by Haynes, Jim
Australians remained obsessed by the mystery of the tragic loss of the HMAS Sydney.
Many theories were put forward over the years about the way HMAS Sydney was lost. One theory blamed a lurking Japanese submarine, although Japan had not entered the war at that point. Others blamed a second German raider or U-boat.
But one question remains, why did Captain Burnett take the Sydney so close to a suspect ship? The theory I subscribed to was that he mistook the disguised raider for an unarmed German supply ship.
HMAS Sydney, like all warships, carried a book of information on enemy warships, supplied by naval intelligence. It contained a photo of the Schiff 41/Kormoran, but the photo was taken before she was converted to an auxiliary cruiser. It was a photo of her when she was the Steiermark.
It was not a good photo. It showed a ship riding high in the water, where the Kormoran sat low. It showed the wrong number of Sampson poles and a stern that looked like a half-counter half-cruiser stern, not the full cruiser stern the Kormoran actually had in 1941.
Perhaps the photo caused Burnett to think the Kormoran was the Japan-based supply ship, the Kulmerland, he knew was working in the area, supplying U-boats and raiders.
The Kulmerland was a very similar ship to the Kormoran with a full cruiser stern. The Kulmerland was known to be unarmed and operating in the area where the Sydney found the Kormoran, usually disguised as the Japanese steamer Tokyo Maru.
The Kulmerland was the Kormoran’s Indian Ocean ‘mother ship’. A few weeks before, she had spent a week re-supplying the Kormoran at sea near Cape Leeuwin. She had also taken all the prisoners, survivors of the ships Detmers had sunk, to be sent back to Germany.
British Naval Intelligence issued a report on German raiders in May 1941. It described each ship, giving the original identity, alternative names and known disguises.
Descriptions of most of the raiders were quite comprehensive, but the report gave little information on the Schiff 41/Kormoran, which was quite wrongly described as having a ‘squat funnel in the centre of a rather high superstructure’, with a ‘half-cruiser, half-counter’ stern. In fact, the Kormoran was specifically reported to resemble ‘a modified Kulmerland’.
I believed the poor photo and misleading description caused the Kormoran to be misidentified as the Kulmerland.
If Captain Burnett believed the Kormoran was the Kulmerland, everything he did makes sense.
The pretence about identity and the unreadable signal would have been logical. It would have been a quite normal and expected ploy to gain time to scuttle the ship and prevent her falling into enemy hands. This was a common practice and explains Burnett’s haste to get to the vessel, to prevent it being scuttled and take her as a prize. It also explains why the warship came along broadside to the raider; this would have been the normal practice when sending a boarding party.
It even explains why HMAS Sydney’s first salvo missed completely, as her guns would have been set to miss in order to scare an unarmed enemy ship into surrendering and not attempting to scuttle. As there were no officially reported messages from HMAS Sydney at all, it will never be known what Captain Burnett believed.
After the wrecks were discovered and explored, the investigation showed that Detmers had told the truth—and my theory was very plausible.
Phew!
JH
LOST WITH ALL HANDS
PETER MACE
Her hull was laid down on a far distant shore,
When the threat to world peace was too great to ignore,
Designed for a purpose, and that purpose was war,
The dockyards were building the Sydney.
Launched when the Great Depression held sway,
In action to keep the Italians at bay,
By blockading the ports in the Med, far away,
From her namesake, the city of Sydney.
With the world now at war the real work has begun,
Against Germany now, soon Japan’s rising sun,
The Bartollomeo felt her twin six-inch guns,
The day she was sunk by the Sydney.
Steaming down south to the west of Shark Bay,
A freighter is seen at the close of the day,
With the flag of the Dutch flying there on display,
But a raider is stalking the Sydney.
The Captain approached what he thought was a friend,
But the one thousand yards is too close to defend,
Then the flag of the Reich on the mast did ascend,
And all hell breaks loose on the Sydney.
Taking water and burning she turns on the Hun,
Returning her fire, ‘These colours won’t run’,
Determined to finish what she has begun,
She fought to the end did the Sydney.
The battle is over, both ships drift in haze,
The Kormoran scuttled and Sydney ablaze.
The painful conclusion, made after six days,
All hands have gone down on the Sydney.
. . .
The bronze woman stands gazing, grief etched on her face,
Symbolising the mothers and wives who, with grace,
Had waited for news on the last resting place,
Of their loved ones who served on the Sydney.
. . .
It was just a dark smudge on a video screen,
But the hunters were cheering for what they had seen,
Then the thoughtful reflection on what it may mean
Had they found the wreck of the Sydney?
A nation had waited sixty-seven long years,
Long after the loved ones had shed all their tears,
Then a shadowy shape on the sonar appears
And reveals the wreck of the Sydney.
A cold watery grave for captain and crew.
No one will ever know what they went through,
When the Kormoran’s guns and torpedoes flew,
Straight into the heart of the Sydney.
The fate of six hundred and forty-five men
Remembered in silence by the Navy, and when
The wreaths were cast out, the priest whispered, ‘Amen,’
And they prayed for the souls of the Sydney.
The wreaths were cast out, the priest whispered, ‘Amen,’
And they prayed for the souls of the Sydney.
RACING YARNS
The racetrack is a rich source of great yarns and there is something very Australian about the yarns that come from the racing game. I guess they often emphasise the stoic, deadpan nature of Aussie humour, that dry self-deprecating style we seem to enjoy—laughing at ourselves.
I have enough racing yarns to fill a book on their own. Come to think of it, I have filled two books already with racing history, yarns and true stories. But this book is strictly for good yarns, so we will stick to the most interesting and amusing yarns.
As settlements spread out into the bush in the nineteenth century, horses were an essential part of life; they were virtually the only means of transport. Whether it was a good saddle horse or a sulky, buggy, dray or Cobb & Co coach, horses were the only alternative to walking.
Entertainment in the bush was limited and the race meeting became the most common way to let your hair down after a spell of hard work, a way to socialise after living in isolation for a while. Along with this came the love of a long weekend or a holiday, the belief that handicapping the more talented performers makes things ‘more interesting’, and the Australian love of gambling.
The racing industry is so full of colourful true stories that there seems to be no reason for exaggeration or make-believe, but, Australians being what we are, there are plenty of tall tales told about the races.
So, this section mixes totally factual yarns about racing with make-believe, tall stories and often-told yarns and jokes. You can guess which is which!
Banjo Paterson loved the races and was a very good rider himself, winning races at Rosehill as an amateur rider on several occasions and being a m
ember of the first ever New South Wales polo team, which defeated Victoria 2–0 in the first ever interstate polo match. Banjo had a great store of humorous yarns about racing—so he gets a good look-in in this section.
NOT BAD
Stoicism is a common element in racetrack humour. One of my favourite stories concerns the old battling punter who heads off to the races with $20 in his pocket.
The old battler, let’s call him Jim, backs the first winner at 10 to 1 and then goes all up on the next three favourites, who duly salute the judge, giving him a bank of $500 when the fifth race comes around.
Now, Jim has done the form carefully on this race and has a ‘special’ which opens at 6 to 1 and drifts out to 8 to 1. Unperturbed, Jim steps in, backs his ‘special’ and watches it win with his hands in his pockets and no emotion on his face.
Two more all-up bets on successful favourites take Jim’s bank to almost $20,000 before the final race on the card.
This race features Jim’s second ‘good thing’ for the day, a track specialist named Wire Knot, third up from a spell over his pet distance.
Jim extracts a $50 note from his wad, tucks it into his back pocket and puts the rest on his second ‘special’, Wire Knot, on the nose at 3 to 1.
Wire Knot misses the kick, flies down the outside late and it’s a photo finish. The judge calls for a second print before awarding the race to the rank outsider, Mitre Guest. Wire Knot misses by a nose.
On his way to the bus stop, Jim meets a mate who says, “Hello, Jim, how’d you go today?’
‘Not bad,’ says Jim, deadpan, ‘I won $30.’
JH
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
I have often been amazed and amused by the wonderful cryptic and appropriate names owners come up with for racehorses.
Some favourites of mine over the years here in Australia have been Itchy Feet which raced in Sydney in the 1960s and was by an imported French stallion named Le Cordonnier which means ‘the shoemaker’ in French, out of a mare called Ticklish.
And as a kid, I was amazed that race callers didn’t ‘get’ the name of a well-performed Sydney horse. The name was spelled C U R F T A and race callers always said ‘Kerff-tar’ but, of course, with Curfta being sired by Arrivederci, which means ‘goodbye’ in Italian, the name should have been pronounced C U R fta—‘see you after’.
A few of the more imaginative and amusing names of recent years have been None for the Road, which was by Noalcoholic out of Road to Gold; Greenie by Naturalism out of Ozone Friendly; and Rumpus Room by Shemozzle out of Downstairs.
Some of the most clever Aussie names I can remember are Bowled Lillee, which was out of a mare named Courtmarsh, and VRC Derby winner Plastered, a Western Australian colt whose mother was called Tipples.
Some names are quite obscure and the majority of racegoers may never see the cryptic joke or reference involved. Caulfield Cup winner Railings, for instance, was out of a mare called Suffragette who was a daughter of Emancipation, and the name was a reference to the early suffragettes chaining themselves to the railings in Downing Street.
Suzanne Philcox, who works at Woodlands Stud, has to find names for up to 300 foals a year. ‘I try to use the dam’s name,’ she says. ‘I also try to keep names short for the callers. Crawl is out of a mare called Traipse whose mother was Elegant Walk; another of her foals was named Swagger.’
Phar Lap is Malay for ‘lightning’ spelled with a P H because trainer Harry Telford thought seven letters was lucky and horses with two-word names comprising seven letters won the most Melbourne Cups!
With so many opportunities to be clever with names, I often bemoan the fact that owners miss golden opportunities to be inventive, coming up with unimaginative names when some thought could have produced a real beauty.
An imaginary horse by Bogtrotter out of Cakewalk, for instance, often ends up being labelled with Bogwalk or Caketrotter or, even worse, Bogtrotter Lad or Cakewalk’s Lass. Lad, Lass, Boy, Girl, Star, Prince, Lord, Lady, King and Queen are thrown onto the end of sires’ and dams’ names with reckless abandon to create names which, it seems to me, are harder to carry than topweight in a welter handicap.
The best and funniest racing name story comes from the early days of thoroughbred racing and is a true story—the best yarns are always the true ones.
The horse was named Potoooooooo or Pot-8-Os (truly!). He was foaled in 1773 and was a quite well-performed racehorse who defeated some of the greatest horses of his day and later became an influential sire. He was sired by the great Eclipse and bred by a bloke with an wonderfully posh name, Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon.
Pot-8-Os acquired the strange spelling of his name, Potatoes, when a stable lad was asked to write it on a feed bin. The lad’s version, Potoooooooo, was said to amuse his lordship so much that he kept it, and it appears in the Stud Book.
Pot-8-Os won thirty-four races over the span of seven years, including the Jockey Club Purse three times, and the prestigious Craven Stakes. He retired in 1783 to stand at stud and sired 172 winners including Champion, the first horse to win both the Derby and the St Leger (in 1800); Waxy, who won the Derby Stakes in 1793; and Tyrant, the 1799 Derby winner.
Pot-8-Os was finally ‘planted’ when he died at Upper Hare Park in November 1800.
JH
WHAT PRICE POSSUMUM?
One of the strangest true stories of the Australian turf concerns the uncanny punting ability of a Chinese market gardener from Bankstown, Jimmy Ah Poon. The odd thing about this story is that, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Jimmy only ever backed one horse, and only when he won.
You see, Jimmy Ah Poon’s appearance on Sydney’s racetracks coincided with the career of the mighty champion Poseidon in the early years of the twentieth century.
Poseidon won eighteen times from twenty-six starts as a three and four year old. His wins included two Derbies, two Caulfield Cups, the Melbourne Cup and the AJC and VRC St Legers, and it seems that Jimmy backed him on every occasion that he won but never when he ran second or worse.
Jimmy was known as ‘Louis the Possum’ by bookmakers because he could not pronounce the name of the horse which won him an untold fortune. Every time Poseidon was due to win, Jimmy would turn up at the track and ask the bookmakers, ‘What price Possumum?’
Jimmy disappears from Australian racetrack history after Poseidon’s four-year-old season. Legend has it that he returned to China and lived like a mandarin for the rest of his days on the estimated £35,000 fortune he acquired due to his uncanny prescience about the future successes of ‘Possumum’.
Punters used to follow Jimmy around and treat him as kindly as possible to see if he was going to bet or not. I believe this is the origin of that odd saying still heard on Aussie racetracks when a punter cannot pick a winner for love or money—‘My luck’s lousy today, I must have killed a Chinaman.’
JH
YOU CAN’T LOSE—AT LEAST, NOT TO A HORSE
Back in the days before doping tests came in, a trainer was spotted by a steward slipping a pre-prepared ‘speed-ball’ to his horse before a race.
‘What did you give that horse?’ demanded the steward.
The trainer, who had several more of the pills in his pocket, replied, ‘Oh, they’re just home-made boiled lollies,’ and he popped one into his mouth and went on, ‘my Missus makes ’em and the horse loves them. I’m having one myself,’ he says, ‘here, do you wanna try one?’
‘Okay,’ said the steward as he took the pill, looked at it and put it in his mouth, ‘but I’ve got my eye on you.’
Minutes later, as the trainer legged him aboard, the stable jockey asked, ‘Are we all set, boss, everything as planned?’
‘Yes,’ the trainer replied, ‘money’s on and he’ll win. If anything passes you, don’t worry, it’ll just be the Chief Steward or me!’
JH
THE MAN WHO LIKED LOT 41
There was once a battling trainer in Sydney who was addicted to studying bloodlines. H
e was born in Australia, in Bendigo in fact, but had lived most of his life in New Zealand before returning to Sydney to try to make it as a trainer.
He spent a lot of time reading through auction catalogues. He always found the time to do that, but he didn’t have the budget to do much else.
He had an uncanny knack of looking at a horse’s breeding and making an assessment of its ability, while completely ignoring the racing history and results achieved by its immediate forebears.
To the uninitiated (and that’s 99.99 per cent of the population) a horse’s pedigree is a jumble of names. To people like the battling trainer, however, a horse’s family tree can be a treasure map showing how certain great ancestors’ DNA, in conjunction with that of certain others, can produce an alchemy of characteristics and innate abilities unseen by those without the ‘sixth sense’ and encyclopaedic knowledge to calculate and spot such things.
One day, while browsing a New Zealand auction catalogue, the battling trainer noticed a yearling being offered for sale as the despised last lot of the day—Lot 41. The last few lots at any sale are not horses that the auctioneer expects to do well in the sale ring.
The sire of this particular lot was bred in England but had poor conformation and, although he was well bred, his breeder ‘got rid of’ him for a mere 100 guineas as a yearling. He was trained by a good trainer named Tom Hogg but only ever ran third in a poor ‘selling’ class race and Hogg ‘got rid of’ him to Australia where he was trained in Sydney by Peter Keith. The horse only managed one win in a restricted race at Randwick, and even that was a dead heat, not a stand-alone win.
Keith then ‘got rid of’ him to breeder Paddy Wade who stood him at stud in the bush at Wagga Wagga. Even there the horse could not attract mares from local owners and so Wade decided to ‘get rid of’ him to a New Zealand breeder and sold him for half what he had paid for him.
This battling trainer, however, perusing the family tree of this racetrack failure, saw that he was a grandson of two great champion sires Bend Or and Spearmint. He also had the blood of the great St Simon and the well-known champion sire Galopin on both sides of his family tree. Having Spearmint as a grandsire meant he also had the blood of champions Carbine and Musket in his veins.