Vindicatrix Boy

The move of The Navigator, the memorial to the vessel SS Admella from St Vincent Street to the Queens Wharf end of Timpson Street, Port Adelaide, has been completed on schedule for special commemorations on Wednesday, August 5.
                                        
With its large ship’s wheel, longitude and latitude markers, compass points and a new black granite block, The Navigator will be unveiled at a candlelight vigil at 5.30 am — the time Admella departed from Port Adelaide on her ill-fated voyage 150 years ago.
 
She was last seen at Semaphore, where she picked up three more passengers and a fireman, making a total of 84 passengers and 29 crew, who were about to face a tragedy that rivalled the sinking of the Titanic. 

Over the next eight days, 89 people lost their lives, but miraculously 24 survived, most of them hanging on to the wreck in raging winter seas all that time.
 
The Navigator, sculptor Karen Genoff’s brilliant depiction of the tragic sinking of Admella at Carpenter Rocks, will be commemorated at 11 am on August 5 and many of Port Adelaide and Semaphore’s maritime families will be among the large crowd expected to attend the commemoration.
 
This major South Australian history project is the result an enormous amount of dedicated work by Karen Genoff, the Land Management Corporation (LMC), the City of Port Adelaide Enfield and contractors Seacon and Tillets.

Karen, seen here taking delivery of a 2.5-tonne black granite block for the memorial, has a diverse and widely acclaimed body of public art work across Australia.
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Click here to see rare footage of the Australian hospital ship Centaur rescuing the survivors of the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran after it had sunk and been sunk by HMAS Sydney.

This painting of the Australian hospital ship Centaur for the 2009 ANZAC Light on the Water commemoration by renowned Birkenhead maritime artist, John Ford (F.A.S.M.A.) is shown here for the first time.

To raise funds for the spectacular Port River ANZAC commemoration on April 24, this brilliant painting is the prize in a raffle to be conducted among the 400 people at the 1940s Dance Party fundraiser at the Maritime Workers Hall on Saturday April 4.

Locals will sport 1940s fashions and hairstyles as they dance to the Bay Big Band with singers Marlene Richards, Terry Brooker, Wally Carr, Jenny Loftes and the Not The Andrews Sisters.

A few tickets are still left for this memorable event at $25 per head (concession $20) from the Port Mall Newsagency in Port Adelaide, by phone on (08) 8447 2961 or by email

The historic Waterside Workers Hall is at 11 Nile Street, Port Adelaide.

The State and Commonwealth’s search for AHS Centaur has attracted eleven national and international expressions of interest, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said today.

“Tenders closed this afternoon and this is a most pleasing outcome to have had such interest,” said the Premier.

“The Australian Hospital Ship Centaur, ablaze with lights, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine south east of Cape Moreton in May 1943. She caught fire and sank within minutes. Of the 322 persons on board, only 64 survived.

“The specifics of the eleven applications are commercial-in-confidence and are now the subject of evaluation. That process will be undertaken by the intergovernmental Steering committee.

“The evaluation will take place over the next couple of weeks. Dependant upon subsequent contractual negotiations, it is hoped the preferred Project Manager could be known soon after.

“The Project Manager’s first responsibility will be to develop search timeframes. It is expected that the search’s timing could be affected by the availability of suitable vessels, equipment and prevailing weather conditions.

“But my government is keen for it to be undertaken at the earliest possible time.”

The Committee’s evaluation criteria will be based on; relevant experience (particularly in the area of finding shipwrecks, marine salvage and/or archaeology), track record, methodology, business skills (people and contract skills), time (proposed timeframe, likelihood of achievement and availability) and referee checks.

“Also the panel will obviously evaluate the value-for-money aspect,” she said.

As the Acting Premier Paul Lucas said last week, the separate Reference Group; including the Steering Committee’s Chair, Project Manager, Centaur Association representatives, the RSL and historian Captain Foley will meet once the Project Manager is in place.

The Commonwealth is matching Queensland’s $2 million commitment for the search.

Story from www.australia.to/

Photo from Wikimedia.

David Mearns, who found HMAS Sydney, is keen to find the wreck of the Australian hospital ship Centaur before ANZAC Eve 2009.
 
David told us that he would like to find Centaur before Port Adelaide’s major ANZAC event Light on the Water on April 24 commemorates her sinking.
 
Adelaide school students will make 3000 cardboard candle-lit lifeboats that will float on the Port River to honour those where lost when Centaur was torpedoed and sunk off Queensland in 1943.
 
In an interview with Sydney Morning Herald writer Jonathan Dart, David said the task was feasible so long as there was funding.
 
The world-renowned shipwreck hunter said he has conducted preliminary research on Centaur and said it would be easier to find than Sydney and Kormoran.
 
He said the only barriers to finding Centaur were a lack of money and political will.
 
“On the basis of what I’ve seen of her, I believe she’s findable,” he said. “The information, even at this preliminary stage, is better than what I had to deal with in locating … Kormoran and Sydney.
 
“I think the water depth isn’t a barrier; I don’t think there are any environmental problems. But how it’s organised, who funds it — those are all big questions.”

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With its rich maritime history, it is fitting that Port Adelaide will celebrate Australia’s first national Merchant Navy Day on Wednesday September 3 in nautical style.

All local families with links to the sea are being invited to join the Merchant Navy March leaving the Seafarers Centre at 11 am that day to commemorate all seafarers who have served in war and peace.

The march will go through Black Diamond Square and along the wharf to the old Ports Building.

Serving and former merchant seamen, their families and representatives from other maritime groups including the Maritime Union of Australia will head the March.

The march will conclude with a special commemoration at the superb Navigator memorial to Lost Seafarers by local sculptor Karen Genoff.

Karen has many fine works of art in public locations around Australia.

In granite, lyten steel, breakwater rocks and timber, the Navigator memorial stands outside the old Ports building.

It was unveiled in 1992 for the SA Department of Marine and Harbours Port Adelaide.

This sculpture is to be incorporated in a new waterfront Seafarers Memorial for Port Adelaide.

Karen Genoff is working with the Land Management Corporation in the removal, transport and placement of this sculpture at a waterfront site to be selected.

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The ANZAC Light on the Water tribute to the 645 lost crew of HMAS Sydney provided stunning new ANZAC images for Australia.

Television coverage was extensive with a brilliant feature story leading the Ten Network’s morning show across Australia at 9 am on ANZAC morning.

Amongst a flood of top news stories including the controversial Olympic torch relay on Thursday and a multitude of ANZAC events from Gallipoli to Villers Bretonneaux, dawn services and marches here and around the world, the Port Adelaide commemoration was highly visible.

Channel Ten national coverage included interviews with Le Fevre Primary School students and their rendition of the national anthem over footage from the night including the candle-lit boats and floating of wreaths.

There was continuing coverage throughout the day and night on Ten, Nine, Seven and the ABC.

Indigenous and Navy ceremonial spectacles added to the poignant sight of school students, naval cadets and North Haven Surf Lifesavers launching the candle-lit boats on the dark waters of the Port River.

Earlier the South Australian Pipes and Drums had presented a one hour Ceilidh music concert in Black Diamond Square.


Next year we are planning to focus on the little-known story of the hospital ship HMAS Centaur which was sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1943.

Photographs by Jan Bransbury

The first photographs and video of HMAS Sydney II, taken at a depth of more than 2 kilometres by the research ship SV Geosounder, have now been released on the Finding Sydney Foundation website.

HMAS Sydney’s lifeboats are seen strewn over the debris field in this picture from the Geosounder’s remotely operated camera

The Reverend Ali Wurm, who will officiate at the 2008 ANZAC Light on the Water commemoration on the Port River, is the parish priest of a Semaphore church that was built 35 years before the Gallipoli campaign.

There is an unusual link to the Gallipoli lifeboats landing because many parishioners say the wooden ceiling of St Bede’s reminds them of being in a boat.

School students and families will launch several hundred candle-lit cardboard lifeboats from the Queens Wharf pontoons in a moving tribute to the merchant seamen who rowed our troops ashore in ships’ lifeboats on April 25, 1915.

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