Signals, issue 119 by Australian National Maritime Museum

SIGNALS quarterly NUMBER 119 JUNE • JULY • AUGUST 2017

BATAVIA SHIPWRECKED A story in stitch

MARITIME ARCHAEOLOGY The wreck of the Jenny Lind

GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT Remembering HMAS Perth and USS Houston

ANMM.GOV.AU $9.95

ANMM.GOV.AU

Contents WINTER 2017

Acknowledgment of country The Australian National Maritime Museum acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the bamal (earth) and badu (waters) on which we work. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the land and waters throughout Australia and pay our respects to them and their cultures, and to elders past and present. The words bamal and badu are spoken in the Sydney region’s Eora language. Supplied courtesy of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council. Cultural warning Warning: People of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent should be aware that Signals may contain names, images, video, voices, objects and works of people who are deceased. Signals may also contain links to sites that may use content of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people now deceased.

3 BEARINGS From the director 5 GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT Remembering the loss of HMAS Perth and USS Houston, 75 years on 12 THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND Exploring a 19th-century wreck on the Great Barrier Reef 19 A FIESTA AFLOAT The Australian Wooden Boat Festival 2017 22 THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY A tragic story of mutiny and murder told in stitch 30 THE HARTOG PLATE Reflections on a historic piece of pewter 33 RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP Behind the scenes at Sydney’s Port Botany container terminal 39 INSPIRING SAILORS Inviting nominations for the Australian Sailing Hall of Fame 41 MESSAGE TO MEMBERS AND MEMBERS WINTER EVENTS Your calendar of activities, talks, tours and excursions afloat 51 MEMBER PROFILE Fairlie Clifton: the sea in her blood 54 WINTER EXHIBITIONS Wildlife Photographer of the Year; the Hartog Plate; Clash of the Carriers documentary film 61 MARITIME HERITAGE AROUND AUSTRALIA Holbrook Submarine Museum, NSW 68 FOUNDATION The generosity of donors enriches the National Maritime Collection 74 COLLECTIONS A unique set of WWI medals; Indigenous fire sticks re-imagined by contemporary artists 83 AUSTRALIAN REGISTER OF HISTORIC VESSELS Researching the stories behind the vessels 89 TALES FROM THE WELCOME WALL The Chinese family that founded a commercial dynasty 95 READINGS Revisiting Persuasion; 1787; Stories from the Sandstone; The Girl who Stole Stockings 108 CURRENTS Endeavour refit; model ship expo; Amundsen exhibition launch 114 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We recognise the museum’s principal sponsors

Cover: The stern of Batavia – a detail from textile artist Melinda Piesse’s epic Batavia Tapestry, currently on display at the museum. Image Kristina Kingston, courtesy Melinda Piesse

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BEARINGS

Bearings FROM THE DIRECTOR

THE MUSEUM’S European Navigators gallery is framed by the formidable 1.3 tonne Bower anchor recovered from the wreck of HMS Sirius in 1986. HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet, was wrecked on the reef at Slaughter Bay, Norfolk Island, on 19 March 1790. Its anchor is a powerful link between the galleries of the ANMM and Norfolk island’s unique convict history. Over the years our conservation team, led by Agata Rostek-Robak, has worked closely with the museums on Norfolk Island, particularly working on the 800-plus objects recovered from the reef. However, in recent years the ANMM’s support of Norfolk Island’s precious heritage has expanded to provide advice on ways to help strengthen the island’s cultural tourist economy. Since opening our galleries in 1991 the Australian National Maritime Museum has welcomed more than 14 million visitors. Many of these visitors are domestic and international cultural tourists – those of us who travel specifically to participate in art, heritage or museum experiences. Worldwide, cultural tourism is now thought to make up over a third of all tourism and is recognised as a major financial contributor to many local,

01 Kingston Pier, Slaughter Bay, Emily Bay

(extreme right) and the Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area on Norfolk Island. Image courtesy Heritage Management, Norfolk Island Regional Council

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BEARINGS

regional and national economies. The ANMM is an integral part of Sydney’s cultural tourist economy and over the years has developed significant tourism marketing, product development and brand expertise. In recognition of this, two years ago I began to help with the cultural tourism strategy of the Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historic Area (KAVHA) on Norfolk Island. Norfolk Island is more than 1,400 kilometres east of mainland Australia in the South Pacific Ocean. Archaeological evidence suggests that before Captain James Cook sited Norfolk Island on 10 October 1774, Polynesian seafarers had occupied as early as the 12th century. This represents the westernmost extent of Polynesian migration and is the island’s earliest known human habitation. In 1788, the first of two convict settlements began, then in 1856 the Pitcairn Island descendants of the Bounty mutineers were resettled on the island. Covering 250 hectares, today the KAVHA site includes a spectacular group of Georgianera buildings from the second convict settlement, with many modified during the Pitcairn period. These are surrounded by evocative ruins set against the stunning beaches of Emily Bay and Slaughter Bay. So it’s not surprising that in 2010, KAVHA, along with ten other Australian convict-era sites, was inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage list. The population of Norfolk Island is approximately 1,900, with many working in the tourism industry. Each year around 20,000 tourists arrive on the island, a figure that is steadily increasing, with cruise ship arrivals predicted to grow significantly following the completion of the $13 million upgrade to Cascade Pier – so the current tourism outlook for Norfolk Island is bright. The Georgian architecture, serene landscape and compelling stories found at KAVHA make it a must-visit experience for all tourists to the island. So, working closely with the Council of Elders representatives and heritage tourist experts, we have begun the exciting task of developing a new cultural tourism strategy for KAVHA. This ensures that the historic site remains accessible and usable by locals on the island and at the same time looks to actively encourage the development of new tourist ventures, both within the site and across the island. Of course taking precedence over all is the need to ensure that the unique, remote and breathtaking KAVHA site is protected and preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.

Kevin Sumption

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

Guardians of Sunda Strait

REMEMBERING HMAS PERTH AND USS HOUSTON 01

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Sunda Strait, one of the fiercest naval battles of World War II, which claimed both HMAS Perth and USS Houston. For the past three years, Honorary Research Associate Lindsey Shaw has been researching, selecting and organising artefacts, documents and photographs from multiple sources in Australia and the USA. The resulting exhibition, Guardians of Sunda Strait, tells the story of these warships and their survivors.

01 Before its deployment to Asian waters,

HMAS Perth saw duty in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Egypt was exotic and exciting for the young Australian sailors, nd photographs to send back home were a priority. Naval Heritage Collection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

ON THE NIGHT of 28 February–1 March 1942, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth and the American heavy cruiser USS Houston fought bravely and defiantly against overwhelming odds – outnumbered and outgunned by a large advancing Japanese naval force – as they approached Sunda Strait, a narrow sea passage between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Both ships sank that dreadful night in the Battle of Sunda Strait. The exhibition Guardians of Sunda Strait – the WWII loss of HMAS Perth and USS Houston premiered at the Houston Public Library’s Julia Ideson Building in Houston, Texas, on 1 March. This is one of three exhibitions the ANMM has developed about the Battle of Sunda Strait as part of our ‘War and Peace in the Pacific 75’ commemorative program supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund. Also in March, the museum joined the USA, Britain and The Netherlands in remembering the ABDA (American– British–Dutch–Australian) Forces with an exhibition at the Museum Bahari in Jakarta, Indonesia. Four panels present HMAS Perth’s role in ABDA, the Battle of Sunda Strait and the work of our archaeological team. And running concurrently with the exhibition in Houston is an eight-banner version displayed aboard the last World-War-I-era dreadnought battleship, USS Texas. The banners will then travel around the USA over several years, visiting museum warships affiliated with the Historic Naval Ships Association. Perth and Houston had very different beginnings to their naval careers. Perth started life in 1934 as the British Royal Navy’s Leander class cruiser HMS Amphion, and was transferred

02 In September 1944, US submarines

torpedoed a convoy of Japanese cargo transports in the South China Sea – unaware that POWs were aboard, including Perth men. Left to die by the Japanese, prisoners clung desperately to wooden rafts. US submarines Pampanito, Sealion, Barb and Queenfish rescued 159 oil-sodden, exhausted, starved and dehydrated Allied POWs, sharing their clothes, food and bunks with them. US Naval History and Heritage Command

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

to the Royal Australian Navy in June 1939 and proudly renamed HMAS Perth. USS Houston was commissioned into the United States Navy in June 1930 and headed to the Philippines in January 1931 as flagship of the US Asiatic Fleet. Houston’s pre-war service was filled with routine training operations plus a period protecting American nationals and US interests in Shanghai during the 1931–33 conflict between China and Japan. Back in the USA by late 1933, Houston spent the next seven years on fleet manoeuvres and exercises – and on special cruises for President Franklin D Roosevelt, Houston’s most famous passenger. He sailed four times on recreational cruises between 1934 and 1939, earning the cruiser the nickname ‘the presidential taxi’. With the president aboard, Houston visited the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska and the Galapagos Islands. In November 1940, USS Houston left America for what was to be the final time and returned to the now-aging Asiatic Fleet.

The men from Perth and Houston formed a close and enduring relationship through their common experiences

HMAS Perth’s pre-war service was very short. It had been intended that, once the crew had taken possession of the ship from the Royal Navy, they would embark upon a three-month voyage home to Australia via New York, the West Indies, the Panama Canal, the west coast of America and the South Pacific. The outbreak of war with Germany in August 1939 changed these plans significantly. A successful 12-day visit to New York as Australia’s representative at the World’s Fair was followed by a longer stay than anticipated in the West Indies. From August 1939 to February 1940, Perth was on an active war footing, undertaking patrol and escort duties in the West Indies and across the Caribbean and Western Atlantic.

03 During Perth’s visit to New York for the

World’s Fair, a contingent of the crew marched as part of the fair’s ‘Australia Day’. Naval Heritage Collection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

The battle-scarred remains of HMAS Perth and USS Houston lie in Banten Bay off the north-west tip of the Indonesian island of Java

Arriving in Sydney in March 1940 to a tumultuous public welcome, Perth took up duties in Australian waters until ordered to the Mediterranean in November. Patrol work, troop transportation and escort duties with the Royal Navy’s 7th Cruiser Squadron followed. HMAS Perth took part in the Battle of Matapan, evacuated troops from Greece and Crete, aided the Syrian campaign and survived several aerial attacks, although four men were killed when the forward boiler room received a direct hit from a Stuka bomber. In November 1940 Houston was heading up the Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines, when the brutal Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 flung America into war. It was immediately deployed to convoy protection and reconnaissance as part of the ABDA naval force in a valiant effort to stop the Japanese advance through the East Indies (Indonesia). Many of these ships were outdated and poorly equipped, and communication within the multinational force was poor. They were at a major disadvantage against the stronger, more modern Japanese fleet. Having returned to Australia from the Mediterranean in August 1941 for much-needed repairs and respite for the crew, it wasn’t long before Perth was sent north to join the ABDA force. In February 1942 the commanding officers of Perth and Houston met for the first time, not knowing the magnitude of what lay ahead for them, their ships and their crew. On 4 February 1942, a group of ABDA ships sailed to intercept a Japanese force in the Makassar Strait but were attacked by Japanese bombers. A direct hit on Houston’s aft eight-inch gun turret killed 48 men and disabled the turret. On 27 February

04 The sinking of USS Houston was a

propaganda win for the Japanese, as shown in this postcard. They had claimed to have sunk the ship at least four times in previous months; this time it was real. Courtesy private lender

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

the eight-hour Battle of the Java Sea sank or crippled two Dutch cruisers and three destroyers. Both Houston and Perth survived, but the ABDA fleet was in disarray. On the night of 28 February the two ships sailed for Sunda Strait. They ran into most of the Japanese Western Invasion Convoy in Banten (Bantam) Bay – more than a dozen cruisers, destroyers and smaller ships guarding 60 transports. In the ensuing battle Perth and Houston were repeatedly bombarded; both were struck by torpedoes and sank. Men abandoned ship as best they could, swimming for the distant shores of Java, but more than a thousand Houston and Perth men died that night. For the remainder, their battle to survive had started. Many succumbed to their injuries; others struggled in the water for endless hours. Most made it to land or were picked up by the Japanese, but others were swept by strong merciless currents through the Sunda Strait and never seen again.

Men captured by the Japanese were interrogated; some were killed. They were moved from prison camp to prison camp over the next three years and put to work building the Burma–Thai railway, along with 60,000 other Allied POWs and some 250,000 Asian labourers. Some were sent directly to Japan to work in coal and iron ore mines or on the docks loading and unloading Japanese ships. They endured the ordeal of filth, privation, sparse rations, disease and brutal punishment. They were bombed by their own planes and torpedoed at sea, but showed a strength of mind, spirit, humour and camaraderie that kept them alive through the darkest periods of their lives. In the end, only about 25 per cent of the men who had fought at the Battle of Sunda Strait made it home. The first HMAS Perth survivors returned to Australia in late 1944. A handful of them were being transported from Singapore to Japan in the Japanese freighter Rakuyoˉ Maru when it was torpedoed by a US submarine in the South China Sea on 12 September 1944. They were rescued by US submarines patrolling the area, taken to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands for hospital treatment and then flown to Brisbane, Queensland, for debriefing and further treatment. The remaining Perth survivors were repatriated when the prison camps were liberated at the end of the war. Evacuation of USS Houston survivors began on 28 August 1945, in planes sent in by the American Army’s Air Transport Command via Karachi (then part of India). They were flown direct to Washington, DC, for hospital checks, treatment and debriefing before being sent home.

Prisoners of war endured the ordeal of filth, privation, sparse rations, disease and brutal punishment

05 A banner version of the exhibition will

be travelling through the USA to historic warships. First stop is the mighty battleship USS Texas. Despite its size, it was a tight fit for the eight banners. Image Lindsey Shaw

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

Life would never be quite the same again for the Perth and Houston survivors. Some chose to re-enlist in their navy, while others returned to civilian life. For some the choice was made for them when they were declared unfit for service due to the injuries – physical or psychological – they received during the war. Of Perth’s company of 686, including airmen and civilian personnel, only 218 returned to Australia. Of the 1,068 sailors, marines and airmen aboard Houston, only 261 returned to the United States.

Guardians of Sunda Strait is one of three exhibitions the ANMM has produced recognising this historic event from World War II

The battle-scarred remains of HMAS Perth and USS Houston lie in Banten Bay off the north-west tip of the Indonesian island of Java at the approaches to Sunda Strait. Perth lies on the sandy bottom at about 35 metres (115 feet) and Houston on a silty seabed at about 30 metres (98 feet). Advances in underwater exploration – especially the invention of scuba gear – led to the discovery of the wreck sites in the 1960s. Since then, they have been popular for technical diving, for history enthusiasts and for taking souvenirs.

06 The entrance to the exhibition, with its

main panel by graphic designer Virginia Buckingham. Image Lindsey Shaw

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GUARDIANS OF SUNDA STRAIT

Since 1974 salvage companies have removed brass and bronze from these and other wartime wrecks, but in 2013 Indonesian dive companies alerted Australian, American, British and Dutch authorities to the damage being done by international commercial salvage companies. Salvagers use divers operating from barges equipped with crane-operated grabs. With this equipment, they are removing entire wrecks from the Java Sea and surrounds for the scrap metal value. Australian, Indonesian and US authorities are now working together to formulate a cultural underwater heritage plan for these World War II ships, hoping to prevent further violations. The men from Perth and Houston formed a close and enduring relationship through their common experiences of the harrowing sea battle followed by imprisonment. Physical reminders of their sacrifice include memorials and the naming of ships in their honour. More significant are the ceremonies of remembrance held in Australia and America each year. The ships and their men are remembered at Anzac Day in Australia and Veterans’ Day in the United States, and both countries have services on the 1 March anniversary. The Australian National Maritime Museum is honoured to give voice to the men of HMAS Perth and USS Houston and their families through Guardians of Sunda Strait.

07 The family of USS Houston survivor John

D Reilly at the USS Houston monument during the memorial service held in Sam Houston Park. 08 For the very first time, the family of

USS Houston survivor Albert ‘Red’ Krekan saw his signature from his time as a prisoner of war. It was an emotional moment for them indeed. The calico undershirt bearing the signature belonged to Private Stanley Herron of the 2/20 Australian Battalion, who was captured on Java. He laboured on the Burma– Thai railway and in the coal mines of Japan. Instead of wearing this shirt, on it he gathered the names and addresses of his fellow POWs, including some Perth and Houston survivors. He took it home after the war, and his wife embroidered the fading names. The shirt is on loan from the Australian War Memorial.

Guardians of Sunda Strait is on at the Julia Ideson Building, 550 McKinney Street, Houston, Texas, until 30 June. The former ambassador to Australia, Tom Schieffer, gave an address at a private dinner after the exhibition opening in Houston. To read it, see anmm.gov.au/sundastrait

All images Lindsey Shaw

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

The wreck of the Jenny Lind THE KENN REEFS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Maritime archaeologists affiliated with the Australian National Maritime Museum and Silentworld Foundation recently led an expedition to the Australian Coral Sea Territory to conduct an archaeological survey of historic shipwrecks lost at Kenn Reefs during the 19th century. James Hunter and Renee Malliaros report on their findings.

01 01 A single Admiralty pattern anchor is located

on the reef top close to the mound of iron bar stock. It is of British manufacture and its dimensions indicate it would have been used as Jenny Lindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stream anchor. Image Renee Malliaros/Silentworld Foundation.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

THE KENN REEFS EXPEDITION continues a collaboration between the museum and the Silentworld Foundation that began in 2009. No fewer than eight vessels are reported to have wrecked at Kenn Reefs between 1828 and 1884. Most grounded relatively close to one another on the largest of the southernmost reefs in the chain, as it was located within an oft-travelled shipping route, but poorly charted until the mid-19th century.

No fewer than eight vessels are reported to have wrecked at Kenn Reefs between 1828 and 1884

Kenn Reefs are located outside the extreme eastern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and comprise a large coral seamount reef system created by part of a submerged geological feature called the Kenn Plateau. The complex covers some 40 square kilometres and comprises four main reefs that together have the appearance of a backwards capital ‘L’. The sea breaks over all of the reefs in the complex at high water, and the tops of all save one are exposed at half-tide. Four sand cays are present at Kenn Reefs, three of which are at least partially exposed at high tide. All known historic shipwrecks at Kenn Reefs occurred near Observatory Cay, which is the second largest of the group and also features the second-highest point (approximately two metres) above sea level in the entire reef complex. Nearly all recorded vessel losses at Kenn Reefs occurred in the 1850s, as that decade witnessed increased migration to Australia and burgeoning trade between Australia’s major port cities (Sydney and Melbourne) and destinations in the Indonesian archipelago, India and Great Britain. Many northbound ships followed the ‘Outer Route’, a course that took them away from navigational hazards associated with the Great Barrier Reef, but also put them in the potential path of a number of smaller, remote reefs scattered throughout the southern Coral Sea.

02 Detail of some of the concreted wrought iron

bar stock that makes up the majority of the mound. 03 This iron ‘key’ located near the top of the

anchor shank indicates the anchor would have been fitted with a wooden stock.

All images Renee Malliaros/Silentworld Foundation

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

One of these vessels, the British barque Jenny Lind, was travelling from Melbourne to Singapore when it came to grief on Kenn Reefs in the early morning hours of 21 September 1850. Jenny Lind’s loss was the second recorded instance of shipwreck at Kenn Reefs following their discovery by British mariner Alexander Kenn in April 1824. Few specific details are known about Jenny Lind, save what is available in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping and a handful of other archival sources, including accounts of the vessel’s loss and its aftermath. Built in Quebec, Canada, in 1847, Jenny Lind’s hull included components manufactured from oak, pine and hackmatack (Larix laricina), a species of larch native to Canada that was used by Canadian shipbuilders to fashion knees in wooden ships. It was single-decked, had an overall length of 118 feet (40 metres), a 26-foot (8-metre) beam, 20-foot (6-metre) depth of hold, and carrying capacity of 484 tons. The vessel’s figurehead was a likeness of its namesake, the Swedish opera singer Johanna Maria (‘Jenny’) Lind.

04 Concreted remnants of an iron windlass pawl

located on the Jenny Lind site. Its diameter measures 62 centimetres.

Image Renee Malliaros/Silentworld Foundation

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

Lookouts aboard Jenny Lind spotted ‘something black’ in the water ahead and immediately took evasive action

Popularly known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, Lind was one of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century. She worked in close association with German composer Felix Mendelssohn and American showman P T Barnum, and toured extensively in Europe and the United States from the 1830s to the 1850s. Jenny Lind was purchased by shipping concern Brent & Co and re-registered at the English port of Plymouth on 26 February 1848, then began operating between Liverpool and New York under the command of Stephen Cleverly. In February 1850, the vessel departed on its first – and only – voyage to Australia with a new master, Joseph Taylor, at the helm. It carried 114 passengers and a cargo of merchant goods, and arrived at Port Adelaide in mid-June. A little over a month later, Jenny Lind sailed for Melbourne with 50 passengers and a consignment of merchandise, arriving there on 2 August. On 27 August 1850, Jenny Lind cleared Melbourne, then departed Port Phillip Bay two days later on what would be its final voyage. In addition to a portion of its original cargo, the vessel carried 19 officers and crew and nine passengers, including three young children. The weather was reportedly variable for the first part of the voyage, but by 19 and 20 September the sun was so obscured by cloud that celestial observations could not be taken to fix the vessel’s position. Shortly after 4 am on 21 September, lookouts aboard Jenny Lind spotted ‘something black’ in the water ahead and immediately took evasive action, but were unable to prevent the barque striking the reef and going over on its beam ends.1 Miraculously, no lives were lost.

05 A modern satellite image showing the location

of the Jenny Lind shipwreck site (highlighted by red rectangle) relative to Observatory Cay. Digital Globe Imagery/Silentworld Foundation

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

All crew and passengers were subsequently transported to a ‘coral bank, partly covered with sand … about half a mile away’ from the wreck site, where they eked out an existence for the next 37 days.2 Critical to their survival was a water distillation system made from copper cookware and lead piping salvaged from Jenny Lind. Designed and built by passenger Phillip Beal (a physician and former ship’s surgeon), it could reportedly convert 25 gallons (114 litres) of seawater into drinkable freshwater per day. The crew, meanwhile, salvaged timber, rigging and sails from the wreck and constructed a ‘schoonerrigged boat’ capable of carrying 22 people.3 On 29 October 1850, this vessel and Jenny Lind’s only surviving ship’s boat (a small cutter) set off from Kenn Reefs for Brisbane, where they safely arrived after a voyage of about three weeks. The series of events that transformed Jenny Lind from a functional watercraft into an archaeological site began the moment the vessel struck Kenn Reefs. Portions of the vessel’s hull and superstructure were wrenched away as they ground against the reef and were pounded by surf. All three masts and their sails and rigging were cut away by the crew in an attempt to right the hull and prevent it from breaking up.

06 The mound of iron bar stock and ballast that

forms the centrepiece of the Jenny Lind shipwreck site. About 1.5 metres high, it consists primarily of iron bar stock and rods lying atop stone ballast. Renee Malliaros/ Silentworld Foundation

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

However, within a very short time Jenny Lind began to succumb to the elements, and according to passenger Daniel Rowntree Somerset, it ‘presented a scene of perfect and complete ruin’ only an hour after striking the reef. The barque continued to break up while its crew and passengers were marooned on Observatory Cay, and in the months and years following their departure was reduced to a scatter of predominantly large, robust iron artefacts lying atop the reef flat. What remains of Jenny Lind is located on the reef top approximately 800 metres south-west of Observatory Cay, which roughly matches the ‘half a mile’ distance recorded in historical accounts of the vessel’s loss. The site was first documented in 1987 by a team of maritime archaeologists from the Queensland Museum. Labelled ‘KR4’, its most prominent feature is a large mound comprising stone ballast fused with a mass of concreted iron rods and bar stock. The mound measures nine metres in length and forms the basis of the site’s identity as Jenny Lind, as it correlates well to a description of the wreck provided by Seaman Richard Tope:

The one dangerous place was where the waves met; the one which came round the bow of the wreck, and the other the stern. This is near where the rugged edge of the reef began, and although the heavy break was spent a good way outside, where the ballast and about sixty tons of bar iron were lying in a heap, which also helped to lessen the stroke of the sea on the remains of the ship.4 Yet another description of the wreck, provided by Seaman Richard Holten, notes ‘nearly all one side’ of Jenny Lind had washed onto the reef top by 3 October, and was ‘made … fast to a rock’ in an apparent effort to hold it in place.5 This hull section may very well have contained the ballast and bar iron referred to by Tope. If so, its wooden components would have eventually been destroyed by the elements, leaving only the more robust iron and stone within to fuse together into a single corroded mass. Inspection of the bar stock during the 2017 survey revealed it was manufactured from wrought iron, widely used during the 19th century because it was both tough and malleable. These qualities meant it could be easily worked into a variety of products, including structural elements for ships and buildings. Architectural components manufactured from iron were often loaded aboard ships as cargo, but because of their great weight also functioned as ballast. In the case of Jenny Lind, archival sources do not specifically state the vessel was carrying a cargo of iron. Indeed, most accounts state it was only loaded with a ‘small quantity of flour and beef’, which suggests the bar iron may have functioned exclusively as ballast.6 Alternatively, it may have been an undocumented speculative cargo.

Jenny Lind ‘presented a scene of perfect and complete ruin’ only an hour after striking the reef

07 A scale drawing of Jenny Lind’s anchor

and an anchor windlass component located nearby, as documented in 1987. Warren Delaney/Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE WRECK OF THE JENNY LIND

Located around the mound are other artefacts and features, including stud-link anchor chain, several large unidentified concreted iron objects, windlass components, a small number of indeterminate iron structural elements, and an Admiralty pattern anchor. The anchor was relocated and inspected during the 2017 survey, and its position plotted with Global Positioning System (GPS). Its shank is 2.9 metres long and the distance between the ‘bills’ (the protruding tip of each ‘palm’ or fluke) is 2.0 metres. A ‘key’ near the top of the anchor’s shank indicates it would have been fitted with a wooden stock, but given that the anchor is lying flat on the reef top and not ‘picked in’, it may not have been used when the wreck occurred. The anchor is clearly of British design and manufacture, as its protruding bills are a distinct attribute of Admiralty pattern anchors. Given Jenny Lind’s origins and subsequent British use, the presence of a British-manufactured Admiralty pattern anchor at the shipwreck site offers additional evidence of its identity as the Canadian-built barque. During the 1987 survey, the Queensland Museum team noted that most of the archaeological material associated with the site was located north and northwest of the ballast/bar iron mound, and covered an area of approximately 50 metres by 25 metres. In the wake of the 2017 survey, analysis of Geographic Information System (GIS) data derived from satellite imagery suggests the site is much larger, and may actually measure closer to 157 metres by 60 metres. However, additional fieldwork – including inspection and survey of the expanded site footprint – will be necessary to confirm the theory. Further fieldwork will also provide an opportunity to determine exactly where Jenny Lind ended up on the reef, and the manner in which it subsequently broke up. Future investigations should also include a more comprehensive survey of Observatory Cay, with the goal of finding specific remnants of the Jenny Lind survivors’ camp. Cultural material associated with the camp would provide a tangible link to this incredible tale of shipwreck, survival and perseverance, and inform how Jenny Lind’s crew and passengers faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles and adversity. The ongoing analysis and interpretation of Jenny Lind and other historic shipwreck sites at Kenn Reefs offer to bring the stories of our forebears to life, and illuminate the hardships faced by many who transited to and from Australia by sea during its early transformation into today’s modern nation.

Notes 1 ‘Wreck of the Jenny Lind’, Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 27 November 1850, p 4. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid; Diary of Daniel Rowntree Somerset, M 1256, Ian H Nicholson Collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. 4 ‘A Few More Reminiscences by Captain Tope’ in Delaney, W (undated), Research Notes: Barque Jenny Lind, Maritime Archaeological Section Research Files, Queensland Museum, p 13. 5 R Holten, An Account of the Wreck of the Barque Jenny Lind on Kenn’s Reef, Sept 21st 1850, M 1256, Ian H Nicholson Collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. 6 ‘Wreck of the Jenny Lind’, Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 27 November 1850, p 4. Further reading Delaney, W, 1987, Report on wreck inspection survey: Kenn Reef, Maritime Archaeological Section, Queensland Museum.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A FIESTA AFLOAT

A fiesta afloat AUSTRALIAN WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL 2017

Hobart drew some 250,000 people in February for the Australian Wooden Boat Festival. More than 450 lovingly maintained vessels ranging from dinghies to tall ships were joined by tradespeople, artisans, commercial exhibitors, lecturers, musicians and wooden-boat aficionados.

01 Constitution and Victoria docks crowded

with vessels. Image Janine Flew/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A FIESTA AFLOAT

02 Sheldon Thomas, Trish Hodge and

This four-day international event is staffed entirely by more than 400 dedicated volunteers

Dewayne Everettsmith with a Tasmanian Aboriginal rolled-bark canoe known as a ningher, made by Sheldon. 03 Teenagers compete in the Quick and

Dirty Boatbuilding Challenge. 04 An evening performance by the

Boaters Choir.

All images Janine Flew/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A FIESTA AFLOAT

07 In keeping with its Dutch theme, the festival

included a small fleet of tjotters, six-metre Frisian sailing vessels. Lacking a keel, they have instead a retractable leeboard on either side of the hull, giving them a draught of only 30 centimetres and allowing them to be sailed in shallow waters.

05 Historic Derwent River Four Foot Two model

yachts in the atrium of the Henry Jones Art Hotel. 06 Among many crafts on display was a

demonstration of lobster-pot making.

All images Janine Flew/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

The Batavia Tapestry A TRAGIC TALE TOLD IN STITCH

Over a period of seven years, textile artist Melinda Piesse researched and stitched a large-scale tapestry inspired by the legendary Batavia shipwreck off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. It was launched to great acclaim in February at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, and is now on display at the museum. We interviewed Melinda about how she tackled this unusual and daunting project.

Signals Why Batavia? Melinda Piesse The shipwreck of the Batavia is an extraordinary tale of marooned Europeans, murder and intrigue, and also represents many firsts in Australian history: the first European settlement, the first European dwellings constructed, the first written record of kangaroos and, arguably, the first recorded land battle. I consider the Batavia narrative to be a relatively unknown, under-represented Australian story â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a tale of treachery, despair, mutiny, murder, courage and conviction, escape, revenge and ultimately heroism.

01 Melinda Piesse with the finished tapestry.

All images Kristina Kingston, reproduced courtesy Melinda Piesse

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

It’s hard to believe what happened there on the Houtman Abrolhos Islands nearly 400 years ago. It’s such an isolated, wild and windswept place – a haven for birds, wallabies and seals, but not a particularly hospitable place for survivors of a shipwreck. I stumbled across the Batavia story about ten years ago while browsing through the Monash University library, where I found an old paperback copy of Hugh Edwards’ Islands of Angry Ghosts (1968). Intrigued by the image of a group of divers on the cover, gazing down on a shallow grave and a human skull, I read on. The story of the shipwreck captivated my imagination. While shocking and gruesome, it was pure Robert Louis Stevenson, projecting images of treasure, death and disaster, heroism and survival against the worst possible odds, and real pirates in Australia, all well before Captain Cook’s arrival. For a group of desperate people struggling for survival, I couldn’t imagine a more complete exile, or a grander philosophical challenge, so far away from civilisation, than to endure the wild conditions without falling into savagery. Visitors to the islands today will discover that apart from West Wallabi, which is rich in wildlife, with access to some fresh water, most of the islands are barren, covered by patchy native scrub and bordered by bleached white coral bones that seem to echo the islands’ murderous history. Explain your background in needlecraft, art and design. I have been interested in textiles since I was a little girl, learning to sew and knit with my grandmothers. I later studied Fine Art at Monash University to Masters level, majoring in tapestry. The focus of my Masters degree was the Batavia shipwreck. When I first started sailing, aboard Melbourne’s tall ship Enterprize, I began to see a connection between tapestry and

02 A detail depicting some survivors being taken

out on rafts by the mutineers and murdered or drowned.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

The embroidery is historically accurate, based on hours of research, including archaeological journals

the rigging and ropework of sailing ships, which influenced my work as an artist. During my Honours year I started working with different mediums such as rope, tarred marline and sailcloth, which drew me towards maritime art. I began to collect sail-making and rigging tools and books to teach myself a new skill set. That summer, I began to study the history of trade, discovery and exploration. Fascinated with old maps, I began dreaming of embroidering a large-scale sail in the style of early charts. In the 17th century, Australia’s west coast was a real mystery. There were only rough sketches of the ‘Great South Land’, charted on secret maps more precious than gold. Fascinated too with the early shipwrecks that pepper our coastline, in the Batavia wreck I finally found a story that localised all my areas of interest. Why did you choose such a violent and grisly subject to render in the supposedly gentle art of tapestry? While needlepoint tapestry, as a decorative art, has been traditionally associated with women, it also has the power to be read as a historical document, describing the period in which it was created – an example is the Bayeux Tapestry. Therefore, I chose the medium of needlepoint tapestry on a larger scale to give an empowered voice to a ‘gentle art’ in my interpretation of the events of the Batavia shipwreck, told from a woman’s perspective. What historical documents did you consult for your research? The embroidery is historically accurate, based on hours of research, including archaeological journals. Key references for me, apart from accounts of the Batavia, were Western Australian maritime archaeological studies on the subject and

03 In the mutineer’s camp, leader Jeronimus

Cornelisz is depicted with his foot upon a skull.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

the works of 17th-century Dutch artists such as Johannes Vermeer and the maritime illustrations of the father and son Van de Veldes – Willem the Elder and Younger. I researched ships, art and costume of the era and referenced the modern Batavia replica in my drawings. The detail is quite fine, including faces stitched in silk, dead-eyes laced with thread, and three-strand rope made from wool with a handmade rope jig. I am particularly taken with the actual relics found in the shipwreck’s recovery, including a piece of lace in a barber’s shaving bowl, which I imagined belonging to the barbarous Jeronimus Cornelisz, leader of the mutineers. Relics like these pose questions, and are as evocative to the storyteller as to the artist. How did you decide which historical incidents to include the tapestry? I chose to depict the key events both before and after the shipwreck – the attempts of the passengers to reach shore, the first settlement, the plots of the mutineers to seize control, and the first open killing, of a young boy who dared to speak to the pirate king’s mistress. Drownings are grouped, and abduction, murder and intrigue are all depicted. The departure of the ship’s officers in the longboat is shown, and their dramatic return amid an epic battle and race to capture the rescue ship. 04

04 Batavia’s 30-foot longboat, in which

48 people – twice as many as are shown in the tapestry – first set off in search of water, and then made their way to Java to raise the alarm and organise a rescue. The 3,000-kilometre journey took 33 days. A baby was born on the way.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

Were there any incidents that particularly stuck in your mind? My fascination with the Batavia shipwreck was really ignited by my discovery of the significant role textiles played in the narrative, when cloth became the currency of the islands. The islands held no shelter, apart from the tents survivors made from sailcloth salvaged from the wreckage. So, while jewels, coins and other treasures lay scattered across the islands, any textiles – the finest linen and woollen cloth of scarlet and indigo, lace, gold and silver braids, silk stockings, garters and blankets – were seized by Cornelisz and given out to those of his supporters most willing to commit murder. How long did each of the various stages take you? I spent about a year in research, immersing myself in the 17th century to get the correct details of the ships and the attitudes and accoutrements of soldiers and seafarers, women and children. Contemporary references also included the Swedish warship Vasa and replica VOC ships Batavia and its longboat and the Duyfken (‘Little Dove’). Then there was another year in drawing and perhaps five in execution.

Did you consult any experts about details, for instance the proportions and rigging of the ships? My husband Wayne Parr, master shipwright at the Wooden Boat Shop at Sorrento in Victoria, helped me immeasurably right from our first dates and all throughout the project. He built my embroidery frame and the lightbox I used to transfer my drawings to the linen. He was a sounding board and helped me to correct my illustrations where needed. He also made the traditional spar I use to display the tapestry upon. Historical sail-makers Ullman Sails in Virginia, USA, were also consulted at the eleventh hour, to ensure that the rope work edging on my tapestry was period correct. This edging was done over January 2017 at Quarantine Station, Point Nepean, where the old army barracks provided a sufficiently large carpeted space on which to complete this last stage of the tapestry. Who is depicted in the tapestry? Every person recorded by name is illustrated in the tapestry. Some figures, such as Commander Pelsaert, Batavia’s skipper Jacobsz and the pirate king’s henchmen, are shown several times in their various acts. What stitches were used? The style of the embroidery is crewel work, an old English term for wool embroidery. The principal stitches used include stem stitch, outline stitch and couching. Bayeux stitch, as seen in the Bayeux Tapestry, appears in the heraldic lion in the first panel.

05 Women were brutalised and repeatedly raped

by the mutineers. Seven women were kept alive for this purpose, including Lucretia van der Mylen, whom leader of the mutineers Cornelisz took for himself. Lucretia survived the massacre and lived to old age back in Holland.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

The detail is quite fine, including faces stitched in silk and dead-eyes laced with thread

Applique is used for stitching on pieces of wool felt, for example in the clothing on the figures and larger areas such as Batavia’s stern, beneath accents of goldwork. What new skills and techniques did you need to learn for this work? The knowledge and skills I have developed while undertaking this project include sailmaking, spinning, lacemaking, rigging, ropework, weaving, embroidery and even linen production involving growing and spinning flax fibres. Focusing on research like this, investigating centuries-old techniques, is like ‘time-travelling,’ a way of connecting with the past. What specialised equipment did you need? A lot of the tools and materials I collected or sourced along the way, including traditional sailmakers’ tools such as a sailmaker’s palm. Others I had built, such as embroidery frames, a light box and a rope jig of the type used for model ships. Plus there were embroidery essentials and reams of paper. Why the limited colour palette? For harmony and balance, I chose a bold but limited palette of yarn. Olive and golden hues were inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry. The bold ancient dyes, such as indigo, madder and cochineal red, were inspired by medieval tapestries and Old Master paintings. What were some of the customised elements? The main custom element was the 100 per cent wool fabric from a Melbourne supplier, Winterwood. I had this dyed to match my threads, which came from the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

06 Melinda with some of her tools of the trade

– a sailmaker’s palm, to push the needle through the heavy cloth, and waxed thread.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

Did it ever become upsetting or depressing to spend so long labouring over a work about such a shocking episode in history? The research was quite confronting early on, until I became more desensitised to the events. Through detective work, like Miss Marple, I concentrated on creating an accurate pictorial map of the events to portray in my artwork.

Every person recorded by name is illustrated in the tapestry

In a way the process of drawing and embroidery has been one of release after an intensive study of an extremely dark episode of Australian history. My embroidery, from the shipwreck to the return of the rescue ship, reveals many incidents of drowning, abduction, sinister execution games, massacre and secret burials. Contrasted with these events is the sheer determination of a group of men known as the defenders of the High Island, who fought back – armed only with swords, sticks and stones against the mutineers’ guns, pikes and black powder. Who were those people? Who were the bloodthirsty men? Who were the unhappy women and terrified children? What were they doing there and what do their actions reveal? I don’t think you need to know the history of the Batavia explicitly to understand my representation of evil. I hope that all Australians will find something within the work, whether it is to reflect upon how their ancestors arrived in Australia, some free and some in chains, or otherwise experienced trauma on the Australian frontier since colonisation by the British. What did you get out of this project, personally and professionally? I feel I have been able to connect with the past, through the process of making this project. It has expanded my knowledge, research, skills and understanding, and helped to build my profile as an emerging artist. I have learnt how to splice, serve and manipulate rope, how to spin and weave fabric, how to make lace and how to twist my own rope, among many more things. I feel that I have truly engaged with history through an active participation in creating and researching this project, as if I had seen and walked the decks of the Batavia myself, many years ago. What are your hopes for the future of the tapestry? I would describe the project as Australia’s contemporary Bayeux Tapestry and I’d like to see it ‘sail’ around Australia now, on tour. My aim ultimately is to raise public awareness of an extraordinary episode in Australian history. The tapestry project is intended as a gift for future generations to enjoy and I’d also like to write a book on the shipwreck, illustrated with my tapestry images.

The Batavia Tapestry is on display at the museum until 29 October. To find out more about Melinda and her work, see galateadesign.com.au

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE BATAVIA TAPESTRY

Mutiny and massacre In 1628 the Batavia made its maiden voyage as the prize flagship of a fleet of seven ships of the Dutch East India Trading Company (VOC) headed towards Batavia in the East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). Batavia carried 28 cannon and a company of soldiers to protect its crew of 300 and a valuable cargo of precious jewels, art treasures, cloth, wine, cheese and silver coin for trading. The ship never made its destination. Before dawn on 4 June 1629, Batavia was wrecked upon Morning Reef of Houtman Abrolhos, the southernmost coral islands in the Indian Ocean, some 65 kilometres off the coast of Western Australia. Following the wreck, Batavia’s Commandeur Francisco Pelsaert set sail in search of water in the ship’s longboat. Overloaded with passengers and provisions, he ultimately reached Java and organised a rescue ship. Meanwhile a mutinous crew, led by under-merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz, had seized control of the settlement on Beacon Island and begun to massacre the marooned survivors.

Cornelisz’ strategy was ‘divide to conquer’ to eliminate any opposition. He split the settlement among the neighbouring islands and marooned a group of loyal VOC soldiers, under the command of Wiebbe Hayes, on West Wallabi, confiscating their arms. Many other castaways were drowned by Cornelisz, who sent them out in rafts, where his accomplices would often simply bind their hands and push them overboard. Rescue came four months after Batavia was wrecked, when Commandeur Pelsaert returned in the Sardam. The worst of the mutineers were tried and executed on one of the islands. The two youngest were spared due to their age, instead being marooned on the mainland, never to be seen again.

In December 1629 Sardam returned to the Dutch East Indies with the remaining survivors of the Batavia shipwreck. There the remaining mutineers were tried. Some were punished by torture to extract confessions; others were imprisoned during their trials. The lesser offenders, who had been flogged, keelhauled and dropped from the yard-arm as punishment on the voyage home, were then executed. In all, only some 125 people survived out of about 340 originally aboard Batavia.

07 Engraving depicting a massacre of

Batavia survivors from Ongeluckige voyagie van ‘t schip Batavia, nae de Oost-Indien (Unlucky voyage of the ship Batavia to the East Indies), 1647. ANMM Collection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE HARTOG PLATE

The Hartog plate REFLECTIONS ON A PIECE OF PEWTER

Until October, museum visitors will have a rare chance to see the Hartog plate in Sydney, on loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to mark 400 years since Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog made the first recorded European landing on the west coast of Australia. Curator Kim Tao explores the meanings embodied in this very special piece of pewter.

01 Dirk Hartog plate, 1600–1616. Tin alloy

(metal), 36.5 cm diameter. The Dutch message on the plate is translated as: ‘1616, 25 October, is here arrived the ship the Eendracht of Amsterdam, the upper-merchant Gillis Miebais of Liege, skipper Dirck Hatichs [Dirk Hartog] of Amsterdam; the 27th ditto set sail again for Bantam, the under-merchant Jan Stins, the upper-steersman Pieter Dookes van Bill, Anno 1616.’ Reproduced courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE HARTOG PLATE

HOW MANY STORIES can one object tell? When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) skipper Dirk Hartog made landfall in Western Australia in October 1616, he left behind an inscribed pewter plate that is recognised as the oldest European artefact found on Australian soil. Much has been written over the years about Hartog’s fateful landing in the Eendracht (see Signals 116, pp 38–41), but what about the physical object, the pewter plate, itself? As a museum curator, I am fascinated by the materiality of the Hartog plate and the many stories embedded in its historic fabric – of trade, exploration, navigation, unknown coastlines, chance encounters, material preservation and the enduring power of tangible cultural heritage. The Hartog plate is typical of the large pewter serving plates that were used in the great cabins of VOC ships. Now more than 400 years old, it consists of 17 separate fragments that bear witness to the object’s tumultuous history. In 1616, the plate was hammered flat and inscribed with a sharp tool, which weakened its structure. It was then nailed to a wooden post on a rocky cliff top, overlooking what is now known as Cape Inscription on Dirk Hartog Island in Shark Bay, and exposed to decades of sun, wind and salty air. These conditions made the plate more susceptible to corrosion. Rijksmuseum conservators have aimed to preserve the Hartog plate in its most complete and authentic state, so that it remains legible and accessible for future generations. For metals conservator Tamar Davidowitz, this has meant reversing past treatments and removing all unoriginal materials from the plate, to acknowledge that the object’s intrinsic value lies not in its aesthetic appearance, but its provenance. As Wendy van Duivenvoorde has noted, Dutch seafarers often left formal inscriptions on postal stones, tablets, trees and plates, to communicate messages and intelligence to other ships, mark their presence on distant shores or assert their nation’s claim to land.1 The inscription on the Hartog plate, however, was not an act of possession, but provided documentary proof that Hartog and his crew visited Shark Bay. The placement of physical markers was a practice upheld by subsequent explorers such as Willem de Vlamingh, who was instructed to leave pewter plates as signposts during his 1696 expedition to search for possible survivors from two VOC shipwrecks. When de Vlamingh and his crew landed at Dirk Hartog Island in February 1697 and discovered the Hartog plate, they immediately appreciated its historical significance. The artist on board, Victor Victorsz, created a series of delicate watercolour views of the Western Australian coastline from the Swan River to Shark Bay (now held in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam), as well as a most exquisite map (now in the

Dutch seafarers often left formal inscriptions on postal stones, tablets, trees and plates

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE HARTOG PLATE

National Archives of the Netherlands) depicting Dirk Hartog Island with the inscription ‘alhier de schootel gevonden’, which refers to the ‘plate found here’. De Vlamingh replaced the Hartog plate with a new one engraved with Hartog’s message and details of his own visit, and delivered the original to Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), from where it was sent to Amsterdam and eventually to the Rijksmuseum. The de Vlamingh plate was recovered by French explorer Louis de Freycinet in 1818 and taken to Paris. In 1947, the year the de Vlamingh plate was returned to Australia by the French government, Western Australian writer Peter Hopegood published a poem titled ‘Dirk Hartog’s Plate’ that delightfully evokes the ‘Amsterdam ships’ chandler’s platter/ Taken and set/Afar from galley reek and clatter.’2 It reminds me how wonderful it is that an object as tactile and domestic as a pewter plate – so ordinary yet also extraordinary – connects Australia and The Netherlands across four centuries of shared history. The Hartog plate is on display in the Navigators Gallery until 29 October 2017. For more on Dirk Hartog, visit stories.anmm.gov.au/dirk_hartog. 1 Wendy van Duivenvoorde, ‘Dutch Seaman Dirk Hartog (1583–1621) and his Ship Eendracht’, The Great Circle, vol 38, no 1, 2016, p 13. 2 Peter Hopegood, Circus at World’s End: An Assembly of Verse, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1947, pp 127–128.

Now more than 400 years old, the Hartog plate consists of 17 separate fragments that bear witness to the object’s tumultuous history

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

Rain or shine, the boxes never stop BEHIND THE SCENES AT PORT BOTANY

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a wet and windy morning as the Yang Ming Singapore arrives in Sydney, ready to discharge and load almost 2,000 of the 2.3 million containers that will pass through Port Botany Container Terminal this year. Curator Dr Mary-Elizabeth Andrews takes a look on board.

01 One of 999 boxes being unloaded from the Yang Ming Singapore. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

WE ARRIVE AT PORT BOTANY at 11 am. It’s been raining on and off all day, but now the heavens really open. ANMM Staff Photographer Andrew Frolows and I have an appointment with the Yang Ming Singapore, one of five container ships in port today. The YM Singapore arrived outside the Kurnell headland fairly close to schedule at 2.18 am. Within two hours it had been piloted through Botany Bay and docked at one of three berths along the 937-metre wharf operated by DP World, which, along with Patrick and Hutchison, occupies about 146 hectares of container terminal space at Port Botany. Unlike the adjacent airport, Port Botany never sleeps. Nor does it slow down for bad weather. Waiting for security clearance on the perimeter of the DP World facility with nothing but a converted shipping container for shelter, we’re painfully aware of this fact. By the time we reach the ship – in a mini-bus so we’re not inadvertently crushed by the ever-moving rubber-tyred gantries, heavy-duty container forklift trucks, internal transfer vehicles or the never-ending procession of trucks – work is well under way. The cranes are carrying out their hypnotic exchange of boxes overhead. DP World’s Botany terminal has seven million-dollar-plus ZPMC quayside gantry cranes, also known as ‘gooseneck’ cranes for their ability to lift a feeder arm clear of berthing vessels and drop it down again to span the width of the ship – in the case of YM Singapore, that’s 32 metres. The cranes are distinctively yellow against the grey sky and can simultaneously load and unload containers weighing up to 90 tonnes each. Operators stationed in glass-bottomed cabins suspended about 30 metres overhead traverse the entire span, moving backwards and

02 Chief Officer Sergii on the bridge.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

forwards to lower and lift the special container spreaders that lock into the boxes’ corner castings using a twist-lock and release mechanism. The high-tech computerised operation facilitates an average lift rate of about 40 containers per hour, the equivalent of which would have taken several days to load using traditional techniques before the advent of the container. It’s still raining as we board the ship. We’re issued security passes before making our way to the Ship’s Control Office to meet the Russian-born Captain, Mikhail, and Ukrainian Chief Officer, Sergii. The captain is completing a Port State Control inspection with a representative from AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which conducts comprehensive checks on some 3,500 international vessels each year to ensure that environmental and safety standards are maintained. This goes for the safety of the ship and its cargo as well as crew wellbeing and is guided by International Convention requirements and the resolutions of the International Maritime Organisation and International Labour Organisation. Given the sometimes murky lines of responsibility for ships that may be owned in one state, registered in another, chartered by a separate party altogether and crewed via an international crewing agency, these inspections are an important means of protecting the marine environment and lives at sea.

The high-tech computerised operation facilitates an average lift rate of about 40 containers per hour

In the case of the Yang Ming Singapore, a Greek-owned, Taiwanese-operated vessel flying the Liberian flag, half of the 22 officers and ratings on board are Russian and the rest Ukrainian. Just to confuse matters, the vessel was originally commissioned by a German shipping company and kitted out to their specifications, so the crew tell me it’s a German ship (hence the excellent leisure facilities, including a ping pong room, swimming pool and sauna).

03 Engineers work to change a cylinder while

the YM Singapore is in port. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

While seafaring has always been international by definition, the countries of origin for employment and ship ownership today are increasingly separate, and whatever political tensions may exist between nation-states, the 1.5 million seafarers across the globe must work together. YM Singapore’s crew may typify this point, but it’s not wholly representative of global statistics. According to the latest report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the largest suppliers of seafarers are China, Indonesia and the Philippines, followed by the Russian Federation, India and Ukraine.1 UNCTAD also points out the implications for home economies. Given the relative population sizes, seafaring is a significantly more important source of income for the Philippines than any of the other major suppliers.2 Sergii offers to show us around. He explains that he’s been on board this time for just over two weeks. Officers usually spend four to five months at sea, so he has a long haul ahead of him. For ratings, it can be up to seven months before they see home. I ask Sergii if he’ll have a chance to disembark, to see anything of Sydney while he’s here, but as chief officer he has too many responsibilities during the ship’s brief stay. YM Singapore is operating on the CAT service: China – Australia – Taiwan. It departed Ningbo, a major port and industrial centre in China’s Zhejiang province, 19 days ago and stopped at Shanghai, then Shekou, which lies across the Shenzhen Bay from Hong Kong, and Kaohsiung, on Taiwan’s south-west coast, before making a 12-day trek to Sydney. Tomorrow it departs for Melbourne, Brisbane and Kaohsiung again before starting all over. The whole CAT run takes 42 days and is a significant service for Australia’s containerised trade. China ranks first among Australia’s two-way trade partners; that is, it’s our largest export destination and our largest import source.3 Taiwan ranks ninth and 15th respectively, placing it 13th in terms of two-way trade.4 There are around 3,500 containers on board today, just over 80 percent capacity for this 2004-built 4,300 TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) capacity vessel. Jason McGregor, Marketing and Trade Manager for NSW Ports, has joined us on board and tells me this is a fairly typical utilisation pattern for this time of year. Container ships are generally full around Christmas and Chinese New Year, when they can command freight rates of $1,000 per container. These rates fluctuate according to demand and can drop as low as $600. Because of the vital importance of seaborne trade to national and global economies, port activity is perhaps the best barometer of the health of an economy. A port worker once told me that the effects of the former Australian Labor

Because of the vital importance of seaborne trade to national and global economies, port activity is perhaps the best barometer of the health of an economy

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

government’s multi-billion-dollar stimulus package during the Global Financial Crisis could be measured within days on the docks as shipping trade picked up again. We head down to the engine room first. At 4,300 TEU and 53,611 DWT (deadweight tonnage), this is a Panamax container ship5 and about average for the Australian trade. I’ve seen images of the massive twin-propeller engines that run the 18,000 TEU Triple-E ships which ply the ocean on the Europe– Asia service, but YM Singapore’s Hyundai B&W Type MC-C diesel engine is, nonetheless, impressive. The noise, even when idling, brings that home even more. Engineers are overhauling a cylinder and Sergii takes us through to see their workshop, where they can fabricate what they need to make repairs at sea, often hundreds of kilometres from the nearest parts supplier. We visit the bridge next, where the captain joins us. Despite the foul weather, we head straight out to the wings, where we get a prime view of the constant whirring and clanging of cables and cranes. One crane is directly in front of us, so that the little glass cabin moves backwards and forwards above and I can see the driver’s feet. I’m fascinated by the process and watch one box after another be located, picked up, carried through the air, lowered, gently placed on a waiting vehicle and driven away. The whole process takes less than two minutes and another transit vehicle drives straight up behind to receive the next box. The movement is relentless. 04

Unlike the adjacent airport, Port Botany never sleeps

04 A container is loaded onto a waiting transit

vehicle. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > RAIN OR SHINE, THE BOXES NEVER STOP

Back inside, I ask how many boxes are being exchanged today and Sergii replies straight away with the precise figures: 999 boxes are being discharged and 932 loaded. What’s in the boxes is much more difficult to answer. In terms of the top commodities arriving from East Asia, it’s likely there’s a good deal of furniture, bedding and mattresses, lamps and light fittings, toys and sporting goods, as well as electrical items, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, beverages, machinery and parts. We take a quick look at the equipment on the bridge, a complex array of navigational equipment and monitoring devices. The captain shows me how he can check that each part of the ship is watertight with the flick of a switch, an important feature in a storm. With the rain persisting, we’re not going to make it to the main deck to walk the perimeter of the ship and see the stacked containers up close, but Sergii asks if we’d like to visit the galley before we go. There’s a small eating area, which is homelier than I’d expected, and in the galley Chief Cook Vladislav is getting ready to prepare the evening meal, chicken and rice. He’s more than happy to pose for the camera and we get the sense that we’ve found the life of the ship. Sergii says the food is pretty good, too. As we leave the ship the sun suddenly appears from nowhere, illuminating the glistening coloured boxes that spread out on the terminal before us. By the time we return to the museum, it’s clear and warm. I package up some complimentary museum passes for Captain Mikhail and Sergii. A former navy sailor, Sergii is particularly keen to see HMAS Onslow and HMAS Vampire and he assures me that he’ll find time to visit next time he’s in port, in 42 days. 1. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Review of Maritime Transport, United Nations Publication, New York and Geneva, 2016, p. 44 2. Ibid. 3. DFAT, Trade and economic fact sheet, China, available at dfat.gov.au/trade/ resources/Documents/chin.pdf 4. DFAT, Trade and economic fact sheet, Taiwan, available at dfat.gov.au/trade/ resources/Documents/taiw.pdf 5. ‘Panamax’ refers to the largest container ships able to pass through the Panama Canal prior to the expansion project concluded in 2016.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > INSPIRING SAILORS

Inspiring Sailors AUSTRALIAN SAILING HALL OF FAME

The Australian National Maritime Museum is very proud to partner with Australian Sailing in a major initiative to launch the Australian Sailing Hall of Fame to celebrate the greats of the sport of sailing. By Daina Fletcher.

THE AUSTRALIAN SAILING HALL OF FAME will honour exceptional performance and contribution to sailing in Australia, a sport whose long history is punctuated by some of the most iconic sporting moments this country has seen. Recognising those who have been part of this history and who have inspired others lies at the heart of the program. The Australian Sailing Hall of Fame will acknowledge achievement on an international and/or national level, historically and today, and will include all forms of sailing, both able-bodied and disability sailing.

01 An 18-foot skiff with a mixed crew,

photographed by William James Hall in 1931. ANMM Collection 00002061 Gift from Bruce Stannard

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > INSPIRING SAILORS

The awards are open to nominations in two categories: sailors or athletes (individuals and teams) and those who have played a critical enabling role, such as designers, coaches, sports scientists and administrators. The Australian Sailing Hall of Fame recognises the 1830s as the official commencement of sailing in this country, when the first sailing clubs were established in colonial Australia. The nomination process was launched by Matt Allen, President of Australian Sailing, and Kevin Sumption, Director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, in late April. If you know of a sailing icon, past or present, who should be recognised, go to the Australian Sailing website for more information on how to nominate them. The nominations will be assessed by an expert panel, and the announcement of the inaugural inductees will be made on 30 November 2017 and published in the December issue of Signals. Nominations for the 2017 inaugural induction will be accepted until Friday 16 June. For full details and the nomination form visit sailing.org.au/australian-sailing-hall-of-fame

The Australian Sailing Hall of Fame will include all forms of sailing, both able-bodied and disability sailing

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

Winter at the museum MESSAGE TO MEMBERS

Winter may have set in, but why stay at home when so much is happening at the museum? We’ve got plenty of interesting events this season to entice you out of hibernation.

LAST QUARTER got off to an exciting start with expert talks by Chris Frame on QE2 and Patrick Greene on his archaeological work at Pompeii, and the opening of Escape from Pompeii – the untold Roman rescue. Last quarter we also introduced 3D films to our program, so if you haven’t yet visited our 3D theatre, please drop in the next time you’re here. There are several sessions per day, and of course they’re all free to Members. I would like to extend a sincere welcome to all of our new members, in particular our MAAS and ANMM joint members, who joined as part of our April promotion. A record number of new members have signed up this year, and we hope they

01 Our science show stimulated young

minds (and funny bones) over autumn. Image Annalice Creighton/ANMM 02 Chris Frame gave a Members Maritime

Series talk in March about 50 years of QE2. Image Shutterstock 03 Patrick Greene spoke in April about

his archaeological work at Pompeii. Image courtesy Patrick Greene

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

will take advantage of the events we have on offer in the winter quarter. Especially designed for new members (with a membership of six months or less, or upon request) are our welcome tours. A representative of the Members’ team will guide you through the museum, pointing out areas of interest. It’s a great way to get to know the museum and learn how to take full advantage of your membership. Those of you who heard David Mearns speak at last year’s 25th anniversary Members lunch will know what fascinating stories he has to tell. We’re pleased to announce that he will be launching his new book here on 27 July. David Mearns has found some of the world’s most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. The Shipwreck Hunter – a lifetime of extraordinary discovery and adventure in the deep sea is his compelling story. Don’t miss your chance to hear this engaging speaker – tickets will sell fast.

Also on offer is an exclusive tour for Members that explores behind the scenes of our Interpretation and Design section – the people who create and produce our exhibitions and installations. We are planning a Members trip to Canberra, as well as another curatorial talk in the Members Maritime Series. Details of these events were not finalised as we went to press, so please check our website regularly for more information.

Just a reminder that as Members, you have access to exciting reciprocal benefits. We have recently confirmed a new reciprocal benefit to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Full details are available on our website, or call the Members office on (02) 9298 3646. The Membership team is always looking to improve our events and services, so please don’t hesitate to give us your feedback. We send out an email every month with all of our event programs. If you are not receiving these emails please contact Renae, Alana or me directly.

I look forward to seeing you at the museum over these colder months. Oliver Isaacs Manager, Members

04 At the opening of Escape from Pompeii:

His Excellency Pier Francesco Zazo, Italian Ambassador to Australia; Donatella Cannova, Director, Italian Cultural Institute; Arturo Arcano, Italian Consul General to Sydney; ANMM Director Kevin Sumption; ANMM Chairman Peter Dexter. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM 05 Gladiators battle in the museum foyer

at the opening of Escape from Pompeii. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM 06 Commemorations at the museum for the

75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

Members events WINTER 2017

JUNE

JULY

Book launch

Annual festival

Winter holiday programs

The Shipwreck Hunter – David Mearns

Maritime Vivid Sydney Festival – Inspired by the Sea

Kids’ and family activities

6–8 pm Thursday 27 July

6–10 pm Friday and Saturday evenings until 17 June

Rooftop projection and interactive family-friendly activities Members Maritime series

Wildlife Photographer of the Year – Members preview 5–7 pm Thursday 8 June

Join our exhibition team for a tour of Wildlife Photographer of the Year Seaside strollers tour

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 12.30 pm Tuesday 13 June

A guided tour of the exhibition plus baby playtime Family fun Sunday

Wondrous Wildlife 11 am–4 pm Sunday 18 June

Lively performances, film screenings, character tours and face painting Exclusive tour

Welcome to new Members 10–11 am Tuesday 20 and Sunday 25 June

Tips and tricks to get the most from your museum membership

2–16 July

Exhibitions, vessels, hands-on workshops, themed creative activities, performances and more Youth workshop: Animation

Claymation creations 10 am–4 pm 5 or 6 July

Kids can learn how to produce stop-motion and clay animations Youth workshop: Photography

Cockatoo Island Escapade 10 am–3.30 pm Wednesday 12 July

Kids can build skills in using digital SLR cameras and learn photo editing techniques Family torchlight tour

Wild Thing!

An insight into the discovery of some of the world’s most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks

AUGUST Members Maritime Series

To be confirmed 2–4 pm Thursday 3 August

Seaside strollers tour

Lustre: Pearling and Australia 12.30 pm Tuesday 8 August

A guided tour of the exhibition plus baby playtime Family fun Sunday

6–7.30 pm Thursday 13 July

Lighthouse Larks

A dramatic after-dark tour of our galleries and Wildlife Photographer of the Year

11 am–4 pm Sunday 20 August

Seaside strollers tour

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 10.30 am Monday 24 July

A guided tour of the exhibition plus baby playtime

Lively performances, film screenings, character tours and face painting Behind the scenes

Interpretation and Design 2–4 pm Thursday 24 August

An insight into how exhibitions are designed and built

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

Available free

Bookings and enquiries

ANMM Speakers

Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet. Please note that booking is essential unless otherwise stated. Book online at anmm.gov.au/whats-on/calendar or phone (02) 8241 8378 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@anmm.gov.au before sending form with payment. Minimum numbers may be required for an event to go ahead. All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change. Members are requested to check our website for updated and new event information.

The complete list of talks can be found on anmm.gov.au/ Speakers. If you would like to invite a speaker to your club, please contact Noel Phelan or Ron Ray: noelphelan@bigpond.com / 0402 158 590 / (02) 9437 3185 ron.ray@aapt.net.au / 0416 123 034 / (02) 9624 1917

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Annual festival

Maritime Vivid Sydney Festival – Inspired by the Sea 6–10 pm Friday and Saturday evenings Until 17 June

The museum’s vast roof is the canvas for Inspired by the Sea. This spectacular projection highlights our storytelling and evokes the sea’s majesty and mystery and its power to influence artists and writers. We’re also offering interactive family friendly activities each Friday and Saturday night from 6 to 10 pm: live music, onsite food trucks, specially created LED roving performances, and glow-in-the-dark body paint creations. Actions Stations will also be open for you to explore the navy’s engagement with the sea.

Free entry

Members Maritime series

Wildlife Photographer of the Year – Members preview 5–7 pm Thursday 8 June

Join our exhibition team for a tour of Wildlife Photographer of the Year. This world-renowned exhibition, on loan from the Natural History Museum in London, features 100 awe-inspiring images, from fascinating animal behaviour to breathtaking wild landscapes. The photographic images are complemented by Indigenous artefacts from the museum’s collection that reflect the importance of the natural world in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Members $20, non-Members $35. Includes light refreshments

Family activities

Family fun Sundays 11 am–4 pm Sundays 18 June and 20 August

Join us for special themed family fun Sundays twice a term with lively performances, film screenings, character tours and face painting. Full program online at anmm.gov.au/familyfun or subscribe to our family e-newsletter to keep up to date on all the details. 09

18 June – Wondrous Wildlife 20 August – Lighthouse Larks No bookings required 07 Inspired by the Sea rooftop projection.

UTS/ANMM 08 Arctic showtime © Audun Rikardsen

(Norway) 09 Family fun Sundays. MacDougall Photography

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Exclusive tour

Welcome to new Members 10–11 am Tuesday 20 and Sunday 25 June

This tour is specially designed to welcome new Members (with a membership of six months or less, or upon request) to the museum. A representative of the Members’ team will guide you through the museum, pointing out areas of interest such as the galleries, kiosk and the cafe Yots. At the end of the tour, enjoy morning tea in the Members Lounge and take the opportunity ask any questions. Free for Members 10

Winter holiday programs

Kids’ and family activities 2–16 July

Take a trip to Ancient Rome this winter with exhibitions, vessels, hands-on workshops, themed creative activities, performances and more. It’s fun for the whole family! There are adventures to be had every day, including art-making, games and dress-ups in Kids on Deck; exploring touchable objects and artefacts at the Cabinet of Curiosities; enjoying family theatre performances and film screenings; and more. See anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays for full program

Kids on Deck

Togas and Triremes! 10 am–4 pm daily (hourly sessions) 2–16 July

Play, create and discover at Kids on Deck with art-making, interactive games and dress-ups! Be inspired by the fascinating art and culture of the Roman empire. Craft your own model trireme, make a box-lyre, mint marvellous jewellery and accessories or sculpt an inspired diorama drama! Entry included in any paid admission. Members FREE.

10 Image Ken Butti/Ground Control Pictures 11

Kids can try on a toga in Kids on Deck. Image Annalice Creighton/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Performance programs

Mythic tales and Circus Maximus! Daily (except Saturdays) at 11.30 am, 12.30 pm and 2 pm, 2–16 July. (Duration 30 minutes)

Journey into Roman mythology with musical storytelling performances, or join in interactive circus displays inspired by traditional Roman entertainment. 2–7 July – Musical Storytelling 9–16 July – Circus Members free. Included in any paid entry. No bookings required 12

Family torchlight tour

Wild Thing! 6–7.30 pm Thursday 13 July

Join your character guide for a dramatic after-dark tour through the museum galleries and Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Enjoy creative capers and light refreshments. For ages 4–12 and adults. Members: child $18, adult $10; non-Members: child $22, adult $18

Cabinet Of Curiosities touch trolley

Fighting Roman Daily 11 am–12 noon and 2–3 pm 2–16 July

Explore wonderful and curious replica artefacts of Roman armour and dress in this hands-on discovery device in our galleries. Members free. Included in any paid entry

Activity backpacks

Pompeii Available every day* to 30 August

Explore our latest exhibition Escape from Pompeii and the museum galleries with fun and creative activity backpacks especially designed for children aged 2–12. *Limited hours of availability during term time 11 am–3 pm. Rental free with exhibition entry

12 Learning about Roman artefacts at the

Cabinet of Curiosities. Image Emma Bjorndahl/ANMM 13 Kids can use our activity backpacks over

the school holidays to explore Escape from Pompeii. Image Emma Bjorndahl/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Youth workshop: Animation

Claymation creations 10 am–4 pm, 5 or 6 July

Discover how to produce your own stop-motion and clay animations inspired by our exhibitions Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Escape from Pompeii in this fun-filled one-day workshop. Create your own animation to share and have your work featured on the museum’s YouTube channel. Members $55, non-Members $60. Bookings essential at anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays 14

Youth workshop: Photography

Cockatoo Island Escapade 10 am–3.30 pm Wednesday 12 July

Catch a ferry out to the spectacular shipyards of Cockatoo Island for an adventurous photography workshop. Build skills in using digital SLR cameras and learn photo editing techniques. Have your photos printed and exhibited in a special exhibition at the museum. This course is held in partnership with Spitting Image Photography and the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. For ages 8–14. Suitable to all levels of experience. Members $75, non-Members $80. Bookings essential at anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays

Under fives holiday tours

Alphabet Animals 10 am or 11 am (duration 30 minutes), Tuesdays and Saturdays, 2–16 July

Discover animal pictures and specimens on display at the museum with movement, songs and storytime in a fun and interactive learning program especially designed for toddlers. Enjoy messy play time in Kids on Deck after the session. Included in activities ticket. Child $6, adult $8. Members free. Bookings essential at anmm.gov.au/schoolholidays. Please note that limited space is available for on-the-day bookings when purchased as part of a paid entry.

14 Photography workshop on Cockatoo Island.

Image Spitting Image Photography 15 Kids can enjoy craft and art activities at Kids

on Deck after our under fives holiday tours. Image Zoe McMahon/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Under fives

Mini Mariners 10–10.45 am and 11–11.45 am every Tuesday during term time and one Saturday each month

Explore the galleries, sing and dance in interactive tours with costumed guides. Enjoy creative free play, craft, games, dress-ups and story time in our themed activity area. For ages 2–5 and carers. June – Around the World July – W is for Wildlife August – Pirates Ahoy

Members free. Child $8.50. First adult $3.50, extra adults $7 (includes galleries). Booked playgroups welcome. Online bookings essential at anmm.gov.au/whats-on

Term time family activities

Kids on Deck Sundays 11 am–3 pm every Sunday during school term

Play, create and discover at Kids on Deck with art-making, interactive games and dress-ups. Members free. Included in any paid entry

Tours for mums, dads and carers

Seaside strollers tours Join our new program for carers and babies! Take an educator-led tour through new exhibitions and enjoy delicious catered treats in Yots Café, adult-friendly conversations in the galleries and baby play time in a sensory space. For carers with children 0–18 months. Strollers, front packs, baby-slings and breastfeeding welcome. 12.30 pm Tuesday 13 June – Wildlife Photographer of the Year 10.30 am Monday 24 July – Wildlife Photographer of the Year 12.30 pm Tuesday 8 August – Lustre: Pearling & Australia Members $10, non-Members $18 adult. Babies free. Includes morning or afternoon tea and admission to the exhibition

16 Themed playtime in Mini Mariners.

Image courtesy Playgroups NSW 17 Creative playtime at Kids on Deck.

Image Emma Bjorndahl/ANMM 18 Stroller tours for little ones and their carers.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

Members events WINTER 2017

Book launch

The Shipwreck Hunter – David Mearns 6–8 pm Thursday 27 July

Join David Mearns for the launch of his new book The Shipwreck Hunter. David Mearns has found some of the world’s most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks, including HMAS Sydney, the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood and the wooden skeletons of Vasco de Gama’s 16th-century fleet. The Shipwreck Hunter details the extraordinary techniques David uses, his painstaking research, and the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies. 19

Members $45, non-Members $55. Includes refreshments

Members Maritime Series

To be confirmed 2–4 pm Thursday 3 August

The topic of this talk had not been confirmed at the time of Signals going to press. Please check our website for information. Members $20, non-Members $35. Includes light refreshments

Behind the scenes

Interpretation and Design 2–4 pm Thursday 24 August

The Interpretation and Design department is at the core of every exhibition the museum holds. This tour, led by section head Alex Gaffikin, delves into the nitty-gritty details of the exhibition creation process: how do you design an exhibition, how is it built, what are the priorities of this team? Take a look in our workshops for a sneak peek at the museum’s next big exhibition. Members free, non-Members $20

19 David Mearns’ new book details his

discovery of some of the world’s most famous and elusive shipwrecks. Image courtesy Allen & Unwin 20 Installing a loaned object in Escape from

Pompeii – the untold Roman rescue. ANMM image

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

The sea in her blood MEMBER PROFILE FAIRLIE CLIFTON

When and why did you become a Member? I am a Foundation Member of the museum, having joined soon after it opened in 1991. I joined because, with a background like mine, I have a natural interest in things nautical. Also I believed that an island country like Australia, with its extraordinary maritime history, should have a national maritime museum as one of its major institutions. Do you have a nautical background? Yes, you could say so. Various ancestors went to sea, so the sea is in my blood. My father was in the Royal Navy for nearly 30 years, including throughout World War II, so I grew up in the navy, living in many different places at home and abroad and attending eight different schools before the age of 13. A recent American visitor to the museum described me as a ‘navy brat’.

As my father’s only child, I took a great interest in his activities. When I was nine or ten years old, my favourite reading was his Admiralty Manuals of Seamanship. I married an ex-Royal Navy sailor and we sailed to Australia on our 31-foot 1930s wooden yacht, arriving in 1972. In 2011 I sailed the 15-day Exmouth to Geraldton leg of Endeavour’s circumnavigation of Australia. While at Geraldton I visited the beautiful and very moving memorial to HMAS Sydney II. A cousin of my mother, a Royal Navy officer, went down with the ship. In 2014 I sailed from Cape Town to the south Atlantic island of St Helena and back, on board the RMS St Helena, which supplies the island. This is a small cargo ship with some accommodation for passengers; in other words, it’s a ‘real ship’ – and the last Royal Mail ship in the world with a regular run. Not surprisingly, I have a passion for maritime history, and since retiring in 2012, I have become a volunteer guide at the museum. For most of my working life in Australia I was on the staff of not-for-profit organisations, which involved working with volunteers, so it is interesting now to be a volunteer myself.

21 Fairlie Clifton in 2015.

Image courtesy Fairlie Clifton

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > WINTER EVENTS

What’s your favourite aspect of museum membership? I enjoy talks by expert speakers and the opportunities to meet like-minded people, and I appreciate the floating exhibits, with their rare authenticity. What sort of museum events or programs do you tend to participate in? I like to attend those that mark major events in the maritime world, and lectures on historical topics. What have been some of your favourite exhibitions or events here at the museum? There have been many during the 25 years of my membership, but two in particular stand out. The dinner on 21 October 2005 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar was a very exciting event, with a marvellous guest speaker (Mike Carlton). Last year’s Ships, Clocks & Stars exhibition from the National Maritime Museum in the UK was so rich in history relevant to Australia, with exhibits of extraordinary quality, rarity and value. I adored taking guided tours through it and now that it has returned to Greenwich I miss it greatly. If you had to sum up the museum in three words, what would they be? An important national institution. What else would you like to see the museum doing in the future? Perhaps more focus on 19th-century maritime Australia in the exhibits, for example the era of the clipper ships, and the days of coastal shipping when there were no roads or railways connecting Australian ports. Also the merchant navy more generally, and an emphasis on Australia’s enormous maritime sovereign rights and responsibilities over a vast area of coastline and ocean.

MEMBERS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119

MEMBERS FREE anmm.gov.au/wildlife #WPY52

Â©Audun Rikardsen (Norway) Arctic Showtime (detail)

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS > WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

Wildlife Photographer of theYear 31 May–9 October

THIS WORLD-RENOWNED EXHIBITION, on loan from the Natural History Museum in London, features 100 awe-inspiring images, from fascinating animal behaviour to breathtaking wild landscapes. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is the most prestigious photography event of its kind, providing a global platform that showcases the natural world’s most astonishing and challenging sights for over 50 years. Launching in 1965 and attracting 361 entries, today the competition receives almost 50,000 entries from 96 countries, highlighting its enduring appeal. This year’s 100 award-winning images appear at the ANMM as part of an international tour that allows them to be seen by millions of people across six continents.

01 Nosy neighbour © Sam Hobson

(United Kingdom)

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS > WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Jan English, Head of Touring Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum, says, ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year celebrates the very best nature photography, and it is consistently one of our most successful touring exhibitions, enjoyed by millions every year. These images tell thought-provoking stories about our planet that prompt us all to think differently about the natural world and the future we want to create.’ At the ANMM the photographs will be accompanied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artworks from our collection. These contemporary expressions of Indigenous culture specifically relate to wildlife and the natural world. You’ll also be able to enter and vote for our local People’s Choice award.

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

Hartog Plate Until 29 October

On 25 October 1616, Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog sailed into history when he made the first documented European landing on the west coast of Australia in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship Eendracht. Hartog and his crew left an inscribed pewter plate in Shark Bay, Western Australia, as a testimony of their visit. Don’t miss this rare chance to see the original Hartog plate, on loan from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum to mark 400 years since Hartog’s historic landing. 02

Lustre: Pearling & Australia Until 13 August

From a 2,000-year-old natural pearl found in a Kimberley rock shelter to modern lustrous pearl jewellery, Lustre: Pearling & Australia traces the fascinating heritage of pearling across the country’s north, from Shark Bay to the Torres Strait Islands. The exhibition delves into the gritty human story of pearling, weaving together intersecting strands of Aboriginal, Asian and European histories to reveal insights into one of Australia’s oldest industries. Lustre was curated in a partnership between the Western Australian Museum and Nyamba Buru Yawuru. The exhibition is sponsored by Visions of Australia.

Clash of the Carriers: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4–8 December 1942 Currently showing

Three navies, four aircraft carriers, 255 aircraft and 76 ships in a four-day battle that changed naval warfare forever. Eight ships sunk, 161 aircraft destroyed and 1,622 men killed in a battle that should never be forgotten. As part of our ‘War and Peace in the Pacific 75’ program, the museum has launched a new documentary short film in the Action Stations cinema to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought by the US Navy and Royal Australian Navy against the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Funded by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund 02 Dirk Hartog plate, 1600–1616.

Reproduced courtesy Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 03 Crew of a Broome pearl lugger, 1900–1920

(detail). National Archives of Australia 04 Flight deck of USS Lexington on

8 May 1942 (detail), during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Official US Navy Photograph, Collections of the National Archives, Naval History and Heritage Command 80-G-16802

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

Treasures of the American Collection Currently showing

We celebrate the 25th year of the museum’s USA Gallery in an exhibition featuring more than 100 objects acquired with the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund. The exhibition features masterful ship paintings and seascapes, portraits of dour ships’ captains, intricate ship and engine models and other treasures of a collection that documents the American– Australian maritime relationship in trade, science, migration, defence, exploration, politics, popular culture, love and war. 05

Escape from Pompeii – the untold Roman rescue Until 3 September

This new exhibition casts light on one of the ancient world’s most famous natural disasters – the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pliny the Elder, commander of the Roman fleet at nearby Misenum, ordered the fleet’s ships out to rescue as many people as possible, in one of the first recorded rescue attempts of civilians by a military force. Objects displayed include jewellery, ceramics, sculptures, frescoes from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and artefacts recovered from ancient shipwrecks. Also featured are haunting body casts of some of the victims of Mount Vesuvius.

Bailey curates: Dog and cats all at sea Currently showing

Animal companions have been cherished on board ships for as long as people have made sea voyages. In a life from which children and families are often missing and very much missed, pets provide a focus for affection. Sydney photographer Sam Hood went on board thousands of ships between 1900 and the 1950s. He took countless photographs of crew members, and in many cases their animals. This selection of photos shows how much pets meant to many seafarers. Its guest curator – the museum’s own dog, Bailey – puts his playful interpretation on these images of his seagoing predecessors.

05 SR Bearse entering Hong Kong Harbour,

unknown artist. ANMM Collection 00005647 Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds. ANMM photographer 06 Fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD.

contemplates photos of some of his predecessors. Image Andrew Frolows/ ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

The Batavia Tapestry Until 29 October

This new embroidered work by Melbourne textile artist Melinda Piesse illustrates the tragic story of the wreck of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) flagship Batavia off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. Batavia was wrecked on its maiden voyage to the East Indies (now Indonesia), carrying more than 300 people along with a valuable cargo of trading goods. The ensuing tale of mutiny, mayhem and massacre remains one of the darkest chapters in Australia’s maritime history. 08

Lessons from the Arctic – How Roald Amundsen won the race to the South Pole Until 30 June

This exhibition in the museum’s Vaughan Evans Library outlines the successful expedition of Roald Amundsen and his crew to Antarctica. It contains more than 200 photographs of the preparation and execution of the historic expedition of 1910 to 1912. Created by the Fram Museum, Norway, it is augmented with objects from our collection and books on polar exploration from our library. Free. Open 10 am–4 pm Monday–Friday Sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Canberra

ANMM travelling exhibitions

The Art of Science: Baudin’s Voyagers 1800 to 1804 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, TAS Until 9 July

This exhibition showcases original sketches and paintings created by Baudin’s artists Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit during the voyage of 1800–1804. Such sketches were the scientific snapshots of their age, and those on display capture some of the first European views of Aboriginal people and Australian animals and landscapes.

East Coast Encounter – re-imagining the 1770 encounter Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, NSW Until 17 June

East Coast Encounter is a multi-arts initiative involving Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, writers and songwriters to re-imagine the encounter by Lieutenant James Cook and his crew with Aboriginal people in 1770. This project has received administrative and financial support from Sunshine Coast Council, Museum and Gallery Services Queensland, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Arts Queensland and the Australia Council.

08 Detail from The Batavia Tapestry by Melinda

Piesse. Image Kristina Kingston, courtesy Melinda Piesse 09 Amundsen’s first meeting with the Netsilik

Inuit at his Arctic base Gjøahaven, October 1903 (detail). Reproduced courtesy The Fram Museum 10 Detail of porcupine fish by Charles-Alexandre

Lesueur or Nicolas-Martin Petit. Image courtesy Museum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

Voyage to the deep: Underwater adventures Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle, WA Until 20 August

Based on Jules Verne’s 1870 classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, the exhibition brings to life the mythical deep-sea world of Captain Nemo and the fantastical submarine Nautilus. Kids can climb aboard and take control at the helm, peer through the periscopes, crank the propeller, test out the bunks and explore the Cabinet of Curiosities, full of wonderful marine specimens. For children under 12, it’s a hands-on experience with opportunities to touch, explore and play. 11

War at Sea Tasmanian Maritime Museum, Hobart, TAS Until 18 June Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, NSW 1 July 2016–15 October

The histories and stories of the Royal Australian Navy and its sailors, less widely known than those of the soldiers at Gallipoli and the Western Front, are told through first-hand accounts from diaries and journals, objects, film and interactives from the National Maritime Collection, the National Film and Sound Archives and the Australian War Memorial. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Undiscovered: photographic works by Michael Cook South Australian Maritime Museum, Adelaide, SA Until 4 June Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin, NT 17 June–27 August

A striking series of large-scale photographic works by celebrated Aboriginal Artist Michael Cook, from the Bidjara people of southwest Queensland. Undiscovered provides a contemporary Indigenous perspective of European settlement in Australia, a land already populated by its original people. Cook’s artworks shift roles and perspectives around the notion of European ‘discovery’ of Australia, reflecting upon our habitual ways of thinking and seeing our history.

Through a Different Lens – Cazneaux by the water South Australian Maritime Museum, Adelaide, SA 16 June–15 October

Photographer Harold Cazneaux (1878–1953) is a giant in the history of Australian photography. In the early 1900s he became a passionate advocate for photography as art rather than a mechanical recording process. This exhibition of more than 50 original works presents a new dimension to Cazneaux’s work, reflecting how the water and Sydney Harbour offered him a space to explore mood, light, atmosphere and life in his signature pictorial photographic style.

Interactive adventures with Voyage to the Deep. ANMM image

12 Undiscovered 4 (detail), 2010 by Michael

Cook. ANMM Collection 13 Study in curves (detail), Harold Cazneaux,

1931. ANMM Collection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS WINTER 2017

Guardians of Sunda Strait Houston Public Library, Houston, Texas, USA Until 24 June

An exhibition about the loss during World War II of HMAS Perth and USS Houston, including objects from the Australian War Memorial, Royal Australian Navy, US Navy, University of Texas and Australian National Maritime Museum.

War at Sea panel display Community museums, RSL clubs and public libraries, TAS and VIC Currently showing

A graphic panel display based on the major touring exhibition War at Sea: The Navy in WWI. The panel display highlights the contribution the Royal Australian Navy made in the First World War. This modular display has been shown at more than 110 RSL clubs, museums, libraries and visitor centres since 2015. The panel display will continue to tour to diverse community organisations in 2017.

Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica banner display Various venues in WA, QLD and NSW 15

Through dramatic photographs taken by Australian photographers Frank Hurley and Keith Jack, Shackleton: Escape from Antarctica walks in the footsteps of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1915â&#x20AC;&#x201C;17. Discover what happened to these brave men and their ships. The graphic panel display consist of eight pull-up banners measuring 2 x 1.5 metres. This display is supported by the Australian Antarctic Division and sponsored by Antarctica Flights and APT Luxury Touring & Cruising.

Battle of the Java Sea Museum Bahari, Jakarta, Indonesia Currently showing

This exhibition examines a large sea battle fought and lost against Japan by naval forces in the American, British, Dutch and Australian Command on 27 February 1942. It includes the story of the loss of HMAS Perth and USS Houston in the Battle of Sunda Strait two days later. The work of maritime archaeologists to investigate and conserve the wreck of HMAS Perth is highlighted. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration by the US Naval History and Heritage Command, Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy, Royal Dutch Navy and the ANMM. Supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund 14 Image ÂŠ ANMM 15 Shackleton banner display. ANMM image

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

MARITIME HERITAGE AROUND AUSTRALIA HOLBROOK

A boat out of water

HOLBROOK SUBMARINE MUSEUM

The former Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Otway escaped the scrapyard for an unlikely but lively retirement in a country town 400 kilometres from the ocean. The reason lies in a chain of events that started in World War I, writes Cathy Mann.

01 Otway in the park. Image Paul Temple

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

IN JUNE 2017 THE FORMER HMAS OTWAY celebrates its 20th birthday ashore in the Submarine Precinct at Holbrook, New South Wales. In its time there, the feet of countless men, women and especially children have climbed all over its casing. It has seen rain, flood, wind, heat, frost and even snow. Its exterior coat has been renewed several times and all seven masts stand proud and tall from the fin, the radar mast rotating, relentlessly seeking confirmation that it is alone in this patch of the world. At night, it can be seen caught in a spotlight, seemingly frozen, as if deciding whether to prepare to dive from sight or if the lighting is from friendly sources. Submarines were a relatively new technology in warfare in the early 20th century. Commanding the British submarine HMS B11, Lieutenant Norman Holbrook guided his vessel on a daring underwater journey through the Dardanelles Straits in December 1914, eventually torpedoing and sinking the Turkish battleship Mesudiye. The exploit made world headlines and earned Holbrook the Victoria Cross. During this time, around the world, the names of many towns and locations were changed due to anti-German sentiment. One of these was the New South Wales town of Germanton, which was officially renamed in Holbrookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s honour on 24 August 1915. Replicas of the medals awarded to Commander Holbrook can be seen in the Submarine Museum; the originals are held in safekeeping at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In 1919 Norman Holbrook married Viva Dixon, a widow who had a daughter, Nona, and a son, Nelson, from a previous marriage. Nelson later joined the Royal Navy and died in World War II after his ship was sunk by a German U-boat.

02 Otwayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fin leaves Garden Island Naval

Base in Sydney for its journey to Holbrook. Image courtesy Holbrook Submarine Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

In 1995, the Royal Australian Navy gave the fin of HMAS Otway to the town

Norman and Viva had one child together, Jeffrey Norman Holbrook, who joined the army and was killed in action in Italy two years after Nelsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death. Viva died in 1952, and Norman married Gundula Felden two years later. The couple visited Holbrook a number of times between 1954 and 1976. The first submarine to arrive in Holbrook was a 1/5 scale model of the B11, which was installed near the Submarine Precinct by the Rotary Club and dedicated in 1972. A statue commemorating Commander Holbrook was unveiled in the Submarine Precinct in 1988. Over the years, Freedom of Entry marches and ceremonies have been conducted around B11â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s casing. In 1995, the Royal Australian Navy gave the fin of HMAS Otway to the town, and so began the challenges of organising logistics and finances to acquire more of the vessel from the scrap dealers. After a generous donation from Gundula Holbrook, work began to secure the casing and the salvage rights to the control room fittings, gauges, panels, periscopes, bunks, heads (toilets) and much more. The submarine was transported in sections to its new home; the relocation of the fin caused the old highway to be shut down in the middle of the night to allow the extra-wide load to travel south. The Submarine Squadron adopted Holbrook as its spiritual home, and many friendly sports fixtures have been played between the townsfolk and the submariners. When the squadron was relocated to Western Australia in 1999, the connection between the town and the men serving changed, but almost by default the retired members started visiting more often. Many make pilgrimages to Holbrook and Otway each year for Anzac Day ceremonies, an opportunity to renew old friendships and reflect on those who went before in the service of their country.

03 One-fifth scale model of Royal Navy

submarine B11, commanded by Norman Holbrook during World War I. Image courtesy Holbrook Submarine Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

Otway’s control room was reconstructed inside the museum, and includes the captain’s cabin, officers’ wardroom, a set of three bunks, heads and many of the panels once used to operate the submarine. One of the favourite items in the museum is the working periscope, which allows astonished visitors a view of the town, roads, houses and trees. The dive warning klaxon can be sounded, ensuring wide smiles (and covered ears) from the younger set. The Opening Dedication Ceremony took place in June 1997, with Gundula, the widow of Norman Holbrook, an honoured guest. That weekend is remembered by all who attended as the biggest event in the town’s history.

As part of a local wool fair in 2014, Otway was covered in knitted yellow squares for about eight weeks

Gundula, now in her 103rd year, has remained interested in the town of Holbrook and especially the submarines, and she gave full approval for an actress to portray her and relate her husband’s war exploits in the museum using hologram technology. The resulting ‘little lady’ is the source of much wonder to museum visitors. Three years ago, Otway was the centre of attention due to a major arts project that involved the whole community and the rest of the nation, and which had worldwide reach. As part of a local wool fair, Murray Arts wanted to engage in a large community yarn-bombing project, so to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles in Australia (and their ‘Yellow

04 HMAS Otway after being yarn-bombed.

Image courtesy Holbrook Submarine Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

Submarineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; song) Otway was covered in yellow knitted squares for about eight weeks. This project attracted thousands of extra visitors, and many knitters travelled from far and wide to see if their knitted square was a part of the large woollen cover. A corner of the museum now keeps alive the story of the yarn-bombing. The new submarine in the precinct is a scale model of the control room section of AE2, one of two submarines purchased by the Australian Navy in World War I. The other, AE1, was lost in 1914 off New Guinea, its exact location still a mystery. Both submarines made an epic voyage from England and arrived in Sydney with half English, half Australian crews. As war escalated, the new technology of the submarines operated by Australia, England, France and Germany was seen to have a distinct advantage in the waters of the Dardanelles in what is now Turkey. Their ability to attack enemy shipping supplying troops to the war front was seen as an ideal adjunct to the other campaigns planned in the area.

05 A holographic image of an actress playing

Gundula Holbrook tells the story of her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s war exploits. Image courtesy Holbrook Submarine Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

AE2, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Henry Stoker, followed the path of B11 through the Dardanelles then into the Sea of Marmara. After the Turkish torpedo boat Sultanhisar scored a hit on AE2, Stoker decided to scuttle his vessel so it would not fall into enemy hands. He and his crew abandoned the boat and were taken as prisoners of war. All but four of the 31 crew survived to return home after the war. The museum has developed displays that highlight the lives of the crew of both boats both before and after the war. As you walk towards the museum from Otway, you may notice a strange-looking blue cylinder protruding from the wall. Once inside, you realise that this is a real torpedo casing, all ready to fire away at the café across the parking lot. Just next to the torpedo is one of the museum’s more precious holdings, a Jolly Roger flag rescued by John Straw in 1946 when HMS Unsparing was being scrapped. Flying Jolly Rogers aboard submarines is a custom dating back to the early days of the use of submarines in warfare. Great Britain commissioned its first submarine, Holland 1, in 1901. When Admiral Wilson VC was appointed First Sea Lord in 1910 he stated that submarines were underhanded, unfair and damned un-English, and that he would convince the British Admiralty to have the crews of enemy submarines who were captured during wartime ‘hanged as pirates’. In September 1914, British submarine HMS E9 (under Lieutenant Commander Max Horton) became the first British submarine to sink an enemy warship and returned to port flying a Jolly Roger, made from signal flags and blackout curtains. The practice became far more widespread in World War II, and submariners

06 Jolly Roger from HMS Unsparing.

Image Paul Temple

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > A BOAT OUT OF WATER

from many countries have taken pride in flying their version of the Jolly Roger. In the years since AE2 was scuttled, Australian submarines have not been called upon to enter a war zone, but after naval exercises in 1980 with other countries, HMAS Onslow flew a flag with the silhouettes of seven ships, all ‘defeated’ by it in the exercises. While much of the museum is devoted to submarines of the past, a section is devoted to the six currently serving Collins class submarines, which have been named to commemorate members of the Royal Australian Navy who served their country with distinction. Vice Admiral Sir John Collins and Rear Admiral Harold Farncomb served in both world wars and beyond, but Captain Emile Dechaineux, Ordinary Seaman Edward Sheean, Captain Hector Waller and Lieutenant Commander Robert all lost their lives in service. Especially touching is the story of Teddy Sheean, an 18-yearold Tasmanian trained to use Oerlikon guns on ships. After his ship, HMAS Armidale, was attacked and the firing from enemy aircraft was still wounding and killing sailors in the ocean, Teddy climbed back onto his ship, strapped himself to his gun and fired as the ship went down, ensuring the attacks ceased, but giving himself no chance of survival. He was mentioned in despatches posthumously. Holbrook was the last town to be bypassed by the Hume Highway in 2013. Annually many thousands of visitors stop for a break in Germanton Park, visit the museum, climb on the Otway and depart, refreshed for the next stage of their journey. Cathy Mann has been involved with the Holbrook Submarine Museum since she and her ex-submariner husband relocated to the Holbrook area in 2015. She is now the museum’s Voluntary Curator.

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

Gifts and givers

DONORSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; GENEROSITY ENRICHES THE NATIONAL MARITIME COLLECTION Since its launch 25 years ago, the Australian National Maritime Museum has amassed more than 145,000 objects, many of them via donation. Senior Curator Daina Fletcher profiles some of the donors whose generosity has enriched the National Maritime Collection.

01 Wedding dress belonging to Italian migrant

Lina Cesarin, 1956. ANMM Collection 00004697 Gift from Lina Cesarin

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

THERE ARE TENS OF THOUSANDS of objects in the museum’s collection: large, small, unique, heroic, representative, discrete, personal or public in intent. Some are icon pieces; others are voluminous pictorial, archival or personal collections. Some are manufactured, others the result of a creative impulse, but all of them help us tell stories about Australia’s maritime history and experience. And there are surprises and gems aplenty.

The personal details associated with gifts are often loaded with interest, intrigue and emotion

Artefacts come to the museum in various ways, through purchase, bequest or gift. A look back over the collection shows how much donors, as keepers of family stories or collectors with personal enthusiasms, have contributed to our national maritime collection, often with a poignancy and significance that deepens over time. The personal details associated with gifts are often loaded with interest, intrigue, emotion and rich storytelling. We call this interpretative potential – for the museum it is the ability to use the artefact to connect with audiences to excite interest in the maritime world.

Fishers, filmmakers, environmentalists One such major gift was offered to the museum in 2007 by Australians Ron and Valerie Taylor – pioneer divers, film-makers, photographers and TV personalities whose career spanned 50 years. Together they produced or starred in a number of TV shows and films about the underwater world, including Shark Hunters, Blue Water White Death and Man-Eater. 02

02 Film festival poster depicting Valerie Taylor

demonstrating her shark-proof mesh suit. The suit is currently on display in the exhibition Treasures of the American Collection. ANMM Collection 00050335 Gift from Ron and Valerie Taylor

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

As their profile grew, so did a powerful awareness personally of the need to protect the marine environment. The couple were appointed to film the shark attack scenes in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 epic Jaws. While the film proved contentious in its portrayal of the apex predator, Ron and Valerie Taylor remained committed to shark conservation.

Donors, as keepers of family stories or collectors with personal enthusiasms, have contributed greatly to our national maritime collection

The collection includes Ron and Valerie’s wetsuits, gloves, facemasks, diving equipment, cameras with innovative waterproof housings, underwater lighting systems, film posters, shark repellent technology, spearfishing equipment, a sharkproof suit, shark tagging and research technology and shark jaw specimens. There is also a range of artefacts recovered from shipwrecks in the 1970s (before the sites were declared historic shipwrecks), including from the 1911 wreck of the passenger ship SS Yongala off Townsville in far north Queensland, in an area the Taylors had filmed extensively. The range of technology, equipment, apparel and dates very clearly illustrates Ron and Valerie’s growing awareness and advocacy for the protection of the marine environment. This story within a story has deep interpretative potential that allows the museum to explore one the most compelling issues of our time – the threat to the world’s oceans – through the personal trajectories of the Taylors’ lives. As Valerie says, ‘it provides a valuable historical perspective to marine conservation, especially for young people. The preservation of the Great Barrier Reef shouldn’t start from its health today but from that of 50 years ago. The aim should be to save, repair and restore the reef to how it was then.’ Since Ron’s death in 2013, Valerie has continued to champion marine conservation and to support the museum. While for Valerie the gift to the museum was partly motivated by moving house, there’s another dimension to it, for the artefacts themselves speak strongly of the need to respect, understand, document and promote conservation of the underwater environment. On a different level, seeing the collection cared for by Australia’s premier national maritime institution ensures that the pioneering work the couple did in this realm will be recognised and built upon, nationally and internationally.

An immigration story From a very public life to a very private world, the gift of another personal collection, while quite different in character, also holds a special place in the national maritime collection. The story it centres around – that of a young Italian woman who travelled to Australia to marry her betrothed in the 1950s

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

– has an equally rich potential to reach audiences. This personal story is also the story of many others, and evokes the optimistic period after the Second World War when Australia welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to build the nation; both self-financed immigrants like the Cesarins and those who arrived under assisted-immigration schemes. In 1956 Lina Cesarin (then Mussio) travelled on the SS Neptunia from her family home in Casarsa, in Italy’s north-east, with her heart full of hope, expectation, romance and more than a little trepidation. On board she carried a trunk of clothing, shoes and things that she would need to build a new home – crockery, cutlery, napery, bed linen and family mementoes. One special item was the elegant and simple ivory silk wedding dress that Lina had made with her older sister Maria, a dressmaker in Casarsa. Her wedding ensemble is now in the national maritime collection, given by Lina in 1989. The voyage was exciting, spent in the company of new friends, fellow Italian immigrants like Lina, all leaving the difficulties of post-war Italy behind. In June the ship docked in Sydney and Lina disembarked to find her husband-to-be Rizzieri Cesarin on the wharves. It had been five years since she had seen him. Like many others, he had sailed to Australia in search of a better life for them both in 1951, promising Lina that he would either return to Casarsa or send for her after five years. Lina had spent those five years at home assisting Maria in her tailoring business while she waited out a courtship conducted through letter-writing. During his five years in Australia Rizzieri worked for a time in Brisbane, but disliked the humid climate. He then moved south to Cooma to work for Snowy Mountains Hydro on what would be Australia’s largest postwar nation-building project. Alongside other Italian and European migrants he built and maintained the workers’ villages, and found that the job, climate, lifestyle and camaraderie suited him well. Two days after Lina arrived she donned her treasured wedding dress and the couple were married among new Italian friends in Sydney’s Leichhardt. They then made their way south. Lina had some difficulty with the new language, but otherwise acclimatised quite easily. In the early 1960s, after his work on the Snowy finished, Rizzieri established a panel beating garage and built a family home. So why did Lina donate her precious wedding outfit to the museum? Rizzieri died relatively young, in 1987, and the following year, when Lina was attending a talk at an Italian club in Sydney, she was approached by a museum curator searching

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

for migrant stories to feature in the soon-to-be-launched national maritime museum. She was thrilled that a national museum was interested in migrant history, so she considered the gift of her precious outfit. Because her two children were sons, Lina judged that they would not wear the family heirloom. Today Lina, 85 years of age and still living in Cooma, says that although it remains a treasure to her, ‘it was better to see my wedding dress in the national museum, it was very important to recognise Italians who came to this country’. Many of her friends have seen the wedding dress on exhibition here and this pleases Lina greatly. The wedding outfit and personal effects are powerful artefacts that tell a story of love, longing, displacement, hope and belonging – universal themes that appeal to all. Lina’s tale in this collection is a story within a story of Australia’s postwar immigration.

A fine ship portrait Another treasure gifted to the museum is a very fine oil painting by Joseph Fowles, a well-known artist and teacher in Sydney from the 1840s until his death in 1878. It shows a steam yacht in Farm Cove, Sydney Harbour, with Government House and Fort Macquarie in the background, in the mid19th century. It exhibits the artist’s characteristic delicacy. 03

03 Oil painting by Joseph Fowles of an auxiliary

steam ship in Farm Cove, Sydney Harbour, with Government House and Fort Macquarie (now the site of the Sydney Opera House) in the background, mid-19th century. ANMM Collection 00042690 Gift from Mary Rae Thomas

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > GIFTS AND GIVERS

FOUNDATION WINTER 2017

Fowles came to Sydney as a ship’s surgeon in 1838 with claims already to a reputation as a marine painter. His diary and sketches of his voyage are held in the State Library of NSW. As well as marine works he painted landscapes and was celebrated for his depictions of racehorses. He is best known today for his fine architectural sketches of Sydney’s streets, published in parts between 1848 and 1850.

The Australian National Maritime Foundation supports the museum and its collection. It is the museum’s fundraising arm, and has deductible gift recipient status, enabling it to issue tax receipts for donations and gifts in kind. Broadly, the foundation’s purpose is to support the acquisition, conservation and enhancement of the National Maritime Collection. For more information about donating or leaving a bequest to the foundation, please contact Dr Kimberley Webber, Acting Head of the Foundation; phone 02 8241 8324 or email Kimberley. webber@gmail.com

The donor, Mary Rae Thomas, was given the painting in about 1948 by an elderly neighbour, whose father had commanded the ship in the picture. It is not a naval vessel. It is flying a red ensign of the merchant marine, but also a white flag featuring an emu, crest and kangaroo, suggesting an official capacity. It is possibly the governor’s vessel, a probability heightened by its presence below Government House. For the museum the painting is a gem. It represents the fine art of marine painting by one of colonial Australia’s most accomplished artists, while the harbourscape it depicts reinforces the strong maritime character of Sydney as a colonial hub. It joins a growing collection of marine artists represented in ANMM’s collections, including those working in Australian ports such as Oswald Brierley, Henry Gritten, Haughton Forrest, Frederick Garling, Thomas Robertson, George Bourne, the prolific turn-of-the-century ship portraitists of the Gregory family, Reginald Borstel and William Forster.

Donating to the ANMM Overall the National Maritime Collection, and the nation, have benefitted enormously through public donations of material. We are always interested in offers of gifts and are happy to discuss potential donations; however, we have identified priority areas that we are particularly keen to pursue. Our current priorities are for material that highlights: • Australian Indigenous maritime heritage and culture • Maritime technology – material that reflects innovation in exploring the cultural, scientific and commercial resources

04 16mm Beaulieu camera inside custom-made

acrylic underwater housing, used by Ron and Valerie Taylor in the production of Shark Hunters in 1962 with Ben Cropp. ANMM Collection 00049443 Gift from Ron and Valerie Taylor

of maritime Australia and the wider world. This includes advances in modern ship design and construction, cargo handling, port developments and underwater exploration • Environment – material that has the capacity to highlight aspects of the past, present or future of Australia’s maritime environment. To assess donation offers, we ask that donors send us digital pictures of the proposed object – preferably with a ruler visible to indicate scale. Then please tell us about the item. What is its history? What stories are associated with the object or people connected to it? When was it made? What condition is it in?

The more information you can give us, the better, as it helps us when considering if the material is suitable for the museum’s collection. Please send your pictures and object information to the Australian National Maritime Foundation via email anmf@anmm.gov.au or post to Wharf 7, 58 Pirrama Road, Pyrmont, NSW 2009.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > PIP, SQUEAK, WILFRED AND FRIENDS

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

Pip, Squeak , Wilfred and friends RELICS OF THE SYDNEY–EMDEN CONFLICT

A unique set of World War I service medals was recently donated to the museum. It comprises complete sets of both official and unofficial medals associated with a sailor present at the Sydney–Emden conflict. By Dr James Hunter

01 01 Otto George Morris’s set of official World

War I service medals, from left to right: 1914–15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. ANMM Collection

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > PIP, SQUEAK, WILFRED AND FRIENDS

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

THE MUSEUM RECENTLY ACQUIRED a unique set of First World War service medals and lapel badge belonging to Royal Australian Navy (RAN) serviceman Able Seaman (Gunner) Otto George Morris. They were donated to the museum by the Riverstone–Schofield Sub-Branch of the Returned Services League (RSL), following a lengthy and comprehensive effort to locate and identify living descendants of Morris who might have had a rightful ownership claim to them.

Servicemen nicknamed the medals ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ after a popular British comic strip

Morris was born in Naringaningalook, Victoria, on 23 November 1894. He was one day short of his 18th birthday when he enlisted for seven years with the RAN on 22 November 1912. After spending just over a month at HMAS Cerberus, Morris’s training continued aboard torpedo boat destroyers and he joined HMAS Yarra (I) on 1 October 1913. At the beginning of July 1914, Morris was posted to HMAS Sydney (I). Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Sydney was engaged in operations against Germany’s Pacific colonies and destroyed a radio station in the Pellew Islands. Returning to Australian waters, it joined the escort of the first troop convoy from Australia to the Middle East, which left Albany, Western Australia, on 1 November 1914. Eight days later, Sydney was directed to leave the convoy and investigate reports of an unknown ship off the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. It turned out to be the German light cruiser SMS Emden, which had been capturing and sinking Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean since shortly after the outbreak of the war. In the engagement that followed – in which Morris operated as a gunner – Sydney was hit several times by Emden’s long-range guns, resulting in four dead and 12 wounded. However, the superior firepower of the Australian light cruiser’s broadside soon prevailed and Emden was left ‘beached and done for’ on North Keeling Island.

02 Two unofficial decorations awarded to Otto

George Morris: Sydney–Emden Medal (centre) and Western Australia Emden Medal (right). His Royal Australian Navy Returned from Active Service lapel badge is at left.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > PIP, SQUEAK, WILFRED AND FRIENDS

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

Morris served with Sydney until September 1917. His next posting was the cruiser HMAS Melbourne (I), which he joined in mid-April 1919. He served with Melbourne until 5 August 1919, the day the ship was paid off and laid up. Morris’s last posting was the battlecruiser HMAS Australia (I), where he spent his final days of RAN service. He was discharged on 12 December 1919.

Otto Morris was one day short of his 18th birthday when he enlisted for seven years with the RAN

The medals and lapel badge remained in Morris’s possession until his death in the 1950s, at which point they passed to unknown member(s) of his family, who then approached the Riverstone–Schofield Memorial Club in 2008 with an offer of donation. The Memorial Club in turn transferred the items to the Riverstone–Schofield RSL Sub-Branch (the two organisations are unaffiliated). Due to security worries, as well as concern about the overall condition of the medals, the Riverstone–Schofield RSL kept them in a safe, and ultimately decided to contact the ANMM with an offer of donation. There are five military decorations in the set. Three are official campaign medals awarded to all members of the British Expeditionary Forces who served during World War I, and include the 1914–1915 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. Servicemen from the period nicknamed them ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ after a popular comic strip that appeared in Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper. The remaining decorations include the Sydney–Emden Medal and Western Australia Emden Medal, both of which were specially commissioned by the RAN to commemorate the Sydney–Emden engagement. Sydney–Emden Medals are particularly interesting because they were manufactured from individual Mexican silver dollars confiscated from Emden by Sydney’s crew following the battle. The Royal Australian Navy Returned from Active Service lapel badge features a fouled-anchor device at its centre and would have been worn by Morris after the war concluded to recognise his naval service. Morris’s service medals are important because they comprise a complete (official and unofficial) set belonging to a Sydney crewman who was present during the ship’s history-making battle with Emden. A complete ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’ set associated with a Sydney crewman is itself an exceptionally rare find, but this set is unique in being accompanied by the two ‘unofficial’ medals commissioned by the RAN to specifically commemorate the engagement. Morris was an active serviceman for the remainder of the First World War and ultimately survived the conflict – a fact evidenced by his Returned from Active Service lapel badge. Badges of this kind that were made specifically for RAN personnel are also relatively rare, and nicely complement the complete set of service decorations.

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

Bagu

EXPRESSIONS OF CULTURE AND COUNTRY This year, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural artworks from the ANMM collection feature alongside the photographic works of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. These contemporary expressions of culture specifically relate to wildlife and the natural world, writes Jane Raffan.

03 Uttiâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Stingray bagu by Theresa Beeron.

Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

IN 2016, MONACO HOSTED Taba Naba: Australia, Oceania, Arts of the Sea People, which attracted some 500,000 visitors. Part of this international exhibition was Australia: Defending the Oceans, four works from which were acquired by the ANMM and are now on display to accompany Wildlife Photographer of the Year. These works, known as bagu, are made by the traditional owner groups represented by the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation in Far North Queensland, Australia’s Indigenous rainforest peoples. The bagu provide a contemporary look at freshwater rainforest people and their connection to their culture through water, water stories and water management.

Bagu with jiman The works speak of the land and its relationship to the coast and marine habitat that underpin each of the stories. The sky that connects these elements is represented by the bagu and its traditional significance and links to the shooting star. The bagu’s earthly realm is a region of spectacular scenic beauty encompassing vast areas of pristine rainforest canopy and wet/dry sclerophyll forests stretching to the coast and the fingers of the Great Barrier Reef. Viewed from the mountain tops rising above the canopy, the lush landscapes in this region are adorned with myriad waterways, gorges, waterfalls, mangroves and beaches.

04 From left: Communicating Safety bagu by

John Murray; Baddagulli-Barramundi bagu by Doris Kinjun; Gumbarda–Cyclone bagu by Eileen Tep; Marine bagu by Clarence Kinjun; Jubbun-Eel bagu by Elizabeth Nolan. Images Suzanne O’Connell

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

Bagu are originally fire-making tools that have undergone a contemporary transformation into cultural vessels which symbolise issues around water management and its impact on waterways and culture. Traditionally, firesticks comprised two parts, the bagu (body) and jiman (sticks). Bagu are normally made from the boogadilla (milky pine tree) and jiman are made from mudja (wild guava tree).

Bagu are originally fire-making tools that have undergone a contemporary transformation into cultural vessels

Creation stories form the basis of customary laws and traditions of all Indigenous people from different cultures and regions across Australia, and individual groups have principal stories about the creation of their traditional lands and waters, as well as the origin of fire. For the Girringun rainforest peoples of North Queensland, Jiggabunah is a spirit of fire who took the shape of a man. He ate red-hot coals and threw the first fire-stick, or jiman, across the sky, leaving a trail of fire visible to those on earth as a shooting star. It is said that Jiggabunah came to earth occasionally at certain places: Goodarlah, a hill on the Murray River; the large rock on the western side of the crest of Bulleroo (Mt Tyson), Queensland; and another rock in the Davidson Valley.

05 Alison Murray, Debra Murray and Nephi

Denham among the bagu at Monaco. Image Roger Morten

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

When Jiggabunah took off from the earth there was a frightful bang and a roaring, rushing noise. He was dangerous to look upon, as beholders could be blinded by the strange blue light he emitted. Although he seemed malevolent, and instilled great fear in the hearts of beholders, there is no evidence of Jiggabunah ever having caused any harm. Traditional carved and decorated anthropomorphic bagu fire boards, which hid the spark of fire, are revered as representations of Jiggabunah. The bagu was a source of power, and its holes, into which the jiman (fire stick) were set in the process of creating fire, were subject to strict protocols. Bagu and jiman were carried from place to place as the camps were moved. A special man had the job of looking after the fire. He would not dare to let it go out or he would be in great trouble, particularly in the wet season when it was difficult to find dry tinder.

‘We were not allowed to put our finger in the holes of the bagu. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was a way to keep the fire pure,’ says Gulnay traditional owner Doris Kinjun.

Bagu: contemporary innovation In 2003, the art of Queensland’s Indigenous peoples was explored in a ground-breaking and highly overdue exhibition called Story Place. Five years later, the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre commenced full-time operations and, today, the Rainforest Peoples’ culture is being appreciated on the world stage through the art of their weavers, painters, sculptors, potters, textile artists and makers of traditional objects, many of whom were actively working as artists in a variety of media decades before the centre’s official establishment. In the early years of the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, the bagu spirit figure was seized upon as the perfect cultural symbol to take to the inaugural 2009 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF). While there were occasional exceptions to the rule, making the traditional bagu was normally a male preserve. A group discussion between artists and community elders saw permission granted for bagu to take new form in the hands of artists of both sexes. The bagu’s morphing from wood to clay also proved to be a salient comment on the nexus between contemporary practice, culture and access to traditional country, as ‘the shift from wood to clay was influenced by the scarcity of suitable wood, previously accessible on land now privately owned or declared National Park’.1 06 Saltwater Bagu by Alison Murray.

Image Suzanne O’Connell

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

Creation stories form the basis of customary laws and traditions of all Indigenous people across Australia

The clay bagu broke expectations and brokered a new appreciation of art from the Rainforest Peoples, described by prominent critic Nicholas Rothwell from The Australian as ‘a new class of Indigenous object for the market’. On the occasion of the first showing at the 2009 CIAF, Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre Manager Dr Valerie Keenan remarked that they ‘caught the eye through difference, the pieces were seen as rough and ready, as not painted, as somehow real, and true’.

Culture and country – one and the same The bagu’s creation story is just one among many cultural riches of its peoples. The development in the bagu figuration, however, exemplifies Indigenous ingenuity and artistic innovation. Its physical transformation – from a small, flat, carved wooden fire-board to anthropomorphic threedimensional clay sculptures and the impressive installation-scale works in various forms that have just been acquired by the ANMM and which incorporate new and found materials – is symbolic of the transformation in Australia’s cultural landscape: the increase in visibility and empowerment of Indigenous artists. At the ANMM, far from home, the bagu stand as sentinels: strong symbols of Indigenous artistic innovation and self-determination, and guardians of country and culture. Clarence Kinjun, Gulnay traditional owner and creator of Marine Bagu, says, ‘The Gulnay design and patterns on this bagu represent connection between the land and the sea (…) blue for the sea, yellow for the sand, white for the white caps of the sea and black which represents our connection to the sea and the land in the Tully area’.

07 Painter and potter Emily Murray and Girringun

Aboriginal Arts Manager, Dr Valerie Keenan, at the ANMM. They viewed the recently acquired bagu in their new home, along with other ANMM Aboriginal cultural objects from their region. Image Helen Anu/ANMM

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BAGU

Material matters: Protecting country and defending the waters In caring for country, the traditional owners represented by Girringun community have had to consider strategies to deal with a wide range of environmental threats and degradation, including water quality, watercourse diversions, invasive introduced species and the impact on fish stocks in the fresh and saltwater environments from boating and fishing practices, to name a few.2 Alison Murray, Girramay traditional owner and creator of Saltwater Bagu, states, ‘Mangroves are mostly around the mouth of rivers and creeks. They grow on the land and the sea. It’s where the fish breed and sometimes there is rubbish that ends up in there. It needs to be looked after. If you keep the land clean the fish will stay healthy and the fish will taste alright.’ Theresa Beeron, Girramay/Jirrbal traditional owner and creator of Utti–Stingray Bagu, says, ‘My bagu is a story about the saltwater (…) and the rubbish that washes up on the shore. The bottom of my bagu represents the jawun, the dilly bag. Jawun was used to carry the bagu and jiman and the fish they caught and to carry bush tucker they gathered.’ For some years now, the bagu artists and other traditional owners have taken their message to the world: ‘there is no divide between culture and their relationship with country, caring for country and cultural preservation is impossible in isolation from one another’.3 The physical presence of the bagu artists’ installation at the ANMM commands attention, admiration and respect: for the works themselves, and the artists’ statements about cultural vitality and the spiritual potency and importance of caring for country. 1 Dr Valerie Keenan, Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre manager, personal correspondence with Jane Raffan. 2 Keenan, ibid. 3 Melanie Zurba, ‘Caring for country through participatory art: an emerging method for exploring regional values and aspirations’, paper presented to the Canadian CoastalCURA conference, ‘People in places: Engaging together in integrated resource management’, June 2011. Text adapted with permission from Jane Raffan, Bagu: Matter and Spirit in Rainforest Country, Queensland, Australia, Editions Arts d’Australie, Stéphane Jacob, Paris, 2016 (in association with Suzanne O’Connell, Brisbane). Jane Raffan is a Sydney-based art advisor, valuer and writer who has worked for more than two decades in both the public and commercial art sectors.

COLLECTIONS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

ARHV WINTER 2017

The story behind the stories TEASING OUT A BOAT’S HISTORY

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

01 Now a recreational launch, Riawe is still

going strong after more than a century. Image courtesy Lindon Haigh

ARHV WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

At one point Riawe spotted a Japanese submarine on the surface off Greens Beach

An important aspect of the Australian Register of Historic Vessels is its work in researching and recording the layers of a craft’s history through its various owners, uses, guises and refits over the years. Curator of Historic Vessels David Payne explains.

THE NEW ARHV WEBSITE arhv.anmm.gov.au/en/collections puts the stories behind the nominated craft into the public domain, and from these stories the craft develop their individual significance. How these narratives come about is a story in itself, combining material from a number of sources to bring the boats to life. The background to some of the craft is worthy of a small book, and in some instances resulted in one. Riawe is a prime example. Riawe (The Lady Pam), a remarkable maritime history from 1912 is an A4 book covering the significance of the vessel’s century-plus of varied operation around Tasmania, plus technical information. Built in 1912 by A E ‘Ned’ Jack, one of the key shipwrights in northern Tasmania, Riawe was one of his early craft, and its details become a stepping stone into a wonderful, evolving walk through Tasmanian history. It was built for the Holyman family as a private motor launch and for the cattle trade, which included guiding cattle herds swimming between Robbins Island and Smithton on the mainland. When war broke out in 1939, Riawe was commandeered by the navy, painted grey, fitted with a wheelhouse and armed with a machine gun for patrol between Devonport and Low Head. As HMAS Riawe it had a crew of three, including the owner, who was in charge of the vessel and given the rank of Chief Petty Officer. The patrol work was virtually continuous and the locals tagged it HMAS Ridiculous. The vessel was also used for target towing and some minesweeping activities. At one point it spotted a Japanese submarine on the surface off Greens Beach; the craft acknowledged each other but no incident occurred.

02 Naval patrol auxiliary vessel HMAS Riawe

on patrol. Note the machine gun mounted forward. Australian War Memorial 301972

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

ARHV WINTER 2017

After the war the story continued under Gordon Allison, when Riawe carried cargo, including animals, across the lower reaches, towed piles to Bell Bay for wharf construction, conveyed fruit down the river, laid telephone cables and acted as a ferry. His son Wilfred then owned the vessel, before Charles Gulliver bought it. Renamed The Lady Pam, it went cray fishing and had the misfortune to run aground on Cape Barren Island. Gulliver walked overland to a settlement, then returned by sea expecting to find a wreck. Instead he found the vessel intact with only minor scratches and was able to tow the boat off. A subsequent owner changed the engine and fitted a wet well, and it continued cray fishing with other owners before the current owner renamed it Riawe and turned it into a recreational launch. That’s the short story – the long one is in the book the owner Lindon Haigh has put together, which is filled with extensive photographic and documentary material to embellish the story of the boat and the people associated with it. There are classic images of the boat in various locations and guises, including during the wartime period; a survey report by the builder for its wartime work; plans for a cradle and a wheelhouse; references covering a huge range of texts and sources, including many institutions; and anecdotes from one-on-one interviews and meetings with people formerly associated with the boat and the families involved. In the introduction Haigh refers to himself as a ‘hobby historian’, but his groundwork is that of a professional, and included many visits to Launceston and areas where Riawe had been to meet people and collect their bit to add to the story.

03 Lithograph from 1863 of Richard Green

seated in Star of Australia, the tubular single scull built by his brother Henry Green and designed by another brother, George Green. The scene is a view of the Thames River at Putney. ANMM Collection 00044752

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

ARHV WINTER 2017

Another craft with a well-researched story is a single scull from 1862, Star of Australia. The custodians of the craft at Marlow Rowing Club in England knew they had something rare but did not know a great deal of the story, while in Australia there were people who knew parts or even much of the story, but in some cases were unaware that the craft still existed in the UK. Bringing it all together was one of the outcomes of its ARHV nomination, which culminated in a visit and inspection in 2016.

Personal visits to nominated craft are very helpful

Three facets of local research contributed to its story. The Green family in Australia is well organised with its family ancestry, with people collecting and managing the material. One of them contacted me about the boat being still extant and worthy of ARHV nomination. I followed through with enquiries to the club and they returned a completed nomination form, by which time I had also contacted Richard Fotheringham, who had written a paper titled Early Sporting Diplomacy: The case for R A W Green (University of Queensland, 1989). His research had a very complete story on the sporting background, and initial details of the craft were confirmed by referencing some of the many newspaper articles he had quoted. Some years later Stephen Gard published Port Jackson Pullers, a comprehensive book on early colonial rowing in Australia, and this provided even more reference material. Gard’s research had sourced the missing details on the launching, shipping and early use of the craft, to finally bring it all together. One of the key sources is The Sydney Morning Herald, much of which is available to the public through Trove, the National Library of Australia’s online resource of scanned newspapers and other media. With all this in hand I went to the club in March 2016 and was able to meet committee members and the shipwright who had restored it and who confirmed its construction. I passed on a copy of the text to go with the boat’s display with their ARHV certificate, plus one other gem – a facsimile copy of a lithograph that Green must have brought back from the UK in 1862. The original had stayed in the family, and when its owner was located, he kindly donated it the museum. We held our own ‘Green Day’ some years ago, with Green family members who came to celebrate its display. Personal visits to nominated craft are very helpful, and in Tasmania the ARHV is supported for six months by Tasmanianbased ARHV Research Assistant Peter Higgs. He has been able to follow up personally with owners of a number of important Tasmanian craft. When Peter and I were at the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart in February this year, we met the current owner of a wonderful launch called Latura, which has been sought for ARHV consideration. That personal

ARHV WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

No one knew that the small Australian timber sloop Carronade was not far behind the renowned Sir Francis Chichester

visit on board was valuable for everyone in understanding the heritage of the craft, and shows appreciation for the owners’ efforts in researching their vessel. Background information from the people who were there is another source. Sometimes it takes a little while to come through, but when it does there is enormous satisfaction from all involved. Carronade is a great example. This is a wooden cruising yacht built in Sydney in 1964, which young Andy Wall sailed around Cape Horn and up to the USA. It became the first Australian- designed and built yacht to round Cape Horn and is also important as one of the Carmen class yachts that became famous in Australia when Cadence won the 1966 Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Carronade was built at the Swanson Brothers’ shed in the northern Sydney suburb of Dee Why and was fitted out by Andy Wall. Wall intended to cruise the yacht extensively, and already had considerable sailing experience on other vessels. Carronade’s first long ocean passage was from Sydney to Lord Howe Island. Soon after, Andy Wall sailed it to New Zealand and then Carronade continued across the Pacific, stopping for long periods to sail the Austral Islands in French Polynesia, up to Hawaii, then across to San Francisco on the west coast of the USA. From there Wall sailed Carronade back to French Polynesia. From Papeete they departed for Cape Horn. The non-stop passage from Tahiti to Cape Horn took 37 days.

04 The crew of Carronade: Andy Wall, Ken Mills

and Des Kearns. Image courtesy Des Kearns

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORY BEHIND THE STORIES

ARHV WINTER 2017

Wall was 22 years old at this time; his crew, Ken Mills and Des Kearns, were in their late teens. The epic voyage by these three very young but experienced men sailing to the bottom of South America went unheralded. No one knew that this small Australian timber sloop was not far behind the renowned Sir Francis Chichester. Carronade sailed around Cape Horn on 31 March 1967 – just nine days after Gypsy Moth IV’s highly publicised rounding.

Crew member Des Kearns documented different parts of the trip

It was the long passage from Tahiti through the Roaring Forties before rounding Cape Horn that truly tested the capabilities of the young crew and the well-designed, sturdily built Carronade. After mastering these rugged conditions Carronade spent many weeks sailing the stormy waters of Tierra del Fuego. It continued on to cruise the Beagle Channel before heading up to the more moderate conditions of the east coast of Argentina. Carronade was one of the earliest yachts to cruise in this area; normally people had been content to round the Horn, then to move on without stopping. Crew member Des Kearns documented different parts of the trip, including when the yacht was rolled in a violent gale, which luckily only damaged the doghouse. Kearns included the story of his time on Carronade in his own book World wanderer: 100,000 miles under sail. Andy Wall and his crew sailed up the east coast of South America and through the Caribbean, ending up in Florida, where Andy met and married Pam Krueger. Their honeymoon was spent sailing Carronade across the Atlantic to Europe, where they cruised for three years before sailing back across the Atlantic to Florida. Andy and Pam’s two-week-old daughter, Samantha, was christened in the Gulf Stream aboard Carronade. Samantha was the catalyst to make the story come together. She contacted me about recognising her late father’s achievements, which set in motion further contact first with her mother Pam, then Des Kearns and finally the proud current owners of Carronade. Together we built up a story from their recollections and published material, and with everyone sharing the email exchanges, it was an emotional experience.

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

The Gocks of Middle Mountain HONOURING A FAMILY EMPIRE

Paul Kwok belongs to the 25th generation of a family that can trace its ancestry back to the early 13th century, before the Mongolian leader Kublai Khan founded the Yuan dynasty and conquered China. Paul registered his grandfather, Gock Quay, on the Welcome Wall to honour the first member of his immediate family to set foot in Australia in 1890. By Kim Tao. 01 Paul Gock Quay in Sydney, c 1910.

All images reproduced courtesy Paul Kwok

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

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

GOCK QUAY (1878–1916) was born in the small farming community of Chuk Sau Yuen in Xiangshan county (now Zhuxiuyuan, Zhongshan), in southern China’s Guangdong province. Today Zhongshan (meaning ‘Middle Mountain’) is best known as the birthplace of revolutionary leader Dr Sun Yat-sen, but from the mid-19th century it was also a major source of Chinese migrants and sojourners seeking their fortunes on the Australian goldfields.

Gock Lok quickly discovered that the streets of Melbourne were not paved with gold

Gock Quay was the fourth of six sons, and arrived in Australia at the age of 12 to join his older brothers, Gock Lok and Gock Chuen. Gock Lok, who was the first to land in the New Gold Mountain of Victoria, quickly discovered that the streets of Melbourne were not paved with gold. Without any English, and with little experience beyond that obtained on his father’s farm, Gock Lok headed to Sydney where he worked as a market gardener and then a vegetable hawker. This humble beginning would eventually grow into a multi-billion dollar family empire, Wing On (meaning ‘perpetual peace’) – a diverse group of companies that operated greengrocers, banks, department stores, warehouses, hotels, textile and knitting mills, and insurance offices in a vast commercial network stretching from Sydney to Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai. In the 1890s, as the Wing On business expanded, Gock Lok and Gock Chuen were joined in Sydney by their younger brothers, Gock Quay and Gock Son. The four brothers learnt English from a Chinese pastor and converted to Christianity, taking on the English baptismal names James Gock Lok, Philip Gock Chuen, Paul Gock Quay and William Gock Son.

02 Edward Kwok (third from right) with his six

siblings, late 1910s.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

Immigration records show that Gock Quay lived in Parramatta, Hay and Sydney, New South Wales, before his arranged marriage to 17-year-old Rose Fok in Hong Kong in 1903. The couple returned to Sydney in 1904 and resided at 8 Mary Street, in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. Their seven children – David, Doris, Ada, Gladys, Violet, Marjorie and Edward – were all born in Sydney. In 1907 the Gock brothers opened the highly successful Wing On department store in Hong Kong’s Central district. They also owned godowns (warehouses) and the Great Eastern Hotel in Hong Kong, along with hotels in Canton (now Guangzhou) and Wuchow (now Wuzhou). As their wealth grew, the brothers did not forget their home village of Chuk Sau Yuen, where they helped to build a hospital and school, install irrigation and surface the roads. With the overthrow of the imperial Qing dynasty in 1911 and the subsequent establishment of the Republic of China, the Gock brothers decided to extend their business to the mainland. Gock Quay was dispatched to the cosmopolitan treaty port of Shanghai to purchase a block of land for a new department store. He then returned to Hong Kong but in September 1916 sent a telegram to the Wing On office in Sydney that read, ‘Tell my family come to Hong Kong’. Within a fortnight, his wife Rose, two sons and five daughters, ranging in age from two to 12, departed Sydney on St Albans. They were accompanied by Rose’s sister-in-law Flo, the wife of Gock Son, who helped to care for the children. Sadly Gock Quay died of an illness in November 1916, just weeks after his family’s arrival in Hong Kong, and did not see the opening of the grand new Shanghai emporium on Nanking Road (now Nanjing Lu). Following his death, Rose and the children remained in Hong Kong, later moving to Shanghai.

This humble beginning would eventually grow into a multi-billion dollar family empire, Wing On

In the years preceding World War II, the Gocks decided to anglicise their surname to Kwok. This reflected the opening of Wing On offices in San Francisco and New York, and also the fact that their children were attending Western educational institutions. In the early 1930s, Gock Quay’s youngest son, Edward Kwok (1914–2003), studied at Queen’s College, Hong Kong, and the University of Hong Kong before enrolling in a textile chemistry course at Manchester College of Technology in England. In 1934, Edward met Edith Spliid (1916–2003), a proud Cockney born within earshot of Bow Bells to a Danish father and an English mother. Before returning to the family textile mills in Shanghai in 1937, Edward informed the Spliids that he wanted to marry Edith. 03 Edward Kwok and Edith Spliid in England,

1935.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

In September 1937, a naïve 21-year-old Edith sailed from England on the Comorin, bound for Hong Kong. She arrived on the morning of 14 October and married Edward at St John’s Cathedral the same afternoon. The newlyweds lived with Edward’s sister Gladys and her husband, until Edward was called back to the family business in Shanghai by his brother David. Edith initially found Shanghai to be overpowering and lonely, but she gradually settled into family life with the arrival of three children, Paul (born 1938), Pamela (born 1940) and Peder (1943–2012).

All aspects of daily life in Shanghai were controlled by the Communist government

On 8 December 1941, Edward and Edith were attending a family birthday party when they heard loud noises coming from the waterfront. An announcement was made that the Japanese were attacking Shanghai. At 10 o’clock the next morning, Edith watched with sadness and fear as Japanese forces entered the city. The Kwok family textile mills were taken over by the Japanese, so Edward went to work extended hours at the Wing On offices in Nanking Road, leaving Edith alone with the children for long periods. In 1942 residents of the Shanghai International Settlement (formed through the merger of the British and American settlements) were required to register with the police as enemy aliens. Their property was confiscated and assets frozen. The following year, enemy aliens were sent into the internment camps – a fate that Edith narrowly avoided as her father was born in Denmark, which made her a neutral national. She had to wear a red armband marked with the initial of her country and an identification number, and although free to move about with her children, she lived in constant fear. On one occasion, Japanese soldiers armed with rifles entered the family’s home demanding to see their papers, but fortunately no one was harmed. In August 1945, the war ended and the Nationalist government took control of the International Settlement, the French Concession and other districts of Shanghai. Life was difficult and food was scarce, and inflation reached a critical point, prompting financial reforms and the introduction of a new currency. In April 1949, Edward and Edith were booked to travel to Hong Kong with their youngest son Peder, leaving Paul and Pamela behind with friends. But when Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River and captured Nanjing, it was decided that the whole family should depart together. In Hong Kong they lived in a house owned by Edward’s brother, David, in Stanley.

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

In September 1949 David insisted that Edward return to Shanghai. Edith and the children followed in 1950, to a much changed city. With the establishment of the Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Republic of China under Mao Zedong in October 1949, Wing On was forced to close its banking, insurance and textile businesses employing more than 20,000 people. The iconic Wing On department store in Shanghai was nationalised and renamed Hualian (now Yongan). All aspects of daily life in Shanghai were controlled by the Communist government and people were not permitted to stay away from their place of residence for even one night without seeking prior approval. The popular Chinese game of mahjong was banned, spying was rife and Maoist propaganda blared from loudspeakers across the country.

04 The Kwok family in Shanghai,

Christmas 1955. Edith and Edward are seated with their three children (left to right) Peder, Paul and Pamela.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE GOCKS OF MIDDLE MOUNTAIN

WELCOME WALL WINTER 2017

In 1952 the family began the process of applying for exit permits, which became increasingly crucial in the lead-up to eldest son Paul’s 18th birthday and the looming threat of his conscription into the People’s Liberation Army. The family was finally granted a permit in November 1956 and the following month departed Shanghai for Hong Kong, sailing via Tsingtao (now Qingdao). In Hong Kong, Edward and Edith arranged a job for Paul in a textile mill owned by friends on Castle Peak Road. Paul did not like the work, however, and found a position with a company that produced window-fitted air conditioning units. Around this time he met Maunie Bones through the Vespa Club of Hong Kong. In January 1959, Paul and Maunie were married at St Andrew’s Church in Kowloon. Their first two sons were born in Hong Kong – Stephen (born 1959) and Christopher (born 1963). Paul later joined the British firm Gilman & Co, which promoted and exported Hong Kong manufacturing to the world. This was followed by positions in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then Sydney, where Paul and his family have remained since arriving in August 1964. In Sydney, Maunie gave birth to two more sons, Kevin (born 1965) and Derek (born 1969). Paul and Maunie now have 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Paul’s parents and siblings also made the decision to move to Australia – Peder in 1964, Edward and Edith in 1969, and Pamela in 1978. Pamela has two children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Peder is survived by three children and two grandchildren. The four generations of the Kwok family now living in Australia are proud to have the opportunity to visit Darling Harbour to view the name of their pioneering ancestor, Gock Quay, on the Welcome Wall. The author wishes to thank Paul and Maunie Kwok for their assistance with this article.

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. Please call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3777.

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REVISITING PERSUASION

READINGS WINTER 2017

Revisiting Persuasion

IT’S NOT JUST CHICK-LIT FOR THE LITERATI

The 18th of July this year marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen. Honorary Research Associate Jeffrey Mellefont rereads her ‘naval novel’, Persuasion, and considers the naval characters and motifs prominent within this classic of English literature.

Persuasion By Jane Austen (1775–1817), published 1818

IF, LIKE ME, you’ve been meaning to reread Jane Austen, among other classics you first read long ago, then this year is the time to do it. And if, like me, you weren’t sure which one to begin with, let me guide you as a reader of Signals to Persuasion, with its splendid central characters drawn from the Royal Navy at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It’s not just chick-lit for the literati. You can read it, if you like, as an adjunct or appendix to the well-thumbed maritime classics of C S Forrester and Patrick O’Brian, most likely sitting on your bookshelves already.

01 Woodcut by Joan Hassall illustrating

a pivotal scene from the novel, an accident in Lyme Regis. Anne Elliot is third from left and Captain Wentworth kneeling at centre. From the 1975 Folio Society edition of Persuasion, reproduced with permission

READINGS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REVISITING PERSUASION

Jane Austen writes her naval characters with authenticity and experience, having two brothers who had successful careers in the Royal Navy

Published posthumously in 1818, Persuasion was written in 1815–16 and is set about a year earlier, when its heroine Anne Elliot is 27 and unmarried. It’s the end of Britain’s wars against the French (1803–14), which have made it the world’s greatest naval power. The Royal Navy has grown massively, dominating its adversaries, keeping them blockaded into ports and preventing Napoleon from invading. Its greatest set-piece sea battle and victory, Trafalgar, is nearly a decade in the past, but news of actions has been continuous, in part because of the Royal Navy’s policy of prize money. This was a scaled share of the value of a captured enemy ship, and a ‘head money’ bounty for each captured sailor, which encouraged everyone on a British naval ship to aggressively pursue an enemy vessel, disable it with cannon fire, board it for bloody hand-to-hand combat and sail the prize home. The captain’s share was a quarter, but just a few hours’ battle could win a year’s salary for an ordinary seaman. Okay, there’s scarcely a word in Persuasion about the heroic naval battles and captured prizes that made a wealthy man of Captain Frederick Wentworth, the love of Anne Elliot’s life, or that increased the wealth and social status of the couple’s friends and allies, the admirable Admiral and Mrs Croft. For Austen and her readers they’re assumed knowledge, in an England basking in victory and awash with the magnificent exploits of the Royal Navy. But in any case, you’ve read enough tales of Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey – and probably of Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane, whose incredible real-life adventures inspired much of the fiction – to know what sort of extremely hazardous things Jane Austen’s characters have recently been up to.

02 Two of Jane Austen’s brothers, Francis (left)

and Charles, both had successful careers in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of admiral. The portrait of Charles Austen was painted in Malta by an unknown artist. Francis portrait from Wikicommons; Charles portrait courtesy Jane Austen’s House Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REVISITING PERSUASION

READINGS WINTER 2017

Instead, being Jane Austen, her novel is about the upper-middleclass and titled society that these naval characters must navigate when they step ashore victorious and wealthy, with all that society’s etiquette, conventions, hierarchies, rivalries, conceits and snobberies. And being Jane Austen she trains her incredibly fine-tuned social, psychological and moral antennae upon this society with humor, irony and humanity, while dissecting her characters’ loves and longings, virtues and flaws, vanities, delusions and manners. Or she lets her characters reveal themselves in their long, long dialogues, for which she lends them the use of her own perfect, polished, syntactically flawless and prolifically punctuated prose!

Austen’s sympathies are often strongly with her naval characters

It’s that Austen world where almost nobody actually has a job, except for an occasional curate or glimpses of the lawyers and agents who manage the fortunes that support the central characters’ leisured lives. It’s an endless round of dinner parties and balls and visits to affluent Somerset country houses or apartments in Bath, ordered by strict protocols. It’s clear that Austen’s sympathies are often strongly with the naval characters who have been doing real work beyond the horizons of this rarified milieu, and who often bring decisiveness,

03 HMS Winchester, which Charles Austen

commanded on the North American and West Indies station. Aquatint by W J Huggins, marine painter to His Majesty. Courtesy Jane Austen’s House Museum

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REVISITING PERSUASION

READINGS WINTER 2017

practicality and solid human values forged in their unseen world of action and hardship. Jane Austen writes her naval characters with authenticity and experience, having two brothers, Francis and Charles, who had successful careers in the Royal Navy.

Prize money was a scaled share of the value of a captured enemy ship, and a ‘head money’ bounty for each captured sailor

Sensible, stoic and thoroughly decent Anne is the daughter of status-obsessed widower Sir Walter Elliot, heir to grand Kellynch Hall and a fine rural income that he has fecklessly and extravagantly mismanaged. This forces them and a snobbish eldest daughter to remove to an elegant but much smaller residence in fashionable Bath. The move, and the repayment of debts, is financed by leasing Kellynch Hall to a retired Admiral of the White and veteran of Trafalgar. Admiral Croft’s gentlemanly birth, assisted by his naval prestige and the staggering fortune that prize-money built, give him easy entry into society. Mrs Croft has followed him loyally and lovingly throughout his long career, living with him on his ships as the wives of Royal Navy commanders could in those times, if they chose. The couple are kind and down to earth, but for Anne their arrival revives an eight-year-long heartache. For Mrs Croft is the sister of the man she had loved and lost, Captain Frederick Wentworth. He and Anne had fallen in love when she was 19 and he was a spirited, daring and already successful young naval officer likely to rise in the ranks. As yet, though, Frederick has no fortune, no significant inheritance and no ‘connexions’ to speed his rise. Anne’s father thinks him beneath her, while her trusted confidant and godmother Lady Russell is only slightly less status-conscious and is wary of his youthful impetuosity. It’s her persuasion that convinces Anne, reluctantly, not to follow her heart, and gives the novel its name. Anne dutifully and sorrowfully refuses his proposal. She goes into a long decline, uninterested in other suitors, while Frederick Wentworth goes on to brilliant success in Britain’s wars. He returns now with a fortune in prize money of £25,000 – enough for, let’s say, a trophy home close to Sydney Harbour and a mixed share and property portfolio to retire on in comfort. He’s as eligible as can be, handsome, dashing and still single, and the younger beauties of Anne’s social circle naturally set their sights and fluttering hearts upon him. Though his heart is still bruised and resentful from Anne’s rejection, it’s now time for him to find an appropriate wife and there are plenty of prospects on hand. After this preliminary briefing Jane Austen keeps us on tenterhooks for the rest of the novel as mischance and misinterpretations of comments, glances and deeds endlessly

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REVISITING PERSUASION

READINGS WINTER 2017

postpone the opportunity for Captain Wentworth to rekindle his admiration for Anne’s qualities of character, while she nobly makes way for those pretty young rivals who might bring him the happiness she denied him. There are of course plots and subplots, including Anne being wooed by someone well-heeled whom everybody – including Anne for a while – mistakes as being suitable for her. Turns out he’s an utter cad.

There’s ample material online about Jane Austen’s naval brothers, including ‘Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers Francis and Charles in Life and Art’ by Brian Southam, author of Jane Austen and the Navy, National Maritime Museum 2001: jasna.org/persuasions/printed/ number25/southam.pdf

This all takes place between the rural properties and villages of Somerset and the elegant quarters of Bath, with a wonderful vignette of seaside Lyme Regis where we meet Captain Wentworth’s friends, more of Austen’s warmly portrayed naval characters. There’s the bereaved young Captain Benwick, whose shared tastes in the English poets make it seem for a while that he might be the one to save Anne from spinsterhood, when Captain Wentworth is just on the verge of being captured as a prize man-of-war by one of the fair young ladies. Kindly, practical Captain and Mrs Harville are settling near the Cobb in Lyme, in very modest circumstances since he was lamed by a war injury and is ashore on half-pay. But once again, it’s the mariners to whom Jane Austen allots the most commonsense and sensibility, the least pride and prejudice. One of the most memorable speeches of the entire novel for me is Mrs Croft’s advocacy of her life on men-of-war of the British Admiralty, made to a privileged and pampered circle who cannot have the slightest conception of the lives of the sailors who defend them and make Britannia great. ‘I do assure you, ma’am,’ pursued Mrs Croft, ‘that nothing can exceed the accommodations of a man of war; I speak, you know, of the higher rates. When you come to a frigate, of course, you are more confined – though any reasonable woman may be perfectly happy in one of them; and I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared. Thank God! I have always been blessed with excellent health, and no climate disagrees with me. A little disordered always the first twenty-four hour of going to sea, but never knew what sickness was afterwards.’ So do read Persuasion this year, two centuries after Jane Austen died unmarried aged 41, to find out (if, like me, you’d forgotten, and even more so if you’ve not yet read it) how it all worked out for that brave Captain Wentworth and the worthy Anne Elliot. You might go on to Mansfield Park, Austen’s other novel with prominent naval motifs. And when you’ve finished you might file them up there on your bookshelf next to Master and Commander.

100

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BEFORE THE FIRST FLEET

READINGS WINTER 2017

Before the First Fleet

A BROADER VIEW OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

The time before the settlement of New South Wales is too often treated as a prefatory chapter that starts 50,000 years before the present and ends as sails are seen on the eastern horizon; the ‘Dreamtime’ ends and history begins. In this way, a great slab of human history is relegated to archaeology and hermetically sealed by the founding of a British colony. WHEN MARCO POLO TRAVELLED from Europe to China in the late 13th century, he brought back stories of a place called Java. Polo’s travels provided a tantalising smattering of knowledge to Europeans about what was to become known as the Spice Islands – Indonesia. By the late 1500s European adventurers were in the midst of the Age of Exploration – the tentative beginnings of globalisation. The Europeans were circling ever closer to the continent we now know as Australia. By the early 1600s, the Dutch had joined the Spanish and Portuguese in colonising ventures around Australia’s doorstep. By 1606 Luis Váez de Torres had navigated the strait between New Guinea and Australia and in 1606 William Janzoon, in Duyfken, had mapped a long stretch of the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. Others, mainly Dutch, had bumped into the west coast on their way to Indonesia several times in the 1600s. In 1642, far to the south, Abel Janszoon Tasman had skirted around the west and south coast of what he called Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania). By the end of the 17th century European encounters with the edges of Australia – some brief, some violent, some mysterious – were part of an expanding European knowledge about Australia, and a growing Australian knowledge about Europe and Asia. Nick Brodie’s 1787: the lost chapters of Australia’s beginnings is an overview of this period in which Europeans pushed Australia from the periphery of colonialism to a central target. Contact with Indigenous Australians before 1788 has generally been seen as fleeting and unimportant – punctuated by Cook and

1787: The lost chapters of Australia’s beginnings By Nick Brodie, published by Hardie Grant Books, Richmond, Victoria, 2016. Paperback, 294 pages, illustrations, bibliography. ISBN 9781743791608. RRP $38.00, Members $34.20. Available from The Store or online at store.anmm.gov.au

101

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BEFORE THE FIRST FLEET

READINGS WINTER 2017

his survey of the east coast in HMB Endeavour, but swamped by the year 1788 and the arrival of the First Fleet. Despite much recent work on contact with Asia, in particular Makassan traders in northern Australia and the many encounters with Dutch and other European voyagers, Brodie points out how a teleological view of Australian history has been difficult to dislodge – from both popular consciousness and the pens of historians. A highlight of Brodie’s work is his analysis of how the ‘journalists’ on Cook’s voyage along the east coast in 1770 were in many ways responsible for a perception of Indigenous society as time-less – as if the First Australians had no history apart from ‘perpetually and merrily fishing, hunting and gathering’. Part of the problem that Brodie attempts to address is that our self-focused gaze has long been transfixed on James Cook and Arthur Phillip as the proper set of British origins, fostering a ‘misguided belief in unchanging Aboriginal societies’. Encountered just before the early modern age was about to begin, in a sense these societies became frozen records of the ‘final moments of pre-colonial modern Australia’. The contrast with the rapidly modernising colonial society and the perception that 1770 was a ‘pure’ Aboriginal Australia became ingrained. Opening up a more regional historical focus, Brodie argues, may go some way to disrupt this narrative. He suggests we should consider a ‘Greater Australasia’ before 1788 that includes New Zealand, Torres Strait, New Guinea and other Asian and Pacific peoples, saying, ‘Australia’s national history bleeds into that of its neighbours, and only becomes intelligible with a broader regional and international focus’.

By the late 1500s Europeans were circling ever closer to the continent we now know as Australia

1787 wonderfully circles around this Greater Australasia. From the late Middle Ages we sweep closer and closer in via Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British and even ultimately American voyagers’ accounts of the great southern continent, or its fluid edges. A section on Cook’s east coast encounters is followed by an excellent overview of the generally forgotten Europeans in between Cook and Phillip: the French vessels Mascarin and Marquis de Castries under Captain Marion du Fresne at Marion Bay and North Bay in Tasmania in 1772 and the Adventure under Furneaux in 1773. All these encounters between 1770 and 1787 – some of them quite extended in Tasmania and New Zealand – show that the ‘division of Australia’s national story into phases of “discovery” and “settlement”’ is in fact quite arbitrary. Australia did not exist in anachronistic geographical isolation before 1788.

04 Early modern maps, like this example from

1593, chart a Eurasian frontier advancing towards Greater Australasia. Cornelis de Jode, Novae Guineae forma, & situs, National Library of Australia

102

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > BEFORE THE FIRST FLEET

READINGS WINTER 2017

As Brodie notes, ‘The national story does not grow out of one moment on the east coast of Australia. Rather, it develops out of a much larger interplay of forces and actors, in a much bigger region, over a much longer period of time … it is much more interesting and instructive than the colonial creation story we have heard so often.’

Australia did not exist in anachronistic geographical isolation before 1788

Brodie takes on a huge challenge – to redress imbalances in the weight of certain histories over others. In a readable and thought-provoking way, he calls for a new early Australian history, one that looks to ‘longer colonial processes, broader world stories, a larger regional frontier’. Brodie argues we need to move away from the idea that 26 January 1788 was some sort of ‘national starting point’. While this re-assessment of the teleological modern foundational moments of Australian history is not new to academic historians, Brodie continues a much-needed development of this in the broader Australian historical consciousness. More focus on the economic mechanics of colonialism, rather than reducing it to ‘mercantile avarice’, would have been useful. 1787 is at times a little speculative and verges on itself reducing Indigenous history to only written sources of the outsiders. But it is nonetheless an important call toward broadening Australian history into a more expansive regional history of encounter that goes back half a millennium and ‘allows us to treat our frontiers as places of encounter and conflict’, rather than the ‘“discovery-then-settlement” triumphalist children’s tale we have been fed for several generations’. As the Australian National Maritime Museum moves towards re-imagining the main narrative threads of its core gallery displays, this is a challenge very worthy of note. So, too, Brodie poses timely questions as the museum develops its role in the impending 250th anniversary of Cook and HMB Endeavour in 2020. Dr Stephen Gapps Reviewer Dr Stephen Gapps is a curator at the museum and is currently writing a military history of conflict in the Sydney region from 1788 to 1817.

103

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > QUARANTINE BESIDE THE SAD AND MOURNFUL SEA

READINGS WINTER 2017

Quarantine beside the sad and mournful sea

COMPELLING STORIES OF DISEASE, DEATH AND DETENTION

WHEN THE IMMIGRANT SHIP Canton was isolated for smallpox at the North Head Quarantine Station in 1835, 16-year-old passenger John Dawson disembarked and carved a message into the soft Sydney sandstone. In doing so, the young Englishman inaugurated a tradition of mark-making at the site – one that would be maintained by generations of migrants, merchants and mariners who served out their quarantine at the northern entrance to Sydney Harbour over the next 150 years. In 2013 a team of archaeologists and historians from the University of Sydney, led by Peter Hobbins, Ursula Frederick and Anne Clarke, commenced a three-year project to research these captivating inscriptions – the outcome of which is now documented in Stories from the Sandstone. Reflecting the varied academic interests of the three authors, the book explores the relationship between immigration and quarantine in Australia from the mid-19th century onwards, and the dynamic interplay of human and non-human migration across our maritime and terrestrial borders. Established in 1835, the North Head Quarantine Station was one of 12 such facilities that formed Australia’s first line of defence against infectious diseases, including smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague and influenza. Nearly 600 ships and 16,000 people were detained at the station, near the seaside suburb of Manly, until its closure in 1984. For some, the Quarantine Station would be their only glimpse of Sydney – three burial grounds contain the remains of more than 600 people who died at North Head. In the 1960s and 1970s, the site functioned as a detention centre for illegal immigrants and deportees, and later housed evacuees from Cyclone Tracy and the Vietnam War. In 2006 North Head was added to Australia’s National Heritage List, in recognition of the many layers of meaning and memory – of people and places, vessels and voyages, archaeology and history – embedded in this significant environment.

Stories from the Sandstone: quarantine inscriptions from Australia’s immigrant past By Peter Hobbins, Ursula K Frederick and Anne Clarke, published by Arbon Publishing, Crows Nest, 2016. Hardback, 304 pages, illustrations, sources, index. ISBN 9780994310767. RRP $47.00 Members $42.30. Available from The Store or online at store.anmm.gov.au

104

READINGS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > QUARANTINE BESIDE THE SAD AND MOURNFUL SEA

The book explores the relationship between immigration and quarantine in Australia from the mid-19th century onwards

In Stories from the Sandstone, Hobbins, Frederick and Clarke examine how the experience of quarantine is manifested in both the material landscape of North Head and the wider historical record. To date the authors have located about 1,600 carved and painted inscriptions across the vast headland, often stylistically and linguistically diverse, and occasionally embellished with nautical iconography such as ropes, flags and lifebuoys. They illustrate how the paths of many a migrant, traveller, trader or returning soldier traversed the Sydney sandstone – from John Howie of Scotland and Emil Laakso of Finland, to Li Defang of China and Kon Kritharis of Greece. The inscriptions attest to the remarkable cultural diversity of the site and the highly cosmopolitan nature of maritime mobility, particularly during the Quarantine Station’s peak operating years from 1880 to 1925. Stories from the Sandstone weaves a fascinating dialogue between archaeological fieldwork, archival analysis and personal biography. The book is divided into 12 well-researched chapters, each one tightly focused around the story of a single inscription or group of inscriptions, in order to situate individual narratives within broader discourses of migration, travel, race, nationalism and defence. The authors draw together official records, newspapers, correspondence, diaries, shipping registers, and historical and contemporary photographs to uncover – or sometimes recover – the hidden life stories of those interned at North Head. Take, for example, the modest headstone engraved ‘M.A.Y. 1858’, which was originally believed to denote the month of May. By cross-referencing it with the deaths in confinement in 1858, and the passenger list for the voyage of Forest Monarch

05 Engineers from RMS Australia pose next

to a magnificent monument to their quarantine in March 1898.

105

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > QUARANTINE BESIDE THE SAD AND MOURNFUL SEA

READINGS WINTER 2017

from Southampton to Sydney, the authors determined that the inscription was carved in honour of English immigrant Mary Anne Yeates, who died of weakness and scurvy. Her two-yearold son William had already succumbed to pneumonia on the passage from England. This account of the poignant memorial created by Mary Anne’s husband Daniel, twice bereaved, prompts the reader to consider the powerful intersection of presence and absence, mortality and temporality, tangible and intangible, in the archaeological and historical record of the North Head Quarantine Station. Stories from the Sandstone can be positioned firmly within the context of recent scholarship on memorials and cultures of commemoration and remembrance, as well as comparative literature on North American sites such as Ellis Island, Angel Island and Grosse Île, which highlight the intriguing connections between local and global geographies of immigration restriction and quarantine. Because of its engaging interdisciplinary approach, the work should appeal to a diverse readership with interests in immigration, social history, public health and medicine. Importantly, the book is not just concerned with narratives of disease and death, but also survival. The authors have fittingly dedicated it to ‘all those whose stories of quarantine are lost, buried or forgotten’. As the historic inscriptions at North Head continue to be subjected to the ravages of weather, wind, water and time, it is inevitable that they will one day disappear forever. But their legacy, and the evocative personal stories they embody, will endure in this compelling publication.

To date the authors have located about 1,600 carved and painted inscriptions across the vast headland

Kim Tao Reviewer Kim Tao is the museum’s curator of post-Federation immigration

06 Mason Daniel Yeates created this carved

memorial to the Forest Monarch, aboard which his wife and one of his children died. 07 A prominent and much-photographed

inscription.

106

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > FINDING FRIENDS

READINGS WINTER 2017

Finding Friends THE FATE OF 100 FEMALE CONVICTS

THE GIRL WHO STOLE STOCKINGS is the result of Elsbeth Hardie’s research into her great-great-great-grandmother. Her investigations took more seven years, and it shows – the book is comprehensive, to say the least. It spans 42 years of the life of Susannah Noon, from the titular crime in 1810, when she was about 12, to her transportation to Sydney aboard the convict ship Friends, until her death in New Zealand in 1852. But beyond Susannah’s adventures, the book is also an account of the 100 other women who accompanied her to the colony, the crimes for which they were transported and how they fared on the other side of the world. Through their eyes we get a real sense of what life was like for women in the settlement under Governor Macquarie, and how some were able to transform their lives, while others continued to find trouble. Against all expectations, transportation had increased the life expectancy of these women, particularly those who had come from the squalor of the cities where food was usually poor and living conditions were unsanitary … A child arriving in the colony around the age of five years had an increased lifespan of twenty years. By including details on as many of Susannah’s shipmates as she was able to unearth, Hardie reveals numerous insights into the lives of female convicts: Susannah saw some of her former shipmates meet their ends in Sydney. Londoner Mary Smith, convicted of shoplifting, dies in 1824 in her mid-forties. London prostitute Hannah Taylor dies in 1823, aged thirty-five years. Amelia Bellares dies in 1826, aged forty-six years. Hannah Moss died around the same time at the age of forty-two years. However, being so wide-ranging means this book contains an awful lot of information, which can take a while to get through; it’s not a quick read.

The Girl who Stole Stockings – The true story of Susannah Noon and the women of the convict ship Friends By Elsbeth Hardie, published by Australian Teachers of Media Inc, St Kilda West, Victoria, 2014. Paperback, 344 pages, illustrations, notes, index. ISBN 9781876467241. RRP $34.95

The cover image shows Sophia Bogiatto, the author’s daughter and the great-greatgreat-great-granddaughter of Susannah Noon, the subject of the book.

107

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > FINDING FRIENDS

Having previously learnt a fair bit about the history of New South Wales, I found the accounts of life in the colony interesting, but not surprising. However, when Susannah follows her husband to New Zealand to live at a shore-based whaling station, and we learn about the early settlers over the Tasman, I was in much more unfamiliar territory and thus found myself more engaged. Those whalers disinclined to work depended on the families of their Maori women to provide for them as they waited out the months until the start of the next whaling season, drinking their way through the summer until their money ran out. Hardie has included photographs and images to illustrate her account, which help break up the text and aid the imagination. By the end of the book, I felt I’d come to know Susannah quite well; well enough to have despaired at some of her life choices (why did she go back to the shop from which she stole the stockings?), but if she hadn’t done what she did, Hardie wouldn’t be here to tell the story. Hardie estimates there are more than 100,000 people in Australia and New Zealand today who are descendants of the convict women from the Friends. In writing this book, she has done them a great service. If any of them want to research their female convict ancestors, this book and its comprehensive references would be invaluable. Susannah Noon did much more than unsuccessfully steal stockings, and her great-great-great granddaughter has helped us get to know her and ensured she won’t be forgotten. Em Blamey Reviewer Em Blamey is a creative producer at the museum, responsible for devising exhibitions including Voyage to the Deep and Horrible Histories® Pirates – the Exhibition. As a migrant she’s interested in the experiences of others who travelled from England and made new lives on the other side of the world (though her own relocation was much more voluntary than Susannah’s!).

READINGS WINTER 2017

108

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REFITTING ENDEAVOUR

CURRENTS WINTER 2017

Refitting Endeavour

RECAULKED, REPAINTED AND READY TO SAIL AGAIN

FOR MANY WHO VISIT ENDEAVOUR at the museum, the ship casts them back to the 18th century. It is an opportunity to touch and smell history. Those who visit the ship in a port other than Sydney may have the same reaction, but their underlying question is often, ‘How was Endeavour able to sail there?’ The answer is both simple and complex. Endeavour operates as a Regulated Australian Vessel and as such sails under the umbrella of an international survey. This allows the ship to sail anywhere in the world, but also imposes a stringent regime of inspections and surveys. These are justifiably onerous, with one of the more demanding being the requirement to be dry docked at least every second year.

01 Endeavour ashore, with Fleet staff, volunteers

and contractors. Back row: George Poularas, Peter Lightbody, Riley Hughes, Joseph Nale, Cody Horgan. Front row: Claire Bisset, Jeff Fletcher, Anthony Longhurst, Amy Spets, Peter Mellor, Harold Adolphe, Damien Allan, Matt McKinley, John Dikkenberg

109

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > REFITTING ENDEAVOUR

CURRENTS WINTER 2017

The ship recently spent five weeks away at Sydney City Marine in Rozelle, just under the Anzac Bridge, where it was lifted from the water on a synchrolift and moved ashore on a transporter. There is something unnatural about witnessing 540 tonnes of wooden sailing ship move across the concrete apron on 84 wheels, each hydraulically assisted to compensate for the uneven surface. Although the distance was short, Endeavour seemed a long way from the water.

Despite a month of rain and high winds, the docking completed on time

Dockings can be relatively straightforward, but this one had several additional requirements, including the manufacture and installation of two new propeller shafts, the replacement of almost 2,000 fastenings and the recaulking of several seams. We also took the opportunity to reach and survey areas normally difficult to get to, such as the transom. Below, we removed the deck in the galley, lifted 20 tonnes of ballast for the surveyor and then put it all back. The electrical systems were surveyed and several safety enhancements were added. The gentlemenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s area and the 18th-century deck were entirely repainted. Despite a month of rain and high winds, the docking completed on time, and with the high tide and calm winds coinciding at midnight on 16 March, the ship returned to its natural element. With a metre or two either side of Endeavour, two tugs helped swing the ship and then shepherded it through the Glebe Island swing bridge. As we motored the short distance to the museum, the cloud began to break up and the full moon lit the way home. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think it rained again for weeks.

110

CURRENTS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > MODEL SHIPS ON SHOW

Model ships on show EXPO 2017

EVERY YEAR the Sydney Model Shipbuilders Club hosts a ship-modelling exhibition. This year’s, EXPO 2017, is on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 August from 10 am at the Georges River 16-Foot Sailing Club, Sanoni Avenue, Sandringham. Entry is free. Come and see a great variety of models and displays: • ships of historic interest such as Endeavour, clippers and square riggers of Nelson’s time • large-scale radio controlled models of contemporary warships and merchant ships • radio-controlled racing yachts • tugs and ferries • miniature versions of the elaborate figureheads and carvings on 17th-century warships • sculpture afloat • ships in bottles • dioramas and miniatures. 02 02 The Australian National Maritime Museum is the

principal sponsor of EXPO 2017. Past exhibitions have featured more than 100 models, and even more are expected this year. Image courtesy SMSC

111

CURRENTS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > MODEL SHIPS ON SHOW

The smallest models are only 15 centimetres long, complete with every detail, while the largest is almost 3 metres. Some are made from timber, some from metal, others from plastic or fibreglass. Many are built from kits, which contain the necessary raw materials and instructions; others are â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;scratch builtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, constructed completely from plans or original research. For beginners there will be demonstrations of how to start, with examples of models under construction to show visitors that the process is less difficult than they might imagine. Advice and encouragement from more experienced modellers are also available in abundance. This friendly venue welcomes the whole family. Lunches and snacks are available, plus raffle tickets for your chance to win some great prizes. For further information please see smsc.org.au, or contact Michael Bennett on 0411 545 770 or email anelia@ozemail.com.au. You can see a video of EXPO 2015 at youtube.com/watch?v=gVjeEbTBzCc

03 All ages are welcome, and advice is on hand

for modellers of all skill levels.

112

CURRENTS WINTER 2017

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119

Lessons from the Arctic exhibition launch On 22 March the museum partnered with the Norwegian Embassy for the opening of the new exhibition Lessons from the Arctic – How Roald Amundsen won the race to the South Pole, on show in the museum’s library. Created by the Fram Museum in Norway, the panel exhibition explores how Amundsen used his earlier experience in both polar regions to win the race to the South Pole. Special guest at the event was Beate Gabrielsen, First Secretary and Deputy Head of Mission at the Royal Norwegian Embassy, who represented the Ambassador of Norway to Australia. She is pictured at left with ANMM Chairman Peter Dexter and Halcyon Evans, widow of Vaughan Evans OAM, whose personal book collection formed the basis of the museum’s library, named in his honour. Story Jude Timms, image Emma Bjorndahl/ANMM

The Hartog Plate In May, the museum welcomed back the first European artefact to appear on Australian soil, the Dirk Hartog Plate, which is on special loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum metals conservator Tamar Davidowitz fascinated museum Members and guests of the Dutch consulate with a talk outlining the thousand-plus hours she has spent treating the plate, ensuring it could make the long journey to Australia for its 400th anniversary.

The Hartog Plate will be on display until 29 October 2017 and is presented in association with exhibition partners the Dutch Diplomatic Missions in Australia, Singapore Airlines, Singapore Airlines Cargo and Damen. Pictured are ANMM assistant director Michael Harvey, Rijksmuseum conservator Tamar Davidowitz and Consul General of the Netherlands Willem Cosjin. Story Shirani Aththas, image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

World premiere of Clash of the Carriers on board USS Intrepid The museum was pleased to premiere its newest film, Clash of the Carriers, about the World War II Battle of the Coral Sea, at a commemorative dinner to mark the 75th anniversary of the conflict at the Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum in New York. The gala event, held by the American–Australian Association, was attended by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and US President Donald Trump plus 800 other dignitaries to highlight the ongoing and enduring alliance between Australia and the US which was forged in the battle.

The eight-minute film is part of the museum’s broader four-year commemorative program, ‘War and Peace in the Pacific 75’, and will show once an hour in the museum’s Action Stations pavilion.

US Navy and Royal Australian Navy veterans were honoured guests at the commemorations. Pictured aboard WWII aircraft carrier USS Intrepid are: (back) John Hancock, Roger Spooner (both USS Yorktown); Bill White (HMAS Hobart); RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC (Royal Australian Navy); (front) Gordon Johnson (HMAS Hobart); Norm Tame (HMAS Australia) and Wendell Thrasher (US Navy). Story Shirani Aththas, image courtesy RAN

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > THE STORE

SEE WHAT’S IN STORE THE COMPLETE POMPEII An up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive account of the rise, splendour and fall of this most famous of archaeological sites.

$49.95 / $44.96 Members

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: PORTFOLIO 26 A powerful collection of 100 winning images from the 2016 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, portraying the beauty, drama and diversity of the natural world.

BLACK PAPAYA NECKLACE Dotted pastel glass beads with glossy and satin effect.

$299.95 / $269.95 Members

SOUTH SEA PEARL BLUEBELL PENDANT Grade A mabe (semi-spherical) Australian pearl pendant (16 mm) with nine-carat yellow gold chain.

$385.00 / $346.50 Members

$50.00 / $45.00 Members DVD – POMPEII: THE DOOMED CITY Looks at one of the world’s most devastating natural disasters, and projects what would happen if Mt Vesuvius erupted again today.

A PEARLING MASTER’S JOURNEY A history of Broome, the pearling centre of Western Australia, describing the pearlers and pastoralists of the early 1900s.

$25.00 / $22.50 Members

$120.00 / $108.00 Members

NATURAL HISTORY: A SELECTION Pliny’s astonishingly ambitious work mingles acute observation with often wild speculation to offer a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD.

ROMAN MOSAIC SCARF Long, feather-light and beautifully soft silk chiffon scarf.

$29.95 / $26.95 Members

Shop online at store.anmm.gov.au 9.30 am–5 pm 7 days a week | 02 9298 3698 store.anmm.gov.au | Members’ discounts

$89.95 / $80.98 Members

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

114

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119 > ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements

The Australian National Maritime Museum acknowledges the support provided to the museum by all our volunteers, members, sponsors, donors and friends. The museum particularly acknowledges the following people who have made a significant contribution to the museum in an enduring way or who have made or facilitated significant benefaction to it. Honorary Fellow RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC RAN (Rtd) Honorary Life Members Robert Albert AO RFD RD Vivian Balmer Vice Admiral Tim Barrett AO AM CSC

Maria Bentley Mark Bethwaite AM Paul Binsted Marcus Blackmore AM John Blanchfield Alex Books Ian Bowie Ron Brown OAM Paul Bruce Anthony Buckley Richard Bunting Capt Richard Burgess AM Kevin Byrne Cecilia Caffrey Sue Calwell RADM David Campbell AM Marion Carter Victor Chiang Robert Clifford AO Hon Peter Collins AM QC John Coombs Kay Cottee AO Helen Coulson OAM CMDR Russell Crane AO AM CSM RAN

John Cunneen Laurie Dilks Anthony Duignan Leonard Ely Kevin Fewster AM Bernard Flack Daina Fletcher Sally Fletcher CDR Geoff Geraghty AM Tony Gibbs Hon Brian Gibson AM RADM Stephen Gilmore AM CSC RAN

Paul Gorrick Lee Graham Macklan Gridley Sir James Hardy KBE OBE RADM Simon Harrington AM

Gaye Hart AM Peter Harvie Janita Hercus Philip Hercus AM Anders Hillerstrom Robyn Holt William Hopkins Julia Horne

RADM Tony Hunt AO Marilyn Jenner John Jeremy AM Vice Admiral Peter Jones AO AM DSC

Hon Dr Tricia Kavanagh John Keelty Ian Kiernan AM AO Kris Klugman OAM Jean Lane Judy Lee Keith Leleu OAM Andrew Lishmund James Litten Tim Lloyd Ian Mackinder Casimiro Mattea Jack McBurney Bruce McDonald AM Arthur Moss Patrick Moss Rob Mundle OAM Martin Nakata David O’Connor Gary Paquet Prof John Penrose AM Neville Perry Hon Justice Anthe Philippides Peter Pigott AM RADM Neil Ralph Eda Ritchie AM RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC RAN (Ret) John Rothwell AO Kay Saunders AM

His Excellency the Hon Kevin Scarce AC AO AM CSC RAN

David Scott-Smith Sergio Sergi Mervyn Sheehan Ann Sherry AO John Simpson Shane Simpson AM His Excellency the Hon Peter R Sinclair AC AO KStJ (RADM)

Peter John Sinclair AM CSC John Singleton AM Brian Skingsley Eva Skira Bruce Stannard AM J J Stephens OAM Michael Stevens Neville Stevens AO Dr Andrew Sutherland AM Hiroshi Tachibana Frank Talbot AM Mitchell Turner Adam Watson Jeanette Wheildon Mary-Louise Williams AM Nerolie Withnall Founding Members Chad Bull Janette Biber Bruce Webster Margaret Molloy Kaye Weaver David Leigh Yvonne Abadee Maria Tzannes George Fehrenbach Derek Freeman Alan Stennett Rob Hall

Ivor MacDonald Nancy Somerville Ross Wilson Marcia Bass Christopher Harry Malcolm Horsfall Virginia Noel Dennis Rose John Lynch Barry Pemberton John Butler Judy Bayles Allaster McDougall Sybil Jack-Unger Richard Newton James Downie Glenn and Sue Yates Neville Sully John Seymour Peter Magraith Judy Finlason Cliff Emerson David Toyne Kenneth Grundy Geoff Tonkin David Voce David Waghorn and Helen Nickson Vincent Favaloro Colin Randall Denise Taylor Joan and Robert Killingsworth Ian Peters Robert Heussler Dean Claflin Harry Wark John Hamilton Kenneth Swan Mark Latchford James Hawkins Ross and Valda Muller Joyce Groves Lyndyl Beard Walter Pywell John and Marlene Vaughan Peter Wilson Marion Carter and Donald A Finlayson Angela and Teresa Giannandrea Fairlie Clifton Richard and Margaret McMillan Timothy Lewis Maxwell Beever Paul Joyce Petra Blumkaitis and Paul Wahltuch David Robinson Paul Cavanagh Robert and Mary Dick Michael Stacey Peter and Jan Scutts Peter Rowse John Hoey Ronald McJannett John Swanson Herbert White John O’Toole Robert Newell Tim and Kathe Swales Peter Harvey Andrew Kerr Ronald and Toni White Michael Connor Len Watson Pamela Lowbridge John Carter

Paul Richardson Peter O’Hare Stephen Dowsett Simon Barker Bruce Watson Steven White John Bach Bill and Eugenie Forbes Geoffrey Winter Michael and Evelina O’Leary Colin Delaney Mitchell White and Suzanne Peel Adrian Lane Halcyon Evans Bill Fenwick Stephen Smith David Cunningham Peter Inchbold Jean Morgan John Egan Barry Allison Walter Bateman Peter Siebert Michael Turner Stuart Ridland David Nutley Anthony and Katy Palmer Mark Johnson and Lyn Ashby James Littlefield Hilda Farquhar-Smith Robert Holman Bruce Small Garry Kerr William Bixley Derrick Heywood Peter Anderson Neville Rothfield John Brock Graeme Broxam Fred Cory Michael Dowsett Maxwell Surman-Smith Campbell Edmondson Paul Lincoln Tempe Merewether Sydney Jones Stephanie Ross Robert Murphy Derek Moore Anne Liddy Nigel Stoke Alan Ward Philip and Jennifer Andrew Peter Cramer Jeffery Coleman and Lindsey Marwood Allan Bridekirk Bruce and Robyn Tolhurst Chris Clark John and Cecily Ristuccia Andrew Johnston Phillip Good Dawn Springett Greg Swinden Ron and Helen Scobie Edwina Gowans Murray Doyle Adrian and Glenda Hutchings Peter Gill Ian Robinson Trevor Thomas Jeffrey Mellefont Neville Marshall Bob Walton Peter Bailey

Andrew St John-Brown Ann Parry Gary Wilson Kevin Murphy Richard and Christine Diaz Robert and Lynette Schaverien Richard Gardner Rosemary Mahon Daniel and Rosemary Howard Lindsay Rex Valerie Packer Angus Caporn Tom Fawcett Patrick Cooney and Madeleine Degnam Craig Webb William Abbott Neil Brough Susan Tompkins Michael Wise Ann Campbell Ken Woolfe Sarah Marang Chris Mitchell Rob Landis Lloyd Seaforth Poulton and Joan Poulton Margaret White Maxwell Bryan Peter Campbell Peter Cumes Len & Marion Graff Alan Brown Gregory MacMahon Cheryl Manns and Robert Scott Vicky Bourne John Inglis OAM Kenneth Edwards Stephen Robinson Margaret Arthur John Clifton Johan Brinch John Duncan Garry and Janice Sherwood Julie Armour Dawn and Ron Bradner Alexander Bradner Owen Summers Warwick Birrell Jack McBurney Brian and Judith Skingsley Marcus Blackmore AM Anthony Duignan Helen Kenny Honorary Research Associates Lindsey Shaw Jeffrey Mellefont Paul Hundley Rear Admiral Peter Briggs Ian MacLeod

115

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119

SIGNALS 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. Editorial and advertising enquiries signals@anmm.gov.au Deadline mid-January, April, July, October for issues March, June, September, December Signals is online Search all issues up to 109 (December 2014) at anmm.gov.au/signals. Issues 110 onwards available via the App Store Signals back issues Back issues $4 each or 10 for $30 Extra copies of current issue $4.95 Call The Store 02 9298 3698 Digital Signals Available on iPad from the App Store. Type 'Signals Quarterly' and follow the prompts. First edition free, subsequent editions $1.99. All editions are free to Members – contact members@anmm.gov.au for your coupon code 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 3646. Corporate memberships also available.

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

ANMM Council Chairman Mr Peter Dexter am faicd Director and CEO Mr Kevin Sumption Councillors Mr David Blackley The Hon Ian Campbell The Hon Peter Collins am qc Prof Sarah Derrington Ms Maria Teresia Fors Rear Admiral Stuart Mayer csc and Bar Mr John Mullen Ms Alison Page The Hon Margaret White ao Foundation partner ANZ Major partners Austal Nine Entertainment NSW Ports Returned and Services League of Australia (Queensland Branch) Partners AccorHotels’ Darling Harbour Hotels ACFS AHEPA AMSA APN Outdoor City of Sydney CoAsIt Contemporanea Progetti Expona Foxtel History Channel IAS Fine Art Logistics Institute of Italian Culture Italian Chamber of Commerce Italian Consul-General La Fiamma Laissez-Faire Panasonic Royal Wolf Holdings Ltd Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines Cargo Sony Sydney by Sail Pty Ltd Total E & P Transport for NSW

116

SIGNALS > NUMBER 119

Untitled-2 1

25/09/2014 3:10:03 PM