ROBERT HAMMILL
Recruitment
Oil and acrylic on canvas
76 x 76cm
The Centaur was a merchant vessel built in Scotland on the Clyde
River and launched in 1924. When the war began in September 1939, she was placed under the Australian government’s control.
Following Japan’s entry into the war and subsequent fighting in New Guinea during 1942. Centaur was converted into a hospital ship with the aim of bringing wounded diggers from the battle lines. Now the 2/3rd AHS Centaur, the vessel had a fully equipped operating theatre and dental surgery, and could carry 252 patients. She was clearly marked as a hospital ship. Around her freshly painted white hull a thick green band ran, broken in several places by large red crosses. At night, the vessel brightly illuminated by powerful spotlights.
In the early afternoon of 12 May 1943, Centaur steamed from Sydney for Cairns carrying members of the 2/12th Field Ambulance. Shortly after 4am on 14 May, a Japanese torpedo struck Centaur’s port side. This resulted in the deaths of 268 of 332 people on board, of the 12 nurses onboard only one, Sister Nell Savage, survived.
My painting is a reproduction of a poster [by Bob Whitmore] of the Centaur, sent to factories, workshops, wharves, coal mines, and business establishments, and other places of work. In order to recruit the Australian work force to join the fight for freedom.
