The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of Warrant Officer Kevin James Matheson, HMAS Goorangai, 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 Dennis Stockman, the story for this day was on Warrant Officer Kevin James Matheson, HMAS Goorangai, Second World War.

Warrant Officer Kevin James Matheson, HMAS Goorangai
Killed in accident, 20 November 1940
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 20 November 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Warrant Officer Kevin James Matheson of the Royal Australian Navy.

Kevin Matheson was born on 22 August 1903 in Richmond, Victoria. He was the only son of Captain Roderick Matheson, a retired sea captain of the Union Steamship Company, and he too entered service on the sea after leaving school. He lived in Williamstown, Victoria, with his wife, Evelyn, and their child.

As well as working as a boatman, Matheson was a warrant officer in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, just a month after his father passed away, he was called up for active service and posted to HMAS Goorangai. The vessel had been a fishing trawler in peacetime, but when the war started was taken over by the Navy Board and fitted out for minesweeping.

In early November 1940 a British ship and an American freighter were lost in quick succession to German minelaying operations in the Bass Strait. HMAS Goorangai was one of a number of minesweepers sent to locate and destroy the minefields. After two weeks on the operation the minesweeper had started the return journey to Queenscliff when a rising storm sent the ship to the safer harbour of Portsea.

As it passed in darkness through the dangerous rip at the mouth of Port Philip Bay the Goorangai was hit by an outbound merchant ship and torn almost in half. A crewman on the merchant ship 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.

Some eyewitnesses heard men calling for help, but could do little for them. Floatation devices were thrown out into the darkness and lifeboats were 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 were never found, and the wreck of the minesweeper was blown up to clear the channel. Warrant Officer Kevin Matheson’s body was never recovered. He was 37 years old.

HMAS Goorangai was the first vessel of the Royal Australian Navy to be lost during the Second World War, and was the first surface vessel of the RAN to be lost in wartime.

Kevin Matheson’s name appears on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 others from the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Warrant Officer Kevin James Matheson, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section