In 1991 I received a call from a young lady in Orange, NSW. She explained that she had in her possession a ventriloquist dummy of a sailor in uniform wearing an RN cap bearing the tally...HMS Barham. Her father had been a P.O. onboard during WW2 and had entertainment the crew every Christmas with a cabaret!
He left the ship about 6 months before she was sunk by torpedo in the Mediterranean with a huge loss of life.
On repatriation to Australia, his dummy accompanied him home.
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| The dummy was kindly donated to our museum and greets visitors as they arrive! |
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| HMS Barham |
HMS Barham a Queen Elizabeth Class battleship exploded and sank with a loss of 863 men in1941 after a salvo of torpedoes from a German U-boat from at close range on November 25th 1941 in the Mediterranean. HMS Barham sank with in within 4 minutes after the ship's magazines exploded.
The explosion was caught on film by cameraman John Turner
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