Cover art A Drowned Man by Brendan James Murray via Echo Publishing.
A former prime minister was lambasted for saying, ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’. He could have added, ‘life wasn’t meant to be fair’. Certainly life and, indeed, death was far from being easy or fair for those serving on the HMAS Australia.
Brendan James Murray came to recount the story of the Australia during the second world war at least partly because of his passion for the truth and a fair go – even for those now long dead. During the course of his research, he is haunted by an unexpected discovery – the mysterious death of a forgotten sailor – and he becomes determined to uncover the circumstances of his demise. It is left to the reader to judge whether that mission was successful.
Murray believes that to unravel the mystery of the drowned man it is necessary to understand the mores of the era – a time of a brutal war and an age of homophobia. Life on board the Australia is faithfully rendered with help from numerous interviews with survivors as well as from official naval and other records. Murray acquaints the reader with some of the crew and officers and then, every so often, relates the progress of his research and the logic behind his reconstruction of the past. And while he acknowledges that it is impossible for anyone to conclusively convey the horrors of war as experienced by so many on the Australian, he makes a good fist of it – the book includes graphic descriptions of kamikaze attacks and is dotted with memorable anecdotes of shipboard life and death.
But it’s arguable that to fully understand the men and officers on board the Australia, one needs to be familiar not just with the view of individual crew members but with the prevailing societal attitude to homosexual men at the time. It may come as a surprise to a generation publicly clamouring for LGBTI rights that capital punishment for anal intercourse between consenting men was not abolished in the state of Victoria until 1949. For centuries, public opinion – fortified by religious dicta and the full force of the law – saw male homosexuality as unutterably evil. Not that long ago, any sailor found to be homosexual was given a dishonourable discharge regardless of the merit of his service. But that was not the worst of it – homosexual sailors, frequently referred to as ‘queers’, were subject to extreme abuse and violence from their fellow sailors and were often more in fear of their lives from their fellow men than from the official enemy. Consequently, gay men at the time did their best to hide their sexual orientation.
Murray therefore concludes that if a homosexual man was listed as lost at sea (body not recovered), he may have actually been murdered by men not only trained to be killers but also indoctrinated with a savage hatred of homosexuality. He is too meticulous an historian, too honest a researcher, to jump to any such conclusion, however. That is indeed fortunate as it has led to this thought-provoking book, which is embellished with some 30 photographs (many of which could have benefitted from being somewhat larger). The real names of survivors are used with permission – they are an impressive bunch! – while the anonymity of those who requested it has been respected.
The author does not conclude with a pat plea for fairness but rather deplores the unfairness meted out to the men who died early and unnecessarily, never to experience the joys of family life and time spent with friends, indeed never to experience any of the pleasures enjoyed — at least in some cases — by less deserving survivors. Throughout The Drowned Man, Murray proves to be a thoughtful and readable story-teller, and the book deserves a wide readership.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
The Drowned Man
A True Story of Life, Death and Murder on HMAS Australia
Brendan James Murray
July 2016
RRP: A$32.95
ISBN: 9781760401207
Format: Paperback
Echo Publishing
