The Voices of HMS Neptune

Neptune Calling exhibition, Torpedo Bay Navy Museum

Some of the most poignant recordings made by the Mobile Broadcasting Unit are now able to be heard in a new exhibit at the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum in Auckland, which opened this week. They contain the voices of 50 New Zealand sailors, recorded on board the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Neptune, on 13 November 1941.

Broadcasters Arch Curry and Noel Palmer went on board the Neptune while it was docked at Alexandria, Egypt, and recorded radio messages from 50 of the 150 New Zealanders who were serving amongst its crew of nearly 800 men. They also recorded the ship’s British officers, Captain Rory O’Conor and First Lieutenant Frank Woodward, who spoke about about the history of the ship and the part the New Zealanders were playing in its crew.

Tragically, just over a month later on 19 December 1941, HMS Neptune struck a minefield in the Mediterranean and sunk, with the loss of all but 1 of its crew, including 150 New Zealanders.

Next-of-kin received the tragic news around Christmas, and it was announced publicly in New Zealand in early January 1942. The timing of the disaster added to the terrible poignancy of the men’s final messages, which are mostly Christmas greetings to family and loved ones. Two New Zealand families tragically lost two sons each in the sinking, and Dunedin was hit particularly hard, with the loss of 30 local men.

By the time of the Neptune’s sinking, the recorded discs with the voices of the Kiwi crew were on their way back to New Zealand for broadcasting in the popular weekly radio programme, “With the Boys Overseas.” However, the standard National Broadcasting Service practice when a man had been killed or declared missing in action, was to not play his message on air. Instead, the grieving families were notified that they could come and listen to the recording in private at their nearest NBS station.

So the Neptune messages never went to air during the war, and for many years after they remained in the NBS archives un-played, as it was felt it would be too painful for any family members to hear their lost loved one on the radio. However, by the late 1990s broadcasters believed enough time had passed and most immediate relations would have passed away, so occasionally the Neptune messages began to be heard on programmes such as “Sounds Historical”, hosted by Jim Sullivan on RNZ.

A typical disc of the HMS Neptune messages can be heard online here. Arch Curry introduces 11 men, who each send a brief message to their friends and families. They had been chosen by ballot to record a message, and almost all add another greeting on behalf of one of their mates who had missed out.

With the arrival of the internet in the 1990s, family historians began to discover mention of the recordings online and RNZ’s Sound Archives made contact with the official HMS Neptune Association in the UK, to let them know the recordings existed and that copies could be supplied to family members. In 2012, RNZ’s “Spectrum” documentary team made a radio programme about descendants of one young Auckland sailor, Eddie Vazey, hearing his voice for the first time on the archived HMS Neptune discs. You can listen to “Finding Eddie Vazey” on RNZ’s website.

Since then, the recordings have also been used by the Royal New Zealand Navy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Neptune’s sinking in 2016, and now all the messages are available for visitors to listen to at the Torpedo Bay Navy Museum in Auckland The “Neptune Calling” exhibit opened this week and curator Jane Cotty hopes it will remain in place for the rest of this year, so visitors can hear and pay their respects to the New Zealand men killed in what remains our worst naval disaster.

New Zealand crew of HMS Neptune whose voices are heard in the surviving Mobile Unit recordings: