Australia. Went to the gunnery school at Flinders Naval Depot for about, when was it, till about January 1950 and then I joined the Sydney as the gunnery officer. I spent two years on her until March '52 and that period saw us come back to the UK [United Kingdom] to pick up the new carrier air

01:07:30:07
group and saw us go to Korea for deployment up there in the Korean War in that latter part of '51 early '52 and then come home. And after that I went back to the gunnery school for a while and I wasn't terribly keen on that because I reckoned I hadn't had enough sea time and so I agitated a little and I was then appointed to the destroyer Anzac, HMAS Anzac which was already in Korea and I joined her I think in November '52 and stayed in

01:08:00:10
Anzac until the end of 1952. So that saw us operational service again in the Korean War from November '52 until the cease fire in the middle of '53. After that came back and worked locally in Anzac. I left Anzac in January of 1954 to go back to England for a Royal Naval staff course. That was at

01:08:30:12
the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. That was six months. After that I did a couple of other training courses and then joined HMAS Melbourne which of course had not yet been commissioned but was being finished building, the building process finished in Barrow, Furness in Lancashire in the Vickers shipbuilding yard. And so I came back to Australia in Melbourne and stayed in her until actually 1958 which meant I had quite a

01:09:00:14
long period aboard but fortunately during that time I was promoted to commander and I was then appointed out of the ship's crew into the staff of the admiral, Admiral David Harriers and I was his fleet operations officer. So then at the end of '58 I went to back to the navy office which was then positioned in Melbourne in Victoria Barracks. I was in the

01:09:30:08
personnel department so to speak now called human resources. And 1959 was a pretty momentous year because Carla swept down from Hong Kong. We had met in '57 and we got married here in Sydney on the 1st August '59. So that was quite a change of pace and a wonderful change of phase in one's life. So I stayed on in the navy office which we were then moving

01:10:00:11
from Melbourne up to Canberra where they still are. They were moving all the Commonwealth departments into Canberra in those days. Stayed there till the middle of '61 and I was lucky to be appointed as the first commanding officer of the new frigate HMAS Parramatta and that was great fun. Spent from July '61 until the end of 1962 and during which time

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we did a six months deployment up to the Far East Strategic Reserve as it was known in those days. We went up, the Parramatta and Yarra went up in company and visited ports of Singapore, across to Borneo, up to Hong Kong and also the admiral at the time in '62 was Admiral McNicholl and

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we did a flag showing cruise with the Melbourne, two destroyers and two frigates up to Japan for three weeks. It was the first flag showing cruise to Japan after World War II. So that was good fun. Came back at the end of '62 and '63 went back to navy office in another staff job and stayed there until the middle of 1965. During that time I was promoted to captain. In

01:11:30:09
the middle of '65 all the lotto numbers fell my way so to speak and I was appointed as the first commanding officer of the new guided missile destroyer [HMAS] Hobart which was built in Bay City Michigan in the United States. So I went across there and did commissioning courses, assembled the crew and watched their training and so on and we commissioned in

01:12:00:09
Boston Massachusetts on the 18th December 1965. After that we stayed over there until the middle of '66 doing shakedown trials etc and returned to Australia arriving in Hobart City which was very appropriate on 1st September '66. Short visit there. We were given the Freedom of the City

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which was rather nice and came up to Sydney, had leave, did an exercise off the east coast of New South Wales, Queensland with the Royal Navy ships that came down from Singapore and then went for Christmas leave and so on and at that time it was decided that Australia would commit a

01:13:00:08
destroyer to the US Seventh Fleet in the Vietnam War. And so we eventually deployed to Vietnam. We were based at Subic Bay in the Philippines and we deployed to Vietnam in March '67. We spent six months up there till September '67 and then came home and people decided I had had enough time on Hobart and should give somebody else a crack at this wonderful ship. Then I won again at the end of '67. I was lucky to be

01:13:30:09
appointed as adviser, the naval adviser to the chief of naval staff of the Royal Malaysian Navy and that meant spending two years at Kuala Lumpur. So I took the family up there. It was a wonderful two years. It was wonderful working with the Malaysian people. So at the end of '69,

01:14:00:11
end of '67 to end of '69 we were in Kuala Lumpur. Then went across to England at the end of that time to spend 1970 at what was then the Imperial Defence College in London and at the end of that we returned to Australia and back to Canberra again for another staff job '71 to mid '73. Then I went to HMAS Melbourne as the commanding officer and stayed aboard there

01:14:30:13
until, let me think, end '73 to mid '75 I think it was and during that time probably the most startling event was the relief of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, Christmas '74. That was quite an operation and I think gave great assistance to the city. So then at the end of '75 went back to navy office,

01:15:00:10
this is the price of promotion I think or the cost of it and continued in personnel for a while and in the middle of '76 I was lucky to be promoted to rear admiral and I became chief of naval personnel and stayed there until the end of 1978 and then in January '79 until January '80 I was the flag officer naval support command here in Sydney. I think the final date was

01:15:30:09
18 January 1980. I left the service after I think it was about 43 years in total. So that's roughly a round up, a sketch.

01:16:00:10

Q: Let's go back to the beginning. You went to the naval college at age 13, did you have any family in the military? What prompted that decision?

A: I didn't have, well subsequent family history research shows that back in England there were family members who were actually in the navy but immediate family the answer is no, there were no sort of cousins out here in the military. And the reason I went in was that I was mad keen to be an

01:16:30:09
engineer at the age of 12 or 11 or 12 and I went to a junior technical school in West Maitland for a while, in fact a couple of years I think at the ages of 11 and 12 during which time I think mother was wondering and father was wondering how on earth to progress from there into engineering and somebody said why don't you join the navy and they'll train you to be

01:17:00:12
an engineer and look after you etc., etc. So I had a crack at that and was lucky. I joined. And I joined initially with the idea of being an engineer but one day, it must have been in our second year at college I think, at the end of the second year of four you had to decide whether you wanted to continue, whether you wanted to be an engineer or an executive officer and

01:17:30:09
the old destroyer [HMAS] Vampire was the training ship working out of Flinders Naval Depot in Westernport Victoria. We went down one sort of cold wet and windy Bass Strait day and walked around the dear old ship and went through the engine room and boiler room which I didn't find particularly attractive and I then thought, I can remember quite distinctly coming back and standing on the quarterdeck in the light drizzle and thinking and I

01:18:00:09
looked at the bridge and I thought to myself I don't think I want to be down below. I think I'd like to be up there driving the ship. And so I changed my initial bid for engineering and when it came to the decision at the end of the second year I said no thanks I'll be an executive officer. Never regretted the change.

01:18:30:11

Q: Just going back even a little bit just before that, this was in the early 1930s, late 20s, 1930s that you were growing up wasn't it?

A: I was born in '23, so one was in the countryside and country Australia in the late 20s, early 30s, which was a time of droughts and Depression here in Australia and life was a bit rough. It sounds grand now to say my father

01:19:00:10
had a vineyard, but relatively we didn't have many pennies to rub together. So it was tough times because the whole country was you know really not doing terribly well in that period. And so I had no real desire to follow on the vineyard which didn't really appear to be much of a success nor fortunately did father sort of drum into me that I had to do that. There was

01:19:30:13
no sort of royal command that you know the paternal command that you had to do that take over the vineyard. So I branched right away and went to sea. So hence going to the college was the preliminary. College at that time was really navy high school for four years and you came out with HSC [Higher School Certificate] and equivalent in those days at the end of 1940.

01:20:01:14

Q: So at that time did you have any kind of sort of idea at all of what going to sea was going to be like? Did you actually think about what the navy was going to involve?

A: I think it basically came under join the navy and see the world. The developments in Europe in those days because war was declared in '39 that tended to focus the mind in some way but we personally were very

01:20:30:07
involved in our training and our education and our military drills and so on, naval drills. I don't think we really thought of the consequences or what the consequences could be of going to sea and being sunk or being bombed or anything like that. That didn't really enter our imagination although we read about various incidents of course in late '39 and '40.

01:21:00:10

Q: What did the training involve specifically? What kind of things did you do?

A: At college?

Q: Yes.

A: Well it was fairly rigorous training. We were tended to be roused with bugles in the morning and shower and change very quickly and a bit of a run before breakfast in uniform, breakfast and then every morning had divisions which included prayers and then we adjourned for studies which

01:21:30:09
began as I recall about 9 o'clock, 8.30, 9 o'clock and studies continued through until 4 o'clock in the afternoon but that varied. In that time we moved out of our normal education block, we would go to the engineering school, we would go elsewhere from seamanship training down to the seamanship school and so on. So we were not always locked in our particular classroom. But we did the normal subjects of maths, physics,

01:22:00:13
trig [trigonometry], calculus in the end and all that sort of stuff which I've never remembered anything about. And navigation of course was a study, history, naval history in particular. We seemed to do a lot of study of naval history, English naval history from the beginning of time you know starting off with Alfred and his building of the fleet right through, through Nelson and so on. We never really seemed to deal with any Australian

01:22:30:07
naval history albeit that there wasn't much of it at that time in 1937. The major thing that had happened before then was we had the battle cruiser Australia in World War I and we had HMAS Sydney the cruiser which sank the [SMS] Emden at Cocos Island but what the rest of the navy did wasn't taught to us and so it was a bit of a gap in a way. However, that was the way it was. We also learnt French as a language which I'm sure was good

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for exercising the brain but wasn't entirely appropriate because when we got to England in 1941 it wasn't the time to go to Paris for the weekend to brush up your French. So French quickly fell into disuse. But we had this daily routine of Monday to Saturday, a lot of sport, sport every afternoon

01:23:30:11
after studies and study in the evening, prep we used to call it and then turn in at 9 o'clock and one was ready for bed. And of course it's a bit of a culture shock really in the early days for coming out whether it was city life or country life to getting into college and suddenly there would be a consequence if your boots weren't polished every morning and that sort of thing and hair brushed and cleaned yourself up. It was quite a rigid

01:24:00:11
discipline but I don't think it did anybody any harm.

Q: How did you feel about it at the time?

A: I didn't feel, it didn't sort of get to me at all. It just happened to be that that was it and okay. Many years later in the service one used to run up against the expression if you can't take the joke you shouldn't have joined which really applied in those days but some of the young fellows and we

01:24:30:10
watched the younger ones come in after us for some of them it was a little too much and one or two fell out which I don't think was any great crime of falling out. If it didn't suit you it was much better to get out then rather than flog on and try to make a go of it.

Q: I suppose you'd have to start getting used to being away from family anyway?

01:25:00:09

A: Well it's interesting looking back because we were talking about lots of family communications and so on in these of 2002, you look back at those days, going to college one was removed from the family from the age of 13 but you never ever really went back to live with them. So in your teenage years and growing up you didn't have the opportunity to converse with my

01:25:30:11
father other than when I went up for brief leaves which is the same as the normal school, holiday periods in May and September and then Christmas and you'd go back and you couldn't really start the conversation you had yesterday because you didn't have one and what you talked about in a previous holiday was probably forgotten anyway and things had taken over and there was something. So you were lifted out of your family and I didn't hear her say it, but my dear mother many years later apparently after

01:26:00:09
I was at sea, "Oh I've given Guy to the navy," which really meant that I was there as a family member but I really wasn't actually in the family and that's something which of course people can't, couldn't understand now because fathers and sons are supposed to be terribly close together. We were just physically removed and although my father was a dear fellow

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and my mother was a wonderful lady you weren't really friends with them as a normal person is these days with the opportunity to live, grow up and so on. So it probably affected one later I would think, attitudes here and there.

Q: And in terms of sort of support and pastoral care for the boys at the college, was it a very masculine environment? Who looked after you?

01:27:00:09

A: It was basically an all male cast so to speak. We had a commander of the college who was the boss of the college and each term had a term officer and we had a prefect hierarchy, had a chief cadet captain and cadet captains either in charge of their own year or in charge of the junior years

01:27:30:10
for discipline. Doctors and dentists in the depot were the ones that looked after all the sailors in the depot. All the instructors were all male. The only females we saw was when somebody like the girls schools from Melbourne would come down and play us hockey or something like that. So it was, yes it was not in the modern context at all. It was totally

01:28:00:10
different. You were down there and that was it. Yes it was in a male society.

Q: So not much chance of a social life with any girls then?

A: Basically none no not during college time. There was no time for social life anyway except you know at a weekend when we would hop in a coach and go and play, we used to go up to Point Cook or somewhere to play rugby or to go up to Melbourne Grammar or Scotch College to play them

01:28:30:13
rugby or cricket or tennis or something like that but during the sporting routine that we followed each year which was pretty exacting but social life as seen in the modern context there was basically none except when you were on leave and then you looked around for some social life yes.

Q: What sort of things did you do?

01:29:00:14

A: Well I not always went home or I would go home for a portion of my leave and then I'd go and stay with friends. I went to stay with my college chum John Austin and his family up on the coast once which was great fun. Or I would also go down to my aunt, who was mother's sister who lived at Chittaway Point and I'd go down and stay with them for a week and do

01:29:30:10
some rowing out on the lake and so on, read lots of books. But that sort of thing. Later on from the ships I would go home and see the folks. They actually separated later on so I would go and see one and then the other and you'd go spend it with your new mates from the ships and so on.

Q: You said that you didn't learn any Australian naval history at all, it

01:30:00:10
was very British. What was the sort of set up at the time? There was obviously a very strong affiliation with the Royal Navy.

A: Well that's right. The college curriculum I think was based on that of the

01:30:30:11
Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and the whole of our training was basically identical to the Royal Navy. Our uniforms were identical, our rank structure was identical, the whole training program progression through ranks and so on was identical to the Royal Navy because all our ships were either built according to Royal Navy design or we purchased from England and so on. So we were very interchangeable. Royal Navy,

01:31:00:12
whilst I was at college Lieutenant Commander Skipworth, he was Royal Navy and he was one of the term officers and later I think I met with him again in the cruiser Exeter on the 11th December '41. So we were very interchangeable with the training and the whole development ethic so to speak.

Q: What were Australian naval ships doing at the time that you were

01:31:30:13
studying? What was the navy being deployed to do at that point?

A: I can't quite remember exactly what everybody was doing in '37 to '38 because in '39 and '40 they were doing, Australia was across in England for instance in 1940, the cruiser Australia. Canberra was escorting convoys in the Indian Ocean and patrolling looking for German raiders, raiding

01:32:00:09
merchant ships. Australia was across in England working with the Royal Navy. I think at one stage she went to Dakar and she was convoying in the North Atlantic. Australia, Canberra, Sydney. Sydney of course was in the Mediterranean, operating in the Mediterranean fleet. Hobart was a new ship and went to the West Indies and came home I think and then Perth

01:32:30:05
also went into the Mediterranean in 1941 because that was slightly after I had left college.

Q: Just let's go back to being at college. So war breaks out in 1939 and you're still at college at that time. Can you just remember exactly what happened when you heard? What were you doing? Do you remember that?

01:33:00:10

A: I can't exactly remember but of course like any youth of those days sort of being trained and nearly at the end of your training you felt that you wanted to go to sea. One of the first things that we were told, we were in the third year then, the year ahead of us had nearly finished and they had three months to go you see so they were immediately packed off to sea and we thought boy we'll get out early. We were immediately told oh no you

01:33:30:09
will stay here and you will finish your time which we did until December 1940. So that was interesting and of course we followed the war in the newspapers. So we had to finish our training there which was very wise of course.

Q: But a bit frustrating?

A: I think we were a bit frustrated but you were then absorbed totally in what you were doing and you're able to forget about the frustration and get on with life.

01:34:00:13

Q: So suddenly you had much more of a purpose now I guess?

A: Yes very much more, very much more. Yes purpose unknown almost.

Q: So at that point while you're still doing general training, you hadn't specialised in any particular area of a ship at this point?

A: No, no. You were getting general training on naval ships and seamanship and just general duties around the place.

01:34:33:14

Q: So when you were actually posted, you finally get a posting, just tell me about that when you actually find where you were going to go so you actually going to go and see some action.

A: Well when we heard that we were posted appointed to the cruiser Australia which was in England I mean that was fantastic. Oh boy you know this is

01:35:00:10
really seeing the world. So the five of us who were appointed were very happy and we eventually mustered in Sydney and we went across to Wellington in one of the cross Tasman boats, I don't know whether it was the Wanganui or something like and spent a couple of days in Wellington and went across the Strait down to Christchurch or Littleton, the harbour Littleton for Christchurch. But eventually went aboard the

01:35:30:14
Shaw Saville ship, the Karamea, merchant ship about 10,000 tons and we took passage in her across the Pacific through the Panama up the east coast of America and that's when things began to change. The passage across the Pacific was indeed peaceful and clear and it was interesting. We sailed past the Galapagos Islands which of course we didn't know about in those

01:36:00:09
days too much except from our geography lessons in college but I must say looking back I think one knew quite a lot about various places in the world and where they were and so on in those days because geography and the learning of other countries and where towns and cities and rivers were was fascinating. And then suddenly to be faced with this voyage to England you were actually going to see some of the things that you'd learned about

01:36:30:10
over the years and of course the first was really going to New Zealand. You know that was an adventure. And then going across the Pacific was fascinating. Miles and miles and miles and days and days and days flogging along with nothing in sight and nothing sighted. Through the Panama Canal, I mean that was really tremendous fun seeing the working of the locks and this incredible engineering feat. The big change after we

01:37:00:09
got through the other end of the Panama Canal was of course the weather began to change to winter in the north and I can remember we sailed past Miami and it was all lit up, lights, yachts all over the horizon and everything and you know there we were chugging through on our way to the war. And everything was lit up along the American coast, of course

01:37:30:10
they weren't in the war in January '41 and the first change of weather came when we were up somewhere abreast of New York, the first blizzard came through. That's when we realised perhaps we didn't have quite enough warm clothing. The situation didn't much improve regarding temperature after that. We had a blizzard, we had gales and I can remember one crystal

01:38:00:09
clear morning when the temperature was probably about zero going past Cape Race, Newfoundland before we headed across the North Atlantic to go to Glasgow and then we ran into gales across the Atlantic and of course that was an incredible experience. One was a bit seasick in the early stages. Incredible experience really. It was the first rough weather one had ever experienced. The size of the swells were huge and the gale force

01:38:30:11
winds were incredible but that was life at sea and that's what we were for so you learned about it and took it in. The other thing was that of course February '41, January '41 and February '41 wasn't a good time for lone merchant ships to be in the North Atlantic Ocean because of a certain number of u-boats around keen to send you to the bottom. And I can

01:39:00:09
remember one day in a gale the third mate I think mentioned that a ship had been sunk about four hours distance from us. Well four hours in gale force weather may not necessarily have been very far so you begin to think yes the war is getting a bit closer and two days out from Glasgow when we thought ah at last you know we're nearly there spotted a couple of aircraft

01:39:30:08
on the horizon. Hooray we've got some air cover you know some patrol vessels or patrol aircraft to shelter us from the submarines and so on. Well yes they were very keen. They came and had a look at us but just when they were having a look very close, they opened the bomb doors and dropped some bombs on us because they happened to be Heinkels from Germany or perhaps they were based in Norway and that sort of changed

01:40:00:11
the day. It tended to focus the mind. They machine-gunned the ship. One of the bombs hit the ship but fortunately glanced off and landed in the sea. The ship was actually undamaged except for a derrick dented and hit by one of these bombs. So suddenly you were there. You were in the war and I think it was a day or so later we got into Glasgow. Went up the Clyde.

Guy Griffiths
1146
02

02:00:27:02

Q: Let's just go back a little bit. This is your first time on a ship. Actually can you just tell me what you took with you? What did you pack to take with you?

A: Well we had, when we left naval college all your kit that you had been provided with went into a trunk, a special trunk if I recall and one of the interesting things in those days which sounds a bit irrelevant to your

02:01:00:12
question but we had a special tin box for a pith helmet, you know the old white pith helmet that everybody imagines is linked with the British Raj in India, those were issued to us. I don't think I ever wore it but there was a tin box. So we had tropical uniform with us and we had blue uniform with us. I think our warmest coat was a Burberry and you know Burberrys were

02:01:30:10
pretty thin and that was about it. We had some pullovers and so on but we didn't really have any cold weather gear but that was the way we did it and we unfortunately continued that way for decades after out here instead of

02:02:00:03
when deployed ships into semi sort of Arctic type chill they never really kitted our fellows out properly. However, what did we pack in the truck? Well you packed all the little bits and pieces you had. One of the things of course that I packed that I should never have packed was my midshipman's dirk. Midshipmen have a little sort of short dirk, little short sword so to speak, strictly not for aggression purposes but for ceremonial. You had a

02:02:30:13
dirk and you had a midshipman jacket, full kit. Of course your dirk and your midshipman's jacket and all that sort of thing are entirely useless in the war. You never wore it and if you survived the war and so on without losing your kit you still have it but if you didn't you don't have it. Anyway all those bits and pieces went into this truck and a suitcase or two and that

02:03:00:11
was it. You went off and that was the way. You packed your photographs and a few bits and pieces from the family but one wouldn't have had too much of those in those days at the end of high school so to speak and away you went.

Q: And it was just the five of you on board?

A: Just the five of us yes. I'm not sure how they chose the Karamea but I must say it was quite a good choice. It was comfortable. We shared, we shared

02:03:30:09
a cabin, there were two of us in a cabin. Not too much space but you don't need too much or we didn't really at that time. Yes five of us. There was John Austin, Bruce Dowling, Peter Gyllies, Bob Davies and myself and John Austin is still alive. Bruce Dowling is still alive. Bruce had to leave

02:04:00:05
the navy in 1946 because he was badly wounded at Leyte Gulf and Peter Gyllies died in the early 70s and Bob Davies was lost in Repulse but we'll come to that later perhaps. But yes just the five of us yes.

Q: And an officer with you - and was someone looking after you?

02:04:30:12

A: Yes, Commander Rosenthall, yes. Very nice chap.

Q: Tell us about heading out on the ship. You were talking about the star shells. Tell us about that.

A: That was just a destroyer patrol in what would have been the west approaches in those days, approaching the top end of Ireland going over into the Clyde or into Liverpool and they would have been out there patrolling and they we were coming in as a single merchantman. Maybe

02:05:00:08
he hadn't been told that we were on the way but we were there and so he illuminated the star shell. He came along I think within a couple of hundred metres or so and after star shell and identified us, there was some talk through megaphones and so on as to who we were and where we were bound and then we went on after that into the Clyde.

Q: This was after the attack?

A: From the two aircraft, the German aircraft, yes.

02:05:30:11

Q: Tell us a bit more about that, about your actual experience of that.

A: Well we were standing on deck. I recall two or three of us we were standing on deck looking at the aircraft quite convinced in our own na?ve way that they were friendly but then they flew towards us and we thought oh they're going to buzz us and go on over. Well they certainly buzzed us

02:06:00:09
and open fired with a machine-gun by which time and when the bomb started to drop we headed into the nearest hatch very quickly and got inside out of the range of bullets. Nobody was wounded fortunately from the machine-gun attack but nobody, the bombs didn't go off in the right place so the ship wasn't damaged by the bombs. We were very lucky, very lucky. They could have burst on deck and caused quite some damage but I

02:06:30:14
think the ship would probably still have gotten into Glasgow but we didn't know that then.

Q: So how did you all react to that? Did any of you think what have we done, we might get killed?

A: No I don't think so. I don't think so. Everybody said it was a bit of a close shave and left it at that.

Q: You were saying that there was some rough weather and you got

02:07:00:02
seasick. When the camera was off you were just saying that there wasn't much you could do about that.

A: Well there isn't actually but there didn't seem to be any pills in those days and if you were feeling off you went and lay down on your bunk or something and when you felt like eating you ate some food. It sort of tends to take away the appetite and there were no - as I said - no seasick pills in

02:07:30:05
those days, nothing you could take for it. So you just got over it with the whole sort of balance system. You eventually accommodated the movement and the ears settled down and so the nausea settled down and you went about your duty as you would normally do.

Q: Some sailors never got over their sicknesses?

A: Some people didn't. Not in our group, they were all right but as I mention

02:08:00:09
I have known fellows in the service who have been a little bit seasick most of their serving time. I think it's great courage, it requires great courage to continue sailing under those conditions because if you are feeling seasick you're not very comfortable at all. It's a nauseating feeling and you can't crawl away and you can't stop the ship and you can't sort of stop the world

02:08:30:09
I want to get off or anything like that. You just have to stay there. And I mean there have been fellows, one chap I knew there was a bucket at the back of the bridge and when he was on watch and when he felt sick he'd go and be sick and then come back and carry on with his watch. Now that's a fair amount of fortitude required in that sort of thing.

02:09:00:12

Q: Very difficult when you're fighting. Tell me about arriving in England and your impressions, or Scotland.

A: Well firstly of course going up the Firth of Forth you were surrounded by these magnificent entrance really to the Clyde and the whole countryside was covered in snow and that of course was the first time one had seen countryside covered in snow. We'd been through blizzards and I think if

02:09:30:09
we properly looked some of Newfoundland in the distance might have been covered in snow. I'm sure it was but that was the first time one had seen the normal, what you would feel is normal green hills and mountains and so on all covered in snow and it looked cold and it was cold. It's an indelible impression on my mind. I've never forgotten going up the Clyde

02:10:00:07
and looking at either side of the river at the fields and everything, trees and so on covered in snow. We went up. We passed shipyards such as John Brown's shipyard where they were probably finishing another battleship or something. We passed a Fairfield yard where they were finishing destroyers building and you know it was a hive of activity. And we went

02:10:30:08
up and got to our berth and went ashore in Glasgow and eventually I think we were there, I can't remember what time of the day we arrived, probably about noon or something like that, I'm not sure we really stayed on board for more than one night and then went down to London in the train. And of course we went to London and reported to Australia House where

02:11:00:09
people were sorting out what to do with these five junior midshipmen and we were offered hospitality and they had a wonderful scheme running in Australia House for people like ourselves arriving and we were billeted out, wonderful people and I think three of us went to a doctor and Mrs Logue. She was a wonderful lady and he was a wonderful person. He was

02:11:30:09
a speech therapist I think you would call him these days. But he was actually helping the King who you will recall had a stutter. He was assisting the King in improving his speech. He was quite a fellow, Lionel Logue, he was a West Australian. Never hear about him at all. They lived down at Sydenham and there we hopped in the tram and went out and took

02:12:00:15
our little bag and left the main trunk somewhere. And we spent, I can't remember now but quite a few nights with them and that was when one was first, when one first heard the air raid sirens go and saw the flak going up and hustle down into the basement of the house out of the way to wait till the all clear went and so that was one's first experience with air raids.

02:12:30:02
And then after that we were billeted out into the country. Once again by people who had volunteered to house servicemen or servicewomen servicemen before they went on wherever they were going. We went down to two places. One was a Mrs Marchant, dear lady who lived in the village of Chalfont St Giles, if I recall, near Gerrards Cross. She had a little cottage

02:13:00:10
and she had a heart of gold and fed us more food than we could, I don't know how she managed it but she did. And we were just waiting there walking around the village, going to the pub in the evening for a beer. We couldn't afford much because I think midshipmen had the princely sum of five shillings a day. It really didn't get you far. And then we also went and stayed with a wonderful family in Beaconsfield, Lady Helen Byrne.

02:13:30:10
They were kindness itself. It was really a lovely house. From there we were then ordered back to London. Caught the overnight train I guess up to Glasgow again and we were sent to Repulse. We joined Repulse off Greenock, Greenock as they say down the Clyde and she was out there

02:14:00:14
waiting to escort a convoy south to Gibraltar or Freetown area. We joined I think it was late in the afternoon. It was growing dark on a February day so it couldn't have been much beyond 3 o'clock. It was pretty dark. Anyway it was about 4 or 4.30 in the afternoon and there's this huge ship. We went out on a boat which came in for us and our bags and hammocks

02:14:30:12
and things and so on and joined. You know this was real. You know this was the first ship and there we were. Then there was the first night in a hammock. The ship sailed at about 5 o'clock I think and there we were at sea with our hammocks slung on our first night at sea as a midshipman in a

02:15:00:05
warship. And we had a great time. Wonderful captain. A great, great crew, a friendly team in the gun room. The gun room is the small eating and lounge room mess so to speak where the midshipmen and sublieutenants live. That was right down the aft end of the ship down

02:15:30:10
beyond Y turret. The ship had three turrets, twin turrets. A and B up forward and Y down aft, three of them and we lived there. But we were quite warmly greeted you know there was no sort of who on earth are these colonials although I think probably people might have thought it, didn't say it. And we got along very well and we had a wonderful officer in

02:16:00:09
charge of our training who was at that time Lieutenant John Hayes known as Jock because of his initials and he looked after us. He was later Lieutenant Commander Hayes and much later on Vice Admiral Sir John Hayes when he retired from the navy. And we had a terrific captain, Captain Tennant but a bit forbidding in the early days. I mean the captain

02:16:30:13
was God you know. As a midshipman you were right at the lowest bottom end of the limb. But our training as we got into it over the months ahead we became part and parcel of the team as much as we could contribute. We were learning really and we were absorbing more than we were giving I think. But it all went well. It was great and the ship was active also.

02:17:00:11

Q: You said you were welcomed on board. Do you think there was a difference between, did they perceive Australian sailors as being different?

A: I don't think, I don't think, I don't want to mislead people. Nobody sort of rushed up and grabbed us by the hand and said, "Welcome aboard! We're real glad to have you on board," or anything like that. On the other hand we weren't, we weren't viewed as total strangers and we were accepted as members of the ship and that to me was a passive welcome.

02:17:32:02

Q: You were billeted with English people. What was your perception of Britain and England at that time as an Australian?

A: I mean you felt it the moment the ship went up the Clyde, when the Karamea went up to dock that this all looks a bit different. A it was

02:18:00:10
wintertime, mid winter, B there were blackouts which we had never experienced before. The train journey down to London was in the clickety-clack was you know everything was shuttered up and no lights. Look out, there were no lights outside. London, blackout and of course London had

02:18:30:12
by that time absorbed its major blitz, 1940, end of 40/41 and so the people were very seriously minded as you can imagine and you could almost say that they didn't laugh a lot. It wasn't a scene of beautiful sunshine that we have out here. It was cold, winter, miserable, people had been killed and hurt, air raids were something which people you know worried about, it

02:19:00:10
wasn't just oh there's just another raid I'll keep walking type thing although of course history recounts in detail their bravery, their courage and so on but it was for real you know you were in the middle of a war and England was the headquarters so to speak. So again the bright life of Australia was a million miles away and you were there in the UK with its blackouts, with its food shortages and all those sorts of things.

Q: What was your sort of closest shave with an air raid?

A: Sorry?

02:19:30:12

Q: What was your sort of closest experience with an air raid?

A: With an air raid? Oh I can't really remember. I don't think any bomb exploded nearby. You get the impression there were raids going on you know within a few miles here and there. No I don't think, I was lucky that nothing exploded near where we were.

02:20:00:09

Q: And as an Australian in Britain, I mean what was your perception of yourself as an Australian and as of Australia in relation to Britain at that time? We're sort of moving away from Britain now but what was it like then?

A: Oh we were totally linked, totally linked. There was no thought of separation. Yes we were Australians but we were over there. We were in a Royal Navy ship and we were getting on with the job. I mean there was

02:20:30:10
no, yeah we felt Australian at times there's no doubt about that but not from the point of antagonism or great resistance. We were entirely proud to be what we were and we were quietly committed I suppose, we didn't talk about it, quietly committed to proving that we could be efficient officers just as the same as everybody else. But there was no sort of we,

02:21:00:10
they. Some people felt we spoke English in a funny way, but the chap that said it to me was actually an Indian at the time, later became good friends and he said to me one day, "You Australians do speak the English language in the funniest damn way, you know," and as he was a senior midshipman and I was junior there was no reply to that. But okay, so we spoke English

02:21:30:07
in a funny way. I thought he did too.

Q: When you first got on the ship, did they have a name for the person that looks after you?

A: Oh the midshipman's training officer, midshipmen are known as snotties because they have three buttons on their jackets, on their dress jackets which stories used to say they put them to stop wiping their nose on their

02:22:00:09
sleeve. So midshipmen were known as snotties and the officer in charge of our training was known as the snotties' nurse which was one of those you know naval expressions that was quite normal. Where's the snotties' nurse? It wasn't a put down on the officer. He just happened to be the midshipmen's training officer and that was it.

02:22:30:15

Q: How many men were on the ship?

A: We had about 1350 aboard total. Quite a large, she was a ship with some 32,000 tons in weight and she was built in 1916. She didn't get to Jutland, the Battle of Jutland. Built in 1916 and she was one of the battle cruiser

02:23:00:11
squadron. There was the Renown, Repulse, Hood and so on and others in the battle cruiser squadron commanded by Admiral Beattie at Jutland and Beattie was a bit of a character as can be read in many books. One of the things - he was a nonconformist in his fashion and instead of buttoning up his jacket with four buttons Beattie decided to have a jacket with three. So

02:23:30:08
as nobody else was allowed to have a jacket with three all the battle cruiser officers undid their top right button. That was their privilege. And so we used to proudly undo the top right button as midshipmen and that was, we were in the battle cruiser squadron. It was great fun.

Q: Tell me a bit about how the ship was sort of set up in terms of you know where you slept, where you worked because it's a massive ship.

A: Well she was big, that was the first thing. And we slept, we slept right in

02:24:00:09
the stern portion of the ship. She was lightly armoured but she had side armour on her and it ran down as far as the protecting Y turret magazine which was right on what we call the quarterdeck, the stern of the ship. Now there's a hatch down there just by the Y turret and you then went down into the midshipmen's chest flap. Chest meaning chest of drawings

02:24:30:10
where you stowed your kit and the baggage store and the hammock store and the gun room and a training room, sort of a classroom which had a piano in it as well, a classroom and our bathroom and a couple of other stores aft. Well we quickly learnt that aft of where, aft meaning behind,

02:25:00:10
where the armour stopped and you had this fine stern that was nothing when she hit a swell forward. You know she shook. The back end would waggle like a duck's tail you know and so there were times when you were in hammock and you were sort of moving around a bit while you were sleeping. And the other interesting, ridiculous thing that happened.

02:25:30:02
A bathroom to get rid of the water, you know it's below sea level and you know you have bathrooms down here, we had an ejector system which sucked the water out of the bathroom, there was a sump for your shower water which sucked the sump dry by a valve up until the speed of the ship

02:26:00:08
was about 14 knots and as she went to sort of 16 or 18 knots if the water if the valve hadn't been closed off the water would come back in and fill up the bathroom. By the time the bathroom deck had filled up and we crossed the door, you used to have what we called a sill which is about 8 or 10 inches high to stop water coming out easily but of course if the bathroom filled up the level of the sill and kept filling if the ship was doing say 18 or

02:26:30:10
20 knots and the water would come into the chest flap and you'd wake up in the morning as the duty midshipman was supposed to look at the valve and you'd wake up in the morning and look over your hammock and your boots were floating in about you know a foot of water. Very uncomfortable and you sort of get down and paddle around until we got this thing straightened out again. You weren't very popular, I can say. I

02:27:00:10
think it only happened a couple of times but in the evening you had to make sure that the bathroom was dry and the valve closed just in case sometimes during the night you had to, the ship had to increase speed. But working around the ship you were given, the ship was in defence stations and that means about a third of the ship's company closed up a part of the armament, portion of the armament and that included probably one of the

02:27:30:11
turrets, some of the high angle guns for anti-aircraft and some of the, we had low angle triple 4 inch guns for low angle close range work. I can remember in my early days I was up in the control position for the triple 4 inch at the aft control position under the main mast was just above the after

02:28:00:10
funnel, two funnel ship and of course with the wind from forward all the funnel fumes would draw down over this control position and you had this sort of sulphurous atmosphere which you were drinking in this stuff all the time. Very uncomfortable I must say and you were terribly happy, you'd get them on a zigzag. The ship was always zigzagging, altering course

02:28:30:12
according to a plan for submarine avoidance and there were legs when the smoke would come straight over your control position or inside it and you would hope it would soon change. Very uncomfortable I must say and you were of course in the forward control in the air defence position right forward it was high above the forward funnel so if you were steaming down wind and the wind was stronger than the speed of your ship then

02:29:00:10
those funnel fumes would come over the air defence position forward or the control positions forward. Once again very uncomfortable breathing this sort of air. But we kept lookout on the air defence position or lookout on the bridge, midshipman of the watch, had somebody assisting the navigating officer, gunnery officer and so on learning about the ship and what was happening in her and who was running it and who was operating

02:29:30:12
stores, you know boiler rooms, engine rooms and so on although I must say we didn't spend very much time down in the boiler room and engine room but I wasn't terribly interested because I didn't want to do engineering.

Q: What was the first time the Repulse actually was in action? What are your first memories of actually having to sort of fire the guns?

A: In anger? Well in anger against the enemy really was the first time against

02:30:00:10
the Japanese aircraft off the east coast of Malaya on 10 December '41. We had expected of course, we had looked forward to with some I guess apprehension of shooting at the Bismarck in May '41 but that didn't happen.

Q: Tell me a bit about that, about your perceptions of that time and when you were involved in that. What were you doing at the time?

02:30:30:14

A: Well we didn't see the Bismarck. We headed off at 27 knots into a north westerly breeze so to speak, strong gale from Cape Wrath which is the north west corner of Scotland heading across to the south of Iceland. King George V, the battleship leading the flagship and the carrier Victorious ahead of us and then Repulse with a screen of destroyers and cruisers. We

02:31:00:10
left, I forget the dates now, 24th I think it was. 23rd in the evening we sailed. We joined with King George V, I think it was on the 24th, 23rd, the morning of the 24th off Cape Wrath and away we headed but of course we

02:31:30:10
woke up to breakfast on the 25th to learn that the Hood had been sunk and that sort of tended to indicate that once again the war was for real. And we were expecting to meet Bismarck on the night of the 25th sometime between you know sort of midnight and daylight, closer to daylight than midnight and so the lookouts and I was one of them during the night, I

02:32:00:12
think I was on the first watch, 8 till 12 at night were looking very keenly into the dark North Atlantic sky waiting to get an impression of the silhouette of Bismarck. You can see the silhouette of a ship against the horizon but not at a huge distance but you can see it. And so one was looking out, looking out through the binoculars very, very keenly to catch a

02:32:30:11
glimpse of this ship. The ship was keyed up, ready for action and great feeling that at last she could have the opportunity to fire her guns in anger. Then the following morning at about 6.30 we realised that Bismarck wasn't around and the course, had altered course and I forget what time in

02:33:00:10
the morning it was, probably about 10, the signal we were running out of fuel on Repulse and we couldn't do anything about it. We had to be detached. The nearest place to go was Newfoundland and when we detached the whole ship fell absolutely flat, absolutely flat and frustrated. It really was quite a blow obviously more so to those a lot more senior than

02:33:30:14
we were, well everybody was senior to us, to the captain and all his officers who had been keen to get into action and the ship's company. Of course a lot of experience in the ship's company in those days, chief petty officers and warrant officers, petty officers. Very frustrated that we had been denied the opportunity and that spilt off onto us as well. But we went

02:34:00:11
to Newfoundland in Conception Bay and we fuelled from a tanker and I can remember a fishing boat coming alongside and the beautiful salmon in this ship and I think even the gun room managed to buy some salmon. The most delicious meal I had had for quite a while you know. Then we went on down to Halifax, Nova Scotia after that and of course when we went to I think somewhere between Newfoundland and Halifax or just when we

02:34:30:08
arrived there then we learnt that the Bismarck had been sunk.

Q: How did you all feel about that?

A: Well we all rejoiced of course absolutely because she would have caused mayhem in the North Atlantic if she'd been allowed to roam freely around. She was a tremendous ship, absolutely incredible and beautifully built. I mean subsequently one found out details of it after the war and later and

02:35:00:09
beautifully built ship, very modern in every way with a good gunnery system, excellent gunnery system hence she was able to target the Hood and sink her very quickly. Years later I'd had an interesting meeting or contact, the senior surviving officer of the Bismarck was a fellow who had

02:35:30:10
the short name of Baron Burkard Von M?llenheim-Rechberg and he was I think second or third gunnery officer in the Bismarck and anyway he got away out of this wreck, blazing wreck and swam and was picked up by the Royal Navy cruiser [HMS] Dorsetshire and subsequently I learnt he went into the German foreign office and later he produced a book entitled Battleship

02:36:00:09
Bismarck. We were living in Canberra at the time and my wife who comes from Nuremberg, Bavaria knew the ambassador there and she got this book and the ambassador, we knew him, he said would you like the author to autograph your book. I said that would be something you know and anyway he obviously put in the diplomatic bag, sent it back and the Baron

02:36:30:10
sent a little message in the book which I still have and he said with all best wishes and so on and courtesies and I wrote him a letter and indicated to him he was probably puzzled as to why I was interested in Bismarck. So I wrote him a note and said I married a lass from Nuremberg and we went back to Germany some time and I told him about Repulse chasing, etc., and

02:37:00:09
said I would like to call and see him. So Carla and I went down to see him one day, we went to Germany and rang him up and he said come and have lunch and so on. So we went to his house in Herrsching am Ammersee which is just south west of Munich and we had a delightful lunch, absolutely delightful

02:37:30:09
lunch. And you began to wonder you know about the people on the other side at the time. Everybody hated everybody there was no doubt about that. I mean the causes were, what happened was one of the tragedies of world history. But on the other hand there were people on the other side who were actually quite nice people, normal sort of folk and you begin to wonder why the hell did it all happen in the first place, because some maniac goes the wrong way. It's interesting, his good lady, unfortunately

02:38:00:11
the Baron passed away about four years ago I think now and his wife may still be alive I'm not sure but we were chatting at the lunch table and she said what have you been doing on your trip. So I told her. I said I was doing a little family history research in England and you know all conversational stuff and she said oh yes she said Burkard has quite some

02:38:30:10
family history and I didn't make any comment on that because I wasn't quite sure what was coming and she said yes his family owned Alsace-Lorraine from the 1500s so I thought that was, so we didn't pursue discussion on family history after that. But it was a very interesting meeting. We didn't go back after that somehow or other. Our trips over there we've gone other places and seen other people not that we didn't

02:39:00:09
enjoy it. They were kindness, they said they had a flat, a self contained flat under their house did we ever come to Germany if so would we like to use it, it's there you know. Never met us before. It was terrific.

Guy Griffiths
1146
03

03:00:24:10

Q: Guy I'd just like to go back a little. Just a couple of things to pick up on in regards to your training. I was interested to know how did they prepare you for, you referred later to the reality of war, how was that talked about in terms of your training?

03:01:00:10

A: I think basically in your training you're automatically carrying out your duty to do that duty in a case of action. So it followed you know that if, for instance in Repulse I was at one stage in charge of what was known as the high angle control position - an HACP - and there were two of these. One was in the forward section of the ship and one was in the after section of

03:01:30:11
the ship and they were a computer, a mechanical computer really working out the solution to known as the fire control problem, you track your enemy aircraft and you have your own ship's movement underneath it and so you have a relative velocity problem and you need to fire your shell shall we say at some lead off angle at a certain range to explode the shell in

03:02:00:09
front of the aircraft. So when one is doing that for an exercise you're doing exactly the same duty as you are when you're firing at the enemy. So that's an example whereby your normal training, how you're preparing for war by doing that peacetime exercise. Nobody talks about the war

03:02:30:09
environment. Nobody was saying that, although in a ship of course you have your damage control parties which are there to plug up the holes and put out the fires and so they train to do that without any damage existing but that's what they're training for and the moment the ship was damaged where the bomb hit that's what they were doing putting out fires and repairing damage and the medical parties are trained to look after the

03:03:00:07
wounded and the dead etc and they're trained to do that. They have mock stretcher parties and so on for somebody in the stretchers so that they take them to the medical station and so in all these training things you are trained to do that action when you're actually engaging the enemy. But nobody is likely to tell you how many wounded you're going to have to deal or how many dead bodies you push out of the way or that sort of

03:03:30:11
thing. You know at least, I'm talking about when I was aboard Repulse. Nobody was saying you know in the event of so much damage, I can get tied up in this. Nobody can actually give you the environment to train in otherwise when you get into action of course you're still working but

03:04:00:09
nobody is saying to you that when you get into action it's going to be like this. The only way is a rough petty officer will say well when you young fellows get into action you better have your wits about you, something like that because it's going to be tough and that's about as far as it goes. How else can you impart the environment of an action? Not on really.

03:04:32:12
We'll talk about the environment of an action a little later when we get onto the Repulse and other battles. But I'd just like to stay for a little while, particularly going back to your early school when you were sent off to training school as a teenager, to navy school as a teenager. You

03:05:00:10
discussed that you basically lost your connection with your family. Was there someone for you who became like a father figure at that school?

A: Your term officer really became a father figure I guess, yes albeit that they were probably, yes they were old enough to be our fathers. Yes they

03:05:30:09
would have. The captain of the college was a father figure not in the same way as being a father though. I mean there was not sort of a discussion about how you young blokes feel about this, that and the other but the term officer was there guiding you when guidance was necessary. In a way I suppose in a modern term counselling a little if it was necessary but

03:06:00:07
making sure that you were keeping up with the team and so on. But nobody, there was nobody there really to substitute for a father, no. Under the discipline and the rank hierarchy you couldn't sort of short circuit that back to what I think you're getting at. Yes there were father figures around

03:06:30:09
but they were fairly remote, not in the family sense you know they were remote in the family sense.

Q: You said that in hindsight that's perhaps caused some complexities for you as a result of that distance from your family, etc. I'm just wondering in terms of your experience and your relationship with the

03:07:00:02
navy over the years, has training shifted now with sailors coming in to the navy, are there facilities in place for them to have a closer connection with their family these days or does it still echo what it was like?

03:07:30:10

A: I think, I find it difficult to compare the two because I don't really have enough knowledge of the present day training and the present day conditions of service except that I do know that fellows go off to sea with a mobile telephone and they do have contact with their families. You would have read in the press whereby somebody in a ship up somewhere can talk

03:08:00:09
to their family on sat, sat telephones and so on. That of course never existed in our day. So yes there are major changes I would think, major changes and there's much more ability to, many more facilities allow you better contact with your family. Although of course depending on the nature of the operation that has to be closed off at times. You can't have a

03:08:30:11
ship's company of 200 all on the telephone to their family all the time. I mean they've got a job to do and so it has to be controlled I would imagine at sea. But yes mobile telephones, satellite communications change the whole scene I would think.

Q: No doubt the Internet too.

A: Absolutely - completely different. I mean we have waited for mail and

03:09:00:09
mail had move round and chase you. I mean for instance our mail from home when I was in Repulse would basically reach us when we went back to England something like that. It wouldn't have been sent to meet us at Gibraltar. We wouldn't have collected it at Freetown. There were no daily flights taking airmail in and no mail would get across to Halifax when we

03:09:30:11
were over there so yes there would have been mail in UK and they probably save it up for when we got there and likewise when we deployed to the East. I don't think, we might have got some mail on the east coast of Africa at Mombasa or Durban but I doubt it. I can't actually remember and certainly we wouldn't have got any in Singapore because once again it was a bit tense.

03:10:00:12

Q: So just going back to that moment of the selection of the five sailors who were heading to the UK -

A: Five midshipmen.

Q: Five midshipmen, I'm sorry. Why were those five chosen and from how many in the class?

03:10:30:09

A: Well in alphabetical order there's John Austin, Bodman, Harry Bodman chose to be an engineer. Austin, Bodman, Davies. Bob Davies was there. Bruce Dowling was there. Austin, Bodman, Davies, Dowling, Griffiths, Gyllies and you've got them in alphabetical order. We came off the top of the list. Some went to the cruiser Canberra or other places and so on but

03:11:00:07
yeah we were the first five executive midshipmen in alphabetical order in the term.

Q: The other thing that I've become aware of is that you were all boys, you were all teenagers, were there any girls about? Was there any romance? Was there any opportunity to have a relationship with a girl, to have a girlfriend?

03:11:30:02

A: Not really. No not really. When we went to Halifax Nova Scotia after deploying, detaching from the Bismarck chase we received lots of hospitality from families in Halifax and they had parties and some families had daughters and that was sort of contact. There was some opportunity to go to parties at their homes and so on but that was about the size of it.

03:12:00:10
There was no sort of hopping in a car and going off somewhere for the weekend. I mean in those days you didn't do that, not at all. In England the answer is basically no. When we were in Rosyth Dockyard in about July 41 we would go and have afternoon tea with the some of the Wrens -

03:12:30:08
the Women's Royal Naval Service ladies - up at Dunfermline and we would go to a caf? and have afternoon tea and then catch the bus back to the ship and that was about it.

Q: Was there ever the feeling that - was it disappointing? Would you have liked to have been able to you know taken one of these -

A: Oh yes I think so. I'm sure, I mean after all we were reasonably healthy

03:13:00:07
male fellows. Yes surely but it wasn't too be so there was no sense of total frustration about it because the circumstances didn't permit it so, you couldn't change it so why fuss about it and one was never very long at any one place to sort of form up what they term these days a relationship. It

03:13:30:12
was not on. A bit difficult to understand in 2002. 60 years ago life was different.

Q: Speaking of which you said that on the Repulse you felt no animosity from the English sailors but you did say at times we felt Australian.

03:14:00:08
What was it that made you feel?

A: Oh I think when we did something well, that we knew we had done our duty quite well, we had acquitted ourselves well we thought that's one for the naval college and one for Oz [Australia] you know very quietly to ourselves. I remember one time, I forget which harbour it was in now, it might have

03:14:30:08
been Scapa Flow, we were, part of our training you had to sail and they had boats known as whalers and these had three sails or four a main and a mizzen and we had done a lot of sailing at naval college and sailed you know a hell of a lot of our training and weekends we'd go sailing in these whalers. So we actually knew how to handle them pretty well and so we were sent away in the whaler the five of us to do some training and bring the whaler alongside the gangway which is always a great gimmick

03:15:00:08
because if you don't get it right you smash something. So the five of us all hopped in the whaler and away we went and the first one we charge in you know and you lean over type thing and you turn up and the boat stops. So all five of us did that. Suddenly people realised oh these Australians can sail. It was interesting, it was interesting. We knew we had acquitted

03:15:30:14
ourselves that day. Quite fun. I suppose in a way back in those days we felt just a little bit smug about it but we were only doing what we had been trained to do and we had obviously been taught well at home.

Q: Was there much interaction between the ranks on a ship? I'm talking here on a social level rather than at a professional level when you're at

03:16:00:10
work but when you're off duty.

A: No not really, we're talking about Repulse still in '41. Not really no. Between the midshipmen you know up and down a bit but we were the juniors and we didn't really go ashore with the sublieutenants who were ranked higher and we weren't really involved with the senior midshipmen

03:16:30:12
but we were friends of course with the Royal Navy junior midshipmen on board as well. They were round about our vintage. But between the gun room and the wardroom where the officers, basic officers lived, no there wasn't really any social connection. We would never go to a party with them or something like that no. Meet them on the sporting field and that

03:17:00:09
sort of thing but not otherwise no.

Q: You talked about the captain as God. Where and how would you come in contact with the captain?

A: Well you would come in contact with the captain when you were keeping watch on the bridge at sea and that was basically where you met him or he

03:17:30:18
knew that you existed around the place. Captain Tennant was a very senior captain. In fact I think he was about the most senior captain in the Royal Navy at the time and he was very, in a way a shy retiring but a man with a big heart and good wisdom. You know he knew about his people and so he knew more about you than you thought he did. And it used to be the

03:18:00:08
custom in those days also and it may well be now for captains to invite midshipmen to breakfast, at his table for breakfast and I can remember a couple of us going along, I forget who was with me now, but a couple of us went along for breakfast with Captain Tennant and that was quite an event in your life to have breakfast with the captain. And it wasn't exactly what you would call a freewheeling conversation but it was warm, it was

03:18:30:16
interesting and it was valued, the opportunity to get to meet your captain.

Q: What would you talk about?

A: Oh come on Patrick [interviewer], I can't remember, you know, sixty years ago! What did we talk about at breakfast with the captain? I have no idea. No, that one's too far away. We were lucky actually in Mombasa when we were working out of Mombasa on the east coast the captain was friends with the district

03:19:00:08
commissioner and his lady, Mr and Mrs Hodge and the Hodges were wonderful people and they said, "Do you midshipmen want to come up and have afternoon tea at our house and use the swimming pool and so on, it's all there." So we went up. So occasionally the captain was a bit on the sidelines there so you got a little of contact there but not too much. But you knew he was there and of course yes he was the boss. There's no

03:19:30:09
doubt about it. Always known as 'the Old Man', the expression for the captain. But he had the great respect from the ship's company. They all 'loved-liked' him and respected him very much. There was no dissension at all. You know he was the boss and that was it, acknowledged it but they

03:20:00:14
liked him. It was good. Very, very nice feeling amongst you know the ship's company and so on. Nobody was muttering about him not that we ever heard it but books have been written about Tennant since and everything is plus regarding him and those of us who survived only have positive thoughts about our captain and great respect.

Q: Do you have any recollection of the time on the bridge with him?

03:20:30:03

A: Not really, no.

Q: Would he see it as an opportunity to impart knowledge?

A: No I don't think captains in those days got involved in any deep discussion with their midshipmen. No not really. You were required to do your duty and you had an officer or watch you know a lieutenant or sublieutenant

03:21:00:09
officer of the watch and he would talk to you about what to do and what you should be doing and help train you at the time and the captain was, he was worried about the big picture and his ship.

Q: Talk us through when you were on the bridge with the watch and the person in charge of the watch would teach you various things. What

03:21:30:14
sort of things would they talk to you about?

A: If you were zigzagging so to speak you were allowed to, at times that you were allowed to manoeuvre the ship for the zigzag. You would have to set the zigzag clock as I recall and make sure it was right because if the ships didn't alter all the same way at the same time you had unhappy situations

03:22:00:09
of ships perhaps altering course towards each other. You know the convoy that you were escorting was also zigzagging and so you had to follow the zigzag. So you set the zigzag clock and you would make sure that the timing was right and things like that. If you didn't know how to do it you would be taught how to do it. And then at some stage you might be allowed to manoeuvre the ship and alter course. Well it's not just a case of saying starboard 15 or something like that. You have to take the wheel off

03:22:30:10
before a number of degrees of the new course midships and counter the swing of the ship and so on. So you had to learn about doing that. You'd learn about sweeping with binoculars and you would know how the hands are employed on the ship, whether if the seas were getting rough did you have anybody on the upper deck from the safety point of view and things like. So yes general sort of duties.

03:23:00:13

Q: Just going back a little bit. You talked about this salmon boat that turned up and you were able to buy salmon off it. A couple of questions. Was there much interaction between other forms of sea boats on the sea in terms of you know was that a rare event that a fishing boat should pull up beside you?

A: Oh yes. It was a very rare event that the ship was in Conception Bay of

03:23:30:09
course. I don't know that a Royal Navy battle cruiser had ever been in Conception Bay, Newfoundland before. So we were a bit of a novelty so to speak and I think the fishermen with good marketing sense thought ah I've got a sale out here why not go out and see. We welcomed him with

03:24:00:10
open arms as far as the money would allow. If you went in, sorry, contact between in harbour in between boats ashore or harbour traders yes in fact they can get to the stage of being utterly annoying in places like when we went to Freetown in Sierra Leone. You have to keep the traders away from

03:24:30:08
the ship side and also within Colombo otherwise you're never sure whether they're inboard or outboard and you know what they might take and so on. So yes you do have in certain harbours of the world quite some traders coming alongside in their small boats which have to be carefully controlled and in a way we used to discourage everybody from buying

03:25:00:08
anything out of a boat because you don't get the item until you put the money in the bag and then the item you get mightn't be the one you thought you were going to get and there's no way you can get down and pick it out of the boat.

Q: How does the trade work? There is some pulley system is there between - ?

A: He'll throw up a line you see on deck and you hover at the guard rail and if you're looking at the boat and you want something down there whatever it

03:25:30:11
might be, a piece of cloth or something, you point at it and he says you know so many pesos or pennies or dollars or whatever. So you then, there's a little bag on this line so you put the money in the bag and it goes down and then he puts a piece of cloth on it, on the bag and up it comes. So there is a time when your money is going down and nothing is coming up. You have to be careful.

03:26:00:02

Q: And you said that even the gun room had salmon that night. Did each of the departments have their own mess? Is that how that worked?

A: No there was a general galley for the, we had our own gun room galley. I think we shared the wardroom galley and had our food cooked separately

03:26:30:09
and then there was the wardroom had its galley and then the ship's company would have had their galley forward and the main messing of the ship I don't know whether the boiler boys forward got salmon that day or not. I just know that we did in the wardroom, in the gun room. I'm sure that the wardroom did. I imagine that the supply officer probably got some for the ship's company as well. 1300 fellows eating salmon is quite a lot.

03:27:00:11

Q: When it wasn't salmon, what sort of food did they prepare for you?

A: It's where I first became acquainted with kippers for breakfast in the gun room of Repulse. We had eggs for breakfast and fish, kippers, haddock

03:27:30:12
and so on. The food was wholesome but not exactly three star so to speak. Food in those days was, you would call it wholesome but uninteresting I think generally speaking. It kept your body and soul together and so on and later on in the Pacific we'll talk about later the food was deplorable. But generally speaking, of course we were eating better than the people

03:28:00:09
ashore in England. They were on very tight food rationing in England and fortunately in the services you were getting a bit more food. So yes you know tough meat. Those are the days when everybody used to boil the hell out of vegetables you know. And of course ships weren't fitted for

03:28:30:08
keeping fresh vegetables. Fresh milk was basically unheard of except in harbour. Fresh vegetables only lasted a few days after we left and went on to tinned foods. So no big freezer rooms as they have today and so on, entirely different.

Q: While we are talking about food just tell us why the food was deplorable when you were in the Pacific.

03:29:00:09

A: Well I think firstly they had a victualling allowance which was never really enough to feed people on and strangely enough I don't think in those days that there was much imagination regarding food. It sort of developed out of the old days and all that was good enough you know and that was it.

03:29:30:07
We had a revolution in food in the Australian navy after World War II mainly because we nearly had a revolution during World War II regarding, that's not true of course but our food was terrible up in the Pacific during World War II. But then later on we developed it and we began training

03:30:00:09
cooks in cooking in an interesting way and allocating sufficient food, sufficient money to allow the procurement of reasonable food and there were proper cool rooms and cold rooms to keep stuff which we didn't have before. So when you are in a ship without a cold room you go back to the days of the old cask of salted beef you know which used to be put down. A lovely story given by a fellow who was actually a signalman in the

03:30:30:03
cruiser Sydney when it sank the Emden, a chap called, I've forgotten his name, Ernie, anyway he told a story because after the Sydney sank the Emden off Cocos Island in November 1914 she took a lot of the survivors up to Colombo, landed them and then went on through the Red Sea through the Mediterranean to England. By the time they got into the

03:31:00:08
Mediterranean the ship was pretty low on food, I'm not sure why but it doesn't really matter but they got to Gibraltar and because the supply officer then known as the paymaster didn't have very much money they got some casks of salted beef from the victualling store in Gibraltar and on the side of these casks, Ernie Boston was this fellow's name, on the side of

03:31:30:08
these casks was stamped 1815 and we're now in 1914 and as Ernie used to tell, he spun this tale here in Sydney, unfortunately he's passed away, he should have been recorded, he said you could fry it, you could boil it, you could stew it, you could hit it with an axe, you could tow it astern but you couldn't eat it. Salted beef and of course those were the old sailing ship

03:32:00:07
days and salted beef. It just escaped Nelson and his team. But yes there wasn't much imagination in food in those days and I don't know why. It was something that nobody put any money into it, nobody put very much thought into it. Incredible. I can tell a story when we come later to the Shropshire. We had pretty dreadful food up there in the southwest Pacific

03:32:30:09
and I was friends with an ensign, a US ensign aboard the cruiser Nashville. The US of course had proper cool rooms, cold rooms and good food, excellent food compared with ours which was really down but we had some beer on board in the gun room so Fred would come over and bring some beer and we would go over and watch a movie and have dinner on the Nashville. We, one or two of us you know, have dinner on the

03:33:00:05
Nashville and then watch their movie or come back and watch our movie, in harbour you know not at sea, you're in the harbour and I can remember going over to dinner one night and we had been on bully beef and dehydrated vegetables for some time and went over and sat down to dinner and Fred said, "Say steward, what do we have for dinner tonight?" And the steward said, "It's chicken, sir." And Fred said, "God damn chicken again!"

03:33:35:18

Q: With all due respect to the British, the British aren't renowned for their cuisine and do you think it is because of the relationship with the Royal Navy that the food in the navy was not terrific and do you think that it shifted post World War II because the navy started to identify more as an independent unit at that stage?

03:34:00:12

A: Of course it could be. I think as I said you know we were a pattern, our training, our routines, our orders, Australian Admiralty Fleet orders were in force out here, our whole system of running a ship, training a ship, everything was the same as Royal Navy and therefore we would have probably victualled our ships exactly the same way. Yeah I think it probably

03:34:30:08
was and then later on we said hey this is not good enough.

Q: Just going back a bit to that moment with the Bismarck and you talked about the disappointment after it not being there and you expected it was and you said that at last we could fire the guns in

03:35:00:13
anger. Can you just talk to us about what leads to that moment and what sort of preparations are gone through to that point where you think you are going to fire the guns?

A: Well in your ship at sea on patrol in wartime you are ready for engagement. These defence watches, the third of your ship's company so

03:35:30:08
to speak, all your armament is closed up ready to shoot at any time. The rest of your ship is prepared for that sort of eventuality in that things are stowed in proper, where you want them stowed. Stored so to speak and stowed. Everything is in readiness. The ship is in proper order. You don't have in Repulse 20 hammocks lying in the middle of a mess deck. They're

03:36:00:05
all stowed away you know locked down, lashed down. The various preparations are all your damage control gear is in order but that is so when you go to sea in a conflict situation in defence watches you are ready to press the action hooter, buzzer, close up to action stations and get to work. So we would have been ready to open fire at anybody short of the

03:36:30:06
Bismarck so to speak not just waiting for the Bismarck. She happened to be the target at that time but you're ready so your ship, a navy ship when it goes to sea even on exercises even today I'm sure if they go to a watch system and defence in what we call a third degree of readiness, I'm not sure what they call it now, third degree of, a first degree of readiness is everybody is at action stations and you're ready to bring your total weapon

03:37:00:10
system against whatever you have to do. Second degree of readiness is that people remain at their action stations but they are relaxed. They stand down. They can sit. Somebody can go outside and have a smoke if they are still smoking. Third degree of readiness you stand down that big team and you take a third of that big team, about a third and you close it up and they work one watch in three. Four on and eight off. But at any time

03:37:30:07
during that you've only got to press the action alarm and you get the whole team back and you're ready again. But the build up in the case of the Bismarck came because we were anticipating the event occurring roughly in the morning of the 25th May. You know when we sailed from the Clyde on I think it was the night of the 23rd we steamed at high speed during the

03:38:00:08
24th, we woke up, it must have been the morning of the 26th I've got the dates somewhere, anyway it doesn't matter, day two day three we woke up to night one and night two and then we woke up to the fact that the Hood had been sunk. We then went on for another day and it was that night, the second night or the third night that we were supposed to meet the Bismarck. So you had this build up in approaching the enemy target. So

03:38:30:08
that's different to suddenly coming upon something in the ocean, some other enemy ship at short notice and closing up to actions stations and opening fire. So hence the build up in that case was not so much the build up and preparing the ship it was building up the anticipation of everybody in the ship and at last because as I mentioned she had been built in 1916, she had missed Jutland, the Battle of Jutland in World War I and there had

03:39:00:12
been nothing to fire the guns in anger at until World War II and up until that time in May '41 she had not had that opportunity. So there was a great sense of anticipation, at last we can have a crack. So that's when, why it all suddenly from that high peak of anticipation suddenly everything went down. There was nothing to do. We go to Newfoundland for fuel.

Guy Griffiths
1146
04

04:00:22:06

Q: Okay Guy let's move on now with the Repulse, can you just tell me about the journey across the Indian Ocean?

A: Repulse, after we had escorted the first convoy we called into Durban and then continued with the convoy up the east coast of Africa and it of course went on to provide support to the Middle East and North African forces and we then operated for a while, probably a couple of months I think, out of Mombasa and between Mombasa and Durban. We went out to the

04:01:00:09
Seychelles Islands at one stage doing a sweep out there and doing convoy work up and down the coast and just general patrols in that area. Then when the decision was taken that Repulse and Prince of Wales would deploy to Singapore we were I think at Colombo or we had been sent to Colombo and then later of course Prince of Wales came via Cape Town

04:01:30:09
and we joined up off Ceylon as it was in those days and we both headed towards Singapore and Admiral Phillips had flown ahead because he was the boss and taking over the local job of C in C of the whole area and both ships arrived in Singapore. I forget the date, I think about the 2nd December and Prince of Wales went alongside at the naval base which

04:02:00:03
was on the north east side of Singapore Island on Johor Strait and we were anchored out in the stream in the Strait. I suppose it was interesting, we felt a bit put down by the presence of the flagship and the brand new battleship and so on and we still had to anchor out which meant we had to

04:02:30:10
run boats between ship and shore to take liberty men and so on. So anyway Singapore has been described now, recent writings of being in a sort of holiday mood, a festive mood rather than an area which was anticipating war at an early stage you know in the not too distant future. Anyway we arrived there and strangely enough in those days being a fairly

04:03:00:02
penniless midshipman I didn't go ashore. I didn't get into Singapore on that first visit. I didn't have any money. I think I had spent it somewhere in Colombo or wherever and I was doing duties for other midshipmen, some of them Royal Navy midshipmen who you know wanted to go ashore and felt that way and I thought well there'll be another opportunity I'll take

04:03:30:10
it next time. That was a wish at the time I think. Then a couple of days later Repulse was detached to go to Darwin with an idea to act using the two ships as a deterrent to the Japanese force coming anywhere near Malaya. We would go down to Darwin and sort of boost the morale of the people in northern Australia but of course at that time, I think it was 7

04:04:00:09
December or 6 December, notice of the movement of Japanese convoys, etc., had come through from the South China Sea area and Repulse was recalled. We went back to Singapore and we were in harbour on the 8th, 7th, 7th December, both ships were in the harbour and then on the morning

04:04:30:09
of 8th December at about 4 o'clock was the Japanese first bombing raid over Singapore City and the island and we were out in the stream and we were using our high angle guns so was Prince of Wales to fire targets which were flying over our area. They didn't actually bomb the naval base at the time but they bombed Singapore city because it was lit up like a Christmas tree and no difficulty in sort of putting a few bombs down on

04:05:00:09
Singapore. And then sort of later in the afternoon the Admiral's having meetings which I don't think we knew about at my level on the ship but anyway towards the end of the day at about 5 o'clock both ships sailed and went down Johor Strait and I think really the last photograph of the ship Repulse and Prince of Wales taken from our side was both ships just

04:05:30:12
heading down the strait before that final sortie. So we went out on the evening of the 8th and then we went east from Singapore around the Anambas Islands and then heading north to intercept the Japanese landing which of course had taken place at midnight on the 8th our time and the admiral had hoped to disturb the convoy, destroy it and whatever. And

04:06:00:10
one of the things, a major problem in this whole operation was the fact that the ships did not have any air cover either from shore or from aircraft carriers. Now the aircraft carrier Indomitable was supposed to be with us. She had been on flying exercises and training in the West Indies but had managed to nudge a reef I think somewhere off Bermuda or Jamaica or

04:06:30:12
somewhere and when we were in Singapore needing her services she was in Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia in the United States being repaired. So we didn't have an aircraft carrier with us and the situation ashore was pretty tense with the Japanese having air superiority over Malaya and having landed in Kota Baharu at midnight then the following day they were

04:07:00:10
destroying airfields and aircraft you know RAF [Royal Air Force] and so on. And so when we finally, I mean I don't think we knew it once again at my level, midshipman level, the admiral was informed when we passed Changi that the aircraft would not be available to cover him. And so we went out without air cover either sea air or shore based air. So on the 9th when we were

04:07:30:09
heading north to intercept this Japanese landing the weather was very cloudy, squally, rain, in fact ideal for creating the element of surprise, developing surprise so that we would appear out of the clouds at some time and be there without them being able to find us. So we went on throughout the day and in actual fact we didn't realise it at the time but a Japanese

04:08:00:08
submarine on patrol reported us about I think about 1 o'clock or something like that in the day and reported to Japanese headquarters and they fortunately, once again I'm combining a little bit of recent knowledge with past events.

Q: Before we should get into the actual action maybe we should go back and just pick up some details of the other, what you've said so far.

04:08:30:11
You moved into tropical conditions from having been out in the Atlantic -

A: Well coming south from the Clyde of course when you get to Gibraltar, Gibraltar is about the same latitude as Sydney. You automatically you're coming into the temperate zone and you change into tropical rig then and

04:09:00:10
then because it was, when did we get out there November-ish, we would have been probably in Cape Town and Durban we might have been in winter uniform again but it wasn't cold because we were roughly on our same latitude as here and it wasn't until we got up to Mombasa and up in the Madagascar and beyond north of the Seychelles and so on, Colombo and Singapore that we would have been in tropical rig in tropical

04:09:30:08
conditions and serving there for a while. On the way south from the Clyde we would have called, we called in at, in fact we called in at Freetown in Sierra Leone, not a very attractive place. Well it wasn't then. We also called in the island of St Helena I think right in the middle of the south Atlantic. I can remember walking ashore and just stretching the legs going up the road somewhere and having a look at this rocky outcrop in the south

04:10:00:09
Atlantic, St Helena. And anyway then we came on and we went out and we were in Singapore, in tropical environment, heat and humidity.

Q: And you would have crossed the Equator.

A: Well we crossed the Equator on the way south. Yes we had a crossing the line ceremony.

Q: What was that?

A: Well it was interesting because on our way to England in the Karamea we

04:10:30:09
crossed the equator on the way across so we were rated as you know we had made it but we had a huge crossing the line ceremony and in fact I have a copy of that printed ceremony, photocopied because subsequently after sinking and so on one of our chaps went back to Durban and the

04:11:00:08
ceremony was printed in Durban and he went to the printer and said can I have a copy, have you still got a copy of that and the printer had. So he took it and years later in England this chap he said would you like a photocopy of this. I said I certainly would and so I still have a photocopy of that crossing the line ceremony. It had photographs in it and which of course the five Australian midshipmen are part of the bears in the ceremony. They are the people who dunk them in the pool.

Q: Tell us what happens exactly.

A: What in a crossing the line ceremony? Well it's fairly involved. There's a great announcement that King Neptune is about to board and cross examine the captain as to his purpose, would you like me to look at a bit, anyway you have all this gang of people, the barber who shaves people with a large spoon and somebody paints dreadful stuff on the face. And

04:12:00:12
then the penalty or judgement is read and the person sitting on the little box is then tilted backwards into a pool of water and dunked by bears and so on which partially washes the gunk off the face and partially doesn't. And I don't know most of the ship's company went through this on the way through and it really is a fun event. It really is quite a fun event.

04:12:30:04
Everybody takes part right from the executive officer who was a Commander Dendy right down to the ordinary seamen and so on. It was good. A great event.

Q: Actually just while we're sort of that kind of topic, what other sort of recreational events took place on the ship? Like what sort of things could you do for recreation?

A: Well I have a photograph of a portable canvass swimming pool which was erected down aft and some of us are in the pool. That was available when

04:13:00:12
the weather was hot. I can't remember whether we played deck hockey or not. I think we might have. But there was exercise, gym exercise type thing on the upper deck at certain times for various parts of the ship's company but generally speaking there was not much that can take place, not as much as does now because there was no gym equipment that you

04:13:30:09
have on the ships now. Some ships have got a little a gym compartment where the fellows have got the machines and they can go in and do their weights and so on. In those days, no. So physical fitness was, looking back hindsight I would say it was not as high as it perhaps should have been.

Q: Presumably as part of training to keep you as a fit and fighting sort of force did you have to do some sort of drills and exercise in that way?

A: What do you mean, from the personal fitness point of view?

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Q: As training yes.

A: Yes there was. We had physical training instructors on board and they would take you for physical training and that would be allocated as part of your training program. But there was no sort of voluntary area of gym equipment and so on such as you have in a fitness centre these days.

Q: Did they get you to sort of do press-ups on the deck and things like that?