HMAS Sydney’s Unknown Sailor identified after 80 years

Words: Jamie Walker Producer: Louise Starkey

The remains of a man who died after the HMAS Sydney was ambushed and sunk by a German raider eight decades ago has been identified.

Thomas Welsby Clark , then 21, was the man known as the Unknown Sailor after his desiccated remains washed up on Christmas Island 11 weeks after the disaster.

The remains of the accountant from Brisbane, who served in the army before finding a berth as an able seaman on HMAS Sydney, were all that was ever found of the ship’s gallant company who died to the last man.

Clark was fair in complexion, stood 180cm tall and had transferred to the Sydney barely four months before its fateful run-in with disguised enemy gunship Kormoran on November 19, 1941, 200km west of Steep Point, Western Australia.

In March 1939, Clark enlisted in the Militia — forerunner to today’s Army Reserve — as a private with the Queensland Cameron Highlanders. He was discharged on August 23, 1940, and immediately entered the Naval Reserve.

His attention to detail soon recommended him for specialist training at a Sydney anti-submarine warfare training school, HMAS Rushcutter, where he qualified as a submarine detector. He was then promoted from ordinary seaman to acting able seaman on July 15, 1941. Picture: Australian War Memorial | Anti-submarine detectors, Rushcutters Bay, 1946

Clark joined HMAS Sydney in August 1941. It was considered a lucky ship as the first in the RAN to be equipped with ASDIC, an acoustic device to hunt submarines.

The Sydney’s luck well and truly ran out when it encountered the Kormoran, masquerading as a Dutch-flagged freighter. At 5pm on November 19, the Australian warship approached to within 1300m of the disguised German raider — point blank range.

The crew was at general quarters, with Sydney’s six-inch batteries and secondary guns trained on the Kormoran, according to the German account.

Clark was believed to have blown overboard in the frenzied exchange of gunfire, and somehow ended up in a canvas Carley float. By the time it drifted into Christmas Island harbour on February 6, 1942, his blue navy-issue overalls had been bleached white and his dried-out corpse was found in the kneeling position — suggesting he had been lifted into the raft by someone else.

Clark’s unidentified remains were buried on Christmas Island before the Australian garrison was evacuated and the Japanese occupied the remote outpost, 2600km northwest of Perth. They trashed the local record registries and the gravesite was lost.

Clark was identified in 2021 for his tall stature and mouthful of gold fillings. The breakthrough came when lab workers managed to extract mitochondrial DNA from his teeth, and other samples — collected in 2006 from the body — uncovered both mitochondrial DNA passed from mother to child and the Y chromosome passed from father to son.