The Men of Perth

 Cruiser: The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth and Her Crew, by Mike Carlton; William Heinemann, 2010, 706 pages, $55.

Cruiser by Mike Carlton was launched on Wednesday August 28 on board HMAS Sydney at Garden Island Dockyard. It is an heroic work of over 700 pages and tracks the two and a half years service of HMAS Perth and all who sailed in her from July 1939 until her sinking in the Sunda Strait on March 1. 1942. With Perth as its centre it is also an extremely well written account, both militarily and politically, of the significant events of the war.

Over many years of meticulous research, Mike Carlton has recorded many contrasting details from ships’ company diaries and interviews. These give a compelling insight into life aboard ship, particularly in the Mediterranean and in the harrowing years of Japanese cruelty to prisoners of war.

The story begins with the 500 crew for Perth leaving Sydney on March 13, 1939, in the Blue Funnel ship Autolycus bound for Portsmouth, England, to commission the ship. Perth was previously known as HMS Amphion. Perth left Portsmouth on July 26 for New York.

Service in the Caribbean followed under Royal Navy command and then on September 3 war was declared against Germany. Under the command of Captain H.B. Farncomb, the first of her three captains, Perth spent her time blockading German merchant ships in harbour and acting as convoy escort. Captain Farncomb was later promoted to Rear Admiral.

On arrival in Sydney on March 31, 1940, to a tumultuous welcome, Farncomb was relieved by Captain Sir Philip Bowyer-Smyth. The ship was constantly at sea towards the end of 1940, with convoys of troops to escort and dealing with reports of German raiders operating against Allied shipping.

The account of Perth’s service in the Mediterranean is dramatic: the incessant air raids, the Battle of Matapan, the evacuation of troops from Greece and Crete, and difficult times at Malta and Tobruk.

The last captain, who assumed command on October 24, 1941, was Captain H.M.L. Waller. Known as “Hec”, he had already achieved legendary status as commander of the Australian destroyer group the “Scrap Iron Flotilla” in the Mediterranean. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, in introducing the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, to Waller, said, “and now you are going to meet one of the greatest captains who ever sailed the seas”. Praise indeed from one who was widely regarded as the best fighting admiral in the Second World War.

There are those who believe that after the Battle of Sunda Strait, Waller should have been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, particularly after the captain of USS Houston, Captain Albert Rooks, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the same action.

The account of the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea and the final and fatal action of Perth and Houston in the Sunda Strait against overwhelming odds is splendidly told. It was March 1, 1942, and of Perth’s crew of 681 only 328 survived long enough to be picked up by the Japanese and of these only 218 lived to be repatriated to Australia in 1945.

The final chapters record the fight for the survival of the Perth prisoners of war. They faced death by starvation, illness, beating and beheading, many of them while working on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. These chapters bring back the savagery of seventy years ago and the courage and spirit of those gallant men.

The end of the war with Japan and the homecoming and joyous reunions are covered well.

Mike Carlton is an accomplished naval historian with a great gift for descriptive writing. A compelling read.

Vice Admiral David Leach AC, CBE, LVO, RAN (rtd), a former Chief of Navy Staff, is one
of only two surviving commanding officers of HMAS Hobart and Perth.