The
3,222-ton passenger steamship Centaur
was built for the Ocean Steamship Company (a subsidiary of Alfred Holt’s Blue
Funnel Line) by the Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Greenock,
Scotland. The ship was completed in 1924 and was equipped to carry passengers,
livestock, and general cargo. Centaur
was approximately 315 feet long and 48 feet wide, had a top speed of 12.5
knots, and had a peacetime crew of 68 officers and men. As a cargo liner, Centaur usually carried 72 passengers
(50 first class, 22 second class) and 450 head of cattle. Cargo was carried in
four holds, and while two decks within the hull were primarily used for
livestock, they could instead be used as additional cargo space when needed.
As
soon as Centaur entered service
towards the end of 1924, she was assigned to the Fremantle,
Australia-Java-Singapore trade route. Centaur
was considered to be a cross between a tramp steamer and a cargo liner and from
1928 to the mid-1930s was the only ship of the Blue Funnel Line to service this
route. As trade and travel between these destinations began to increase, the
Blue Funnel Line added two more ships to assist Centaur in the Fremantle-Java-Singapore circuit.
A
sad bit of irony is that in November 1938, Centaur
came to the rescue of the 385-ton Japanese whale-chaser Kyo Maru II. The Japanese ship had developed boiler problems while
returning from the Antarctic and was drifting towards the Houtman Abrolhos
Islands, which are a chain of 122 islands and coral reefs in the Indian Ocean off
the western coast of Australia. Centaur
happened to be in the area and responded to Kyo
Maru II’s distress signal. Centaur
towed the Japanese whaler to Geraldton on Australia’s west coast. Less than five years later, another Japanese
ship came into contact with Centaur,
with much more tragic results.
After Great
Britain entered World War II in early September 1939, Centaur, as a vessel in the British Merchant Navy, was taken over
by the Royal Navy. The ship was armed with a stern-mounted 4-inch gun and two
Vickers machine guns which were located on the bridge wings for protection
against enemy warships and aircraft. Centaur
was also equipped with port and starboard paravanes and degaussing equipment
for protection against naval mines. The Royal Navy kept Centaur on her original trade route as an armed cargo ship.
On 26
November 1941, Centaur was one of the
ships searching for the missing Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney. During the search, Centaur
discovered a lifeboat with survivors from the German raider Kormoran, which had been sunk along with
Sydney in a mutually destructive
battle just seven days earlier on 19 November. Among the survivors in the lifeboat was Kormoran’s captain, Theodor Detmers. Centaur brought the German crewmen to
Carnarvon, western Australia, where they became prisoners-of-war, along with
roughly 100 other Kormoran survivors
who were rescued by other ships. Not one of Sydney’s
645 crewmen was ever found.
After the
start of the war in the Pacific on 7 December 1941, Centaur mainly steamed to ports along the western coast of
Australia. On 6 October 1942, Centaur
was ordered to sail to Queensland, Australia, where she began carrying cargo
between the east coast of Australia and New Guinea. At that time, Australia had
only three hospital ships and none of them was able to operate in the shallow
coastal waters of Southeast Asia. Of the Australian Merchant Navy vessels able
to operate in this region, none was suitable for conversion to a hospital ship.
So the Australian government asked for assistance from the British Ministry of
Shipping. On 4 January 1943, the British Ministry of Shipping responded by
making Centaur available to the
Australian military for use as a hospital ship.
Work began on
converting Centaur into a hospital
ship on 9 January 1943. During this conversion, Centaur was painted with all the international markings of a
hospital ship. She was given a white hull with a green band interspersed by
three large red crosses on each side of her hull. Her superstructure was also
painted white and multiple red crosses were positioned so that the ship could
be easily identified from both sea and air. At night, the ship’s markings were
illuminated by a combination of internal and external lights. Data on the
ship’s markings and a description of her layout was provided to the
International Committee of the Red Cross during the first week of February
1943, who passed this information on to the Japanese on 5 February. This
information was also circulated and promoted by the press and media. All weapons were obviously removed from the
ship, although the anti-mine countermeasures were kept for defensive purposes.
The ship was commissioned on 1 March 1943 as the Australian Hospital Ship
(AHS-47) Centaur. The newly remodeled vessel could carry a total
of 252 patients as well as passengers and cargo.
Centaur began her duties as a hospital ship
on 12 March 1943. During her first voyage sailing from Melbourne to Sydney,
Australia, a large number of defects were noted on Centaur by the captain, chief engineer, and chief medical officer. Centaur went back into the dockyard to
have these defects repaired and, once they were, the ship went on her first
major assignment. Centaur carried
cargo and medical personnel to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and returned to
Brisbane, Australia, with Australian and American wounded along with a small
number of injured Japanese prisoners of war.
Centaur then steamed to Sydney on 8 May 1943.
Once there, she received cargo and provisions, as well as passengers. Centaur carried a totally of 332 people:
75 civilian crew, 8 Army officers, 12 female Army nurses, 45 other Army
personnel, and 192 soldiers from the 2/12th Australian Field
Ambulance unit. Since Centaur was traveling
to New Guinea to pick up wounded soldiers, there were no medical patients on
board the ship. Centaur left Sydney
for Cairns, Queensland, Australia, on 12 May 1943. Once there, she was to
continue her voyage to Port Moresby.
At 0410 hours
on 14 May 1943, as Centaur was
heading north towards Cairns, the hospital ship was suddenly torpedoed by a
submarine. Centaur was approximately
50 miles east north east of Brisbane and the torpedo hit the port side oil fuel
tank. The resulting explosion created a huge hole roughly 33 feet long and ignited
a horrific fire. The fire quickly spread from the bridge aft. Many on board the
ship were killed instantly by the concussion of the blast or were incinerated
by the fire. Also, since the attack took place so early in the morning, most of
the passengers were asleep and didn’t have time to get off the ship. Water
poured through the large hole in the ship and Centaur quickly rolled over to port and sank, bow first, in less
than three minutes.
Of the 332
people on board Centaur, only 64 were
rescued. Reports later indicated that up to 200 people may have survived after
the ship went down, but that many who made it into the water later died of
shrapnel wounds, burns, or simply drowned because they couldn’t find a lifeboat
or a life raft to support them. The survivors spent 36 hours in the water, clinging
to barrels, wreckage, and two damaged lifeboats and several life rafts which
broke free from Centaur as she went
down. The survivors drifted roughly 22 miles north-east of Centaur’s calculated point of sinking and were spread out over a
two-mile area. Of the 12 female nurses on board the ship only one, Sister Ellen
Savage, survived. Although badly injured herself, Sister Savage concealed her severe
injuries and gave what help she could to the other injured survivors. As sharks
circled the raft she was on, Savage organized a sing-along to help keep up the
spirits of the other survivors. She also provided medical care to the other wounded
victims and displayed great personal courage throughout the entire ordeal. For
her bravery and gallantry, Sister Ellen Savage was awarded the George Medal, a
major decoration presented to civilians during the war by the United Kingdom.
On the
morning of 15 May 1943, a Royal Australian Air Force patrol aircraft spotted
the survivors and the floating wreckage in the water. The plane radioed an
American destroyer, USS Mugford,
which was steaming in the area and directed it towards the survivors. Armed
sailors were placed around Mugford to
shoot at any prowling sharks, while other American sailors stood ready to dive
into the water to assist the wounded. As the destroyer began picking up
survivors, Mugford’s medics examined
each of them as they came on board the ship and provided medical care when
needed. Mugford’s crew learned from
the first group of survivors that they were from the hospital ship Centaur. Mugford quickly radioed Brisbane to inform authorities there that Centaur had been sunk. The rescue of all
64 survivors took approximately one hour and twenty minutes, although Mugford remained in the area until dark
searching for any additional survivors. After the search was concluded, Mugford brought the survivors to
Brisbane.
Australia was
shocked and outraged over the sinking of an unarmed and clearly marked hospital
ship. The Australian government delivered an official protest to Japan over the
incident. The Japanese did not acknowledge responsibility for the attack and
for many years the Allied War Crimes Tribunal could not identify the submarine
responsible for the sinking. But as author Tom Frame points out in his book, No Pleasure Cruise: The Story of the Royal
Australian Navy, Volume 83 of the official Japanese War History Series published in 1979 named the culprit: “I-177 sank the British hospital ship Centaur.” The captain of I-177, Commander Hajime Nakagawa,
survived the war to face war crimes charges. Ironically, although he refused to
confirm that his submarine sank Centaur,
he was tried for ordering his men to fire on survivors from torpedoed ships in the
Indian Ocean while he was in command of submarine I-63. Nakagawa was subsequently found guilty of war crimes and
sentenced to only six years in jail. He was never convicted for killing anyone
on board the unarmed hospital ship Centaur.
Nakagawa’s defense was that he was only following orders issued by his
superior, Vice Admiral Shiro Takasu.
The tragic
loss of AHS Centaur was one of many
atrocities committed at sea during World War II. Her loss certainly galvanized
the Australian people and made them even more determined to defeat the
Japanese. But the sinking of Centaur
was also part of the relatively new concept of “total war,” one waged against
both civilians as well as the military. It was adopted by the Axis powers at the
very start of the war, and came to its terrible conclusion at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. World War II proved once and for all that either side would do just
about anything to win and, sadly, they did.
