Australia Policy, it would most likely do so when Great Britain was involved, or threatened to be involved, in a European war. Would the British government dare to authorise the despatch of any substantial part of the fleet to the East to help Australia? The dependence of Australia upon the competence, let alone the readiness, of British statesmen to send forces to our aid is too dangerous a hazard upon which to found Australian defence policy. 15
The speech provoked predictable uproar from the government benches, with cries that Curtin, the wretched socialist, had insulted Britain and trampled the bonds of Empire. But the question he had posed would not go away, despite purblind complacency in official quarters. In March 1937, the Australiannaval staff prepared for the government a confident appraisal, which read, in part:
The only possible enemy is Japan, and although the disparity of force in our disfavour will be large at the outset, we shall be in possession of a first-class and almost impregnable base â Singapore. Furthermore, it is impossible to conceive of a world situation such that the United Kingdom would be unable to despatch a large proportion of the Main Fleet to Eastern Waters in the case of such a war. Hence, we may expect the balance of forces at the scene of operations to be levelled up in a comparatively short time. 16
The âalmost impregnable baseâ was opened, with great fanfare, in early 1939. Winston Churchill would call it âthe Gibraltar of the Eastâ, and it was, indeed, a monumental feat of engineering and construction. There was only one flaw: there was barely a warship in sight and only a handful of obsolete aircraft of the RAF. Fortress Singapore was an empty shell, a grand delusion that would have tragic consequences.
CHAPTER 3
TO THE WORLD BEYOND
The Autolycus berthed in Hobart only long enough to load her cargo of apples, then plodded back north across Bass Strait and into Port Phillip Bay to collect another contingent of sailors from Melbourne.
There were 300 men waiting at Station Pier to join the Perth crew. Many of them, too, were still teenagers, wet behind the ears, fresh from their basic training at the Naval Depot. They were rated as ordinary seamen and wore the square-rig naval uniform as proud as you like, but they had not yet been to sea. Others were more experienced sailors with homes in Victoria, or who had returned from leave in Tasmania, South Australia or Western Australia. One of them was Charles William Lawrance, 26 years old, a leading stoker, known to everyone as Jock. Born in Rotherham, near Sheffield, in England in 1913, Jockâs few years in Australia had done little to take the edge off the thick Yorkshire burr of his youth. His shipmates had decided off their own bat that he was Scottish, so Jock he became.
His early life had been hard. His mother had died when he was a baby. When Jock was just eight, his father, a railway ganger, was found badly hurt beside the tracks one morning after a night of thick Yorkshire fog. Months later, he died of his injuries. Jock lived with his elder sister and eventually worked on the railways for a while himself, training to be a signalman for the old LMS â the London, Midland and Scottish companyâ but they sacked him when he became entitled to a manâs wage at the age of 20. With the Depression beginning to bite, he wrote to an uncle in Tasmania and another in Canada, asking about emigration. The Tasmanian uncle offered him a roof over his head and a job on his small farm on Bruny Island, south of Hobart:
I had some money left. My father had left me a bit from war bonds, and my married sister living in Manchester put in a bit. There was no dole. The trip to Australia cost me £54, a lot of money in those days. I had the fifty but not the four, so my sister gave me that, plus £5 to land with. There were no migration schemes, that was finished. My uncle had to swear I wouldnât be on
The speech provoked predictable uproar from the government benches, with cries that Curtin, the wretched socialist, had insulted Britain and trampled the bonds of Empire. But the question he had posed would not go away, despite purblind complacency in official quarters. In March 1937, the Australiannaval staff prepared for the government a confident appraisal, which read, in part:
The only possible enemy is Japan, and although the disparity of force in our disfavour will be large at the outset, we shall be in possession of a first-class and almost impregnable base â Singapore. Furthermore, it is impossible to conceive of a world situation such that the United Kingdom would be unable to despatch a large proportion of the Main Fleet to Eastern Waters in the case of such a war. Hence, we may expect the balance of forces at the scene of operations to be levelled up in a comparatively short time. 16
The âalmost impregnable baseâ was opened, with great fanfare, in early 1939. Winston Churchill would call it âthe Gibraltar of the Eastâ, and it was, indeed, a monumental feat of engineering and construction. There was only one flaw: there was barely a warship in sight and only a handful of obsolete aircraft of the RAF. Fortress Singapore was an empty shell, a grand delusion that would have tragic consequences.
CHAPTER 3
TO THE WORLD BEYOND
The Autolycus berthed in Hobart only long enough to load her cargo of apples, then plodded back north across Bass Strait and into Port Phillip Bay to collect another contingent of sailors from Melbourne.
There were 300 men waiting at Station Pier to join the Perth crew. Many of them, too, were still teenagers, wet behind the ears, fresh from their basic training at the Naval Depot. They were rated as ordinary seamen and wore the square-rig naval uniform as proud as you like, but they had not yet been to sea. Others were more experienced sailors with homes in Victoria, or who had returned from leave in Tasmania, South Australia or Western Australia. One of them was Charles William Lawrance, 26 years old, a leading stoker, known to everyone as Jock. Born in Rotherham, near Sheffield, in England in 1913, Jockâs few years in Australia had done little to take the edge off the thick Yorkshire burr of his youth. His shipmates had decided off their own bat that he was Scottish, so Jock he became.
His early life had been hard. His mother had died when he was a baby. When Jock was just eight, his father, a railway ganger, was found badly hurt beside the tracks one morning after a night of thick Yorkshire fog. Months later, he died of his injuries. Jock lived with his elder sister and eventually worked on the railways for a while himself, training to be a signalman for the old LMS â the London, Midland and Scottish companyâ but they sacked him when he became entitled to a manâs wage at the age of 20. With the Depression beginning to bite, he wrote to an uncle in Tasmania and another in Canada, asking about emigration. The Tasmanian uncle offered him a roof over his head and a job on his small farm on Bruny Island, south of Hobart:
I had some money left. My father had left me a bit from war bonds, and my married sister living in Manchester put in a bit. There was no dole. The trip to Australia cost me £54, a lot of money in those days. I had the fifty but not the four, so my sister gave me that, plus £5 to land with. There were no migration schemes, that was finished. My uncle had to swear I wouldnât be on
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