Mike rolled over and tried to go back
to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come and after a few minutes he lay
with his eyes wide open staring up into the ceiling. Like all the
young soldiers aboard the ship, Mike was apprehensive about what
lay ahead for him in New Guinea. But he was trying hard not to let
the looming dangers and uncertainties of being in a war zone spoil
a pleasant week sailing through tropical waters as a passenger
aboard the
Centaur.
His thoughts inevitably turned to home
and suddenly he felt very close to his family. He checked the clock
above the ward room door. In the glow of the outside lights he
could see the time clearly. It was fifteen minutes to four. At
dinner, the night before, a crewman had estimated the ship was
making about twelve knots and was probably just far enough off the
coast to avoid the adverse effect of the Eastern Australian
Current. Mike looked at the clock again and estimated the
Centaur
should be off the Queensland
coast by now. He swung silently out of his bunk, put on his shirt
and trousers and headed up to the deck.
Outside, it was a fine clear moonlit
night and the deck seemed to be deserted. Mike found the air chilly
but refreshing. He walked from the companionway to the port side of
the vessel and looked out over the rail. Powerful floodlights
playing on the
Centaur’s
brilliant white hull illuminated her huge red cross markings
and lit up the surface of the sea all around the ship. To his
delight Mike saw a group of dolphins cavorting in the water
alongside the vessel. When at last they disappeared he looked
toward the shore, straining his eyes trying to see if he could make
out the outline of the coast. But the glare of the lights made it
hard to see beyond a few hundred yards. He was about to amble off
towards the stern of the ship where the lighting was more subdued
when he heard someone behind him.
‘Getting a little air are you, son?’
Mike turned around. The voice belonged to an
elderly man wearing the uniform of a merchant marine officer. A
pair of binoculars rested on his chest, hanging from a strap around
his neck.
‘I thought perhaps we’d be off Queensland by
now, sir, I’m from Brisbane. I was just trying to see if I could
see land.’
‘You won’t be able to see land,’ the officer
said. ’But you will be able to see the Cape Moreton light from the
stern of the ship. Come with me. I was just heading that way to
stretch my legs.’
Mike fell in beside the officer. The older
man walked briskly with an almost youthful gait. But white hair and
weathered face suggested a lifetime at sea.
‘Are you the captain of the
Centaur
,
s
ir?’
The old man smiled. ‘No, but I used to be a
ship’s captain and still hold that rank. But I’ve been a member of
the Torres Strait Pilot’s Service for nearly thirty years now. My
name’s Jock Salt. I’m the pilot aboard this ship. And you?’
‘Private Mike Sharkey, I’m an ASC dispatch
rider, sir.’
‘First time to New Guinea, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I suppose you’ve been there many times,
sir.’
‘Enough to know better. I should have retired
years ago. I’m getting on for seventy. But there are so few pilots
and so many ships needing them these days, they keep asking me to
make just one more trip.’
‘How bad is it up there Captain Salt?’
‘Its dangerous, especially for troop
ships and supply vessels. The Japs sunk the last supply vessel I
piloted into Milne Bay. She was the
SS
Anshun.
They sent her to the bottom
while
we were alongside the jetty being unloaded.’ Captain Salt saw
Mike’s eyes widen. ‘Don’t worry, son. You’re quite safe aboard a
hospital ship.’
They reached the small deck area at the stern
of the ship. Compared to the vessel’s mid-section it was
comparatively free from glaring lights.
‘Look…over there.’ Captain Salt pointed
over the port side.
‘
There’s the Cape Moreton
light.’
Mike’s eyes soon picked up the distant
flashing light and suddenly the world seemed a friendlier place. He
knew the Cape Moreton lighthouse well. As a boy his parents had
taken him to Moreton Island many times and he’d often played in the
sand beneath the massive headland on which the great lighthouse
stood. His father had told him its powerful light pierced the
blackness of the night for almost twenty-five miles out to sea and
had given reassurance and comfort to seafarers since 1857. Now, as
he watched the far-off beacon, Mike knew it was his turn to draw
strength from it. Then, suddenly something blocked out its
signal.
‘Bloody, hell.’
The loud curse came from Captain Salt.
Mike turned to the pilot standing
beside him. Salt was looking in the direction of the lighthouse
with his night-lens binoculars pressed firmly to his eyes. Mike
looked back along the line of the glasses. He gasped. Now, where
just a moment before had been gently heaving water, a huge black
silhouette was rising up out of the ocean. After a few moments,
Mike didn’t need binoculars to see that the terrifying stark
outline on the surface of the sea was a submarine.
It
was directly abeam of the
Centaur
, no more than two or three hundred yards
away. Then, as quickly as it had appeared it began to slip back
down into the sea.
‘God, Almighty, it’s Japanese,’ Captain Salt
said calmly as it disappeared from view. ‘I thought I saw one from
the bridge earlier. When nothing happened we all assumed it was
American. No need to panic. They were probably just looking us over
to confirm we’re a hospital ship.’
Mike’s heart was pounding in his chest and he
suddenly realized he was shaking with fear.
‘Settle down, son.’ Captain Salt lowered the
glasses. ‘Look, I’m going back to the bridge now. You’d best get
below, rouse your mates, and await instructions, all right?’
They rushed off towards the mid-section
of the ship and the companionways leading to the bridge deck and
lower decks. For some reason when the pilot scurried upstairs
towards the bridge, Mike turned and took one more look over the
port side before going below. He thought he saw small flashes of
light coming from the area where the submarine had been. He moved
to the rail, then watched, mesmerized, as a streak of sparkling
phosphorescent light came rushing through the water towards
the
Centaur.
When it reached
the patch of floodlit water where he had seen the dolphins playing
earlier, the phosphorescence trailed off and for a moment he saw
what he thought it was a great silver fish. Then, when he realized
it was a torpedo he just stared in horror and watched it slam into
the side of the ship.
The moment the torpedo detonated, Mike was
blasted off the deck in a fiery blast of white hot heat and
catapulted out high over the water. In a fleeting moment of
consciousness after he was deafened, but an instant before he was
blinded and had his flesh incinerated, he saw a gaping hole where a
moment before the side of the ship had been. Then he was dead, even
before his blackened, charred body fell into the sea.
The torpedo triggered a chain reaction
of enormous explosions that literally blew the
Centaur
apart. In seconds the entire ship became
a huge blast furnace as powerful shock waves sent flames racing
through the upper decks devouring everything before them. Instantly
the huge medical wards housing the soldiers and the cabins of the
nursing and medical staff became instant crematoriums. Those in the
lower decks of the ship who were not engulfed in the inferno were
trapped and drowned when the sea thundered in through huge holes in
her sides.
In less than a minute the hospital ship began
to sink. The bow went under first. Soon she was standing vertically
and being sucked down into the ocean end on end. Miraculously, some
of the medical staff working in the upper decks managed to flee the
flames and jump overboard. But three minutes after the torpedo
struck, the only evidence of a ship having ever been there, were a
few terrified survivors clinging to bits of wreckage, and
flickering flames licking at patches of oil on the surface of the
sea.
*
The next day the destroyer USS
Mugford
departed the Brisbane River
with orders to escort the British freighter SS
Sussex
safely out of Australian waters. In the
early afternoon the
Mugford
was sweeping a clear path ahead of the freighter south-east
of Moreton Island, when a lookout spotted men and women clinging to
debris in the water. It was then thirty-four hours since the
Centaur
had gone to the bottom of the
sea.
Just a few hours before John Curtin and
General MacArthur announced to the nation and the world that the
Japanese had sunk the Australian Hospital Ship
Centaur
with the loss of two hundred and
sixty-eight lives, a grim-faced Australian Army chaplain knocked on
the door of Bill and Helen Sharkey’s home in New Farm.
The following day, Ian McDougal from
the Waterside Workers Federation called by the house to express his
condolences. Over a pot of tea in the kitchen, McDougal told Bill
and Helen that there had been sixty-four survivors from the
Centaur
but only fourteen of them
soldiers. He said one of the survivors, an elderly Torres Strait
Pilot, had said he’d had ships sunk underneath him before. The
pilot also said that it was extremely rare for a ship the size of
the
Centaur
to sink so
quickly, unless, of course, her fuel bunkers had been hit
immediately or she was carrying munitions.’
PART FOUR
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Through the southern winter of 1943, the
Allies pressed ahead with the Chiefs of Staff plan to drive the
Japanese from the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and New Britain. At
the end of June, American forces occupied Kiriwina and Woodlark
Islands in the Solomon Sea and began constructing airfields from
which attacks would be launched against the enemy strongholds of
Bougainville and Rabaul. In July, the five Australian Divisions
comprising the New Guinea Force supported by US Army regiments,
fought their way towards Salamaua and Lae. In mid-September, after
bitter fighting, the Australians took both objectives.
While Australia celebrated the hard won
victories in New Guinea, the mood was more subdued at the Sharkey
residence. In the months that had passed since the sinking of
the
Centaur,
Dick and Helen
had been unable to come to grips with the loss of their son or the
questionable circumstances surrounding the Japanese attack on a
hospital ship.
Since the cold hand of death had reached into
their once happy home, it had not seen a smiling face or heard the
sound of laughter. The Sharkey’s grief took precedence over
everything in their daily lives to the exclusion of all else. Even
conversation between themselves and Faith became rare. Faith shared
their grief but tried not to allow herself to be drawn into the
depths of their total despair. Sometimes, she wondered if sunshine
would ever find its way into the house again. After all, life had
to go on.
Faith compensated for the melancholy
atmosphere at New Farm by going out regularly with Lyle Hunter.
Lyle hadn’t brought up the subject of Dan Rivers since the day he
had left Greenslopes for the Army hospital in Melbourne. Lyle
seemed quite content with the status-quo and asked for no
commitment at all from Faith. Faith was sure that it was because he
understood how she felt. What with the war and the constant
uncertainties it created, it seemed pointless to make any firm
plans for the future.
Faith received regular letters from Dan and
she was glad to hear he was making good progress. Between the lines
she sensed that he too was reluctant to chart a course for the
future until he had completely recovered from his illness. She
wished the hospital in Melbourne wasn’t so far away, so she could
visit him. But travelling fifteen hundred miles was out of the
question. Dan had told her in some of his letters that when he was
well enough he would come to Brisbane to see her and Faith knew
that she would have to be content to wait until then.
Faith’s biggest concern was for Joe. Apart
from a short note sent from Katherine when the Nackeroos had first
gone up to the Northern Territory, she hadn’t heard anything at
all. After the shock of the awful news of Mike, she longed for even
just a post card saying he was safe and well. Faith was thinking of
Joe as she helped Helen do the dinner dishes one night when there
was a loud knock on the front door. With Dick working nights again
on the docks, she left Helen at the kitchen sink and went to answer
it. When she opened the door a middle-aged, uniformed soldier stood
on the porch outside.
‘
Is this the Sharkey residence?’ The
soldier asked with a tight smile.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Would Miss Faith Brodie be in, please?’
Faith gasped. Suddenly her knees turned to
jelly. The soldier was polite but seemed tense, just like the Army
chaplain who had called to tell them about Mike. Could it all be
happening again?
She took a deep breath. ‘I’m Faith Brodie. Is
this about Joe? Is he all right?’
‘Yes, he’s well, Miss Brodie.’ The soldier’s
smile widened tentatively. ‘My name is Xavier Herbert. I served
with Joe in the North Australia Observer Unit in the Top End until
quite recently. I’m on my way to Sydney to be discharged. Joe asked
me to call and see you on the way down. May I come in?’