New discoveries illuminate the past
Building the Endeavour replica
Sydney hosts the International Fleet Review
W ITH ye A r’s eND FA sT A pprOACHING, people with school-age children will be wondering how to keep them occupied and engaged over the long summer holidays. Like most museums, the Australian National Maritime Museum gives a great deal of thought to the needs of families by developing targeted exhibitions, activities and programs, and building special-purpose areas. We aim to give these broad appeal to suit a wide range of ages and learning abilities, also keeping in mind something that is often overlooked – that families include adults as well as children.
Our visitors expect sophisticated interactives, and to participate in a two-way exchange
Keeping abreast of the needs of museum visitors includes adapting to changes in how they experience museums and other cultural institutions. Museums now cater for family groups of varying ages that are increasingly tech-savvy. No longer can museums expect to attract visitors with a static display, or to tell visitors what to do or think. Our visitors expect sophisticated interactives, and to participate in a twoway exchange. Many also wish to share what they’ve seen and learnt through social media, and to extend their visit by digital means beyond the physical trip to the museum. These expectations add an extra challenge to exhibition development, but also offer the chance to keep the museum experience ‘alive’ for longer.
Australian galleries and museums are among the best in the world when it comes to developing innovative family programming. These include scitech in perth, Questacon in Canberra and the Children’s Art Centre
at GOMA in Queensland. The Australian National Maritime Museum has had considerable success with family-focused events, including exhibitions such as the recent Rescue and Ships and the Sea; activities such as WetWorld, which returns this summer after its successful debut last season; and long-running popular programs such as Kids on Deck.
Much research has been done into why families visit museums, what they expect of them and how they act once they’re here. Here at the ANMM our families often fall into one of two broad groups – either the ‘Learning is fun’ group, which seeks an experience that’s both enjoyable and educative, or ‘Family fun seekers’, who are looking for an entertaining day out.
With the needs of families in mind, we are developing a new attraction – working title Nautilus – which will open in late 2014. It’s about undersea exploration and adventure, taking its inspiration from Jules Verne, Jacques Cousteau and modern pop-culture sources. Designed with a steampunk aesthetic, it will centre around a submarine in which children can learn about ocean habitats, navigation, undersea creatures, how a submarine works, and what daily life in one is like. Outside the sub will be four different underwater environments offering a wide range of activities, from slides, climbing structures and crawl spaces to table-top activities such as craft. There will also be content to engage parents while their children are busy exploring, and Nautilus will also have strong links to the school curriculum.
In the meantime, we’re presenting our Viking adventure program this summer, which will offer a range of Viking-based attractions for all ages to complement our exhibition Vikings – Beyond the legend We hope to see you and your family at the museum over the holidays.
Kevin Sumptioncover: International Fleet Review – HMAS Sydney, the flagship of the Ceremonial Fleet Review on 5 October 2013, leads six other Royal Australian Navy (RAN) warships past the reviewing vessel, HMAS Leeuwin, and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This fleet of seven ships echoed another from exactly 100 years before: the Australian Fleet Unit, the first ships of the RAN, which entered Sydney Harbour in 1913. Photograph courtesy Helen Darwell
Fascinating finds from this most mythologised of cultures
Celebrating a century of Australian naval ships
Building the replica of Captain Cook’s famous ship: a master shipwright looks back 20 years
Conserving maritime objects (and how to wrangle a 1.3-tonne anchor)
Tales of loss, war and migration woven into the humble handkerchief
Behind the still-unbeaten record set by a Halvorsen yacht in the Sydney to Hobart race
A preview of our Members’ cruise to Sulawesi, Indonesia, in 2014
TO MEMbERS AND MEMbERS SUMMER EVENTS
Your calendar of activities, tours, lectures and excursions afloat
The latest exhibitions in our galleries this season
We announce the winners of the 2013 Frank Broeze Memorial prizes
Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village, Warrnambool
Spices, gunpowder and opium: East Indies by Ian Burnet
Not just just a collection of vessels, the register also records the people and stories behind them
Remembering the 70th anniversary of Operation Jaywick
The journeys of a perennial wanderer, including 4,000 kilometres by rowboat
Vikings raid
What’s happening in social media, plus the winners of our Instagram photography competition
Vikings capture our imagination like few other cultures. But what do we really know of them beyond the stereotype of warriors and seafarers? Modern research paints a much more complex picture of their times.
Curators Gunnar Andersson and Kerstin O Näversköld and associate professor Frederik Svanberg , from the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, look at social relationships, craftsmanship and other aspects of Norse culture as examined in our exhibition Vikings – Beyond the legend.
TH e VIKING AGe Is AN er A ObsCureD by a wealth of modern popular mythology regarding what people in scandinavia were actually like, how they lived, what they would have called themselves and what their world generally looked like. but the ‘Viking Age’ is a modern idea, and ‘Vikings’ are not an indigenous or ethnic group. The Norse literature calls them norrænir menn (north men), which describes all the Nordic peoples excluding the sami. but this is probably not a name they would have used for themselves. Most people who lived in this geographically vast area would certainly never have called themselves Vikings. In fact many would have considered the term an insult, as Vikings seem to have been feared as much in their homelands as in the rest of europe. Instead they would have identified themselves primarily after the farm, village or locality where they lived, and also after the district they came from; for example, sudermœn from södermanland or vestfyldir from Vestfold. Their ‘homelands’ were not synonymous with scandinavia or its present-day borders, so it is erroneous to refer to swedish or Danish or Norwegian Vikings, as is sometimes done. similarly, there was never any homogeneous ‘Viking-Age culture’ shared by everyone in scandinavia. On a higher pan- scandinavian level, people were united by a common language, mythology and pantheon.
There are also common styles and themes in the decoration on artefacts, picture stones and runestones, a clear example being the ‘gripping beast’ style. All over scandinavia, many different kinds of artefacts were created and adorned with these intertwining figures, clinging firmly to each other.
Another example is the face of a bird of prey that decorates a number of exclusive pieces of jewellery found widely scattered in the Viking homelands.
Despite these common elements, there were still great differences between districts or regions. Mortuary practices and women’s costume and jewellery show significant regional variations; so do placenames, indicating that in particular areas, certain gods were more popular and more worshipped than others.
Viking-Age society had a powerful upper class, an aristocracy of magnates and chieftains, some of whom called themselves kings, though they ruled mainly over people, not territories, via alliances based more on personal loyalty than on ethnicity. but while the society was hierarchical, social positions were not always as fixed as we might imagine. It was possible for individuals to both improve, and lose, their social status.
Masses of silver objects and raw material ended up in the ground, testifying to the importance of silver in Viking-Age society
The Stora Ryk theme hoard contains a vessel of soapstone, beads of glass, carnelian, amber and rock crystal, and rings, brooches and pendants made of silver and bronze. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm. Photography A Frolows/ANMM
A large proportion of the population – perhaps some 20 to 40 per cent –was unfree, or thralls. Locally born slaves had more freedom that those who had been captured and forced into captivity. While some unfree people were simply labour slaves, others were given significant rights. A ‘housecarl’ on a farm or estate could, if he was lucky, advance to the level of ‘bryte’, a type of farm manager or overseer.
The trade in thralls or slaves for labour was highly profitable. Indirect evidence of the trafficking of thralls in Viking-Age scandinavia comes from archaeological finds such as shackles, neck-irons and similar restraints.
Land, family and farming were at the heart of Viking society. Owning land was very important and determined your social position, history and future. The white male warrior roaming the high seas with his horned helmet and warship – the image so commonly evoked when thinking of Vikings – is more myth than historical reality. Though there were plenty of men, warriors, testosterone and bloodshed in the
Viking Age, fascinating new research has concluded there were also women, children, peaceful farming and trade. The warrior stereotype does not represent this era nearly as much as popular images would indicate. Nor does the figure of the plundering seafarer; this was not primarily a maritime culture, but instead an agricultural economy of stock breeders and farmers.
One of the most tenacious myths about the Viking Age is that armed men in warships fought battles and plundered monasteries, or set off on distant trading journeys, while the women stayed at home on the farms spinning yarn. both the archaeological evidence and the written Norse sources, however, paint a completely different picture.
The women’s role was multifaceted, and women in the Viking Age seem to have had a more equal position to men than those in later periods. Their contributions to production and reproduction were not valued any less than men’s. relations between the sexes seem to have been complementary, with women having responsibility for the private ‘indoor
sphere’, and men for the public ‘outdoor sphere’. One of the roles of the free woman was that of housewife; she was the mistress of the farm and the undisputed head of the household. since the farm was in many respects the very centre of the human world in the Viking Age, this role was probably not as limiting as it might seem to modern people.
The role of mistress of the house is symbolised by the key that she wears fully visible over her clothes, often hanging on a chain from a tool brooch. These symbolic keys were usually made of bronze and furnished with artistically executed shafts. Keys, both ornamental and everyday, are a common find in Viking-Age graves. Ornamental keys are found frequently, and exclusively, in women’s graves, and show little or no wear. They differ considerably from ordinary keys for practical use, which are usually well worn and made of iron. unlike symbolic keys, ordinary keys occur in the graves of men, women and children alike.
Women were not confined solely to the farm, however. statements in Norse literature show
01 Bronze tool brooch with key and chain. Grave find from Sweden. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, SHM 22917:23. All photographs courtesy Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, unless otherwise stated
02 Decorative bronze key with chain. Grave find from Sweden. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, SHM3331
03 Silver and gold trefoil brooch, typical of those buried in theme hoards. Found in Sweden. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, SHM6998:1
that women took part in such activities as trade and colonisation. Trade-related finds such as weights and scales are just as often found in women’s graves as in men’s. As well as archaeological finds indicating that women engaged in trade and colonisation, there is evidence from Norse literature. One example is the tale of unn the Deep-Minded, a leading character in Laxdæla Saga unn had a ship built and equipped so that she could undertake trading journeys to Orkney and the Faroes, before finally heading for Iceland, where she became one of the 13 women counted as the first settlers. unn settled in western Iceland and – as befits a ruler – distributed land among several of the people who had accompanied her. unn seems to have been a very powerful woman in Iceland in the late Viking Age. When she died she was buried in keeping with her station. The saga tells how ‘she was laid in a ship inside the mound, and a load of treasure was laid there with her’.
Another energetic and impressive woman in the sagas is Freydis eiriksdottir, who set off from Greenland, together with her
husband and others, towards Leifsbudir, the site in Newfoundland where her brother Leif eiriksson (‘the discoverer of America’) had previously tried to establish a settlement. soon after they arrived, fighting broke out, both among the colonists and with the indigenous population. A frequently retold story concerns the heavily pregnant Freydis who, after the Norsemen had been killed or put to flight by the natives, mocked her fellow countrymen for their cowardice, grabbed a sword and entered the fray bare-breasted. At the sight of this valkyrie, the attackers ran for their lives.
Exotic goods and fine craftsmanship Viking activity extended from Asia in the east to Greenland and North America in the west, and from the islands far up in the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean and northern Africa in the south. During the Viking Age, exotic and exclusive goods flowed into the Viking homelands in scandinavia and were made available, for those who could afford them, at trading places such birka, Hedeby, Kaupang and others. Along with the material goods came ideological, political and religious currents.
The largest Viking exhibition ever to come to Australia, it showcases more than 500 Viking-Age objects, many of them never before seen here
Though there were plenty of men, warriors, testosterone and bloodshed in the Viking Age, there were also women, children, peaceful farming and trade
A large proportion of the population – perhaps some 20 to 40 per cent –was unfree, or thralls
01 Previous pages: Vikings – Beyond the legend features more than 500 objects, including weapons, jewellery, tools, funerary objects and two boats, plus interactive exhibits. The boat pictured is a reconstruction of the Årby boat, a small, two-oared fishing or transport craft, the original of which dates to 850–950 ce. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
02 A hoard of silver coins. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, SHM32180. Photography A Frolows/ANMM
03 Thor’s hammer was a popular motif for ornaments. This silver example found in Sweden features the head of a bird of prey. Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, SHM 9822:810
Among the many exotic artefacts that have been discovered at Viking-Age sites are a persian glass beaker, an Irish cross, an Indian statuette of the buddha, a Coptic ladle from egypt, and shells from the red sea and the Indian Ocean intended to be made into pendants. such artefacts are evidence of what great melting pots many of the Viking-Age communities were. Much of what we call ‘Viking-Age culture’ was in fact created from encounters between norrænir menn and other peoples.
Among the archaeological finds from this time are many hoards of silver. silver was the predominant precious metal during the period; gold, which had previously been more prevalent, became less common in the Viking Age. Masses of silver objects and raw material ended up in the ground, testifying to the importance of silver in Viking-Age society. The largest find so far weighs an astounding 75 kilograms, though most are much smaller. The number of hoards found is constantly increasing. On the island of Gotland, where most of sweden’s silver hoards have been discovered, there are new finds every year. We may never really know why people in these times buried their silver; some scholars believe the ground was considered a safe place to store valuables, but there may also have been religious reasons.
some hoards contain only coins, others both coins and artefacts, and some artefacts only. Cut-up and divided coins are a frequent inclusion. Commodities were not paid for simply with a certain number of coins of a given value; it was the weight and silver content that were crucial, so coins were often cut up and divided to make up the correct payment. It was also common for
people to check the genuineness of the silver by cutting a coin or silver object with a knife.
The silver hoard from Stora Ryk Viking-Age silver hoards are categorised by their composition. Hoards consisting of intact ornaments and brooches but lacking coins are sometimes called ‘women’s hoards’, or ‘theme hoards’, as they follow a strict theme: accessories for women’s dress, with the centrally worn trefoil brooch as the common denominator. The objects in these theme hoards vary in character and material, unlike the hoards containing only silver objects. In contrast to the standardised silver hoards, theme hoards are not believed to have been used as money, at least not exclusively; in hoards containing a mixture of silver with glass beads and certain bronze objects, the silver has been interpreted as part of a payment received, unlike the other items.
objects and nearly 80 beads of glass, carnelian, rock crystal and silver. At the bottom of the hoard was the trefoil silver brooch, decorated with filigree and twisted thread.
even if, at the moment of burial, the hoard was not intended to be used in trade again, it still had an inherent economic value, and was perhaps hidden away to be saved for future use. The ornaments in the hoard were of great value when they were buried, and it was a highly prosperous person in the 10th century who chose to place them in the ground.
Edited by Janine Flew from essays by curators Gunnar Andersson and Kerstin O Näversköld and associate professor Fredrik Svanberg of the Swedish History Museum. Reproduced with permission. Gunnar Andersson’s book Vikings: Beyond the legend, which accompanies the exhibition, is available from The Store: store.anmm.gov.au/books
Vikings – Beyond the legend is a joint venture by the Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, and Museums Partner, Austria. It is on at the ANMM until 2 February 2014.
A good example of a theme hoard is that from stora ryk in Dalsland, in presentday western sweden; it has the ‘right’ composition of ornaments in different materials and forms, and the coins in it were all used as jewellery. Among them are two silver coins from the samanid dynasty (819–999ce), which arose in what is now eastern Iran and uzbekistan. The coins were minted under two different caliphs in the early 10th century, and both had been turned into pendants and used as jewellery. This hoard, like other theme hoards, is thought not to have been used as payment; some scholars believe that coins which were turned into pendants lost their economic function once they were reinterpreted as a part of female costume. The stora ryk hoard also has about 20 different silver www .museumspartne r. co m
A century ago, Australia welcomed the Australian Fleet Unit – the first ships of its own navy. One battle cruiser, three light cruisers and three destroyers sailed into Sydney Harbour on 4 October 1913 to a rousing reception from a proud and enthusiastic public. In October this year the Royal Australian Navy commemorated the centenary of the fleet unit’s arrival with an International Fleet Review, inviting warships and tall ships from around the world to participate in a week of festivities on Sydney Harbour. Our pictorial review captures some of the highlights.
The museum attracted more than 85,000 visitors during the nine days of the fleet review festivities
01 Previous pages: INS Sahyadri at anchor in Athol Bay on Sydney’s north shore. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
02 A fanfare from the musicians of HMAS Sydney Photograph courtesy Helen Darwell
03 The ceremonial fleet review included formation flypasts by massed helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Photograph courtesy Helen Darwell
04 HMAS Sydney passes under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, followed by HMA Ships Darwin (centre) and Perth (far right). Photograph courtesy Milo Brogan
05 INS Sahyadri is a Shivalik class frigate, designed and built in India and commissioned in 2012. Photograph courtesy Helen Darwell
06 Her Excellency The Hon Quentin Bryce ac cvo, Governor General of Australia (in blue) and HRH Prince Henry of Wales (in white) review the fleet aboard HMAS Leeuwin. Photograph Ajay Powell
01 Preparing sail for the tall ships race. Photograph Ajay Powell
02 Europa, from The Netherlands, and the Canadian Picton Castle off Sydney’s South Head. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
03 The museum was home to the tall ships and their crews throughout the International Fleet Review. Photograph courtesy Milo Brogan
04 Spirit of New Zealand sails towards the start line of the tall ships race to New Zealand. Photograph courtesy A Frolows/ANMM
Glen Hope (rigger/sailmaker) standing port side forward, with the lower planking completed.
Photographer John LancasterTwenty years ago, in December 1993, the centrepiece of the museum’s fleet was launched – the replica of Captain James Cook’s renowned ship HM Bark Endeavour. Endeavour ’s chief shipwright, Bill Leonard, gives us a glimpse of the immensely specialised knowledge and skills of traditional ship-building, using the language of the men who once assembled the most sophisticated engineering constructions of their day, from no more than timber and a bit of iron.
AusT r ALIA’s eurOpe AN H er ITAGe is profoundly linked with Lieutenant James Cook and his ship HM bark Endeavour The nation’s desire for a tangible link with this great explorer finally materialised in 1988, when, at the behest of bruce stannard, one of the original members of the Australian National Maritime Museum board, bond Corporation announced that its bicentennial gift to the nation would be a replica HM bark Endeavour John Longley (one of Alan bond’s team during the triumphal 1983 America’s Cup campaign) was installed as CeO, and construction began of a shipyard in Fremantle, Western Australia, where the ship was to be assembled. As well as a shipyard there was also a rigging/sailmaking facility, blacksmith shop, drawing office and administration offices. The building also included a viewing gallery so visitors and groups of schoolchildren could watch the construction, and classrooms and a conference room to give school groups and the public learning opportunities and a sense of being involved with the project. More than 600,000 people visited while the vessel was being constructed, and contributed $1.25 million in donations and entry fees over a period of six years.
replica vessels are only as accurate as the data that is available to construct them. The less data, the more the likely the vessel is to be considered an interpretation. To meet the requirement for an exact and historically authentic replica of HM bark Endeavour, original data had to be found. This was located at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, england, and made available for the project. The assistance and cooperation of this museum were paramount to the success of the project, and among the key items that they provided were copies of the HM bark Endeavour ship’s draughts. All of these drawings, done at different times, provided an amazing insight into her conversion from a humble collier, Earl of Pembroke, drawing No 3814b, to the fabulous ‘as fitted’ drawing No 3814A, done on 11 July 1768 at Deptford, just before her historic first voyage. This small but wonderfully comprehensive draught (unfortunately too fragile to be scanned for reproduction in this article) gave me my first insight into the long-gone glorious language of the 18th-century shipwright and his art.
In the 18th century the shapes of these vessels were developed using sweeps, a large compass. Looking at this draught, a shipwright of the time would have noted
in the profile drawing the lines of the upper and lower breadths with the maximum breadths in between, and in the section plan the position of the sweeps that help define the sections of the vessel above and below those breadths. Glancing through her centreline he would have noted the cutting-down line, which defines the maximum height of the floors, and the distance down to the bearding line, which is the intersection of the inside of the planking with the side of the keel, so giving the moulded dimension of these floors.
The spacing of the stations, in conjunction with the formula for the ‘room and space’, provided the dimension of the floor sidings. He would have noted the position of the vessel’s midship bend, the curve of the stem, perhaps wondering about the construction of the stem boxing (where the keel joins to the stem), the height of the bollard timbers (knightheads), the length of the cat-heads and the mounting of the swivel cannons. Our 18th-century shipwright might have noted the loading ports up forward, and wondered if they were used to help stow r iga fir, brought over from the baltic. His eyes might then have focused on the carrick bitts and the drawing showing the profiles of a man’s face, and wondered
To build an exact and historically authentic replica of HM Bark Endeavour, original data was needed. This was located at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England
if they were of the earl of pembroke or perhaps the draughtsman who actually drew them. His eyes would have then wandered along the decks, the forecastle, and lower deck with its stove, the position and size of the deck beams, and he would have noted the lack of headroom in the officers’ quarters back aft, and the companionway that leads down to the hold with the bread room and well. He would have also noted the fore and aft deadwoods, the deck and breast hooks, and back aft, the heights and dimensions of the transoms and the upper wing transom, that would in time help define the shape of the lower counter aft. The details of the sternpost, rudder and gudgeons would have been noted, particularly the outline of the garboard strake that was shown to be let into the stern post to strengthen the keel–sternpost interface. He may have thought how skilful and clever his fellow shipwrights really were. The accommodation drawings would have provided no surprises, except for how small Mr banks’ bedspace was, possibly prompting the thought, ‘surely he wouldn’t sleep in there; perhaps the settle will be used by his dogs, and he will keep the rest of the space for his books’.
For the 20th-century shipwrights who had to contemplate building this replica, other fascinating sources of information were Captain Cook’s log and journals, the journals of Joseph banks and the wonderful sketches made by sydney parkinson.
The timber used in the original vessel was a mixture of english oak and pine. As the replica vessel was to be built and used in the waters of the Antipodes it was decided to use Australian hardwood.
The principal wood used for the hull below the waterline, the wales and all the major
structural components throughout the ship is Western Australian jarrah, though some tallowwood grown crooks were harvested from New south Wales and incorporated as hanging knees for the forward upper deck. To conserve natural resources, some of the ship’s large components were laminated while others were constructed from recycled timbers, such as old railway bridges. The hull topsides, decks, mast and spars, rough treerail, plansheer and quarterdeck spirketting were Douglas fir. The internal thick-stuff – all timbers more than four inches (10 centimetres) thick – and clamps, bilge stringers and the like were made from Western Australian karri, a timber that has long been used for internal ship structures. some of these pieces of wood that were installed were up to 40 feet (12 metres) long, 12 inches (30 centimetres) wide and five inches (13 centimetres) thick.
The construction process started with converting HM bark Endeavour ’s original ship’s draughts to detailed working drawings. These were then sent to steve Ward’s yard in Henderson, Western Australia, where construction began. steve had the original contract to build HM bark Endeavour until the project collapsed with the demise of bond Corporation in the late 1980s.
These draughts first went to the loft floor to be lofted, or laid off, the first step in the physical construction of the vessel. There the ship’s draughts were enlarged up from the original scale (one quarter inch to one foot) and laid out full size on the loft floor in order to fair the lines of the vessel’s concave and convex curves, making them ‘sweet to the eye’ and ‘plankable’. This was done in a conventional and relatively modern way. It was considered that the
01 A 1768 drawing of Endeavour’s deck plans. Courtesy Royal Museums Greenwich 02 Shipwrights Carl Ollivierre and Danny McDermitt harvesting hanging knees. The ship’s hanging knees were cut in one piece from the junction of a tree’s trunk and either a branch (as here) or a root (as in the following image). As the grain follows the natural curve of the tree, these ‘grown’ knees have greater strength than knees cut from the straight grain of sawn timber. Photographer Les Oxenbridge
03 Nev Casey cutting knees for Endeavour at Heron’s Creek, NSW, January 1992. Photographer Les Oxenbridge
04 Les Oxenbridge with some of the knees, which support the upper deck, after installation in the Endeavour replica in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Photographer unknown
The ship’s draughts were scaled up from the original drawing and laid out full size on the loft floor in order to fair the lines of the vessel’s concave and convex curves
accuracy and consequent shape of HM bark Endeavour should be proofed by also lofting her in the 18th-century way by using the sweep positions allocated on the original ‘as fitted’ drawing. The results of the sweeps – a method of lofting that had not been used for about 150 years – confirmed that the modern lofting was accurate. patterns were then made of all the large structural components that were to be fabricated in steve’s yard before assembly at the HM bark Endeavour shipyard in Fremantle.
The keel was constructed in three pieces. We knew its length was 92 feet and a half inch (28.2 metres), its (moulded) depth 25 inches (63 centimetres) and its siding (width) 10–12 inches (25–30 centimetres). It was decided to use traditional 18thcentury methods of joining major structural members, and we found time and time again that using traditional methods proved correct. The 18th-century method of joining (scarfing) the keel pieces together was to have the scarfs vertical, rather than horizontal, which is a more modern method. These vertical scarfs, having nibs and hooks and with the use of an internal mortise and tenon, called coaking or a coak, provide greater longitudinal strength to prevent the keel from sagging or hogging. The through fastenings kept the scarf together, and by working in sheer rather than tension, these fastenings provide strength and watertight integrity. The keel was set up about three feet (90 centimetres) above the slipway and parallel to it for ease of launching. To ensure that all the frames
and bulkheads were square to the keel and not plumb, the shipwrights used a simple declivity stick which is shaped like a narrow wedge, with the same angle as the slipway.
The stem shape was lifted from the loft floor. It comprised two pieces of jarrah that were cut to shape and joined together with a scarf and coak and secured to the keel with a joint called a stem boxing. stem boxing consists of coaking that almost runs the length of the half-joint and is secured with copper bolts that pass through a bronze horseshoe plate let into the stem and keel.
The sternpost was then constructed in three pieces, all coaked and bolted together. The lower end was tenoned into the keel – which is still common practice – and a large dovetail bronze plate was let into the sternpost and keel and fastened and secured with copper bolts.
The fore and aft deadwoods (sometimes called the rising wood) were then cut out to the cutting-down line with the profile shaped and trimmed to fit on top of the keel. They taper fore and aft from amidships and rise towards the stem and sternpost. The deadwoods take the rising floors that eventually become the fore and aft cant frames and they provide tremendous bearing and strength to the stem and sternpost. The scarfs were given as much distance as possible from the scarfs on the keel, ensuring a really strong backbone in the tradition of 18th-century ship construction. After the deadwoods were installed and fastened to the stem and sternpost, the floor scores on the deadwoods were removed.
There are 30 floors on HM bark Endeavour and the deadwood scores are recesses that the floors are lowered into, enabling the floors to reach their seating down to the bearding line. The framing pieces (futtocks) were then secured to the sides of the floors and provided the bends that reach up to the topsides of the vessel. Once the floors were in place the keelson was installed on top and fastened through the deadwood floors and keel.
The ship’s floors, bends (double frames), intermediate frames and fore and aft cant frames were all constructed using scrive
01 Port side from aft, showing floors and midship bend in place. Note the aft score, which takes the final floor of the aft square frame, the bearding line, and the housing for the garboard strake let into the stern post. Photographer John Lancaster 02 Apprentice shipwright Alistair Cross working with the bow structuress. You can see the keelson, lower deck clamp, the ‘thick-stuff’ (bilge stringers), the hawse pieces fitting into the forward cant frame, and bollard timbers alongside the stem. Photographer John Lancaster
boards, which had all of these frames drawn on them full size and constructed in Henderson, before being transferred to Fremantle to be installed on the vessel.
The cant frames and hawse pieces were installed forward, and the foremost piece of framing, called the bollard timber or knighthead, fays against the side of the stem to create the apron that takes the fastenings of the forward planking. Once all these were installed, along with the deck and breast hooks, the fore end of the vessel was effectively enclosed prior to planking. The aft transoms were shaped and secured in place through the sternpost, and with the fashion piece and aft cant frames in place, the shape of the stern was defined. The counter framing and upper counter framing, rising up from the top of the wing transom, were assembled and completed the framing of the stern.
We then proceeded to install the wales. This massive belting that goes around the vessel just above the waterline is 30 inches (76 centimetres) by five and a half inches (14 centimetres) amidships, and the size and position of the wales were well defined on the original ship’s draughts. These were installed in conjunction with the clamp that takes the weight of the lower deck beams and their lodging knees. These knees not only help secure the beams in place but stop the vessel from wracking (twisting) in the plan view. At this point we had two teams of shipwrights working on the planking externally and internally, and a plank expansion drawing was developed to facilitate this.
The planking proceeded from the garboard strake at the keel, which was three inches (7.5 centimetres) thick, and at the same time, working internally, we installed the thickstuff of the limber strakes, which are 12 inches by five inches (30 centimetres by 13 centimetres). because of the shape of the hull and thickness of the plank, the planking had to be steamed in steam boxes. placing the planking in these boxes and cooking them with steam softens the cellulose in the timber so it becomes more flexible, enabling the planking to be bent around the hull and at times twisted
Other fascinating sources of information were Captain Cook’s log and journals, the journals of Joseph Banks and the wonderful sketches by Sydney Parkinson
in place. The time required in the steambox was approximately one hour per inch (2.5 centimetres) of thickness.
As the planking proceeded out from the keel towards the bilge, the internal three-inch (7.5-centimetre) thick footwaling (ceiling) moved outboard towards the thickstuff (bilge stringers) in way of the bilge. The bilge stringers comprise three pieces that were 12 inches by five inches thick (30 centimetres by 13 centimetres) in way of the floorheads; interestingly, it is also at this point that the external planking thickness is increased from three to four inches (7.5 to 10 centimetres) and remains so all the way to the wales.
On reaching the wales and the internal clamps, a team of shipwrights set about installing the lower deck beams and lodging knees. There were 14 deck beams, whose size and positions were found in the original ship’s draught. They were 15 inches by 15 inches (38 centimetres by 38 centimetres), had no round-up
(camber) and take all of the carlings and ledges, the structures in way of the mast steps. It was critical that the installation of these deck structures coincided with some aspects of the ship’s 20th-century fit-out, because we could not retro-fit fuel tanks and the like because of their size.
The 20th-century fit-out was designed by naval architect Ken McAlpine. With sound engineering, lateral thinking and a complete understanding of the subject matter, Ken resolved the conflicting requirements of replicating a full-sized 18th-century sailing ship while meeting the demands of 20th- and 21st-century naval architecture, marine engineering, stability, habitability and safety requirements. The ship was built to usL 2A Classification, meeting the requirements for a wooden, twin-screw auxiliary, full-rigged sailing ship. This made her an insurable sailing ship: a vessel that was able to sail the oceans of the world on her own, just like her predecessor. (see article ‘The 20th-century Endeavour ’ in Signals 80, 2007.)
01 Carving of a face on the port carrick bit. All of the ship’s carvings were done by artist and sculptor Jenny Scrayen. Photographer
John Lancaster
02 Ship’s counter quarter carvings. All the drawings for the ship’s carvings were done by marine artist Ross Shardlow. Photographer John Lancaster
03 Endeavour is launched on 9 December 1993. Work continued after the launch, and the ship was completed in April 1994. Photographer John Lancaster
Endeavour ’s topsides were planked up in Douglas fir that was two and a half inches (6 centimetres) thick and done in conjunction with the internal planking –known in the 18th century as quickstuff – of the same dimension. The process started internally with the installation of the waterways of the lower deck, followed by the spirketting and the quickstuff with the planking extending up to the after fall deck. e xternally, the planking continued up from the thickstuff of the wales to the sheer rail, which is in way of the channels and their chain plates, and internally up to the clamps of the upper deck. Once the beams of this deck were installed, the deck structures, carling and ledges were fastened in place with the hanging and lodging knees and the mast partners, along with the upper deck waterways, spirketting and quickstuff, up to and including the quarter deck clamps. The external planking continued up until it finally reached the height of the plansheer. The deck beams of the quarter deck with their waterways and spirketting and mast
partners were installed until again reaching the plansheer height, and the void between the framing was finally sealed when the 14-inch (35-centimetre) plansheer was fastened to the internal and external planking. The final work on the construction of the quarterdeck involved the installation of the rough tree rail. While the shipwrights were doing this, another team was laying the decks, installing gallows and pump wells, shaping top timbers as bitts, installing swivel cannon mounts, kevels, carrick bits, the bowsprit bits and step, belfry, and the amazing hydraulically powered 18th-century windlass, and aft, the capstan, companionway, ship’s wheel and tiller. The main stove on the lower deck was installed and modified to carry air into the modern accommodation below. The ship was fitted with her 18th- and 20th-century accommodation, galley, engine room and all the modern paraphernalia necessary for a sea-going ship of today. space precludes me from discussing this, the construction of the launch ways or even her launching.
In 2011 when HM bark Endeavour was in Fremantle, I had a look on board with many of the original workers who helped build the ship, and I could feel the quiet sense of pride in all of them. so many people put so much of their energy into creating this lovely ship, and they share many memories. There had been many highs and lows from her commencement in 1988. The ship might have not been completed had it not been for the intercession of Arthur Weller, later sir Arthur Weller cbe (1929–2011), who created The endeavour Foundation pty Ltd and was its chairman. It was he who felt the replica had to be finished, and to take its place as a national monument. Financial assistance from the federal and New south Wales state governments, and extraordinary personal donations from John singleton, Garry Weston and the general public enabled this, and John Longley finally oversaw the push for HM bark Endeavour ’s completion from september 1991 to her eventual launching on 9 December 1993.
All the people who worked on her understood that the launching was the culmination of all their efforts and achievements, and sadly the end of an extraordinary project.
Author and master shipwright Bill Leonard underwent a traditional shipbuilding apprenticeship in Scotland before moving to Western Australia in 1987 to become involved with the America’s Cup. He was also master shipwright in the construction of the replica of the Duyfken, the VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship that was the first European vessel to visit and chart part of Australia. Bill works with the Watercraft Collection, Maritime History Department, Western Australian Museum.
References: Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, 1815 edition; The Elements and Practice of Naval Architecture by David Steele, 1805 Edition
Editor’s note: metric conversions in this document are approximations only.
01 Author Rebecca Torsell (second from right) with conservators Sue Frost, Jonathan London and Julie O’Connor working with textiles for our recent East of India exhibition. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
To promote maritime links between our two countries, the museum awards an annual fellowship to a museum professional from the United States. This year’s recipient, Rebecca Torsell, examines the role of maritime conservators.
ON e Qu I e T DA r LING HA rbOur morning, I strolled through the galleries of the Australian National Maritime Museum looking at the exhibits and pondering the story of each artefact. I imagined the items being treasured by their original owners in their shiny new state, their eventual loss to the seas and the ensuing months or years underwater, and then their recovery by a diver or maritime archaeologist. Most of my attention, however, was focused on the museum patrons. some visitors circled through the museum, mesmerised by the objects on show and perhaps dreaming of a time when pirates ruled the seas, while others silently read the descriptions and passed from exhibit to exhibit. After spending a month working in the museum’s conservation lab, I couldn’t help but wonder, ‘Do they know?’ Do visitors to this museum know what it took, from recovery to display, to preserve each individual object? Can they picture the state of the artefacts before the conservators began work on them? Do they realise that there is a small team in Wharf 7, located behind the museum, who make it all happen?
What I also saw as I wandered through the museum was a chance to shine the spotlight on conservation. I realised that the museum’s visitors were being enriched by these artefacts, but that many of them had no idea that the items’ survival depended on a set of people who have
striven for years to develop the scientific means to preserve them. Conservators, it seemed to me, were not so much forgotten as simply unknown.
Do visitors to this museum know what it took to preserve each individual object, from recovery to display?
I came to know the museum’s conservation staff this year through a fellowship. every few years the museum’s usA Gallery awards a bill Lane ao Fellowship to an applicant who aims to bring together the maritime histories of the united states and Australia. The fellowship is a supporting element of the usA Gallery, currently a 625-square-metre space that was endowed by us Congress for Australia’s bicentennial of european settlement in 1988, and the fellowship was named after us Ambassador L W ‘bill’ Lane Jr (1919–2010) to honour his crucial role in its development. I was awarded a fellowship to work with the conservation department in their efforts to preserve recovered marine artefacts. While at the museum, I focused on examining the quantitative assessment and desalination methodologies for cupreous (copper-based) artefacts.
The conservation of maritime artefacts is a unique field, and those who find their way into it have diverse backgrounds. While working closely with the museum’s conservation staff – Jonathan London, department head and conservator of books and paper, Caroline Whitley (paper and photographic materials), sue Frost (textiles and paper), Julie O’Connor (textiles) and rebecca Dallwitz (objects) – I learned that each one had taken a different and winding path to the field of conservation. It was fascinating to discover that in many cases their careers did not start directly with conservation, but that at some point, heritage and its preservation became a commitment. Many of the staff began their conservation careers when the field was just beginning to be recognised for its importance as a means to scientifically preserve elements of our heritage. regardless of what led them down the conservation path, it was evident that they shared a love for preserving our mutual maritime history and were devoted to prolonging the life of each artefact they cared for. The bill Lane Fellowship allowed me the honour of working with, learning from, and sharing this commitment with these talented and dedicated people. My route to the fellowship was similarly meandering. I gained a bachelor of arts from Wittenberg university, Ohio, in 2004, majoring in business and world culture. I soon realised I wanted to change course,
The conservation of maritime artefacts varies by material, and includes highly involved treatments that can take years
and enrolled for a master of science in historic preservation at eastern Michigan university. As part of this program, I interned with Central park Conservancy in New york city and was able to work on 51 of the park’s monuments, mainly bronze sculptures. My interest in metals and monuments was confirmed at this point, and after graduating in 2008, I began work with The steamship Historical society of America. There I helped to manage part-time staff and interns, which made me realise that their hands-on role in maritime preservation was what called to me the most. I began taking courses at belmont College, Ohio, and as a part of a program that teaches the advanced science of materials, I applied for the bill Lane Fellowship and directed my interest and research towards the field of maritime conservation.
A major aspect of maritime conservation is, of course, the stabilisation and preservation of objects that have spent many years immersed in seawater. The museum, along with its sponsor the silentworld Foundation, supports archaeological expeditions in an effort to locate historical shipwrecks, which have featured regularly in Signals. Once located,
timber and fastening samples may be taken for analysis to determine the species of wood used and the age and approximate origin of the vessels. All recovered artefacts undergo a lengthy desalination treatment that stabilises them by gradually releasing the harmful chlorides that have contributed to the deterioration of the objects while submerged. periodically analysing the data provided from chloride readings can help the process, and that was part of my job while I was at the museum. As well, I travelled to the Western Australian Museum to meet with conservators who have become leaders in the field of maritime conservation, and to Heritage Victoria and Melbourne university to help collect and spread information on conservation techniques.
I found the fellowship a challenge, though my challenges were minimal compared with those that conservators face daily. There are many artefacts and too few conservators, and selecting which artefacts require immediate attention based on their importance, condition and scheduled exhibition can be difficult. The conservation of maritime artefacts varies by material, and includes lengthy, complex treatments that can take years depending on the condition
01 Curator Nigel Erskine and the gudgeon (part of the rudder assembly) from Cato a British ship that was built in 1799, wrecked 450 kilometres off the coast of Queensland in August in 1803 and rediscovered in 1965. The round hole takes the pintle, on which the rudder moves. Photograph Xanthe Rivett
02 The gudgeon on display in the museum’s exhibition East of India in a glass tank of sodium sesquicarbonate desalination solution. Photograph Rebecca Dallwitz/ANMM
and size of the artefact. storing these items for prolonged periods presents yet another challenge to the institution and conservator.
After working with the conservation staff at the museum, I wanted to devote an article to their dedicated behind-the-scenes efforts in preserving maritime artefacts. The fellowship has been an educational opportunity of a lifetime and has enabled me to learn and share new conservation techniques. Opportunities like these help to promote camaraderie among countries, spread information, and develop conservation science and research. I have great admiration for all conservators who work daily to uncover the past and preserve it for future generations, and would like to thank the museum for this chance to help contribute to the maritime heritage of our two countries.
The Silentworld Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation supported by Silentworld Shipping and Logistics. It is dedicated to the development of maritime archaeology and specifically the search for lost shipwrecks, together with philanthropic support of charitable projects in the South Pacific.
THE CONSERVATION of the HMS Sirius anchor is a prime example of the tasks that conservators face. Sirius was the flagship of the First Fleet, which brought the original European settlers to Sydney Cove in 1788. Two years later, the precious ship – one of only two serving the Sydney colony – was disastrously wrecked on a reef just off Norfolk Island, 1,675 kilometres from Sydney. Various artefacts were recovered over the years, but an extensive investigation of the site was not conducted until 1987. Most of the Sirius artefacts are housed in the Norfolk Island Museum, but one of the ship’s anchors is on loan to the ANMM, and is prominently displayed.
After months of monitoring and testing the Sirius anchor, I realised that this massive iron object needed treatment. The previous sealant, used to protect the anchor from atmospheric moisture and to control corrosion, had begun to fail. I researched various treatment options, taking into consideration the size and location of the anchor. Moving such a large object is difficult and expensive, and may cause damage.
We decided that it was most appropriate and cost-effective to treat the anchor in situ. This also enabled visitors to see the conservation in progress, and to find out more about it.
The conservation department at the Australian National Maritime Museum is one of the smallest such departments in a museum in Australia. We have four specialist conservators augmented from time to time by non-ongoing staff working on specific projects. As such, there are some necessary limits on what we are able to achieve, even with the invaluable assistance of volunteers.
To complete a project such as the Sirius anchor, the whole conservation department needed to work together and be prepared to get really dirty. I couldn’t have conserved a 1.3 tonne anchor by myself. To the great credit of my colleagues and some trusty volunteers, everyone stood shoulder to shoulder with me throughout the project – even though it was very tiring, and you couldn’t help but get bits of corrosion and coating in your hair.
Not only were my immediate colleagues extremely supportive, but staff from all around the museum came to lend a hand on the project. Curators, registrars, a shipwright and a librarian all put on lab coats, safety glasses and nitrile gloves, picked up a scalpel and got involved. We removed the old anti-corrosive coating from the intricate surfaces of the anchor, then removed the underlying corrosion, before painting the anchor with tannic acid and applying a new clear anti-corrosive coating. Conservation work is never really complete though, and we will continue to monitor the anchor while it remains on loan to ANMM from Norfolk Island Museum.
Rebecca Dallwitz, objects conservator
Sentimental keepsake, good-luck charm, protest banner, even a passport to a new life – handkerchiefs aren’t just utilitarian. Curator Kim Tao explores tales of loss, war and migration represented in these seemingly insignificant pieces of cloth.
02
TH e H u M bL e HANDK erCHI eF, useful to wipe away tears and wave goodbye, could be one of the most evocative symbols of migration and travel by sea. The sight of a sea of handkerchiefs fluttering in the breeze as a migrant liner, troop carrier or cruise ship pulls away from the wharf is both iconic and unforgettable.
The Australian National Maritime Museum holds a diverse collection of handkerchiefs, ranging from a late-19th-century example issued as part of a sailor’s kit, to our most recent acquisition, a traditional Hazara handkerchief carried by a young Afghan refugee when he escaped to Australia in 2009. Although modest, practical and unassuming, to me these handkerchiefs are among the most emotive and intensely personal objects in the museum’s collection. each one was cherished by its owner before it arrived at the museum and each one has a story to tell, of sadness and joy, loss and hope, love and war.
It’s not surprising that the handkerchief has been invested with so many different meanings nor that it evokes so many different emotions. It has a fascinating history. The handkerchief has been both functional and fashionable, a signifier of status and class. In the Middle Ages a knight would wear a lady’s handkerchief during a tournament as a sign of her favour. In William shakespeare’s Othello, the handkerchief was a token of love and fidelity, as well as the source of a misunderstanding that ended in tragedy. Handkerchiefs were once so valued that they were included in dowries and wills, which explains why many british convicts transported to the Australian colonies had been convicted of handkerchief theft. Today heirloom handkerchiefs, often lovingly handmade or passed down through generations, are still carried by brides as the ‘something old’ in their wedding ensembles.
Valerie Lederer (née Herman) carried a delicate lace handkerchief when she married Arthur Lederer in Austria in the early 1920s. Arthur was a talented Viennese tailor who made gala uniforms for european royalty and high society. On the eve of Adolf Hitler’s march into Vienna in March 1938, Arthur was working on Archduke Otto of Austria’s coronation robes, believing that the exiled monarch would return.
In November 1938, Arthur, Valerie and their 16-year-old son Walter were forced to flee the escalating Jewish persecution
in Nazi-occupied Austria. They escaped just before Kristallnacht – the night when the Nazis targeted, arrested and murdered Jews across Germany and parts of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The Lederers migrated to sydney on ss Orama in June 1939 with the assistance of Lady Max Muller, wife of the british ambassador to spain, who helped them through the Quaker relief organisation Germany emergency Committee.
Walter remembered that in Australia his mother ‘always carried the lace handkerchief in her purse’. For Valerie her wedding handkerchief had become her good-luck charm as well as a poignant memento of a prewar life she had to leave behind.
Handkerchiefs were once so valued that they were included in dowries and wills
Like Valerie Lederer, 29-year-old law graduate Otto strauss fled Nazi europe before the outbreak of World War 2. He arrived in Melbourne on ss Ascanius in October 1938 with his family’s most treasured possessions – an exquisite collection of more than 50 lace and silk handkerchiefs and textiles embodying their former life and livelihood in Krefeld, Germany’s ‘city of velvet and silk’.
It was Otto’s association with the German textile industry that guaranteed his entry into Australia. unable to practise law when Hitler came into power, Otto trained at a textile school in Krefeld, near the Netherlands border, and found work in the silk trade. He obtained an entry permit for Australia as a weaver and was later able to bring his mother roesle Kahn, sister Karola and brother Franz to join him in Melbourne. Many of the handkerchiefs in the strauss collection feature the monograms ‘r K’ and ‘K s’ for Otto’s mother and sister. Wonderful examples of lacemaking and embroidery, they were the strauss family’s passport to a new life in Australia, and were acquired by the museum in 2009 to encapsulate the experiences of displaced persons.
The symbolic connection between handkerchiefs and the displaced was evoked by sydney artists Anne Zahalka and sue saxon in their 2003 work Displaced Persons, which used 20 crisp cotton handkerchiefs
as an artistic canvas for exploring the shared history of their families’ migration from europe after World War 2.
Anne Zahalka’s mother, Hedy, had fled Austria in 1936 to escape Nazism. Later she and Anne’s father, Vaclav, escaped Czechoslovakia after the Communists seized power in 1950. sue saxon’s father, bandy szasz, survived the German occupation of Hungary during the war using false papers. His family’s vineyards were confiscated by the Germans and then the Communists. Displaced from their homelands, both families migrated separately to Australia in 1950 on ss Surriento
In Displaced Persons Anne and sue juxtapose photographs and documents from their family albums to locate their personal experiences within a broader narrative of 20th-century migration. In Identity/Displaced, a mosaic of Vaclav and Hedy Zahalka’s papers and medical certificates examines the theme of identity displacement, as enormous numbers of refugees were processed and resettled in the chaotic aftermath of war.
Antipodes/Exile, showing Surriento on its 32-day voyage ‘through monsoons and stifling heat’, is printed with the anecdote:
They sailed into Sydney Harbour and berthed at Woolloomooloo. ‘What kind of Australian word is this?’ they cried, and, in a variety of ways they attempted to pronounce this strange new word.
The work hints at the vast physical, cultural and emotional distance traversed by so many migrants who travelled from europe to the Antipodes. Indeed bandy szasz regarded Australia as representing ‘the greatest distance between a bloodsoaked europe and a new future’.
One of the most intriguing handkerchiefs in the museum’s collection, recalling shipboard diversions on this long sea voyage to Australia, is a calico one decorated by four passengers on the p&O liner ss Strathallan in 1939. The handkerchief features a series of drawings in green ink by e Jones, M Lines, H Carter and e smith, including a particularly well-executed set of caricatures of Hitler, popeye and possibly Winston Churchill and Joseph stalin, attributed to e smith.
The passenger list for this voyage, departing London on 9 June 1939, shows two passengers by that name:
01 Bandy Szasz and sister Zsuzsi in Hungary, before making their way to Australia, 1948. Reproduced courtesy Sue Saxon
02 Valerie and Arthur Lederer in Austria, c1915. Reproduced courtesy Jean Lederer
03 Migrants on Castel Verde depart Trieste, Italy, for Australia, 1954. ANMM Collection. Gift from Barbara Alysen
04 Japanese prisoners from whom Peter Horne acquired two souvenir handkerchiefs in exchange for cigarettes, 1946. Reproduced courtesy Peter Horne
Throughout history the handkerchief has been both functional and fashionable, a signifier of status and class
Each handkerchief has a story to tell, of sadness and joy, loss and hope, love and war
01 Handmade bobbin lace handkerchief with ‘RK’ monogram for Roesle Kahn, early 1900s. ANMM Collection
02 Handkerchief decorated by Strathallan passengers between Aden and Bombay, 1939. ANMM Collection. Gift from Lud Krastins
03 Handkerchief made by Japanese prisoner of war at Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 1946. ANMM Collection.
Gift from Peter Horne
04 Handkerchief painted with East Timor independence slogan, 1990s. ANMM Collection. Gift from Nancy de Almeida
ethel Dixon- smith, 33, travelling to Karachi, and eric smith, eight, travelling with his family to Colombo. The caricatures appear to be too advanced for an eight-year-old, and a portrait of a woman on the left-hand side of the handkerchief, labelled ‘e smith’ by ‘eJ’, seems to confirm they were drawn by ethel Dixon- smith.
The passenger list shows that the other three passengers were migrating to sydney: 25-year-old cook ellen Jones, 22-year-old domestic Marna Lines, and 19-year-old landscape gardener Harry Carter. ellen, Marna and Harry’s drawings, which include various portraits and two intertwined hearts inscribed ‘ML’ and ‘HC’, provide a charming personal insight into their lives while also alluding to the wider political climate at the time.
The references to Hitler and patriotic remarks such as ‘british is best’ reflect growing tensions in europe and capture a moment in time as the passengers headed to new lives in Australia prior to the outbreak of war. shortly after this voyage Strathallan was requisitioned as a troopship, and in 1942 it was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of north Africa. The decorated handkerchief takes on even greater significance as a touching souvenir of one of Strathallan’s final passenger voyages.
Two other war-related souvenir handkerchiefs in our collection – albeit made under very different circumstances
– were acquired by able seaman peter Horne in 1946 when he served on HMA s Cowra during postwar mine clearance operations in New britain, papua New Guinea. These handkerchiefs, among my favourite objects in the museum’s collection, were produced by Japanese prisoners of war interned at r abaul, the main Japanese military base in the south pacific until it was neutralised by the Allies in 1944. One of the handkerchiefs, probably made from remnant parachute silk, features an embroidered representation of the r abaul volcano, while the other features an enchanting ink drawing of a Japanese lady in a domestic garden setting. peter acquired them from a working party of Japanese prisoners who would come on board Cowra to clean its boilers and trade their works for cigarettes. The handkerchiefs illustrate the fine artistic and handiwork abilities of the Japanese men and provide a fascinating insight into exchange relationships between servicemen and prisoners of war in operational areas. They also speak volumes about war and making do, the home front and the sailor’s longing for the comforts of home. The theme of home and connection to homeland is manifested in a number of handkerchiefs in our collection, including a 1990s calico handkerchief painted with the words ‘east Timor freedom’ and used as a prop in the traditional
makikit (eagle) dance. The dance – designed to emulate the soaring movements of the eagle – was a symbolic expression of power and freedom performed by east Timorese refugees at cultural and political events throughout the long years of struggle for independence from Indonesia.
The sentimental nature of this handkerchief suggests it must have meant much more to its owner than simply an accessory for taking snuff
The handkerchief was donated by Nancy de Almeida, who fled the civil war in August 1975 and arrived in Darwin on the cargo ship Macdili. For Nancy, and for many of the refugees who arrived in this first wave, east Timor’s liberation was a high priority and cultural traditions such as dance and music played an important role in their independence campaign. believing there is ‘no use having culture without being part of the struggle’, Nancy decided to paint handkerchiefs with pro-independence slogans and use them in makikit performances by the sydney-based east Timorese Cultural Centre. In this context
the handkerchief, an emblem of cultural identity, was appropriated by the east Timorese diaspora as a political statement in support of freedom in their homeland. Another compelling symbol of freedom is an embroidered cotton handkerchief carried by 16-year-old Afghan refugee Hedayat Osyan when he escaped persecution by the Taliban in 2009. The handkerchief, a handmade gift from his younger sister, was a source of comfort and familiarity during his difficult journey to Australia via Malaysia and Indonesia, which ended with a rescue at sea by the royal Australian Navy and transfer to Christmas Island. Hedayat’s story was published in detail in Signals No 102 (March 2013). He says:
The journey was a hundred per cent dangerous, there’s no hope, how I get to Australia. Hundreds of people were losing their life, sinking their boats between Malaysia and Indonesia, so there’s certain danger for people who came. But we didn’t have any option; if we stayed in Afghanistan then the Taliban would kill us. So we had to put our life at risk, if we get [to Australia] we will find a better future.
Hedayat was granted a permanent visa and resettled in sydney in 2010. He donated his handkerchief to the museum lin 2012, and for me it resonates as one of the most powerful objects in our collection.
It represents tangible links to family and home but it also reminds us why the handkerchief has meant so many things to so many people – it is a portable personal effect that has accompanied people through war and upheaval, separation and displacement, sad farewells and hopeful new beginnings. Hedayat’s handkerchief, along with others in the museum collection, reveals just some of the incredible meanings, symbols and stories that have been embedded in this modest piece of cloth throughout history.
One of the stories yet to be revealed is that of a little white handkerchief embroidered with a single red ‘x’ or kiss. It was stored in a sterling silver snuff box from the Orient liner ss Ormonde and made its way to the museum several years ago through an anonymous donation. The sentimental nature of this handkerchief suggests it must have meant much more to its owner than simply an accessory for taking snuff (ground tobacco). Who embroidered the tiny red kiss on the handkerchief? Did it belong to one of the thousands of assisted migrants who left britain on Ormonde after World War 2? Hopefully its story will one day be uncovered, adding to our rich tapestry of stories woven in the threads of the humble handkerchief.
01 The Ormonde snuff box and the mysterious hanky embroidered with a red X, or kiss, that it contained. ANMM Collection
02 Hand-embroidered silk handkerchief made by a Japanese prisoner of war at Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea, 1946. ANMM Collection. Gift from Peter Horne
03 Hedayat Osyan with his sister’s embroidered handkerchief, 2012. Photographer Andrew Frolows/ANMM
01 Freya during the 1965 Admiral’s Cup series in the United Kingdom. All photographs courtesy of the Halvorsen family
02 The author aged 12 on Freya in Sydney Harbour. Freya was designed as a family cruising yacht, with all the creature comforts – but she was also designed to win.
As we commemorate 30 years since Australia’s historic win in the America’s Cup, we spare a thought for another important yachting milestone reached in 2013. Randi Svensen looks at the still-unequalled record set half a century ago by her uncles Magnus and Trygve Halvorsen of the famous Norwegian–Australian boatbuilding dynasty.
ON 26 DeCe M ber 1963, M AGN us AND Trygve Halvorsen set sail in Freya, a yacht that was to set a record no one thought possible: three successive wins on handicap in the sydney to Hobart race – a race known for its varying weather conditions, such that one design was never considered capable of triumphing over them all.
Freya represented the culmination of everything Trygve had learned about yacht design in his 20 years in the business. Her hull evolved from previous designs, with emphasis placed on strength and fitness for rough-water sailing. In keeping with the increased creature comforts in each successive Halvorsen yacht – and in stark contrast to most of today’s racing yachts
– Freya had bunks seven feet (2.15 metres) long and plush carpet on the floor!
Construction had begun before Magnus and Trygve went to the united states for the 1962 America’s Cup challenge, and was supervised by the late Trevor Gowland at Halvorsen’s ryde yard. Thirty-eight feet nine inches long (11.8 metres), with a beam
of 11 feet (3.35 metres), Freya was planked in Douglas fir (oregon) with glued-spline seams. Her framing was glued laminations of Queensland maple, her brightwork was teak and her deck was fibreglassed plywood. Her mast was aluminium, stepped on the coach-house over a bulkhead system. Her rudder was timber and plywood, tapering to a feather-edge.
As Magnus recalls:
Her long deadwood gave her the underwater body of a contemporary 50–55 footer [15–17 metre boat]. She had that feeling of a much bigger boat at sea. With her large vertical rudder there was perfect control. She responded to the helm at all times. Never did she broach to! She carried a shy spinnaker longer than any competing yacht. Indeed, a spinnaker could be carried until it was aback, without rounding up. Freya could also carry full sail to windward in 30 knots of wind.
Freya ’s debut was eagerly anticipated in yachting circles … but no one could have predicted just how successful she would be.
With a complement of seven – consisting of Magnus and Trygve as joint skippers, stan Darling as navigator, and crew Keith brown, barry Gowland, Trevor Gowland and stan Macr ae – the race started with a dream run down the New south Wales coast. by the time the competitors were near storm bay, at the entrance of the Derwent r iver in Tasmania, however, the weather took a turn for the worse, with huge seas and high winds – weather Freya was designed not only to withstand but to relish. After demonstrating her seaworthiness and suitability for the rigours of the demanding ocean race, Freya proved the pundits right and won on handicap with a corrected time of three days, six hours, three minutes and 17 seconds.
The following year saw Freya ’s reputation enhanced when she took her second Hobart, having led the field for much of the run down the coast of New south Wales. Freya also won the Cruising yacht Club of Australia’s ocean-racing point score for the 1964–65 season. And, for the 1965 Admiral’s Cup series in the u K, Trygve and
01 At sea in 1963, sailing very tidily to windward under mainsail and number 2 genoa.
02 (back, from left) Reg Brightwell, Trevor Gowland and Keith Brown; (front, from left) Don Browning, Trygve Halvorsen, Magnus Halvorsen and Stan Darling aboard Freya in 1964.
Magnus in Freya joined the crews of Caprice of Huon and Camille in Australia’s team, which gained an admirable second placing.
Freya ’s third – and record-setting – sydney to Hobart race started on 26 December 1965, attracting a huge amount of attention. As it was the 21st sailing of the race, this Hobart lured a number of top overseas contenders, including the south African maxi-yacht Stormvogel, considered by some to be the fastest ocean-racing yacht in the world. Freya ’s third Hobart was closely scrutinised by the yachting fraternity, and also inspired the imagination of the general public. With my uncles having won the Hobart four times in my own short life, I naively assumed they would win this time, too. I had no idea just how great an achievement it was to be the winner in a field comprising the cream of Australian and international yachtsmen. I had supreme confidence in my uncles’ ability. I knew they would win.
While the promise of the 1965 Hobart was exciting, the weather didn’t follow suit, with light conditions for the entire race – not Freya ’s preferred weather. The Halvorsen brothers took an unexpected decision and sailed Freya further out to sea in search
of wind. by the time they had tacked back inshore, they were leading Stormvogel by two nautical miles. Stormvogel regained the lead, but Freya crossed the line with a corrected time of three days, 10 hours, three minutes and 26 seconds to become the first yacht ever to win the Hobart handicap ‘hat trick’ – and still the only one to have done so in consecutive years.
Freya’s debut was eagerly anticipated in yachting circles, but no one could have predicted just how successful she would be
With Freya ’s record now unlikely to be surpassed, Trygve decided to give up competitive sailing as an owner–skipper. While he crewed on five Hobarts between 1968 and 1974, as well as in the Onion patch series (New york to bermuda) in 1972 in Apollo, Trygve wanted to spend more
time with his family. Feeling that sailing was no longer the sport he had loved for most of his life – subject, as it now was, to political influences – he retired.
Magnus was still passionate about ocean racing. Deciding to concentrate on his navigation skills, he raced very successfully in a further 11 Hobarts, as well as other ocean races, before finally retiring from competitive racing in 1982 at the age of 64. In 1975, Magnus navigated Kialoa II in her line-honours record-breaking Hobart race – a record that stood for 21 years.
Randi Svensen is the author of Wooden Boats, Iron Men – the Halvorsen Story (Halstead Press and the Australian National Maritime Museum, 2004) and Heroic, Forceful and Fearless: Australia’s Tugboat Heritage (Citrus Press and the Australian National Maritime Museum, 2012). Freya was sold by Trygve and Magnus Halvorsen towards the end of the 1960s, and found a new home in the USA. She changed hands on at least two more occasions, and at one point was unlucky enough to have sunk. She was, however, recovered. In late September of this year the current owner contacted the museum, asking for any information we could provide. He had just acquired Freya in the West Indies, and recognising her Australian heritage he will nominate Freya for the Australian Register of Historic Vessels.
Representing a true departure from the ordinary, an all-inclusive APT Luxury Small Ship cruise offers an unforgettable discovery through Antarctica, coupled with the superior comfort and service for which APT is rightly famous.
A vast and remote wilderness, this frozen continent has attracted the most accomplished adventurers and scientists the world has ever known. Whether it’s cruising through ice-filled channels, observing penguin rookeries or exploring the shores via a fleet of zodiacs, you will always be presented with new and fascinating discoveries during your once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
✓ Cruising on the stylish Sea Explorer, designed especially for Antarctic exploration and with a maximum of just 106 guests
✓ Included – All excursions, sightseeing, tipping, transfers and port charges
✓ Included – Exquisite onboard dining with a touch of the local flavours
✓ Included – Wine, beer and soft drink with lunch and dinner on cruise
✓ Included – Dedicated Expedition team and local guides
✓ Included – All internal flights
FrOM
Join us on another exclusive overseas tour for Members of the Australian National Maritime Museum, exploring maritime themes as well as the distinctive cultures, landscapes and history of one of our nearest Asian neighbours. Tour leader
Jeffrey Mellefont previews next year’s journey to tropical South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
su LAW esI (formerly known as the Celebes) is an exotic island that’s draped like an orchid across the equator, close to the centre of Australia’s sprawling, archipelagic neighbour Indonesia. Its landscape encompasses tropical beaches and coral cays, lush rice fields among dramatic limestone outcrops, forests, lakes and spectacular highlands. Its human landscape is a checkerboard of languages, cultures and religions, from coastal seafarers to the acclaimed Toraja of the mountains, famed for their extraordinary houses, megalithic stoneworks, and ancient rice terraces.
Museum Members and guests will encounter all of these on next year’s escorted tour from 2–15 June 2014. It’s the latest of a series of exclusive itineraries from the Australian National Maritime Museum that have introduced Members to the maritime cultures of our region, while revealing the unique histories and environments of our tropical neighbours. All at the bargain price of $5,490 per person including international airfares, in the early dry season for the best climatic conditions.
The Indonesian archipelago’s 17,000 tropical islands have bred seafaring races that gave rise to ancient trading empires … and many diverse maritime communities that today continue to build and sail wooden boats. The ones that have the closest historic links to Australia are the people we know as Makassans, who built and launched fleets that made annual voyages on the monsoon winds to northern Australia centuries before europeans first arrived. The Makassans worked with Aboriginal people gathering valuable trepang, or beche-de-mer, a delicacy they traded to distant China. They left many traces of their culture – and their descendants – among Indigenous clans.
On this exciting Asian tour you’ll meet the Makassans and other seafarers who
accompanied them from south sulawesi, including the bugis, the Mandar and the sea-Gypsies. you’ll meet them first when we arrive in sulawesi’s southern capital Makassar, which was an important port of the spice trade. portuguese Antonio de paiva described it in 1554 as ‘rich in sandalwood, gold, ivory, seed pearls, iron, slaves. …’ Here rival sultans battled each other and the Dutch, who finally conquered it in 1669. Joseph Conrad, who immortalised this maritime world, called it one of the prettiest towns in the east. Today it’s a dynamic part of modern Indonesia – but its old forts and colonial remnants, its Chinese and Arab quarters with their mosques and temples and crowded bazaars, all recall a turbulent, cosmopolitan history.
In Makassar we see the world’s last great timber trading fleet in the traditional prahu port called paotere. you can shop for textiles, carvings, filigree silver, and antiques including Ming chinaware and legendary kris knives – and learn how these powerful, mystical blades caused this island to be known as the Celebes. And you’ll discover ‘pesisiran’ cuisine, combining fresh seafood and the trade-borne tastes of the archipelago in a variety of harbourside restaurants and night markets. Here too you will learn about the spread of Islam by maritime traders of old, and you will personally experience its famous hospitality towards strangers. you will in all probability return with a different picture of this important religion. After Makassar our journey takes us up the coast along the Wallace Line, which divides the natural worlds of Asia and Australasia. Here we’re in the very footsteps of the famous naturalist Alfred russell Wallace, visiting beautiful waterfalls where he declared he’d ‘enjoyed some of the most pleasurable moments of my life’. We meet the maritime Mandar people who still race
their big, elegant, white outrigger fishing boats called sandeq. Climbing into highland valleys of clove plantations and rice terraces we reach mountainous Torajaland, where spectacular houses evoke the ships that brought ancestors to sulawesi. Here we visit mysterious megaliths of unknown age and solemn grottos of the dead, where an ancient religion, Alok To Dolo, survives alongside the Christianity of Dutch missionaries.
Descending to the bay of boné we’re in the old bugis kingdoms of Luwu, Wajo and boné. It’s a land of pagoda-shaped mosques and stilt-houses with horned rooflines. At singkang we ride dugout longboats to the floating villages of Lake Tempe. Down at the very southern tip of sulawesi we’re at home with those master boatbuilders, the Konjo Makassans. This is the palm-fringed tropics at its best, where hand-crafted prahus take shape on white-sand beaches.
‘Celebes sailors, ships & spice’ has been created exclusively by the Australian National Maritime Museum, and cannot be found on any other itineraries. Travel arrangements and bookings are managed by adventure and cultural travel specialist World e xpeditions.
Tour runs from Mon 2 to Sun 15 June 2014. Price $5490 including airfares and twin-share. Detailed itinerary, inclusions and booking details are at www.anmm.gov.au/celebestour.
Tour leader Jeffrey Mellefont, recently retired as editor and publisher of Signals, has travelled extensively in Indonesia since 1975. Formerly a mariner and navigator, maritime writer and photographer, Jeffrey has researched and written about Indonesian maritime traditions for the museum, and published in both academic and popular journals. His knowledge, fluency in the language and personal contacts open doors and provide opportunities to meet local people and experience their culture.
Developed for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s 2014 program to increase understanding of Indonesia
01 A Makassan mother and child greet us from their traditional seaside village at the southernmost tip of Sulawesi. Photographs by Jeffrey Mellefont
02 The spectacular architecture of the mountain Toraja people evokes the ships that bore their ancestors to these islands.
03 A Bugis pinisi, part of the world’s largest surviving fleet of traditional timber ships, with a fast fish carrier at Paotere, the prahu port of Makassar.
Summer is here, and with Christmas and the festive season fast approaching we hope that this year has been involving, enjoyable and sociable for all our valued old and new members.
W e LOOK FOrWA r D TO CeL ebr ATING with you at our special December festive activities – there’s something for everyone, we hope! It has been both fun and a challenge to put together a variety of events and to run diverse activities for your enjoyment. As you know I value your input, suggestions and feedback, and I have tried to ensure plenty of on-the-water activities, as you’ve requested.
We’ve seen a terrific response from families this year, with more than 50 per cent of our memberships now in that category. If you are a new member attending an event, please introduce yourself so that we can make you feel welcome.
The museum’s big Viking summer holiday program has lots of free activities for Members, including an exciting new Viking physical theatre show called The truth about Vikings, Viking Kids Deck, and an all-new, Viking-themed Wetworld with two special evening sessions just for Members. see the following pages for more details.
As usual we will celebrate sydney’s most spectacular harbour events this summer. On boxing Day we’ve scheduled a cruise to farewell the sydney to Hobart fleet, and catch the most exciting moments of this yachting tradition. On Australia Day we’re offering an exclusive Members cruise on our Endeavour replica, for a very special day of maritime activities in Campbells Cove and on the harbour. places will be limited, so book early.
This year’s stand-out Members event was the International Fleet review. More than 1,200 Members took to the water for this week-long naval celebration. Many others have visited our Members Lounge to enjoy the exclusive Australian society of Marine
Artists exhibition that commemorates the event. We also extend a very warm welcome to the 70 new members who joined us during the Fleet review.
some of our new events have become calendar fixtures, such as the popular Meet the Neighbours program and the nowannual Krait lecture that commemorates the anniversary of Operation Jaywick’s daring and successful raid on singapore Harbour in 1943. Our Members book group, too, is proving to be a stayer after the recent outstanding evening spent discussing peter Corris’s thriller The Dunbar Case. As usual we have included some images of recent event highlights on these pages, with thanks to those who kindly snapped them for us. Again, thank you to everyone who has given me some terrific ideas for excursions and events. One that we will try this quarter is to join the riverboat postman on his Hawkesbury r iver deliveries. There are many more adventures planned for 2014, so if you are looking for a special Christmas gift for friends or family, why not buy them a museum membership to enjoy all year? Call us and we will send a gift card for you. please note that the Members’ office will be closed from Monday 23 December to Thursday 2 January 2014. Of course the museum will be open every day except Christmas Day, and don’t forget that we extend our opening hours until 6 pm for the month of January, to help you make the most of daylight saving and the summer holiday months.
Thank you for your continued support throughout the year and the positive feedback you’ve given us about the museum’s events. We hope to see you at the museum over the summer months. And when you’re here, drop in to your Members Lounge for complimentary tea, coffee and cold drinks. The lounge is open from 10 am to 4 pm daily.
On behalf of the Members’ team and our wonderful volunteer hosts in the Members lounge, I wish you a safe and happy festive season and new year.
Diane Osmond, Members and special projects advisor
01 Lady Hopetoun, now owned by the Sydney Heritage Fleet, was part of the ceremonial fleet review in October. She also participated in the original entry into the harbour 100 years ago. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
02 The Maple-Brown family aboard their jauntily dressed yacht Kelpie welcome the tall ships to Sydney for the International Fleet Review. Photograph K Tao/ANMM
03 ANMM Members the Maple-Brown family, winners of both ‘best-dressed’ categories – owners and yacht – for the RAN Naval Review, as voted by the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club. Photograph courtesy Merrin Maple-Brown
04 A special Members’ tour on HMB Endeavour cruised to Sydney Heads to farewell the tall ships on their race to New Zealand. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
05 Former Signals editor Jeffrey Mellefont, maritime archaeology manager Kieran Hosty and author Peter Corris at the recent Members book group. Photograph D Osmond/ANMM
06 Members exploring Goat Island. Photograph A Frolows/ANMM
Meet the neighbours
Visit to ballast Point Park
Wednesday 4 December
Explore Sydney’s newest and most spectacular harbourside park
Lecture
Ships that changed the world
2–4 pm Sunday 8 December
Learn about the Vikings’ maritime feats, ship technology and advanced seamanship skills
Festive fun
Family Viking Christmas party
11 am–2 pm Saturday 14 December
A pre-Christmas Viking family day especially for Members
Members’ preview
USA Gallery – new exhibitions
5.30–7.30 pm Wednesday 18 December
A look at the shared history of Australia and the USA in World War 2
On the water
Sydney to hobart start cruise
11.30 am–2 pm Thursday 26 December
Follow the race fleet to Sydney Heads
Members family theatre program
The truth about Vikings
10.30 am, 12.30 pm and 2.30 pm
Daily (except Mondays) 3–24 January
An interactive circus comedy show for the whole family, about Viking life
Family fun Sundays
Viking invasion
10 am–4 pm Sunday 19 January
A family fun extravaganza presented by Viking re-enactors
Archaeology lecture
Egypt’s oldest boats
6–8 pm Wednesday 22 January
Dr Yann Tristant talks about his team’s recent major discovery
Free art exhibition
Art of Sydney
9.30 am–5 pm 24–27 January
More than 300 paintings from 14 art societies around Sydney
Hawkesbury day cruise
The riverboat postman
Wednesday 5 February
A cruise on the Hawkesbury River with the riverboat postman
Author talk
The Reef – A passionate history
2–4 pm Sunday 2 February
Professor Ian McCalman discusses his new book about the Great Barrier Reef
Love and war
Valentine’s Day lunch
11.30 am–2 pm Friday 14 February
Lunch, entertainment and a talk, American WW2 style
Author talk
Spices, gunpowder and opium:
East Indies with Ian burnet
2–4 pm Sunday 16 February
The story of the 200-year struggle for trade supremacy in the eastern seas
bookings and enquiries
Booking form on reverse of mailing address sheet. Please note that booking is essential: online at anmm.gov.au/membersevents or phone (02) 9298 3646 (unless otherwise indicated) or email members@anmm.gov.au before sending form with payment. All details are correct at time of publication but subject to change.
A day on the water
Australia Day aboard hMb Endeavour
9 am–2.30 pm Sunday 26 January
Enjoy the spectacle and take part in the tall ships race
Curator lecture and tour
Myth and religion of the Viking world
6–8 pm Thursday 30 January
Viking mythology, tradition and worship, plus a curator-led tour of our exhibition
Cruise forum
The forts of Sydney harbour
10 am–3 pm Wednesday 19 February
Tour the fortifications of Fort Denison and Middle Head
Members book group
Carsten Jensen: We the drowned
4–6 pm Sunday 23 February 2014
An instant classic of the sea? Debate its merits with fellow Members
Talk Mercy Ships
Saturday 1 March
Hear about the inspiring work of medical charity Mercy Ships
01 Ballast Point Park.
02 US Army Captain Sheridan Fahnestock outside Gili Gili Headquarters in New Guinea. Photograph Ladislaw Reday Photographic Collection, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
03 Members enjoy the Sydney to Hobart race start. Photograph J Mellefont
Meet the neighbours
Visit to ballast Point Park
Wednesday 4 December
Explore Sydney’s newest and most spectacular harbourside park – Ballast Point Park, on the site of the old Caltex site in Balmain, with our guide, Roger Parkes. Members can either drive or take a ferry from the museum to meet at the Thames Street wharf at 11 am. Bring a picnic lunch in the park or a pub lunch is available at the nearby William Wallace Hotel. Wear comfortable walking shoes and explore this many-layered site that was rescued from development by a group of visionary residents.
Meet at the museum 9.30 am.
Members $5 Guests $7.50
Lecture
The ships that changed the world: Dr Eric Acheson
2–4 pm Sunday 8 December
The ship technology perfected by the Vikings, and their advanced seafaring skills, allowed them to achieve unprecedented levels of trade, settlement and exploration. Join Dr Eric Acheson from the University of New England as he explores their maritime feats. Afterwards board our replica Viking longship for a unique living-history experience, or visit our Vikings exhibition to see the Krampmacken, a reconstruction of a Viking-Age river vessel.
Members $20 Guests $25. Includes refreshments. Bookings essential
Festive fun
Family Viking Christmas party
11 am–2 pm Saturday 14 December
Join us for a pre-Christmas Viking family day especially for Members. Enjoy entertainment, activities and games, plus Christmas shopping in The Store, with 20% discount on the day and a special gift for all children. Feast on Viking fare of raider hotdogs, glacial snow cones and plunderers’ popcorn. There will be a cash bar and mulled wine for big Vikings, and complimentary Viking surprise drinks for little Vikings. Come along in Viking costume to win a prize for the best-dressed family or boy and girl.
Member families $25 Guest families $50. Bookings essential
Exhibition opening and preview New exhibitions in the USA Gallery
5.30–7.30 pm Wednesday 18 December
Our two new exhibitions look at the shared history of Australia and the USA in World War 2. Persuasion – US propaganda posters from WW2 evokes America at war on the battlefront and at home. Mission X – the ragtag fleet tells the story of 3,000 Australian vessels requisitioned by the US Army Small Ships Section. Check out the exhibitions, view a propaganda film, join in the swing dancing and enjoy American beverages and fast food. Dress to suit the era!
Members $20 Guests $30. Includes refreshments. Bookings essential
On the water
Sydney to hobart race-start cruise
11.30 am–2 pm Thursday 26 December Board our fast ferry and follow the Sydney to Hobart fleet to Sydney Heads. Enjoy the spectacle, and also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first of three consecutive wins for the Halvorsen yacht Freya in a time yet to be bettered by a yacht of her class (see article on page 36). Bring a picnic of Christmas leftovers or try the Aussie BBQ on board. Includes commentary, complimentary sparkling wine on boarding, sausage sizzle, tea and coffee.
Members $80 Guests $95. Includes refreshments
Members family theatre program
10.30 am, 12.30 pm and 2.30 pm daily (except Mondays) 3–24 January
This interactive circus comedy show for the whole family explores the myths, legends and realities of Viking life. Did they really drink from skulls, carry fire and sail ships with wings? Join Sven, Bjorn and Astrid as they sail the high seas to England. Will they scare the tights off English king Ethelred the Unready, or will they be defeated in the greatest battle ever?
Free for members. Included in Big Ticket. No bookings required
Special after-hours event
Viking Wetworld
5–7 pm 10 and 17 January
Exclusively for Members! Bring the family along for an after-hours Viking World experience, and cool off in our water adventure playground. Big kids can battle it out through a maze of Viking forts with shields and water pistols, while the littlies can immerse themselves in interactive water play and toy boat racing. Drinks and snacks will be available for purchase.
Free for Members. Bookings advised
Archaeology lecture Egypt’s oldest boats
6–8 pm Wednesday 22 January
A clue in a century-old archaeological report led Egyptologist Yann Tristant of Macquarie University and his team to excavate in the elite cemetery of Abu Rawash. They found the remains of several boats dating back about 5,000 years – the oldest ever found in Egypt. Hear Dr Tristant talk about this fascinating discovery and the conservation efforts being undertaken to preserve the vessels.
Members $20 Guests $25. Includes wine and refreshments. Bookings essential
01 Viking fun for summer. A Frolows/ANMM
02 The remains of an ancient Egyptian funerary boat. © Abu Rawash Expedition, IFAO
03 Australia Day action. A Frolows/ANMM
A day on the water
9 am–2.30 pm Sunday 26 January
An early start lets us join the fun and games with the other tall ships at Campbells Cove, before we head into the harbour to absorb the colour and spectacle of the annual Australia Day parade. Watch the famous Ferrython aboard our very own Endeavour, and then enjoy the thrill of being in the tall ships race – the most hotly contested race of the day! After the race Endeavour will lead the tall ships back to the museum.
Members $220 Guests $250. Early bird bookings in December only $200. Includes music, entertainment, morning tea and lunch. Bookings essential
Family fun Sundays
Viking invasion
10 am–4 pm Sunday 19 January
Join in a Viking-themed family fun extravaganza presented by Viking reenactors. Play like a Viking with traditional game tournaments, fight like a Viking in interactive displays of battle tactics and armour, trade like a Viking in the market stalls and craft like a Viking with artisan demonstrations and workshops.
Included in museum admission. Free for Members
Free art exhibition
Art of Sydney
9.30 am–5 pm 24–27 January
Combined Art Societies of Sydney presents more than 300 paintings from 14 art societies around Sydney in an annual celebration that showcases the diversity of Sydney’s leading local artists, such as Colina Grant, Julie Simmons, John Wilson and Ros Psakis. All works are for sale.
Terrace Room
Curator lecture and tour
Myth and religion of the Viking world
6–8 pm Thursday 30 January
Unravel Viking mythology, tradition and worship with Professor Margaret CluniesRoss in a fascinating after-hours lecture, followed by a guided tour of the exhibition Vikings – Beyond the legend with ANMM curator Dr Stephen Gapps.
Members $32. Includes light refreshments. Bookings essential
04 Riverboat postman. Photograph A Frolows/ ANMM
05 Cover of East Indies by Ian Burnet
06 Fort Denison. Photograph courtesy H Darwell
Hawkesbury day cruise
The riverboat postman
Wednesday 5 February
Cruise the route pioneered in 1910 as we stop at such places such as Dangar and Milson islands, Kangaroo Point, Bar Point, Marlow Creek and Fisherman’s Passage, with commentary provided by the skipper along the way. We depart Brooklyn Public Wharf next to the Brooklyn train station at 10 am (a train connects from Sydney). After the tour, take the chance to explore Brooklyn before returning to Sydney.
Members $50 Guests $55 (train fare not included). Includes homemade morning tea and a delicious ploughman’s lunch. A cash bar operates. Bookings essential
Love and war
Valentine’s Day lunch
11.30 am–2 pm Friday 14 February
Did you know that 190 million Valentine cards were sold in the US last year?
Join us to celebrate this custom in the style of WW 2 America, with themed food, decorations and entertainment. First, enjoy a fascinating talk by our USA Gallery manager Richard Wood on ‘War brides, valentines and propaganda’. Join Richard for a tour of the USA Gallery’s new exhibitions Persuasion and Mission x – the Rag-tag fleet, then lunch in true American style. Valentines surprises included! Bring your sweetheart.
$40 Members $50 Guests. Includes two courses and wine. Cash bar for American beer. Bookings essential
Cruise forum
The forts of Sydney harbour
10 am–3 pm Wednesday 19 February
Delve into the fascinating history of fortifications and defence around Sydney Harbour. We will cruise from the museum to Fort Denison, then continue on to Chowder Bay to see Middle Head’s tunnels, gun pits and infamous ‘tiger cages’, built in response to the Crimean War and used until the mid-20th century. Our guides will be educators from National Parks and ANMM curator Dr Nigel Erskine. Sturdy footwear and moderate fitness level required.
Members/concession $78 Guests $85. Includes morning and afternoon tea. Bookings essential 9264 2781 or weasydney.com.au
Author talk
The Reef: A passionate history by
Iain McCalman2–4 pm Sunday 2 February
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system. It can be seen from outer space, has been selected as a world heritage site and is labelled one of the seven natural wonders of the world, yet few know the social, cultural and environmental history behind it. Professor Iain McCalman talks about his new book, which charts the shifting staus of the Great Barrier Reef from labyrinth of terror to global treasure.
Members $20 Guests $25. Includes wine and refreshments. Bookings essential
Author talk
Spices, gunpowder and opium: East Indies with Ian burnet
2–4 pm Sunday 16 February
A fascinating talk about the spice trade and its little-known associated social and military impacts. Historian and author Ian Burnet documents the 200-year struggle between the Portuguese crown, the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company for trade supremacy in the eastern seas. He discusses the rise of the world’s first joint stock and multinational trading companies and their conversion to huge colonial states ruling over millions of people in Indonesia, India and Malaya.
Members $20 Guests $25. Includes wine and refreshments. Bookings essential
Members book group
Carsten Jensen: We the drowned
4–6 pm Sunday 23 February 2014
Hailed as an instant classic of the sea, this imaginative epic follows generations of a Danish seafaring community around the world, navigating the currents of war and peace, love and jealousy, reality and magic. An extraordinary interlude in colonial Hobart sets the scene for the appearance of the skull of the murdered Captain Cook, as a central symbol of … what? Join former Signals editor Jeffrey Mellefont to debate whether it’s really in the league, as claimed, of the Odyssey or Moby-Dick
Members $5 Guests $10. Includes wine and refreshments. Bookings essential
For your diary
Mercy Ships
Saturday 1 March
An inspiring talk by volunteer surgeon Dr Alan–John Collins of medical charity Mercy Ships, which operates the world’s largest independent hospital ship and has transformed the lives of 2.42 million desperate patients from the developing world over the past 35 years.
For your diary
Phil Renouf Memorial Lecture: Olympic Sailing Australia
6–8 pm Thursday 6 March
A panel of experts – including Victor Kovalenko oam, head coach of Australia’s Olympic sailing team, and gold-medalwinning sailors such as Malcolm Page oam and Mathew Belcher – join us to share their experiences and answer your questions. Come and see their boat Practical Magic at the museum from February.
For more details about events in March, check our website closer to the date.
Exclusive overseas tour Celebes sailors, ships & spice
2–15 June 2014
$5,490 including airfares & twin-share Discover the exotic, orchid-shaped Indonesian island of Sulawesi, where the Wallace Line meets the Equator – formerly the fabled Celebes, home of Bugis pirates and rival sultans who battled the Dutch for the treasures of the Spice Islands. Today its seaport, Makassar, is a dynamic growth centre of modern Indonesia, but its traditional prahu port is still home to the world’s last great timber trading fleet. Its old forts and colonial remnants, Chinese and Arab quarters, pagoda-shaped mosques, temples and crowded bazaars all recall a turbulent, cosmopolitan history – reflected, too, in its famous seafood and cuisine.
This exclusive tour meets Indonesia’s most celebrated boat builders and seafarers, the Makassans, who sailed to Australia before the Europeans, and their neighbours the Bugis, the Mandar and the Sea-Gypsies.
In the footsteps of the great naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, and novelist Joseph Conrad, who called Makassar ‘the prettiest town in the East’, we explore lakes and rivers and reach the acclaimed mountain cultures and spectacular architecture of the Toraja highlands.
Join the Australian National Maritime Museum’s latest tour of the maritime cultures of our region, led once again by former Signals editor Jeffrey Mellefont, to discover southern Sulawesi’s everchanging vista of tropical land and seascapes, cultures and cuisines.
See also pages 40–41.
More information and detailed itinerary at www.anmm.gov.au/celebestour.
Price includes airfares and transport, twin-share accommodation and breakfasts, entry to all specified sites and attractions, and Australian and Indonesian guides. Single supplement and travel insurance extra. Bookings and information from our travel partner World Expeditions (02) 8270 8400, toll-free 1300 720 000 or email info@worldexpeditions.com.au
01 Child patient Josephine,
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15 Days / 13 Guided Tours From $5,795* per person
Imagine 15 magical days along the Rhine, Main and Danube Rivers. From Holland’s windmillstudded fields to Germany’s fairytale castles, from the engineering marvel of the Main-Danube Canal to the picturesque vineyards of Austria’s Wachau Valley, this epic voyage presents the highlights of Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.
For more information call 1800 131 744 or see your travel agent. Visit www.vikingrivercruises.com.au
Persuasion – uS propaganda posters from World War 2
From 19 December
American propaganda posters of the First World War used graphic imagery to illicit raging hatred of the enemy – for example, by depicting Germany as a bloodthirsty half-human, half-ape that devoured women and children.
In 1942 the American public was more sophisticated. It had been exposed to ‘mass media’ advertising, and the frauds of World War 1 atrocity propaganda had created suspicion of heavy-handed methods. American propaganda posters from the Second World War are subtler, and emphasise the importance of saving
time, money and resources. The enemy is evoked as an invisible menace, a threat to the American family and way of life.
The posters in Persuasion run the gamut of propaganda – from the prophetic drowning hand of ‘Someone talked’, to the patriotic ‘Bonds buy ships’ and the simple ‘Become a nurse’ to evoke America at war on the battlefront and at home.
Along with Mission X – the ragtag fleet, Persuasion explores a moment in the shared history of Australia and the USA.
01 Unknown artist 1943, Abbott Laboratories USA Office of War Information USA. ANMM Collection
02 US Army Captain Sheridan Fahnestock outside Gili Gili Headquarters in New Guinea. Fahnestock was key in the implementation of Mission X. Photo Ladislaw Reday Photographic Collection, Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
Mission X – the ragtag fleet
From 19 December
This story of Australians sailing under the US flag during the Second World War is one of daring and courage. The US Army Small Ships Section comprised some 3,000 requisitioned Australian vessels of every imaginable size and type. In their hastily refitted and sometimes armed boats, Australian merchant crews under contract to the US Army plied the dangerous waters between northern Queensland and New Guinea to establish a supply lifeline to allied forces fighting the Japanese.
The small ships went where bigger vessels couldn’t. Covered in palm fronds, they hid by day in jungle estuaries. By night they landed cargo as diverse as water, food, fuel, fresh troops and heavy equipment, and brought back the wounded and the dead. This little-known story is told in the USA Gallery using objects and documents lent by the men of the Small Ships and their descendants.
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Vikings – Beyond the legend
Until 2 February 2014
Warriors, invaders and plunderers, or explorers, traders and farmers? What do we really know about the people we call Vikings? Their fascinating world is revealed in this must-see exhibition, which draws on recent archaeological discoveries and nearly 500 rare artefacts to explore Viking domestic life, death rituals, mythology, craftsmanship and the symbolism of Viking ships.
Entry with Big Ticket. Free for Members
on their own – Britain’s child migrants
22 February–11 May 2014
From the 1860s until the 1970s, more than 100,000 British children were sent to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries through child migration schemes. The lives of these children changed dramatically and fortunes varied. Some forged new futures; others suffered lonely, brutal childhoods. All experienced dislocation and separation from family and homeland.
05 Yathikpa II (detail), artist Bakulanay Marawili, 1998. ANMM Collection, purchased with the assistance of Stephen Grant of the GrantPirrie Gallery
Hood’s harbour
26 February–June 2014
Photographs from the Samuel J Hood Studio Collection showcase the maritime history of Sydney Harbour. Sam Hood’s images, spanning the 1890s to 1950s, capture work and pleasure, from port scenes and troop departures to portraits of sail and steam ships and their crews. This small selection highlights the diversity of a unique photographic record.
visions
23 May 2013–23 February 2014
A selection of 10 bark paintings from the Saltwater collection are on display to celebrate NAIDOC Week 2013 and the 50th anniversary of the presentation of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. Five of these barks were used as evidence in the 2008 High Court case that recognised traditional owners and their use of the coastline and coastal waters. These important bark paintings document the spiritual and legal basis of the Yolngu people’s ownership of saltwater country in north-east Arnhem Land.
Until 16 February 2014
Be inspired by artworks produced by students in Public Schools NSW across Sydney (K–Y12) exploring the 2013 NAIDOC Week theme, We value the vision: Yirrkala bark petitions 1963. In this annual arts program, students and teachers aim to develop an understanding of Aboriginal culture and heritage, the unique connection Aboriginal people have to their country and how past achievements affect hopes and plans for the future.
anmm.gov.au/kooriart
ANMM travelling exhibition
Waves & water
National Wool Museum, Geelong, Victoria
25 November 2013–23 February 2014
Iconic photographs from the Australian National Maritime Museum’s collection capture Australian beach culture from the 1930s to 2000, by Max Dupain, Jeff Carter, Ray Leighton, Ian Lever, Roger Scott, Anne Zahalka, and Narelle Autio.
Supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to the national collections for all Australians
The Frank Broeze Memorial maritime history prizes have once again attracted a strong crop of contenders. The diversity of topics among the 2013 nominations – from explorers, journals and art to shipwrecks, tugboats and stock exports –demonstrates the breadth and perennial popularity of this field.
J u DGING OF TH e 2013 Fr ANK brOeZ e Memorial Maritime History Awards, consisting of a book prize and a community history prize, is now complete. These biennial awards – sponsored jointly by the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) and the Australian Association for Maritime History (AAMH) – reflect the wish of both organisations to promote a broad view of maritime history, demonstrating how the sea and maritime influences have been central to shaping Australia, its people and its culture.
We thank our panel of judges, Kevin sumption (director of the ANMM), peter r idgway (president of the AAMH) and Michael pearson (emeritus professor of history, u NsW). With 22 entries in the book prize and nine in the community prize, they had their hands full compiling a shortlist and then choosing the top three in each category. In the end they were unanimous in their rankings for the book prize.
The winner of the 2013 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize of $3,500, which is awarded for a book published in 2011 or 2012 by an Australian author on any aspect of maritime history relating to or affecting Australia, is Saltwater People by John Ogden (Cyclops press, 2012). This lavish and hefty two-volume set, comprising Saltwater People of the Broken Bays: Sydney’s northern beaches and Saltwater People of the Fatal Shore: Sydney’s southern beaches, examines the coastline around sydney and its role in Australian culture and social and political history. It was praised for its stunning contemporary and archival photography, detailed text and brilliant layout. ‘A sumptuous curation of historical and contemporary art and photography’, commented one judge, ‘supported by summaries and extracts from a large number of published sources on the maritime history of sydney’s ocean landscapes … strongly conservationist, [with] respect for Aboriginal heritage’. both volumes begin with overviews of the sydney Aboriginal people who lived on these foreshores for millennia, describe the arrival and impact of the first europeans, and range along the beaches of sydney, examining their role in history, from being the birthplaces of Australia’s surf culture to the sites of notorious crimes such as the Wanda beach murders. In the words of one judge: ‘The two volumes have a strong representation of indigenous and surfing histories … The key theme is the descriptor of those who work and play along the coast as being saltwater people. The subjects include environment, indigenous history, industry (eg fishing, film making),
leisure (swimming and surfing), coastal media, artists, musicians, planning and architecture.’
The first runner-up in this category was David Hill for The Great Race: The race between England and France to complete the map of Australia This compelling story of endeavour and tragedy is set within the context of the Napoleonic wars and compiled from diaries and other first-hand accounts. The book recounts the tale of the englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas baudin, both tasked by their governments to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and determine whether the west coast of New Holland and the east coast of New south Wales, 4,000 kilometres apart, belonged to the same island. Our judges called it ‘a familiar story, agreeably told’ and commented that ‘Hill’s use of extracts to provide a 19th-century feel to the narrative works well’.
second runner-up in the book category was Lisa di Tommaso for Art of the First Fleet praised as very professional, well produced and with excellent commentary, the book reproduces and examines artworks found in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London, and represents an increasing and welcome trend to publish works of art related to our maritime history. ‘It features generously sized reproductions providing sources for maritime historians of a wide range of subjects: indigenous people and technology, watercraft, family life, fire transportation (in canoe), colonial interactions, landscape, wildlife and navigation’, remarked one judge.
The 2013 Australian Community Maritime History Prize of $500 is awarded for a publication produced by a local or regional museum or historical society that contributes to advancing the field of Australian local maritime history. This prize, inaugurated in 2011, attracted a greater number and stronger field of entrants this time. One judge commented: ‘A wider choice this year confirms our decision to add the category: maritime history is alive and well at the local level!’
Our panel of judges awarded this prize to Mornington Peninsula Art Gallery for Sea of Dreams: The lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830–1914. This catalogue of an exhibition, combining art reproductions and essays on the history of the region, was praised by one judge as ‘a treat to read’: ‘a roll call of recognisable names (streeton, McCubbin, Condor, etc)
that are not usually thought of in a maritime context [and] a well-structured account using artworks and essays to good effect: why people left england, the sea journey, arrival, early settlement, maritime industry, defence, leisure and economy’. Another commented: ‘It has great scope as a starting point for another book either expanding into a more comprehensive history of the region or one that gives depth to a single subject such as coastal development.’
The first runner-up in the community category is the Charles Sturt Memorial Museum Trust for The Life and Times of Captain Charles Sturt. This interactive DVD comprises a library on disk of a large number and range of resources – many of them printable – for school teachers and students, including historical material such as books and newspaper reports (incorporating hyperlinks to enable students to navigate through the various chapters), video clips, worksheets and teachers’ aids, and a virtual tour of the museum. Our judges commented: ‘Very well done and I found it easy to navigate around’ and ‘the compilation of electronic and written sources onto the DVD reflects the opportunities community organisations have to reach out to a wider audience’.
The second runner-up is the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum for Axel Stenross Maritime Museum and Port Lincoln Fishing Industry. This DVD – succinctly narrated, professionally produced and full of information – offers a short history of the museum and a promotional video that covers all aspects of marine work in the region. It was described as ‘unassuming and a real tribute to volunteers’, with one judge commenting, ‘The DVD will become a historical source itself in time!’
The ANMM and AAMH wish to thank all those who nominated for the prizes, and to congratulate the winners.
The two awards were presented on Friday 15 November in conjunction with the 2013 Vaughan evans Memorial Lecture held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, and hosted by the Australian Association for Maritime History. John Longley am citwa presented the memorial lecture, ‘What next for the America’s Cup? Australia II to Oracle USA’. Janine Flew
The major prize is named in honour of renowned maritime historian the late Professor Frank Broeze (1945–2001) of the University of Western Australia. Professor Broeze was a founding member of the AAMH and inaugural editor of its scholarly journal The Great Circle, and introduced Australia’s first university course on maritime history at the University of Western Australia. He was the author of many works on Australian maritime history, including the landmark Island Nation (1997), which helped to redefine the field of maritime history.
2013 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize ($3,500)
Winner: John Ogden for Saltwater People (two-volume set) (Cyclops Press, 2012)
First runner-up: David Hill for The Great Race: The race between the English and French to complete the map of Australia (William Heinemann, 2012)
Second runner-up: Lisa di Tommaso for The Art of the First Fleet (Hardie Grant, 2012)
2013 Australian Community Maritime History Prize ($500)
Winner: Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, for Sea of Dreams: The lure of Port Phillip Bay 1830–1914 (2011)
First runner-up: Charles Sturt Memorial Museum Trust for The Life and Time of Captain Charles Sturt (interactive DVD, 2011)
Second runner-up: Axel Stenross Maritime Museum for Axel Stenross Maritime Museum and Port Lincoln Fishing Industry (DVD)
Editors’ Choice award
Though its subject matter was judged too specialised for the major prize, one book so impressed the former and current editors of Signals that they have decided to give it an unofficial award. The Editors’ Choice award therefore goes to John Perryman for Kit Muster: Uniforms, Badges and Categories of the Australian Navy 1863–1953 (Sea Power Centre, 2012, 2nd ed), a comprehensive work that should find great favour with enthusiasts and researchers.
The city of Warrnambool – located on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, and the centre of the Shipwreck Coast – has been shaped by the Southern Ocean that beats upon its beaches. Tourism services manager Peter Abbott traces the museum’s history.
LIK e TH e sTOr M y se A s that make the region so rich in maritime and shipwreck heritage, Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village has charted many courses and faced many challenges since it was formed as the result of a public meeting in 1973 called by the then Warrnambool Chamber of Commerce.
Today, Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village (FHMV or ‘Flaggy’) has become Victoria’s largest maritime museum and heritage centre, and may well claim to be Australia’s most awarded maritime venue.
Through the day it provides interactive museum galleries, an outdoor maritime village experience, traditional tearooms and a licensed hotel. It also maintains the Victorian Heritage-registered Lady bay Lighthouses complex and Warrnambool Garrison precinct. Guided tours are a highlight. every evening the Shipwrecked sound and laser show generates extra bed-nights for the city, as guests stay in the city to hear the story of the 1878 wreck of Loch Ard. To complete the experience, guests can stay on site in the original Warrnambool Harbourmaster’s House, now called Lighthouse Lodge, or camp on site at the recently opened Warrnambool Garrison Camp. March 2014 will mark FHMV’s 40th anniversary after welcoming about 2.3 million daytime guests and 300,000 night-time guests.
Warrnambool’s maritime heritage began about 1848 with the erection of the first flagstaff on the hill overlooking Lady bay. Trade grew rapidly as the first european farmer-settlers began to export their produce, and the harbour also became a landing place for bass strait traders. In 1859 the first lighthouses were built on Middle Island and Lady bay beach. They proved unreliable in heavy seas, so in 1871 they were moved brick by brick to their current location on Flagstaff Hill.
Later, in 1887, as part of protecting the colonial ports of southern Australia from perceived international threats, a garrison was built on Flagstaff Hill overlooking the busy port of Lady bay.
by 1974 the Lady bay Lighthouses and Warrnambool Garrison complex had become lost in time and unkempt, with the original buildings derelict. Here Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum had its beginnings; the land was cleared, the lighthouses and garrison area fully restored and in 1978 the two historically significant and once again fully operational 80-pound guns were returned to the garrison.
Down the hill the adjoining blackberryinfested horse paddock was cleared and laid out to represent a typical 1870s maritime village, when shipping was at its peak along the shipwreck Coast.
Funding for the project had been secured through a decentralisation fund established by the then prime minister Gough Whitlam, but just as the project was about to start development Whitlam was dismissed, funding halted, staff laid off and works stopped. Lobbying to Warrnambool’s local federal member, Malcolm Fraser (Whitlam’s successor as prime minister), saw the project restarted, staff re-employed and the master plan implemented.
Initially, the shipwreck collection was acquired through donations, purchases and Flagstaff Hill divers actively engaging in rescue archaeology on wreck sites that were being rediscovered and often indiscriminately searched through the mid-1970s with the advent of recreational diving. At that time shipwrecks lacked legal protection. Flagstaff Hill management was actively involved in promoting the need for such legislative protection.
Today, thanks to the work of a dedicated band of volunteers, overseen by Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village p ublic programs Coordinator Helen sheedy, the mostly paper-based collection records have been digitised, and more than 12,000 museumstandard images photographed as part of a wider collection audit. In 2012 Flagstaff Hill completed the Museums Australia (Victoria) Museum Accreditation program
01 Previous pages: Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village harbour area. Photographer Troy Hutchinson
02 Falls of Hallandale was wrecked near Peterborough in 1908. The master set all sail in a futile attempt to dislodge it from the submerged reef it had struck. The abandoned ship became a local tourist attraction as it broke up over a number of months. Photographer unknown. All photographs reproduced courtesy FHMV unless otherwise stated
03 The Loch Ard peacock, centrepiece of the FHMV collection.
04 Firing the 1866 80-pound cannon, restored as part of the Warrnambool Garrison area.
05 Australian Whaleboat Racing Championships, operated by FHMV using its fleet of wooden whaleboats.
and now more than 7,600 items in its collection have been placed online through the Victorian Collection project.
In many ways the wreck that defines the shipwreck Coast is that of the clipper Loch Ard on 1 June 1878, at the site now known as Loch Ard Gorge. Attracting 1.8 million people each year, it is one of the mostvisited maritime heritage sites in Australia.
The tragic and romantic story of the shipwreck grabbed the attention of the then booming city of Melbourne as well as that of international media. Loch Ard was wrecked en route from england to Melbourne with the loss of 51 passengers and crew. The only survivors were ship’s apprentice Tom pearce and a young lady named eva Carmichael, both 18 years of age. These two teenagers became the colonial media’s obsession for many months, and the story of Tom diving back into the water to save eva was dramatised endlessly as the media searched for further stories and a ‘fairytale’ outcome. These romantic, and totally false, stories of Tom and eva’s relationship and even marriage were still being repeated as late as the 1930s, just before eva’s death. In fact, after leaving Australia, they never met again.
The Loch Ard itself was a complete loss, sinking quickly as the hull was ripped from stem to stern against the steep cliffs as Captain Gibb made a last desperate attempt to turn the ship.
While the ship salvage rights were soon sold, the only major ‘item of significance’ that was salvaged was dragged onto
the Loch Ard beach a few days after the wreck, washed ashore in its packing crate. Continued attempts to obtain further salvage were frustrated when the salvage ship ss Napier was wrecked in late september while attempting to enter the bay at port Campbell.
This salvaged item – now Australia’s most valuable shipwreck artefact – was a Minton earthenware peacock that most likely survived the wreck by being in the personal care of Captain Gibb and not down in the ship’s hold. Of the three birds and much other Minton material aboard Loch Ard and heading to the 1880 Great e xhibition at the newly built royal e xhibition buildings, only the peacock survived intact.
The magnificent bird was hauled from the gorge and taken to the home of Mr Miller, the salvager, where it stayed until the death of his daughter in 1940. It further survived the dangers of household life – including being ridden by young children like a rocking horse – until it was offered for sale in 1975. After failing to sell at auction, it was brought to the attention of Flagstaff Hill’s creators; serendipitously, by the granddaughter of the peacock’s original rescuer, Charles McGillivray.
A public appeal was started in Warrnambool with people of all ages contributing various amounts and with additional support from the local clothing manufacturer and retailer Fletcher Jones and the Warrnambool City Council. Further support by the Victorian state Government allowed the peacock to be acquired and it travelled to Warrnambool on a piece of foam rubber, wrapped in
a sleeping bag in the back of a station wagon, before being placed in a wheelbarrow to be wheeled across the cobblestoned streets of Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village to its new display area. On the opening weekend nearly 5,000 people (in a town of 15,000) came to view the new acquisition (‘the people’s peacock’).
since then the peacock has left our site just twice; once to arrive, 100 years late, at the centenary of the now World Heritage-listed royal e xhibition buildings in Melbourne in 1980, and the other to be the centrepiece at the entrance to the Victorian e xhibition Hall at the brisbane World e xpo in 1988.
Nearly 5,000 people (in a town of 15,000) came to view ‘the People’s Peacock’
At the close of the brisbane e xpo, power was cut off and the peacock was left to bake in the Queensland heat. unknown then was the fact that in 1878 the head had been broken from the body, and as a result of the heat the original glue failed and the head was saved from falling off completely only by a small length of wooden dowel that appears to have been part of the 1878 repair.
After its repair in Queensland and return to Warrnambool the city council passed a motion that the community’s Loch Ard peacock was never to be removed from the boundaries of Warrnambool again.
Flagstaff Hill celebrates the region’s maritime and whaling heritage with its summer whaleboat rowing season. While dragon boating is a popular on-water activity across many parts of Australia, Warrnambool sought a truly local event to get teams active on our beautiful Hopkins r iver – and the result was whaleboating.
The sport began in the 1980s with the construction of three replica 1840 ‘beetle’ design whaleboats sponsored by local businesses and Warrnambool City Council. These beautiful 650-kg wooden boats are based on a type of Nantucket whaleboat commonly used in the 1840s local whaling industry, and are maintained by Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village wooden-boat builder Jeff McMurrich. The sport lay dormant for many years before being revived five years ago and the boats taken off display and again put to work.
Today about 25 teams train in these boats through the summer, working towards the Australian Whaleboat r acing Championship held on the third weekend in February each year. The boats have five rowers and one sweep/coxswain, and were used to hunt whales in the local waters. When within range, one of rowers would stow his oars to become the harpooner. Once the boat was connected to the whale, all rowers would stow oars and ‘Nantucket surf’ behind the dying whale.
Teams from the united states have visited twice and Warrnambool crews have paid two return visits to compete for the Captain Mills International Whaleboat Cup,
named after a local south-west Victorian whaling station captain. In the tradition of the America’s Cup, the Australians are yet to wrest this trophy from their American rivals. In February 2014 Warrnambool again welcomes us rowers, with the ‘Warrnamboolians’ very confident they have found the secret to success (no winged keels involved!).
Flagstaff Hill continues to promote the maintenance of rare trades. Our boatyard completes repairs on local wooden vessels as well as being engaged on larger projects as they become available. In 2012 the city of Mount Gambier received funding to restore or renew their replica ship, HM b Lady Nelson. FHMV was engaged to provide advice on options and it quickly became apparent that the vessel – which had sat on a concrete pad in front of the local visitors centre since 1986 – had become so compromised that the most economic solution was to completely replace the hull and restore the rigging.
FHMV was engaged for the project in partnership with local boatbuilders Fibre Infusion. The original plans of the 1798 ship were sourced and digitised and the ship’s interiors redesigned to cater for a new education room. The ship’s hull was built in Warrnambool, and restoration
of the riggings completed at FHMV.
The rejuvenated ship was trucked to Mount Gambier and as part of a local community celebration the ship was reinstalled and re-rigged, successfully renewing Mount Gambier’s links to its maritime heritage.
Hill continues to promote the maintenance of rare
FHMV’s most popular events are tours of the museum and village by volunteer guides. These allow us to bring our maritime heritage to life in a personalised way, and constantly receive positive reviews and online feedback.
Warrnambool is unique in maintaining such a substantial regional museum that is so linked to the tourism and lifestyle brand of the city. since its inception, FHMV has worked to develop its maritime content and its presentation in ways that encourage the active participation of its visitors.
The Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village Master plan aims to set the course for the changing regional tourism and heritage attraction that we now operate within. While this master
01 By day, Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village replicates a busy coastal port of south-east Victoria. Photographer Troy Hutchinson
02 By night, the Shipwrecked sound and light show brings to life the 1878 wreck of the clipper ship Loch Ard.
plan is yet to be funded, the community survey that was conducted as part of the project showed over 80 per cent support for a concept plan that will see the largest change in the precinct’s operations since its inception.
Celebrations are planned for our 40th anniversary in March 2014, as we steer a course for the site’s future. With an economic impact conservatively estimated at $2.9 million, 15,000 volunteer hours per annum and one of the nation’s most significant maritime heritage collections, Flagstaff Hill and Warrnambool have the opportunity to further develop this major tourism and cultural centre to become a maritime heritage site of national significance.
Australian Maritime Museum Council Conference, 20–22 March 2014
The peak maritime museum conference for Australia will be held in Victoria in 2014, hosted by the Queenscliffe Maritime Museum. The conference allows delegates from maritime museums large and small to discuss issues affecting them, and to establish networks across the sector. Details will be available soon; check the Australian Maritime Museum Council’s Facebook page for more information.
East Indies: The 200 year struggle between the Portuguese Crown, the Dutch East India Company and the English East India Company for supremacy in the Eastern Seas
By Ian Burnet, published by Rosenberg Publishing Pty Ltd, Sydney 2013. Hardcover, illustrations, timeline, bibliography, index. ISBN 9781921719592 RRP $39.95
IN 1581 THAT Gre AT english swashbuckler, Francis Drake, was knighted by Queen elizabeth I for bringing his Golden Hind home from the first english circumnavigation richly laden with spanish gold and silver. And perched atop this ballast of bullion lay another fortune in what was then the world’s most valuable commodity: cloves, loaded directly from the only place that they grew in the entire world, the remote island of Ternate in the eastern part of the east Indies. With it Drake brought a letter from Ternate’s sultan baabullah, pledging allegiance to elizabeth.
A few years later one other notable subject of the Tudor virgin queen, sir Walter r aleigh, fetched home another captured galleon, the Madre de Deus, filled this time with portuguese spoils. For this was the century when portugal dominated the eastern seas, trying to monopolise its riches of spices, silks and the other oriental luxuries that europe craved. unfortunately for them, in this robust era of armed enterprise, privateers like r aleigh could plunder the proceeds for their own monarchs. The value of just this one cargo was almost half of england’s treasury.
It’s with vivid historical anecdotes such as these that Australian author Ian burnet navigates the long and complex history of european expansion into the Indian Ocean, southeast Asia and the China seas, lured by the wealth to be gained in wresting control of the world’s oldest and richest trades and sea lanes. It’s not that there’s any shortage of such histories. Libraries are lined with the works of scholars slicing and dicing in detail these interwoven struggles for economic, military and maritime domination over a broad sweep of time and geography. Much has been written of the many players – portuguese and spanish, Dutch and english, French, Danish, russian and usA, and the Asian sultanates, empires and principalities they contended with.
burnet’s challenge has been to turn this tumultuous history into a readable, short narrative for a wider, more general audience. To this end he structures the book into three sections from the perspective
of the key european players, chronicling the activities first of the portuguese, then the Dutch and then the english. The chapters of each section deal with a particular port and the struggles to control it, which means that we revisit some places, such as Malacca and Ternate, more than once. Chronologically things are not quite so neat. The timeline occupying several pages at the back of the book is useful in this respect, and actually works better by maintaining this three-way, national split. burnet tells of the struggle between the portuguese Crown, the united Dutch east India Company (VOC) and the english east India Company for trade supremacy. It follows the rise of the world’s first multinational joint stock companies and their conversion to huge colonial states ruling over millions of people in Indonesia, India and Malaya. One notes, though, that the time frame is rather more than the 200 years of the book’s lengthy subtitle, while the geographical span from bombay to Nagasaki is rather wider than the title’s ‘east Indies’. but then this is, after all, the beginnings of globalism, and the east Indies with its spice Islands was – initially, in any case – the centre of this tale.
Two features of the book that make this popular history so enjoyable are the many quotes from the mouths of the story’s protagonists, and the well-selected historic colour images that closely enhance the narrative. Thus we meet the man who paves the way for the Dutch to challenge the portuguese, young Jan Huygen van Linschoten: ‘… being young and living idelye in my native Countrie … I found myself so much addicted to see and travaile into straunge countries, thereby to seeke some adventure …’ And with it, we see the gorgeous masterpiece of cartographic art that was used to promote the ‘Company for Far Distant Lands’, predecessor of the VOC. Australian publisher rosenberg is to be congratulated for again committing to a handsome, accessible book for readers with maritime history interests.
Jeffrey Mellefont, editor Signals 1989–2013
WWW.ANMM.GOV.AU/ARHV This online, national heritage project devised and coordinated by the Australian National Maritime Museum reaches across Australia to collate data about the nation’s existing historic vessels, their designers and builders, and their stories.
The ARHV explores all corners of Australia’s maritime history. It records the details and stories of designers and builders, from famous names to backyard enthusiasts, as well as boating events and the various types and classes of vessel – Indigenous watercraft, Australian designs such as ’couta boats and pearling luggers, and the idiosyncratic craft of ingenious rural builders.
TH e AusT r ALIAN reGIsT er of Historic Vessels (A r HV) is much more than just a list of vessels nominated for inclusion. It is also a platform for their social stories – the people they are connected to, the events they are associated with and other craft they are related to.
The A r HV website includes a series of reference pages, which are gradually increasing each year along with the vessel nominations. Already they cover a large number of designers, builders, types, classes and events that link both to the craft and to each other, building up a considerable background within which the vessels feature.
The ‘Designers’ and ‘builders’ pages focus on two of the primary roles associated with each vessel, and cover both famous and lesser-known names. big-name builders
include Halvorsen, the Wilson family in Tasmania, and Norman r Wright and sons from Queensland, who were profiled in the previous issue of Signals stories about less familiar names include that of A G Williams, a boatyard based in the sydney suburb of Drummoyne, which – along with William Holmes at McMahons point – snatched some of the motor cruiser and launch market away from the Halvorsen firm. In further contrast, sports Craft boats from ryde in sydney show how a post-World War 2 business concentrated on small craft, in particular plywood runabouts, later retailing them through the department store Nock and Kirbys. As Kerrie Ann (HV000458) shows, they came complete with engine and trailer.
both George Towns and A & H Green built gold-medal-winning rowing sculls for Olympic and world champion sculler bobby pearce in the 1930s, but their story covers more than just one generation, and the intriguing skills of George Green with his innovative and unorthodox craft are noted too, linking back to Star of Australia (HV000058).
skiff racing on the harbour forms part of the press family entry, but not only did they build a long series of 18-foot skiffs called H C Press, they also built a motor launch, Australia, which took out members of the public to watch the races.
Names barely known have their space, too. Ivar Gronfors built launches on the Central Coast of New south Wales, but A r HV research has now highlighted his role working for Charles Lucas in Hobart, where Gronfors was the shipwright on the famous Tassie 21-foot restricted class yachts. Finnish-born Gronfors’ skill with the adze and the large amount of woodchips he
created led to his nickname, ‘Chips’. still in Tasmania, only the family of cabinetmaker ron beltz understood his passion for boatbuilding, but now revealed is the wonderful tale of ron building Storm King (HV000122) and other craft, including a 20-metre trawler, in his backyard at 95A Giblin street, Lenah Valley, in suburban Hobart.
Designers display a similar variety. Alan payne and ben Lexcen, two of Australia’s best-known yacht designers, feature prominently, but the register also lists Len r andell’s achievements in Western Australia, and reviews Charlie peel’s impressive range of yachts that have left their mark much more widely than just in his home state of Victoria. The co-designers of the famous VJ (Vaucluse Junior) class, represented on the register by Revival (HV000066), were Charles sparrow and sil rohu; their entries show their diverse backgrounds that complemented each other as they created the plans and market for this national class that many people have sailed in at some point. The register explores the case for Walter reeks being both our first and perhaps even our most influential naval architect, and shows the wide range of craft, many with unorthodox features, that he designed during his career in sydney from 1885 to 1925. He was not alone, and information from various sources has put together a story on his Tasmanian contemporary, the draughtsman and designer Alfred blore, who had a hand in many important Tasmanian designs, and even takes some credit for modifying a reeks design that became Gypsy (HV000107).
The register’s ‘Type’ and ‘Class’ listings focus on Australian craft – those that were created here and are unique to our coastline and
waterways. under ‘Type’ are such vessels as the pearling lugger from across northern Australia, and Victoria’s iconic ’couta fishing boat. More familiar to the general public are the surfboat and surf ski, both of which have moved beyond our shores to become internationally used, although their origins are completely Australian, responding to our own needs and activities. providing another contrast are the clinker ski boats and runabouts, such as the museum’s Ski-Bye (HV000031) or Fury (HV000156).
The best-known representatives of these are the classic Lewis, Hammond and everingham craft that managed to secure a solid place in the recreational market against the would-be dominance of the us -style Hacker and Chris-Craft chine hulls.
The history of the Manly ferry, a commuter service that’s also a huge tourist attraction and a feature of sydney Harbour, is also recorded here.
Australian ingenuity and inventiveness are covered by the ‘unusual Watercraft’ page, which delves into some of the bushmen’s creations from regional Australia, where they used the materials they understood and objects at hand to create a range of curious but capable craft. Indigenous watercraft –the original Australian craft – have a large entry in which the diverse variety of canoes, outriggers and rafts are documented, linking back to the many craft already nominated in the A r HV vessel list.
under ‘Classes’ come the skiffs, with pages on the 18-, 16- and 12-footers in which their interstate, interdominion and world championship histories unfold; training classes, including the VJ and Manly Junior, both equally home grown, are represented as well. Interstate competition was a feature
The register’s ‘Type’ and ‘Class’ listings focus on Australian craft – those that were created here and are unique to our coastline and waterways
of yachting for much of the 20th century, and one of the most significant classes was the 21-foot restricted class, which raced for the Forster Cup over many decades until the mid-1950s.
The other famous interstate cup was the sayonara Cup, named after Sayonara (HV000367), and the trophy’s story comes to life under ‘events’. This page also covers a number of other yachting-related entries, including our exploits in the Olympic Games, the sydney to Hobart yacht race and the intercolonial regattas. There’s even a page on some of the rules used to handicap the yachts, which then looks back to the boats in the list. ‘War service’ covers the fascinating story of private vessels requisitioned to serve during both world wars, then painted grey and armed with guns or depth charges to patrol coastal waterways. Many of them, such as the Hollywood Fleet’s Silver Cloud (HV000401), returned to their original recreational roles after the war ended.
research into Walter reeks’s background brought to light an image in the collection of berrys bay in sydney, where reeks had a boatyard in 1892–93. This classic image shows his first sydney Harbour ferry, The Lady Mary, minutes away from being launched in late July 1892. beside it is the partially built hull of his second lugger, Isabel, while in the water being fitted out is the steam yacht sy Isis, designed by William Fife III in the united Kingdom but built in sydney under reeks’s supervision for James r Fairfax of the Fairfax family of newspaper proprietors. Charlie Dunn’s yard is active to the right, while W M Ford’s yard lies just off to the left, with his newly launched lugger, Marie, sitting just off the
shoreline in the background. This image has helped to tell the story of berrys bay, where many vessels were built from the 1870s onwards, and this has become the first of the register’s ‘sites’ to be included as a reference page.
The existing reference pages are added to or revised as new information comes to hand, and new categories of pages are created as required. As they grow, they show how the craft can be linked together within shared themes, while the A r HV increases its depth of information and creates context and perspective for the vessel entries.
Search the complete Australian Register of Historic Vessels at anmm.gov.au/arhv
01 Previous page: Synchronised sailing: in Brisbane’s Forster Cup series in 1936, Tassie Too leads Carinya, from South Australia, and Milsonia, from Victoria.
Photograph courtesy Andrew Sutherland
02 The trawler Helen J almost complete in Ron Beltz’s suburban Hobart backyard. Photograph courtesy Michael White
03 The motor launch Australia under construction in the Press boatshed in the Sydney suburb of Woolloomooloo, with the family patriarch H C Press in the foreground. Photograph courtesy Max Press
04 VJ (Vaucluse Junior) class co-designer Sil Rohu and his yacht Maluka (HV000240) towing a fleet of VJs plus their young crew down Sydney Harbour to a regatta in the 1940s. Photograph courtesy Warwick Thomson
05 Saturday 30 July 1892, and The Lady Mary is minutes away from christening at Walter Reeks’s yard in Berrys Bay, North Sydney. The unfinished lugger Isabel is on one side, while SY Isis is in the water and being fitted out. Photographer William Hall, ANMM Collection
The famed vessel MV Krait turns 80 next year, having eventfully evolved from a humble fishing boat to an exhibit at the museum’s wharves. September 2013 marked the 70th anniversary of the bestknown episode in Krait ’s long history – Operation Jaywick, one of Australia’s most daring wartime missions. Curatorial assistant Penny Hyde profiles the event that wrote this little vessel into Australian military history.
KRAIT WA s Or IGINALLy NAM eD
Kofuku Maru (meaning ‘happiness’ or ‘good fortune’) when it was built in Japan in 1934 for use as a fishing boat and passenger vessel in the ports of the r hio Archipelago. Kofuku Maru’s fishing activities ceased during the early years of the war when the boat was impounded by the british in singapore along with many other Japanese vessels. Here the vessel began the next chapter of its life when it was chosen by Australian seaman bill reynolds as his means of escape from singapore in 1942. reynolds had been a merchant mariner for more than 30 years and had worked for several different companies throughout Malaya, borneo and burma, including the british-owned Anglo-Oriental in the years leading up to the outbreak of war. As the Japanese advanced ever closer, reynolds sent his wife and daughter back to Australia in 1941, but as a member of the perak Volunteer Defence Force,
he remained behind and reported for duty. Then aged 49, reynolds joined the royal engineers and, using his demolitions expertise, worked his way south through the increasingly deserted landscape toward Kuala Lumpur, destroying utilities and resources to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands. Arriving in singapore in January 1942, reynolds had the idea of restoring one of the impounded Japanese vessels for the purpose of evacuation in the lead-up to the imminent fall of singapore. He eventually settled on one particular small craft: Kofuku Maru. Despite the boat’s derelict appearance and the terrible odour acquired during its years as a fishing boat, bill reynolds was assured by the solid structure he could see hidden beneath the filth. soon Kofuku Maru was seaworthy enough to undertake the dangerous voyage out of singapore, and on the morning of 12 February 1942, reynolds sailed Kofuku Maru out of singapore Harbour.
01 The men of Operation Jaywick. Back row: AB Mostyn Berryman, AB Frederick Walter Lota Marsh, AB Arthur Walter Jones, AB Andrew William George Huston. Centre: Cpl Andrew Anthony Crilly, LS Kevin Patrick Cain, LDGSTO James Patrick McDowell, L/TEL Horace Stewart Young, AB Walter Gordon Falls, Cpl Ronald George Morris. Front: Lt Hubert Edward Carse, Lt Donald Montague Noel Davidson, Major Ivan Lyon, Major H A Campbell (did not accompany the expedition), Lt Robert Charles Page. Photograph courtesy National Archives of Australia 02 Krait in Refuge Bay, north of Sydney, 17 January 1943. National Archives of Australia photo album, barcode 235466. Photograph courtesy National Archives of Australia
The mission required Allied commandos to sail to Singapore disguised as a Japanese fishing crew, enter the harbour and use delayed-action explosives to destroy enemy cargo ships
There were many other vessels streaming out of singapore on this day as evacuees raced to escape the advancing Japanese forces, and many of these vessels found themselves under heavy attack by Japanese aircraft. Among the convoy leaving that day was the Vyner Brooke, which was sunk two days later with Vivian bullwinkel and 64 other Australian nurses on board. Many of the women who survived the sinking went on to die in the infamous massacre on banka Island.
This was the hazardous atmosphere in which bill reynolds and Kofuku Maru made their first voyage. remarkably reynolds managed to negotiate these dangerous waters, aided by the vessel’s innocuous appearance and his own extensive knowledge of the waterways. Despite the perils in the area, reynolds did not return immediately to Australia; over the next month, he moved around in Kofuku Maru, rescuing more than 1,500 evacuees who had become stranded in the islands around Malaya.
During one of his trips transporting stranded evacuees to safety, reynolds passed another small craft as it moved through the Indragiri estuary, encountering it again at rengat when it collided with Kofuku Maru On board was Captain (later Major) Ivan Lyon of the Gordon Highlanders.
Lyon was born into a military family during the early years of World War 1 and had been serving with the Gordon Highlanders since 1935. For much of his service he was posted to south-east Asia, based in singapore, and spent the early years of the war conducting covert operations in the area. After meeting bill reynolds in rengat, Lyon was struck by how Kofuku Maru’s undistinguished appearance had allowed reynolds to move about freely and without attracting the attention of the enemy. He was inspired by the possibilities this presented and the beginnings of a plan began to grow, based around reynolds’ little fishing vessel.
by early 1943, the plan was fully developed under the auspices of the special-forces unit known as Z special. Codenamed Operation Jaywick, the mission required Allied commandos to sail to singapore disguised as a Japanese fishing crew, enter the harbour and use delayed-action explosives to destroy enemy cargo ships. Kofuku Maru was to be used to maintain this disguise, and the vessel was refitted and renamed Krait, after the deadly Indian snake.
Originally planned for early 1943, the first anniversary of the fall of singapore, Operation Jaywick was stalled several times as Krait had numerous engine problems and the command structure above and around Z special unit was changed several times.
As Jaywick was shelved, revitalised and shelved again, bill reynolds, originally slated to join Jaywick, instead took up an offer to work for a highly secret American intelligence outfit – the us bureau of economic Warfare. Accepting a mission in borneo to gather intelligence for the Americans, reynolds was taken prisoner by the Japanese only a few days into this operation. sadly, on 8 August 1944, reynolds was executed in surabaya in Java and buried in an unmarked grave.
Operation Jaywick was finally given the go-ahead in september 1943, with Lyon leading a 14-man crew comprising british and Australian navy and army personnel. With bill reynolds no longer available as Jaywick’s navigator, r AN Lieutenant Hubert edward Carse stepped in only days away from Krait ’s departure.
On the night of 26 september 1943, after sailing the vessel from Australia, six of the men disembarked from Krait in folboats and paddled into singapore Harbour. under cover of darkness they attached limpet mines to Japanese ships before returning to their rendezvous with Krait. The mines detonated at 5 am on 27 september, damaging and destroying nearly 40,000 tons of Japanese shipping. The operation was an Allied success and the crew was decorated with military honours.
bolstered by the success of Operation Jaywick and Krait, Lyon was given permission to plan a second raid on singapore Harbour. Known as Operation r imau and led again by Lyon, this raid was more ambitious and comprised a larger group of men, but remained true to Jaywick in that the group would again travel disguised as a local fishing crew in the Indonesian junk Mustika unfortunately the operation was compromised on the approach to singapore Harbour on 6 October 1944, ending tragically with all the men eventually either killed or captured and executed by the Japanese.
Of Operation Jaywick little was known publicly until after the war was over. eight original crew members survived Jaywick and the war, and a revival of interest in Operation Jaywick in the 1960s saw these men taking their place on our front pages. One important element was missing, however: Krait
After the war Krait had been sold and used for commercial timber haulage in borneo. After it was rediscovered by an Australian working in the area in the early 1960s, several public appeals resulted in its restoration and return to Australia. Krait was operated for some time by the
01 In preparation for Operation Jaywick. two members of Z Special unit, Australian Services Reconnaissance Department, enter the water at Refuge Bay, north of Sydney, with a two-man canoe known as HMAS Lyon Photograph courtesy Australian War Memorial 02 Australian commandoes attacking Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour, September 1943. Dennis Adams, 1970. Photograph courtesy Australian War Memorial
03 Black jacket from the naval uniform belonging to Lt Hubert Edward ‘Ted’ Carse. ANMM Collection Gift from J Millane
04 Krait’s nondescript appearance helped it evade suspicion during clandestine operations. ANMM photographer
Volunteer Coastal patrol (VCp) before being transferred to the Australian War Memorial in 1985. since 1987 the vessel has been on loan to, and in the expert care of, the Australian National Maritime Museum.
Kofuku Maru ’s undistinguished appearance allowed it to move about freely and without attracting the attention of the enemy
On board during Krait ’s jubilant return to sydney Harbour in April 1964, along with original crew members Arthur Jones and Horrie young, was Krait ’s Jaywick captain, Hubert edward ‘Ted’ Carse. born in May 1901 in rutherglen, Victoria, Carse had had several careers, including teacher and merchant seaman. In september 1942, aged 42, he enlisted in the navy and was eventually moved to a training station for Z special operatives in Cairns, where he heard about an upcoming mission for which a navigator was desperately sought.
Carse was a late addition to the Jaywick crew, but he knew the waters north of Australia well and had a reputation as a skilled navigator. It is Carse’s voice that officially narrated the operation; as captain, he updated the ship’s log books daily, and in his musings you can trace the tense hours and weeks as Carse navigated Krait into, and out of, enemy waters.
Carse continued to serve until the end of the war, mainly in Australia, and before his death in 1970 was actively involved in commemorative activities relating to Z special unit, along with other members such as Horrie young. The museum holds several items relating to this period of Carse’s life, kindly donated by his family.
In addition to all of these items there is, of course, Krait, a powerful object for communicating this special event in our military history to new generations.
Throughout Krait ’s history as a fishing boat, as a commissioned vessel of the royal Australian Navy, and its time with the VCp, Krait has been connected to many fascinating characters such as reynolds, Lyon and Carse. Today the little vessel fulfils its new duty as a museum ship and memorial – reminding us of the brave men who served on board 70 years ago and their historic mission to singapore.
In one of history’s great migrations, over six million people have crossed the seas to settle in Australia. The museum’s tribute to all of them, The Welcome Wall, encourages people to recall and record their stories of coming to live in Australia
A passion for adventure and the sea ran deep in the veins of intrepid wanderer Anthony Stewart. Naval architect, master mariner and British merchant marine, he also rowed the length of the Murray–Darling river system in a boat (and an outfit) of his own making. Welcome Wall historian Veronica Kooyman recounts some of his nautical exploits both in Australia and overseas.
ANTHON y (TON y) sT e WA rT was born in London in 1910 to Walter stewart, a brilliant if somewhat eccentric barrister, and Mary roberts. His mother sadly died when he was only four years old and his father was left to raise Tony and his elder sister Marjory. This same year Tony had one of his first sea adventures, crossing the english Channel in a small sailing boat with his father. Tony was swept overboard by rough seas only to be quickly, and fortuitously, washed back on board. A few years later, in 1920, his father built a small timber boat in his chambers at Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London. Walter gave a tea party attended by close friends and family, and the guests, including a young Tony, helped carry the boat across the embankment and launch the craft into the Thames.
In 1930, when Tony was just 19, his father gave him some money to travel abroad. Tony walked across europe until his funds ran out, covering 800 miles (1,300 kilometres) and returning to england so gaunt that his father failed to recognise him. With his father’s encouragement and sense of adventure, it is not surprising that Tony had a wanderer’s spirit throughout his life. Tony extended his seafaring interests through his employment, training in a naval architect’s office. To subsidise his income he also delivered newly built yachts to their
wealthy owners and spent his spare time successfully racing yachts with a group of friends during the inter-war years.
On 3 september 1939 the united Kingdom officially declared war on Germany following the invasion of poland. The very next day Tony enlisted. Due to his maritime experience, he was placed on a sailing ship undertaking highly secret reconnaissance work around the islands off the coast of Germany in the freezing waters of the baltic and North seas, areas he was familiar with through pre-war sailing trips. Later in the war he worked in the british Merchant Navy, carrying out salvage work and delivering munitions around the world. Tony was at sea in the pacific when peace was declared and it was not until his ship docked that the message reached the crew. During the war Tony first visited Australia, enjoying his shore leave as yet another adventure in life.
After war’s end Tony returned to england, a little battered and, like many, traumatised by the terrible things he had seen. He soon gained employment with renowned marine insurer Lloyd’s of London, assessing the balance of cargo in ships. When an opportunity arose for him to work for the company’s sydney and Melbourne branches he eagerly took the posting and an opportunity to start afresh. He arrived in Australia in 1947 and by 1948 had decided
‘Pit yourself against the forces of nature in such a way that the contest is enjoyable’
to stay permanently. but the desire for new adventures quickly drew him away from the city and his position with Lloyd’s.
He moved to Arcadia, on the northern reaches of sydney, and stayed on a farm, helping the owners, Olive and Ted. In 1949 Olive, Ted and Tony began a long journey in a canvas-covered horse-drawn wagon along the coast between Queensland and south Australia. The trio worked odd jobs, such as mending fences, along the route for money. After the first few years Olive died, and for some time it was just Ted and Tony, until eventually Tony was left travelling alone. by the time he returned to Arcadia he had been away for seven years. Tony wrote an account of this time, naming it The Sailor and the Unicorn – the ‘unicorn’ being the position of his three draught horses, one of which was harnessed in front of the other two.
Tony always returned to Arcadia after his adventures, drawn by the charms of a young woman called Gabrielle bell. They first met when Gabrielle was a young girl messing about on a dam with her elder brother and their homemade corrugated-iron canoe, the holes plugged with tar scraped off a hot road, and curtains for sails. Gabrielle, too, had the sea in her blood; her father had been a captain in the british navy, and his peaked cap worked well as the childhood captain’s cap aboard their makeshift boat. Tony regularly camped near the dam and the family often held his mail and stored his possessions while he was away on his adventures. Gabrielle vividly recalls her first sight of Tony, unforgettably astride a beautiful horse. she asked if she could ride the horse too and they soon became friends. When he was away they wrote to each other regularly and she fell in love with this wandering character. Gabrielle left to study at the National Art school in sydney, honing such creative skills as painting and drawing. she went on to study at the university of sydney and teachers’ college to become a high-school teacher, keeping in touch with Tony by letter.
Tony still had the urge for adventure, unable to settle in a single place for too long. He was fascinated by the explorer Charles sturt and wanted to retrace his
steps down the Murray–Darling r iver system before the land and wildlife changed too much from those first seen by early explorers. A rowboat seemed the perfect solution, as oars would make little sound to intrude on the landscape. Tony hand-built a flat-bottomed boat from ash, with a sailing rig, rudder and centreboard. He named it Menera, an Aboriginal word meaning ‘we are friends’. The boat was 13 feet 2 inches (4 metres) long and 4 feet 3 inches (1.3 metres) wide, and the oars were unusually long at 8 feet (2.4 metres). When fully loaded with his personal gear and repair equipment it weighed over a quarter of a ton (250 kilograms).
between 1956 and 1960 Tony completed a number of trips, rowing from the upper reaches of the Murray r iver on the New south Wales–Victorian border to Lake Alexandrina in south Australia, and along the Murrumbidgee r iver from Narrandera in southern New south Wales to the Murray. High rainfalls in western Queensland led to severe flooding of the Murray r iver system in 1956, affecting south Australia, Victoria and New south Wales for many months. The waters of the river spread for kilometres and it was almost impossible to identify the true path of the river. Ingeniously, Tony decided to ‘follow the ducks’, as they would know the fastest and
He always returned to Arcadia after his adventures, drawn by the charms of a young lady named Gabrielle
safest way down the river. He averaged seven hours of rowing a day, often doing longer days in summer, and wore leather gloves for an hour each day to prevent his hands from setting. He went through many pairs of gloves during these trips.
His longest time away was from early February to mid-August 1963. He first tried putting the boat in the water in Queensland, eventually finding sufficient water to begin rowing at Mungindi, on the Queensland–New south Wales border. He rowed the full length of the Darling r iver – 915 miles (1470 kilometres) – reaching the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers at the end of May. He turned east and rowed upriver to Albury, on the border with Victoria, arriving on 18 August 1963, having rowed a total distance of 2,200 nautical miles (4,000 kilometres). His trip was a solitary one and he could only communicate
with his sweetheart by telegram or letter, stopping at larger towns to send them. After his return from the final trip, he and Gabrielle eventually bought a home and general merchants’ business in country New south Wales and had six children.
Tony advocated a simple life filled with wonderful and exciting experiences, living by the mantra ‘pit yourself against the forces of nature in such a way that the contest is enjoyable’ – advocating courage with a true spirit of adventure. Tony was a skilled navigator and sailor as well as a talented man of letters, publishing a number of short stories and writing several manuscripts. sadly, he developed Hodgkin’s disease, possibly caused by a war injury.
In 1977, within a year of diagnosis, he died, leaving behind his loving wife and children. Gabrielle registered Tony, along with her ancestors, with the Welcome Wall. Their names were unveiled on 5 May 2013.
It costs just $105 to register a name and honour your family’s arrival in this great country! We’d love to add your family’s name to The Welcome Wall, cast in bronze, and place your story on the online database at www.anmm.gov.au/ww. So please don’t hesitate to call our staff during business hours with any enquiries on 02 9298 3777.
01 Previous page: Tony Stewart during his Murray–Darling trip, in the leather outfit he made himself, with his boat Menera Menera’s mast did double duty as the ridgepole of Tony’s tent. All Photographs courtesy of Gabrielle Stewart and family.
02 Tony in the UK aged about 30, in his merchant marines uniform.
03 Tony with a three-cornered tent of his own design, in which the oars served as tent poles. His friend Paddy Pallin – fellow adventurer and owner of the eponymous chain of travel equipment stores – said it would never work. Tony proved him wrong.
04 On the Murray–Darling. RORC stands for Royal Ocean Racing Club, in England. Tony was a founding member and donated the Stewart Cup in about 1960. It is still raced for today.
05 Tony and Gabrielle in the yard surrounding their general merchants business in Frogmore, New South Wales.
01 Re-enactors aboard the reconstructed Viking vessel Jorgen Jorgenson approach the museum. All photographs A Frolows/ANMM
02 The Anglo-Saxon (left) and Viking warriors do battle, watched by their supporters.
03 The victorious Viking warrior pays tribute to his slain opponent.
04 Anglo-Saxon mourners.
05 The defeated Viking warrior is borne aloft on shields.
06 A finely dressed onlooker.
TH e seCre T W e A pON IN TH e M useu M’s recent launch of its exhibition Vikings –Beyond the legend came in human form. As the MC and special guests made their speeches, a large group of Viking re-enactors awaited their cue. A ripple ran through the crowd as they realised what was happening offshore; a dark-hulled Viking longship had loomed out of the blackness of the harbour. It sat silently for many minutes, oars raised, waiting for the order to move. At a command from its captain torches were set ablaze one by one and the crew began to row, bringing the fire-lit ship right up to the museum.
Fur-clad men, women and children disembarked. Though many were armed, they declared to the Anglo- saxon inhabitants who challenged them that they wished only to trade peacefully. The claim was met with scepticism, and the two sides agreed to fight, each trusting to God that their own champion would triumph. In handto-hand combat, the Anglo- saxon warrior was vanquished. repeating that they came as traders only, the Vikings offered a bag of coins as weregild, or reparation for the death, to the Anglo- saxons’ ‘king’ – museum director Kevin sumption. With the weregild accepted, the sides declared a truce, and the slain warrior was given due honour by being laid on three shields and borne aloft – into the museum, where he and his friends then wandered through the exhibition, enjoyed the Viking-themed food and drink on offer, and mingled with other guests and staff.
This atmospheric launch could not have been possible without the knowledge and enthusiasm of these Viking re-enactors,
who, ably assisted by curator and fellow re-enactor Dr stephen Gapps, generously gave their time to create a unique spectacle.
The Vikings came mainly from a sydneybased group of re-enactors called the New Varangian Guard, who represent scandinavian and rus Vikings who travelled to the byzantine empire – centred on Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul in Turkey) – and served in the emperor’s bodyguard around the end of the Viking Age (8th to 11th centuries).
Other re-enactors came from the group europa, based in the blue Mountains west of sydney, who portray the so-called Dark Ages of european history (about 400–1000 Ce). still others were from Fire and steel and The Huscarls, two groups based on the New south Wales Central Coast, who portray Anglo- saxons and Vikings.
The opportunity for re-creating Vikings on board a working longship was so tempting for some re-enactors that several travelled from Melbourne for the occasion, and a father-and-son Viking team flew down from brisbane.
It may surprise readers to learn that the re-creation of Viking life and culture is quite popular in Australia, so far away from scandinavia. yet this just reflects the broad popular interest in all things Viking. What makes re-enactors stand out here –and makes them quite relevant to the aims of the exhibition, going beyond the popular stereotypes and misconceptions of Viking-Age cultures – is that they treat their historical re-creations with utmost care.
re-enactors pride themselves on creating replica historical artefacts and clothing. They take authenticity very seriously. Many of the Vikings at the exhibition opening were wearing hand-stitched, naturally dyed, hand-woven and handembroidered tunics and other woollen or linen clothing, based on archaeological and historical evidence. some were carrying hand-forged replica swords and other weapons. Others were wearing exact replicas of jewellery found at such VikingAge archaeological sites as birka in sweden.
While the Vikings – Beyond the legend opening offered re-enactors a chance to perhaps more meaningfully partake in their hobby, they often perform VikingAge histories at medieval festivals as well as private gatherings of re-enactors at so-called ‘living history immersion’ events. At such events, re-enactors live for a few days in Viking longhouses and tents, surrounded only by the sights and sounds of a (re-created) Viking-Age village. some re-enactors travel to europe for an even more authentic experience at such places as the famous Viking Moot at Moesgaard in Denmark – an annual market and re-enactment battle that has been conducted since the 1970s.
Janine Flew and Dr Stephen Gapps
Readers will recall the terrible bushfires in the Blue Mountains in October this year. One member of the New Varangian Guard, Stephen Close, lost his house in the fires. When he returned to the debris, his only possessions that survived the fire intact were two of his re-enactment helmets!
Our recent Instagram photography competition, which asked entrants to produce images in the style of Ansel Adams, attracted an enthusiastic response
I N THIs Issue W e LAu NCH A N e W feature, Transmissions, which looks at the museum’s digital activities, blog and other social media sites. Our website and social media presence are continually growing, and we’re keen to engage with our online community in as many ways as we can. Our recent Instagram photography competition, which challenged entrants to produce a photograph of the Australian landscape in the style of Ansel Adams, attracted an enthusiastic response, with 259 entries of a very high standard. We are delighted to announce the results, and to congratulate Daniel Foote, who won first prize. runners-up were Marta Jackiewicz and James Farley, with honourable mentions going to Chloe Zylstra and Joanne Kirby. The judges were the museum’s digital content officer Carli Collins, museum photographer Andrew Frolows, and r ichard Wood, curator of the exhibition Ansel Adams – Photography from the Mountains to the Sea. We thank everyone who entered!
If you’re not already familiar with our popular blog, we encourage you to check it out. The blog is regularly updated with contributions from many areas of the museum, including curatorial, visitor programs, fleet and digital, and is full of news about our ever-changing events and fascinating stories about items in our collection. A very popular recent blog series was ‘A Viking ship on sydney Harbour’, which documented the restoration of our reconstructed Viking vessel, the Jorgen Jorgenson you can comment on the blog and share the stories you enjoy the most.
The International Fleet review was an extremely busy and exciting time for everyone at the museum, including the digital team, who worked hard to update our website, Twitter account and Facebook page as events occurred. We thoroughly enjoyed hosting the tall ships and getting to know their crews and captains. see if you can find yourself in our IF r slide show on Flickr. We’d love to see any IF r photos that you took yourself, whether it be on Flickr, Facebook or Twitter.
It’s been great to hear what you’ve had to say about our current exhibition Vikings – Beyond the legend. If you’ve already visited the exhibition, we’d appreciate knowing your comments and experiences. you can share these via Facebook or Twitter. Online content from the exhibition has included the hugely popular Viking saga on Facebook, where we challenged our Facebook fans to write the ultimate Viking saga in a five-daylong collaborative writing experiment. We have also been posting weird and wonderful Viking facts on Instagram, and videos related to our Vikings exhibition on youTube. recently we’ve also been working with curators and some amazing and very dedicated Viking re-enactors. Keep an eye out over the summer period for regular Viking-related updates.
Lately we’ve been developing a kids’ app, ‘Lucy’s adventures’, which is now available as a free download for i pad and android devices from the appstore and Google play – just in time for the summer holidays! The application encourages children to explore our links with the sea through pictures, movies and puzzles. It’s a great way for kids aged 3 to 7 to stay entertained,
hone important skills, and learn what one of the world’s coolest museums does. The app also provides regular updates of new puzzles and themed backgrounds, characters and objects. parents can also use the app to stay informed on the museum’s latest events, including the popular family fun days, programs for Mini Mariners (under 5s) and activities for Kids on Deck (ages 5 to 12).
We hope to connect with you via social media soon. And if you’ve anything to say about our programs, exhibitions or collections, we’d love to hear from you.
The digital team
Connect with us
Instagram entries – bit.ly/186Cc2J Blog – bit.ly/UDxujY
Flickr IFR slideshow – bit.ly/1eOm6Pg Facebook and Twitter – #vikingexhib Vikings on YouTube – bit.ly/1bvZGiz Free app download – lucysadventures.com.au
01 First prize in our Instagram photography competition went to Daniel Foote for his image of Nigretta Falls near Hamilton, in western Victoria, taken in August 2013.
02 Runner-up Marta Jackiewicz took this image in the NSW snow country near Perisher Valley in August this year.
03 Runner-up James Farley’s photograph was taken on the shore of the Blowering Reservoir, which forms part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme, in early spring 2012.
04 Honourable mentions went to Chloe Zylstra, for an image taken in August this year of a highland bull beside Mogo Creek in NSW …
05 … and to Joanne Kirby for her photo taken on Pine Ridge, Pheasant Creek, in April this year. She notes: ‘Many lives were lost on the ridge during the Black Saturday fires and the area still holds a feeling of despair and grief’.
THE WORLD Of VIKINGS
The full story of the Vikings, from their origins in Scandinavia to the last surviving settlements in 15th-century Greenland.
$45.00 / $40.50
DVD VIKINGS
The Vikings legend is brought to life in a dramatic program set in the 10th century on the Norwegian island of Karmoy. Features authentic re-creations filmed in Norway.
$39.95 / $35.95
VIKING GaME
Simple yet very addictive, this Viking board game must rank as one of history’s greatest! Fans of chess, checkers and other strategy games will love it.
CRuISE GuIDE
Thinking of a taking a cruise? This new 2014 edition of the ‘cruise industry bible’ will help you make the right choice.
$59.95 / $53.95 Members
2014 CaLENDaR
Motor, sail, or oar
– 12 classic wooden boats to delight anyone with an eye for line and grace.
$35.00 / $31.50 Members
Members
VIKING ROCK CRySTaL PENDaNT
Based on a rock crystal necklace found in Sweden. From ancient to medieval times, rock crystal was thought to have talismanic properties. Sterling silver with crystal, height 1.9 cm, width 1.3 cm, crystal 1.3 cm, length 43 cm
$89.95 / $80.95 Members
ROOCH
Inspired by the rich Viking hoards found throughout Scandinavia – treasures that were often buried for safekeeping, then forgotten for centuries. Pewter with antique silver finish. Diameter 3.5 cm
$49.95 / $44.95 Members
CELTIC BROOCH
This beautiful silver plated Celtic-knot brooch has been inspired by treasures from our Vikings exhibition. Diameter 2.5 cm
$59.95 / $53.95 Members
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Signals
ISSN 1033-4688
01 Krait on the Brisbane River, February 1943, from a souvenir postcard from the Z Special Unit Association. See story on page 64. ANMM Collection
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