The Wanetta Organisation, 1902–20
The war had started well for Australia’s Naval Intelligence Section and the ACNB. They had secured Germany’s codes and, despite the interference of the Courts of Admiralty around the country, managed to keep this information secret. The operations at the beginning of the war had also shown that the best intelligence operations combine HUMINT and SIGINT in support of one another. The successes and speed with which the captured documentation and codebooks were exploited demonstrates a level of sophistication in the Navy Office of 1914 that was not replicated in 1939. In the intervening 25 years, the ACNB and RAN would suffer a significant degradation in capabilities, starting around 1919 when the Australian government began a process of cutting defence spending that continued right up until 1937.
The successes in Australian intelligence collection in 1914 arose from a combined effort, in which HUMINT operations were used to obtain secret intelligence from the enemy that enabled a much more powerful SIGINT attack to be implemented and maintained. This series of operations shows the importance of a mixed approach. The only rub was that the HUMINT effort involved was limited to Australia’s own shores, and to the small number of officers and men working for the RAN in the ports of Australia. What Australia lacked was a HUMINT capability that could obtain intelligence abroad.
Good HUMINT requires good humans. This is such an obvious truism that it is often overlooked until it is too late. In 1914, the ACNB would find that its capability to conduct HUMINT operations in Asia was to be stymied by the lack of suitable personnel to carry out the work. Asian languages and familiarity with Asia and Asians was a significant shortfall in Australia’s capabilities of the period. Of course, Australia could access the intelligence being sent to Britain by her network of consular officials, supplemented by the routine reporting of British shipping agents. In terms of broad-ocean surveillance, this system worked well, but not in dealing with the clandestine activities of German intelligence agents operating against the British Empire internationally.
The problem of this German intelligence activity came to a head in Australia’s region in early 1915, when it became obvious the Germans were attempting to support nationalist rebels in India by supplying arms via the neutral Netherlands East Indies (NEI, now Indonesia).1 The schemes being implemented involved German agents in the still neutral United States purchasing weapons and ammunition and shipping them from American ports in American ships to the also neutral NEI. From the NEI, the German agents could then arrange meetings with India’s nationalists and send the arms as required. In theory, this was a workable plan. The only flaw was the ineptitude of German intelligence in avoiding detection by US authorities.
The German espionage operation in the United States involved sabotage rather than intelligence, and this resulted in a series of attacks that either failed or were devastating, particularly the blasts that destroyed the rail wharves on Black Tom Island in New York Harbor. These operations were appalling because, rather than making Germany safer, they severely damaged its reputation and made all of its espionage activities the focus of US government attention. The final straw was the Zimmermann Telegram debacle of 1917, which the much more sophisticated British intelligence operation in America ruthlessly exploited to drive the United States into the war against Germany. Germany’s espionage operations in the United States are probably the best example of the dangers associated with direct action.
With the US government and people increasingly angry at the behaviour of the Germans and suspicious of the intentions and activities of the British and their allies, it was difficult for the British to take serious steps against the German gun-running operations, particularly when the shipments were being sent to the NEI. The answer was an intelligence capability within the NEI and South-East Asia, something Britain did not yet have in place.
The ease with which German speakers could operate within the NEI was a matter of substantial concern to British colonial administrations in India, Singapore and surrounding colonies. This became even more acute following the mutiny in Singapore of the 5th Indian Light Infantry Regiment and the Malay States Guides Mountain Battery in February 1915.2 The causes of the mutiny appear to have been poor discipline, an unpopular commanding officer and the fact that the men were concerned about being sent to the Middle East to fight fellow Muslims.3 It was also thought that a German prisoner, August Diehn, a suspected intelligence officer, had played a part in stirring up the men.
This mutiny underscored the concerns about German intelligence activity in the NEI. It was around this period that the ACNB happened across Reginald (Reg) Hockings of Thursday Island, a man whose background and knowledge made him eminently suitable for the role of intelligence officer operating in the NEI.
Hockings was born in South Brisbane in 1868 and educated at Kangaroo Point Public School before taking up a position with the merchant houses of Samuel Hodgson and Co. of Brisbane, and, later, Parbury, Lamb and Co., also of Brisbane. In March 1888, Hockings went north and joined James Clark4 to form the Wanetta Pearling Company, based on Thursday Island. Pearling proved profitable for Hockings and he became wealthy enough to buy plantations on Boeton (Buton) Island in the south-east Celebes. He even became Vice-Consul for the Netherlands at Thursday Island.5 This background made him a prime candidate for work as an intelligence agent in the NEI and South-East Asia.
Exactly how Reg Hockings was recruited into foreign intelligence work is unknown, but it is more than likely that Atlee Hunt at External Affairs recommended him to the ACNB. The grounds for this belief are that Hockings and Hunt had a relationship going back a number of years, and the circumstantial evidence suggests that Hockings and his company were part of Atlee Hunt’s informal intelligence system.
The relationship between Hunt and Hockings appears to have started in November 1903, when Hunt approved the Wanetta Pearling Company’s application to bring in groups of 25 to 30 Asian pearlers to work in the Torres Strait pearling industry.6 Two years later, Atlee Hunt visited Thursday Island as part of an inspection tour of New Guinea.7 It is highly likely that the two men met and reinforced what appears until then to have been a long-distance relationship via correspondence.
Further evidence that Hockings was a source for Atlee Hunt can be seen in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Hansard of 21 September 1905, which reports that in answering F.F. Bamford’s question on Thursday Island pearling, Prime Minister Deakin relied on information that, Deakin stated, Atlee Hunt had just obtained from pearlers on Thursday Island.8
Other signs that Reg Hockings and the Wanetta Pearling Company enjoyed a special relationship with the Australian government was Atlee Hunt’s role in obtaining permission for the company to operate its own wireless network. Hockings wanted to build a wireless base station on Thursday Island and to equip his luggers with transmitting and receiving equipment. Hunt ensured that the necessary permissions were granted and that Wanetta Pearling became the first pearling company to be so equipped. The increase in capability that this brought was immense. Wanetta Pearling could now send situation reports back to Thursday Island, from where, if they were of interest to Hunt or the government, including the ACNB, they could be telegraphed, so that a sighting in the Indonesian Archipelago could be on the desk of Naval Intelligence within hours.
From a commercial perspective, the equipping of the luggers allowed Wanetta to deploy its vessels more astutely and to avoid sending follow-up vessels to areas where the fishing was proving uncompetitive. This made the company much more flexible in the way its luggers operated, and it provided a constant stream of intelligence back to Australia. All of this put the Wanetta Pearling Company at the forefront of radio communications in northern Australia.
Wanetta was also one of the very few Australian companies to gain the approval of the Papuan administration to fish in Papuan and New Guinea waters. Again, Atlee Hunt controlled the activities of the Papuan administration, and most likely ensured that Hockings’ company obtained this approval. The return for Hunt would have been the intelligence that Wanetta’s skippers were collecting and sending back to Australia.
All of this suggests that Reg Hockings and his company were undertaking intelligence-collection missions for Atlee Hunt and External Affairs well before he made himself available to the ACNB in 1915. When Hockings wrote his letter offering his services as a secret agent, he was not just offering himself, but a small fleet of radio-equipped pearling luggers supported by a long-range radio transmitter and receiver station and company wharves and facilities on Thursday Island.
The organisation that Reg Hockings was offering for service was highly capable, and not just because of its sophisticated radio network, but because the crews of Wanetta’s luggers were multicultural and included Malay and Indonesian seafarers and fishermen who were well known throughout the NEI. It was an entire espionage organisation and it fell right into the lap of the ACNB just as the need for such an outfit became critical.
Reg Hocking and the Wanetta Pearling Company became secret agents of the ACNB and Admiralty in February 1916, when Admiralty Signal 269 arrived approving his employment as a secret agent.9 This approval from the Admiralty did not mark the initiation of the Wanetta network, as by the time it was received by Navy Office, Hockings’ two trusted Malay assistants, Thomas Loban and Batcho Mingo, to whom Hockings referred as No. 1 and No. 2 respectively, were already active in the islands to Australia’s north. It appears from the evidence that the ACNB had already tasked the Wanetta network but had now also offered its services to the Admiralty.
The organisation that Hockings ran embarked on a program of general surveillance and intelligence collection throughout the NEI, Portuguese Timor and the islands of the Celebes (now Sulawesi). The organisation consisted of a hard core of Hockings on the lugger Wanetta, accompanied by Loban, Mingo and a crew, and his nephew and partner, Norman Hockings, who managed the company’s facilities on Thursday Island and manned the radio link with the Wanetta. The two assistants, Loban and Mingo, were most likely from Borneo, and had worked for Hockings for thirteen and fifteen years respectively. It seems that once he had volunteered his services as a spy, they joined him.10
Batcho Mingo and Thomas Loban departed Australia aboard the French warship Kersaint to join the Australian Destroyer Flotilla at Dili, in Portuguese Timor, in October 1915.11 From there, Loban accompanied Hockings to Humboldt Baai (now Yos Sudarso Bay, Jayapura), where he went ashore to make contact with local police and the domestic servants working for senior Dutch officials.12 Mingo was placed aboard an Australian destroyer and acted as an intelligence gatherer and translator during the patrols around Sandakan and Singapore. Later, he went to Djambea (Emden) where he was betrayed to the NEI authorities. Despite the NEI authorities issuing a warrant for his arrest, Mingo continued his espionage work unperturbed.13
At this stage, the main tasks given to the Wanetta organisation were to travel throughout the archipelago and try to identify and track vessels, their cargoes and their intended destinations. The organisation was well equipped for this task, as its lugger was well known in the archipelago as a legitimate pearler and did not stand out. Neither did Hockings, with his plantation interests in the Celebes and his standing in the NEI.
As well as identifying and reporting shipping movements to the ACNB, the organisation was also tasked with identifying the presence of German agents within the NEI and to report the attitudes of the local NEI officials and population to the war and towards Britain and Australia. As part of this task, the organisation expended considerable effort in the dangerous work of developing sources among local police and officials and the domestic servants of senior Dutch officials. Loban took the lead in this work after he accompanied Hockings to Humboldt Baai.
During 1915, the organisation was also tasked with identifying those German intelligence officers operating in the NEI who were involved with the attempts to ship arms to India. The arms themselves were to be investigated, as were the ships carrying them. One of the individuals they were specifically asked to find was August Diehn, the German businessman who was thought to be a spy and had escaped British captivity in Singapore.14
Although the British authorities had no hard evidence, it was suspected that, along with the Helfferich brothers, Diehn was a member of one of the more effective German espionage and intelligence operations working in South-East Asia, channelling money and arms to the nascent nationalists in India and other British colonies, and sending information back to Germany. He was also suspected of being the mastermind behind the exploits of the German commerce raider SMS Emden.
The objective of these operations was to draw British forces away from Europe by fomenting rebellion within British colonies, particularly India, where there was already a large and well-organised anti-British political organisation. This made Diehn and the Helfferich brothers important targets for British intelligence and thus for the Wanetta organisation.
The Wanetta organisation was successful in tracking Diehn to Bali, and Loban was sent to follow up his activities there and look for a secret German radio transmitter believed to be on the island. While carrying out this task, he and an assistant were attacked by a tiger and barely escaped with their lives.15 He did not find much to report other than that Diehn was trying to buy an oil mill. He did discover, however, that the Dutch Resident on Bali was pro-Allies and kept a very close watch on the activities of all Germans on the island, including Deihn.16
With Diehn identified as being on Bali buying his oil mill, Loban returned to the Wanetta and accompanied Hockings on visits to ports in the NEI in an effort to identify and inspect the American vessels there. Two high-interest US vessels they were seeking were the SS Annie Larsen and the SS Maverick, which the British suspected were running the guns destined for the Indian nationalists.17 It appears that this suspicion was well founded, but the German plan failed because of the incompetence of the German operatives in the United States. At the time, however, this operation was accorded an extremely high priority and was of great interest in London.
In fact, the priority of the operation was so high that an interdepartmental committee in London comprising representatives from the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, India Office, Admiralty and War Office had been established to coordinate it.18 The importance attached to this task explains the attention the Wanetta organisation gave to finding these vessels and the risks Hockings and his men took to board them. One good example of these risks is the way Loban finally got information on the Maverick in late 1917.
Having just arrived in Tanjoeng (Tanjung) Priok, Hockings and Loban found that the Maverick was also berthed there. In order to get to her, Loban demonstrated considerable chutzpah by ‘borrowing’ a motorcycle from the post office in Batavia (now Jakarta) and riding it out to Tanjoeng Priok for an entire week, during which he cajoled information about her cargo and true destination out of the Maverick’s American mate and captain’s boy.19
In addition, Loban, assisted by W.G. Beckett, the British Consul-General at Batavia, worked to identify the activities and cargoes of suspicious vessels operating out of Batavia. The relationship between Hockings and Beckett was close, and Beckett was an important part of the organisation. When Beckett suddenly died at Weltevreden, Batavia, on 19 September 1917,20 Hockings described it as an event that was ‘very serious at the present time’.21
Another high-priority task given to the Wanetta organisation was locating the missing Australian vessel SS Matunga, operated by Burns Philp. All that was known in Melbourne was that the Matunga had disappeared between her departure from Sydney and nearing Rabaul, and it was feared that the German raider SMS Wolf had taken her. This fear was well founded.
Although on the face of it the Matunga appeared to be just another of the Burns Philp trading vessels, she had an interesting history. In 1913, she had been fitted out on the orders of Atlee Hunt, and at Commonwealth expense, with a powerful radio transceiver station.22 This activity was covered by a formal agreement between the Department of External Affairs and Burns Philp, even though radio communications on maritime vessels was not the province of External Affairs.
Why External Affairs financed this activity is unknown, but it was secret, and Atlee Hunt acted to keep it that way. Whatever the radio work being conducted on the Matunga, it was sensitive enough that in August 1914 Hunt sent a coded telegram to the Lieutenant-Governor of Papua ordering him to impress upon all passengers and crew, ‘but most especially the wireless operators, the need for the strictest secrecy in relation to all matters heard on board or on arrival in Australia’.23 This suggests the Matunga’s radio operators were probably involved in SIGINT collection against German New Guinea.
On 7 August 1917, Wolf intercepted the Matunga off Rabaul, captured her and later looted and sunk her after taking the crew and passengers off. The popular explanation for the taking of the Matunga was that she had compromised herself by radioing her departure from Sydney and the details of her cargo. The Wolf, operating in northern waters, somehow then picked up this transmission and laid in wait on Matunga’s approach to Rabaul. According to some versions, it was detected on approach to Rabaul by the aircraft from the Wolf. Another version is that Matunga radioed her imminent arrival in Rabaul and the Wolf pounced.24
Although plausible, the idea that the Matunga’s wireless operators, who appear to have been involved in SIGINT collection themselves, compromised her position by carelessly transmitting messages is hard to believe. If they had done this on departure from Sydney, it would have resulted in a rebuke from the Naval signal station, and this would have been logged. No such log entry appears to have been found at the time, as no mention is made in the files of the Matunga breaking radio silence or security. Given the effort that was put into the ACNB’s investigation into the loss of the Matunga, the absence of this evidence is important, as it indicates that poor radio security did not cause the loss of the vessel as most of the sources suggest. As for the Matunga transmitting her arrival at Rabaul, again, it is plausible, but knowing the Wolf was in the area, why would she do this? Some care has to be taken with the stories of how the Matunga was captured because they come from the British captives held aboard the Wolf, and it is unlikely that the Germans told civilian captives they intended to release later how they had really detected the Matunga. It has the feel of a cover story.
It is more likely the Germans noted something odd about the Matunga. It might have been that the Wolf detected Matunga using naval or other non-commercial codes or they had heard something about her from their contacts ashore. After all, there were German citizens throughout the archipelago, passing intelligence of this sort to the Wolf. This latter explanation seems more convincing, because the ACNB did not simply chalk the Matunga up to experience; it ordered an extensive investigation and search for both her and the Wolf.
Reg Hockings and the Wanetta organisation were among those tasked with finding both ships. The organisation conducted searches all over the archipelago and its men even walked across islands to inspect inlets hidden from the open sea. It was during this activity that Mingo was captured on Waigiau (Waigeo) Island, tortured and interrogated by the Dutch authorities. In 1919, Reg Hockings put Mingo’s capture down to insecurity in Australia: ‘someone in Sydney spoke too freely of my mission and it got to a certain neutral quarter’.25 He may have been right, but it could also have been that the constant flow of communications and the resulting work carried out by the organisation was now attracting attention.
One of the major problems experienced by the Wanetta organisation was the complicated way its instructions were sent. The actual acceptance of the tasks appears to have been left to the ACNB and Naval Intelligence at Navy Office in Melbourne. These tasks were conducted on behalf of the Admiralty and the Colonial, Foreign and War offices in London, the Australian government and ACNB and Naval commanders in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Far too many people knew about the Wanetta organisation and far too much was being asked of it. Other British government agencies in China, India and Malaya also appear to have been aware of the Wanetta organisation and Hockings’ role in it.26 It did not stop there.
One example of how the Wanetta organisation’s work was being passed around government occurred in late 1918, when a British diplomat turned up without warning at Hockings’ estate on Boeton (Buton) Island. This individual asked him to supply information, but Hockings wrote that he only revealed information a normal planter or resident would have known. The ‘diplomat’ thanked him and left, but as Hockings reported, ‘the look he gave me on parting led me to believe he knew more about me than we discussed’.27
After this episode, he had to deal with yet another visit, this time from an American who ‘presented himself with papers from Singapore and Macassar referring him to me for assistance’. In this case, Hockings observed his American visitor for three days before deciding he ‘passed muster’, then sat down and wrote an extensive report for the use of the US government. During this time he told the American how the British had intercepted cash transfers of around 5 million Guilders from American sources to the Germans in the NEI and how it had all been ‘spent’ on British operations.28 The American was, Hockings reported, somewhat surprised at this revelation.29
Given the way the Wanetta organisation’s exploits were being passed around in official circles, it was no wonder Mingo was captured while crossing Waigiau Island to look for the Matunga. The record does not divulge how the Dutch identified him, but it is unlikely they were overly interested in him. Their real target was Hockings, the white man for whom they knew Mingo and the others worked. In his reports, Hockings detailed how Mingo was passed up the chain of the NEI administration, being interrogated at each level in turn, until the Governor of the NEI personally interrogated him. Mingo kept the identity of Hockings and his other comrades secret, and his health suffered accordingly. Hockings describes his physical state on his release from hospital as being that of a skeleton.30 In order to get Mingo out of the NEI, Hockings and the British Consul-General at Macassar, Lazarus Sarkies Arathoon, pledged their word to the Governor of the NEI that they would keep him available.31 They left the NEI with Mingo in December 1919 and were back in Australia on New Year’s Day 1920.
Reg Hockings did not leave Batcho Mingo to die in the NEI and he did not abandon Tommy Loban either. In fact, during their service in the war, Hockings seems to have persuaded the Australian government to issue both men with ‘alien registration certificates’, Mingo getting his, no. 509, on 5 February 1917, and Loban no. 516 on 7 February 1917. This was something of a feat, because the conditions for this status forbade the holders from changing their abode without notifying police.32 After the war, Hockings would fight to have both men granted permanent residency, or, as he put it, the ‘common right to live in Australia if they desire’, free of the threat of expulsion at the hands of Australian officials. He got that too.
Despite the White Australia policy, the authorities also agreed to let the Armenian, Lazarus Arathoon, settle in Australia. The ACNB accepted Hockings’ arguments on behalf of Arathoon and recommended that Prime Minister Hughes duly approach the British government to allow Arathoon to live in Australia. The Governor-General sent Hughes’s request to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on 15 October 1920, but bureaucracy, a force much greater than racism, now intruded to stop Arathoon being given residency. In London, the Foreign Secretary decided Arathoon could not get a certificate of British naturalisation until he had completed the regulation five years of service. This decision was probably made on advice against setting a dangerous precedent. Arathoon’s service as the acting Vice-Consul at Macassar did not count towards this period of service and neither did his work for the Wanetta organisation. Arathoon was told he should resubmit his application in April 1922.33 Lazarus Sarkies Arathoon, MBE, died at Macassar on 10 April 1932 and was buried on 17 April 1932 in Batavia.34
In support of his appeals for his assistants to be allowed to remain in Australia as free men and for Lazarus Arathoon to be admitted, Reg Hockings called Mingo and Loban his ‘trusted servants’, who had been vital in ‘reaching places it was impossible for me to go and for visiting ground one person alone could not cover’.35 He called Arathoon a man upon whose secrecy ‘my life depended’.36 As far as Hockings was concerned, ‘The secret of my mission, my safety and liberty remained in their loyalty…They did their job well.’37 All of these men and the nameless others who manned and sailed the Wanetta, are part of Australia’s intelligence history.
With the end of the war, it appears Reg Hockings did not give up his role as a secret intelligence officer, and his services were simply transferred from Navy Office in Melbourne to the C-in-C, China Station, to whom he was still reporting in September 1920.38 In the covering memorandum to a report dated 23 September 1920, Hockings informed the C-in-C that the Dutch were still actively hunting the ‘Britisher’ and an inspector had been visiting Ternate and its surrounding regions. Hockings remained confident his identity had still not been compromised, and this strongly suggests he continued to collect intelligence, most likely on the Indian and other nationalist groups operating within the NEI.
Hockings arrived back on Thursday Island around 15 September 1920, and sent his reports and memos through to the ACNB on 23 September, telling the Secretary of that body he would be arriving in Melbourne on 20 October.39 Atlee Hunt, still at External Affairs, stayed abreast of developments and arranged for the First Naval Member, Rear Admiral Sir Percy Grant, to meet Hockings aboard HMAS Australia before he left Sydney on the evening of Thursday, 7 December 1920.40 Hunt was to act as Reg Hockings’ chaperone.41 Unfortunately, due to delays in inspecting ships, the Admiral was late getting back to HMAS Australia and Hockings had had to leave. It was then arranged for the First Naval Member to meet with Hockings on his return to Sydney on 19 December, although the record does not disclose whether this happened. This writer hopes it did.42
It appears life returned to normal for Reg Hockings and the Wanetta Pearling Company, and that Atlee Hunt was no longer playing any role in the management of Australia’s foreign interests. Like all good spies, Reg Hockings, Tommy Loban, Batcho Mingo, Lazarus Arathoon and Norman Hockings simply returned to their public lives, leaving little trace of their exploits other than in the dark and dry recesses of the official archive.