Captain Joseph Burnett RAN

Author

Burnett, Cdr. P.R. RAN (Ret.)

Subjects

Biographies and personal histories

Tags

Naval Auxiliary Patrol, Waller RAN, Kormoran

RAN Ships

HMAS Adelaide I, HMAS Canberra I, HMAS Australia I, HMAS Sydney II

Publication

December 1973 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

So much for my own opinions. Vice- Admiral Sir John Collins has written to me:

‘Joe Burnett was one of our finest officers. An outstanding sport with a good brain – an unusual combination. With these qualifications and, as you so well know, a happy and cheerful disposition it is not surprising that he was one of the most popular of our year.‘

I am tempted also to quote once more from Admiral Colvin, who gained so much knowledge of senior RAN officers during his time with the RAN as First Naval Member. He wrote in The Times of Captains Waller, Getting and Burnett:

‘No finer sailors ever trod deck. To one who has known them and worked with them there was something out of the ordinary about these sailors of the RAN. Coming from the Australian Naval College they worked and trained for years on their own and with the Royal Navy, but they were never mere copyists. They assimilated the knowledge and traditions of the older Service, but blended with it something peculiar to themselves; and the result was unmistakable and unmistakably good.⁹‘

My brother and I are proud to have been the first sons of a graduate of the RANC to enter it as cadets and embark upon a career in the RAN, and so to some extent help preserve the traditions that my father and his contemporaries developed. It is fitting that his memory should be perpetuated at the RANC by the Burnett Memorial Prize for rugby, the sport at which he most excelled, donated by his family in 1943. I leave the last words of this tribute to my mother, who knew him better than anyone else. In a letter to me giving details for this article she ends by saying ‘He was a truly good man.‘

Footnotes:
¹ For an interesting account of the selection of the first entry, see F.B. Eldridge, History of the Royal Australian Naval College, Melbourne, 1949, Chap.2
² The Times, London, 19/12/41
³ For a detailed description of this conference see G. Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy 1939-42, Canberra 1957, pp 267-9
⁴ Ibid, p269
⁵ Ibid, pp416-7
⁶ This account of the ship’s movements is taken from Vice-Admiral Sir John Collins, KBE, CB, ‘HMAS Sydney’, Naval Historical Society of Australia, Sydney, 1971 pp41-49
⁷ Gill, op.cit.,pp450-9
⁸ The Times, London, 19/12/41
⁹ Eldridge, op. cit., p238