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Mike Carlton, author of
Cruiser: The Life and Loss of HMAS Perth,
tells us about writing his new book.
The loss of HMAS Perth was one of Australia’s great naval defeats. When did you first learn of its remarkable story?
One of the first adult books I ever read was Behind Bamboo, a memoir by the Adelaide journalist Rohan Rivett, who was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942. I would have been 11 or 12 at the time, so I probably didn’t get a lot of it. But it did tell the story of the sinking of HMAS Perth and the torment of her survivors as POWs, and that stuck with me.
Over the years I developed a passion for naval history. I am one of those Patrick O’Brian tragics [rightly beloved of booksellers] and I have long wanted to write a sea-going book myself. The Perth story seemed a natural. It runs the scale from epic drama to intimate human tragedy and triumph.
So I am hoping I have struck a balance here. I wanted it to be accurate history that reads like a page-turning novel.
Were you able to interview any of the survivors?
When I began getting my thoughts together in 2006 there were perhaps 25 Perth survivors left. They are in their late eighties now, a few in their mid to late nineties. Some were too frail to talk to. To my infinite regret, others died before I could reach them.
At the time of writing the oldest, a bloke named Jock Lawrance, was 97. He had a memory as sharp as a knife and we did a long interview together. Others also gave me hours and, in some cases, days of their time.
They are truly remarkable men, from the finest generation Australia has known. They grew up as Depression kids, went to war in their late teens or early twenties, then came home and fathered the Baby Boomers, our most lucky and indulgent generation.
And it was not only survivors. I also talked to their widows, their children and grandchildren. This is not just a story of sailors, it’s a story of those who loved them and waited – often in vain – for them to come home. It was a humbling experience. The best thing was their absolute candour combined with an utter lack of boasting or humbug. After the horrors they knew, they have attained an enviable wisdom and serenity.
How long did the research for the book - including the Japanese imprisonment of many of the ship’s crew – take?
It was a four year project. I was still doing breakfast radio and writing a column for The Sydney Morning Herald at the time, and then about two-thirds of the way through the writing my wife and I had a baby boy. So there were fits and starts.
There was a mass of detail to get through. A lot of Australian naval history is written for professionals, so I had to master the detail to satisfy them. But I also needed the human interest stuff as well. Many of the men left diaries and memoirs behind, often powerful and observant stuff, so there was much to be gleaned there.
And the internet these days turns up the most amazing information as well. For example, I needed to know a lot about US Navy submarines in 1944. After days of googling, I suddenly hit on an obscure website where somebody, God luv ‘em, had uploaded the ships’ logs of the entire submarine fleet. It was like striking gold, and there were a lot more moments like that.
The wonderful thing was how many people were willing to be so helpful. Journalists are accustomed to getting knockbacks in their every day work, but this was the very opposite. So many people wanted this story told, as much as I did. I hope I have met their expectations.
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