On Wednesday 12 May, 1943 the hospital ship Centaur left Sydney bound for Port Moresby to embark casualties from the Buna and Gona battles. On board were 75 crew of the Merchant Navy, including one ship's pilot, 64 medical staff, including 12 nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service, and 149 men of the 2/12th Field Ambulance with 44 attached personnel heading for a tour in Papua New Guinea.

Nobody who saw it would have been in any doubt that the Centaur was a hospital ship. As it steamed through the night all the lights were kept on. Running down the sides of the vessel were thick green stripes broken by three large red crosses. Painted on the bow was the number 47. This was the Centaur's registration number with the international Red Cross and indicated that, through diplomatic channels, the enemy had been notified of her status as a hospital ship.

In 1943 the oceans and seas off Australia were a battle zone. As it sailed up the coast of New South Wales towards Queensland the Centaur passed close to the last resting places of the Kalingo, the Lydia M Childs, the Wollongbar, the Fingal and the Limerick. These merchant ships had been sunk, some with great loss of life, by Japanese submarines between 18 January and 29 April. There could be no doubt of the intensity of enemy activity in the sea lanes through which the Centaur was making her way north.

Background | The Sinking | The Survivors | Sister Ellen Savage | Commemoration | Photo Gallery