The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (W1437) Engine Room Artificer Hugh Gilroy, HMAS Goorangai, Royal Australian Navy, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (W1437) Engine Room Artificer Hugh Gilroy, HMAS Goorangai, Royal Australian Navy, Second World War.

W1437 Engine Room Artificer Hugh Gilroy, HMAS Goorangai
Accidentally killed 20 November 1940
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 29 January 2014

Today we remember and pay tribute to Engine Room Artificer Hugh Gilroy of the Royal Australian Navy.

Hugh Gilroy was born on 24 June 1901 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He migrated to Australia in the 1920s on an assisted passage, and worked for two years in a dairy to repay the government. In 1929 he married Jessie Jane Bowie Sutherland and settled in Sydney. They had two daughters, Isabel and Helen. Hugh worked as a seaman and was a member of the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. He was called up for active duty in September 1939 following the outbreak of the Second World War. He had two brothers on active service in England, and two brothers-in-law in action with the Australian military.

Gilroy was posted to HMAS Goorangai. This vessel had been a fishing trawler in peacetime, but when the war started she was taken over by the Navy Board and fitted out for minesweeping. Her peacetime captain, also a Scotsman and a member of the Naval Reserve, remained captain of the Goorangai in her new role.

In early November 1940 a British ship and an American freighter were lost in quick succession Bass Strait to German mine-laying operations. HMAS Goorangai was one of a number of minesweepers sent to locate and destroy the mines. Following that operation the vessel returned to Queenscliff, but a rising storm sent the ship to the safer harbour of Portsea.

As the Goorangai passed in darkness through the dangerous rip at the mouth of Port Philip Bay she was hit by an outbound merchant ship and torn almost in half. A crewman on the ship that hit the Goorangai reported: "In the short time it took me to run along the promenade deck to the rail by the bridge the Goorangai had disappeared. There was not a sound but the crash of water." In that moment in between, some eyewitnesses heard men calling for help, but could do little for them. Floatation devices were thrown out into the darkness, and lifeboats deployed
immediately, but despite a long search no survivors or bodies were found. The minesweeper had sunk almost immediately with all hands still on board.

Over the following weeks diving operations recovered the bodies of five of the crew. The remaining 19, including that of Hugh Gilroy, were never recovered, and the wreck of the minesweeper was blown up to clear the channel. His wife, Jessie, remembered him with "memories sweet indeed".

After 15 months of war, HMAS Goorangai was the first vessel of the Royal Australian Navy to be lost in the Second World War, and the first surface vessel of the RAN to be lost in wartime at all.

The names of Hugh Gilroy and the crew of HMAS Goorangai are listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with around 40,000 others from the Second World War. There is no photograph in the collection to display beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of courage and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Engine Room Artificer Hugh Gilroy, and all of those Australians who have given their lives in the service of our nation.