H M A S Armidale was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy on June 11th, 1942. She was built by Mort’s Docks and Engineering Pty Ltd, of Balmain, NSW.
Unfortunately, she was sunk by three torpedoes launched by enemy torpedo bombers off Timor on 1st December 1942. She went down while transporting supplies and reinforcements to the commandos fighting in Timor. The ship had been hit by two torpedoes and a near-miss bomb had helped by blowing a hole in her side.
The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Commander David Richards, gave the order to abandon ship but one man refused – Ordinary Seaman Teddy Sheean.
He struggled back to the after Oerlikon gun, strapped himself in and fired at the planes strafing his shipmates in the water. The ship was sinking so rapidly that when he fastened those straps he must have known he would go down with the ship.
He poured a stream of 20mm shells at the planes and sent one cartwheeling into the sea. A Zero flashed in, its guns blazing, and slashed Sheean’s chest and back wide open. With blood pouring from his wounds he kept fighting. The ship was now sinking faster and with water lapping his feet he kept shooting.
The men in the water gasped in amazement as they saw the blood-stained, desperate youngster wheel his gun from target to target, his powerless legs dragging on the deck.
Then came the most incredible sight of all – the ship plunged down and the sea rose up past Sheean’s waist to his shattered chest, but still he kept firing. Even when there was nothing left of the ship above water, tracer bullets from Sheean’s gun kept shooting up from under the water in forlorn, bizarre arcs.
Armidale and Sheean had kept fighting to the end. It was valour above and beyond the call of duty.
Sheean was not the only hero that day and on the grim days that were to follow.
Ten of the crew and 37 soldiers had been killed in the action. In the water now were 102 men – 73 of Armidale’s crew and 29 soldiers, including three AIF men, two Dutch army officers and 24 Javanese troops. And, of course, sharks and deadly sea snakes. They were 110 km from Timor, 470 km from Darwin and 400 km from the nearest Australian land, Bathurst Island.
The next day the CO, left with 21 others in the 5.3-metre motor-boat to try to get help. It was not until four harrowing days later – six days since the sinking – that the motor-boat was spotted and the survivors rescued, by the corvette HMAS Kalgoorlie.
Meanwhile back at the scene of the sinking, something approaching a miracle had taken place. The sailors managed to salvage the derelict whaler – a 27 foot in length lifeboat – which was peppered with holes and gashes from shrapnel and bullets.
The Gunnery Officer, Lieutenant Lloyd Palmer, left with 29 men in the patched-up boat to try to get help and nine harrowing days after the sinking they were sighted by an RAAF plane and rescued by HMAS Kalgoorlie.
Fate dealt cruelly to the 47 men left behind on the raft. On the eighth day after the sinking, a RAAF Catalina flying boat sighted them, but could not land because the sea was too rough. The airmen dropped food and water to them, but despite searches by the Catalina, Hudson’s and Beaufighter’s they were never seen again.
Somehow or other, fate snatched them away just when they thought they were about to be rescued.
The RAN named one of its Collins submarines HMAS Sheean and named the first of its new patrol boats HMAS Armidale in recognition of the courage and ingenuity that characterised the Australian corvettes in the Battle for Australia.
On December 1st, 2020, 78 years to the day, Ordinary Seaman Signalman Edward “Teddy” Sheean was finally posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia “for the most conspicuous gallantry and a pre-eminent act of valour in the presence of the enemy during a Japanese aerial attack on HMAS Armidale in the Timor Sea on 1st December, 1942”.
He remains the ONLY Australian NAVY Sailor or Officer to be awarded the Victoria Cross.
