Seeking the Sydney: A Quest for Truth

The wartime loss of Australia’s pride, HMAS Sydney, with all hands on board, remains among the great riddles of modern maritime history. One that has teased authorities, naval experts and researchers for more than six decades. Ablaze, crippled and doomed, the cruiser vanished off the West Australian coast in November 1941, leaving not just profound unanswered questions, but grieving families and a nation mourning such wholesale loss of life. For author Glenys McDonald, Sydney’s final voyage and its ill-fated clash with the German raider Kormoran herald a personal quest that will take many unexpected turns. Seeking the Sydney is her detailed account of how a chance brush with the past turns to deepening obsession and how an unschooled novice takes on an entrenched establishment in a bid to help families of the 645 lost sailors win closure. McDonald’s struggle to piece together a labyrinth of facts, theories and, in many cases, elusive false trails makes for compelling reading in this densely woven account. pp. xv, 248 illusts. Tipped in newspaper cutting. First Edition. #0520