Signals, issue 111

SIGNALS quarterly NUMBER 111 JUNE • JULY • AUGUST 2015

TRADITIONAL NAVIGATION Wayfaring skills revived

‘A DESPERATE BUSINESS’ A sailor’s Gallipoli diary

POLAR EXPLORATION AND SCIENCE From Shackleton to sea cucumbers

ANMM.GOV.AU $9.95

ANMM.GOV.AU

Contents

Cover: Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a in 2013 off the eastern shores of O’ahu, Hawaii, while the crew was training for their worldwide voyage (see page 35).

Built 40 years ago to revive the traditional navigation methods know as wayfaring, the canoe visited the museum in May. Photograph by Kaipo Ki‘aha, © ‘Oiwi TV. Courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

3 BEARINGS

From the director 5 SPECTACLE AND TRAGEDY A sailor’s view of the Gallipoli landings 11 SEARCHING FOR SEA CUCUMBERS Scientific research in the Weddell Sea 18 ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’ An Antarctic expeditioner writes home on the eve of a perilous journey 26 A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL A first-hand account from an Antarctic rescue mission 31 STILL LIFE Jane Ussher’s intimate photographs inside the Antarctic huts of Scott and Shackleton 35 SAILING BY THE STARS A unique Hawaiian initiative revives traditional navigation techniques 38 UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET Tracing the fates of Australia’s early torpedo boats 46 RIGGED AND READY Endeavour gets a repair after a storm at sea 52 ANMM SPEAKERS Volunteers deliver talks on maritime history to clubs and societies 54 MESSAGE TO MEMBERS AND MEMBERS WINTER EVENTS Your calendar of activities, tours, lectures and excursions afloat 61 WINTER EXHIBITIONS The latest exhibitions in our galleries this season 66 MARITIME HERITAGE AROUND AUSTRALIA Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory 74 OUT OF PORT

Museum staff travel to regional New South Wales and the Northern Territory 82 AUSTRALIAN REGISTER OF HISTORIC VESSELS The stories behind heritage craft, including two WWI lifeboats 87 TALES FROM THE WELCOME WALL An Estonian family flees postwar turmoil in Europe 92 READINGS Maps: Their untold stories; First Fleet Surgeon 98 CURRENTS A Norwegian royal visit; special guests at Shackleton exhibition; mystery vessel identified 99 FOUNDATION NEWS A generous bequest endows the museum with a rare WWI medal 101 TRANSMISSIONS Museums and galleries share their treasures through Google Cultural Institute

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Bearings FROM THE DIRECTOR

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I AM PASSIONATE about museums as we are first and foremost places of learning, but we need to acknowledge that the world in which learning takes place is constantly changing.

We are seeing a number of trends affecting the nature of learning right now and it is vital that museums not only reflect these, but also support research to understand how best to create meaningful learning experiences. Some of these trends are highlighted in the recently published Horizons Report by New Media Consortium, which examines technologies that will affect museum education. I have covered one of these trends, computer gaming, in a previous column, but others are rapidly emerging.

First, the growth of cross-institution collaboration means that we all need to work much more closely together, sharing resources, ideas and even staff. The idea that any one place or institution has all the expertise, experience and technology to both conceptualise and develop learning experiences is simply not viable. To address this the Australian National Maritime Museum is already working with education colleagues from institutions such as Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, and several universities including Griffith and the University of New South Wales.

01 A teacher guide with a primary-school class

aboard the HMB Endeavour replica. With the CSIRO, the museum is currently developing ‘virtual’ Endeavour voyages for students who are not able to visit the museum.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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We are also working very closely with the CSIRO (Australia’s premier scientific and industry research organisation) under a National Broadband Network development grant.

CSIRO is developing a 3D camera system for our replica of Captain Cook’s HMB Endeavour. This new camera will allow us to conduct virtual tours on board the ship in real time.

Then, using an interactive platform called IntoScience, a group sitting in a classroom anywhere in the world will be able to virtually visit HMB Endeavour and have a guided lesson by one of the museum’s teacher guides without ever leaving their classroom. This type of ‘virtual’ visit critically allows the museum to reach out to teachers and students, particularly in regional and remote Australia, many of whom may never have a chance to step aboard our replica.

A second trend of which the museum is increasingly aware involves the many companies stepping in to ‘educate’, an example being our recent partnership with Google’s Cultural Institute. This online platform, which includes the Google Art Project, allows visitors to search and virtually explore highresolution images of artworks and artefacts from around the globe. So far, 673 museums have joined, contributing digital collections and online exhibitions. The ANMM selected 236 items from our collection for the March launch, and has created four new online exhibits for Google’s Cultural Network.

On a smaller scale, the museum has recently trialled an engagement with Apple’s education platform iTunesU. A year 9 education course created to accompany the War at Sea exhibition was repurposed and made available to audiences of Apple’s iTunes store. This course, as well as the work we are now doing with our partners Google, CSIRO and Mystic Seaport, not only helps raise the museum’s profile, but also critically allows students and teachers to use our ‘virtual’ collection and fleet to create compelling learning experiences beyond the museum’s walls.

Kevin Sumption

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Spectacle and tragedy THE GALLIPOLI DIARY OF 2ND ENGINEER GEORGE ARMSTRONG

One hundred years after the Anzac landings at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, the museum has acquired a rare diary written on board a transport ship lying off Anzac Cove. Curator of the museum’s exhibition War at Sea – The Navy in WWI, Dr Stephen Gapps, outlines the diary and its significance.

01 01 George Armstrong titled this sketch of the

landings at Anzac Cove ‘Landing Kata Tepe “Anzac” 25-4-15’. ‘Kata Tepe’ is Gaba Tepe – the headland where the Anzac landings took place. Armstrong notes various prominent locations of the Gallipoli Campaign, including Lone Pine and Suvla Bay, suggesting the sketch was compiled or annotated some time after 25 April. ANMM Collection Gift from David Matheson

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GEORGE ARMSTRONG travelled to Gallipoli as 2nd Engineer aboard A45, the only Australian transport vessel in the Allied fleet during the campaign. After conveying troops and horses from Australia to Egypt, A45 was tasked with transporting the 26th Indian Mountain Battery of artillery in the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Described by a fellow sailor as a ‘burly Tynesider’, Armstrong was born in Scotland in 1882 and began his maritime career as 5th engineer on the cargo vessel Clan MacPherson in 1903.

By 1906 he had advanced to 3rd Engineer, working on several of the well-known Glasgow-based Clan Line vessels, including Clan Graham, Clan Cameron, Clan Chattan and Clan McKinnon.

By 1914 Armstrong had met Alice Sarah Poole of Waverley, Sydney, and moved to Australia. With the outbreak of World War I, a position on one of the troop transport ships came up, and he was accepted as 2nd Engineer by A45’s captain, Ronald Arthur Thomas Wilson – known to his crew as ‘Rat’ Wilson due to his initials.

A45 was an ex-German ship, the Hessen, one of 25 German ships that were captured or impounded in Australia at the start of the war. In fact, it was the last of the German ships to join the Australian merchant navy. The North German Lloyd steamer entered Port Phillip Heads on its way to Melbourne on 3 September 1914 – nearly a month after war had broken out. Its master, Captain Reiners, had no idea there was any sign of trouble when the ship left Antwerp on 19 July, and was apparently ‘astounded’ when he arrived in Melbourne to find that Germany was at war.

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Armstrong described the first day of the Gallipoli landings as ‘a grand day’ and ‘a marvellous sight’

The ‘fine vessel of 5108 tons register’ was then scheduled to transport the 2nd Reinforcements of the Field Artillery, and according to the 4th Officer on A45, A Ward Guthrie, ‘arrangements were [made] for the accommodation of 410 horses and 150 artillerymen’. A45 left Melbourne on 17 January 1915, trailing the convoy badly – due, according to Guthrie, to either poor Australian coal or sabotage of the engines by its former German crew.

Despite the crew’s best efforts in spraying the horses with water, many died from the extreme temperatures while travelling through the Red Sea. The carcasses were thrown overboard for the sharks.

A45 arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, on 10 March 1915 and the crew learned that they must await the outcome of the planned Allied naval assault of the Dardenelles Strait. It was hoped this would knock Turkey out of the war by bombarding the capital, Constantinople (Istanbul). But on 18 March, in the Battle of the

02 George Armstrong in merchant naval

uniform, c1915. ANMM Collection Gift from David Matheson

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Dardanelles – known as the Battle of Çannakale in Turkey (and still celebrated today as a great Turkish victory against the mighty British and French navies) – the Allied fleet could not force the heavily mined and fortified straits and it suffered heavy losses. It was then decided that the infantry would land on the Gallipoli peninsula.

After visiting the pyramids in Cairo, in early April the crew of A45 were directed to convey the 26th Indian Mountain Battery with its personnel, mules, guns and supplies to an ‘unknown destination’.

‘The only Australian in the armada’ A45 entered Mudros Harbour at the Greek island of Lemnos and joined the massive assemblage of Allied ships at anchor.

According to Guthrie, A45 hoisted an 18-foot (6-metre) blue Australian ensign, but was soon told to haul it down and hoist the red British ensign instead: ‘It was the first time the southern cross had been displayed in these waters, our vessel being the only Australian in the armada.’

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On 24 April, A45 weighed anchor at sunset and proceeded to Kephalo Bay on the north side of Lemnos, where it joined several other ‘darkened down’ vessels. On what was widely recalled by soldiers and sailors as a beautiful and calm night, course was then set for the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Armstrong wrote ominously in his diary: There will be a big loss of valuable lives before they affect a landing as the Turks are very strongly entrenched. It is awful to think of … I don’t think that people realise that this is going to be a desperate business here.

Speculation about the impending attack was rife. Armstrong described how the crew formed an opinion that they had been tasked with running the ship up on the beach and using it for landing. He then promptly went to the ship’s bosun and asked him to make a canvas bag to put his gear in, ‘in case we have to clear out in a hurry’.

Shortly before 6 am, those who were able to sleep on A45 were awoken by the thunder of battleships’ guns as they began their task of supporting the landing. A45 lay at anchor and within range of Turkish guns, ready to disembark its Indian artillery unit.

At 9 am Armstrong looked out across an incredible scene: ‘Shells dropping all round us … Troops landing all the time …

Queer sensation the shells passing overhead knowing one is enough to send us to the bottom.’

03 Alice Sarah Armstrong (nee Poole) just before

World War I. Alice was born in Waverley, Sydney, and met George on one of his regular visits to Australia working as an engineer on various Scottish Clan Line cargo ships.

ANMM Collection Gift from David Matheson

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The queue to get troops ashore grew throughout the morning and A45 had to wait under intermittent Turkish artillery fire.

Finally, at 10 am, lighters came alongside and half the artillery was unloaded. Mules were lifted over the side with ‘belly straps under the squealing and protesting’ animals. Armstrong noted how the mules ‘kick out some’ and he didn’t care to get too close to them. The Indian artillerymen, dressed as though for parade, were put on boats with, according to Guthrie, all their ‘guns, ammunition, accoutrements, camp gear, signalling apparatus, and our fervent good wishes’.

‘I don’t think that people realise that this is going to be a desperate business here’

An ‘absorbing spectacle’ Armstrong watched the first day of the Gallipoli landings in awe. He described it as a ‘grand day’ and ‘a marvellous sight’.

The vision of aeroplanes, observation balloons, battleships, and masses of troopships and landing craft streaming ashore urged him to record the scene in a remarkable sketch.

04 This page from George Armstrong’s diary,

dated 25 April 1915, describes the Gallipoli landings. ANMM Collection Gift from David Matheson

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One can imagine the crew lined up on deck, craning to see what was happening. As he noted on 27 April, ‘we can’t keep away from the ship’s side these days’.

Even when a shell landed close to the vessel, ‘nobody seemed to mind them at all’. Armstrong later found out that these shells were from the German battleship SMS Goeben (which had become the flagship of the Turkish Navy, renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim), ‘fired from the Dardanelles, across the land’.

From the vantage of a transport ship, Armstrong could describe events as they happened: ‘There are 4 battleships and a cruiser tearing along just now. I can see them through my port as I write this.’

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And a few days later: We can make out the soldiers ashore quite plain with glasses.

A lot of the Australian troops were swimming on the beach this afternoon … We could see the Turkish trenches from where we were this morning …

On the night of 25 April, the shelling went on right through the night and by 26 April had ‘scarcely stopped at all’.

But Armstrong’s confidence in the massive barrage soon began to wane: ‘We haven’t had any word of how the troops are getting [on] but we think they must be all right as no more have been landed.’

By the 27th, the heavy guns were still ‘going all day’ and the machine guns had ‘hardly stopped’. At times, Armstrong could see the flashes from Turkish machine guns right along the hilltops. One Allied battleship was anchored about a ship’s length from A45 and ‘firing 12 inch guns all the time’.

Another diarist on board transport A45, engineer Jesse Garton, noted how the shell fire from Queen Elizabeth ‘made the whole ship tremble … like a tree in a gale’.

By 28 April, the spectacle had worn off considerably and Armstrong wrote, ‘It looks as if it was going to be a long job’.

After receiving some wounded members of the ship’s company back from landing troops he wrote, ‘It seems queer to be writing this so close to where the actual fighting is going on’.

Armstrong’s diary records the first accounts of the action, much of which he heard from other soldiers and sailors.

Often this was more wild rumour than truth. On 29 April Armstrong wrote that ‘news came of the [Australian submarine] AE2 getting through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmora’ [sic]. He also heard that it had returned safely – which it hadn’t.

05 Mules being lifted overboard in slings,

probably photographed by Armstrong.

An annotation on the back reads ‘Landing mules and Indian Troops at the Gallipoli Peninsula April 25th 1915’. Image ANMM Collection Gift from David Matheson

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AE2, the only Australian navy unit at Gallipoli at this point, had indeed forced the Dardanelles Strait, but had been scuttled several days later after a fight with the Turkish torpedo boat Sultanhisar. Armstrong did later note that it was ‘funny how these reports get about’.

By 30 April Armstrong began to describe the campaign as ‘pretty severe’, recording casualties of ‘3500 soldiers’.

His excitement at the spectacle of Anzac Cove began to turn into despair. By May 4 he wrote: [Our] 2nd mate and 4th engineer … are pretty sick of it.

They were at one of the landing places and it seems the troops got cut up pretty bad. Some of the boats were filled up with dead bodies …

A45 moved out of artillery range and remained anchored near the battleships at Gallipoli for another three weeks, operating as a water supply and, as Armstrong noted, ‘a hospital ship for mules’. The ship returned to Alexandria on 20 May and then went on to London. It later returned to Australia and then served in the North Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Indian and Pacific oceans during World War I. George Armstrong returned to Australia and married Alice, living in Waverley, Sydney. He went into partnership in an engineering business, Nicol Bros, which was well known on the waterfront at the Sydney suburb of Balmain for many years. George died during World War II, not long after the death of his son Andrew, an engineer in the merchant navy. His ship, SS Ceramic, was torpedoed by a German submarine. It went down with 655 dead and only one survivor, who was picked up by the submarine. George and Alice also had a daughter, Alice Elizabeth, who lived well into her 80s.

Armstrong’s diary is written in wonderfully clear handwriting in ink in a foolscap exercise book with a card cover and bluelined pages. It begins on 2 February 1915 with his ship leaving Melbourne bound for ‘London via Colombo or Egypt’ and ends on 3 July 1915, just before arriving in England.

George Armstrong’s diary is an important addition to the National Maritime Collection, recording an unusual perspective of the Anzac landings. The diary has not previously been published, remaining in the hands of the Armstrong family until recently, when they generously donated it to the museum.

It featured in a display in the museum foyer during the Anzac Day centenary period and will now be transcribed and made available online.

War at Sea – The Navy in WWI is on at the museum until 3 May, and will then travel to various regional and interstate venues: for details, see anmm.gov.au/ waratsea.

This exhibition has been made possible with the assistance of the Returned & Services League Queensland Branch, Triple M, Foxtel, Australian Government, Australia Council for the Arts and 100 Years of Anzac.

The exhibition catalogue to War at Sea: The Navy in WWI is available to purchase at the museum’s Store or online at store.anmm.gov.au Sources and further reading Guthrie, A Ward. ‘The captured German ships in Egypt and the Dardanelles’ [online]. Sabretache, Vol 40, No 4, Dec 1999: 3–15 Availability: search.informit.com.au/ documentSummary;dn=200104859; res=IELAPA ISSN: 0048-8933 [cited 9 Apr 2015].

Jesse Garton diary 5/4/1915–21/5/1915, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK JOD/255 Related WWI articles in previous Signals ‘Saying prayers at the bottom of the sea’, Signals 108 ‘Project Silent Anzac’, Signals 108 ‘An Anzac allegory’, Signals 109 ‘World War I dazzle, art and fashion’, Signals 109

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Searching for sea cucumbers SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE WEDDELL SEA

A chance to join an Antarctic scientific research expedition was a dream come true for biologist Melanie Mackenzie of Museum Victoria. She recounts her experiences from the journey and some of the creatures she encountered.

01 01 Juvenile psolid sea cucumber on sea urchin spine,

Weddell Sea. Image courtesy Camille Moreau

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SHACKLETON, MAWSON, SCOTT and Amundsen – to follow in the footsteps of those brave bearded men of the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration was a dream for me as a university student volunteering my time to count squid-suckers for researchers at Museum Victoria. Working with modern scientists who had themselves travelled south, I listened eagerly as they recounted their tales of collecting animals from the watery depths while surrounded by frozen fields of Antarctic ice.

I was even lucky enough to meet Curator Emeritus Hope Black, a pioneer for Australian women in Antarctica, who travelled to Macquarie Island in 1959 as a member of the first group of four women on an Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition.

These days I am a Collection Manager of Marine Invertebrates at Museum Victoria with a research interest in sea cucumbers (holothuroids), and it was these seemingly innocuous creatures that finally gave me my own long-awaited ticket south.

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Often mistaken for sausage-shaped worms, sea cucumbers are echinoderms, and so are related to sea stars and sea urchins.

They use their tentacles to feed on detritus from the water column or seabed, often breaking up food for other animals to eat, and in turn they become a meal for many creatures, from fish and turtles to humans. Sea cucumbers also have some quite bizarre abilities. Some shoot sticky tubules from their nether regions to poison fish; others have a fantastic variety of reproductive strategies, from self-regeneration to brood protection, and even carrying their young in a pouch on their back.

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But my favourite thing about sea cucumbers is something most people never get to see – the tiny skeletal remnants hidden in their tentacles and body walls. Known as ‘ossicles’, these miniature calcareous artworks, rarely visible to the naked eye, are where the real beauty of sea cucumbers lies. From hooks and wheels to anchors, tables and spired plates, each ossicle assemblage is like a thumbprint, helping me to sort one species from another.

Found throughout the world’s oceans, from rockpools and mangroves to coral reefs and the depths of oceanic trenches, sea cucumbers are widespread and diverse, and as luck would have it for me, Antarctic waters have proven a hotspot for this biodiversity.

In the summer of 2012 my turn had finally come. I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to travel to Antarctica not as a tourist, but as a research scientist on the RRS (Royal Research Ship) James Clark Ross. For two months this beautiful icestrengthened vessel of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) would be my home, my workplace and my protection from

02 Studying sea cucumbers in the Falkland

Islands. All images courtesy Melanie Mackenzie, Museum Victoria, unless otherwise stated 03 Scanning electron microscope image of sea

cucumber ossicles. Image courtesy Didier Van den Spiegel. All rights reserved

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the extraordinarily harsh conditions of the Antarctic. We were headed to the Weddell Sea in Western Antarctica, a place best known for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s attempted crossing turned epic escape mission – the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17. But as I left the Falkland Islands on my own voyage of discovery I had little real understanding of the landscape, animals, harsh conditions and extraordinary beauty I would encounter.

As mariners of every decade can attest, a ship is a world unto itself, with its own people, laws and culture. Improvisation is not just an art form but a necessity, and from the thrashing waves of the Drake Passage to the calm, dry crunch of the ice, you soon learn the tricks of the trade: wedging yourself securely into your bunk, rigging up makeshift humidifiers, finding that ‘personal space’ to escape to, drinking ginger beer to fend off the nausea, living without eggs or fresh vegetables, learning to ‘ground’ yourself with the handrails to avoid static shock, choosing the appropriate number of layers to wear, and even the etiquette of formal dinners and the sometimes rigid segregation of officers and crew. We started out with just over 40 personnel, including our own small biology team of seven, but as the journey went on our personal space would gradually diminish. From the Antarctic continent we would collect more than 20 extra shipmates, most of them weary and well-bearded, having completed their long build of the new Halley station.

Shackleton’s men came to know well the intricacies of their ship and ice-bound environments, and for some it was the routine of daily tasks that kept them from depression and despair when disaster struck. Antarctica was a new scientific frontier, and scientists in both the Weddell and Ross Sea parties knew the huge importance of the specimens and data they would gather. In the Ross Sea, physicist Keith Jack spent hours

04 Protelpidia murrayi ‘sea pig’, Weddell Sea.

Image courtesy Camille Moreau 05 Cladodactyla crocea sea cucumber carrying

juveniles, Falkland Islands. Image: Shallow Marine Survey Group (SMSG)

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grinding down lenses and perfecting his tide gauges, while in the Weddell Sea geologist James Wordie was persistent in his hunt for rock samples, and biologist Robert Clark collected birds and dredged for marine animals, one instance of which was recalled by Shackleton in South: … we heard a great yell from the floe and found Clark dancing about and shouting Scottish war-cries. He had secured his first complete specimen of an Antarctic fish, apparently a new species …

Each trawl, some even reaching depths of 2,000 metres, would bring up a tangle of limbs, eyes and fins

While Clark heartbreakingly had to sacrifice his samples when the Endurance was finally claimed by the ice, his many recorded observations – from whaling in South Georgia to studies of Gentoo penguin stomach contents on Elephant Island – have all added to our knowledge of the Antarctic ecosystem.

As part of a modern marine benthic biology team, my job – like Clark’s – would be to collect, sort, identify, document and preserve the wonderful marine invertebrates from the Antarctic sea floor. Each trawl, some even reaching depths of 2,000 metres, would bring up a tangle of limbs, eyes and fins.

Some animals would prove new to science, and we would handle each sample – a precious glimpse of life under the ice – with respect and care. We collected many weird and wonderful animals from the depths of the Weddell Sea – glass sponges and lace corals, shrimp-like crustaceans, snails and bivalves, octopus and urchins, brittle and feather stars, jelly-fish, sea spiders, and many more.

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06 The catch from a trawl in the Weddell Sea.

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Selected for my skills in collection management and sea cucumber taxonomy, I would take away many different skills from the voyage, beyond an increased knowledge of Antarctic species. While I was busy sorting ‘benthos’ (benthic marine life) and studying sea cucumbers, others were taking diagnostic photographs, collecting rocks from the mantle of the earth, extracting DNA from brittle stars, studying the potential effects of climate change on bivalve respiration, measuring the ocean’s depth, temperature and salinity, and of course swath-mapping unknown regions of the sea floor.

Clad in hard-hats and steel-capped boots, we learned the processes for operating scientific trawls and sleds, tying the perfect knot in a net with frozen fingers, lashing down microscopes and supply boxes, extracting DNA from animals, and most of all maintaining team morale in a freezing, moving workplace.

While we watched in amazement the underwater footage of glass sponges crawling with tiny brittle stars and giant sea spiders, a nearby snort would make us look up to see a minke whale break the surface of the fast-forming sea ice while an emperor penguin stood sentinel nearby. We steamed past towering iceberg plateaus slashed with brilliant blue crevices, watched the belly-scooting antics of Adélie penguins at play, and even chatted with their curious chin-strapped cousins.

We picked up a crew from a new Antarctic station and slipped and slid our way around giant elephant seals as we helped to close down another station for the winter season. The Antarctic continent itself greeted us with crisp air and profound silence.

Our work was the continuation of a long legacy of Antarctic science. We hoped to further our knowledge of the environmental intricacies of the Antarctic landscape, to better understand its many underwater inhabitants and their

07 Retrieving the trawl, Weddell Sea. 08 Biologist James Wordie dredging for

specimens from Endurance in the Weddell Sea, 1915. Photograph Frank Hurley courtesy Scott Polar Research Institute

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patterns of biodiversity and evolution, and ultimately to explore, understand and preserve this unique environment for those to come. Each new specimen from my Weddell adventure will be carefully curated as I add it to the life library of marine collections at Museum Victoria and the British Natural History Museum. Of the 1,000-plus holothuroid samples I collected, some species have proved new to science. While my colleagues and I publish scientific papers based on these animals and data, the specimens themselves are kept as a time capsule for use by both today’s researchers and scientists of the future.

And the journey itself opened another unexpected door for me. A launch delay in Stanley gave me time to volunteer at the Falkland Islands Fisheries Department with members of the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute and the Shallow Marine Surveys Group, and they encouraged me to apply for a Shackleton Scholarship – an award that commemorates the lives of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his son, Lord Edward Shackleton. This enabled me to return to the islands the following year to assist with collection management, sea cucumber identification and even some penguin and plant conservation projects. Most exciting of all, the launch of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s exhibition Shackleton – Escape from Antarctica has given me the chance to meet many amazing people who have ties with Antarctica, including Tim Jarvis am, who re-enacted Shackleton’s journey, and the Hon Alexandra Shackleton, President of the James Caird Society and granddaughter of Sir Ernest.

The Antarctic continent itself greeted us with crisp air and profound silence

09 Leaving the RRS James Clark Ross,

Antarctica. Image courtesy Richard Turner, British Antarctic Survey

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Though my own Antarctic adventure in the relative warmth and comfort of a modern research vessel was a very long way from Shackleton’s epic open-boat mission in the James Caird, a trip to Antarctica is always a lesson in endurance that brings its own feeling of achievement. It leaves you with a sense of belonging to this otherworldly place of blues and whites and a yearning to protect it. And once you get the bug, you know you’ll be back, whatever it takes.

Melanie Mackenzie is a Collection Manager in Marine Invertebrates at Museum Victoria and studies echinoderm taxonomy with Honorary Associate Mark O’Loughlin.

Shackleton – Escape from Antarctica is on at the museum until 22 November.

For more information, see page 49 or anmm.gov.au Further reading A blog from the ship in the WeddellSea: blog.antarctica.ac.uk/ rrsjamesclarkross/2012/02/17/jr-275-diary-log museumvictoria.com.au/about/mv-blog/may-2012/ice-ice-baby Shackleton Scholarship fund: www.shackletonfund.com Australian Antarctic Division website: www.antarctica.gov.au Shallow Marine Surveys Group: smsg-falklands.org A blog about the ‘Aurora Australis’ book in the Shackleton exhibition: museumvictoria. com.au/about/mv-blog/mar-2011/dear-antarctican museumvictoria.com.au/collections-research/sciences/marine-sciences/people/ melanie-mackenzie

10 King Penguin colony, Volunteer Point,

Falkland Islands.

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Elephant seals at the British Antarctic Survey’s Signy Research Station, South Orkney Islands.

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‘Hardships to be endured’ A LAST LETTER FROM ANTARCTICA

In 1915, Australian scientist Keith Jack had been in Antarctica for almost a year as part of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Before embarking on a perilous sledging journey, he wrote a long letter to his mother, extracts from which give a personal and emotive insight into the difficulties and daily routines of life on the ice.

By Senior Curator Daina Fletcher.

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01 Keith Jack, Irvine Gaze and John Cope on their

second sledging trip south, from which they were were forced to turn back after their stove failed.

Photograph Andrew Keith Jack. State Library of Victoria from estate of Andrew Keith Jack

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THE ROSS SEA PARTY’S CHALLENGES in laying food depots for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition form one of the narrative pathways in the museum’s current exhibition Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica.

Scientist and teacher Andrew Keith Jack (known as Keith) volunteered, aged 29, to join Aeneas Mackintosh’s depleted Aurora party, recently arrived from England. He was one of six Australians on that party, which sailed on Aurora from Hobart, Tasmania, on 24 December 1914, and one of the three Australians in a group of ten who became marooned on the continent for two years. The exhibition features Keith Jack’s sledging and personal apparel, his aluminium pemmican mug, hot chocolate jug, scientific equipment and records, dried food and personal items, including the watch given to him by Shackleton as a memento of the expedition. It also includes pocket notebooks in which he wrote each night in pencil to record this most incredible adventure.

His accounts of the trials of the supply party remain unpublished. They were written as a personal account yet also a potential expedition record, in accord with contractual arrangements for expedition crew. This material was given to the State Library of Victoria before Jack’s death in 1966.

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‘I am leaving this note merely in case of anything unforeseen happening’

A new, more personal account also penned by Jack has recently come to light after his granddaughter Anne Lipzker paid a visit to the exhibition. It is a long letter signed off on 30 September 1915. In the Antarctic spring, with the long, cold, dark winter behind him, Jack was in Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s hut at Cape Evans on Ross Island with a group of nine others.

They were about to undertake what he thought could be the most gruelling journey of his life, and possibly the last – pulling supplies across the blizzard-ridden, barren polar ice shelf to the Beardmore Glacier at 83°30'.

The ten men had been in Antarctica for nearly a year.

They had endured one treacherous, frostbitten sledging season, while their base ship Aurora, key crew and supplies were lost to them. The Australian scientist knew what was in store, and that the next sledging trek was a journey from which he might not return.

Jack felt compelled to put his thoughts on paper in a long letter to his mother Elizabeth. This letter, written in the evenings before his departure and tipping over 8,000 words, is his snapshot of the expedition up to that point. What follows is abbreviated text from this letter.

02 Keith Jack in June 1915, after three months

at Hut Point. Photograph Andrew Keith Jack.

State Library of Victoria from estate of Andrew Keith Jack

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

Imp’l Trans-Antarctic Expedition Cape Evans Ross Island Antarctica September 1915 Dearest Mother Only a few more days now and we shall be leaving the shelter of Scott’s hut at Cape Evans and commencing our big sledging journey away to the southward on the vast snowy wastes of the Great Ross Ice Barrier … Our journey will be a long one and one too on which there will be hardships to be endured and possibly some danger, and so I am leaving this note merely in case of anything unforeseen happening though of course I do not anticipate it …

In my dreams I sometimes see you all at home with a good fire going in the old breakfast room and everybody looking so snug and cosy – rather different from the filthy reeking blubber fire that we have here… What wouldn’t I give for just one whiff of the bush with its good old gums and wattles.

Jack the scientist outlines key developments in logical order, describing his wonderment at seeing the ice shelf and the volcanic peaks of Ross Island.

He then relates the first sledging season:

All of us suffered from frostbite … Everything was frozen hard – tent, sleeping bags, boots, mitts, everything with the slightest trace of moisture in it was hard and rigid as a board… All night long the whole body seemed to shiver and lie quiet alternately and you spent a good part of the time hoping it would soon be time for striking trail again … The sleeping bags inside were simply a mass of ice ...

In March the men reached Hut Point, the sledging base hut:

Well here we were, six of us cooped up in a dark and oily wooden hut that was anything but weatherproof, with no light but that derived from matted seal fat and fires of the same material. With the aid of the tent we were able to screen off a corner of the hut and keep it slightly warmer than the rest of the hut – at least the force of the wind during a blizzard was broken.

There was just room for three of us to lie in our sleeping bags and the remaining three to sit crouched over the reeking blubber stove which had the almost chronic habit of belching forth what I’m sure were the sootiest and filthiest fumes on earth …

[On provisions] The ship had left at the hut about three months

provisions for 3 men and also a few candles and some old stores that Scott had left here … we always went seal hunting – altogether a most unpleasant but at the same time most necessary job …

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

03

We contented ourselves with two meals per 24 hours (can’t say ‘day’ for it was the long night of the winter for a great part of the time) and spent the remainder of the time either in the sleeping bags, huddled over the fire (such as it was) or out sealing. It was easily the most unpleasant three months I have experienced …

[On water] Every drop of water had to be obtained by melting down snow or ice and it was impossible to keep it liquid for any length of time …. A bath of any kind was out of the question and it was over five months from the time I had one on the ship till I got the next at [Cape] Evans.

[On the winter] What intensified the unpleasantness was the

perpetual darkness. We saw the sun for the last time about April 23rd and the ‘days’ gradually became darker and darker till there was darkness entirely day and night with only the faintest tinge of red to the north at midday. Towards the end of August the sun reappears above the horizon at midday and the days begin to lengthen once more. I verily believe that at the end of our sojourn at Hut Pt., I could almost see in the dark.

Well Mother, it was the first week in June before the ice seemed safe enough to venture on the long cold journey across the frozen sea to [Cape] Evans …. where we found Gaze, Smith, Richards and Stevens. You can imagine the joy with which we greeted each other after so many months absence and each party without any news of the other for so long.

03 Rescued Ross Sea Party members Irvine

Gaze, Keith Jack, Ernest Joyce and Richard Richards all cleaned up on the voyage home in January 1917 with three of the surviving dogs.

Photograph Frederick Middleton. State Library of Victoria from estate of Andrew Keith Jack and courtesy Middleton family

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

04

At Cape Evans they learnt of the disappearance of Aurora a month earlier after it was torn from its moorings in a blizzard and drifted off. Jack muses about its fate, which he felt was inextricably linked to theirs:

I did not sleep too well and found it difficult to keep my thoughts from the ship and wondering what had happened to her…

I came to the conclusion that there could be little chance of her escaping without being crushed.

Now, three months later I see no reason to change my opinion, though I still believe that there is a chance she may have survived and if so may still be frozen in unable to move till the ice breaks up sufficiently.

In any case we shall have to carry out the big sledging programme as best we can with the 10 of us left on Ross Island.

I might say that very little stores had been put ashore from the ship though there is a fair amount of flour etc. here left behind

by Capt Scott …

Well Mother … There is so much more that I should like to have written of but time is now getting short and everyone is busy preparing for our departure the day after tomorrow.

There are however one or two things I must tell you of – [Sledging] turn out at 6am, breakfast over by about 7.30 and

everything packed and underway by 8am – march till midday and halt one hour for lunch consisting of a cup of cocoa and two biscuits, move off again till 6pm, and then camp for the night turning in after a mug of pemmican – a kind of soup containing 60% fat – a mug of tea or cocoa and 3 biscuits … sledging journeys are made only in summer and the only protection is the tent into which three men and their sleeping bags just about fit.

04 Some of Keith Jack’s scientific equipment and

notes in the museum’s exhibition Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

For heating the food a small primus lamp is taken and a Nansen cooker and with this a gallon of kerosene must last 3 men ten days. Of course all the water required must be obtained by melting down ice or snow.

[Blizzards] At times it’s impossible to keep one’s feet and as one

attempts to walk … Imagine for a moment one of our fastest express trains thundering along at 60 miles an hour, and now imagine yourself standing on the roof of the train with the engine belching forth an endless torrent of cinders which envelopes you as it tears along, and you will then have some rough idea of what it is to experience one of these terrible Antarctic blizzards. Whichever way you turn there is the all-enveloping blinding cloud of drift which, finding its way into the eyes, freezes the lids together, as one staggers along …

Jack also describes the penguins – the comical inquisitive Adelies and the stately deliberate Emperors – and the Weddell seals:

05

great unwieldy brutes which after gorging themselves with fish come up through a hole in the ice or through a crack and just lie on the ice and digest their meal ... The flesh is dark – almost black in fact – and at times very powerful in flavour …

Sept 30th – just one line Mother before I close.

We leave here tomorrow and if the ship has the good fortune to be still afloat and reaches Ross Is. this coming summer, we should be home in April next, but if disaster has overtaken her, we cannot possibly get back before March 1917 and then only if relief be sent, and this I expect will be determined by the war though I trust this is long over since, with the British Empire victorious. Surely it could not be otherwise! And if things should so eventuate that I do not get home again you must not worry too much. Shackleton is depending on us absolutely for food and we must not fail. It is our job and we must see it through at all costs.

The group was completely isolated, unaware also that Shackleton’s crossing party was at that time trapped in the Weddell Sea ice while Aurora was intact but trapped off King George Land.

He adds a final word:

We have an early start in the morning so I must at last bid goodbye to yourself first Mother and then the family …

With fondest love to all at home and a very full share for your own dear self from Your loving son Keith 05 A flyer (printed by the Jack family firm)

advertising lectures that Jack gave in aid of the war effort. Lipzker family collection

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

06

Keith Jack’s predictions about their rescue were correct – they were eventually rescued in January 1917 and he spent the waiting months busy with his scientific and meteorological observations, taking temperature, glaciological and tidal readings around the Cape Evans hut. He survived the ordeal, along with six of the marooned party, but three others died – Arnold Spencer-Smith on the sledging journey and Aeneas Mackintosh and Victor Hayward while crossing the ice.

‘Everything was frozen hard – tent, sleeping bags, boots, mitts, everything with the slightest trace of moisture in it’

Keith Jack arrived back in Melbourne on SS Katoomba in March 1917. The Argus reported his return on 6 March, noting: ‘Like most men who have done something he shuns an interview and it is difficult to get him talking. “What have I got to tell you?”

He said. “There is nothing in what we did, compared to what was going on in Europe….”’

Once induced to talk, Jack recounted his time sledging, the loss of the ship and being stranded, the loss of his fellow expeditioners, and the scientific observations he conducted around the huts. He also described being rescued by their very own ship Aurora: ‘The first thing we did when we got there was to get a hot bath and clean clothes, and we wanted both after all the oil and blubber. They had hot baths ready for us and plenty of soap.’

06 Items of Keith Jack’s sledging equipment and

apparel in the exhibition. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ‘HARDSHIPS TO BE ENDURED’

07

Jack volunteered for the war, but was not accepted for the AIF. He was seconded as a chemist to the Government Cordite Factory (later the Explosives Factory), at Maribyrnong in Victoria. He worked there for much of his career, including as a manager during World War II, when he also travelled to London on munitions supply business for Australia.

Jack met Madeleine Rogers the year of his return and they married in the early 1920s. Keith Jack was awarded a Silver Polar Star with two clasps, and a Shackleton medal from the Royal Geographical Society. He delivered lectures about his time in Antarctica to raise money for the Australian Red Cross and other patriotic funds, but his Antarctic life, like those of his contemporaries, was largely overshadowed by the focus on the war effort. The observations recorded by the three scientists on the expedition – Jack, Alexander Stevens and the other Australian physicist, Richard Richards – were deposited in the Scott Polar Research Institute, where they lay unregarded until analysed and published in January 1963 by Fritz Loewe at the Institute of Polar Studies, The Ohio State University.

The museum wishes to thank Anne Lipzker for allowing the use of her transcription of Keith Jack’s letter.

Three of Keith Jack’s maps drawn during his time in Antarctica were reproduced in Signals 110.

Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica is on at the museum until 22 November.

For more information, see page 63 or go to anmm.gov.au

Media partner

Exhibition sponsor

Exhibition partner

07 A sledging camp on the Ross Ice Barrier,

1915. Photograph Andrew Keith Jack.

State Library of Victoria from estate of Andrew Keith Jack

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL

A medical officer’s journal FROM AN ANTARCTIC RESCUE MISSION

Among the artefacts in the museum’s exhibition Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica is a medical kit from the Ross Sea Relief Expedition. A journal written by the expedition’s medical officer Frederick Middleton gives a first-hand account of efforts to retrieve ten men stranded in Antarctica. His grandson James Middleton relates the story.

01

01 Frederick Middleton with one of the surviving

dogs aboard Aurora on the return journey after picking up the survivors of the Ross Sea Party. Photograph Frederick Middleton courtesy David Middleton family

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL

THE ‘FORGOTTEN MEMBERS’ of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (ITAE) of 1914–17 were the Ross Sea party, tasked with laying supplies in terrible conditions for Shackleton’s team, who planned to sledge across Antarctica via the South Pole, aiming to be the first to do so. A shore party of ten men became stranded when their ship, Aurora, broke its moorings in a storm and became trapped in pack ice. Three of the men subsequently died; the other seven began a long and lonely wait in hope of rescue.

With unassuming humour, Middleton gives detailed and unpretentious descriptions of shipboard life and routine

Aurora eventually broke free of the pack ice and sailed to New Zealand, where the ship was refitted to return to Antarctica in search of the stranded men. In late November 1916, 27-year-old Frederick Middleton, a fifth-year medical student at Melbourne University, was appointed medical officer to this Ross Sea Relief Expedition. The decision ‘personally left me speechless’, he noted in his journal. He was given two days to catch the SS Manuka, which was leaving Sydney for Wellington.

From there he was to catch an overnight ship to Lyttelton, then trains to Christchurch and Dunedin. The journey would take seven days. Once in Dunedin he had the chance to assemble his medical kit and supplies.

He was also appointed unofficial photographer for the voyage, despite having no experience or training, and was given a camera and ‘enough camera film to photograph the world’.

The journey from Dunedin to the pack ice took 10 days.

Middleton’s journal was mostly written as an account of his journey for family and friends. He usually wrote in the warmest place on the ship – in the engine room or on deck near the funnel. With unassuming humour, he gives detailed and unpretentious descriptions of shipboard life and routine, such as his reaction when faced with lavish meals after expecting to rough it: ‘Ye Gods, may we always thus rough it.

T’would be a pleasant death to be thus starved…’.

02 Joyce and five of the survivors from the

02

marooned Ross Sea party greet Aurora.

The seventh, Jack, was back at the hut.

Photograph Frederick Middleton courtesy David Middleton family

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL

He expresses delight in the journey but insecurity about his medical knowledge: ‘My heart falls into my boots when I see a seaman slowly coming down the gangway for fear he brings news of some dire accident’.

He studied amputation and haemorrhage, preparing as best he could for the worst medical situations. His first duty was to attend a seaman who had cut his head: Today I had my first serious case ... I was down in the saloon doing nothing in particular as usual and doing it tolerably well, when I heard a call for me and was informed that one of the seamen had cut his head badly. Well my feelings were rather mixed and putting on a cold and as unconcerned face as possible I asked to be led [to] the victim. I found he had suddenly raised his head which was stopped suddenly by a bolt. The head lost. It was a small transverse cut about 2" from forehead and only ½" across. There was plenty of blood and this frightened the bearer of the news – the Chief Officer. However I got some water and fixed him up.

03

The sea was rolling its best and it was surgery under difficulties and asepsis could not be expected to enter into the question ...

I tremble to think of the looks of horror on the faces of the nursing staff etc at the Mater Hospital as they saw me dressing this wound.

The injuries that he was asked to treat were only minor, but many of the men, including Shackleton, complained about sore teeth. Middleton notes, ‘I don’t want to make my debut in dentistry on him. I hope he doesn’t know I’ve not handled a dental instrument’. But the next day, the ‘terribly nervy’ Shackleton indeed became his first dental patient. He records how Shackleton ‘can’t bear to think of pain, let alone bear any’.

He also records Shackleton’s emotional suffering: ‘The reaction of his last journey is beginning to tell, and of course the fate of those people down here is a great weight for him.’

04

On 10 January 1917, 22 days after leaving Dunedin, six survivors of Shackleton’s expedition were spotted several miles away, approaching the ship over the ice. The ship’s captain, John King Davis, told Middleton and Morton Henry Moyes to accompany Shackleton to meet the rescued party. He also arranged that if any of the Ross Sea party members had perished, this would be indicated to those on the ship by a corresponding number lying in the snow.

03 Ernest Joyce, experienced sledger and dog

handler.

04 John Cope, biologist, appointed medical

officer for the Ross Sea Party.

Photographs by Frederick Middleton courtesy Middleton family

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL

As they approached the survivors, Middleton notes: ... one of them came forward to meet us, leaving the team and men waiting. This one was [Ernest] Joyce. Sir E.H.S. recognised him and spoke to him when about 40 yards off. The latter was very glad and surprised to see Sir E.H.S. As the men came up Joyce called for 3 cheers for Sir E.H.S. The next question was how many alive. The answer seven, and then the names of those who had died, Macintosh [sic], Rev. Spencer-Smith, Heywood [sic].

I sighed with relief when the other seven were reported well.

One, [Keith] Jack, had stayed back in the hut, taking some readings and collecting papers. They looked very fit physically, but very unkept and their clothes were about on their last legs – all had been away from civilization for two years – since December 1914.

On hearing that the three were dead three of us lay down on the ice, Shackleton, Moyes and myself, to let Capt. Davis know …

The first I shook hands with after Joyce was one Richards who was at the Ballarat Technical School – School of Mines – and asked me if I was related to Les (my brother). – “Not Middleton of Ballarat!” We talked straightaway about the war. They were surprised to hear it was still on. We then talked on many things, and they plied many questions one on top of the other, and then they had their first smoke of tobacco for two years and after a spell we moved towards the ship.

05

‘They looked very fit physically, but very unkept and their clothes were about on their last legs’

On approaching the ship Middleton took photographs of the survivors.

The survivors were astonished to see Shackleton walking towards them from the sea instead of over land. They would then have realised that their monumental efforts over two seasons to lay depots along the Ross Ice Shelf were in vain, as were the deaths of Mackintosh, Hayward and Spencer-Smith.

Soon after, Shackleton and Joyce sledged to Cape Evans to look for any trace of Mackintosh and Hayward, who had vanished in a blizzard some six months earlier. Meanwhile two of the survivors, Jack and Wild, completed a memorial cross they had made to commemorate the lives of the three men lost.

The ship departed; then, after ice prevented a further search for Mackintosh and Haywood, Captain John King Davis set sail for New Zealand.

Middleton expresses his concern about Shackleton’s fitness: Sir E.H.S. is not at all well and I don’t think he is in too fit a condition. He of course is very much disturbed by the death of his three comrades … It is a severe blow to Sir E.H.S especially after he saved those other 22 men.

05 Andrew Keith Jack, scientist. Photograph by

Frederick Middleton courtesy Middleton family

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > A MEDICAL OFFICER’S JOURNAL

06

Returning to Wellington, Shackleton presented Middleton with the medical kit that was used by the sledging parties when laying depots along the Ross Ice Shelf. It remains intact and is currently on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum on loan from the Middleton family.

06 Items on display in the Shackleton exhibition:

the medical kit and instructions used by the Ross Sea Party and given to Fred Middleton

by Shackleton (left); and Middleton’s own supplies (right). Lent by David Middleton and family. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

Within four months Aurora was lost at sea somewhere between Australia and South America after being refitted to carry coal.

Within four years Shackleton was dead.

‘It will be rather funny to go home and get back to work again particularly after swanking it around here as doctor’, Middleton noted. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world’. On return from the voyage he completed his medical studies at Melbourne University. After internships at the Royal Melbourne and Mater hospitals in Victoria, he was appointed Stewart Lecturer in Anatomy at Melbourne University. Becoming disillusioned with academic life, in 1922 he bought a medical practice in Nhill, Western Victoria, where he worked as a general practitioner for 25 years until his retirement.

As a means of raising money for the war effort, Frederick Middleton would tour towns in Western Victoria with his collection of glass-plate photographs and tell the story of his unexpected voyage to Antarctica. He became lifelong friends with Captain Davis, who was best man at his wedding.

All members of the Ross Sea Relief Expedition were presented with the Bronze Polar Medal. Frederick Middleton died in 1972.

Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica is on at the museum until 22 November.

For more information, see page 63 or anmm.gov.au

Media partner

Exhibition sponsor

Exhibition partner

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > STILL LIFE

Still Life

INSIDE THE ANTARCTIC HUTS OF SCOTT AND SHACKLETON The turn of the 20th century was the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration. The simple wooden huts that served as the bases for these expeditions still stand today, crammed full of objects the men left behind. New Zealand photographer Jane Ussher was given the unique opportunity to photograph the huts in intimate detail. Many of these images now feature in an immersive exhibition at the museum.

01 01 The iconic view of the wardroom table.

Immortalised by Herbert Ponting’s photograph of Scott’s last birthday party. Behind the table are Ponting’s darkroom and the science laboratory. © Jane Ussher

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > STILL LIFE

IN THE SUMMER OF 2007 I attended a speech given by Helen Clark. New Zealand’s then Prime Minister had just returned from Antarctica and she spoke with great passion about the experience of visiting Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans. I’d heard the Prime Minister speak on many occasions but never with this genuine depth of emotion. I was immediately seized with the desire to get down to the ice and photograph the huts.

It’s true that before I set foot in Antarctica my head was full of the usual romantic notions about the so-called ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration, when great explorers set out to reach the South Pole. I hadn’t fully appreciated the horror of their ordeal.

Like many people, I was familiar with the beautiful photographs taken by Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley, which showed in detail not only the Antarctic landscape but also the interiors of the huts that the men used as their base. Seeing the photographs and seeing the huts would be two entirely separate visual sensations.

The huts where the men lived for months on end waiting for the Antarctic summer had remained virtually uninhabited and untouched since the explorers stepped out the door 100 years ago. Photographing them would be a rare and special privilege.

I knew how I wanted to approach the assignment, but I was apprehensive that my technique of using long exposures, multiple frames per image and a lot of macro work might not be achievable. I needn’t have worried. The digital Hasselblad I took with me performed brilliantly.

02 Shackleton’s Hut from the north.

The remnants of the garage for the ArrolJohnston motor car and the stables for the ponies can still be seen, as can the fodder boxes for the ponies. The meteorological screen to the right of the hut stands on a small rise. The chimney and roof covering have been reinstated to their original specifications, as has the right-hand window which has been replaced with the original species of untreated timber. © Jane Ussher

02

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > STILL LIFE

03

Even on an overcast day, Antarctica in midsummer is a bright, shadowless place. The glare off the snow and the vastness of the landscape were the first things that struck me. As my preferred photography conditions are soft low light, I knew that I was going to find this challenging. The huts, by contrast, were dark and oppressive.

04

My imagination was captured by the layers of detail that slowly began to emerge

I remember walking through the door of Scott’s hut for the first time and seeing the space, so familiar from dozens of photographs, with my own eyes. It was eerie, beautiful and moving. I felt desperately sad.

While the building was impressive, my imagination was captured by the layers of detail that slowly began to emerge.

The longer I spent in the hut surrounded by the items these explorers had left behind, the more they became the focus of my photography.

There were the roughly darned socks and the handmade boots stuffed with straw. There were the personal items the men had decided to bring with them to the ice, and left there – combs, cufflinks and dress shoes. I had a lot of time to wonder why these items had been chosen as necessities for the expedition.

I was seduced by the dull, soft colours, some created by weather and age, and some by the seal blubber which had been burnt to heat the huts and cook with. The fat darkened the walls and added to the bleak atmosphere.

These cold, silent huts with their sad stories made the long days behind the camera seem endless. There were many times that I felt close to tears. You only had to step outside the hut to see death in the form of skua and penguin skeletons.

Even in summer there were visual reminders of the harshness of the place.

03 Wooden chair from Scott’s last expedition.

The sacking has been sewn onto the chair by Keith Jack from Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party. © Jane Ussher 04 A small portion of the provisions inside the

building. Part of the stencilling SS Terra Nova Lyttelton can be made out on the right hand box. © Jane Ussher

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > STILL LIFE

05

06

I often felt torn, knowing that there was a responsibility to photograph the huts in an informative, documentary style, but also wanting to take photographs that were personal and reflected my uneasy relationship with these interiors.

Photographing the huts was an intense and extraordinary experience. The knowledge of the tragic outcome of Scott’s expedition, and the extreme levels of bravery and sacrifice they needed to survive, were ever present. In all their gloom, their intimacy, and their stillness, I hope the photographs stand as a record of something special and lasting that took place in the white world of Antarctica.

Jane Ussher wishes to thank the New Zealand Government, Antarctica New Zealand and the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand) for their support of this project.

Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton, based on the book of the same name, is a unique audiovisual work that takes you inside the heroic-era huts.

The exhibition complements the exhibition Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica, currently showing at the museum.

Still Life has been created with the support of Exhibition Partner, the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand). The trust is expert in cold-climate heritage conservation.

It is a not-for-profit organisation responsible for the conservation of five historic sites in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica. To learn more about the trust’s work, go to nzaht. org, visit its Facebook page facebook.com/antarctic.heritage.trust, or see the articles

by Sue Bassett in issues 106–109 of Signals.

Jane Ussher’s book Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton is available for purchase from The Store or online at store.anmm.gov.au

05 Ernest Shackleton’s signature on a packing

slip for the passage of goods in the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s Box No 6. © Jane Ussher 06 Original Edwardian provisions still stand on

the shelves in the small galley. A cracker sits beside a jar of jam. A bottle of Heinz gherkins remains unopened. © Jane Ussher

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SAILING BY THE STARS

Sailing by the stars

INDIGENOUS WISDOM AND GLOBAL CONNECTIONS

For 40 years, a replica Polynesian voyaging canoe called Hōkūle'a has sailed the world’s oceans using only traditional navigation techniques. It recently visited Sydney as part of a four-year circumnavigation that aims to promote conservation and sustainability and to connect cultures.

01 01 The crew for Hōkūle‘a’s worldwide voyage

comprises navigators, students, educators, scientists, medics and cultural leaders.

Photograph by Nā‘ālehu Anthony, © ‘Oiwi TV. Courtesy Polynesian Voyaging Society

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SAILING BY THE STARS

STARS, WAVES, WIND AND BIRDS – these are the tools of wayfaring, the traditional method of navigating long ocean distances without instruments. Polynesian people used wayfaring for centuries to settle the scattered islands of the Pacific Ocean, relying on their knowledge of astronomy, ocean movements, weather patterns and the habits of birds and other marine life to lead them to their destinations.

Wayfaring skills diminished then eventually disappeared once Polynesian cultures came into contact with Europeans.

But 40 years ago, a remarkable movement began to recover and reclaim knowledge that had been locally extinct for 600 years, rekindling pride and interest in Hawaiian culture.

The Polynesian Voyaging Society was founded in 1973 by nautical anthropologist Ben Finney, Hawaiian artist Herb Kawainui Kane, and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes. hey wanted to show that ancient Polynesians could have purposely settled the islands of the Pacific using non-instrument navigation, rather than by passively drifting across the oceans in the hope of finding land.

Since its launch in 1975, Hōkūle‘a has sailed 140,000 nautical miles, and has inspired a renaissance in Pacific Ocean voyaging

And so they built Hoˉkuˉle‘a, a replica of a traditional doublehulled Polynesian voyaging canoe and the first such vessel to be built in centuries. The canoe’s name means ‘Star of Gladness’, and refers to Arcturus, which passes directly overhead at Hawaii’s latitude and so acts as a guiding star for Hawaiian navigators. But the boat was only half of the story; navigating it by traditional methods was another challenge entirely.

02 Hōkūle‘a arrives at the ANMM, May 2015.

01

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SAILING BY THE STARS

The ancient wayfaring skills long lost to the Polynesians had been kept alive by a small group of Micronesian navigators.

One of them, Pius ‘Mau’ Piailug from the Caroline Islands, was the only one willing to share this closely guarded knowledge with the Polynesians, in the hope of saving it from extinction. Under his mentorship, these ancient skills were passed down, sparking a newfound respect and appreciation for Hawaiian culture and language in the state of Hawaii and beyond.

Hoˉkuˉle‘a was launched in March 1975, and relies solely on sail power; it does not carry an engine, even for backup. Hoˉkuˉle‘a has since sailed 140,000 nautical miles (260,000 kilometres), and has inspired a renaissance in Pacific Ocean voyaging.

Across the Pacific Island nations, there are now 25 voyaging canoes, 21 voyaging organisations and 1,000 active voyagers.

Hoˉkuˉle‘a represents Hawaiian culture, heritage and connection to ancestors, and through the vessel and associated educational and cultural programs, the Polynesian Voyaging Society aims to promote sustainability for the planet and its people and to recognise the interconnectedness of all life on Earth.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Hoˉkuˉle‘a is currently undertaking a worldwide voyage, Maˉlama Honua (‘To care for the Earth’), which aims to cover 47,000 nautical miles (87,000 kilometres) over four years, and to visit 85 ports in 26 countries.

For much of the voyage Hoˉkuˉle‘a has been supported by sister ship Hikianalia, which is powered by sails and solar-powered electric motors. Hikianalia carries technology to link with classrooms and individuals around the world via the website hokulea.org. This website enables the two canoes to become ‘floating classrooms’ that demonstrate the potential of projectbased learning on a global scale.

The canoes parted company for Hokulea’s first visit to Australia.

Hoˉkuˉle‘a left the Pacific Ocean for the first time ever when it entered the Tasman Sea on its way from New Zealand to Australia, while Hikianalia accompanied it to New Zealand then made its way to Tahiti before returning home to Hawaii in June. For the Australian leg of the journey Hoˉkuˉle‘a is being supported by Gershon II, a steel motor sailor built in Hawaii.

Hoˉkuˉle‘a’s worldwide voyage also aims to cultivate the next generation of navigators and explorers, so that the skills of wayfaring can flourish once more.

Compiled by Janine Flew from materials provided by the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Hōkūle‘a and Gershon II visited Sydney between 15 and 23 May, where they were visiting vessels at the museum, open to the public and to school groups.

For more information and to follow Hōkūle‘a’s voyage, go to hokulea.org

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

Unearthing a ‘mosquito’ fleet ARCHAEOLOGY AND AUSTRALIA’S EARLY TORPEDO BOATS

A small fleet of nimble little torpedo boats was an integral part of naval defence in colonial Australia, but is now largely forgotten. Curator Dr James Hunter has spent years researching them and tracing their fates.

01 01 Aerial view of Countess of Hopetoun’s

abandonment site, early 1990s.

Photograph courtesy Heritage Victoria

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

02

ON 16 NOVEMBER 1924, an auction on Melbourne’s South Wharf featured the stripped-down steel hull of a steam-powered vessel with incredibly fine lines and a sleek, narrow profile.

Some attending the auction would have quickly surmised that the unusual craft had once fulfilled a military role, while others doubtless recognised the silhouette of HMVS (Her Majesty’s Victorian Ship) Countess of Hopetoun, a British-built torpedo boat that first arrived at Port Phillip Bay in 1892.

Countess of Hopetoun was the last vessel ordered for naval service in Australia while it was still a colonial possession of Great Britain. Although initially part of colonial Victoria’s naval defences, it would later serve both the Commonwealth Naval Forces (CNF) and fledgling Royal Australian Navy (RAN).

In fact, only four years before the auction at South Wharf, Countess of Hopetoun was liveried in an all-white ceremonial paint scheme and engaged to officially greet the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) during his review of Australia’s new naval capabilities.

The historical record does not show whether Countess of Hopetoun was purchased, but there is no doubt about where it ended its days. A few years later, the vessel was captured in a black-and-white photograph, its derelict hull partially submerged in shallow waters off Swan Island in Port Phillip Bay. Countess of Hopetoun’s abandonment signified both the demise of a unique watercraft, and the end of a fascinating and largely overlooked chapter in Australia’s naval history. It was not until the 1980s, when Countess of Hopetoun was relocated and became the focus of archaeological investigation, that more than passing interest in Australia’s early torpedo boat defences was renewed. Other antipodean torpedo vessels of similar vintage have since been studied, and the information their sites possess has significantly expanded our knowledge of Victorian-era torpedo technology and warfare. It has also highlighted the crucial role torpedo boats played in the development of Australia’s colonial, and later national, maritime defences, and revealed the manner in which they were decommissioned and ultimately discarded.

02 Archaeological plan drawing of Countess

of Hopetoun created from multiple visits to the site between 1983 and 1997.

Image James Hunter

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

03

Big threat, small boats Between 1878 and 1890, the colonial governments of Australia purchased eight steel-hulled torpedo vessels, nearly all of which were constructed in Great Britain. Descended from a lineage that originated with spar torpedo boats used by Union and Confederate naval forces during the American Civil War (1861– 65), the colonial Australian craft were relatively small by warship standards, but extremely swift and manoeuvrable. These attributes gave them a decided advantage against much larger adversaries, which (at least initially) did not possess effective defensive weaponry such as machine guns and quick-firing cannon.

The colonial Australian craft were relatively small by warship standards, but extremely swift and manoeuvrable

Naval doctrine of the period dictated that multiple torpedo boats engage a single target, attacking and ultimately overwhelming it. Not surprisingly, several 19th-century torpedo vessels were given names that reflected their size, speed and mode of attack, including Lightning, Midge and Mosquito.

Others, less imaginatively, were given numerical designations reflecting their order of manufacture. Intended primarily as an offensive weapon that could quickly attack and escape, the boats were lightly built, with hulls just ¹/ inch (0.16 centimetres) thick.

16

The spar torpedoes they originally used comprised an explosive canister attached to the end of a bow-mounted pole or ‘spar’.

Taking advantage of their vessel’s considerable speed and manoeuvrability, a torpedo boat crew would closely approach

03 The Victorian torpedo boat HMVS Countess

of Hopetoun prepares to tie up at Flinders Naval Depot (Western Port) during the late 19th century. Photograph courtesy Museum of HMAS Cerberus

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

04

05

their intended victim, submerge the torpedo then commence their attack, with the torpedo boat’s bow perpendicular to the run of the enemy ship. Once the torpedo struck the enemy vessel’s hull, it would detonate, more often than not placing the torpedo boat’s crew literally an arm’s length from their opponent—and the explosion generated by their own weapon.

The spar torpedo’s complete submergence protected the boat and its crew to a certain degree, as did the shape of the canister, which was designed to direct most of the explosive force away from the torpedo boat and into the hull of the enemy vessel. By the late 1880s, spar torpedoes were replaced by motive (self-propelled) variants that could be launched from a nominally safer distance. However, early versions of these weapons were unwieldy, unguided and notoriously unreliable.

Australia’s torpedo boat fleet Torpedo boats were integral to the Australian colonies’ efforts to develop coastal defences for their most important ports.

They were also part of a larger response to regional threats and other defensive concerns – principally, perceived Russian military designs on British possessions in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific islands. Australian fear of Russian seaborne invasion had existed since the Crimean War (1853–56), but increased to near hysteria in the 1870s and 1880s following several unannounced visits by Russian warships to Australian ports. These ‘Russian Scares’ revealed significant shortcomings in Australia’s maritime defences, and were the primary catalysts for colonial acquisition of torpedo boats as a counter to rumoured Russian naval threats.

Australia’s first torpedo boats, Acheron and Avernus, were ordered by the New South Wales colonial government in early 1878 and constructed by the Atlas Engineering Company in Pyrmont, Sydney. The first of their kind to operate in Australian

04 Countess of Hopetoun’s stripped hull

abandoned at Swan Island, c1925.

Photograph courtesy Queenscliffe Historical Museum 05 The torpedo boat Avernus in Port

Jackson during the late 19th century.

Photograph courtesy Ross Gillett

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

06

waters, they were also the only Australian-built examples (although their designer, Norman Selfe, closely adhered to specifications outlined by British torpedo boat manufacturer John I Thornycroft & Co). All subsequent vessels used by Australia’s colonial navies were constructed in Great Britain, either by Thornycroft or its main competitor, Yarrow & Co, Ltd. These included the Victorian ships HMVS Childers, HMVS Lonsdale and HMVS Nepean, HMQS (Her Majesty’s Queensland Ship) Mosquito, and Tasmania’s Torpedo Boat (TB) 191. All of these arrived in Australia in 1884 and, with the exception of Childers, were transported as deck cargo on much larger vessels. Both Childers and Countess of Hopetoun, being larger ‘First Class’ boats, were rigged with temporary masts and journeyed to Victoria as sailing vessels.

The seaborne threat these vessels were meant to deter never materialised, and their careers proved relatively uneventful.

Following Federation in 1901, all colonial torpedo boats were amalgamated within the CNF. One year later, Acheron and Avernus became the first to be removed from military service. All remaining vessels continued as active assets and were commissioned into the RAN in 1911. However, age and obsolescence quickly overtook them and in June 1912 Lonsdale and Nepean were decommissioned, followed by Mosquito the following year. Childers and Countess of Hopetoun remained on active duty through World War I, serving primarily as minesweepers and port defence vessels. In 1916, Childers was decommissioned. Countess of Hopetoun survived until 1924, when it too was struck from the naval register. The last remaining torpedo vessel from the colonial era, TB 191, was transferred to South Australia in 1905. It was laid up at Port Adelaide around the time of World War I, and purchased by an Adelaide resident in 1927. Its fate after that is unclear.

06 The torpedo boat Lonsdale’s abandoned

hull at Queenscliff, Victoria, c1915.

Photograph courtesy Queenscliffe Maritime Museum

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

Tales of abandonment Of the eight steel-hulled torpedo vessels involved in the naval defence of Australia, three have been archaeologically investigated. Countess of Hopetoun was relocated during the early 1980s, and documented between 1986 and 1996.

Lonsdale’s surviving hull was found buried within the grounds of the Queenscliffe Maritime Museum during the late 1990s (see Signals 106). It was partially excavated and recorded during the early 2000s. In 2009, Mosquito’s final resting place was identified and its visible remnants documented. Both Countess of Hopetoun and Lonsdale are in remarkably good condition, and have retained much of their original hull structure and integrity. By contrast, Mosquito – which is located within a tidal mangrove swamp – has gradually disintegrated and collapsed, and is now mostly buried in silt and mud.

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Archaeology has revealed new insights about the careers of Countess of Hopetoun, Lonsdale and Mosquito following their release from military service – an aspect not well documented in the archival record. None appear to have been modified or adapted to post-military roles, nor is there any indication they were salvaged for their structural components. Each boat underwent extensive removal of its armament, engines and machinery at the time it was decommissioned, but the stripped hulls were not salvaged for their constituent parts.

Further, none of the boats appear to have been modified or adapted to fulfil a post-military function. This is curious, as there are ample historical and archaeological examples of both civilian and military vessels that have been broken up for re-use or recycling. Abandoned steel-hulled watercraft, in particular, were prized for their potential scrap value.

Stripped civilian and military ships were also frequently adapted to secondary roles, the most common being storage hulks or breakwaters.

Following the auction at South Wharf, Countess of Hopetoun appears to have been towed to Swan Island, where it was intentionally grounded in shallow water and abandoned.

A length of steel cable was affixed between the boat’s bow and a tree on the nearby shoreline, but this was the only effort made to keep the derelict in place (and prevent it from becoming a hazard to navigation). Those responsible for leaving Countess of Hopetoun to its fate are not documented, but the vessel’s abandonment on property then occupied by the RAN is certainly intriguing, and hints at possible military complicity (if not outright involvement).

07 The author recording a section of Mosquito’s

stern casemate in October 2009.

Photograph James Hunter

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

Lonsdale was also discarded in an inter-tidal zone, and under circumstances that share some similarities to those of Countess of Hopetoun. However, Lonsdale did not end up on or adjacent to military property, and no effort was made to anchor it in place. A photograph taken around 1915 shows it partially buried in the beach, its prow emerging dramatically from the sand. When originally abandoned, Lonsdale was in the intertidal zone with its bow pointing towards shore. Over time, shoreline migration extended the adjacent beach into the water and eventually buried the site under what is now dry land.

Before disappearing beneath sand, the torpedo boat’s conning tower was occasionally used as an impromptu change room by beachgoers – apparently its only post-military ‘function’.

A torpedo boat crew would submerge the torpedo and detonate it directly against the enemy vessel’s hull

Shortly after its removal from naval service, Mosquito was towed to a mangrove swamp near the mouth of the Brisbane River and abandoned – presumably by RAN personnel, as there is no record of the vessel being sold or transferred to civilian interests. The hull was positioned with its bow facing towards dry ground, and no evidence exists to suggest it was intentionally anchored in place. Interestingly, Mosquito is the only torpedo boat that has been altered after discard.

Mostly, this appears to have been the result of relic collecting.

For example, a section of stern casemate and a handful of other small hull components were removed from the site as souvenirs during the 1960s. However, the conning tower was discovered lying on its side a short distance from the rest of the surviving

08 Lonsdale’s conning tower and part of the bow

08

section, as uncovered during archaeological excavation of the vessel’s abandonment site in March 2006. Photograph courtesy TerraCulture Heritage Consultants

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNEARTHING A ‘MOSQUITO’ FLEET

09

hull, and appears to have been removed around the time the boat was abandoned – perhaps as a means to compromise the hull’s integrity and re-useability.

It is clear from both the historical and archaeological records that the specialised construction and use of Countess of Hopetoun, Lonsdale and Mosquito made them uniquely unsuited for other military roles. This problem was further compounded by their general obsolescence at the time of discard. Their small size and relatively light construction precluded their use in secondary military functions and significantly reduced the value of their constituent parts. Simply put, they weren’t worth the time, money and effort to dismantle or dispose of properly, and these military prejudices may well have carried over to civilians who might otherwise have attempted to reuse or recycle them.

Remnants of five other Australian torpedo boats have yet to be discovered and identified, although the approximate discard locations of two, Childers and Acheron, are known.

Childers was reportedly abandoned near Swan Island in Port Phillip Bay, while Acheron was scuttled near the entrance to Broken Bay in New South Wales. Both vessels are unique, although archaeological investigation of Acheron would be of particular interest, given its Australian origins and connection to the Atlas Engineering Company, which was located a short distance from where the Australian National Maritime Museum now stands.

Dr James Hunter has been involved in the fields of historical and maritime archaeology for nearly two decades, and participated in the investigation of a number of internationally significant shipwreck sites. His doctoral research explored the history and archaeology of torpedo boat defences utilised by the colonial and early national navies of Australia and New Zealand. He was appointed ANMM’s inaugural Curator of RAN Maritime Archaeology in January 2015.

09 The Queensland torpedo boat HMQS

Mosquito during naval exercises in Moreton Bay around the turn of the 20th century.

Photograph courtesy Commander Norman Pixley Collection, Queensland Maritime Museum

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > RIGGED AND READY

Rigged and ready BUILDING A NEW SPAR FOR ENDEAVOUR

Storm damage to the museum’s HMB Endeavour replica during a recent trip to Hobart necessitated the construction of a new spritsail yard. Endeavour’s first mate, Anthony Longhurst, details the process.

01

01 The broken spritsail yard. Photograph by

Anthony Longhurst/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > RIGGED AND READY

ENDEAVOUR SAILED FROM SYDNEY on 28 January after joining in the annual Australia Day celebrations on Sydney Harbour. She was heading to Hobart to attend the biennial Classic and Wooden Boat Festival, which is the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Endeavour was likely to have been a star attraction, being the largest wooden ship in Australia.

Unfortunately nature had other ideas. After Endeavour left Sydney, an intense low-pressure system developed, causing strong southerly winds and large seas and swell – the worst possible weather for Endeavour to head south in.

02

In the days of the original Endeavour, the master would have had no choice but to heave-to the ship off shore and wait for more favourable weather. Time would not have been an issue and delays due to weather were common on most voyages.

After carefully reviewing the weather and developing a conservative plan, including fallback options if there were no improvement, we tried to use the engines to head into the southerly winds and seas – an option not available to an 18th-century master. We kept a careful eye on the ship’s masts, rigging and speed, adjusting the ship’s angle to the wind and sea so that she was not working too hard.

After motoring for several days and making a slow 160 nautical miles to the south, Endeavour rode over a large wave and pitched into a deep trough, burying her bowsprit and jibboom.

The spritsail yard that is attached beneath the bowsprit did not survive the pressure, breaking in two at its centre. Attached to the spritsail yard are the jibboom guys, which provide important downward support for the jibboom and add support to the fore topgallant mast. With the loss of this support, pushing the ship into a heavy head sea for at least another four days – let alone the remaining 1,000-plus nautical miles of planned voyaging ahead – was deemed too risky, even with the jury-rigged martingale that we put in place shortly after the yard broke.

03

04

We made the difficult decision to turn the ship and head back to Sydney. Using the resources and support of the museum, we figured we could replace the yard and return the ship to sea to make her passage to Hobart. We emailed the dimensions of the yard through to the museum using Endeavour’s satellite communication system and a plan was put into action.

We decided it would be easier and faster to replace the broken yard rather than repair it, and chose Douglas fir (Oregon) for the task. All of the spars, decking and topside planking on Endeavour are Oregon. This timber is used because it has

02 Cutting the scarf joints. Photograph Eden

Alley-Porter/ANMM 03 The team glue up the planks, after first

roughing up the timber to give greater grip.

Photograph Mark Edwards/ANMM 04 The clamps go on. Photograph Eden

Ally-Porter/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > RIGGED AND READY

good flexibility, is relatively lightweight (approximately 560 kilograms per cubic metre) and is fairly easy to source.

The timber for the replacement yard was of exceptional quality, having a very tight, straight grain with no knots in lengths of up to six metres. In all, 80 lineal metres of timber were bought to be glued (laminated) together to build the new yard, rather than trying to find a single straight tree to shape it from.

Laminated spars are also stronger than those made from a single piece.

05

We had a great team that was made up of Fleet staff and volunteers from the museum plus some assistance from the Sydney Heritage Fleet. To make the yard, the planks (or deals) of Oregon were dressed to a uniform thickness, all glued faces were roughed up to ensure the glue would adhere properly and 12:1 scarf joints were cut so that the yard’s overall length could be achieved by joining shorter lengths together without losing any strength. Six layers of timber were glued together with epoxy to make a square section of laminated timber 12 metres long. All of the scarf joints in each of these laminated layers were staggered so that no two joints were located in the same area, to avoid creating a potential weak point.

After the glue had cured and all of the clamps were taken off, the taper of the yard was marked out using the same ratios that would have been used more than 200 years ago. All yards have taper, meaning that they are thicker in the middle and become smaller towards each end. Once the taper was marked, the excess timber was cut off with circular saws, chisels and power planers, while maintaining the square cross-section shape throughout. We had only a week to get the ship out sailing once more, so using power tools sped up the process.

06

After the tapering was completed and the yard roughly faired (smoothed), we needed to make it octagonal. We employed a technique that has been used for centuries which achieves this in such a way that the yard remains round and does not end up oval-shaped or irregular in cross section. With the cutting lines marked, we set the circular saw to a 45-degree angle and cut off the corners. We then faired the eight faces to remove high spots and ensure the yard remained straight and true.

Marking out once more and initially using only power planers, we took off the corners of the octagonal yard to make it sixteen sided. We faired the faces with traditional long-soled try planes, spending some time on this step to ensure the new yard would turn out perfect. We then took the corners off the 16 sides, firstly with power planers set at a shallow cutting depth, then fairing the resulting 32 faces with the hand planes.

07

05 The yard is cut and planed into

a tapered square.

06 Planing to make the yard 16-sided.

07 Dressing the yard.

All photographs Anthony Longhurst/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > RIGGED AND READY

Endeavour rode over a large wave and pitched into a deep trough, burying her bowsprit and jibboom

08

Sanding the yard made it perfectly round, and the timber was then sealed with an epoxy wood sealant. The fittings from the broken yard were overhauled and fitted to the new yard, which was then painted.

Once the paint had dried, all that was left was to dress the yard. This involved fitting the foot ropes (horses) that enable the crew to climb out on the yard to handle the sail upon the yard at sea. The truss (the rope sling that holds the yard to the bowsprit) was seized, and we attached the clew blocks, bunt blocks, jibboom guy blocks, halyard blocks and the safety lines to which the crew can affix their harnesses.

Anthony Longhurst is HMB Endeavour’s leading hand, shipwright, rigger and first mate. His involvement with tall ships began in 1986 at the age of 13. From 1995 until 2000 he sailed with Endeavour as a watch leader, shipwright, sailmaker and boatswain on her first world voyage. Anthony rejoined Endeavour in 2005 when she came under ANMM management.

The yard was moved to the ship on a floating pontoon where the running rigging was attached, including the halyard, braces, lifts and jibboom guys. The yard was raised into position and the truss, once passed around the bowsprit, was finally seized in place. The sail was then bent (attached) to the yard and Endeavour was once more ready for sea – with one afternoon to spare.

It was a tremendous effort by all involved to achieve this in only seven days, enabling Endeavour to return to sea to complete her voyage to Hobart and showcase the ship to the public in Tasmania. We enjoyed great sailing on the passages to Hobart and back to Sydney, enabling us to experience Endeavour coming to life and being in her element.

08 The completed yard on the ship.

Photograph Anthony Longhurst/ANMM

50

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ENDEAVOUR RETURNS TO BOTANY BAY

09

Endeavour returns to Botany Bay For the first time in some years, Endeavour headed to Botany Bay in late April to mark the anniversary of Cook’s arrival.

The short voyage and brief appearance off Kurnell were not simply to mark European arrival, but also a recognition that Endeavour represents the age of great maritime exploration.

It was also intended to acknowledge that 1770 marked the meeting of two nations.

In the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing in 2020, there will be numerous opportunities to reflect on all these aspects of Cook’s arrival.

Cook looked for opportunities to land on the coast north of Point Hicks (on the northeast coast of Victoria), which is where, on 19 April 1770, the continent of Australia was first sighted by his men.

It wasn’t until he got to Botany Bay, some 600 kilometres up the coast, however, that the opportunity really presented itself. On the afternoon of 28 April 1770, he sent the master, Robert Molyneux, inshore in the pinnace to sound the entrance to a wide open bay. The following afternoon, Cook took Endeavour through the heads and ‘anchor’d

under the south shore about 2 mile within the entrance in 6 fathoms of water’.¹ The challenge for Cook was entering relatively uncharted waters on a coast he knew little about, driven only by wind and surrounded by a nation of people who had shown little propensity for interaction.

09 The Meeting of Two Nations ceremony.

Photograph courtesy Paula Tinney

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ENDEAVOUR RETURNS TO BOTANY BAY

Cook stayed in what he originally named Stingrays Harbour (later renaming it Botany Bay) until 6 May and then sailed north.

His last Australian landing was on 22 August on Possession Island where he ‘once more hoisted the English colours in the name of His Majesty King George the Third (and) took possession of the whole eastern coast from the above latitude down to this place by the name of New South Wales, together with all the bays, harbours rivers and islands …’.2 Taking Endeavour into Botany Bay 245 years later does not pose the same issues that confronted Cook, but remaining off the shore of Kurnell today

does offer its own problems.

Botany Bay is now Sydney’s main port and the area Cook chose to anchor in is now the main channel to the container wharves and oil refinery. Anchoring closer inshore brings the ship dangerously close to shallow water and inside the tanker wharf and mooring buoys associated with the refinery.

It is definitely not the ideal location in which to rest peacefully for six or seven days and we remained only long enough to participate in the Sutherland Shire ceremony of Two Nations. Our voyage crew and supernumeraries who went ashore, however, got a sense of how Cook may have felt when they looked back at his ship at anchor.

Participation in the Botany Bay ceremony from now on is likely to be an annual event as we build public interest in Cook leading up to 2020. Endeavour will also be visiting many Australian cities in the next few years, each time emphasising her role in charting the east coast of Australia while acknowledging the impact her arrival had on the world that she encountered.

1 HM Bark Endeavour, Ray Parkin.

Miegunyah Press, Victoria, 1997, p 180 2 HM Bark Endeavour, Ray Parkin, p442

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ANMM SPEAKERS

ANMM Speakers TAKING MARITIME HISTORY TO CLUBS AND SOCIETIES

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ANMM SPEAKERS is a small, dedicated team of volunteer museum guides who promote the museum to community groups and clubs via a series of free illustrated talks. In 2014 they delivered 36 talks to 1,711 people, and they expect to exceed these numbers in 2015.

They present to a wide range of community groups, including Probus, Rotary and View clubs, historical societies, social groups, and naval, sailing and maritime clubs located all over the Sydney metropolitan area.

If you are a member of a club in metropolitan Sydney that has visiting speakers and would like to book a free talk, please contact an ANMM Speakers representative: Noel Phelan: noelphelan@bigpond.com mobile 0402 158 590, phone 9953 2436 Ron Ray: ron.ray@aapt.net.au mobile 0416 123 034, phone 9624 1917

To encourage people to attend each talk, a family museum entry pass is given away as a ‘lucky door prize’ and various discounts are offered to people to become museum Members or to organise groups who arrange future visits to the museum.

Each of the talk topics is carefully researched and professionally put together on standard computer software. When a new presentation is developed, its author assures its quality by leading a ‘walkthrough’, thoroughly explaining the topic to all speakers in the group before it is delivered to an external audience. Available talk topics are listed on the opposite page.

To ensure continuous improvement, we have a form which asks attendees to comment on a range of questions to provide documented feedback on their level of satisfaction with the topic, how it was delivered and how well the group was entertained by the speaker.

01 Ron Ray (left) and Noel Phelan with one

of the ANMM Speakers presentations.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > ANMM SPEAKERS

ANMM Speakers talk topics VIRTUAL TOUR OF DESTROYER HMAS VAMPIRE Shows the onboard life of officers and sailors, the operation of the guns, boiler and engine rooms, and how the ship was commanded.

THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA In early May 1942, a most extraordinary sea battle took place on our doorstep. No ships fired their guns directly at an enemy ship – the battle was fought entirely by aircraft launched from their carriers and land bases.

VIRTUAL TOUR OF SUBMARINE HMAS ONSLOW An overview of the museum’s FLYING BOATS diesel–electric powered Oberon class submarine and how the The aquatic airman and the vessel performed its silent service. ships that flew – the story of an Australian aviator who founded the VIRTUAL TOUR OF first water-based regular airline HMB ENDEAVOUR service to Lord Howe Island using surplus World War II aircraft.

The pride of the museum’s fleet, our Endeavour is an authentic BASS AND FLINDERS replica of the ship that Cook used to explore the east coast Discusses the backgrounds of Australia. Hear stories of life on of these two famous maritime board and gain an understanding explorers, their fates and their of how a sailing ship operated in voyages of coastal exploration in the 18th century. small boats.

VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE MUSEUM GALLERIES Take a virtual stroll through the museum galleries for a peek at some of the amazing maritime treasures on display.

THE BATTLE BETWEEN HMAS SYDNEY AND THE KORMORAN A fierce battle unprecedented in the annals of naval warfare.

See photos of the ships before the battle and also on the sea bed.

Find out how the pride of the RAN was sunk with the loss of all 645 crew.

THE JAPANESE MIDGET SUBMARINE ATTACK ON SYDNEY HARBOUR Describes how the attack was carried out by Japanese naval personnel against inadequate harbour defences.

ALCOHOL AT SEA Find out about the origins of grog and the navy, where the rum ration came from and when it disappeared. We also explore the elaborate ceremony of the rum issue on board navy ships.

MV KRAIT This successful commando raid on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour demonstrated extraordinary bravery, resilience and ingenuity. Find out about the training and equipment required, and the lasting legacy of these brave men.

THE SYDNEY–EMDEN BATTLE A talk detailing how HMAS Sydney achieved the RAN’s first victory at sea at the start of World War I, how the battle unfolded, the aftermath and the strategic importance of the victory for Australia.

THE HMAS MELBOURNE – HMAS VOYAGER COLLISION: AUSTRALIA’S WORST PEACETIME NAVAL DISASTER In 1964, the destroyer HMAS Voyager was cut in two by the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne with the loss of 82 lives. How did it happen? Could it have been avoided, and has the blame really been fairly apportioned?

DAMN THE DARDANELLES – THE ROLE OF THE NAVY AT GALLIPOLI AND THE AUSTRALIAN SUBMARINE AE2 The contribution of the navy in World War I has been largely overshadowed by that of the army, but British, French and Australian ships all played a part in the landings, gunfire support and eventual evacuation.

The submarine AE2 was the first to penetrate the Dardanelles, with an extraordinary effect on the whole operation.

SAILORS ON HORSEBACK – THE STORY OF THE RAN BRIDGING TRAIN AT GALLIPOLI The little-known story of a group of sailors in army uniform who landed with the second invasion at Gallipoli at Suvla Bay. They provided essential logistic support as well as building wharves and jetties, and were the last out when Anzac Cove was evacuated.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > WELCOME TO WINTER

MEMBERS WINTER 2015

Welcome to winter MESSAGE TO MEMBERS

As another busy season ends, the Members team extends a very warm welcome to our many new Members, and hopes that Members both new and current will take advantage of our wide range of activities and events this winter.

01

01 Alexandra Shackleton on display in the museum’s

foyer. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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MEMBERS WINTER 2015

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > WELCOME TO WINTER

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THIS SEASON, we have plenty to tempt you out of hibernation and into the museum for our current range of Member events, talks and tours.

I would like to sincerely thank our Members who completed our recent Member survey. More than 500 Members contributed, which was a great result. We are compiling your answers over the coming weeks and will be considering your feedback. You may have noticed some small changes already, including the return of some event formats that Members told us they preferred.

Welcome aboard to all the new Members who joined us during autumn. The school holidays saw a record number of family registrations, demonstrating that the museum is at the forefront of delivering high-quality and good-value entertainment for Members.

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The new exhibition Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica opened on 2 April, and a 2.5-tonne boat named Alexandra Shackleton now hangs in the museum foyer as a highlight of this exhibition.

The boat is a replica of the James Caird, the small lifeboat in which Sir Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley and four crew sailed 1,500 kilometres across the Southern Ocean in 1916 to organise the rescue of 22 fellow expeditioners who were stranded on Elephant Island. Tim Jarvis am and five companions sailed the Alexandra Shackleton between Elephant Island and South Georgia during their re-creation of this desperate journey, and you can now see this boat at the museum until the exhibition closes.

Autumn saw many events for Members, including the exclusive preview of Shackleton on 31 March, at which the museum hosted exhibition contributors Tim Jarvis, The Hon Alexandra Shackleton (granddaughter of Sir Ernest) and photographer Jane Ussher.

More than 100 Members attended this event. The Vampire wardroom dinner on Saturday 11 April was also a successful night and allowed Members to see the warship from a different and unique angle.

02 Garden Island is the destination for a Members

tour in August. Photograph Janine Flew/ANMM 03 The Hon Alexandra Shackleton and Tim Jarvis am at the opening of Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ ANMM

04 A Customs beagle inspecting Alexandra

Shackleton for termites before the boat could be allowed into the museum. Photograph Will Mather/ANMM

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MEMBERS WINTER 2015

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > WELCOME TO WINTER

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With winter upon us, the museum is the best place to get out of the cold, and the new line-up of Member events is just the ticket for winter entertainment.

Captain of the HMB Endeavour replica, John Dikkenberg, will be joining Members as a guest speaker on Friday 26 June for an exclusive wine tasting by our wine partners from Angove.

This will be accompanied by a delicious menu prepared by onsite caterer Laissez-faire Catering.

Annual events are an important part of the Members events calendar, and winter brings the return of a few of these popular activities. Our whale-watching tour is now open for bookings.

The east coast of Australia is one of the best vantage points to view these amazing creatures and this event will include commentary and morning tea, and is exclusively for Members.

The Garden Island tour is also back again this quarter, with the island’s RAN Heritage Centre reopening its doors after a lengthy closure. Members will be some of the first people to visit it, arriving by boat after touring the sites of the Japanese midget sub attacks in 1942. A full lunch will be served, rounding out a perfect day on the harbour.

The Members team is planning well ahead and working on a great program for spring and summer, as the end of the year will see the opening of our new Warships Pavilion and its Action Stations interpretive centre, as well as a new family exhibition, Horrible Histories Pirates. Following Member feedback, the annual anniversary lunch is back to its traditional date on Saturday 28 November – so put the date in your diary now.

05 Senior Curator Daina Fletcher (left)

with Members at the exclusive preview of Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

Please enjoy reviewing this quarter’s events and museum activities, and I look forward to seeing you at the museum soon.

06 Members at the Vampire wardroom dinner.

Deanna Varga

07 Naval architect John Jeremy am,

Assistant Director Commercial and Visitor Services

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM guest speaker at this year’s Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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MEMBERS WINTER 2015

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > MEMBERS EVENTS

Members events WINTER 2015

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

Author talk

Family event

Member exclusive

First Fleet Surgeon

by David Hill

Glow-in-the-dark treasure hunt to the South Pole

2–5 pm Sunday 7 June The life and work of Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon to more than 100 convict women and their children en route from England to the penal colony of New South Wales

6–7.30 pm Friday 10 July An after-hours quest through the spooky glow-in-the-dark Shackleton exhibition

Behind the scenes: Vaughan Evans Research Library

Talk and taste

Author talk

Meet the neighbours

Angove wine tasting with guest speaker John Dikkenberg, Captain of HMB Endeavour

Chris Beazley on the seafaring life of Lawrence Hargrave

Garden Island tour

6–9 pm Friday 26 June Enjoy fine wines, a matched menu and first-hand stories of life aboard Endeavour

2–5 pm Sunday 12 July The little-known maritime roots of Australian pioneer aviator Lawrence Hargrave

2–3 pm Thursday 13 August Tour the Vaughan Evans Research Library with librarian Gillian Simpson

10 am–2 pm Sunday 23 August Cruise the sites of the 1942 Japanese midget sub attacks on Sydney Harbour, then enjoy a guided tour of the Naval Heritage Centre

Artists’ talk and sketching session

On the water

Bookings and enquiries

Painting for Antarctica

Whale-watching cruise 10 am–1 pm Saturday 25 July Witness these majestic creatures in their natural environment

Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet.

Please note that booking is essential unless otherwise stated. Book online at anmm. gov.au/events or phone (02) 9298 3644 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@anmm.gov. au before sending form with payment. All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.

2.30–4.30 pm Sunday 21 June Hear from renowned Australian artists Wendy Sharpe and Bernard Ollis. Sketch in the galleries and enjoy afternoon tea.

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MEMBERS WINTER 2015

Members events WINTER 2015

Author talk

First Fleet Surgeon by David Hill 2–5 pm Sunday 7 June Bestselling Australian author David Hill will be talking about his latest book (reviewed on page 74), which reveals the life and work of Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon to more than 100 convict women and their children aboard the Lady Penrhyn during its journey from Portsmouth to New South Wales. David Hill dissects Bowes Smyth’s diary, which covers life at sea, stopovers in the slave port of Rio de Janeiro, the tropical paradise of Tahiti, and three months of early settlement in Australia.

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Members $25, Guests $50. Includes afternoon tea.

First Fleet Surgeon is available to purchase from The Store or online store.anmm.gov.au

Artists’ talk and sketching session

Painting for Antarctica 2.30–4.30 pm Sunday 21 June Renowned Australian artists behind the Painting for Antarctica exhibition, Bernard Ollis and Wendy Sharpe, were artists in residence on a voyage to Antarctica. They share insights about their time spent capturing the wildlife and sublime land and seascapes from the Southern Ocean to South Georgia.

Enjoy afternoon tea and the chance to sketch in the museum’s galleries.

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Members $20, Guests/concession $30. Includes afternoon tea and museum entry. Book online anmm.gov.au/whatson

Talk and taste

Angove wine tasting with guest speaker John Dikkenberg, Captain of HMB Endeavour 6–9 pm Friday 26 June Friends of the museum, Angove invite Members to enjoy an evening tasting their unique and delicious wine, covering the spectrum of traditional favourites shiraz, cabernet and chardonnay to the innovative flavours of fiano, grenache and tempranillo.

Joining Angove will be Captain John Dikkenberg to impart firsthand stories of life on the sea aboard Australia’s most famous ship, the Endeavour.

Members $90, Guests $105. Includes wine and matching menu 08 Cover of First Fleet Surgeon by David Hill 09 Wendy Sharpe, Self portrait with patterned

sky, 2014

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > MEMBERS EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2015

Members events WINTER 2015

Family event

Glow-in-the-dark treasure hunt to the South Pole 6–7.30 pm Friday 10 July The ghost of Perce Blackborow is our personal guide through the spooky glow-in-the-dark Shackleton exhibition. Perce was a stowaway aboard Shackleton’s ill-fated ship; threatened with becoming dinner, he opted to become the cook instead.

Follow the clues in this after-hours quest, make your own Antarctic neon souvenir to take home and enjoy themed face-painting and a snack.

Member children $17, Member adults $15, Guest children $20, Guest adults $17. Includes light refreshments and souvenir art-making activities

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Author talk

Chris Beazley on the seafaring life of Lawrence Hargrave 2–5 pm Sunday 12 July Lawrence Hargrave is well known as Australia’s father of flight, but little is known about his maritime roots. Chris Beazley explains how the aviation and maritime worlds combined in Hargrave’s life, starting with his apprenticeship at the Australasian Steam Navigation Company, up to and including his shipwreck off the coast of New Guinea. With 6 July 2015 marking 100 years since his death, this is a great way to commemorate Hargrave’s seafaring life and achievements.

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Members $25, Guests $50. Includes afternoon tea

On the water

Whale-watching cruise 10 am–1 pm Saturday 25 July Every year, about 3,000 humpback and southern right whales migrate thousands of kilometres from the Antarctic to warmer northern waters to breed. Witness these majestic creatures in their natural environment as they pass Sydney Harbour.

An expert commentator will be on board to tell you about their habits and ensure you make the most of every sighting.

Members $60, Member family $150, Guests $80, Guest family $190. Includes morning tea 10 Captain John Dikkenberg aboard Endeavour.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM 11

Lawrence Hargrave building a boxkite, c1910.

Courtesy State Library of NSW

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > MEMBERS EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2015

Members events WINTER 2015

Member exclusive

Behind the scenes: Vaughan Evans Research Library 2–3 pm Thursday 13 August See the museum as you’ve never done before. This tour takes us to the Vaughan Evans Research Library, where librarian Gillian Simpson will show you the rarest and oldest books in the museum’s holdings. Learn how to research your family’s maritime history during this exclusive Members event.

Members free, Guests $10

Meet the neighbours

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Garden Island tour 10 am–2 pm Sunday 23 August This tour is a must for all naval history enthusiasts! Our vessel Olympic Storm will take us out into Sydney Harbour for a tour of the sites associated with the Japanese midget sub attack on Sydney Harbour in 1942. Steven Carruthers, author and midget sub expert, will be our guide through this enthralling chapter of Australian history, before we stop at Garden Island for a behindthe-scenes guided tour of the Naval Heritage Centre. After the tour, a full lunch will be served on board Olympic Storm during the trip back to the museum’s wharf.

Members $80, Guests $100. Includes lunch, entry to RAN Heritage Centre, guided tour, transport

12 The Vaughan Evans Research Library

is on Level 2 of the Wharf 7 building.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

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EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2015

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNDISCOVERED

Undiscovered PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL COOK

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Opens 4 July Undiscovered is a series of photographic works by celebrated Aboriginal artist Michael Cook from the Bidjara people of southwest Queensland. This exhibition, marking NAIDOC Week 2015, presents a contemporary Indigenous perspective of European settlement in Australia, a land already populated by its original people.

These striking large-scale photographic works shift roles and perspectives around the notion of European ‘discovery’ of Australia, reflecting upon our habitual ways of thinking and

01 The Undiscovered series of ten works

by Michael Cook (2010) reflects upon the discovery and occupation of Australia by the British. Undiscovered#4 depicts a role reversal; the assertive uniformed figure posing on the shore is not James Cook or another European, but an Aboriginal man.

Michael Cook’s works ask what position Indigenous people would have been in if the land had not been considered as ‘undiscovered.’ ANMM Collection 00054261

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > UNDISCOVERED

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2015

seeing our history. This series questions who really discovered Australia while making reference to what was always here, what has been introduced and the effect this had on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their culture and country.

The scene is set on the shoreline looking out to sea, at the site that brought the first ships to Australia. The photos depict an Aboriginal man role-switching with his colonisers: at times he is dressed in full colonial-style clothing; other times the colonial clothing is removed, revealing the strength and resilience of Indigenous Australians before and after colonisation. Throughout the series the man is joined by some of our Australian native animals as well as modern introduced objects. In some photos a sailing ship appears on the horizon – a strong reminder of European colonisation of Australia.

ANMM Collection. Works courtesy Andrew Baker Art Dealer

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02 Undiscovered #9 depicts an Aboriginal man

dressed only with a cloth around his waist pushing a wheelbarrow along the shoreline.

In it he carries an echidna. ANMM Collection 00054255

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2015

Mission X – The rag tag fleet Until end June This story of Australians sailing under the US flag during World War II is one of daring and courage. The US Army Small Ships Section comprised some 3,000 requisitioned Australian vessels of every imaginable size and type, which plied the dangerous waters between northern Queensland and New Guinea to establish a supply lifeline to Allied forces fighting the Japanese.

This little-known story is told using objects and documents lent by the men of the Small Ships and their descendants.

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Painting for Antarctica: Wendy Sharpe and Bernard Ollis follow Shackleton Until 9 August In 2014 Australian artists Wendy Sharpe and Bernard Ollis voyaged to Antarctica in the footsteps of Shackleton.

Their paintings of its land and seascapes are on display and for sale in this exhibition. All proceeds will benefit the Mawson’s Huts Foundation.

Special charity exhibition made possible courtesy of Wendy Sharpe and King Street Gallery on William, Sydney; Bernard Ollis and N G Art, Sydney; chief sponsor Chimu Adventures; and Mawson’s Huts Foundation.

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For sales enquiries visit mawsons-huts.org.au

Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica Until 22 November One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton sailed aboard Endurance to Antarctica aiming to be the first to cross its vast interior. A support party followed, led by Aeneas Mackintosh on Aurora. Both ships were crushed in the ice and lost to their crews, who endured incredible hardship. How did they cope in this treacherous place?

Their exploits are contrasted with those of modern-day adventurer Tim Jarvis, who re-enacted parts of Shackleton’s epic trip.

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The exhibition features Australian Frank Hurley’s stunning images, multimedia and interactive elements, and rare and unusual artefacts, specimens and equipment.

03 US Army Captain Sheridan Fahnestock

in New Guinea. Ladislaw Reday Photographic Collection, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park 04 Fur seal and penguin friends, Wendy Sharpe,

2014.

05 Crew on Elephant Island farewell Shackleton

as he leaves for South Georgia. Photograph Frank Hurley ANMM Collection 00034268

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2015

Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton Until 22 November New Zealand photographer Jane Ussher was given the unique opportunity to photograph in intimate detail the huts used

by Antarctic explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Falcon Scott and their teams. Some of her images now feature in an immersive audiovisual exhibition that takes you inside these huts.

Based on Jane Ussher’s book of the same name, this unique exhibition complements Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica.

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Still Life has been created with the support of Exhibition Partner, the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand).

Black Armada: Australia and the Indonesian struggle for independence 1945 to 1949 Opens 20 August At the end of World War II in August 1945, Indonesians declared their independence from Dutch colonial rule. The declaration began a four-year political and military struggle. During this period, Australian support for Indonesia was prominent.

From late 1945, Dutch ships in Australian ports preparing to return to Indonesia with military arms and personnel were paralysed by a series of black-bans by maritime trade unions. Support for Indonesian independence then grew beyond the labour movement and Australia led the way in international political recognition of Indonesia.

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This central moment in the Indonesian struggle for independence has since been largely forgotten in both nations.

To mark the 70th anniversary of Indonesia’s declaration of independence on 17 August 1945, the Australian National Maritime Museum, in conjunction with the Museum Benteng Vredeburg in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, is developing a display focusing on the boycott of the so-called ‘Black Armada’ of Dutch ships.

06 The interior of Shackleton’s hut, Cape Royds

(detail). © Jane Ussher 07 HMAS Glenelg in Indonesia at the end of

World War II. ANMM Collection ANMS0296

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2015

X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out Until 16 February 2016 Striking X-rays of fish dazzle in this fascinating travelling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Forty prints of specimens from the 20,000 contained in the museum’s National Fish Collection are arranged in evolutionary sequence, so you can go with the flow of fish evolution. Many of the species X-rayed are found in Australian waters.

X-Ray Vision was inspired by the book Ichthyo: The Architecture of Fish – X-Rays from the Smithsonian Institution (Chronicle Books, 2008) by Daniel Pauly, Lynne Parenti and Jean-Michel Cousteau.

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X-ray Vision: Fish Inside Out is organised by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

A Different Vision Until 16 February 2016 This companion exhibition in our USA Gallery displays a small selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander fish images and maritime art using the X-ray technique pioneered in Arnhem Land thousands of years ago.

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ANMM travelling exhibitions

Black Armada Museum Benteng Vredeburg, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Opens 18 August At the end of World War II in August 1945, Indonesians declared their independence from Dutch colonial rule, and so began a fouryear political and military struggle. During this period, Australian support for Indonesia was prominent, and included blackbans by maritime trade unions of Dutch ships in Australian ports preparing to return to Indonesia with military arms and personnel.

To mark the 70th anniversary of Indonesia’s declaration of independence on 17 August 1945, the Australian National Maritime Museum, in conjunction with the Museum Benteng Vredeburg in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, is developing a display focusing on the boycott of the so-called ‘Black Armada’ of Dutch ships.

On Their Own: Britain’s child migrants UK tour, Merseyside Maritime Museum Until 4 October 2015 From the 1860s until the 1970s, more than 100,000 British children were sent to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries through child migration schemes. The lives of these children changed dramatically and fortunes varied. Some forged new futures; others suffered lonely, brutal childhoods. All experienced dislocation and separation from family and homeland.

08 Lookdown Fish. Radiograph and fish

photograph by Sandra J Raredon, Division of Fishes, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution 09 Black Armada will be shown simultaneously

at the ANMM and the Museum Benteng Vredeburg in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, which is housed in an 18th-century Dutch fortress. Photograph Jeffrey Mellefont.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > AUSTRALASIAN FOCUS

MARITIME HERITAGE AROUND AUSTRALIA DARWIN

Australasian focus

MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORY

Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory, is a young city with a turbulent past and close connections to both local Aboriginal communities and nearby Asian nations.

Richard Creswick profiles the Northern Territory’s Museum and Art Gallery, its well-chosen collections of art and boats, and its visionary founder.

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01 Founding director of MAGNT, Dr Colin

Jack-Hinton (right), pictured in 1987 at the stern of the nearly completed replica of a 19th-century Makassan perahu commissioned for a re-enactment voyage from Indonesia to Darwin at the time of the 1988 Australian Bicentenary. With him are the project’s founder, Dr Peter Spillet of the NT Historical Society, and the boat’s master-shipwright Haji Jaffar. The vessel, Hati Marege, is now a centrepiece of the museum’s maritime gallery.

Photograph Jeffrey Mellefont

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DARWIN, AUSTRALIA’S NORTHERNMOST capital city, and apart from Canberra its youngest, is unique in being closer to a number of Southeast Asian capitals than it is to Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne. Since its first European settlement in 1869 – the last of five attempts to establish a British foothold in the north – the city has suffered from its isolation and from various setbacks such as the cyclones of 1897 and 1937, the wartime bombings by the Japanese and, most recently, the devastation of Australia’s worst natural disaster, Cyclone Tracy, in 1974.

Yet from the wreckage of Tracy, a new vibrant city emerged – and nowhere is that renewal more evident than in its small but in many ways world-class Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), a facility that provides a cultural focal point across a range of disciplines and reflects the city’s multiculturalism, a product of its many regional ethnic influences.

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These include the original inhabitants, local Aboriginal tribes or clans; the various ethnic groups from what is now Indonesia who fished and traded across the northern coast for centuries; the Chinese, brought in to work on the railway south from Darwin but who stayed to work the goldfields, and then formed the basis of the city’s merchant class; the Greeks and Japanese, who came for the pearling industry from the late 1800s; and the Filipinos involved in the live-cattle export trade of the early 20th century.

A desire to reflect all of these influences became the guiding principle of the museum’s founding director, Dr Colin JackHinton, an erudite and persuasive man with vision, energy, and industriousness, whose legacy is this superb facility.

Plans for a Museum and Art Gallery had begun in 1964 but it wasn’t until 1969 that Jack-Hinton, then just 36 years of age, was appointed and given one of the city’s few surviving historic stone buildings,the Old Town Hall, for its home.

Jack-Hinton turned out to be an inspired choice. A largerthan-life figure with a patrician mien, pukka British accent, a fondness for whiskey and a formidable intellect, he already had considerable experience of South-East Asia.

Born in England in 1933, he took his MA at Scotland’s Aberdeen University. He served with the Gordon Highlanders Regiment of the British Army in the Malaya crisis before joining Britain’s Colonial Service and working as a District Officer and colonial administrator in the Solomon Islands. There he studied the nation’s maritime history, writing the thesis – later published as a book – that earned him a doctorate from the Australian National University in 1962. This led to an invitation to lecture

02 Terimah Kasih, a vividly painted perahu

konteng from East Java, Indonesia.

Photograph Richard Creswick

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03

at the University of Singapore before he returned to Australia to establish a maritime history gallery for the Western Australian Museum.

It was his belief that a small regional museum and art gallery could punch above its weight if it concentrated on seeking high-quality exhibits in a handful of core areas. For MAGNT, he identified these as Australian art, northern Australia’s Aboriginal history, the archaeology and anthropology of the Asian countries to our near north, Oceania, and finally the region’s maritime history and archaeology.

With Jack-Hinton’s enthusiasm for collecting, the Old Town Hall soon proved to be inadequate for the purpose. A new home for the collection became imperative when on Christmas night in 1974, Cyclone Tracy swept across Darwin like a giant brush, painting a swathe of destruction unprecedented in Australia’s natural history.

The actual extent of the museum’s losses is hard to pin down.

They are known to include some Aboriginal art and craft works, and some watercolours. Some parts of the collection

The museum’s founding director, Dr Colin Jack-Hinton, was an erudite and persuasive man with vision and energy

03 These elegant lipa-lipa are the type of boat

on which the famous Sea Gypsies (Orang Bajau) lived and worked their entire lives, with a whole family living permanently on board and roaming the sheltered seas of the archipelago. Photograph Jeffrey Mellefont

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were stored in other government buildings throughout Darwin, surviving with minor losses. Conservators faced difficulties in restoring works damaged not only in the cyclone, but in the days that followed.

Even the city’s few stone buildings, of which the Old Town Hall was one, could not withstand the destruction. While some of those buildings have since been restored, only a couple of walls and the floor of the Old Town Hall are preserved as a memorial to both Cyclone Tracy and the museum’s first incarnation.

With the support of the Northern Territory’s first Chief Minister, Paul Everingham, Colin Jack-Hinton set about establishing a purpose-built museum and art gallery on a prime piece of seafront property at Bullocky Point on Fannie Bay, looking out to the Arafura Sea. It opened in 1981 and later would include a Cyclone Tracy display, which remains one of the museum’s most popular exhibits.

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As well as being a fine building to house his already extensive collection, it was to provide a base for high-quality research, field work and scholarship via an expanding team of handpicked staff. It also gave Jack-Hinton more scope to expand his collections, including the modest but representative collection of work by Australian artists.

A former chairman of MAGNT’s board, Tom Pauling am qc (later Administrator of the NT), says Jack-Hinton had an astute eye for Australian art, and that the breadth of the collection still astounds him, including as it does works by some of Australia’s and the Territory’s best-known artists.

Jack-Hinton came up with an enterprising way of continuing to acquire quality additions to the collection by holding annual artists’ camps, to which he invited many of the nation’s best artists, requiring that they donate to the museum’s collection at least one of the works produced. He used a similar tactic to bolster the comprehensive collection of Indigenous art and crafts by establishing the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, now in its 31st year, and also to ensure additions to a fine collection of regional crafts with an annual Acquisition Craft Award. All the while, Jack-Hinton was indulging his particular passion – expanding the maritime collection.

From earliest times, Australia’s Aboriginal people were familiar with small watercraft such as canoes made with sheets of bark or rafts of mangrove poles and used to collect food or make short journeys on coastal or inland waters. Reports of the 1839 exploration of Port Darwin – now Darwin Harbour – by Captains John Wickham and John Lort Stokes on the third

04 A Balinese jukung built for the ‘Great Jukung

Race’ during the Australian Bicentenary in 1988. Photograph Richard Creswick

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voyage of the Beagle contain a reference to a meeting between the explorers in their whaleboats and two Aboriginal women and some children on a raft. The area of their meeting was named Raft Point.

Although not long-distance sailors themselves, the Aboriginal people on the Territory’s north coast became familiar with craft used by the various sea-people from the archipelago now known as Indonesia. Long before European settlement, these Makassans and other groups made seasonal voyages to Australia’s northern coast to hunt for trepang (sea cucumber), and, in meetings with Aborigines, to exchange or acquire other goods such as dried fish, ironwood, beeswax, colourful feathers, mother-of-pearl and sometimes the pearls themselves.

The museum’s permanent collection comprises 18 watercraft ranging from small dugout canoes to a 20-metre pearling lugger

05 Tujuan (Destination) is a perahu lambo

05

built on an island north of Flores in Eastern Indonesia in the 1940s. It came into the museum’s collection in 1990 after being arrested in Australian waters for illegal sharkfin fishing. Photograph Richard Creswick

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In return these visiting sailors left behind tamarind trees – which now flourish along the coast – pottery and many loan-words, such as balanda (white man) and rupiah (money), now incorporated into Yolngu, the dominant Aboriginal language of the northeast coast of the Northern Territory.

Occasionally Aboriginal people, both men and women, would travel back to the home ports of the visitors to either settle and intermarry or to return on later voyages.

In 1990 Jack-Hinton designed and supervised construction of an extension to the museum building to provide a dedicated space for the expanding maritime collection. Leading up to the opening of this new gallery in 1992, Jack-Hinton employed the Foundation Curator of Maritime Archaeology and History, Paul Clark, who remains senior curator of the collection today.

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Jack-Hinton’s collection policy included what he saw as the need to preserve examples of traditional watercraft from Southeast Asia, particularly those that had made contact with the Australian coast. The result of the study of these early maritime interactions, according to Paul Clark, is a fine maritime collection with representative samples of a number of the types of vessel that made these voyages. It also includes some other vessels with particular links to recent Northern Territory maritime history.

One of Jack-Hinton’s first acquisitions in Darwin was Semanis, a small double-ended Madurese vessel known as a perahu lete lete, which had been illegally sailed into Darwin by a sailor called Jamie Munro and was the collection’s first ocean-going vessel. Subsequently he acquired Karya Sama, recognised as a fine example of the perahu lambo, which visited the north coast of Australia in the latter half of the 20th century.

On Christmas Eve in 1974, Cyclone Tracy swept across Darwin like a giant brush, painting a swathe of destruction

The museum’s permanent collection, housed in the Colin Jack-Hinton Maritime Gallery, comprises 18 craft ranging from dugout canoes only a few metres long to the largest vessel, a 20-metre pearling lugger.

The sea craft from the Indonesian islands include small single and double outrigger canoes, beautifully carved or decorated larger sailing canoes with a variety of styles of rigging, as well as examples of more substantial wooden-planked sailing craft of the types that traded across the island chain and as far as Australia. These include examples of perahu (Bahasa Indonesian or Malay for ‘boat’) in a variety of styles such as konteng, lambo, sondeq, sekoci, golekan or lete, and lipa-lipa.

06 All that remains of the Old Town Hall,

site of Darwin’s first museum, destroyed in Cyclone Tracy. Photograph Richard Creswick

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A few of the boats in the collection are reproductions, built specifically for display, such as the Bajau lipa-lipa, an ornately carved open canoe from Malaysia, or the Hati Marege and the Balinese jukung, vastly different types of craft but both built to mark Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988.

The Hati Marege is a traditionally built Perahu padewakang constructed in the busy boatbuilding centre of Tanah Beru in South Sulawesi. It was conceived as a joint project between the Darwin Historical Society’s president, the late Peter Spillett, and Colin Jack-Hinton as a way of both paying tribute to the earliest sailors and of celebrating the Bicentenary.

The Balinese jukung, a double outrigger canoe with its trademark beak and bulging eyes, was one of 11 also built in the traditional style at the small port village of Padangbai, East Bali, as part of what its promotor, New Zealand maritime adventurer Bob Hobman, planned as a race from Bali to Australia with each jukung crew of two people from different countries. In the event, the crews plumped for cooperation over competition and contrived to all arrive in Darwin at the same time.

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Several of the craft on display have been donated, among them the pearling lugger mentioned earlier. Named Bintang Putih (‘White Star’) it was built in Perth in the early 20th century and later acquired by the Darwin master pearler Nick Paspaley.

When it was retired in 1990, Nick Paspaley donated it to the museum, but insisted it be renamed Vivienne, after his wife.

Also first loaned, and later purchased, is a pretty little fivemetre double-ended sailing canoe designed in the style of English longboats. Built on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, it was a parting gift to the retiring Australian Government-appointed Administrator of the islands, Dawn Lawrie, who had earlier been an independent member of the Northern Territory’s Legislative Council and Assembly.

In recent decades Darwin has become a destination for people seeking to flee various forms of persecution in their home countries, who arrive in vessels known as SIEVs – Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels. Among the first to reach Darwin were two groups of people: East Timorese fleeing from a civil war and subsequent invasion by Indonesia in 1975, and Vietnamese who had supported the losing side in Vietnam’s war with the United States.

Although most of the fleeing Timorese ultimately arrived by air, 2,581 people – mostly Portuguese but some Chinese – were taken to Darwin aboard a small Dutch cargo ship, the Macdili, and the Swedish cargo ship Lloyd Bakke.

07 Exterior of the Colin Jack-Hinton Maritime

Gallery, which houses the museum’s collection of watercraft. Photograph Richard Creswick

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In 1976 the first of the Vietnamese arrived in a rickety boat having endured days at sea. Over the following five years a total of 60 boats, carrying just over 2,000 people, survived the hazardous voyage – but tens of thousands of people drowned when their boats sank or were sunk by pirates. In other pirate attacks, the women were raped and kidnapped, the men and children killed or abandoned.

The voyages of such people are commemorated by the inclusion in the collection of the Thinh Vuong (Vietnamese for ‘Prosperity’), a 17-metre long, 3.2-metre beam, carvel-planked wooden fishing trawler which arrived in Darwin in June 1978 with nine people on board. It was the 44th ship to arrive in Australia.

Less welcome have been two more recent groups of arrivals on Australia’s north coast – illegal fishing boats from the eastern islands of Indonesia and the boats of asylum seekers displaced by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The vessels of both of these groups would be legitimate additions to the Colin Jack-Hinton collection, but those which make it to Darwin are routinely taken to an isolated beach on a remote reach of Darwin Harbour and destroyed by fire.

Colin Jack-Hinton retired as Director of MAGNT in 1993.

He became Emeritus Director on his retirement and continued to have an interest in the Northern Territory and Southeast Asia until his death in 2006, aged 69.

Richard Creswick is a retired journalist. He arrived in Darwin in February 1972 to help introduce news bulletins on the recently launched ABC Television. He produced the last ABC TV news bulletin before Cyclone Tracy.

08 Pearling lugger Vivienne and Vietnamese

refugee boat Thinh Vuong (‘Prosperity’).

Photograph Jeffrey Mellefont

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From the Murray to Saltwater Country MUSEUM STAFF GO ON THE ROAD

The museum has an extensive regional and interstate outreach program to assist individuals and smaller institutions involved in maritime heritage and culture. This includes grants, internships, on-site visits, workshops and training programs. Staff members David Payne and Donna Carstens report on two recent visits to regional New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

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01 PS Ruby in dock at Wentworth.

Photograph David Payne/ANMM

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Developing vessel management plans

By David Payne, Curator of Historic Vessels EVERY YEAR THE MUSEUM AWARDS various grants through its Maritime Museums of Australia Support Scheme (MMAPSS).

These can take the form of financial assistance or in-kind support, for which museum staff travel to the institution involved. This is an excellent outreach opportunity for the museum, and being onsite greatly improves the quality of the work its staff can do.

As Curator of Historic Vessels I travelled well out into regional New South Wales to work with two of the successful recipients in the most recent round of grants. I was visiting two very different craft: the 107-year-old paddle steamer PS Ruby and an oyster punt built by Gus Cole, possibly as early as 1918.

For both craft my task was to develop a Vessel Management Plan (VMP). This vital document creates a handbook about the vessel’s background, significance, conservation, interpretation, display and operation. At the recent 2015 Conference for the Australian Maritime Museums Council, Rob Bowring from Mannum Dock Museum, which manages PS Marion, simply called it a ‘bible’ that guides these aspects so that they work together to achieve the desired outcome, and everyone involved is clear about what needs to be done and the steps involved.

PS Ruby operates out of Wentworth in southwestern New South Wales, where the Murray and Darling rivers converge. It’s a picturesque location; at this point the Murray is wide and as it ambles across the country the Darling comes down to meet it from the north. Over its last kilometre the Darling takes a sharp turn west to run parallel to the Murray, before easing itself into the Murray’s flow. There at Wentworth they become one big river, soon to turn southwest and head for Goolwa in South Australia.

02 Gus Cole’s oyster punt. Photograph David

02

Payne/ANMM

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03

PS Ruby was built at Morgan, on the Murray River in South Australia, in 1907 for Captain Hugh King by David Lowe Milne, and is 39.85 metres in length with a beam of 5.71 metres.

PS Ruby’s outstanding feature was its very light draught of between 2 feet 6 inches and 3 feet (0.75 m and 0.915 m) when fully laden at about 85 tons. This enabled PS Ruby to operate on much lower river levels than other steamers.

PS Ruby carried 30 passengers in style and comfort and had three decks. It was one of only a few paddle steamers built specifically to take passengers.

PS Ruby was one of only a few paddle steamers built specifically to take passengers

On a Sunday afternoon I went over the vessel with Bill Nicol from the PS Ruby Board and Peter Trevathan, who is employed by the council to manage PS Ruby. He is a real hands-on enthusiast who knows the steamer and its machinery in very fine detail. It now has a 20 nhp Robey engine installed, built in 1926, replacing the original 1907 engine. This newer model has required some time to bed down. Peter consulted with one of the old hands from upriver, and together they gradually tuned the parts to have it all working smoothly.

I spent a long day on the Monday with Peter, working together on computers in the mid-deck saloon of the vessel, developing the VMP to a point where the board and Peter can fill in or expand on various sections. A key part is quite simple – identifying that the paddle steamer is to be conserved and interpreted to show how it was from 1915 to 1920, its heyday as a passenger vessel. PS Ruby is in survey and can carry passengers again. It is operating monthly at present but looking for opportunities to do more. A vessel management plan is also needed for maritime survey with regard to any application for a heritage exemption that concerns managing an aspect of the vessel’s survey requirements.

03 The Murray River, on the left, and the

Darling, on the right, converge at Wentworth.

Photograph David Payne/ANMM

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Wentworth was once one of Australia’s busiest ports, rivalling the coastal centres. It had a strong economy. Huge amounts of produce came to the town by land and river, to be sent down by paddle steamers as far as Goolwa and then on to the coast. On their journey up the river the steamers carried goods and supplies, with a number of them also accommodating passengers.

Wentworth was once one of Australia’s busiest ports, rivalling the coastal centres

Craft from the oyster trade The oyster barge in the collection of the Merimbula Imlay Historical Society (MIHS) is quite a contrast in many ways – much, much smaller than PS Ruby and without the complications of machinery, operation and survey.

It is a display vessel only, so its Vessel Management Plan concentrates on significance, conservation and interpretation.

The plan is still a ‘bible’ as such, containing what is needed to conserve and manage the punt as it remains on display.

One task was to inspect another punt with MIHS committee members, which was recently brought to their attention.

I recorded the dimensions of this wooden scow-shaped barge, and with the owner began the process of nominating it for inclusion on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels (ARHV).

The MIHS punt was built locally by Gus Cole, and has a sharp stem and a flat bottom. Simply but effectively put together, it has survived for decades. Its age shows, but it is stable, almost completely original, and a wonderful connection to Merimbula and its oyster industry. We undertook a detailed review of the punt’s structure and dimensions, then developed a vessel management plan to help them display, interpret and conserve the craft, and develop the story of its significance.

Australia has a great abundance of oysters. Around Merimbula, Aboriginal people from the Yuin nation harvested them each season. The modern industry began first near Pambula, and then after World War I it was established commercially in Merimbula. It survives today as a major industry, although these days it’s serviced by aluminium punts with a scow or barge shape, their wooden counterparts almost extinct. The two recorded here make three in total noted on the ARHV, and it is anticipated that more will be located and we will end up with a diverse range for comparison.

Our two MMAPSS visits to Wentworth and Merimbula were well received. They show the museum’s ability to move out from Sydney and extend its support to the regional institutions and to lesser-known aspects of maritime culture, and in this instance they leave two groups with detailed Vessel Management Plans to help them manage their unique historic craft into the future.

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A visit to Saltwater Country

By Donna Carstens, Manager of Indigenous Programs IN MARCH THIS YEAR I visited the community and art centre in Yirrkala, Northern Territory, home of the 80 Saltwater bark paintings that are held in the museum’s collection.

The Saltwater collection is a remarkable body of works explaining how the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land are spiritually bound to their coastal lands. They assert the Yolngu’s inherent responsibility to protect this ‘sea country’ above and below the tidal line. The paintings, in their entirety, map and describe hundreds of kilometres of coast south and west of Cape Arnhem. They explain the spiritual and legal basis underpinning the community’s native title sea rights claim in the ‘Blue Mud Bay Case’, and were used as a substantial part of evidence in the landmark High Court ruling in 2008 that legally confirmed the Yolngu people’s ownership of their coastal waters.

The purpose of this trip was to consult with the community about upcoming international exhibitions in which a selection of these stunning and significant works will be viewed for the first time ever outside Australia. Four bark paintings will travel to Turkey in September 2015 to be included in the 14th Istanbul Biennial, while a five-year touring exhibition of 50 of the works is currently being marketed in Europe, Canada and the USA in conjunction with Museum Partners, with plenty of interest already shown.

Talking with the community, artists and art centre workers ensures that the museum is representing the works in their truest form

04 Shady Beach, Yirrkala. Photograph Donna

Carstens/ANMM

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The consultation process behind these exhibitions is vitally important. While the museum is the holder of the physical works, it does not hold the cultural knowledge and content within them. This will always remain with the artists and the community. Talking with the community, artists and art centre workers ensures that the museum is representing the works in their truest form, and that the cultural integrity of the pieces is always maintained. This includes conversations around how the works are displayed and the appropriate support material to accompany them, right down to discussions regarding copyright and appropriate merchandise that will support the exhibitions. Every little conversation needs to be had, and this is a best-practice process for the museum, given the significance and cultural content of these and other Indigenous works and objects held in our collection.

The artworks of the Saltwater collection feature sacred clan designs that are carefully applied to bark taken from the stringybark tree

05 Bamurrunu by Wukun Wanambi, 2001.

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Bamurrunu depicts the large sacred rock Bamurrunu in Trial Bay and is one of the paintings used to establish the Yolngu people’s native title claim. ANMM Collection 00033840 Purchased with the assistance of Stephen Grant of the GrantPirrie Gallery

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The artworks of the Saltwater collection feature sacred clan designs that are carefully applied to bark taken from the stringybark tree. Each design is painted using local earth pigments sourced from the very estates depicted in that artist’s work. On my trip I was lucky enough to spend a morning ‘out bush’ with the art centre workers collecting bark for their paintings. The process of selecting the right tree is important, as is that of removing the bark. It is peeled starting from the side of the tree that faces the sun, as that side will dry out first, and the trick to removing a good piece of bark is ensuring it is not too dry.

The pieces of bark, each measuring about four metres long and one metre wide, are then transported back to the art centre where they are cleaned up, trimmed, then laid out on the ground to dry out. The bark is also weighted at this time to stop it from curling back up, making it flat and ready for the artists to create their works. One piece of bark can yield up to ten paintings of various sizes.

06

The bark paintings are the work of 47 Yolngu artists, representing 15 different clans. Each artist has inherited the right to paint his or her clan’s piece of coast, explaining the creation of the area and its animals, documenting the clan’s history and declaring its responsibilities to manage the area.

Each work presents sacred knowledge about a specific area, and the works were commissioned in 1998 by Yolngu elders in order to share Yolngu lore with non-Aboriginal people and gain respect for their environment and culture. The initiative was the elders’ response to the desecration of ancestral lands.

In 1966 a Yolngu elder visited sacred custodial coastal land, the ancient home of Baru the ancestral crocodile. There he discovered a rubbish-strewn poachers’ camp and the severed head of a crocodile. The elders were disgusted and frustrated at this invasion and the sacrilege of beheading Baru in his own nest.

Three generations of Yolngu leaders have now confronted governments and multi-nationals and contributed to land rights legislation.

The artists and community are very excited about the opportunity for these works to travel abroad and reach an international audience, carrying with them their stories of sea rights, culture and traditions. They are very much looking forward to sharing their culture on the world stage.

At the time of my trip, the area had just been hit by category 4 cyclone Lam. Although Yirrkala was lucky enough to escape without any damage, their neighbours in the communities

06 DJ Marika begins removing a piece

of bark from a stringybark tree on Aboriginal community land. Photograph Donna Carstens/ANMM

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on Elcho Island and Ramingining were not so lucky. To show our support for these communities, the museum’s Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group held a charity drive, with staff at the museum donating five large suitcases of clothes to send to the affected communities. The museum would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the communities affected and wish them the best of luck and a speedy recovery.

If your organisation has an object or collection that contributes to an understanding of Australia, its people or developments which have influenced the nation’s maritime history, you may be interested to visit the MMAPSS website (anmm.gov.au/grants) for details about the application process, key dates, eligibility and a list of past grant recipients.

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07 Bruce Munungurr loading the bark for

transportation back to the art centre.

Photograph Donna Carstens/ANMM

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Boats with tales to tell AUSTRALIAN REGISTER OF HISTORIC VESSELS

ANMM.GOV.AU/ARHV This online, national heritage project devised and coordinated by the Australian National Maritime Museum reaches across Australia to collate data about the nation’s existing historic vessels, their designers and builders, and their stories.

01

The diverse range of craft recently nominated to the ARHV continues to add to the many stories Australia’s heritage craft can tell. The register gives them their place on the stage, and our history comes alive as one after another the vessels speak of their technical and social background, and what makes them worthy of attention.

01 SS Devanha’s lifeboat No 5 at the Shrine

of Remembrance in Melbourne, Victoria.

David Payne/ANMM

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Lifeboats are designed to save lives, but the rules of war are written differently

02

WHAT THESE DIFFERENT CRAFT have to say is not always immediately obvious. The Port Denison Aboriginal canoe from the coastline of Cairns in Queensland seems to be mute at first.

We know little of how it came to be in a collection at Berlin’s Ethnological Museum in the early 1900s, and can only speculate on what may have happened and how it managed to survive the ravages of war in the 1940s. As one of only two of its type recorded on the ARHV, its construction and use tell immensely valuable stories of Aboriginal Australia and its culture and connection to country, which are so important to reveal and restore.

Lotus takes us inland, to near the South Australian town of Renmark on the Murray River, and back more than 100 years to a family of pioneering settlers with the typical self-reliance and can-do nature that enabled them to build their future on the shores of the river. When they needed a boat, they commissioned one from a builder in Port Adelaide and completed it themselves, including installing a car engine.

Then for its maiden trip they went miles up the river to the Wentworth Show, as you do in the country.

Yachts feature once again. Ambrosia can talk about its protracted building, beginning in the late 1930s and finally finished in the 1980s by its second owner, a carpenter, helped by one of the original stock plans. The wonderful plans that come with the yacht Antares illustrate one man’s almost obsessive attention to detail, along with its very detailed and personal fit-out.

Saona can reveal the ruggedness of Tasmania’s coastline, sharing its conversation with Melalueca. Saona was used by its third owner, Vice Admiral Sir Guy Wyatt, who had recently retired from his role as Royal Australian Navy Hydrographer to complete charting many remote corners of Tasmanian waters, including Bathurst Harbour. In March 1953 Wyatt took the noted author Neville Shute on a cruise to Port Davey and return.

02 A view looking aft of a lifeboat carrying

unidentified men of the Australian 1st Divisional Signal Company as they are towed towards Anzac Cove at 6 am on the day of the landing. Australian War Memorial A02781

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While they just visited, Melaleuca lived there. Melaleuca is well known in Tasmania as the yacht owned by legendary pioneer and miner Denny King from 1950 to 1995, and it was his family’s principal means of transport and communication from their tin mine in remote Bathurst Harbour on the southwest coast to the main centres.

The wonderful plans for the yacht Antares illustrate one man’s almost obsessive attention to detail

Muriel and Rhona H take us out into Bass Strait from either side, fishing for couta, crayfish and shark. Both formed a long association with their respective second owners, who were hugely respected fisherman and personalities in their localities.

These craft also talk of their construction by equally legendary builders – Muriel is an outstanding couta boat from Mitchie Lacco at Queenscliff in Victoria, while directly across the strait, Launceston’s ‘Ned’ Jack added to his reputation with Rhona H. The most dramatic stories come from two lifeboats, No 5 from SS Devanha and No 6 from SS Ascot. On the same night in 1915, they were just a few kilometres apart on still waters, unable to see each other, and operating in total contradiction to their intent. As a rule, lifeboats are designed to save lives, but the rules of war are written differently. These two lifeboats, and many others of their type, ferried men towards a ghastly fate.

Landing them on the shores of the Turkish coastline, they took them to the horrors of the Gallipoli campaign as it began – and for many men this was their end, victims of the Turkish defenders’ gunfire.

From there the lifeboats remained silent in two different worlds.

Lifeboat No 5 eventually returned to its original station on the liner SS Devanha, now back in service with P&O. In contrast, SS Ascot’s boat No 6 lay abandoned and rusting on the shores of the coastline to which it had been brought.

Soon they were recognised for what they could tell. In 1919 a passenger on the SS Devanha knew what No 5 had been through, while at a similar time historian Charles Bean, ashore at Gallipoli and stepping over the refuse of war that spoke of the campaign, could see how Lifeboat No 6, with its bullet holes and damage untouched, could forever stand for the sacrifices made as the memories slip into the past. Both lifeboats came into the collection of the Australian War Memorial in the early 1920s, and are solemn reminders of a dramatic time.

The SS Devanha clinker construction Lifeboat No 5 was probably built around 1905. After the outbreak of war Devanha was pressed into military service in 1915, manned by the normal peacetime P&O officers and crews. Then known as Troopship A3, It was used by 12 Battalion AIF, 3 Field Ambulance and 3 Infantry Brigade Head Quarters during the landings at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. They landed on the beach around

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the point from Anzac Cove at about 4.30 am as part of the initial wave. The landing position was almost at the extreme north (or left) of the Divisional front, at the foot of the wellknown landmark on Russell’s Top known as ‘The Sphinx’.

This portion of the beach was under direct machine-gun fire, apparently coming from the lower slopes of Walker’s Ridge or perhaps further north from the vicinity of Fisherman’s Hut. There were many casualties. Despite this, the lifeboat was able to return to the ship and help evacuate injured troops, and SS Devanha began its role as a hospital ship.

SS Ascot’s steel-plated Lifeboat No 6 was built around 1902.

SS Ascot was also requisitioned for the war and became Troopship A33. It carried ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies of 13 Battalion from Alexandria to Lemnos and then to Gallipoli.

RQMS Byron Charles Hobson was one of the troops and he kept a diary. From this we know firsthand that SS Ascot was sent to Gaba Tepe, north of Anzac Cove, where the actual task of landing the 13 Battalion troops from SS Ascot was a three-phased affair. The ship’s lifeboats were first lowered and hitched to the torpedo boat destroyer HMS Chelmer. Then the troops climbed the rope nets from SS Ascot onto the decks of HMS Chelmer, which gave them a fast run into the beach, and finally the troops disembarked into SS Ascot’s lifeboats, which they then rowed ashore. This took place under enemy fire, with covering fire from HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Chelmer.

Once ashore, the battalion went straight to the front line.

The two craft help us remember these events and the men involved. Lifeboat No 5 from SS Devanha is on display at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. It has been restored and stands silently as a memorial to the fallen. SS Ascot Lifeboat No 6 is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and still bears its bullet holes and other damage – scars of war that speak of the souls and spirits still haunting Gallipoli’s shores.

Search the complete Australian Register of Historic Vessels at anmm.gov.au/arhv NAME

DATE

BUILDER

TYPE

CODE

01

Ambrosia

1937

Unknown

Yacht

HV000640

02

Edelweiss

1908

J Hayes & Sons

Launch

HV000641

03

Saona

1936

Charles Lucas

Yacht

HV000642

04

Melaleuca

1943

Bernie Berkshire

Yacht

HV000643

05

Antares

1948

Andrew Riddell

Yacht

HV000644

06

Muriel

1917

Mitch Lacco

Couta boat

HV000645

07

Rhona H

1947

E A ‘Ned’ Jack

Fishing boat

HV000646

c1940s

Unknown

Ship’s cutter

HV000648

1910

Unknown

Launch

HV000649

08 HMAS 09

Sydney (III) ship’s cutter

Lotus

10 SS

Devanha lifeboat

c1905

Unknown

Lifeboat

HV000652

11 SS

Ascot lifeboat

1902

Napier & Miller

Lifeboat

HV000653

Unknown

Unknown

Aboriginal bark canoe

HV000665

12

Port Denison canoe

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All images courtesy of the boats’ owners.

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02

03

06

04

05

07

08

09

10

11

12

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As far from Europe as possible THE TALMET FAMILY FROM TALLINN

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In the aftermath of World War II, many displaced Europeans migrated to far-flung nations, including Australia, in search of a better future.

Curator Kim Tao profiles one such family, who fled Soviet rule to settle in Adelaide, building a new life from very little.

01 The Talmet family in Estonia, 1943.

All photographs reproduced courtesy Maie Barrow

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IN SEPTEMBER 1944, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Nazioccupied Estonia, Dagy Talmet (1915–1986) fled her hometown of Tallinn with a small suitcase in one hand and her two-yearold daughter Maie in the other. Her husband Osvald Talmet (1912–2004) was a pilot in the Estonian Air Force (then part of the German military forces), which had withdrawn to Germany ahead of the Soviet advance. Osvald knew that if his wife and daughter remained in Estonia, they were likely to be deported to a forced labour camp in Siberia. He arranged for them to be evacuated from Tallinn on the German hospital ship Moero.

In one of history’s great migrations, more than six million people have crossed the seas to settle in Australia. The museum’s tribute to all of them, The Welcome Wall, encourages people to recall and record their stories of coming to live in Australia

As Dagy did not want to leave on her own, she convinced her sister Olga to go with her. Olga was very practical and packed food and warm clothing for their escape. By the time they reached Tallinn Harbour the hospital ship was already full, carrying more than 1,000 wounded soldiers and civilians.

They boarded a smaller ship, Lapland, which formed part of a convoy that made a timely departure from Tallinn on the night of 21 September 1944. The next day the Soviets marched into the capital, re-occupying Estonia for nearly half a century.

(Estonia achieved full independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.).

During the night Lapland sailed south through the Baltic Sea and in the morning Dagy heard planes flying overhead.

She was accustomed to the sound, as Osvald always flew over their home in Tallinn to let her know that he had returned from each mission. As she went below deck, a number of Soviet planes dropped bombs on their convoy. Lapland managed to pull out of the way but Moero was hit and it sank, drowning more than 600 people – the majority of whom were Estonian refugees.

Lapland arrived safely into the German port city of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and as Dagy had papers to identify herself as the wife of an Air Force officer, she and Maie were permitted to travel on troop trains. With five other Air Force wives and their children, Dagy and Maie made their way across Germany, at times just 20 or 30 kilometres ahead of the front line. Where the railway tracks had been bombed out, they left the train and walked until they found another railway line, which would eventually take them into Bavaria in southeast Germany. They arrived late at night at a railway hotel, and the next morning Dagy opened the curtains to reveal a panorama of the Bavarian Alps. It was the most beautiful sight she had seen in a long time.

02

02 Maie and Dagy Talmet on the deck

of Oxfordshire in Adelaide, 1949.

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Dagy and Maie remained in Bavaria until the end of World War II, when they were put into a Displaced Persons (DP) camp first in Augsburg, and then Wielandshag, in the American zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Osvald, meanwhile, who had been taken as a prisoner of war, had no identification papers and no way of knowing where his wife and daughter were.

Dagy eventually managed to locate Osvald with the assistance of the Red Cross, and the family was reunited at Wielandshag.

Dagy and Maie made their way across Germany, at times just 20 or 30 kilometres ahead of the front line

Like many others in the DP camp, the Talmet family had hoped that when the war was over, the Soviets would withdraw from Estonia and they could return home. By 1946, however, they had realised that this was unlikely, and they aimed to get as far away from Europe, and Soviet influence, as possible.

Osvald applied to emigrate to America, Canada or Australia.

The American government didn’t favour applicants who had been in the German forces, while the Canadian government wanted young, single migrants. The Australian government was receptive to family groups and the ‘beautiful Balts’, with their blonde hair and blue eyes, were considered ideal immigrants who would blend in and help build Australia’s postwar population and workforce.

Osvald migrated to Australia first, travelling under a sponsored scheme that required him to work for the Australian government for two years in exchange for an assisted passage. He departed from Bremerhaven, Germany, on SS Svalbard and arrived in Sydney in October 1948. Osvald was sent to the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre near Wodonga, Victoria, and was given the choice of three assignments, the first of which was digging trenches for the new sewerage system in Adelaide. Fearing that the second and third assignments could be worse, Osvald chose to go to Adelaide.

03 Maie Talmet (second from left) at Woodside

Hostel with the doll her father gave her on arrival in Adelaide, 1949.

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Osvald waved at a bare sand hill and exclaimed to his wife, ‘I’ve just bought that block of land for our house!’

04

Dagy and Maie migrated the following year, having been placed in an Italian transit camp at Bagnoli, near Naples, before embarking for Adelaide on SS Oxfordshire. For Maie, now seven years old, the voyage through the Suez was a great adventure. Dagy bought a bunch of small bananas from Arab traders in the Red Sea and placed them under her bunk.

Maie, who had never seen a banana in her entire life, could not resist this sweet temptation. By the end of her mother’s two-hour English class, Maie had eaten all but one of the 200 bananas! She was rushed off to the ship’s hospital and given a large dose of castor oil.

Dagy and Maie arrived at Outer Harbor, Adelaide, in May 1949 and Osvald was there to welcome them, presenting a little doll to Maie across the deck of the ship. The family boarded a train for the Adelaide Hills and as they passed through Largs North, in Adelaide’s northwest, Osvald waved at a bare sand hill and exclaimed to his wife, ‘I’ve just bought that block of land for our house!’ When Dagy saw how isolated it was, she burst into tears.

In Adelaide Osvald lived in a tent in a work camp while Dagy and Maie spent several weeks at the Woodside Hostel.

Before long the family moved to Cheltenham, where they rented two rooms from the local postman. Maie started school at Woodville Primary in June 1949, not knowing any English, apart from the words to the song ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’, which she had been taught on board Oxfordshire.

By the end of the year she had come top of her class, having learnt English through total immersion at school.

04 Maie Talmet in front of the house her father

built, Largs North, 1950s.

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WELCOME WALL WINTER 2015

In 1951 the Talmet family moved into their new house at Largs North, which was built with the help of other Estonian migrants.

Osvald, who had completed his compulsory work for the government, found a job at General Motors Holden, while Dagy, who had been a weaver in Estonia, worked at ACTIL (Australian Cotton Textile Industries Limited) in Woodville. Osvald and Dagy, like so many migrants, were prepared to labour in the factories and sacrifice their own lifestyles to ensure that Maie and her younger brother Erik (born in Adelaide in 1958) could receive a better education.

Maie studied chemistry at the University of Adelaide, where she met her future husband, Kevin Barrow. In 1966 the couple moved to London and Maie worked as a research assistant to leading Australian chemist Sir Ronald Nyholm at University College London. They returned to Australia in 1973 and settled in Sydney. Following the birth of her two daughters, Anni and Kristi, Maie returned to work as a research assistant at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She completed a Masters degree in chemistry, studying fungal metabolites, and later worked in the Chancellery at UNSW, as executive assistant to the deputy principal.

05 05 Joint celebration for Osvald Talmet’s

50th birthday and Maie’s 20th birthday, Adelaide, 1962.

In 1994 Maie was attending an Estonian function when she got a tap on the shoulder from community elder Raivo Kalamae, who offered her a voluntary position at the Estonian Archives in Australia in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. Not knowing anything about the world of archives, she completed a Masters degree in information management at UNSW and was the archivist at Botany Bay City Council for 15 years. She has been the honorary archivist at the Estonian Archives for the past 20 years and enjoys preserving the heritage and culture of her homeland and introducing it to Australians.

Reflecting on her family’s life in Australia, Maie says, ‘When my father got here he had to borrow two shillings from a friend so that he could write and tell us that he’d actually arrived. While he was working here, every so often in a letter would be a one pound note he’d managed to save and send to us. We really started from nothing. And that’s why my mother got a job as fast as she could. I don’t think they would complain, I think they would say they had quite a good life here. But it was hard work and it was a hard life to start with.’

Maie registered her parents’ names on the Welcome Wall to honour their struggles and successes in Australia.

The Welcome Wall It costs just $150, or $290 for a couple, to register a name and honour your family’s arrival in this great country. We’d love to add your family’s name to The Welcome Wall, cast in bronze, and place your story on the online database at anmm.gov.au/ww. So please don’t hesitate to call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3777.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SNAPSHOTS OF TIME AND PLACE

READINGS WINTER 2015

Snapshots of time and place SEVEN CENTURIES OF MAPS

WHAT DO WE EXPECT OF A MAP? In an age of extremely precise surveying techniques and standardised printed maps, we might take for granted accuracy, comprehensiveness, scientific rigour, consistency of scale, the presence of compass indicators, and that the top of the map represents north.

We might not expect artistic skill or artistic licence, far less wit, whimsy and idiosyncrasy – but maps in former times often had these in abundance.

This large-scale, beautifully produced book covers some 700 years of maps and charts. Created or used by the government of the United Kingdom, they relate to much of the globe at various points in time, in particular Britain’s enemies (notably France and Germany) and its various trading partners and colonies. Many maps are unique, being either original manuscript creations or printed maps annotated by hand.

The book is divided into eight themed chapters: Early maps; Mapping the metropolis; The countryside; Theatres of war; Charting the seas; New worlds; Maps that witnessed history; and Worlds of imagination. Within each chapter, the maps are then placed in their historical and documentary context.

Some examples, particularly estate maps of the 17th to 19th centuries, are lavishly decorated works of art. The simplicity of others belies their importance: a few straight lines represent the hugely complex Normandy landings of 1944, and hindsight gives sinister weight to a stark sketch from 1942 of huts and a wood near Oswiecim – better known by its notorious German name, Auschwitz. Illustrating another brutal episode in human history is a map of a slave fort on an island in Gambia.

Large images and many smaller vignettes show maps full of engrossing and sometimes surprising detail. A map from 1675 depicts what might be the first image of Father Christmas in a sleigh pulled by reindeer and, in his familiar red and white outfit, leaning casually on the scale bar and apparently yarning with a polar bear. A British map from 1800 shows fanciful weaponry imagined but never put into practice – balloons dropping explosives on ships in the French harbour of Brest below.

Maps: their untold stories – Map treasures from the National Archives

By Rose Mitchell and Andrew James, published by Bloomsbury and the National Archives, London, 2014. Hardback, 256 pages, illustrations, references. RRP $65 (Members $58.50). Available at The Store or online store.anmm.gov.au.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SNAPSHOTS OF TIME AND PLACE

Publishing on demand dates back unexpectedly far, with an atlas in the 1670s being produced on a bespoke basis

01

‘We could easily have chosen to call the whole book “Maps that witnessed history”’, the authors note. The 100-odd maps that are reproduced are only a tiny fraction of the six million or so items held in the UK National Archives, but they represent eternal human concerns and activities: trade and conquest, exploration and colonisation, changes in urban landscapes, and disputes both great and small – between neighbours over fishing rights, grazing land and rabbit warrens, or between countries over their borders. There are references to Australia in early maps of the site of Adelaide and of nearby ‘Yanky-Lilly’ (Yankalilla), when the area was being surveyed in the 1830s. A sketch from 1833 is the first known Aboriginal map drawn in pen and ink on paper; its maker, Galliput, explained its meaning to a European, John Morgan, who recorded it in text below the sketch. The map depicts an Aboriginal encampment in Galliput’s country, what is now King George Sound in Western Australia.

Some maps are by famous hands, such as explorer David Livingstone and George Washington, who was a land surveyor and competent draughtsman before he became a soldier and statesman. There are maps created on various materials, such as parchment maps in which the distinctive shape of the animal’s neck can be seen, and even a map on a lady’s glove.

01 An 1837 map from the initial survey

of Adelaide and surrounds, possibly made

by William Light. It clearly shows the positions of the five squares that still characterise the city centre.

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READINGS WINTER 2015

02

Also included is one of the 1.75 million ‘escape and evasion’ maps printed on fabric for use by the UK armed forces in World War II. The authors state that, ‘Of the 35,000 members of the Allied armed services who escaped from or evaded capture during the war, it is estimated that about half used a fabric map to help find their way home’.

The diversity of maps is well represented, encompassing military and political maps, patriotic maps carrying overt or subtle propaganda, maps for marketing and satirical purposes, and a tactile map for blind people. In an 1899 tourist map of the UK and its railway lines, the surrounding waters bear pictures of principal sights, the whole looking rather like a souvenir tea towel. An interesting fact that emerges is that publishing on demand dates back unexpectedly far, with an atlas in the 1670s being produced on a bespoke basis, with specific sheets added to meet customer requests.

Many maps are unique, being either original manuscript creations or printed maps annotated by hand

As records of places in time, the authors note, most maps are out of date as soon as they are published; yet the maps reproduced in this book have a timeless attraction as records of human endeavour, imagination and achievement. The book should appeal broadly to anyone with an interest in art, history, geography or cartography. Its stories are well worth relating.

Janine Flew

02 A map of central London painted in ink onto

the leather of a lady’s glove, apparently designed as an aid to tourists visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > THE FIRST FLEET AT FIRST HAND

READINGS WINTER 2015

The First Fleet at first hand A SURGEON’S CANDID JOURNAL

IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS OF 13 May 1787, the small flotilla of British convict transports and colonisation vessels that would come to be known as the First Fleet departed England for Botany Bay in what is now Australia. Among the more than 1,400 people who embarked on the journey was Arthur Bowes Smyth, a physician from Essex who signed up as ship’s surgeon on the female convict transport Lady Penrhyn. Starting on 22 March 1787, the day he arrived in Portsmouth to join the fleet, Bowes Smyth kept a daily journal that only concluded when he arrived back in England two years later on 11 August 1789. Today, the original leather-bound volume of 238 pages is in the collection of the National Library of Australia, and provides a remarkable first-hand account of the First Fleet’s outbound voyage, the fledgling colony’s first 100 days in Australia, and Bowes Smyth’s return to the British Isles via Tahiti and China.

David Hill’s First Fleet Surgeon: The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth is an engaging, lavishly illustrated volume that brings Bowes Smyth’s writings vibrantly to life. Because Bowes Smyth was neither a convict nor a member of the governing and military classes that ruled the colony, his accounts of shipboard life and the first British foray on Australian soil are often frank and free of bias. For his part, Hill has made an effort to refrain from commenting on or interpreting Bowes Smyth’s account, preferring instead to ‘present Arthur Bowes Smyth as he presents himself in the journal’. Hill has been largely effective in this regard, with the result that Bowes Smyth’s often colourful language and anecdotal passages are able to shine through.

For example, Bowes Smyth notes with candour that promiscuity among the Lady Penrhyn’s crew and the vessel’s female convicts was an issue even before the fleet departed England, and subsequently devolved into a ‘scene of debauchery and riot’ following the landing of the fleet at Port Jackson.

First Fleet Surgeon – The Voyage of Arthur Bowes Smyth

By David Hill, published by the National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT, 2015.

Paperback, 210 pages, illustrations, bibliography, index.

ISBN 9780642278623.

RRP $48.00 (Members $43.20).

Available at The Store or online store.anmm.gov.au

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READINGS WINTER 2015

Bowes Smyth’s criticism was not restricted to sailors and convicts, however, and he was quick to point out perceived inadequacies in Governor Arthur Phillip’s seemingly authoritarian and ineffective approach to administering the colony. He records Phillip’s ‘harangue’ to the convicts immediately following the colony’s formal declaration, which included instructions that men were to be fired upon by sentries if they attempted to fraternise with the women, and that anyone who failed to work would be denied food.

Bowes Smyth derides this as just one example of the colony’s overall ‘state of anarchy and confusion’, and places the blame squarely on Phillip’s mismanagement and the general ‘discontent and jealousy … evidently seen amongst the different heads of the settlement’.

While the socio-politics of the First Fleet and Port Jackson colony are notable themes within Bowes Smyth’s writings, his day-to-day observations as physician to convicts, crewmen and colonists figure prominently in the diary.

Among his many descriptions of medical incidents and treatments, outbreaks of disease, and births and deaths, Bowes Smith provides a brief but stomach-churning account of his efforts to remove a parasitic ‘Jiggar Worm’ (sand flea) that had burrowed into his foot. Considerable attention is also given to descriptions of the many landscapes and natural ‘curiosities’ he encountered during his travels. These include a number of delightful sketches and watercolour illustrations of specific locations, and examples of flora and fauna that appear in his journal. Bowes Smyth even dabbles in anthropology, describing and sketching latte stones on the island of Guam in the Northern Mariana Islands, and observing that they reminded him of the large monolithic stone structures of England’s Stonehenge.

03

Because Bowes Smyth was neither a convict nor a member of the colonial ruling classes, his accounts are often frank and free of bias

Hill complements Smyth’s drawings and paintings with an impressive selection of contemporary artworks – many of which were also sourced from the National Library’s collections – that richly illustrate various themes and subjects throughout the book. An object held by the Australian National Maritime Museum is also featured: The Charlotte Medal, engraved by convict Thomas Barrett, whose execution on 27 February 1788 was chronicled in Bowes Smyth’s journal. The Charlotte Medal is widely considered Australia’s first colonial work of art.

Barrett is also the holder of another, more dubious, ‘first’: he was the first person to be executed in the new settlement.

In an effort to lend context to Bowes Smyth’s story, Hill has included several breakout boxes throughout the text.

Often a page in length and well illustrated, these cover a wide array of topics, ranging from the tea trade to tattoos.

03 Journal entry by Bowes Smyth recording

the names, ages, crimes and sentences of the women aboard Lady Penrhyn.

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READINGS WINTER 2015

Context is also provided through the inclusion of a two-page feature at the beginning of each chapter that highlights an excerpt from Bowes Smyth’s journal. These passages, depicted in their original manuscript form on one page and fully transcribed on the page opposite, effectively summarise and set the tone for the narratives that follow.

One shortcoming is the book’s treatment of the Indigenous populations the British encountered when they first arrived at Botany Bay and Port Jackson. Hill briefly describes Bowes Smyth’s interaction with ‘local Aboriginal people’, but fails to identify the specific cultural groups concerned (such as the Gadigal nation). This oversight may be due to Hill’s decision not to comment on or interpret the journal’s text, but nonetheless seems odd for an author well versed in Australia’s contactperiod history.

04

Another issue is the referencing used in the volume. While the bibliography is comprehensive, it lists mainly popular books and websites. Scholarly texts, such as journal articles or monographs, are noticeably scarce, as are other primary archival sources.

There is no system of citation included that connects the book’s text and bibliography, an oversight that seems inconsistent given the comprehensive list that identifies the page number and source for each of the volume’s many illustrations.

Despite these issues, First Fleet Surgeon is a fine addition to the vast body of work – including Hill’s earlier volume 1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet – that has been written about the first days of colonisation in Australia. Although by no means an academic text, it is nonetheless useful as a reference for those unfamiliar with the First Fleet, Australia’s first contacts with Indigenous people, the early colonial period and shipboard life during the late 18th century. It is accessible, entertaining, visually compelling, very readable, and suited for scholars and general readers alike.

Dr James Hunter Arthur Bowes Smyth’s complete journal is available in digital format on the National Library’s website.

04 The entry for Wednesday 27 February 1788

records the hanging of a prisoner called Barrett. Bowes Smyth notes, ‘He was the most undaunted of any Man I ever saw in a similar horrid predicament’.

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CURRENTS WINTER 2015

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > CURRENTS

01

A royal visit This February we were delighted to welcome some very special visitors, Their Majesties King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway, to the museum.

The royal couple visited as part of a special symposium celebrating Australia and Norway working together for the protection of Antarctica. They took some time to tour the museum and to inspect the beautiful ketch Kathleen Gillett, Norway’s Bicentennial gift to Australia.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

02

Special guests Museum Chairman Peter Dexter (left) is pictured with adventurer Tim Jarvis am and the Hon Alexandra Shackleton, who were special guests at the opening of Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica.

Ms Shackleton, granddaughter of Sir Ernest Shackleton, has spent the past 25 years nurturing the legacy of the grandfather she never knew. Now representations of Shackleton and his crew have been brought to life in the exhibition using augmented reality technology more commonly seen in 3D games such as World of Warcraft. By pointing an iPad at a target on a diorama in the exhibition, visitors can see animated figures retrace important parts of Shackleton’s trip. The exhibition also features century-old artefacts, including diaries, hand-drawn maps, specimens collected by the expeditioners, and equipment and clothing that they used. Insights by Tim Jarvis, who re-enacted parts of Shackleton’s journey, take visitors into Shackleton’s world as seen through the eyes of a modern-day adventurer. Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

03

Mystery ship identified Naval historian John Jeremy has identified the dazzle-painted merchant steamship pictured on page 19 of Signals 110 as the Federal Steam Navigation Company’s Somerset, which was launched in 1918 and visited Sydney in 1919 on its maiden voyage to Australia. It was Flagship of the Anniversary Regatta that year, and it seems that the photo was taken that day.

Somerset was completed on 24 October 1918 and two days later was requisitioned by the British Government as a transport under the liner requisition scheme. It served in this role until 3 June 1919, when it entered commercial service. It was requisitioned again on 6 August 1940.

On 11 May 1941 it was torpedoed on a voyage from Buenos Aires to Liverpool. The torpedo broke the ship in half – the stern sank immediately but the bow stayed afloat and was then sunk by HMAS Alisma. No lives were lost. Photograph Samuel J Hood Studio ANMM Collection 00024569

01

02

03

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > MEMENTOES OF SACRIFICE

FOUNDATION WINTER 2015

Mementoes of sacrifice

GIFTS ENHANCE THE NATIONAL MARITIME COLLECTION The museum recently established the Australian National Maritime Foundation, a charity that aims to raise funds and receive gifts and donations to develop and conserve the National Maritime Collection. A generous bequest has enabled us to buy a World War I military medal, one of the few artefacts associated with the lost Australian submarine HMAS AE1.

01

RECENTLY THE FOUNDATION received a significant gift from a Member, the late Mr Basil Jenkins, who had been a keen supporter of the museum for 20 years. With part of his donation, the museum was able to buy a medal impressed with the name of George Dance, the submariner to whom it was posthumously awarded.

Signalman George Dance was born on 5 November 1887 in Berkshire, England, the son of a police inspector. He joined the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class in 1904, and in September 1913 was drafted for submarine training. When the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) decided to develop a submarine arm, he volunteered for service and was lent to the RAN for three years to serve on Australia’s first submarine, HMAS AE1.

He died, aged 27, when AE1 was lost, the cause unknown, off New Guinea on 14 September 1914. He left a wife, Annie (née Annie Eliza Trickett); they had married that January, just a few weeks before George left on his final posting.

The 1914–15 Star was awarded in 1918 to those who served in various theatres of war between 5 August 1914 and 31 December 1915. George Dance’s 1914–15 Star is one of only four known sets of items relating to the crew of AE1. Two others – the medals, death plaques and related letters of Lieutenant Leopold Scarlett and Able Seaman Frederick William Woodland – are also in the Australian National Maritime Museum’s collection. The medals of Petty Officer Stoker John Joseph Moloney are with the Australian War Memorial.

George Dance’s medal represents and acknowledges the service of just one of the 35 men lost on AE1

01 George Dance’s 1914–15 Star is one of only

four known sets of items relating to the crew of HMAS AE1. ANMM Collection

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FOUNDATION WINTER 2015

George Dance’s medal represents and acknowledges the service of just one of the 35 men lost on AE1. We hope that through the foundation, more heritage items can be acquired and preserved for the nation.

The Australian National Maritime Foundation is a registered charity with Deductible Gift Recipient Category 1 status, meaning it can receive donations from individuals, other foundations, and public and private ancillary funds.

The foundation plays a crucial role in helping the museum to acquire important objects for all Australians and visitors to enjoy, such as heritage items that might otherwise disappear into a private collection or overseas. Donations boost our reserves, giving us the chance to respond quickly when rare items of importance to our national maritime history become available. In giving to the foundation in this way, donors are assured they are leaving a legacy to preserve the nation’s maritime heritage.

02

For more information about donating or leaving a bequest to the Foundation, please contact Andrew Markwell on 02 9298 3777 or email amarkwell@anmm.gov.au.

02 George Dance as pictured in the Penny War

Weekly of 17 October 1914.

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > SHARING THE COLLECTION

TRANSMISSIONS WINTER 2015

Sharing the collection ON GOOGLE CULTURAL INSTITUTE

01

IN MARCH 2015 the Australian National Maritime Museum was among 14 major Australian museums, archives and galleries to join Google Cultural Institute – the world’s biggest online museum.

The Cultural Institute was founded by Google in 2011 as a not-for-profit initiative, beginning with the Google Art Project.

Its aim was simple: to use Google’s technology to help cultural organisations showcase and share their riches online, making them accessible to the widest possible audience.

Through the one online platform visitors can search and explore high-resolution images of artworks and artefacts from collections around the globe. So far, more than 700 international museums have joined, contributing over 6 million digitised collections items, 600 online exhibitions and even virtual tours made possible with Google’s Street View technology.

We selected 236 of our own collection highlights for the launch, showcasing the breadth and diversity of the National Maritime Collection – from paintings, manuscripts, maps and photographs, to artefacts, costumes and printed ephemera.

Objects such as The Charlotte Medal, recognised as Australia’s earliest colonial artwork, and our rare Blaeu celestial globe can now be explored in incredible detail thanks to Google’s custom-built zoom viewer.

A selection of our artworks was also captured using Google’s ‘gigapixel’ camera, taking ultra high-resolution photographs that reveal details previously only discoverable with a magnifying glass – brushstrokes, ink smudges and even paper fibres.

01 The Charlotte Medal. ANMM Collection

00045213

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TRANSMISSIONS WINTER 2015

02

But the platform has more than just collection objects; Google’s online exhibitions help bring the stories to life.

We launched with three exhibits that highlight different aspects of Australia’s connection to the sea: Australia’s first naval battle of World War I between HMAS Sydney and the German raider SMS Emden; the immigration story of Croatian artist Gina Sinozich; and life on Sydney Harbour in the early 20th century, as seen through the lens of photographer Samuel J Hood.

02 Google’s ‘gigapixel’ team with the art

camera, photographing a painting at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Photograph Andrew Frolows/ANMM

The Australian launch of Google Cultural Institute was held at Parliament House in Canberra on 3 March 2015. Staff from the participating institutions, including the Australian War Memorial and the National Museum of Australia, joined with Google Australia and New Zealand’s Managing Director Maile Carnegie and Attorney General and Minister for the Arts, the Hon George Brandis qc, to celebrate this partnership between culture and technology.

The Digital Outreach team will continue creating and sharing our content on Google Cultural Institute, allowing many more people to discover and access Australia’s maritime heritage and culture.

Michelle Mortimer for the Digital Outreach team Explore the collection at google.com/culturalinstitute

/anmmuseum #anmm /anmmuseum /anmmuseum #anmm anmm.gov.au/blog

SIGNALS > NUMBER 111 > THE STORE

SEE WHAT’S IN STORE SHACKLETON’S EPIC –

BY TIM JARVIS In 2013, explorer Tim Jarvis and five comrades set out to replicate Ernest Shackleton’s gruelling journey of survival from Elephant Island to and across South Georgia.

This is their story.

SOUTH WITH ENDURANCE – PHOTOGRAPHS

BY FRANK HURLEY These exquisite reproductions include all of Hurley’s most famous photographs and many others previously unseen.

$45.00 / $40.50

Members

$35.00 / $31.50

Members

STILL LIFE: INSIDE THE ANTARCTIC HUTS OF SCOTT AND SHACKLETON A unique and hauntingly beautiful photographic study of the huts used as expedition bases by Antarctic explorers Scott and Shackleton.

$85.00 / $76.50

ANZAC TREASURES: THE GALLIPOLI COLLECTION OF THE AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL This landmark publication commemorates the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign.

$69.95 / $62.95 Members

Members

SHACKLETON: DEATH OR GLORY DVD Discovery Channel documentary in which adventurer Tim Jarvis and his companions successfully re-enact Shackleton’s historic journey of survival in Antarctica.

$49.95 / $44.95

SHACKLETON TANKARD Bone china half-pint tankard mug designed by Susan Rose to commemorate Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–16.

In a presentation box.

$49.95 / $44.95 Members

Members

SOUTH: SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON’S GLORIOUS EPIC OF THE ANTARCTIC DVD Photographed by Frank Hurley, South is the film record of Shackleton’s heroic but ill-starred attempt to cross Antarctica.

PENGUIN SCARF Blue penguin scarf in 100 percent cotton 90 x 180 cm

$18.95 / $17.05 Members

$39.95 / $35.95 Members

Shop online at store.anmm.gov.au 9.30 am–5 pm 7 days a week | 02 9298 3698 | fax orders to 02 9298 3675 thestore@anmm.gov.au | Members discounts | Friendly service

Books DVDs & CDs Brassware Models Gifts Prints Posters Toys Shirts Hats Scarves Souvenirs

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SIGNALS > NUMBER 115

SIGNALS quarterly Signals ISSN 1033-4688 Editor Janine Flew Staff photographer Andrew Frolows Design & production Austen Kaupe Printed in Australia by Pegasus Print Group.

Material from Signals may be reproduced, but only with the editor’s permission.

Councillors Mr Paul Binsted The Hon Ian Campbell Mr Robert Clifford ao The Hon Peter Collins am rfd qc ranr (nsw) Mr Shane Simpson am Rear Admiral Stuart Mayer csc and Bar The Hon Margaret White ao

Editorial and advertising enquiries Janine Flew 02 9298 3777 signals@anmm.gov.au Deadline mid-January, April, July, October for issues March, June, September, December

Foundation partner ANZ

Comments or questions about Signals content?

Call the editor 02 9298 3777 email signals@anmm.gov.au Signals is online Search all issues from No 1, October 1986, to the present at anmm.gov.au/signals Signals back issues Back issues $4 each or 10 for $30 Extra copies of current issue $4.95 Call The Store 02 9298 3698 Australian National Maritime Museum Open daily except Christmas Day 9.30 am to 5 pm (6 pm in January) 2 Murray Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia.

Phone 02 9298 3777.

The Australian National Maritime Museum is a statutory authority of the Australian Government.

Become a museum Member Benefits include four issues of Signals per year; free museum entry; discounts on events and purchases; and more. See anmm.gov.au or phone 02 9298 3644. Corporate memberships also available.

ANMM council Chairman Mr Peter Dexter am Director Mr Kevin Sumption

/anmmuseum #anmm /anmmuseum /anmmuseum #anmm anmm.gov.au/blog

Major partners Nine Entertainment Returned and Services League of Australia (Queensland Branch) Partners Accor’s Darling Harbour Hotels Angove Antarctica Flights Antarctic Heritage Trust Australian Pacific Touring Pty Ltd Douglas Fabian Productions Foxtel History Channel Laissez-Faire Lloyds Register Asia Royal Wolf Holdings Ltd Southern Cross Austereo Sydney by Sail Pty Ltd Founding patrons Alcatel Australia ANL Limited Ansett Airfreight Bovis Lend Lease BP Australia Bruce & Joy Reid Foundation Doyle’s Seafood Restaurant Howard Smith Limited James Hardie Industries National Australia Bank PG, TG & MG Kailis P&O Nedlloyd Ltd Telstra Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics Westpac Banking Corporation Zim Shipping Australasia

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Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica

War at Sea: The Navy in WWI

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Painting for Antarctica: Wendy Sharpe and Bernard Ollis follow Shackleton

Australian National Maritime Museum Partners 2015

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