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SPOT
FALCONER: Retired Navy Captain Richard Arundel is trying
to identify telegraphist William Wolseley Falconer, who
may be among the crew of AE2 pictured here.
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Photo:
P00371.001 courtesy Australian War Memorial
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The
search is on to find a photo of one man, who through his actions,
and those of his submarine skipper at Gallipoli in 1915, may
have inadvertently contributed to the Anzac legend.
The man in question was a Navy telegraphist, William Wolseley
Falconer, who served onboard the Australian submarine AE2.
Retired Navy Captain and amateur artist Richard Arundel recently
contacted Navy News, with the intention of obtaining a photo
to enable him to correctly define Falconer’s features in a painting,
that he hopes can be presented to the Australian War Memorial.
AE2 was the first Allied submarine to successfully navigate
the perilous underwater passage of the Narrows of the Dardenelles
Strait, the treacherous slice of water that connects the Mediterranean
to the Sea of Marmara, during the landings on the Gallipoli
peninsula.
The captain of AE2 was LCDR Henry Stoker of the Royal Navy.
On April 25, 1915, the very morning of the fateful landings
at Gallipoli, he managed to safely navigate his submarine through
the Dardenelles.
“The story of AE2’s passage through the mined straits is little
short of a monumental feat,” CAPT Arundel said.
“Crew members counted some 18 mine moorings or mines scraping
along or above the boat. The boat grounded twice beneath forts
but managed to escape.
Stoker later wrote of the crew’s extraordinary calm and epic
performance in getting their frail craft back into deep water,
then sinking a suspected minelayer and maneuvering for some
hours away from searching craft before bottoming near marshes.”
CAPT Arundel said that when the AE2 finally surfaced to charge
its depleted batteries and vent the boat of acrid fumes that
first evening of the Gallipoli landing, all was not well with
Anzac forces.
“Stoker now knew his was the first Allied submarine to have
made the hazardous mined transit and must have created some
panic among enemy naval forces since the minefields no longer
ensured a safe haven for sea transport in the Sea of Marmara,”
he said.
“Stoker’s duty once clear on the surface, was to signal his
success to the Flagship. It was at this point that Stoker had
to rely on the only member of his small crew with a specialisation
in submarine radio communications - Telegraphist William Wolseley
Falconer.
“Falconer had enlisted in the RAN four years earlier at age
18, and is recorded as a submariner in January 1915, just prior
to AE2’s departure in convoy for the Middle East. He was thus
relatively inexperienced and once at sea had no one to turn
to for specialist advice.
‘Now with AE2 surrounded by curious fishermen and searching
craft, Falconer was directed to rig his aerial and transmit
Stoker’s message’ Falconer managed to tune an erratic aerial
impedance to the Marconi Type 10 M/F transmitter’s wandering
and unstable submarine guard frequency.
The communication orders for the landing required each word
or coded group to be receipted.
Falconer received no reply. “He decided to continue to try and
transmit his message “blind”, but there was still no receipt
despite constant re-tuning,” CAPT Arundel said. Both Stoker
and Falconer believed their valve-operated equipment had probably
failed.
Several days later, the AE2 encountered problems staying submerged
and became uncontrollable. On April 30, 1915, AE2 was caught
on the surface by Turkish patrol vessels. The submarine had
been attempting to deceive them in how many submarines were
in the water, by surfacing randomly.
AE2 was attacked and holed, forcing Stoker’s crew to scuttle
the boat and abandon it.
The crew was then imprisoned in Turkish POW camps where four
members succumbed to disease and maltreatment, before the survivors
were released three and a half years later.
What they didn’t know until after their release was that the
message Falconer had dispatched to the HQ Ship on that evening
of April 25, 1915, was actually received.
CAPT Arundel said records from the Headquarter ship’s operation
room log, indicated that prior to receiving AE2’s message, HQ
were considering ordering an evacuation of men already on the
shore.
“A delaying tactic was urgently sought together with some means
of boosting the morale of a demoralised Allied force. When the
message from the AE2 arrived, it changed everything.”
