- Author
- Zammitt, Alan
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- HMAS Sydney III
- Publication
- June 1981 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Whilst in Liverpool the ship received a draft of RN sailors including radar rates to operate the new radar sets.
Victor was delayed from returning from Liverpool to Australia during one very bad air raid, and ended up in an air raid shelter. A chap started a conversation with him about Sydney, as the man had visited the city between the wars. Later a policeman told Victor that the man he had been talking to was one of Liverpool’s worst pickpockets, and if it were not for the air raid, he would have arrested the man, as there was a warrant out for him.
On arriving at the dockyard an armed sentry challenged him, but Victor didn’t know the password for the night, but answered the challenge with: ‘Don’t shoot, I am Jesus, the canteen manager.’
In January 1941 Australia left England with a convoy and arrived at Durban in February 1941.
During that month Australia searched for the pocket battleship Scheer, which ship had entered the Indian Ocean. After more convoy work Australia arrived back in Sydney in March 1941.
During the remainder of 1941, until the entry of Japan into the war, Australia was mainly employed on convoy work between Aden and Durban and provided escort for Queen Elizabeth, the largest liner in the world, as well as Queen Mary, Mauretania and many other famous ships.
The battleship Ramillies escorted convoys with Australia during the early part of the war, and created great interest when she visited Sydney in 1940.
Another battleship, HMS Warspite, spent a week in Sydney in February 1942, on her way from America to join the Eastern Fleet, and she too created great interest.
While in the Indian Ocean near the Equator, the canteen staff were flat out serving goffers. Ice cream was also being turned out, but took quite some time to set because of the heat. One day the Chaplain came into the canteen and asked for a dish of ice cream. Vie told him that the ice cream was too soft but would be ready in about half an hour. The Chaplain lifted the lid to see for himself, and somehow Victor’s pipe fell into the churning mass, ruining the ice cream with pipe ash and tobacco.
Victor used all the swear words he could muster in front of about a dozen sailors waiting to be served.
The Chaplain asked Victor to bite a piece of soap, the punishment the Chaplain had for sailors who swore. Victor refused, so the Chaplain reported Victor to the captain. Goffers are cold soda water with flavouring, and are the same as a glass of lemonade or orange, depending on the flavouring used, and sold for three pence.
Without flavouring they were two pence. With ice cream they were called ‘Spiders’. Besides being a cool drink, they were a very popular and good remedy for hangovers. Many a young officer who ended up an admiral came to the canteen and asked for a goffer after a wild night.
To make goffers the canteen had to have a large supply of CO2 gas, and one time during the war Australia sailed without the ship’s supply of CO2 cylinders, which were very essential as the ship’s refrigeration plant was a CO2 plant, and this plant also supplied magazine cooling for the cordite magazines.
Vie Zammit came to the rescue, and lent his spare cylinders, and thus saved the ship the need to return to port to stock up.
From the heat of the Indian Ocean, Australia did a patrol to the cold south iceberg region of the Kerguelen Islands on a secret mining operation.
Australia was in East London when the news came that Sydney had been lost with her entire complement.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour found Australia on her way home. She left Fremantle on the evening of 17th December 1941 and reached Sydney on the 21st of December, a trip of less than four days, and a record for the ship.
On 24th December 1941 Australia once again after ten years as a private ship, became flagship.
Captain H.B. Farncomb, RAN, became the commanding officer.
After convoy work in December 1941 and January 1942 the Squadron left Sydney, Perth being ordered to proceed south to Melbourne on 1st February 1942. This was the last time that Australia and Perth operated together, as Perth was lost in the Battle of Sunda Strait some twenty-eight days later. Only one third of Perth’s ship’s company survived the war, 438 were either killed in action or died as prisoners of war.