There were three ships sunk off the Gippsland coast during World War Two. There also was also the City of Rayville, the first American ship sunk in WW2, she went down on November 28, 1940, almost exactly a year before the attack on Pearl Harbour.
That was over near Cape Otway. She struck a German mine laid by either the Pinguin or the Passat.
The Passat was originally a Norwegian ship named Storstad but the was captured by the Pinguin off Western Australia, renamed and converted to be a minelayer. She and Pinguin laid mines in Bass Strait. The Japanese navy's submarines also were active in the Strait.
On October 12, 1940 Passat set off down the WA coast and around the southern coast of Tasmania. She laid 30 mines in Banks' Strait, a narrow passage between the Cape Barren islands and the northeast corner of Tasmania and then continued north to lay another 30 mines between Deal and Cliffy Islands and 10 more just off the Promontory.
The City of Rayville was apparently sunk by a mine off Cape Otway. I don't know whether it was one of Passat's mines or one of Pinguin's, but Pinguin's plan was to put minefields at the major ports, particularly on our east coast.
The SS Iron Crown was the first wartime sinking off the Gippsland coast. She was originally named Euroa, built in 1922 for the Commonwealth Line (owned by the nation through the Australian Commonwealth Shipping Board). She was built in Victoria, at Williamstown and launched on January 27,1922. She was not to have a long life.
She was of 3353 tons and 331 feet long, and drew just under 24 feet. She was a neatly designed standard cargo ship of the time, with the bridge amidships and cargo cranes fore and aft.
In December 1923 she was sold to Broken Hill Proprietary, who used her as an ore carrier. On June 4, 1942 she was (probably in a convoy) heading east out of Bass Strait, about 70 kilometres south-south-west of Gabo Island. She had a cargo of manganese ore heading for Newcastle. At this time the "Battle for Australia" was raging and her cargo was important.
There are many stories about exactly what happened but it now seems likely that she was hit by a single torpedo fired by the Japanese submarine I-27. This was one of the 'mother' submarines that had deployed the midget submarines that had attacked Sydney. It might have been the I-24, another of the three mother ships that launched midget submarines into Sydney Harbour.
I-24 belonged to Japanese Imperial Navy's Eastern Attack Group, experienced submariners that had been in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Her skipper reported three sinkings in the area at about the right time, but there was only one.
Surprisingly, at least to me, there were at least thirteen Japanese submarines operating off out east coast, and they claimed 22 Allied ships and 194 lives. Twelve of those ships were Australian, with Australian crews.
There was a belief among merchant seamen that what the Iron Crown was doing was really dangerous. The 'black and tan' ships, the colours the national line's boats were painted, plying between Whyalla and Newcastle were obviously an important part of the war effort and so were thought to be likely targets. The Iron Crown seems to have been the only such ship torpedoed, but one is more than enough.
The torpedo, a tube of high explosive with a fuse in the nose and a powerful motor in the rear, probably reached the ship without being seen. There was a very large explosion which nearly broke the ship in two,
The Iron Crown sank in about a minute and 38 of the 43 men aboard went down with her, including Captain McLellan. At the time this was the worst loss of merchant seamen we had suffered in the war. The five men n the water had managed to grab lifejackets, and they were able to get hold of floating wreckage. They had a long and despairing wait for rescue.
One of those men in the water was an 18-year old seaman, George Fisher. He was the last of the Iron Crown survivors to leave us, in 2012. He was coming up onto the deck when the torpedo hit and was able to go over the side safely. He was calling out to other crewmen to get out of the ship, but few did.
There was a Hudson bomber escorting the convoy and, ironically, watching for submarines. The Hudson was a rather stubby twin-engin light bomber and coastal reconnaissance aeroplane. Some say the plane was an Avro Anson, a lighter plane used for training and for escorting convoys. I lean toward the Hudson because it engaged the submarine with bombs. I lean toward the convoy theory because the stories suggest that another ship tried to engage the submarine with its deck gun.
The survivors spent about five hours in the water before they were picked up by the SS Mulbera. The torpedoing occurred just before five o'clock on a winter afternoon, so visibility would have been failing. The submarine escaped and Iron Crown went to the bottom in 700 feet of water. The SS Mulbera picked up those survivors around 10pm and the men would have been extremely cold and weak. They must have known the chances of rescue became far less with the last of the daylight.
The SS Mulberra had been built in the same year as the SS Iron Crown but for the British East India Company. With the war she was requisitioned and found herself in a convoy heading east of Bass Strait.
There is a memorial plaque in Mallacoota, which is rather well served for memorials, with the Bunker, the WW1 and 2 Memorial and the RAAF memorial near the airfield. This is close to the main memorial and lists the names of those lost, and the survivors. I believe George Fisher helped organise that memorial.
Some level of closure, at least in a historical sense, was gained when the CSIRO ship "Investigator" found the wreck, lying in 700 metres of water, so off the Continental Shelf, on April 16, 2019.
The wreckage was upright and one CSIRO member said that it seemed the torpedo had hit her near stern. The confusion about where she was struck is extremely easy to understand given that the initial reports came from men who were aboard when the huge blast hit, and who then spent five hours in the water, hoping for rescue.