Lt-cdr Henry ‘Nobby’ Hall
Australian seaman who showed ‘resolution and coolness’ during the sinking of HMAS Canberra
LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER HENRY “NOBBY” HALL, who has died aged 95, was probably the last survivor of the sinking of HMAS Canberra in 1942 and a tireless contributor to the Returned Servicemen’s League in New South Wales.
In the early morning of August 9 1942, as a 20-year-old able seaman, Hall was at his action station as a rangefinder halfway up the mast of the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra, flagship of the Australian navy. The 10,000-ton cruiser was in the Solomon Islands with an American and Australian fleet which was surprised by a strong fleet of Japanese cruisers and the Battle of Savo Island ensued, the first of a series of costly sea engagements in defence of Allied landings at Guadalcanal. Allied losses caused veterans to call it the Battle of the Sitting Ducks, and the number of wrecks led to the waters subsequently being called Iron Bottom Sound.
Interviewed by the Australian press on the 70th anniversary of the loss of HMAS Canberra, Hall recalled that shortly after 1.30am a Japanese seaplane dropped a parachute flare which illuminated his ship, and moments later several enemy cruisers opened fire on Canberra from close range. In a short time she was hit by a score of shells, her engines stopped and her superstructure became a mass of twisted steel. Then all power and communications lost, fire broke out amidships and she listed heavily to starboard.
It was, Hall recalled, “hell on earth”, as splinters showered over him. “The bloke standing next to me dropped; a piece of shrapnel through his head. My headset was smashed and I just about s--- myself and dropped to the deck.” As he crawled for cover he bumped into an officer who asked him: “Are you frightened?” “No, sir,” Hall replied. “I’m f------ terrified.”
Chaos reigned; amidships the ship was burning. Hall saw an entire gun crew disappear in an explosion, while there was thunder and lightning from a storm. He recalled: “If you had ampoules of morphine, once you gave a poor devil a shot of morphine you would write an M on their forehead in blood. There was no shortage of it. This was so somebody else wouldn’t come along and give them another dose. You hoped it [the M] wouldn’t wash off.”
As Canberra lay stopped she was fired on by an American cruiser which mistook her for a Japanese ship, but eventually Hall and many others were rescued by the USS destroyer Patterson, and Canberra was sunk by torpedoes.
Of Canberra’s 819 crew 84 would die and 109 were wounded. Three American cruisers and an American destroyer were lost. On Patterson Hall volunteered to work with the ship’s doctor. He saw his badly wounded captain die, helped dig 40 pieces of shrapnel out of another officer’s back, and comforted the wounded and dying. For five days he lived on cigarettes and coffee.
Hall was mentioned in despatches for his skill, resolution and coolness.
Henry Albert Longdon Hall was born on April 4 1922 into a Baptist family in Sydney during the Depression. When his father disappeared and his mother remarried and returned to England to seek a better life, Hall joined the Royal Australian Navy in December 1938 in search of three meals a day. There he found a home.
In February 1945, with many other survivors of Canberra, Hall joined her sister-ship Shropshire, which was given as a replacement by the Royal Navy to the Royal Australian Navy. Postwar he qualified as a naval airman and served on the aircraft carrier HMAS He was the first Australian to be promoted to both Petty Officer and Chief Petty Officer Airman Meteorology.
He was commissioned as a sublieutenant in 1957 and during the 1960s and 1970s he served at the RAN air station, HMAS Albatross, as the Armament Stores Officer, and at sea in the carrier HMAS Melbourne as the flight deck officer. Later he trained Australian helicopter crews in small arms and aircraft-mounted machine guns ready for the Vietnam War. He was a lieutenant-commander on the Emergency List in 1981 when he was appointed MBE and retired after 43 years’ service.
He settled at Currarong, New South Wales, where in his eighties he cheerfully boasted that he enjoyed helping old people. From 2002 he was a “men’s peer health facilitator” for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, explaining: “One of our major problems, particularly with our veterans, is you can’t get them to go and see a doctor. My task in life is to point them in the right direction.”
His wife Ethel was awarded the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2002 for her services to the community through youth, church and aged care organisations, and through the provision of assistance to children with learning difficulties. Hall credited her as his inspiration. In 2010, Hall was also awarded the OAM for his services to the community, which started in the 1950s with the NSW Spastic Centre Council (now the Cerebral Palsy Alliance) where he served several terms as secretary and then president of the Nowra branch.
He was a lover of flags, and the flagstaff at Spin Drift, his family home at Currarong, wore a different flag on most days. He also collaborated with Kathryn Spurling on her book, HMAS Canberra: Casualty of Circumstance (2016).
In 1951 he married Ethel May, whom he met while on a course in England. She predeceased him in 2005 and he is survived by their two daughters.
Lt-cdr Henry “Nobby” Hall, born April 4 1922, died June 25 2017