CHAPTER ELEVEN
KUTTABUL SINKS
Confronted with the evidence of their one night of warfare, Sydneysiders can count themselves lucky the attack wasn’t more successful.
This Fabulous Century
Peter Luck.
When the torpedo exploded against the sea wall, the impact lifted Kuttabul as though she were on top of an enormous wave. A huge column of water shot 60 feet into the air. Wooden pylons buried deep in the seabed next to the barracks ship were torn out and hurled over waterfront buildings before landing on a nearby road. Half of Kuttabul’s wooden helm was blown away, and empty fuel drums and steel boilers on the wharf were tossed about like corks. The explosion broke Kuttabul in two pieces and severely damaged the Dutch submarine K-9 moored outside of the vessel. On settling into the water, the after section of the barracks ship sank rapidly, having been completely wrecked by the blast. The forward section remained afloat for about half an hour before it too sank, after which only the funnel and the roof deck, littered with splintered woodwork and broken glass, were visible. The explosion caused a small fire on the wharf.
Built in Newcastle, HMAS Kuttabul belonged to the Sydney Ferries Fleet until the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, when the company was forced to lay off 17 ferries. Kuttabul was one of Sydney’s largest ferry vessels. After periods of idleness and use as a harbour show boat, she was requisitioned by the Navy on 26 February 1941 to serve as a barracks ship for sailors in transit to other ships and shore establishments. She was permanently berthed on the south-east side of Garden Island. Many ferries were given Aboriginal names beginning with “K” and the name of Kuttabul meant “wonderful”.
When Kuttabul sank, there was pandemonium. Rear-Admiral Muirhead-Gould writes in his report that the force of the explosion extinguished all the lights on Garden Island and the telephones went out of order; but came back into service four minutes later.
It was 12:30 am on a Sunday night and most people were asleep. The explosion was heard for miles around and violently shook thousands of houses and apartments along the waterfront. Picture frames fell from walls, books toppled from shelves, and crockery rattled in cupboards. Some people thought there was an earthquake, while others feared an air raid was in progress. Few realised the harbour was under attack by Japanese submarines.
In the congested harbour, ship alarms and air raid sirens echoed continuously around the harbour. The sirens caused men to leap out of their hammocks and rush to gun turrets. Orders and curses filled the air and night was turned into day by the many searchlights now sweeping the harbour waters.
Naval ratings from British, New Zealand, Dutch and Australian navies were asleep on the Kuttabul and K-9 when the torpedo exploded. Earlier in the evening, they were awakened by the sound of gunfire on the harbour. Able-Seaman Ernest Higgins, from Lorne, Victoria, recalled the “buzz” was that there was at least one Japanese submarine in the harbour; but most sailors thought the special steel netting strung across the harbour would prevent them from coming further.
When I was told there were Japanese subs in the harbour I laughed like the others, and said it was bloody stupid; so I went back to my hammock and woke up two days later in a Sydney hospital. I was told later that I was fished out of the water with a lot of other bodies and put on the wharf. An American doctor from Chicago, trying to get back to his ship, saw me move and accompanied me in an ambulance to hospital.
When the torpedo exploded, Higgins, along with Stocker Lester Jamieson from Geelong and Able-Seaman Leslie Bland from Western Australia, were quartered together, above the water line. Only Higgins survived the blast. Nineteen-year-old Bland had only recently returned from six months’ active duty overseas and was awaiting a transfer to the gunnery school in Victoria when he was killed in Sydney Harbour. He had been orphaned at an early age when his parents were killed in a motor accident, and he had lived with his grandparents before enlisting in the Navy.
Higgins suffered severe spinal, head, and facial injuries and remained in hospital for three months before he was able to resume active service; ironically, as sentry on Clarke Island guarding the two midget submarines later recovered from the harbour floor.
Earlier in the night, Stoker Bill Williams had heard gunfire and had gone up on deck to watch the “fireworks” where he overheard someone say there was a sub scare. After the commotion died down he returned to his hammock and went back to sleep.
I remembered going to sleep in my hammock on the lower deck and next waking up in a Sydney hospital. I had been blown into the water and picked up by Leading Stoker “Lockey” Peterson, a crew member of a passing officer’s motorboat. Apparently, they thought I was dead but when the medical officer arrived he realised that I was still alive.
Able-Seaman Charlie Brown had joined Kuttabul six weeks earlier to await his posting to the Australian light cruiser, HMAS Hobart. On this night he had been rostered for sentry duty and watched the commotion on the harbour before being relieved at midnight. Billeted on the lower deck forward, Brown recalls he was the last on the outboard hammock line, with himself and Able-Seaman Eric Davies, the only Australians among a group of New Zealand sailors. Brown jumped into his hammock at 12:10 am and 20 minutes later was struggling for his life in the water.
Charlie Brown remembers a colossal orange ball of fire before being thrown, head first, between a row of wash basins and through the ship’s side. Davies was thrown upwards onto the next deck, escaping with only minor cuts to his hands. Charlie Brown was not so lucky. He vividly remembers a huge amount of wooden debris being thrown on him, and struggling to free himself before eventually starting to drift away. He remembers being in the water for a long time before everyone got down to the wharf area and started searching. Apparently, one of his hands was spotted flailing out through the debris and he was dragged out.
Charlie Brown suffered extensive head injuries and was heavily bruised and scarred from his head to below the waist. In an interview with the author in 1988, he said that the Kuttabul disaster was particularly unfortunate for the New Zealand sailors, who had recently been saved from their sinking ship off Western Australia. They were all killed in the blast.
Charlie Brown eventually made it to HMAS Hobart and survived a second torpedo while cruising off the Solomon Islands. The Hobart wasn’t sunk, but he told the author the two incidents didn’t do anything for his nerves.
The only New Zealand survivor was Able-Seaman Colin R. Whitfield, who had climbed out of his hammock to go on duty when he heard a terrific explosion.
Bits of ferry flew around me, and I thought that we were being bombed. Having heard that a table was good protection, I found one and ducked under it, but pieces of ferry kept flying about just the same. I called out to my mate, “Where are you Snowy?”, but there was no answer. Then I waited a while and when I went to move I found that my legs were useless. Somehow, I got downstairs and found that the water was up to my knees. The next thing I remember is someone helping me on to a jetty and being carried into the sick bay. There was no panic.
Eighteen-year-old Able-Seaman Neil Roberts was on sentry duty at “Kuttabul Steps” until midnight. When his relief failed to arrive, he went to wake him. In an interview with Animax Films in 2005, he recounted that when his relief finally arrived he offered Roberts his hammock, which was located on the upper deck. He accepted the offer and a few minutes later had dozed off, still fully dressed except for his shoes and webbing.
When the explosion came, Roberts found himself in water and caught in a stairwell. Swimming underwater, he eventually found the exit and made his way to the surface and climbed the sea wall where he was met by a bewildered rating wanting to know if any of the officers were alive. (There were no officers billeted on the barracks vessel.) Roberts was taken to a Sydney hospital suffering from shock and immersion. He said later that the decision to sleep on the upper deck saved his life.
Bandsman M. N. Cumming and another rating had returned to the barracks ship only five minutes earlier and thought the ship had been hit by a bomb. Cumming escaped with only minor cuts. After regaining his sensibilities, he stripped and repeatedly dived among splintered timber and jagged glass to recover trapped men from the wreckage. He succeeded in rescuing three critically injured ratings.
Ordinary-Seaman L. T. Combers, who was below decks in the engineers’ quarters, was suddenly and violently thrown upwards. He punched his way out through a window and then heard a cry for help. On seeing a trapped seaman sinking with the wreckage, he dived into the water and pulled the rating clear, dragging him to a nearby motor launch.
Petty Officer J. Littleby would normally have been in the Petty Officers’ quarters, which were completely demolished by the blast. Fortunately, he had accepted the invitation of a mate to sleep in a small motor boat moored nearby. When the torpedo exploded, the boat was flung out of the water and a wall of water enveloped and flooded the motor boat. Fittings were blown out of sockets and the fuel tanks were ruptured. Still afloat, Littleby manoeuvred the craft alongside the stricken Kuttabul and rescued several naval ratings, some badly injured and all suffering from shock. Littleby pulled away from Kuttabul just as the forward section settled on the seabed.
Twenty-five year old Able-Seaman Frank Rudd was about to settle in for the night when the torpedo exploded. In June 1982, he recounted in Melbourne’s Sun-News that the torpedo had hit the sea wall astern of the depot ship, “exploding and ripping the bottom out of the ship”. He said Kuttabul went down like a stone: “With the blast, many were thrown overboard and we just had to scramble ashore the best we could.”
Stoker Norman Robson was only 19 years old. He had joined the navy seven months earlier and had only recently joined Kuttabul to await a warship posting. He was due to go home on leave the following morning. Early that evening he wrote a letter to his friend, Terry Crowe, after which he proceeded ashore to post it. When he returned to Kuttabul, he turned in for the night. He died instantly as the explosion ripped through the ship. A few days later Crowe received the letter in which Robson had written: “You can never tell with this place. Anything might happen.”
Petty Officer Leonard Howroyd of Penrith had swapped duty so he could meet his wife the next day, but lost his life that night.
Ordinary-Seaman David “Boy” Trist of the Royal Navy had survived the sinking of the British battleship HMS Repulse, which had gone down the previous December off the Malayan coast, only to die six months later in Kuttabul.
Able-Seaman F. Kirby, also of the Royal Navy, had escaped injury from the bombing of HMS Cornwall, but met his death in Sydney Harbour.
Within minutes of the explosion, Captain A. B. Doyle and Commander C. C. Clark arrived on the scene and searched the vessel for any men who might have been trapped. They did this in darkened and hazardous conditions and assisted a number of men who had been shocked and stunned by the suddenness and force of the explosion.
When daylight arrived, the full extent of the damage was apparent. Leading Seaman diver W. L Bullard recorded that he was amazed to find Kuttabul on the bottom with only the funnel and wheelhouse out of the water and that the dive boat, which had been moored near the barracks ship against the sea wall, was nowhere to be seen. Bullard writes in his report that a motor launch was requisitioned and naval stores supplied replacements for the heavy gear left in the diving boat a few days earlier. The dive team was back in business and underwater by 9:15 am.
I will never forget the scene when we arrived on the sleeping deck of the sunken ship. The sun was shining through a gaping hole in the deck head, giving a green glow to the still water. Blankets and clothing were scattered round the deck. Hammocks were still slung with their occupants as if asleep. There were two men sitting on a locker leaning towards each other as if they had been having a yarn before turning in. There was not a mark on any of them of any kind. The blast from the explosion must have killed them instantly.
The 21 naval ratings who died on Kuttabul were victims of a war that had suddenly overtaken them before they had a chance to meet it.
It was some days before all the Allied seamen were recovered from the splintered wreck. On 3 June, the bodies of eight sailors were buried at Rookwood Cemetery with full naval honours. More than 200 sailors from all ranks formed a mourning party led by a sombre Muirhead-Gould. The ceremony was simple with no addresses, and the service was read by three chaplains of various denominations, after which a naval guard of honour sounded the “Last Post” as the flag-draped coffins were lowered into the ground.
Later that day, the K-9, then a unit of the Royal Netherlands Navy, was towed up harbour for repairs. Launched in 1922, the 210-foot long submarine was in the East Indies, now Indonesia, when Japan entered the war. Following the Japanese advance on Java, she escaped to Fremantle. The Dutch submarine was subsequently based in Sydney and later commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy as an anti-submarine training vessel; however, she became an expensive liability requiring constant servicing. The hull was scrapped in 1944 and used to carry diesel oil. She was lost in a towing accident at Seal Rocks in June 1945 when she became stranded on Fiona Beach. Classified by the NSW
Heritage Council as a “Significant Historic Shipwreck”, the K-9 is now buried under beach sand and is only exposed on rare occasions. 
