Signals 140

The Wharfies’ Mural

150 years of protest and progress

Lord Howe’s Nemo

A unique anemonefish

The Drayton Grange tragedy

Death and democracy at sea

Bearings

From the Director

WELCOME TO THE SPRING EDITION of Signals

and my first as Director and CEO of the museum. It has been a busy first few months as I have met staff, volunteers, members, council and a multitude of stakeholders, all passionate and committed people. It has been a joy.

The museum has a very wide brief that encompasses important aspects of what has shaped our country and what will shape us into the future. From our rich Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and European maritime heritage, the waves of migration that have created modern Australia, to ocean science and climate change –this is a nation that has been shaped by the sea and waterways and will continue to be influenced by the water around us.

I welcome the opportunity to connect with you, whether on site or via email. If you have any ideas, please drop me a line to thedirector@sea.museum I may not be able to respond directly to every person, but please be assured, different voices are always welcome and will be heard.

Daryl Karp AM Director and CEO

The exhibition Mariw Minaral (Spiritual Patterns) features works by Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islands) artist Alick Tipoti. ANMM image

Contents

Spring 2022

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

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 Islander people now deceased.

The museum advises there may be historical language and images that are considered inappropriate today and confronting to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The museum is proud to fly the Australian flag alongside the flags of our Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Australian South Sea Islander communities.

Cover Panels from The Wharfies’ Mural. See story on page 20. ANMM Collection 00040189, 00040190, 00040192

2 Finding Lord Howe’s Nemo

The McCulloch’s anemonefish – conserving an endemic species

10 Ms Daryl Karp AM

Introducing our new Director and CEO

12 The Bikini Queen

Paula Stafford, fashion designer, innovator and entrepreneur

20 The Wharfies’ Mural

Commemorating 150 years of maritime trade unions

26 $10,000 maritime history prizes

Calling for nominations for biennial awards

28 Troopships and citizenships

The Drayton Grange tragedy prompts our first Royal Commission

36 Museum speakers

Book a free talk for your club or society

38 Model ships on show

The Sydney Festival of Model Shipbuilding returns

40 Members news and events

Your calendar of special events for members and their guests

44 Exhibitions

Our temporary and travelling exhibitions this quarter

48 A Dutch wreck of a different stripe

The search for Koning Willem de Tweede in Robe, South Australia

56 Education

Endeavour in the curriculum

58 Collections

The Antarctic adventures of a beloved toy cat

62 Settlement Services International

Family separations and resilience during COVID-19

64 Readings

Recreating Titanic and her Sisters; Root & Branch; Rose

74 Currents

Vivid Sydney 2022; Greek ministerial visit; Vale Helen Coulsen

This, the world’s most southerly coral reef, is listed as a World Heritage Area and is also protected by the Lord Howe Island Marine Park

Finding Lord Howe’s Nemo Monitoring

the McCulloch’s anemonefish

The dainty anemonefish is fast becoming the early warning system for tropical sea temperature warming. Marine scientists on Lord Howe Island are working to monitor and conserve an endemic species peering from its host anemone at an uncertain future. By Justin Gilligan.

Dr Jean-Paul Hobbs teaches local glass-bottom-boat tour operator Dean Hiscox how to carry on future monitoring surveys of the McCulloch’s anemonefish. On this reef, the count stands at 15. All images Justin Gilligan

OUR SMALL VESSEL GENTLY ROCKS back and forth in the southern end of the Lord Howe Island lagoon. A soft breeze whispers around two forest-clad mountains partially shrouded by low-level cloud, whose flanks descend precipitously into the sea. It’s possible to make out every piece of the reef beneath the boat, including brightly coloured fish milling about. Although the view is spectacular, we barely have time to take it all in. We are faced with a pressing task: to discover Lord Howe Island’s own Nemo, the McCulloch’s anemonefish – found only in this tiny corner of the world – and its host anemones.

Tiny though it may be, Lord Howe Island has some large designations to uphold. This, the world’s most southerly coral reef, is listed as a World Heritage Area and is also protected by the Lord Howe Island Marine Park. It is positioned in the Pacific Ocean, 700 kilometres north-east of Sydney and more than 1,000 kilometres south of the Great Barrier Reef.

At Lord Howe Island, the lagoon and surrounding waters are influenced by both tropical and temperate currents, resulting in an unusual mix of species, including 16 fishes that are found nowhere else. Within this group is the McCulloch’s anemonefish (Amphiprion mccullochi ), which has one of the smallest geographic ranges of any of the 29 species within this family of quaint fishes.1

The McCulloch’s anemonefish has three isolated populations, including small populations at nearby Middleton Reef and Elizabeth Reef. Previous surveys revealed that approximately 75 per cent of the world’s McCulloch’s anemonefish occur in the lagoon at Lord Howe Island. This makes the lagoon a critical area to monitor and conserve for this species.

As ocean temperatures rise with global warming, the frequency of mass bleaching events is expected to increase. This may negatively affect the future both of anemones and of the McCulloch’s anemonefish that rely on them.

Anemonefish populations are entirely dependent on the availability of suitable host anemones for habitat and protection

Back on the vessel, the water is so clear it is possible to conduct the surveys by looking over the side, without even getting wet – but where would be the fun in that? We are at the first of our survey sites and marine biologist Dr Jean-Paul Hobbs, of the University of Queensland, can barely contain his excitement as he explains the project:

It’s simple, really. Monitoring all the species on the reef can be overwhelming, so we focus on a single species, such as this anemonefish, which acts as an indicator species. Global warming can kill corals and anemones and anemonefish can’t survive without anemones. By monitoring this species, we get an indication of how healthy the reef is.

Like hard corals, sea anemones have a symbiotic relationship with a species of algae called zooxanthellae. The anemone provides shelter for the microscopic algae, which in turn provide carbohydrates to the host as a by-product of photosynthesis. When anemones experience an increase in water temperature, such as that caused by global warming, the food-producing algae may be expelled. It is the zooxanthellae that give the anemone its bright colours, therefore when they are expelled the anemone appears pale and bleached. If the zooxanthellae are not reabsorbed, the anemone will eventually perish. Anemonefish populations are entirely dependent on the availability of suitable host anemones for habitat and protection, hence a loss of anemones directly results in a loss of anemonefish.

Mass bleaching events have been reported throughout the world’s tropical waters over the last 20 years

Occasionally, complete reefs can be affected by an increase in temperature. Known as mass bleaching events, such phenomena have been reported throughout the world’s tropical waters over the last 20 years. Some reefs suffer greatly during these events, with severe damage including large losses of anemones and anemonefishes, and even local extinctions on some reefs.

Mass bleaching has been documented off Lord Howe Island in 1998, 2010, 2011 and 2019. The earliest recorded bleaching event at Lord Howe occurred in 1998 during summer, when sea temperatures rose above 27°C. Following a fast phase-transition of the record-breaking 2009–10 warm-pool El Niño in the Central Pacific to a strong La Niña event in late 2010, the high-latitude coral and reef assemblages at Lord Howe were exposed to unprecedented successive marine heatwaves. The most recent, in 2019, coincided with anomalously high sea-surface temperatures between January and April, during which time coral and reef assemblages were again exposed to a marine heatwave that resulted in severe bleaching, affecting up to 95 per cent of corals in the inshore lagoon.

Dr Jean-Paul Hobbs checks data collected during his surveys.

The large, shallow lagoon on the western side of Lord Howe offers sheltered water for reef life. This environment is the remaining stronghold for the McCulloch’s anemonefish.

Tiny though it may be, Lord Howe Island has some large designations to uphold

01

Dr Jean-Paul Hobbs records counts of anemonefish and anemones on waterproof paper. The black-and-white fish stand out among the bright orange anemones, making them easy to count.

02

Small fin clips are taken from these youngsters for DNA analysis before they are returned to their anemone homes. Such analysis is important to evaluate the species’ ability to adapt to environmental change.

The response of coral reefs to adapt to an increase in temperature depends on the ability of the zooxanthellae to adapt and acclimatise to warmer temperatures.

A project by PhD candidate Laura Wicks, of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, examined the diversity of zooxanthellae found in corals at Lord Howe Island. Wicks determined that the diversity here is of particular significance with respect to global climate change, because disparate types of zooxanthellae exhibit striking differences in their susceptibility to temperature increases. She notes:

The diversity of zooxanthellae is high at Lord Howe Island, which means there may be species that can tolerate greater temperature variation resulting in anemones and corals that are more resilient to changes in temperature.

To conduct the monitoring, Dr Hobbs first counts anemones, which can be individually identified because they retract to a gentle touch, and then counts the anemonefish. To continue the assessment of the species’ future, he also collects juvenile McCulloch’s anemonefish samples to be used for genetic analysis.

As I sit staring into the anemone at the small black-andwhite fish moving back and forth, net and spray bottle of clove oil in hand, I wonder how this is going to be possible. Dr Hobbs swims past, separates the juvenile fish from the anemone with a simple hand movement, gives a few quick sprays of clove oil (just enough to make the fish drowsy), scoops the tiny fish into his net, then places them in a holding bag.

In a matter of seconds we take a small fin clip, much like a fingernail clipping. Within a minute the fish has woken up and is returned to its anemone home. The tiny fin clip holds DNA which is the key to the species’ future. Back in the laboratory, analysis will determine the genetic diversity of the population. This information is then used to determine the species’ ability to adapt to change, and more importantly to assess their risk of extinction.

As we complete our underwater surveys at the final site, there is a sense of relief. The prognosis is okay for now, but the downward population trend over the past 10 years of monitoring is concerning. Fortunately, the Lord Howe lagoon still has some of the world’s highest densities of anemonefish and is a clear stronghold for the endemic McCulloch’s anemonefish.

Although Lord Howe Island has an abundance of McCulloch’s anemonefish, the world’s coral reefs face a challenging era ahead. As the ocean’s temperature rises with global warming, the frequency and severity of mass bleachings are expected to increase. On Lord Howe Island, scientists and marine park managers are striving to secure the long-term future of this iconic coral reef fish, so that Lord Howe’s Nemo can always be found.

1 The species is named for Allan McCulloch, a former Curator of Fishes at the Australian Museum, Sydney. For more on McCulloch, see Brendan Atkins (2018) ‘Death in Honolulu’, Signals 123:34.

Justin Gilligan is a freelance photojournalist with an honours degree in marine science. He has worked on numerous projects with Australia’s federal and state fisheries agencies, and several of his images have received international acclaim in prestigious photography competitions. For further information, see justingilligan.com

‘As an island nation, our stories are shaped by our relationship with the sea – maritime history, immigration, First Nations knowledge and understanding, oceanography and climate change’

Ms Daryl Karp AM

Image Mark Nolan

Ms Daryl Karp AM

Introducing our new Director and CEO

The museum welcomed Daryl Karp AM as Director and CEO on 4 July. She comes to us after leading the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra for the past nine years.

DARYL KARP HAS HAD A PASSION FOR HISTORY, both cultural and natural, for most of her working life, starting at the ABC where she set up a TV science unit that built on the success of the series Quantum and which included the ABC’s first environmental series, A Question of Survival. As the head of TV factual programming and history, she was responsible for non-fiction programming, including documentaries, natural history, Indigenous, science and environmental programming.

She then moved to Film Australia, where, as CEO, she set an ambitious target of being leaders in Australian documentary, making it onto the RealScreen global top 100 production companies list three years later.

She has been involved in the production of more than 100 documentaries, including 50 Million Years under the Sea (focusing on coral reefs), Lost Diggers of Fromelles, Mawson: Life and death in Antarctica and the four-part series Captain Cook – Obsession and discovery

Daryl moved to the Museum of Australian Democracy (MoAD) at Old Parliament House in Canberra in 2013.

She says:

When I started, MoAD often had more staff than visitors, but through working collectively, we came up with the vision of a place to celebrate the ‘spirit of Australian democracy and the power of your voice within it’. It became a lively, engaging and sometimes robust conversation.

Over the following nine years, MoAD became a must-visit destination in Canberra, regularly third or fourth on the national capital’s crowded museums-to-visit list – just behind the Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Australia and Questacon.

As a director, Daryl has sat on the boards of SBS, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation and, of course, Old Parliament House, in which MoAD is situated. She was recently Chair of the Council for Australian Museum Directors (CAMD) and is currently Chair of the Canberra Writers Festival.

Daryl was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2019 for significant service to the arts, particularly to the museum and galleries sector:

I’m particularly proud that my AM is for services to the museum sector, which is something I care passionately about.

So why the maritime museum? She says:

It’s a coming together of all my passions – my twin loves of science and history; my relentless curiosity and desire to keep learning, my passion for making a difference. This museum does all of this and more – it is at the nexus of the issues of this generation.

As an island nation, our stories are shaped by our relationship with the sea – maritime history, immigration, First Nations knowledge and understanding, oceanography and climate change. We are perfectly placed to be at the heart of seeding ideas and exploring solutions.

I’m so looking forward to meeting the many volunteers, donors and supporters of the museum over the coming months as we plan for the next phase of this wonderful institution.

By Steve Riethoff, Head of Communications

A model wears a Paula Stafford two-piece and full skirt, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, 1950s.

Photographer unidentified.

Image courtesy City of Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection 46181

Paula Stafford’s oeuvre extended to a wide range of fashion that was suited to a beachcentred lifestyle

The Bikini Queen

Paula Stafford, pioneer of Australian swimwear

Paula Stafford was an innovative and entrepreneurial designer who produced a wide range of popular fashions. Examples of her swimwear are held in the National Maritime Collection, writes Assistant Curator Inger Sheil.

THE MEDIA CELEBRATED PAULA STAFFORD as the woman who introduced the bikini swimsuit to Australia, bestowing on her such titles as the ‘Bikini Queen’. She was an entrepreneur who helped build and celebrate the lifestyle of Queensland’s Gold Coast and promoted Australian design and tourism around the country and internationally. Her oeuvre encompassed more than the two-piece outfits for which she was best known, extending to a wide range of clever, colourful fashions that were suited to a beach-centred lifestyle. Her designs were embraced by the beach-loving public.

The history of the bikini is as controversial as the style itself has occasionally proved to be. French designer Louis Réard famously introduced the name in July 1946 in the wake of nuclear testing in the Pacific at Bikini Atoll, with the impact of the brief two-piece being likened to that of an explosion. Two-piece swimsuits, however, were not a new invention. They had clothed adventurous wearers in the 1930s on beaches in Europe and America as part of an emerging culture that embraced lighter garments for swimming as well as sunbathing and greater skin exposure for tanning. When they weren’t commercially available, some women made their own versions. Among them was 16-year-old Paula Stafford who, while holidaying at Point Lonsdale, Victoria, in 1936, modified her own one-piece swimsuit by cutting it in half. Stafford drew a distinction between the fuller cut of the two-piece and what was known as a French two-piece, or bikini:1

In the early days people started calling the two-piece a bikini and I said you can’t call it a bikini unless it’s three inches at the sides. Later I changed my definition to one inch!

Surfers Paradise, Queensland, 1960s. Photographer unidentified.

Image courtesy City of Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection 46191

02

Reversible broderie anglaise one-piece backed with orange poplin and with a boned bodice, mid-1950s.

ANMM Collection 00006147

Stafford was born on 10 June 1920 in Melbourne. Her original ambition was to be an architect, but her educators steered her towards fashion, a field deemed more appropriate for a woman. She attended the Emily McPherson School of Domestic Economy, a part of Melbourne Technical College. Her interest in architecture would later manifest itself in designing her own home, rental accommodation and production spaces on the Gold Coast.

During World War II she worked as an army nurse stationed in Toowoomba, where she met her husband Beverly ‘Bev’ Stafford, a serviceman who was undergoing rehabilitation following hospitalisation. He had lived at Southport, Queensland, before the war, where family members were involved in real estate development. In 1944 the couple moved to Main Beach on the Gold Coast, where Beverly ran a business renting equipment to beachgoers from their home, a converted former kiosk. The couple’s four children were born there, and Paula happily embraced the beach lifestyle, later saying she lived in a swimsuit. Paula created clothing – including swimsuits – for herself and her children. These designs soon caught the attention of holidaymakers, and one of Beverly’s clients became enamoured of a beach coat Paula had made, requesting one for herself. Paula offered her the coat, and so her fashion business was born.

By 1946 – the same year French designers were introducing their abbreviated two-piece swimsuits, to considerable controversy – Paula had started selling her own version. In the early days of the business, she would take her order book and a box of materials down to the beach, where clients would order a swimsuit to be made ready for pick-up later that day. Her business model – which included a quick turnaround on orders and colourful designs made to individual measurements – proved to be a success, particularly with holidaymakers from the southern states and from Queensland’s inland regional areas. She rapidly expanded production and in 1949 the Staffords purchased land on Cavill Avenue in Surfers Paradise, just in time for its development boom. In the following years they built their own house, apartments for rental, a workroom and eventually a shopfront dubbed the Bikini Bar and Tog Shop.

In the early years, with fabric scarce due to wartime restrictions, Stafford innovated by using whatever materials she could source, including tea towels, tablecloths and furnishing fabric. Later, as the business grew, she used textiles from around the world, such as Swiss cottons and Thai silk, ordering a great variety so she could offer her customers a range of colours and textures for individual tastes. ‘My biggest influence’, she said, ‘was the fact that I loved fabric and what I could do with it and the coordination of colours’. 2

01 Models in Paula Stafford designs for a fashion show at the Chevron Hotel Skyline Lounge,

Stafford proved adept at turning media attention into publicity

Paula Stafford’s clever, colourful designs embraced the sun and surf, and in turn were embraced by the beach-loving public

From swimsuits, her business expanded to matching accessories such as hats and beach coats, then to sundresses and other garments, including evening wear and even wedding gowns. Stafford did not particularly market towards a youth audience and as the clothing sold through her shop was made to order, it suited a range of ages and body types. Made to measure in soft, natural fabrics, her designs offered a comfort and ease of wear at a time when swimsuits could still be stiffly structured and uncomfortable, more like shapewear undergarments than clothing made for sport and leisure as well as fashion.

Bikinis still courted controversy in the 1950s and 60s, when local by-laws and often-conservative mores on beach attire influenced what was regarded as appropriate. Stafford proved adept at turning media attention into publicity, and in 1952, when model Ann Ferguson was asked by a beach inspector to leave a Surfers Paradise beach because her Paula Stafford bikini was too brief, Stafford turned the ensuing media coverage to her advantage and sent more bikini-clad models to the beach – a move condoned by the town council, which ruled them acceptable. Stafford humorously addressed this and similar incidents by hosting a parade of swimsuit fashion at her shop during a 1967 convention of Australian and international beach inspectors, attended by approximately 100 convention goers and a large press contingent. 3

01

Paula Stafford synthetic fabric two-piece with a hibiscus print, 1970s. ANMM Collection 00006144

02

Men’s cabana set of boxer-style shorts and matching beach jacket, 1950s. Like many of Stafford’s garments, this outfit was reversible. ANMM Collection 00006148 and 00006149

03

Paula Stafford and customer Kathy Ford in Stafford’s Bikini Bar and Tog Shop at Broadbeach, Queensland, in about 1957.

Image Jeff Carter ANMM Collection 00027922

Stafford worked with Queensland tourism promoters, including the local Chamber of Commerce and airlines, to sell the Gold Coast lifestyle of sunshine and beaches to potential visitors from around Australia and the world. In 1956 in Sydney, she organised Australia’s first bikini parade as part of a Gold Coast promotional event. At a time when the market for swimwear was dominated by American brands – to the extent that American companies Jantzen and Cole of California had factories in Australia – Paula Stafford made inroads into both the national and international markets. By the late 1950s, major department stores embraced the brand, her designs were carried at high-end retailers in America, Europe and Asia, and a thriving mail-order business served more customers around the globe.

Clients for Stafford’s menswear included Sammy Davis Jr, who once bought 15 bags of clothes to take home to America for his friends

01

Although best known for her swimwear, Paula Stafford also produced day and evening fashions. This design is from the early 1960s. Photographer unidentified. Image courtesy City of Gold Coast Libraries Local Studies Collection 46134

02

Paula Stafford’s black ‘one-piece bikini’, designed in 2008, alluded to Annette Kellerman’s infamous woollen one-piece swimsuit while also referencing Stafford’s own bikini designs. ANMM Collection 00047705

03

Annette Kellerman in about 1907, wearing her controversial one-piece black swimsuit that influenced swimwear fashion and designers, including Paula Stafford.

ANMM Collection 00029949

Stafford worked with tourism promoters to sell the Gold Coast lifestyle of sunshine and beaches to potential visitors from around Australia and the world

Paula Stafford was also a good friend of the Australian National Maritime Museum. Before the museum opened its doors to the public in 1991, its curators worked to establish the nucleus of the National Maritime Collection. Paula Stafford’s designs were identified as significant in the development of the nation’s beach culture, and museum staff collaborated with her to acquire designs that showcased a range of her work from the 1950s to 1970s. A men’s cabana set in the collection – comprising swimming trunks and a matching beach jacket – is a reminder that her range extended beyond the bikini. Clients for her menswear included Sammy Davis Jr, who once bought 15 bags of clothes to take home to America for his friends. The cabana set, like the green tartan and broderie anglaise swimsuits that also form part of the collection, is reversible. Reversible garments – including swimwear and dresses – were another Stafford innovation, born out of her clients liking the quality of her lined garments so much that they wanted to wear some of them inside out. Stafford obliged, with zips that were reversible and labels sewn unobtrusively into the pockets.

Stafford also made a generous gift to the museum of a group of objects connected with Annette Kellerman, another Australian swimsuit pioneer, who helped popularise practical garments for swimming in the early 20th century. Kellerman retired to Southport, where she and Stafford became friends, establishing a connection between two people who influenced beach culture for two different generations. Among the Kellerman objects that Stafford donated to the museum was a handwritten card in which Kellerman wrote of Stafford’s ‘charm & talent’.

In 2008 Stafford came out of retirement to again support the museum as part of a project to celebrate Annette Kellerman’s ground-breaking one-piece woollen swimsuit of 100 years earlier. Notable swimsuit designers and labels past and present were invited to submit their interpretations of the one-piece as part of the Woollen Mermaid collection. Stafford’s contribution was designed by her and made by students at Queensland University of Technology. In a witty reference to the bikini design that helped make her famous, the top and bottom are joined only by a narrow band of fabric to form a black ‘one-piece bikini’ with plastic diamante bead detail. Today the swimsuit resides in the National Maritime Collection, part of an enduring tribute to Paula Stafford’s creative drive and passion, and the design innovation that helped shape what we now wear for fashion, sport and recreation.

Paula Stafford OAM died on 23 June 2022, aged 102.

1 ‘Paula Stafford’. Brisbane Modern issue 3 2008, transcript of an interview with Paula Stafford conducted 20 October 2008 by Janet Campbell, brisbanemodern.com.au/issue3-article.html, accessed 4 July 2022

2 Ibid.

3 Jack McKinnon, ‘When a former beach inspector and bikini-maker meet’, Gold Coast Sun, 16 June 1967, p 4.

The Wharfies’ Mural

A record of struggles, victories and aspirations

In 1996, the Maritime Union of Australia donated a remarkable mural to the National Maritime Museum. In 2022, maritime trade unions are commemorating 150 years since their formation, and in October the mural will go on display. Dr Stephen Gapps and David O’Sullivan trace its history.

By 1965 the mural had wrapped almost completely around the canteen, traversing doorways and windows

This panel celebrates the eighthour working day. The figure with the prominent moustache on the left-hand side is famous Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson, whose work inspired unionists. This panel also depicts the foundation of the Australian Labor party at Unity Square in Balmain, Sydney, in the 1890s. ANMM Collection 00040188

All images © Maritime Union of Australia, reproduced with permission. Gift from Maritime Union of Australia

These images focus on the suffering of the working class during the Great Depression of the 1930s, plus industrial resistance and the fight against Fascism during World War II. At the centre is the face of Waterside Workers’ Federation leader Jim Healy, who symbolises the triumphs of the union and the workers. ANMM Collection 00040196, 00040198

IN THE EARLY 1950s, a group of workers at the wharves of Sydney’s Darling Harbour decided to paint a mural. But this wasn’t just an artwork to decorate their lunchroom walls and liven up the time spent indoors when rain stopped work; it was a mural designed to reflect the struggles, victories and aspirations of their fellow workers.

In 1872, the first trade unions representing waterside workers were formed in Port Adelaide, Sydney and Port Melbourne. By 1902 these state-based unions had joined to form the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF). During the first half of the 20th century, waterside workers around Australia campaigned for, and won, important wage and work conditions.

The waterside workers’ canteen at the time was right in the heart of the busiest docks and wharves in Sydney. This area is now known as Barangaroo, and is home to parklands, restaurants, a casino and apartments – a far cry from the Great Depression of the early 1930s, when the wharves on the eastern side of Darling Harbour were known as the ‘Hungry Mile’. The name came from the time when casual waterside labourers and the unemployed would tramp along the docks each morning looking for work.

The canteen wall mural began rather modestly in 1953, but it soon inspired other artists. By 1965, the mural had wrapped almost completely around the canteen, traversing doorways and windows. It expanded in scope as well and positioned the story of the WWF in that of the larger history and politics of other trade unions, charting Australian industrial campaigns from the 1850s up to World War II.

One of the artists who contributed to the mural, Clem Milward, recalled his ‘gang’ of artists: They used to call us ‘The Brains Trust’. We used to play chess in the rain periods and smokos [tea breaks] and so on. We had a very talented composer, Arnold Butcher … and people who were trying to write and act and all this sort of thing, all in the same gang.

During the 1950s, the WWF Sydney Branch on Sussex Street became a hive of activity for wharfies, artists, activists and intellectuals. Clem Milward and Harry Reade were two such artists who became wharfies and contributors to the mural. For them, casual employment on the wharves allowed the flexibility to focus on their artistic pursuits – packaged with the socially progressive politics that came with being involved in a militant union.

The WWF encouraged the cultural and artistic self-development of its members, which included theatre and, in 1953, the establishment of the Waterside Workers’ Film Unit. The unit produced several documentaries about life on the wharves and waterfront. One documentary from 1957, Not Only the Need, focused on inner-city Sydney housing conditions. The film-makers went into the slums of Paddington and Surry Hills where few other film-makers at the time would have trod.

The mural artists were influenced by ‘Socialist Realism’, a movement that emerged in 1930s communist Russia. Twentieth-century Realist literature and art attempted to depict social or physical realities rather than subjective or idealised views. Socialist Realism sought truthfulness in artistic subject, with a view to educating working people in the history, struggles and spirit of socialism. The WWF formed a partnership with the Studio of Realist Art (SORA). Wharfie Rod Shaw was a founding member of SORA, and he, union leader Tom Nelson and wharfie art student Sonny Glynn envisaged the design of The Wharfies’ Mural

During the 1950s to 1970s, thousands of wharfies ate their lunch in the Sydney canteen, surrounded by the giant mural. But from the 1980s, as Sydney Harbour transformed from an industrial port into a residential and tourist one, maritime industries moved to other places such as Port Botany and Wollongong. In the early 1990s, when the wharves were to be redeveloped and the canteen torn down, the wharfies made the farsighted decision to keep their mural.

Removing it was no easy matter, however. The mural had been painted on thin lime plaster on brick and was painstakingly removed in 12 sections, using a specially designed saw to separate it from the brick. In 1996 significant conservation work was undertaken at the museum, generously funded by the Maritime Union of Australia and many other contributors to a Wharfies’ Mural Appeal Fund.

The Wharfies’ Mural is now one of the museum’s iconic treasures. It is a window into the cultural movements that occurred among workers on the waterfront during the 20th century, and a reminder of their significant role in broader Australian politics and society.

The maritime unions’ 150th commemorative events in October will include the display of The Wharfies’ Mural.

Dr Stephen Gapps and David O’Sullivan are curatorial alumni of the museum.

During the first half of the 20th century, waterside workers around Australia campaigned for, and won, important wage and work conditions

The upper section of this panel depicts a mass meeting of waterside workers at Sydney’s Leichhardt Stadium in 1943. The lower section depicts the heavy physical nature of waterside work; workers are heaving and rolling a ‘double dump’ wool bale, which could weigh up to 400 kilograms.

ANMM Collection 00040201, 00040202

Donors to The Wharfies’ Mural appeal 1996

The Australian National Maritime Museum wishes to acknowledge and thank all those whose generous donations in 1996 supported the relocation of The Wharfies’ Mural to the museum and enabled extensive conservation work to be undertaken.

Principal Donors

Columbus Line

Maritime Union of Australia

(Central NSW Branch)

P&O Ports

Corporate Supporters

Canberra Tradesmens Union Club

HSBC Asset Management

Maritime Unions of Australia

Maritime Workers of Australia Credit Union

Qantas

Sydney Ports Corporation

Supporters

Carol and Laurie Aarons

ANL

Charlie Attard

Australian Maritime Safety Authority

Paddy Berry

BHP Stevedoring Co Committee

Harry Black

Boomerang ITF Seafarers Club

Arthur Brown

Tas Bull

Dr Meredith Burgmann MLC

Bob Byrne

Aldo Cacciotti

Sean Chafer

Eric Chater

Norman Cole

Alan Curry

George Dingwell

Jim Donovan

Henry Downey

Murray Doyle

Jim Euhus

Laurie Ferguson MP

Mervyn Fitzhenry

George Fordham

Peter Francis

Globe Star Shipping PL

Tom Gould

Mr and Mrs Russell Gow

Alan Green

B Guy

Wendy Ann Hardiman

Harveys Chartered Accountants

BH and NM Hawkins

Evelyn Healy

Ina Heidtman

HA Heinemann

Holt family: Robert Gordon Holt Senior,

Robert Emmet Holt Junior, Steven Ray

Holt, Maire E Holt

Jane Howarth

Howard and Lillian Hunt

John Kane

Kay Starr’s Cafe

Patricia Kelk Graham

Myrtle King

Labor Council of NSW

Dr Alf Liebhold

Life Members Association Port Kembla

Branch Waterside Workers Federation

Merv MacFarlane

Enid Maher

KJ Manski

Maritime Union of Aust (S Qld)

Maritime Union of Australia (WA Branch)

Maritime Workers of Australia Credit Union

Ron Maxwell

Bob McMullan MP

Vincent Micallef

P Moloney

June and Milton Moore

Newcastle BHP Stevedores

Newcastle Workers Club

Sally Nicholson

Alan Oliver

Tom Orchard

Stephanie O’Sullivan

Mrs G J Parkes

Jack and Helen Phelps

Norm Philps

Michael Power

Dick Quinn

Randwick Labor Club

Barry S Risk

Peter Sago

Claude Savino

Richard C B Scott

Peter Sheahan

Ken Shorter

Dick Singh

Vic Slater

Sofrana Unilines

Paddy Swanson

R Tanti

L Taylor

Frank Toohey

John Wade

Jean Welsh

Wilhelmsen Lines Australia

Jim Winders

$10,000 maritime history prizes

Nominations are now open

Writers and publishers of maritime history are invited to nominate works for maritime history awards totalling $10,000, sponsored jointly by the Australian Association for Maritime History and the Australian National Maritime Museum. Nominations for the next round close on 30 March 2023.

EVERY TWO YEARS, the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Association for Maritime History sponsor two prizes: the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize and the Australian Community Maritime History Prize. Both prizes reflect the wish of the sponsoring organisations to promote a broad view of maritime history that demonstrates how the sea and maritime influences have been more central in shaping Australia, its people and its culture than has commonly been believed.

The major prize is named in honour of the late Professor Frank Broeze (1945–2001) of the University of Western Australia, who has been called the pre-eminent maritime historian of his generation. This will be the 12th joint prize for a maritime history book awarded by the two organisations, and the sixth community maritime history prize.

The 2023 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize of $8,000

To be awarded for a non-fiction book treating any aspect of maritime history relating to or affecting Australia, written or co-authored by an Australian citizen or permanent resident, and published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2022. The book should be published in Australia, although titles written by Australian authors but published overseas may be considered at the discretion of the judges. The prize is open to Australian authors or co-authors of a booklength monograph or compilation of their own works.

Fictional works, edited collections of essays by multiple contributors, second editions and translations of another writer’s work are not eligible.

The 2023 Australian Community Maritime History Prize of $2,000

To be awarded to a regional or local museum or historical society for a publication (book, booklet, educational resource kit, DVD, film or other print or digital media, including websites, databases and oral histories) relating to an aspect of maritime history of that region or community, and published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2022. The winner will also receive a year’s subscription to the Australian Association for Maritime History and a year’s subscription to the Australian National Maritime Museum’s quarterly magazine Signals

Publications by state-run organisations, physical exhibitions and periodicals such as journals are not eligible.

How to nominate

To nominate for the Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize, complete the form at sea.museum/ history-prizes and provide THREE photocopies or PDFs of the following:

• dust jacket or cover

• blurb

• title page

• imprint page

• contents page

• the page showing the ISBN

• one or two representative chapters of the publication (up to 10 per cent of the contents), including examples of illustrative materials.

A copy of the book may also be included, but may not substitute for these materials.

Copies of any published reviews may also be included.

To nominate for the Australian Community Maritime History Prize, complete the form at sea.museum/ history-prizes and send to the address below, along with:

• For print publications or DVDs – include a physical copy.

• For digital publications such as websites, databases, online exhibitions or apps – include 250–300 words explaining the vision and objectives of the digital media, plus data indicating its success. For websites and databases, also provide the URL or download details.

• For an app or other digital media – submit it on a USB or via a file transfer system.

Copies of any published reviews may also be included.

Multiple nominations may be made, but each must be for one category only.

Nominations for both prizes close on 30 March 2023. They should be posted to:

Janine Flew Publications officer

Australian National Maritime Museum

Wharf 7, 58 Pirrama Road

Pyrmont NSW 2009

Judging process

Following an initial assessment of nominations, shortlisted authors or publishers will be invited to submit three copies of their publication. These will be read by a committee of three prominent judges from the maritime history community.

The judges’ decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.

The winners will be announced in the spring 2023 issue of Signals and via other channels in September 2023.

For more information, see sea.museum/history-prizes

Previous winners of the biennial maritime history prizes.

Troopships and citizenships

Death and democracy among Australian soldiers at sea

When the troopship Drayton Grange brought Australian volunteers home from the South African War, conditions aboard provoked a national scandal. Dr Peter Hobbins considers what the soldiers’ experiences in 1902 revealed about expectations for the new Commonwealth of Australia.

THE DRY COUNTRY AROUND JERILDERIE, 400 kilometres inland from Bateman’s Bay, seems an odd location for a shipping tragedy. Yet it was from this small New South Wales town that, on 23 April 1903, John Hanna signed a letter with his shaky invalid’s hand.

‘Trusting this will receive your favourable consideration in time to assist me back to health and strength which was lost on active service’, it read. Hanna was too weak to write the three-page missive himself, so it had been neatly drafted on his behalf.

Addressed to military headquarters at Victoria Barracks in Sydney, the letter included endorsements by the mayor of Jerilderie, plus the town’s bank manager, council clerk, police sergeant, two justices of the peace, three business owners and local medical practitioner Dr Arthur Robinson.1

All ten witnesses confirmed that John Hanna had been a fit young boundary rider when he joined the Australian Contingent for Service in South Africa in February 1902. 2 Like other members of the 3rd Battalion Australian Commonwealth Horse, Trooper Hanna was single and required ‘to be able to ride and shoot and to pass medical examination’. 3 Two months later the tall, well-built 21-year-old shipped out on Hired Military Transport (HMT) Manhattan, bound for Durban in South Africa.

Just a month after the 3rd Battalion arrived, however, the British Empire’s three-year war against the Boer republics concluded. On 11 July most of the men – including Trooper Hanna – boarded HMT Drayton Grange to be repatriated. Instead they steamed into a controversy that signalled the changing expectations of citizen soldiers serving the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia.

Conditions aboard Drayton Grange were ripe for an epidemic. It soon arrived

John Hanna’s grave in Jerilderie Cemetery, NSW. Image courtesy Andrew Scrivener

Irregular conditions

It should have been a straightforward trooping voyage in a modern steamship. Built at the Belfast yards of Workman, Clark & Co, SS Drayton Grange was launched in December 1901. A twin-screw steamer of 6,591 tons, the vessel was owned by the London-based Houlder Line and sported their stylised cross insignia midway up its single red funnel.

Rated 100 A1 by Lloyd’s, over April and May 1902 Drayton Grange had been entrusted with conveying the Premier of New Zealand, Richard Seddon, to visit South Africa as the military campaign wound down. The only drama enlivening that voyage was rescuing the crew of Geertruida Gerarda, a Dutch barque that foundered 1,300 kilometres west of Fremantle.4 Commanded by Captain Joseph Bennett, Drayton Grange was solid and roomy, eminently suitable for conveying 1,500 personnel under the British Admiralty’s Regulations for His Majesty’s Transport Service

But in July 1902, conditions in Durban were far from regular. The South African war had cost Britain a staggering £210 million – the equivalent of more than £18 billion today – and the imperial authorities were keen to disperse their now-superfluous soldiery.

Many among the Australian contingents were equally eager to return to civilian life, as citizens of a newly independent nation. Indeed, just weeks earlier the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 had granted nearly all white Australian men and women the right to vote and to stand for Federal Parliament.

Eager to repatriate these former colonials, the Principal Transport Officer in Cape Town chartered HMT Drayton Grange to carry 41 officers and 2,002 men to Albany, Melbourne and Sydney. Several Australian contingents were rushed aboard, with little order, preparation or supervision. Although formal records suggest that 42 officers and 1,941 other ranks embarked, this number was bolstered by a substantial number of stowaways, ‘most of whom possessed or borrowed uniforms’. 5

Both cold-weather kit and medical necessities were dangerously deficient. Captain James Gillies –normally a civilian doctor from Seymour in Victoria – realised that the troopship was about to depart in an alarmingly unprepared state. Without any formal authority, he scoured Durban for whatever supplies he could source, asserting that ‘if I did not do so the transport would sail without any medical equipment whatever ’. 6

Although standard procedure allowed the troops a day to settle in before sailing, HMT Drayton Grange steamed out of Durban on 11 July 1902, just hours after the gangways were cleared. During embarkation, neither the ship’s master nor the Officer Commanding Troops, Lieutenant Colonel John Lyster, received a copy of the Admiralty’s Transport Regulations. This dry-sounding document ‘outlined in minute detail how to organise soldiers for what were usually tedious voyages’.7

Nevertheless, Captain Bennett should have owned the reference guide ubiquitously known as ‘Stevens on Stowage’, which insisted that when trooping, ‘the most beneficial effects are derived from the use of windsails’. 8 Such devices for diverting fresh air below should have been welcomed by the men. Instead, in the cold and heavy weather as the vessel tracked across the southern Indian Ocean, chilled soldiers blocked the airflow through their crowded troop decks. The ‘vitiating exhalations from so many human beings – some with none too cleanly clothes or persons’ – rapidly became ‘extremely offensive and very deleterious’. 9

Both cold-weather kit and medical necessities were dangerously deficient

Image

02

Burke

Image courtesy Denise Milne

On the top deck, poor wooden sheathing and inadequate latrine design led to the sloshing of noisome liquids between the scuppers. Meanwhile, both ill and ill-disciplined soldiers used the shower stalls as unofficial urinals, further discouraging personal hygiene among their comrades.

Conditions aboard were ripe for an epidemic. It soon arrived. The highly infectious disease measles had caused substantial illness and death in South Africa throughout the war, and now it prospered between Drayton Grange ’s crowded troop decks. Colds and other respiratory ailments added to the morbid burden, with the coughing and spitting of sick men further escalating infection rates.

Illness now became nearly universal, with historian John Price remarking that ‘of the 50 transports that had carried Australian volunteers to and from South Africa during the three years of war, none had such a record of disease’.10 Soldiers waited for hours on the blustery, slippery deck during daily sick parades. The limited hospital accommodation of 40 berths was rapidly supplemented by 100 additional beds, but even they soon proved insufficient. Some men, however, volunteered as temporary hospital staff, performing duties that were ‘arduous under trying circumstances’, with little expectation of reward beyond altruistic comradeship.11

The 3rd Battalion Australian Commonwealth Horse. Trooper John Hanna is circled. (Numbers identifying each soldier are inscribed on the original silver gelatin print.)

AWM A04119

Thompson’s grave in Waverley Cemetery, NSW.

The Jerilderie letter

As HMT Drayton Grange approached Western Australia, pneumonia and related heart conditions took their toll. Yet local authorities denied permission to land the sick into the Albany quarantine station; they claimed that there were no quarantinable diseases aboard, and that there were insufficient facilities and staff ashore.

Five men promptly died at sea; another nine expired upon reaching Port Phillip Bay in Victoria. Even today, a monument at the Victorian town of Sorrento honours the ‘returned soldiers from South Africa by “Drayton Grange” who died at Fort Franklin Barracks Portsea August 1902’. By early September, two more men had succumbed to illness at Sydney’s Coast Hospital.

Such was the scandal that two days after HMT Drayton Grange docked in Sydney on 10 August 1902, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the affair. Signalling rising expectations of governmental responsibility for the welfare of citizens, this was the very first Royal Commission conducted by the new Commonwealth of Australia.

The commissioners concluded that both Colonel Lyster and Captain Shields – as Senior Medical Officer – had insufficiently protected the men in their care. Moreover, indicating the democratic spirit embodied in the Commonwealth Franchise Act, the rank and file were also blamed for not taking ‘effective steps, by representations to their officers, to have matters altered for the better’.12

Another political expectation was also at play. Nearly two months after HMT Drayton Grange moored off Portsea, 20-year-old Bert Parker died from cerebrospinal meningitis in Ballarat, Victoria.

Trooper Parker had served in South Africa with the Marquis of Tullibardine’s Scottish Horse, but returned home with fellow Australians. Blaming this tragedy on the insanitary onboard conditions, Bert’s father prosecuted a £150 compensation claim against the Commonwealth Department of Defence. When that gambit failed, he took the case to Britain’s War Office, which also declined to admit that the appalling state of the transport had prompted Bert’s demise.13

His headstone in Ballarat General Cemetery asserts that it was ‘the result of the overcrowding of the troopship “Drayton Grange”’.

Some families were recompensed for their loss, however. Trooper Burke Thompson of the 3rd Battalion Australian Commonwealth Horse died less than three hours after reaching Melbourne Hospital. After intercession by Australia’s first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, the Department of Defence paid for Trooper Thompson’s body to be returned to Sydney. He rests there still, interred by the sea at Waverley Cemetery.14

Herbert Parker’s grave at Ballarat General Cemetery, VIC.

Image Janine Flew/ANMM

Drayton Grange moored in Wellington, New Zealand, April 1902. The men visible aboard, including soldiers wearing slouch hats, are probably members of the North Island Regiment of the Tenth Contingent departing for the South African War. Image Robina Nicol, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand Ref 1/2-233726-G

As HMT Drayton Grange approached Western Australia, pneumonia and related heart conditions took their toll

The enquiry into the Drayton Grange affair was the very first Royal Commission conducted by the Commonwealth of Australia

01

The Royal Commission’s report included detailed plans of Drayton Grange as outfitted for trooping. They were drafted by James Orr, the chief shipwright surveyor in the NSW Department of Navigation. Image Vaughan Evans Library/ANMM

02

The single red funnel and its distinctive cross insignia marked out Drayton Grange as a Houlder Line steamer. Image ANMM ANMS0599

At Jerilderie, meanwhile, John Hanna’s letter to headquarters had been written in desperation. When Hanna’s father died on 14 April 1903, Hanna’s mother Sarah faced the burden of caring for her desperately ill son, plus his seven younger siblings. A very different widow’s son had written a letter from Jerilderie in 1879 – the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly. ‘It will pay Government to give those people who are suffering innocence justice and liberty’, he asserted.15

No direct link could be proven between Trooper Hanna’s passage aboard HMT Drayton Grange and his subsequent tuberculosis. Nevertheless, on 14 July 1903 the Minister of Defence finally offered £25 in compensation. This decision came a year after the troopship departed Durban – and two days after John Hanna died.16 Although a poor reward, it at least recognised the 23-year-old’s service, sacrifice and suffering. In the parched landscape of the Jerilderie General Cemetery, far from the sea, his headstone stands today, bearing testament to ‘A victim of the “Drayton Grange”’.

1 National Archives of Australia [hereafter NAA], Series A6443 Control 203, JA Hanna to SOR Troops, 23 April 1903, p 3.

2 NAA, B4418 Hanna JA.

3 PL Murray, Official Records of the Australian Military Contingents to the War in South Africa, 1899–1902 (Melbourne: Albert J Mullett, 1911), p 176.

4 National Library of New Zealand, MS-Papers-9246, H Duit, Letter to the Captain, officers and crew of the steamer Drayton Grange, 7 May 1902.

5 A McLean, G McGregor, Dugald Thomson, WD Williams and D Astley Greswell. Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into and Report Upon the Arrangements Made for the Transport of Troops Returning from Service in South Africa in the SS “Drayton Grange” (Melbourne: Robt S Brain, 1902), p 5.

6 NAA, A6443 577, James Gillies to the Minister of Defence, 9 May 1903, p 1. Emphasis in original.

7 Michael Tyquin (2001) ‘The SS “Drayton Grange”: the tragedy of the last Australian troopship from the Boer War’, Health and History 3(2):94.

8 Windsails are tubes of canvas positioned above a hatch or companionway to funnel wind below decks to provide ventilation.

9 Robert White Stevens, On the Stowage of Ships and Their Cargoes: With Information Regarding Freights, Charter-Parties, &c, &c (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, & Dyer, 1893), p 761.

10 McLean, Report of the Royal Commission, p 8.

11 John E Price (1993) ‘The tragic voyage of the troopship Drayton Grange ’, Sabretache 34(2):32.

12 NAA, A6443 614, JS Lyster to DAQMG NSWales, 12 August 1902, p 1.

13 McLean, Report of the Royal Commission, p 15.

14 NAA, B168 1903/2052, George H Parker to Sir John Forrest, 8 June 1903.

15 NAA, A6443 209, The Prime Minister to the Premier of Queensland, 2 August 1902.

16 National Museum of Australia, Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter, p 19.

17 NAA, A6443 203, WD Williams to Secretary of Defence, 13 July 1903 (annotated 14 July 1903).

The 1902 report of the Royal Commission into the Drayton Grange affair was recently donated to the museum’s Vaughan Evans Library; call number 968.0487 REP.

Dr Peter Hobbins is the museum’s Head of Knowledge. This is the first in a series of articles in which he will explore the military, commercial and social aspects of hired transports in Australian maritime history.

Museum speakers

Book a free talk for your club or society

Did you know that the museum runs a dynamic speakers program? You can book an experienced speaker to give a free presentation at your club meetings, either face to face or via Zoom.

By Volunteers Coordinator David Cutler.

THE MUSEUM’S SPEAKERS are trained museum volunteers who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their chosen subjects. They present to a wide range of community groups, including Probus, Rotary, U3A, View clubs, historical societies, social groups and maritime clubs.

In the last financial year, despite the difficulties caused by COVID-19, our speakers delivered 202 presentations, some via Zoom, to an audience of almost 9,000 people. To encourage attendance at each presentation, the museum provides a family pass worth $70 (offering free admittance for two adults and three children to all exhibits open on the day), which may be used in a raffle or as a lucky door prize. Information on discount group tours is also available.

The topic is agreed upon by the available speaker and your organisation. Speakers are available for a question-and-answer session at the end of the talk.

Presentations are available in the following categories, with various topics of interest within each category:

Navigators and explorers The maritime exploration of Australia and the world – the who, why, where and how of these incredible voyages.

Australians at war Heroic true accounts of our armed services at war – not just ships and battles, but the inspiring stories of the people involved.

Remarkable Australians Australian maritime men and women with vision and courage who became legends.

Finding long-lost vessels Fascinating stories of the searches for ships that were tragically lost and sometimes all but forgotten.

Maritime disasters and mysteries In war or peace, conflicts, human error and plain bad luck cause disasters that cost lives and leave behind mysteries to be solved.

History at sea Presentations that tell us about people and events and their life and times.

General interest topics with a maritime connection

A diverse range of presentations with an emphasis on how the sea is connected to life in Australia.

Presentations are made in person for clubs in metropolitan Sydney. If your club is outside Sydney, presentations can be offered via Zoom. If your club or society would like to book a free talk, please see sea.museum/invite-a-speaker or email a representative at bookingsspeaker@gmail.com.

Presentations on dozens of topics are free and available in person or via Zoom

01

The Halvorsen dynasty and their boats are a popular subject for presentations. Here, classic Halvorsen cruisers take part in a sail-past on Pittwater in 2000 to commemorate Harold Halvorsen’s 90th birthday. Image Brendan Read/ANMM

02

The former Quarantine Station at North Head, Sydney Harbour. Quarantine is a topical subject for the museum’s talks. Image Taras Vyshnya/Shutterstock

Model ships on show

The Sydney Festival of Model Shipbuilding returns

EXPO 2022, the Sydney Festival of Model Shipbuilding, is back after a two-year pause due to COVID-19. It will be held at Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, Sydney, on the weekend of 15–16 October. The event is supported by the Leagues Club and long-time sponsor the Australian National Maritime Museum.

MODELLING CLUBS FROM across New South Wales will be participating, along with individual exhibitors. More than 100 models are expected, from tiny miniatures to 4-metre-long craft. They range from vessels of Nelson’s time to clipper ships, modern warships, ocean liners and tugboats. Some models are for static exhibition, while others are radio controlled and able to sail. The First Fleet and HMB Endeavour are popular subjects.

Some models are built completely from researched plans, others from purchased kits available online or from hobby shops. Many exhibitors bring partially completed projects. Participants enjoy talking about how they build their models, while the clubs welcome new members and provide advice and encouragement for beginners or those wishing to rejoin the modelmaking community.

The Leagues Club has plenty of on-site parking and is close to bus routes and Ashfield railway station. Meals, light refreshments and drinks are available at its restaurants and bar. We hope to see you there!

More than 100 models are expected, from tiny miniatures to 4-metre-long craft

01

The USS San Francisco and a Daring Class destroyer formed the centrepiece of a display of working radio-controlled ships.

02

Two small boys fascinated by a cross-section through HMS Victory HMB Endeavour is in the foreground. Images taken at the 2019 festival by

02

Expo 2022 is on Saturday 15 October (10 am to 5 pm) and Sunday 16 (10 am to 4 pm). The venue is Wests Ashfield Leagues Club, 115 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, Sydney. Admission is free and children are welcome. It makes a great day out for the family!

For more information about the Expo or if you are interested in starting ship modelling, phone Michael Bennett on 0411 545 770 or email mjbennett@ozemail.com.au.

Anelia Bozinovska

Message to members

Welcome to our Spring program

AFTER A SUCCESSFUL WINTER at the museum, we would like to welcome all our new members and say a big ‘thank you’ to our existing members who have renewed over the winter months.

As you may be aware, memberships were extended due to COVID-19, and renewal notices were not sent out during that period, but as the world begins to return to some sort of normal, we’re thrilled that so many of you are still part of our members family.

Many of you will have met or spoken on the phone to Merryn O’Sullivan, our new Members Officer. Along with a team of volunteers assisting in the office, Merryn and I look forward to delivering you an engaging members program with a varied series of events both on and off the water.

Our Members Lounge will soon reopen after a refresh. It will feature objects from the National Maritime Collection, some of which were either acquired or conserved using generous donations from members.

Over the next few weeks, you will also receive a members survey which we hope you will complete. We want to know what you think about the museum, what you would like to see more of or less of, and what sorts of events and programming interest you most.

Since I took over the Members department in May, I have been listening to a lot of our members. I want to hear from as many more of you as I can, so that together we can create and deliver the best possible members program.

For those of you who haven’t yet met our new Director, Daryl Karp AM, I’ll also be putting together some events at which you can meet her and hear about her vision for the museum.

I’m also pleased to announced that we have confirmed Australian media commentator and journalist Mike Carlton AM as the guest speaker at this years Members Anniversary lunch, which will be held on Saturday 26 November. Mike will entertain us with stories from his long career and talk about his new book, The Scrap Iron Flotilla. See opposite for more information.

If you have had any problems with receiving our emails or issues of Signals, or anything regarding the museum or your membership, please contact Merryn or myself directly at members@sea.museum or on 02 9298 3777.

Finally, thank you for your ongoing support of the members program and the museum. I hope to see you soon at the museum or at one of our events.

Matt Lee, Manager – VIP Relations & Membership

To book members events, email memberevents@sea.museum and tell us which event you wish to attend, and who is coming. Alternatively, you can phone us on 02 9298 3777.

For all other events, please see sea.museum/whats-on/events for further details and how to book.

For children’s and family programs, please check sea.museum or sea.museum/kids .

31st Anniversary Members’ Lunch

This year marks the 31st anniversary of the opening of the Australian National Maritime Museum. To say thank you for your support, we are delighted to invite you to help us celebrate at our annual lunch.

Join museum Chairman John Mullen AM and Director and CEO Daryl Karp AM for pre-lunch drinks and canapés followed by a three-course meal with matching Tyrrell’s Wines, by award-winning caterers Sydney Restaurant Group on our stunning Ben Lexcen Terrace.

You will enjoy the company of fellow Members and friends of the museum and hear from media commentator and author Mike Carlton, who will be talking about his career in the media and his new book, The Scrap Iron Flotilla

Saturday 26 November

11.30 am–2.30 pm

Ben Lexcen Terrace

Australian National Maritime Museum

2 Murray Street, Pyrmont NSW

Members $125, General $140

RSVP Friday 18 November 2022

To secure your seat, phone 02 9298 3777 or email members@sea.museum

Images courtesy William Heinemann Australia/Penguin Books

Author talk

Shipwreck – The true story of

the Dunbar

2–3.30 pm Thursday 8 September

Join Larry Writer as he talks about his new book on one of Australia’s greatest maritime disasters, the wreck of the Dunbar. In August 1857, after an 81-day voyage from England, Dunbar was caught in a storm near Sydney’s South Head and was smashed to pieces on the rocks. The book follows the personal stories of the crew, passengers and the sole survivor, James Johnson, to bring to life the tragedy that changed the colony forever.

Free for members and one guest. Bookings essential; see box on page 40.

Author talk

Beating France to Botany Bay: The race to found Australia

2–3.30 pm Thursday 20 October

Author and historian Margaret CameronAsh talks about her new book and how it rewrites the founding of modern Australia. It tells how the French had a jump start in the race for the Pacific empire, but then British officials launched their own pursuit around the globe – reaching Botany Bay just five days before their rivals.

Free for members and one guest.

Bookings essential; see box on page 40.

Speakers talk

Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean VC 2–3.30 pm Friday 25 November

Ron Ray OAM tells the story of Teddy Sheean, a Royal Australian Navy sailor on HMAS Armidale in World War II. Sheean was only 18 when the ship was attacked by 13 Japanese planes. His bravery in defending his shipmates as they were trying to escape in a motorboat was finally recognised in 2020, when he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Free for members and one guest. Bookings essential; see box on page 40.

Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean VC. Australian War Memorial 044154

Speakers talk

The Age of Exploration in the 15th–17th centuries

2–3.30 pm Tuesday 20 September

Join speaker Ray Walsh on a voyage of exploration through a fascinating era as we learn how the Europeans discovered the wider world. Who were the famous explorers? What were they looking for? Why did the Portuguese sail east but the Spanish sail west? And where are the Spice Islands? All these questions and more will be answered in this fascinating presentation.

Free for members and one guest. Bookings essential; see box on page 40.

Speakers talk

HMAS Sydney vs SMS Emden

2–3.30 pm Tuesday 25 October

In the opening months of World War I, the Royal Australian Navy cruiser HMAS Sydney scored the first Australian naval victory, against the German raider SMS Emden. Join speaker Kez Hasanic as he tells the story of both ships and their men, their gallantry, the cruel realities of one of the first battles of modern naval warfare, and the strange connection with famous poet AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson.

Free for members and one guest. Bookings essential; see box on page 40.

HMAS Sydney (I) steaming out of Sydney Heads following the outbreak of World War I. RAN Heritage Collection

Special event

Members Anniversary lunch

11.30 am–3.30 pm Saturday 26 November

Our guest speaker at this year’s lunch will be media commentator, radio host and journalist Mike Carlton AM He will be talking about his career in the media and his new book The Scrap Iron Flotilla, which chronicles the heroic story of a small, ageing squadron of destroyers during World War II –HMA Ships Stuart, Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager and Waterhen

Members $125 | General $140. Bookings essential; see page 41.

Duyfken was built by the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation jointly with the Maritime Museum of Western Australia and launched on 24 January 1999 in Fremantle.

From the Collection

Now showing

The Australian National Maritime Museum is responsible for the National Maritime Collection, which includes paintings, posters, maps and prints that highlight the history and diversity of maritime cultures in Australia and across the world.

THE VISUAL ARTWORKS in the National Maritime Collection range from traditional depictions of vessels and port infrastructure to those by contemporary artists that explore our relationship with the sea.

To celebrate 30 years of collecting, the museum will display a changing selection of works in the Tasman Light Gallery. The first to go on show are three paintings purchased with funds from the USA Bicentennial Gift and a charcoal-on-linen drawing of a ‘gospel ship’ salvaged from a hotel in Hobart. They will be on display for the next six months.

The Great White Fleet Entering Sydney Harbour Through the Heads (detail), Rupert Bunny (attributed), c 1908. ANMM Collection 00050474

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 57 Now showing

From the Natural History Museum in London, this exhibition features more than 100 exceptional images that capture fascinating animal behaviour, spectacular species and the breathtaking diversity of the natural world.

Using photography’s unique emotive power to engage and inspire audiences, the images shine a light on stories and species around the world and encourage a future of advocating for the planet.

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.

sea.museum/wildlife

© Angel Fitor, Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Endeavour cannon and artefacts

From 16 September

This small display brings together artefacts associated with Lieutenant James Cook’s famous HM Bark Endeavour In June 1770, 48 tonnes of material, including six iron cannons, were jettisoned from Endeavour in a successful attempt to save the ship after it ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.

On show is one of the cannons, along with kentledge (iron ballast) and other artefacts recovered from the site.

The Wharfies’ Mural

From

11 October

For the first time since it was donated in 1991, the entire Wharfies’ Mural will be on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

The mural was painted from 1953 to 1965 on the walls of the lunchroom at the former headquarters of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) on the ‘Hungry Mile’, now Barangaroo.

The mural expresses the history and political philosophy of the WWF and other maritime unions from the 1890s to the end of World War II. Its subjects include the struggle for the eight-hour day, anti-conscription, the spread of Communism on the waterfront and the fight against Fascism.

The Wharfies’ Mural (detail).

ANMM image 00040188

One Ocean – Our Future Closing soon

Marvel at the diversity of Australia’s marine life revealed by Schmidt Ocean Institute’s 2020 circumnavigation of Australia aboard Research Vessel Falkor. Discover, manipulate and inspect 3D visualisations of five extraordinary deep-sea specimens, hear about the impacts of a changing planet and oceans, and learn how two centuries of analysing and examining the ocean have given us the knowledge to change things for the better.

sea.museum/one-ocean

Ocean Wonders Closing soon

Over the past two years, Schmidt Ocean Institute has collaborated with research institutions from across Australia and the globe. Their mission: to explore the deepest and most remote parts of selected Australian and Pacific marine environments. This free outdoor exhibition reveals a selection of their stunning underwater images.

The exhibition can be viewed at the museum’s Wharf 7 forecourt.

Ocean Wonders is delivered in partnership with Schmidt Ocean Institute.

sea.museum/oceanwonders

Mariw Minaral (Spiritual Patterns)

Now showing

An exhibition of the artwork of Alick Tipoti, a renowned Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait Islands) artist.

With over 25 years as an artist, Tipoti is respected for his work in regenerating cultural knowledge and language.

Guided by the traditional cultural practices of his people, Tipoti’s storytelling encompasses traditional cosmology, marine environments and ocean conservation – focusing on what it means to be a ‘sea person’.

sea.museum/mariw-minaral

Travelling exhibitions

Sea Monsters – Prehistoric ocean predators

Newcastle Regional Museum, NSW from 10 September

Earth’s oceans were home to some of the largest, fiercest and most successful predators ever! While dinosaurs ruled the land, giant reptiles and sharks hunted the depths. What can their fossilised bones tell us about how they lived? How do they compare to today’s top ocean predators? Discover the secrets of these monsters of the deep in this exhibition for all ages.

sea.museum/sea-monsters-travelling

Brickwrecks – sunken ships in LEGO ® bricks Museum of Geraldton, WA until 20 November

Featuring large-scale LEGO® models, real shipwreck objects, interactives and audiovisuals, Brickwrecks explores the history and archaeology of some of the world’s most famous shipwrecks, including Batavia, Titanic, Vasa, Terror and Erebus

The exhibition was developed and designed by the Western Australian Museum in partnership with the Australian National Maritime Museum and Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught. sea.museum/brickwrecks

Shaped by the Sea

Now showing

Shaped by the Sea tells the deep-past story of our relationship with the seas and inland waterways that make up our continent, revealed through the perspectives of modern science, maritime archaeology and Indigenous knowledge.

This new permanent exhibition transforms the way the museum interprets the National Maritime Collection and heralds a new chapter in our life and vision. The centrepiece of the exhibition is a commissioned work by the Mulka Art Project. This contemporary video installation called Dhaŋan Dhukarr (Many Pathways) brings together all the elements of the exhibition – land, water and sky – into an immersive cyclic reflection on deep-time Australia.

sea.museum/shaped-by-the-sea

Remarkable – stories of Australians and their boats

Port MacDonnell Community Complex, SA until 2 October

Redland Museum, QLD until 16 October

St Helen’s History Room, TAS until 30 October

Broome Public Library, WA until 2 November

Gerringong and District Historical Society, NSW until 6 November

Gannawarra Library, Kerang, VIC until 30 November

With over 1,000 rivers and a coast that stretches more than 36,000 kilometres, it’s no surprise that Australia’s history abounds with stories of people who have lived and worked on the water. This banner exhibition presents 12 stories from across Australia that explore the remarkable connections between people and their boats. Remarkable has been produced by the Australian Maritime Museums Council, its members and the Australian National Maritime Museum. This project was assisted by the Australian Government’s Visions of Australia program.

sea.museum/remarkable

James Cameron – Challenging the Deep Oregon Museum of Science and Industry until 25 September

North Carolina Museum of Natural History from 15 October

In an exhibition that integrates the power of the artefact and the thrill of experience, visitors will encounter the deep-ocean discoveries, technical innovations and scientific and creative achievements of underwater explorer James Cameron.

Created by the Australian National Maritime Museum’s USA Programs and supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund. Produced in association with Avatar Alliance Foundation and toured internationally by Flying Fish. flyingfishexhibits.com/exhibitions/ cameron

LEGO® model of the Swedish ship Vasa, which sank in Stockholm Harbour on its maiden voyage in 1628. Image Rebecca Mansell, Western Australian Museum

Koning Willem de Tweede at Batavia, 1849. Watercolour by Jacob Spin.

Courtesy Rotterdam Maritime Museum P1850

A Dutch wreck of a different stripe

Lost off South Australia: Koning Willem de Tweede

In April, staff from the museum and its research partner the Silentworld Foundation visited Robe, South Australia, to liaise with the community ahead of a planned shipwreck survey later this year. The focus of the survey is to locate and identify the wreck site of Koning Willem de Tweede, a Dutch ship lost near Robe in June 1857. Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology, Dr James Hunter, and Silentworld Foundation’s maritime archaeological conservator, Heather Berry, share the results of their trip.

THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN TOWN OF ROBE is located at the southern end of Guichen Bay, a large body of water with a mainly sandy seabed that provided excellent anchorage for ships during the 19th century. The bay’s vast, open entrance faces west, however, providing little protection from the full fury of the Southern Ocean during inclement weather. Historically, this resulted in the loss of several vessels but also poses a threat to modern shipping. Consequently, we reconnoitred the area where Koning Willem de Tweede (King William the Second), a Dutch fregat (frigate-built merchant ship) is thought to have wrecked, and we spoke with the community to gain insight about local conditions. We also met with members of the Robe Branch of the National Trust of South Australia (NTSA) to examine, document and assess artefacts and other objects in Robe that, according to local lore, are thought to have originated from the vessel.

When people associate Dutch shipwrecks with Australia, most think of 17th- and 18th-century vessels – such as Batavia and Zeewijk – that were lost on the coast of what is now Western Australia while transiting between the Netherlands and the former Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). However, by the 1850s the Dutch were again traversing Australian waters, this time aboard merchant ships carrying goods and passengers, mainly between Sydney and Amsterdam by way of Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). During the 19th century, several Dutch ships were lost among the labyrinth of shoals and coral outcrops that comprise the Great Barrier Reef and Australian Coral Sea Territory. Some, including the wreck sites of four vessels lost at Kenn Reefs in the 1850s, were investigated by the museum and Silentworld Foundation in 2017 and constitute a new avenue of historical and archaeological inquiry with which to examine Dutch maritime links to Australia.1

Another intriguing but little-known maritime link between Australia and the Netherlands in the 1850s is the role of Dutch ships in transporting Chinese immigrants to the Victorian gold fields.

In 1857 alone, five Dutch vessels arrived at Robe with a combined consignment of about 2,000 Chinese passengers headed for the Victorian gold fields

The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 prompted people from around the world to flock to the colony and seek their fortune. Among them were tens of thousands of Chinese, whose rapid influx to Victoria aroused anxiety within the colony’s European population. As a result, the government passed the Chinese Immigration Act in June 1855 to limit the number of Chinese immigrants a vessel could carry. The Act also required ships’ masters to pay a £10 poll tax for each Chinese passenger brought to Victorian ports. Ultimately, the legislation failed to curb Chinese migration to the gold fields, as ships began landing passengers at the nearest non-Victorian port: Robe, South Australia. From there, an estimated 17,000 Chinese walked more than 400 kilometres to reach the diggings in such places as Ballarat, Bendigo and Daylesford.2

Most ships that delivered Chinese immigrants to Robe were British or American, but the Dutch also played a significant role. In 1857 alone, five Dutch vessels arrived at Robe with a combined consignment of about 2,000 Chinese passengers. One, Koning Willem de Tweede, would never leave Guichen Bay.

Koning Willem de Tweede was launched at the shipyard of Fop Smit in Kinderdijk, Netherlands, on 8 December 1840. Originally named Erfprinses van Oranje (Crown Princess of Orange), it was 140 feet (42.7 metres) long, had a beam of 39 feet (11.9 metres), a draft of 13 feet (4 metres) and a carrying capacity of 800 tons. It first appears in Bureau Veritas in 1842 and was commanded by Leonard Christiaan Elize van der Brugh. The vessel was initially owned by the firm BJ Suermondt of Rotterdam, but by 1842 ownership had transferred to Pieter Varkevisser, and the vessel was registered in The Hague. In 1849 its registration changed to the Port of Rotterdam. Little is currently known about Koning Willem de Tweede ’s sailing career. It was certified to travel ‘all seas’, but scant historical evidence of its overseas journeys has so far been found. Archival research undertaken by project partner the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands aims to fill these gaps and is focusing on documentation related to the ship’s design and construction, as well as its sailing career (both within Europe and overseas).

01 Parts of a broken copper-alloy rudder gudgeon in the collection of the National Trust of South Australia, recovered from an unidentified shipwreck near Robe. Image James Hunter/ANMM

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Guichen Bay’s Long Beach, where Koning Willem de Tweede wrecked in 1857. Image Heather Berry/Silentworld Foundation

The best way for artefacts to be conserved and survive generations is for them to be used and seen, rather than locked out of sight

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Dr James Hunter photographs the cannon at Flagstaff Hill, Robe. The photos were later used to construct a 3D digital model of the cannon.

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Dr James Hunter photographs a copper-alloy bell believed to be associated with Koning Willem de Tweede. The photos were later used to construct a 3D model of the bell.

Images Heather Berry/ Silentworld Foundation

The vessel departed Hong Kong on its final voyage in early June 1857, bound for South Australia with more than 400 Chinese migrants. It arrived at Robe on 15 June 1857, and its passengers were safely discharged the following day before commencing their arduous overland passage to the gold fields. Due to inclement weather, Koning Willem de Tweede remained sequestered in Guichen Bay, and was still at anchor when it was struck by a severe southwesterly gale on 30 June. Initially the anchors dragged, but as the storm and seas intensified, the windlass was reportedly torn from the weather deck. This prompted the captain, Hindrik Remmelt Giezen, to order the vessel’s crew to set sail, to intentionally run it aground in shallows off Long Beach, a crescent-shaped sandy expanse that forms the bay’s eastern boundary. Despite grounding on the sandy bottom close to shore, the storm’s severity caused the hull to quickly break up and led to the loss of 16 of its crew of 25 when one of the ship’s boats overturned in the surf. Giezen survived, but only through sheer luck, as he was unable to board the doomed boat and was later dragged to safety through the surf by a rope that he attached to a small barrel and floated to bystanders on the shore. He reportedly sold the wreck for £225 to Robe carpenter Jacob Chambers a short time later. It is unclear whether Giezen remained in Australia, but a lawsuit brought against him in the 1860s suggests the fregat ’s final voyage may have been unsanctioned and conducted without the shipowner’s knowledge.

Robe possesses numerous community artefacts that are believed to be associated with Koning Willem de Tweede

Accounts of Koning Willem de Tweede ’s loss note that the vessel grounded off Long Beach between three and four miles (4.8 and 6.4 kilometres) northeast of Robe. We had hoped to attempt a snorkel survey of the wreck site’s projected location during our visit but were thwarted by breaking waves with heights ranging between three and four metres. Although unable to safely enter the water, we walked most of the length of Long Beach and searched for shipwreck indicators, including washed-up hull timbers and small finds such as ceramic and glass fragments. As luck would have it, our visit coincided with a low astronomical tide, which enabled us to venture onto areas of exposed seabed that are normally under water. While we observed a small number of heavily degraded wood fragments along the beach, none could be positively identified as ship timber, and no other artefacts were noted.

We met far greater success documenting and assessing community artefacts that are believed to be associated with Koning Willem de Tweede. These include an iron cannon displayed at Flagstaff Hill on the town’s foreshore, a copper-alloy bell and several wooden doors reportedly salvaged from the wreck in 1857 and currently still in use in one of Robe’s oldest extant hotels, the Caledonian Inn. All were documented extensively with digital photography and the images used to generate 3D models. We also examined several unprovenanced shipwreck artefacts in the possession of the NTSA, with the goal of identifying the vessel(s) from which they originated.

Constant contact between significant shipwreck items and Robe’s development creates a dynamic setting for the conservation of artefacts

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Ceramic fragments collected by members of the public from a beach near Robe and believed to have originated from an unidentified shipwreck site just offshore.

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Heather Berry of Silentworld Foundation at the ruins of Robe Gaol, leaning on a sandstone wall which, after a successful convict escape, was reinforced with iron plate reportedly salvaged from the steamship Admella

Images James Hunter/ANMM

Robe has been moulded from the ships that visited Guichen Bay

Preliminary analysis of the cannon has revealed it is of British manufacture and lacks specific diagnostic markings indicative of Dutch ownership. Ongoing archival research has yet to confirm that artillery was salvaged from Koning Willem de Tweede, or indeed that the vessel was armed at the time of its loss. This, combined with the diagnostic features (or lack thereof) noted on the cannon argue against its association with the Dutch fregat However, investigation of this fascinating object and other community artefacts is ongoing.

From a community conservation standpoint, Robe presents unique opportunities. The town prides itself on being in touch with its history, seen when walking through the rows of historic houses or wandering through Robe Gaol and past the navigational obelisk. Robe has been moulded from the ships that visited Guichen Bay, and literally built from those that wrecked there. Following a successful inmate escape, the gaol’s walls, built from soft sandstone, were reinforced in 1863 with iron plate reportedly salvaged from the wreck of the Admella. Constant contact between significant shipwreck items and the town’s development creates a dynamic setting for the conservation of artefacts.

The best way for artefacts to be conserved and survive generations is for them to be used and seen, rather than locked out of sight. Robe has excelled in this regard. The Caledonian Inn and several private residences possess extraordinarily well-preserved wooden doors that are believed to be salvaged from shipwrecks.

Through their conservation, the wrecks’ stories are kept foremost in people’s minds. Artefacts in the Customs House Museum are well cared for and evoke stories of the town’s previous inhabitants. It is perhaps this physical contact with the past that explains the warm welcome we received from Robe’s residents. On the last day of the project, we presented at a town hall meeting and provided information about Koning Willem de Tweede ’s historical background and wrecking event, as well as offering conservation advice for artefacts commonly found from shipwrecks.

By assessing artefacts held in the town’s public and private collections, we have developed a better understanding of their degree of preservation. This in turn will allow us to tailor specific community conservation advice when we return to Robe to look for Koning Willem de Tweede ’s wreck site later this year. We aim to investigate the survey area with a larger team utilising a combination of a towed marine magnetometer and metal detector-equipped snorkellers and divers. The magnetometer will be towed behind a shallowdraught survey boat in waters ranging between three and five metres deep, while shallower waters will be investigated by snorkellers and divers. In the event that Koning Willem de Tweede ’s wreck site is located, its visible features will be archaeologically surveyed and documented. Land-based activities will include continued community consultation to locate, document and identify Robe’s shipwreck artefacts and provide conservation advice for their ongoing care.

1 The Dutch vessels lost at Kenn Reefs in the 1850s were the fregats Delta and Hester (both lost in 1854) and barques Doelwijk (1854) and Olivier van Noord (1858). Kieran Hosty, Paul Hundley, James Hunter and Irini Malliaros (2018) ‘Kenn Reefs Archaeological Survey: Field Season Report 2017’. Report submitted to Australian Marine Parks – Parks Australia, Kingston (Tasmania), from the Silentworld Foundation and Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.

2 Daina Fletcher (2020) ‘The Celestial Trek: Chinese miners on the Victorian goldfields’, Signals 133:58.

This project is being undertaken as an initiative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands’ Shared Cultural Heritage Program and supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Australia, and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

References

Adelaide Times , ‘Law and Police Courts: Supreme Court – Civil Sittings’, 7 December 1857, p 2.

Delftsche Courant, ‘Robe-Town (Guichen-Baai)’, 25 September 1857, p 1.

BJ Lintelo de Geer and Van Boneval Faure (1864) ‘Regstgeleerd Bijblad Behoorende tot de Nieuwe Bijdragen voor Regstgeleerdheid en Wetgeving’. Johannes Müller, Amsterdam.

South Australian Register, ‘Guichen Bay’, 8 July 1857, p 2.

Endeavour in the curriculum

A focus on different viewpoints

After two years of lockdowns and COVID-19 limitations, the museum is getting back into full swing and once again offering its popular onsite educational programs. A staple of these is a visit to the Endeavour replica, which offers both Western and Indigenous perspectives on the momentous visit of James Cook’s ship. By Education Officer Megan Baehnisch.

THIS YEAR HAS BEEN AN EXCITING TIME for the Education team at the museum, as a rush of students and teachers return to explore our exhibitions and vessels. Over half of those taking part in educator-led programs on site are touring our beautiful Endeavour replica and learning about the journey of Lieutenant James Cook and Joseph Banks (1768–71) as part of the years 3 and 4 History syllabus.

Visiting Endeavour with one of our educators gives students a tactile, multi-sensory experience and provides an insight into the working lives of 18th-century sailors. It aims to instil in students an interest in this history, so teachers can further explore it back in the classroom. The Endeavour program is a popular staple of education at the museum and is highly regarded by schools, some of which visit time and time again. Our team has heard students call it the best excursion they have ever been on, while teachers comment about the value of the physical experience to reinforce the stories that have been read and talked about.

Visiting Endeavour with one of our educators gives students a tactile, multi-sensory experience

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Endeavour ’s mess deck is fitted out to evoke shipboard life as it would have been experienced by 18th-century sailors.

02 In the online educational game Cook’s Voyage, a Tasmanian Aboriginal character named Larila adds an Indigenous perspective to the more familiar Western viewpoint of Cook’s expedition. ANMM images

Most learners and members of the public who visit the vessel look at it from a Western historical standpoint, focusing on the journey of exploration more than 250 years ago. This is undoubtedly the obvious approach and is important in developing our understanding of the history of modern Australia. It’s not the only approach, however, and the Education team continually improves the program through our growing understanding of different perspectives. One such instance was adding the fascinating story of Tupaia, a Polynesian navigator and priest, who joined the voyage in Tahiti. Tupaia shared his local knowledge with Cook and Banks and created amazing artwork of his homeland, as well as recording what he observed while visiting New Zealand and Australia. As we continue to tell the story of Endeavour, it is vital that our team strives to help students understand different views of historical events and realise how this helps to gauge their impact.

Another way the museum can highlight different points of view is through our digital projects. These online resources enrich the learning of those who visit us on site, as well as reaching students across Australia who can’t physically visit the museum. The educational game Cook’s Voyages is a great example of how we can use a digital project to help students learn from another perspective. In it, an Indigenous character called Larila, from Tasmania’s north-east, adds her viewpoint from the shore to the more familiar narrative of Cook’s expeditions.

While the tangible experience on board the replica ship gives students one type of valuable learning opportunity, online educational games like Cook’s Voyages offer the players agency to interact with historical events and see how their choices and actions play out, deepening their understanding and empathy. This project won a Museums and Galleries National Award in the Interpretation, Learning and Engagement category last year, and since launching in 2020 has been played by tens of thousands of students across the country and around the world.

Australia is moving towards a new, updated National Curriculum, where students’ study of Cook and Banks will transform from simply learning about European sailors exploring distant places, to looking more deeply at the ‘secret instructions’ given to Cook, and the many other factors that influenced British colonisation almost two decades later. First Nations perspectives are also increasingly ingrained across the curriculum and are essential for students to understand different viewpoints on historical events.

The Education team at the museum looks forward to continually expanding our ability to tell a variety of stories to students and teachers on board our vessels and in our constantly evolving galleries, as well as developing more online resources to ensure various perspectives can be heard across the country.

Joy aboard

The seafaring adventures of Howie’s Cat

In the world of science, amid all the number-crunching and method-devising, sometimes joy and play need to be built into a day’s work. Decades after a small toy cat was a popular member of long Antarctic research journeys, this fluffy traveller and its owner are still recalled with fondness, writes Cay-Leigh Bartnicke .

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After its years of Antarctic adventures, Howie’s Cat is now in peaceful retirement at the museum. ANMM Collection 00056022 Image Jasmine Poole/ ANMM

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Members of an Aurora Australis marine science voyage in 1993. Howard Burton is at centre, in striped jumper. John Kitchener is at his right shoulder, with Graham Hosie standing slightly in front of Kitchener. Image courtesy John Kitchener

Although Howard Burton died in 1993, leading to the Cat’s retirement, his legacy is still warm in the hearts of voyage mates all these years later

OUT AT SEA, TIME DRAGS AND LOOPS on the extended research voyages that are familiar to staff of the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD). These passages can take up to three months. Aboard former research vessels RSV Aurora Australis and MV Nella Dan, such trips were enlivened by a particular plush toy called ‘the Cat’, or ‘Howie’s Cat’, which current and retired staff still remember as a valued shipmate.

Owned by Howard Burton (Howie), the Cat first lived in a small locker off Nella Dan ’s mess, which held computer equipment. Howie was an instrument technician responsible for programming and running the computer gear that collated and analysed data being received on the vessel. Retired principal research scientist Dr Simon Wright recalls that the locker ‘was so crammed with equipment that you could not swing a cat. Howie tested this by buying the eponymous toy cat.’

The museum acquired Howie’s Cat earlier this year. A call-out to past and present AAD staff for more stories of the Cat elicited a wonderful swell of appreciation and commemoration for Howie and his feline accomplice.

Although Howie died in 1993, leading to the Cat’s retirement, his legacy is still warm in the hearts of voyage mates all these years later. Former research associate John Shearer recalls Howie’s ‘unusual way of looking at things and sense of humour … his cure for a bad moment was a cat hanging by its tail from the ceiling tiles ready and available for a poke in the ribs’.

Howie’s Cat is not the only fluff-filled team member in the history of the AAD. Several other ‘aquanauts’ have been recruited across the research teams over the years, such as the mascots of the whale observers and orca researchers. The AAD recognises that of all the aquanauts to serve with the Australian Antarctic Program, however, Howie’s Cat has the greatest record of achievement. It has visited every Antarctic station, as well as Heard Island, and has been involved in most marine science programs. Besides regularly being kidnapped in its own game of ‘the elf on the shelf’ across vessels, the Cat has hitchhiked several times on oceanographic instruments to the depths of the sea, making a record-breaking plummet of 4,700 metres below sea level and witnessing extraordinary scenes.

Howie’s Cat has visited every Antarctic station, as well as Heard Island, and has been involved in most marine science programs

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Another time, the Cat hopped inside a water-sampling apparatus to test the integrity of the casing in the event of flooding. Retired principal research scientist Dr Graham Hosie explains: ‘We needed something to test for dryness. Paper towel would have worked, but we chose Cat instead, plus several other stuffed toys appeared and joined the aquanaut team.’ The Cat also performed general mascot duties while teams carried out microbiological research, seabird studies and other surveys for seawater and sediment research.

But the Cat’s repertoire didn’t end there, the AAD notes: ‘It features as a scale in many sea-floor photographs, particularly in Prdyz Bay. It has frequently donned wings to appear in bird observation logs, it has appeared in most parts of the ship on occasions and has stood in for the orca mascot on the foremast [of Aurora Australis].’

Current zooplankton biologist John Kitchener reveals one of the Cat’s extracurricular activities: ‘I do remember it being frozen in a bucket of water, and then the cat-iceblock being used either for ice-hockey or curling on the deck of Aurora Australis.’

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Nella Dan in sea ice. Image courtesy Dr Simon Wright

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Howard Burton at Albany, WA, on his way back from Antarctica in March 1986. Image courtesy Rowan Butler

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On occasion the Cat was joined in its missions by other furry adventurers. Here a bear friend prepares to share a CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) voyage. Image courtesy AAD

Some of its adventures were more perilous than others, coming at a cost to the Cat

Some of these adventures were more perilous than others, coming at a cost to the Cat. Dr Hosie performed surgery on the cat to try to fix its squeaker: ‘Eventually, I had to perform a squeakectomy in the mess of Nella Dan. I think we gowned up for that one thanks to the help of the [onboard] doctor.’

Since Howie’s premature death at 42 years of age, the Cat has been in retirement, ‘but its example remains an inspiration to the soft toys of the Australian Antarctic Program,’ the AAD affirms.

‘There are so many memories of the people and adventures of the Nella Dan era of Australian Antarctic marine science, but Howie and his cat are among the most treasured,’ says Dr Wright. John Shearer adds:

The Cat reminds me, and no doubt all of us who were fortunate enough to know both it and Howard, of a time long ago when we were all young(er), invincible, grew beards and went south on red ships.

Howie’s Cat and its display case were donated to the museum by the AAD when Aurora Australis was retired in 2020 after 30 years’ service. The AAD’s current research ship is RSV Nuyina; see Bruce Stannard (2021) ‘Nuyina: our ship of the future’, Signals 135:10.

Cay-Leigh Bartnicke is the museum’s Assistant Curator for Special Projects.

Foundations for Belonging

Refugees remain resilient during COVID-19 separations

Foundations for Belonging is a research program by Settlement Services International that gathers the perspectives of refugees as they begin their lives in Australia. The latest results show that the pandemic has heightened their concerns about family separation, writes Tadgh McMahon.

Digital technologies have helped refugees to maintain links with family and friends who remain overseas.

Image courtesy Settlement Services International

The effects of family separation for refugees include significant psychological, social and financial costs

WHEN WE THINK OF MIGRATION, a recurring motif is the often-inevitable separation from family and friends and the longing to be reunited on visits ‘home’.

In decades past, the reality for migrants in Australia was to take long journeys by ship or more recently by air. Familial bonds were also maintained by airmail letters and expensive overseas phone calls. These have been superseded by digital technologies that offer instant contact.

Family separation has arguably been much more challenging for refugees in cases where the safety and security offered by Australia were offset by ongoing concerns and prolonged uncertainty for the safety of family and friends left behind. The effects of family separation for refugees include significant psychological, social and financial costs in ongoing efforts to keep loved ones safe and secure.

New research by Settlement Services International (SSI) and Western Sydney University, launched at the Australian National Maritime Museum in August, has found that COVID-19 heightened these concerns among newly arrived refugees in Australia. They reported that, in addition to fears for their own health, they were particularly worried about the safety of friends and relatives overseas during the pandemic. Due to international border restrictions, visiting family overseas – even in an emergency – was out of the question: they couldn’t leave at all or, if they did, they couldn’t return.

This research was part of the Foundations for Belonging program, now in its third year, which gathers the perspectives of refugees and their everyday sense of welcome and belonging as they navigate a new chapter of their lives in Australia. It explores refugees’ social connections and their access to rights and fulfilment of responsibilities.

Families constitute a critical foundation of support and connection in society. Yet the Foundations for Belonging 2022 report, based on surveys and interviews conducted in late 2021, found almost two-thirds of refugees reported that at least some of their immediate family members were overseas – mostly siblings, parents and children.

Like other Australians, refugees reported having regular contact with family and friends overseas using various digital platforms. While the research indicated that this helped, over one-third had applied to be reunited with their family since coming to Australia and, of those, more than half reported that COVID-19 had affected the visa application process.

Among refugees who reported experiencing difficulties, the most common nominated difficulty was worry about family back at home. Among those who reported family separation challenges due to COVID-19, worry about family living overseas during the pandemic was the most common.

The pandemic and the international border restrictions heightened the existing challenges of family separation among refugees, with little or no opportunity either to visit family members overseas or to reunite with them in Australia. They missed births, deaths and marriages –family milestones that they could never get back.

For example, as soon as an Iraqi family was granted Australian citizenship, they applied in early 2020 for an Australian passport to visit parents and siblings who lived in Iraq, but in the end they were unable to travel when the international border closed.

In another case, a woman reported that when her daughter gave birth during the pandemic, the restrictions prevented her from fulfilling her duties as a grandmother.

Overall, however, Foundations for Belonging has revealed that refugees demonstrate a very high level of trust in institutions and a positive sense of being part of the Australian community. This imbues them with a sense of hope for the future.

While the findings indicate that family separation and family reunion are critical issues for refugees, newly arrived refugees in Australia have been resilient in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite reporting COVID-19-related difficulties and hardships, the latest phase of the research does not signal a fracturing of refugees’ sense of welcome and belonging attributable to the pandemic.

The Foundations for Belonging data is available at ssi.org.au/ssi-insights/insights

Tadgh

McMahon is Head of Research and Policy at Settlement Services International.

The imagined perspective of some of the passengers just moments before the ship broke in two. Digital rendering by HFX Studios

A Titanic tale

New perspectives on an enduring story

BEFORE THE SISTER SHIPS Olympic (1911) and Titanic (1912) entered into service, the White Star Line released promotional material featuring conceptual art of the passenger common areas and cabins for their new vessels. Among the scenes depicted were a first-class passenger descending the forward Grand Staircase, a meal served in the third-class dining room, children scampering on deck and men and women in Edwardian garb gathering convivially to take the air on their trans-Atlantic crossing. Modern concept art for new business enterprises has changed little – the same idealised air of serenity and style prevails, aimed at selling a lifestyle in surroundings that do not yet exist.

After the cataclysmic Titanic sinking on its April 1912 maiden voyage, in which 1,496 people perished, newspapers and magazines scrambled to depict life aboard during the ship’s brief working life. There were scant photographic resources –publications were able to snap a few brief interior shots, and Francis Browne, a Jesuit priest who sailed from Southampton to Queenstown (modern-day Cobh) in Ireland, recorded a rare, vivid photographic impression of life on board. But after sailing from Queenstown, there would be no more images of the ship until its wreck was discovered in 1985. Illustrators grappled to depict the sinking with various degrees of success, some drawing on eyewitness accounts faithfully rendered, and some using more fanciful interpretations as they tried to evoke the lost vessel for their audiences.

In more recent decades, authors – particularly those working with more graphic publications – have often turned to other liners to fill in the gaps, particularly when images from the Titanic ’s similar but not-quite-identical sister Olympic were available. Gifted artists such as Ken Marschall have rendered the ship’s structure from new angles and interpreted incidents during the sinking. Film-makers have brought the ship to the screen with various degrees of accuracy. James Cameron famously created detailed models, CGI and sets with a keen eye for accuracy in his 1997 Titanic movie.

In the 110th anniversary year of Titanic ’s loss, what could yet another book add to discourse on the subject? As proved by Recreating Titanic and her Sisters, the answer is quite a lot.

01

The port-side Private Promenade, looking forward. The Parlour Suite and its starboard-side twin offered amenities unrivalled by any liners then on the Atlantic –even Olympic. Image Chris Walker

02

Titanic ’s deck officers were never photographed together, but digital artist Tatiana Yamshanova has suggested how such a photograph might have looked. Her research materials included previously unpublished primary sources.

Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters: A visual history

By

Tad Fitch, J Kent Layton and Bill Wormstedt. Published by The History Press, Cheltenham, UK, 2022. Hardcover, 192 pages, illustrations, bibliography.

ISBN 9780750998680

RRP $99.00 Vaughan Evans Library 910.453 FIT

The authors Fitch, Layton and Wormstedt made a significant impression in Titanic research circles with their 2012 publication On A Sea of Glass, a book that provided a clear, coherent narrative on the current state of research regarding the Titanic story. Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters is a worthy successor, dense in information but not prohibitively technical for a layperson. Sidebars highlight particular facets of the story, whether to expand upon a facet of the Titanic tale or to tackle one of the myths or conspiracy theories that have metastasised in the age of social media.

The engaging storytelling avoids some of the more purple prose that still pervades writing about this subject but, as the title suggests, this book’s point of difference is the visual interpretation and representation of the story. In this, the book provides a new perspective on the subject. Drawing on the work of young, very talented artists across many media, the reader is introduced to new spaces on board and visual interpretations of incidents. These give a vivid impression of how they would have existed, beyond the black-and-white period photos that are seldom reproduced in high resolution from the original negatives and often lack clarity.

In one sequence, renderings by HFX Studios of the sinking show the ship at different times and from various angles, with a more realistic lighting than the cinematic, brightly illuminated illustrations or film reproductions favoured by artists and film directors. This is an interesting choice, and reflects the actual conditions of the night, providing a visual understanding of why eyewitness accounts differed so radically on matters such as whether or not the ship broke apart before sinking. Far from darkening our perceptions, on a visceral level it has the effect of immersing us in the actual events of the night as eyewitnesses, rather than as spectators in what feels like a well-lit, staged interpretation.

Some Titanic books and documentaries demonstrate quite a schism between the maritime architectural and engineering aspects of the vessel’s life, and the social history of the event. This book manages to synthesise both. Not only is the ship rendered in its technical details, with photographs including such aspects as detailed model recreations of the engines, but images also show the passengers and crew who breathed life into those spaces.

Books like Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters give those of us who have long studied the ship cause for optimism about the future of publishing in this field. The book successfully integrates the solid research of established historians without being hidebound, and embraces both traditional art and new techniques in digital painting and rendering. It is particularly heartening to see so many young and emerging artists and researchers featured, from not just the traditional research base of North America, Australia and Europe, but also from such countries as Indonesia and Algeria, demonstrating the enduring and widespread appeal of this extraordinary story. Additional chapters also expand the visual reinterpretation to the other Olympic class ships, Olympic and Britannic

Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters is that rare publication that appeals to both the seasoned researcher and to those new to the subject looking for a comprehensive, visually engaging recounting of this enduring story of the sea.

Reviewer Inger Sheil is an Assistant Curator at the museum and the author of Titanic Valour: The Life of Fifth Officer Harold Lowe (The History Press, 2011).

Root & Branch: Essays on inheritance By Eda Gunaydin. Published by NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2022. Softcover, 288 pages. ISBN 9781742237312. RRP $30.00 Vaughan Evans Library 824.4 GUN

Confronting otherness

Stories of diaspora, identity and belonging

ROOT & BRANCH IS A COLLECTION of essays and stories which, like its author, originates from the illdefined sphere called the ‘Western Sydney writing space’. Eda Gunaydin inhabits this space in more than one way. As the child of a family with Turkish roots, her topics often refer to her upbringing and life in a family and community shaped by migrant backgrounds and cultures. Her topics, but also her personal struggles, are intimately linked to this space. At the same time, Gunaydin tries to contextualise these places in a greater whole, framing her life in the ‘here’ of Sydney with the ‘there’ of other countries like Turkey and Germany.

The 12 essays in the book form a fractured narrative. The reader is guided by the persona of the author through many facets of her life and mind: writing and struggling, thinking and teaching, and interacting with family, friends and strangers. This sphere of experiences expands slowly with each story, focusing on her home in Sydney first, then extending to her travels and experiences beyond.

All the stories take place in a cultural space in which –by design – some parts remain unfathomable for the average reader. When the protagonists speak Turkish, the author leaves the sentences untranslated. Some phrases are kept because they are difficult to accurately translate, but the everyday use of Turkish in the essays is a strategic tool to root the reader in the otherness of the situation. Gunaydin omits readily available information to clearly communicate to the reader that many places and exchanges are, except to those of a similar background, not theirs to understand without outside help. This creates a specific type of authenticity that is brought to life by obfuscation and exclusion.

The book introduces itself by stating that the author ‘explores class, capital, intergenerational trauma and diaspora’, and Gunaydin does indeed use her own life and surroundings to talk about topics like race and belonging, framed by political viewpoints that are unapologetically anti-capitalist. ‘Race’, she emphasises, is a concept devoid of meaning until it is filled by living it.

The essays follow someone who has shaped herself into an author and researcher through constant struggle against herself and others

For many, doing so is not a choice, but is forced on them by their background and upbringing and the challenges of adult life. Migration is at the centre of the riddle she wants to understand, because it is singularly important to the impetus to define her ‘self’.

The landscapes of her stories are places in Sydney where she has lived – Parramatta, Blacktown, Auburn and other suburbs with a large immigrant community. However, in many stories, the intricacies of the author’s psyche are the real backdrop, expanded and sometimes enriched by theory. Gunaydin introduces Lacan, Foucault and other modern philosophers to help her to reflect on her topics. She does so for many reasons: to support her ideas, to help her understand where pure remembrance is not poignant enough, and to root the book in traditions of thought that invite and even necessitate criticism and critical analysis of life and society. She also likes theory. Gunaydin offers to take the reader to many places, most of which are neither happy nor uplifting. Root & Branch is defined by not being an upbeat,

colourful tale of struggle and eventual success in Sydney’s migrant communities. Rather, the essays follow someone who has shaped herself into an author and researcher through constant struggle against herself and others, and who tries to define and analyse identity and belonging because they are close to all of her challenges and traumas.

Following along this journey is, the reader discovers, marked by frustrating realisations. Confronting otherness, it seems, is often futile and hurtful – both opening old wounds and creating new ones – but also necessary, inevitable and inescapable. This means that while the journey alongside the author’s voice is not always pleasant, it is always important and significant. Much more so than most other books, Root & Branch has the potential to leave a unique, lasting impression on the reader. This is why, all trepidations and warnings aside, these ‘essays on inheritance’ are a gateway to a journey that is worth undertaking.

Reviewer Dr Roland Leikauf is the museum’s Curator of Post-war Immigration.

A unique voice

Rose de Freycinet’s secret voyage around the world

It is done; my name has been linked with a small corner of the world.

Rose de Freycinet, on Louis de Freycinet naming Rose Island in her honour

NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD ROSE PINON married 35-yearold Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet in 1814. Louis was already a seasoned explorer and cartographer; he had served on a voyage of discovery led by Nicholas Baudin to the southern lands, from 1800 to 1803, and produced the first complete map of the Australian coastline in 1811.

In 1817, de Freycinet was given command of the corvette Uranie and tasked with leading a scientific expedition to Australia and the Pacific. The French Admiralty did not allow women to sail on their ships, but de Freycinet’s wife of just three years was determined not to be separated from her husband. After cutting her hair and donning male attire, a terrified Rose boarded Uranie, and on the morning of 17 September, embarked on the greatest adventure of her life.

In Rose: The extraordinary voyage of Rose de Freycinet, the stowaway who sailed around the world for love, author Suzanne Falkiner gives a comprehensive and well-researched take on Rose’s remarkable journey and the years that followed.

During her voyage, Rose visited South America, Australia and various Pacific islands, and even suffered through shipwreck in the Falkland Islands. Her unique account of Uranie ’s voyage is contained in a journal that she wrote for her friend Caroline, Baronne de Nanteuil, and a series of letters written to her mother, Madame Pinon.

This fascinating personal account lay dormant until Charles Duplomb transcribed and published her journal in 1927.

While there is little evidence that Rose was on board for any reason other than to be with her husband, and although she has been viewed as no more than ‘a witness to a voyage that was never meant to include her’,1 perhaps she benefited from incremental changes in how women were seen in society at the time. In the wake of the French Revolution and its push for ‘égalité’, feminism was on the rise. Falkiner relates letters from before the voyage that show that the de Freycinets’ families and friends were aware of the couple’s plans and, for the most part, supported their adventure together.

Before Matthew Flinders set out for the Great Southern Land in Investigator in July 1801, he too had tried to bring aboard his wife of just three months, Ann. While Flinders was unsuccessful, perhaps knowledge of this attempt was the de Freycinets’ inspiration. Another catalyst may have been Jeanne Baret, who dressed as a man to accompany naturalist Philibert Commerson aboard the Bougainville expedition of 1766 to 1769.2

What Falkiner makes clear from personal accounts and images is that Uranie ’s crew knew Rose was on board. Throughout her journey, she visited ports and interacted with people – while in female dress – yet was never mentioned in the official records. In Hawaii, she even met with Keohoua, one of King Kamehameha I’s wives, who was seemingly not that impressed by Rose’s short stature or hair.

After cutting her hair and donning male attire, a terrified Rose boarded Uranie

In this light-hearted depiction by Jacques Arago (c 1818), Rose, dressed in her finery, is greeted by the Portuguese governor on landing in Dili in Timor. In the official version of the scene, Rose is absent. National Library of Australia 138059498

Rose: The extraordinary story of Rose de Freycinet, the stowaway who sailed around the world for love

By Suzanne Falkiner, published by ABC Books, Sydney, 2022.

Softcover, 416 pages, illustrated, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780733342356

RRP $35.00 Vaughan Evans Library VEL 910.2 FAL

Uranie ’s shore camp at Baie de Chiens-Marins, New Holland (Shark Bay, Australia), as depicted by J Alphonse Pellion, c 1818. In Pellion’s official version, Rose (as well as a boy from Mauritius crouched near her) was removed from the painting. National Library of Australia nla. obj-136213126

What the French called Baie de Chiens-Marins (Shark Bay/Gutharraguda) in Western Australia was recognised by early European explorers as one of the area’s safest anchorages. Baie de Chiens-Marins was also the location of one of the most fascinating visual records of Rose’s voyage to Australia. When expedition artist J Alphonse Pellion sketched the shore camp, he naturally included shipmate Rose, seated outside her conical tent, reading. However, as Rose was officially ‘not there’, Pellion scrubbed her image from the official etching submitted at the end of the voyage.

The French exploration footprint on our continent is light. Historical and archaeological research into this period often relies on the accuracy of illustrations and the written word. Coupled with Pellion’s images, Rose de Freycinet’s letters provide a unique voice, and were used in the early 2000s to assist in determining the location of the campsite at Shark Bay. 3

Suzanne Falkiner obviously enjoys archival research. If you appreciate extensive and detailed backstories on previous French explorations to the Australian continent and key players – like Rose’s husband Louis –you will be grateful for the initial chapters of the book.

If, instead, you want to get right into the meat of the voyage, I suggest starting with chapter seven, in which Uranie is prepared to embark from Toulon. The thrilling recount of their shipwreck in the Falkland Islands and the subsequent stranding and rescue are covered in chapters 21 to 23, and Rose’s return to France and death in chapters 26 and 27. Of particular interest is the author’s epilogue, in which Falkiner relates her own romantic voyages through Europe in her early 20s and her personal responses to how Rose approached and recorded her voyage. In this section, by questioning who Rose was and why she went, Falkiner’s own voice shines.

1 Maria de la cinto Ramblado Minero, ‘Rose de Freycinet: A Woman of Courage’ (book review), LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland), 1997, 24(2):114–17.

2 Myffanwy Bryant (2020) ‘“She will be the first woman that ever made it”: The extraordinary circumnavigation of Jeanne Baret’, Signals 130:30.

3 Matthew Gainsford and Richenda Prall, ‘Report on the Inspection of the de Freycinet land camp, Shark Bay, 2005’, Maritime Heritage Site Inspection Report, Western Australian Maritime Museum, No 196; Mack McCarthy (2005) ‘Rose de Freycinet and the French exploration corvette L’Uranie (1820): a highlight of the “French connection” with the “Great Southland”’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 34(1):6–78.

Reviewer Emily Jateff is the museum’s Curator of Ocean Science and Technology.

Recent additions to the Vaughan Evans Library

Kate Bagnall and Julia T Martínez (eds)

Locating Chinese Women: Historical mobility between China and Australia

Call number

305.488951094 BAG

Richard Broome, Jess Chamoff, Graeme Davison and Marian Quartly

Creating a Nation: 1834–2008

Call number 994.0072 ANA

Richard Broome, James Grout, David Harris and Geoff Peel

From Custodianship to the Anthropocene: 60,000 BCE–2010

Call number 994.0072 ANA

Callum Clayton-Dixon

Surviving New England: A history of Aboriginal resistance and resilience through the first forty years of the colonial apocalypse

Call number 385.89915 CLA

Robert Cleworth and John Suter Linton

RAAF Black Cats: The secret history of the covert Catalina mine-laying operations to cripple Japan’s war machine

Call number 940.54499 CLE

Danielle Clode

Prehistoric marine: Life in Australia’s inland sea

Call number 560.450994 CLO

Gillian Dooley and Danielle Clode (eds)

The First Wave: Exploring early coastal contact history in Australia

Call number 994.02 DOO

Mark Dunn

The Convict Valley: The bloody struggle of Australia’s early frontier

Call number 994.02 DUN

Siân Evans

Maiden Voyages: Women and the golden age of transatlantic travel

Call number 387.2432 EVA

John Fitzgerald and Hon-ming Yip (eds)

Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific 1850–1949

Call number 361.74089951 FIT

Alan Frost

Botany Bay Mirages: lllusions of Australia’s convict beginnings

Call number 994.402 FRO

Stephen Gapps

Gudyarra: The first Wiradyuri war of resistance: the Bathurst war, 1822–1824

Call number 994.02 GAP

CJ Harris and Brian D Ingpen

Mailships of the Union-Castle Line

Call number 387.50941 HAR

Nicolette Jones

The Plimsoll Sensation:

The great campaign to save lives at sea

Call number 623.888092

PLI

Miyakatsu Koike (translated by Hiroko Cockerill)

Four Years in a Red Coat: The Loveday internment camp diary of Miyakatsu Koike

Call number 940.547294 KOI

Meredith Lake

The Bible in Australia: A cultural history

Call number 266.00994 LAK

Jay Ludowyke

Carpathia: The extraordinary story of the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic Call number 910.453 LUD

Stuart MacIntyre

A concise history of Australia

Call number REF 994 MAC

Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into and report upon the arrangements made for the transport of troops returning from service in South Africa in the SS Drayton Grange and to inquire into and report upon the circumstances under which trooper Harold Burkitt, 2nd Australian Commonwealth Horse, who was in a serious condition of health, was not landed at Adelaide from the SS Norfolk

Call number 968.0487 REP

Nick Robins

The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company shaped the modern multinational

Call number 387.50941

ROB

Georg Ruppelt and Elisabeth Sladek

(English translation by Karen Williams; French translation by Aude Fondard)

The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries (Die schönsten Bibliotheken der Welt; Les plus belles bibliothèques du monde)

Call number FOLIO 727.8

WOR

Anne Slattery, Jenny MacRitchie and Paula Grunseit

Postings from the front: the city of Botany Bay and World War I

Call number 940.4099441

POS

Trevor Tucker

The Stolen Maps: Australia’s greatest maritime secret?

Call number 823.4 TUC

Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic

Indianapolis: The true story of the worst sea disaster in US naval history and the fifty-year fight to exonerate an innocent man

Call number 940.5426 VIN

Vivid Sydney 2022 Celebrating migration

THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM Foundation stepped out on 2 June to celebrate stories of Australian immigration as the focus of the museum’s program for Vivid Sydney 2022. Sydney’s festival of light illuminated the city’s foreshore for three weeks from late May to mid-June after two years of pandemic cancellations.

This year the museum’s rooftop featured Across the Seas: Immigration by sea to Australia 1940 to 1970 –illustrating the journeys of migrants who arrived on our shores after World War II, bringing with them their hopes, values, skills, customs and beliefs. Floating across the rooftop were stories from cultures and countries around the globe, chronicled in large-scale imagery drawn from family albums and national archives.

The Foundation event, hosted by Foundation Chair Dan Janes and Senior Executive Daina Fletcher, celebrated the Vivid projection and the museum’s migration program – an exposition of identity drawn from artefacts and narratives of place shaped in dialogue with First Nations identities. Across the Seas was made in consultation with the museum’s Curator of Post-war Immigration, Dr Roland Leikauf, and with assistance from the National Archives of Australia.

The evening featured a mesmerising performance by soprano Imogen-Faith Malfitano, who is of Sicilian and Venetian heritage. Her father’s and mother’s families arrived here after the first and second world wars respectively. Imogen-Faith’s story showcases the strength of intangible heritage in identity. Her greatgrandfather Francesco Crisafi migrated from a fishing village in Messina, Sicily, and made his way to Sydney Harbour to join the fishing industry. He eventually earned enough money to bring his wife Anna and family from Italy. They settled in Woolloomooloo, where ImogenFaith’s great-grandmother made her husband’s fishing nets by hand. According to family lore, Anna had a beautiful voice and people often heard her singing opera as she was making the nets.

The event also included the launch of a special initiative with the Italian community for the National Monument to Migration, introduced by Thomas Camporeale, General Manager of Co.As.It, a not-for-profit Italian assistance association. This campaign aims to raise funds to honour members of the Italian community on the monument.

Guests included donors and supporters of the museum, including consular representatives, museum partner Settlement Services International, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Council of Australia, the Department of Home Affairs, the Human Rights Commission, SBS and representatives from a variety of community organisations. The Artistic Director of Vivid Sydney 2022, Gil Minervini, was a special guest.

As part of Vivid Sydney 2022, on Saturday 18 June the museum site sparkled with a vibrant program of performers and provocations in Our Place – Sharing song, story, dance and film, produced in partnership with Blacktown Arts. The day featured some of Sydney’s most exciting artists, performers and cultural commentators in thought-provoking and illuminating question-and-answer sessions. One focused on how food has helped to shape Australia, while another featured an in-conversation event with mother-and-son duo Dr Mehreen Faruqi, Greens Senator for NSW, and Osman Faruqi. A festival of short films, Gathering Honey, featured work by innovative artists from Sydney’s west and shared emotive stories of family, ceremony, migration and place.

The Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation supports fundraising for the museum’s collection development and interpretation programs, including Australia’s National Monument to Migration.

To find out more about our migration programs, see sea.museum/ explore/migration

To get involved in our Chairman’s Circle membership program or Foundation activities, see sea.museum/support

Daina Fletcher is the museum’s Senior Executive Strategy and External Relations.

01

Soprano Imogen-Faith Malfitano performed arias by Puccini and Verdi for the museum’s Vivid Sydney 2022 launch in Action Stations , 2 June 2022.

02

The museum’s rooftop projection for Vivid Sydney 2022, Across the Seas: Immigration by sea to Australia 1940 to 1970, 2 June 2022.

Images Damon Photo Studio © ANMM

Hellenic links

Greek Minister for Culture and Sports visits the museum

THE PAST YEAR MARKED the 200th anniversary of the start of the Greek War of Independence. On 26 April, the museum hosted a visit from Dr Lina Mendoni, Minister of Culture and Sports of the Hellenic Republic. The minister toured the museum’s exhibitions, vessels, wharves and other features, including Action Stations and our National Monument to Migration. Dr Mendoni also viewed collections related to the Greek diaspora in Australia and discussed an arc linking the ancient seafaring cultures and identities of Greece and Australia. For example, the voyage of tailor Costas Melidis, his wife Maria and their family is just one of the fascinating stories of around 160,000 Greek nationals who came to Australia between 1947 and 1971.

In 1964 Mr Melidis left his home on the island of Limnos and spent many weeks travelling to Australia aboard the Chandris liner Ellinis. Here, he established a successful business and several years later was joined by Maria and their two children. The museum holds artefacts from the family in Limnos, including Costas’ tools of trade and Maria’s domestic items brought to establish her new home. This collection includes crêpe paper maritime uniforms that the talented tailor made for the museum, copying those that won him a fancy dress prize on board Ellinis

Dr Lina Mendoni, Minister of Culture and Sports of the Hellenic Republic, in Action Stations . Image David Cutler/ANMM

Of our exhibitions Dr Mendoni, a former archaeologist, was especially interested in early timepieces, notably a replica 18th-century chronometer made by Mr Norman Banham of Canberra. Dr Mendoni spoke at length about the fascinating Anthikythera Mechanism now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. This archaeological artefact is believed to be one of the world’s earliest computing devices. Recovered in 1902 from a shipwreck site off the island of Antikythera, it marks the calendars of the sun, moon, stars and planets, and is dated to the second or first century BCE.

The museum’s commemorative program for the Greek bicentenary involved a campaign to honour Greek Australians on our National Monument to Migration, developed in partnership with the Greek Welfare Centre and the Greek community. This past year the project raised more than $50,000 to inscribe the names of more than 100 Greek Australians on the monument and to add their stories to its web portal.

Australia’s National Monument to Migration features the names of more than 31,000 immigrants. To nominate your family or learn more, please go to sea.museum/support/national-monument or call Pamela Proestos, manager of the National Monument to Migration, on 02 9298 3777.

Daina Fletcher

A guiding hand in our early years

Vale Helen Coulson OAM

HELEN COULSON OAM, who died aged 103 in April 2022, was a significant supporter of the Australian National Maritime Museum during its formative years and served on its Council from 1992 to 1995. Following our opening at the end of November 1991, and under the guidance of our Council – led by founding Chair Peter Doyle AM and later Ms Kay Cottee AM – our national profile grew, along with the development of our collections, historic vessels, public events and an extensive range of touring exhibitions.

Helen was a strong advocate for local history and she published a number of local histories from the late 1940s. After moving to the Murray River town of Echuca in 1960, she became a founding member of the Echuca Historical Society. Much taken with the living history and significance of the historic port, Helen campaigned for the preservation of its wharf and later the acquisition and conservation of several significant vessels of the river trade. One of them was the PS Adelaide, built in 1866. This historic paddle steamer is listed on the museum’s Australian Register of Historic Vessels and occasionally operates from the port of Echuca.

Helen was general manager of the port of Echuca in the 1980s, and when appointed to the museum’s Council in early 1992, she brought her knowledge, experience and expertise to the museum’s planning processes. Her contributions in regard to Australia’s regions and river systems were invaluable. In addition, her straightforward manner, charm and incisive observations impressed all who dealt with her during those important early years.

Mary-Louise Williams (former museum director and, during Helen Coulson’s time, assistant director) remembers, ‘Helen was a staunch supporter of local maritime history and made a significant contribution to the history of the Murray River. She was extremely supportive of the museum and its programs.’

Helen Coulson was awarded an OAM in 2016 for her outstanding service to the Echuca–Moama community. We salute her service to both the museum and Australia’s broader maritime heritage, and offer our heartfelt condolences to her family.

Daina Fletcher

Helen’s straightforward manner, charm and incisive observations impressed all who dealt with her during those important early years

For more than 50 years Helen Coulsen was a writer, teacher, historian and advocate for her Echuca community. Image courtesy Riverine Herald

Acknowledgments

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 Fellows

John Mullen AM

Peter Dexter AM

Valerie Taylor AM

Ambassadors

Norman Banham

Christine Sadler

David and Jennie Sutherland

Major Donors –

SY Ena Conservation Fund

David and Jennie Sutherland Foundation

Honorary Research Associates

Rear Admiral Peter Briggs AO

John Dikkenberg

Dr Nigel Erskine

Paul Hundley

Dr Ian MacLeod

Jeffrey Mellefont

David Payne

Lindsey Shaw

Major Benefactors

Margaret Cusack

Basil Jenkins

Dr Keith Jones

RADM Andrew Robertson AO DSC RN

Geoff and Beryl Winter

Honorary Life Members

Yvonne Abadee

Dr Kathy Abbass

Robert Albert AO RFD RD

Bob Allan

Vivian Balmer

Vice Admiral Tim Barrett AO CSC

Lyndl Beard

Maria Bentley

Mark Bethwaite AM

Paul Binsted

Marcus Blackmore AM

David Blackley

John Blanchfield

Alexander Books

Ian Bowie

Colin Boyd

Ron Brown OAM

Paul Bruce

Anthony Buckley OAM

Richard Bunting

Capt Richard Burgess AM

Kevin Byrne

Sue Calwell

RADM David Campbell AM

Marion Carter

Victor Chiang

Robert Clifford AO

Helen Clift

Hon Peter Collins AM QC

Kay Cottee AO

Vice Admiral Russell Crane AO CSM

Stephen Crane

John Cunneen

Laurie Dilks

Dr Nigel Erskine

John Farrell

Dr Kevin Fewster CBE AM FRSA

Bernard Flack

Daina Fletcher

Sally Fletcher

Teresia Fors

CDR Geoff Geraghty AM

John Gibbins

Anthony Gibbs

RADM Stephen Gilmore AM CSC RAN

Paul Gorrick

Lee Graham

Macklan Gridley

Sir James Hardy KBE OBE

RADM Simon Harrington AM

Jane Harris

Christopher Harry

Gaye Hart AM

Janita Hercus

Robyn Holt

William Hopkins OAM

Julia Horne

Kieran Hosty

RADM Tony Hunt AO

Marilyn Jenner

John Jeremy AM

Vice Admiral Peter Jones AO DSC

Hon Dr Tricia Kavanagh

John Keelty

Richard Keyes

Kris Klugman OAM

Judy Lee

Matt Lee

David Leigh

Keith Leleu OAM

Andrew Lishmund

James Litten

Hugo Llorens

Tim Lloyd

Ian Mackinder

Stephen Martin

Will Mather

Stuart Mayer

Bruce McDonald AM

Lyn McHale

VADM Jonathan Mead AO

Rob Mundle OAM

Alwyn Murray

Martin Nakata

David O’Connor

Gary Paquet

David Payne

Prof John Penrose AM

Neville Perry

Hon Justice Anthe Philippides

Peter Pigott AM

Len Price

Eda Ritchie AM

John Rothwell AO

Peter Rout

Kay Saunders AM

Kevin Scarce AC CSC RAN

David Scott-Smith

Sergio Sergi

Ann Sherry AO

Ken Sherwell

Shane Simpson AM

Peter John Sinclair AM CSC

Peter R Sinclair AC KStJ (RADM)

John Singleton AM

Brian Skingsley

Eva Skira AM

Bruce Stannard AM

J J Stephens OAM

Michael Stevens

Neville Stevens AO

Frank Talbot AM

Mitchell Turner

Adam Watson

Ian Watt AC

Jeanette Wheildon

Hon Margaret White AO

Mary-Louise Williams AM

Nerolie Withnall

Cecilia Woolford (née Caffrey)

Image: David Moore, Migrants arriving in Sydney, 1966. Australian National Maritime Museum Collection

Lisa, Michael, Matthew and Joshua Moore.

Signals

ISSN 1033-4688

Editor Janine Flew

Staff Photographer Jasmine Poole

Design & production Austen Kaupe

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Back issues $4 each or 10 for $30

Extra copies of current issue $4.95

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Australian National Maritime Museum

Our opening hours are 10 am–4 pm (9.30 am–5 pm during NSW school holidays)

2 Murray Street Sydney NSW 2000 Australia. Phone 02 9298 3777

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

ANMM Council

Chairman Mr John Mullen AM

Ms Daryl Karp AM

Councillors

Hon Ian Campbell

Mr Stephen Coutts

Hon Justice SC Derrington

Rear Admiral Mark Hammond AM RAN

Ms Gisele Kapterian

Mr John Longley AM

Mr Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO

Ms Alison Page

Ms Judy Potter

Ms Arlene Tansey

Australian National Maritime Museum Foundation Board

Mr Daniel Janes, Chairman

Mr John Mullen AM, ex officio Chair

Ms Daryl Karp AM, ex officio

Mr David Blackley

Mr Simon Chan

Mr Peter Dexter AM

Mr David Mathlin

Mr Tom O’Donnell

Dr Jeanne-Claude Strong

Ms Arlene Tansey

American Friends of the Australian National Maritime Museum

Mr Robert Moore II

Mr John Mullen AM

Ms Daryl Karp AM

Feed your imagination and explore Australia’s stories of the sea by becoming a museum member. Options for individuals, families and people who live interstate or overseas offer a great range of benefits, including unlimited entry to our museum, vessels and exhibitions, as well as special discounts.

Visit sea.museum/members

Signals is printed in Australia on Hannoart Plus Silk 250 gsm (cover) and Hannoart Plus Silk 115 gsm (text) using vegetablebased inks.

Foundation sponsor

ANZ

Major sponsors

Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation

Port Authority of New South Wales

Sponsors

Australian Maritime Museums Council

Challis & Company

Colin Biggers & Paisley

Gage Roads Brewing Co

Lloyd’s Register

Maritime Union of Australia

Natural History Museum

Nova Systems

Panasonic

Schmidt Ocean Institute

Smit Lamnalco

Tomra

Supporters

Australian Antarctic Division

Australian Government

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Faroe Marine Research Institute

Japan Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology

Royal Wolf

Settlement Services International Silentworld Foundation

Sydney by Sail

The Greek Herald

The Ocean Cleanup

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sea.museum/blog

What’s in the shop?

Celebrate spring with our nautical-inspired clothing and accessories and a gorgeous selection of gemstone jewellery.

White knit jumper and Italian Star pants

Timeless and flattering nautical style in 100% cotton. Jumper designed in Australia exclusively for the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Jumper RRP $89.95 | members $80.95

Chino pants RRP $149.95 | members $134.95

Nautical accessories

3D-embroidered cap RRP $49.95 | members $44.95

Bamboo drink bottle RRP $44.95 | members $40.45

Canvas duffle bag RRP $59.95 | members $53.95

Kyanite jewellery with 925 sterling silver

Striking jewellery featuring rare and iridescent kyanite.

Ring RRP $199.95 | members $179.95

Earrings RRP $170 | members $153

Pendant RRP $120 | members $108

Blue topaz jewellery

Blue topaz is known as the stone of clarity.

Ring RRP $80 | members $72

Heart on chain RRP $150 | members $135

Earrings RRP $125 | members $112.50

Hats and T-shirts

Crushproof Panamate hat RRP $69.95 | members $62.95

Raffia Breton hat RRP $99.95 | members $89.95

ANMM T-shirts RRP $49.95 | members $44.95

Open 7 days a week

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