Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Sea Scouts in Western Australia - Camp Cornwell

The Sea Scout headquarters facility at Pelican Point near Perth is officially named Camp Cornwell. There's a low sign adjacent to the main gate saying so. However it's rare to hear the name used these days. I checked with my eldest sons whom all have been senior Sea Scouts and none were familiar with the name or it's history. They simply knew the place as Pelican Point.

According to a local history, Sea Scouts in Western Australia started off in 1913 with a small troop near Albany on the south coast. By 1925 the interest in the movement had become such that the facility at Pelican Point was established. From the outset it was intended to be exemplary. A place with first-rate Scouting amenities as good as could be found anywhere in the British Empire.

Its name was chosen to honour of sixteen year old lad named John Travers Cornwell. A former English Scout, he'd attained the rank of 'Boy 1st Class' in the Royal Navy, but died of wounds after his ship HMS Chester engaged with the German navy at the Battle of Jutland on June 2, 1916. The action was a disaster for the Royal Navy. Fourteen ships were destroyed and 6,784 men were killed.

A curious story evolved after his death when he was posthumously awarded the naval Victoria Cross. This award caught everyone off guard and his body had to be hastily exhumed from a mass grave and accorded more dignified treatment. It's arguable that he received any. Instead he'd become the focus for a concerted propaganda campaign to revitalise enthusiasm for the war and invigorate patriotic support for the King and Empire.

With hindsight, the reasons for awarding the VC seem illusory. According to the story, after HMS Chester had been clobbered by the Germans and a large proportion of its crew slaughtered, John Cornwell was discovered alone and mortally wounded, but still at his gunnery post 'awaiting further orders.' This was interpreted as exceptional courage and devotion to duty. The rest as they say, was spin-doctor history. He'd died ashore a few days after the action, which was very convenient for the propaganda merchants to work unhindered upon the development of his heroic status.

But there are others who've spent much effort researching this sorry saga and it's better I insert an appropriate link to their efforts.

However, I'd like to add that I'm reminded of an earlier naval story about a heroic boy perpetuated in a poem titled Casabianca. The boy was purportedly on a French ship which engaged the British under Nelson during the 1798 Battle of the Nile :

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames roll'd on...he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He call'd aloud..."Say, father, say
If yet my task is done!"
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
"Speak, father!" once again he cried
"If I may yet be gone!"
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames roll'd on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but one more aloud,
"My father, must I stay?"
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud
The wreathing fires made way,

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And stream'd above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound...
The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea.

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.

(Written by Felicia Dorothea Hemans - 1826)

John Cornwell's name was perpetuated in many ways and one of them was the naming of the Sea Scout facility at Pelican Point in 1925. It's not a bad thing he's remembered there, because in a way I see it as a tribute to a significant victim of the British establishment. An establishment which endeavoured to treat the working class and youthful young men of the time with appalling arrogance and insensitivity at every opportunity.

Last month when the Master Mariners' competition was getting underway I took a series of images from the Sea Scouts' jetty at Camp Cornwell which I've transformed into a panorama. One of my sons is in it. I suspect Scout John Cornwell would have enjoyed being there too if he'd had the chance. Click up the link to the max:

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

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