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48 australian maritime issues 2009: spc-a annual
further intensity to issues of survival. Although politicians and the media generally prefer
simple moral and ethical values in conflict and clear distinctions between our friends
and enemies, few Australian sailors have ever demonstrated an overriding interest in a
particular ideology. Time and again personal identification with the Service and loyalty
to ship and shipmates has done far more to blend individual and group actions than any
appreciation of a war’s higher aims. Writing after World War II, one RAN sailor noted
simply that all he and his shipmates had wanted to do was win and get out of it, ‘We had
no ideas of glory, we had fought as a team’. 3
Leading Seaman Ronald Taylor and Chief Petty Officer Jonathan Rogers both
displayed consummate loyalty to their shipmates in extreme situations (RAN)
Self sacrifice, the act of laying down one’s life in a deliberate attempt to save others, is
perhaps the supreme example of loyalty to ones shipmates. During the Pacific War against
Japan several RAN personnel died in comparable circumstances, fighting to the last as
their vessels went down, and thereby seeking to protect their shipmates from further
harm. Best known of these men is undoubtedly Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean,
who was lost in the corvette HMAS Armidale (I) on 1 December 1942. Still strapped to
his gun, Sheean continued to fire at the attacking enemy planes even as his ship slipped
beneath the waves. Another, Robert Davies, was a midshipman in HMS Repulse when
Japanese bomber and torpedo aircraft sank his battlecruiser off Malaya in December
1941. He was last seen shouting defiance as he manned his 20-mm Oerlikon gun, and at
least one enemy bomber may have fallen to his fire. A third was Acting Leading Seaman