Authors: Mike Carlton
With the time difference across the meridians, the Admiralty War Telegram, as it was called,
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arrived at 5.41 on that Sunday, halfway through the morning watch when most of the crew were still asleep. Marked most immediate, and addressed to all His Majesty's Ships, it was a masterpiece of brevity, just five words: TOTAL GERMANY repetition TOTAL GERMANY.
Rowley Roberts recorded its impact in his diary:
The men had a rather crude awakening with the âReveille', a shrill bosun's pipe and the announcement that we were at war with Germany. Hands went to divisions and prayers during the forenoon. The lower deck was cleared and we were addressed by the Captain, who told us the plain facts and then called for three cheers for H. M. The King. Never before have I heard such a rousing response, and it can be said that it came from the bottom of their hearts with the will to serve.
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So it had happened. If there were cheers on the quarterdeck, there would have been quiet thoughts, too, of loved ones at home. The ship had been due to return to Sydney on 14 October. That was obviously out. It was not until 10 October that the Navy Office in Melbourne sent a letter to
Perth
next of kin around the country, to say in starchy officialese:
It will be appreciated that, in war time, the location and movement of ships-of-war cannot be disclosed, as the promulgation of such information would be of material benefit to the enemy. The Board cannot do more than advise you that the return of HMAS
Perth
to Australia is not expected for some time to come, and that she is rendering valuable service.
All on board are well.
Perth
would spend the next six months in the Caribbean and the western Atlantic. More by good luck than good management, it would be a relatively gentle apprenticeship for the conflict that would eventually engulf her in other seas and oceans, and her men were fortunate that this was so.
For much of the time, they were engaged in the monotony of patrol and convoy â weeks on end of it. As he had planned, Farncomb would appear off ports in the region, sometimes with the dummy funnel in place to give him that different appearance. His reach and range were restricted by his lack of both radar and the reconnaissance aircraft that had become entangled in bureaucratic red tape, but as he cruised the Caribbean he diligently ordered suspicious merchantmen to stop for inspection if he thought they might be Germans in disguise or carrying goods to German ports.
The ship's routine was now on a war footing, the crew on two watches instead of the peacetime three â four hours on and four hours off â and called to âstand to the dawn' each morning. Dawn was a time of heightened danger, with the chance of an enemy ship or submarine or perhaps an aircraft taking a position to attack when the cruiser might be starkly silhouetted against the rising sun. Elmo Gee sounded the call for action stations on his bugle, followed by the clatter of the alarm rattlers. Officers and men tumbled bleary-eyed from bunks and hammocks, struggling into their cumbersome anti-flash clothing and steel helmets, if they were stationed on the exposed upper decks, pounding along the flats and passageways and up the ladders. The decks were still wet with dew, and it was cool enough then not to mind their heavy gear as they stood to the guns, the torpedo tubes, the depth-charge racks, the Sick Bay, the magazines deep below decks, the boiler rooms and engine spaces, or waiting around in the damage control parties.
âA-turret closed up, sir.'
âVery good.'
âAction Quartermaster on the wheel, sir.'
âVery good.'
âP1 4-inch closed up, sir.'
âVery good.'
It was the sound of the ship stirring for the day. On the bridge and the signal deck, the officers, lookouts and signalmen would scan the sea and sky with their binoculars, alert for a whiff of smoke on a horizon or a distant speck in the air that might spell hostilities. With nothing sighted after half an hour or so, the stand-down would come, and after that the pipes of hands to clean ship and hands to breakfast. The same routine would happen at evening quarters.
At first, it was exciting, then tiresome, until finally it became just another part of the unalterable tedium of wartime, to be endured without complaint because there was no point in complaining. At least the weather was kind. Being Australians, the men relished the Caribbean sunshine, and in that era before anyone worried about skin cancer they often worked in just a pair of shorts, with their shirts off, to get a tan. You could find relief from the stuffy heat of the mess decks at night by rolling out your hammock in some quiet corner of the upper deck to sleep under the stars, which was officially illegal but tacitly condoned.
Sometimes, though, there were complaints, pointless or not. With the humid heat and the boredom, tolerance and tempers frayed. Ray Parkin, the most tranquil of men, would write in his diary of his divisional officer, Lieutenant Gerard Carter, that âhe is the only officer who has ever inspired me with the mad desire to thump him on his ignorant nose ⦠he seems to be governed by fear of his superiors because of his own inefficiency and inability to handle men. He is every bit as big a menace to the efficiency of the ship as any active Nazi.'
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Rowley Roberts reported a water shortage:
10 November. Water facilities bad. When the men were trying to bathe before going ashore last night the hot water was cut off and the cold turned down to a mere drizzle. In view of the tropics and the terrific heat below decks this is scandalous. The
officers are not restricted â they may have their bath or shower.
11 November. Some say our being stationed here is punishment for the so-called mutiny which was boosted up by the New York papers. If this is true then the Government and the Naval Board are using methods only to be accepted by the tyrant of Europe.
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Perth
did not fire a shot in anger in the Caribbean. For all their efforts, the only sight of the German merchant vessels they were hunting was the occasional distant red, white and black swastika flag flying at the stern of some freighter safely blockaded in a neutral harbour. But it was a proving ground, a getting of wisdom. And the Australians were delighted when they heard an American radio news report describe them as âthe terror of the Caribbean'.
There were times that would stay in the memory because of a tension set running or a fear aroused. There were also moments of mateship, an escapade ashore, a private pause for reflection, or just some incident out of the ordinary that brought relief from the monotony. The first boarding was one of them. It happened only hours after the declaration of war, as
Perth
cruised in a fiery sunset near the Dutch West Indies island of Curaçao off the northern coast of the oilfields of Venezuela. At five o'clock, halfway through the first of the two dog watches, a bridge lookout reported a small freighter creeping along inside the island's five-kilometre limit. There seemed to be something furtive about her, so the Officer of the Watch sounded action stations and called the Captain from his sea cabin.
The rattles were still clattering as Farncomb hurried to the compass platform and raised his binoculars. A closer look showed that her funnel markings and masts had been newly repainted in the colours of an American shipping line, which heightened suspicions still further. German merchant ships were likely to do that to escape inspection. Worse, there was the possibility she could be an auxiliary cruiser disguised as a harmless merchant vessel, with concealed guns and torpedo
tubes ready to strike. They had done that sort of thing in the last war. And would do it again in this one.
As
Perth
kept closing, the ship ran up a brand-new Panamanian flag. Someone on the bridge produced a long telescope and picked out the name SS
Tachira
, which Lloyd's Shipping Register had listed as an American vessel. So why the Panamanian flag? Farncomb was taking no chances. As the stranger edged away from the Curaçao coast and into international waters,
Perth
moved in to nudge her further seawards and hoisted the international code for âStop instantly'.
That produced no result. The
Tachira
, if that was who she was, plodded on through the gathering dusk. Farncomb ordered âGuns' Bracegirdle to fire a blank shot from one of the 4-inchers. It echoed across the water, but also without effect. More wary still, the Captain ordered
Perth
's main armament, the four big turrets of 6-inch guns, to train directly at the quarry. They swung around at point-blank range. One broadside could blow the freighter to kingdom come. The threat was unmistakable. It worked.
From the
Tachira
's bridge, the message âMy engines are stopped' spluttered out in faltering Morse code, and Farncomb sent away a boarding party in a cutter. The piratical Percy Stokan, the Yeoman of Signals and an athletic man who was, among other things, a champion archer, carried his cutlass with him, the blade so finely honed he could shave the hairs of his arm with it. Bill Bracht was another of the boarders:
Within ten minutes we were climbing the Jacob's ladder onto her deck, our officer with his pistol, the petty officer with a cutlass and the remainder of the party with rifles and bayonets in their scabbards. I was first on deck with a revolver.
A signalman and leading seaman went immediately to the bridge. The crew and passengers, amongst them some women, were lined up before our lieutenant and myself, and three other seamen were ordered to inspect the cargo. It was coffee.
Everything was found to be in order. The ship was as it
claimed to be. Our lieutenant apologised to the captain of the
Tachira
for our action, and stated that it would not have happened if
Perth
's signals had been answered promptly and correctly. The captain said that he did not carry the international code of signals and his country was not at war.
We climbed down the ladder and into our boat and rejoined
Perth
a little disappointed in not having an early victory.
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The cutlass and bayonets were a picturesque flourish, an echo of eighteenth-century warfare in the mid-twentieth, but not inappropriate in these pirate waters.
Perth
would carry out more boardings in the months to come, but none so exciting as that first taste of harm's way.
Then there was the hurricane. As an experience to be recalled, this came into the category of cold fear, a rage of the elements more furious than any enemy could contrive, which, at its height, seemed intent on despatching the ship and the men who manned her to their death in that sailors' graveyard of legend, the Bermuda Triangle.
It began quietly enough. On 30 September, Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff, Captain of the
Graf Spee
, made his first kill, sinking a small British freighter, the
Clement
, in the south Atlantic off the far-east coast of Brazil. It was the first indication that a German pocket battleship was on the loose. This was deeply worrying news. The pocket battleships had been given that name for good reason. They were formidable vessels of nearly 14,000 tons fully loaded, far bigger and more powerful than any single British cruiser. They boasted a main armament of six 11-inch guns, which had a punch heavy enough and a range long enough to blow a 6-inch cruiser like
Perth
out of the water before she could hope to hit back. British merchant ships in the Atlantic were now in mortal danger. The Admiralty scrambled hunting groups of warships to protect them.
On the same day that the
Clement
was sunk, Farncomb finally managed to get
Perth
some gunnery practice, shooting at a target being towed for him off Kingston. A few days later,
he was ordered to escort a convoy of 45 ships from Jamaica out into the Atlantic, for their journey home to Britain â a daunting assignment with the news that a pocket battleship might well be in the area.
The convoy plodded to the north-east in nine long columns, zigzagging at a stately eight knots to make it difficult for submarines to track them. This was an infuriatingly slow pace for a cruiser captain. On the evening of 4 October,
Perth
picked up a wireless transmission from a German warship. Farncomb brought the ship to action stations. It might well be
Graf Spee
or perhaps
Deutschland
, which was also thought to be out. His dilemma was acute. Bill Bracht, newly promoted to leading seaman, noted a conversation he had with his captain at the time:
At one stage in October I asked the captain his thoughts on the German pocket battleships. The scuttlebutt on
Perth
was that
Graf Spee
and the
Deutschland
were in the Atlantic. Farncomb said âthey are very modern ships capable of matching up with bigger battleships. As we have no British battleships in this area, it is considered the only chance is to attack with a heavy cruiser of eight-inch guns and a light cruiser of six-inch guns, from different directions.'
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From around that time, the crew began to call Farncomb by a new nickname: Fearless Frank. There was some relief when the convoy was joined a day later by the 8-inch Kent class heavy cruiser HMS
Berwick
. Her captain, senior to Farncomb, laid plans for what to do if a pocket battleship appeared.
Perth
was to engage the enemy on her bow with her main armament and, if possible, a torpedo attack, while
Berwick
attacked from the rear. With luck, it might work.
The convoy drove on through the Caribbean, heading for the Windward Passage and the Atlantic, nervously expecting the enemy to appear over the horizon at any minute.
Perth
's ship's company was jumpy, closed up at defence stations, the
guns manned night and day. There were two submarine alerts, which turned out to be false alarms. For the superstitious men in the crew â and sailors are by nature quite extraordinarily superstitious â there was an added bad omen when a sick Chinese fireman from one of the merchant ships was brought aboard for treatment by
Perth
's doctor, Charlie Downward. Chinamen were very bad luck. And so too was Friday the 13th, the date in October when the fireman was returned to his ship. âWe were looking for and expecting the worst at any moment,' wrote Rowley Roberts.
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