By John McKechnie AO, KC
A typical January day dawned hot in busy Fremantle harbour where the SS Panamanian was loading flour for Ceylon. By morning knock off, the temperature had climbed to 107F (43C) in the shade. The lumpers or stevedores, better known as wharfies, climbed onto deck for such relief from the heat as they could get. Cigarettes were passed around. Everyone rested for a while, drenched with sweat from working in the heat of the hold.
It was so hot that a piece of hessian, perhaps from a flour bag, was hung over a winch to keep it out of the sun.
Perhaps the winch overheated and set the hessian smouldering. Or maybe one of the wharfies set it smouldering during smoko.
However it happened, When Jim Durnin, one of the wharfies, saw the burning hessian bag he became concerned. First he stamped on it. Still smouldering. What to do next? The Panamanian was of course surrounded by harbour water. Easy solution. Jim threw the smouldering hessian over the side to fizzle out safely.
Or so he thought.
The day was 17 January 1945. Fremantle became strategically important after the fall of Singapore. By 1945, it was the largest submarine base in the southern hemisphere, sometimes hosting up to 20 submarines from the USA, Britain, and the Netherlands. Warships and merchant ships also called at the port in need of refuelling.
Submarines need fuel – dieselene to be precise. Surface ships need furnace oil.
Vessels were refuelled in the harbour. Pollution controls were not as effective as might have been and there was from time to time there was significant spillage of oil on the surface of the water, both dieselene and heavier furnace oil. Sometimes there might be only trace amounts while at other times oil would pool around ships and wharves until tide or wind broke it up. The harbour and naval authorities knew this because a ship had caught fire following oil build up, a short time before.
Back to the SS Panamanian. To Mr Durnin’s astonishment and apprehension, a 20-foot sheet of flame shot skywards between the ship and the wharf, setting fire to the quay structure, the SS Panamanian and a submarine depot ship,, HMS Maidstone, which was moved out of harm’s way by two tugs.
The navy and civilian fire services turned out to fight the conflagration. Black smoke from the doomed ship towered hundreds of feet skywards. When the fire was extinguished after three days and the smoke had cleared, a thousand feet of wharf had been badly damaged. The SS Panamanian’s wooden superstructure was burnt completely away, her hull blackened and blistered, and her cargo destroyed. The officers and crew were left destitute with only the clothes they stood in – all their money burned away. One sailor, a New Zealand volunteer, died while fighting the fire.
While HMS Maidstone was saved, going on to a distinguished career until being scrapped in 1978, the SS Panamanian was a total loss.
The owner of the SS Panamanian was the Eastern Asia Navigation Company Ltd although it took the company some time to prove this in court.
The company sued the Fremantle Harbour Trust Commissioners and the Commonwealth of Australia with a variety of causes of action. The loss to the company was enormous. The Panamanian was valued at 500,000 pounds, about $20 million today.
The trial took place over 23 days in 1949 before the Chief Justice of Western Australia Sir John Dwyer. Alas the company (or its insurers) were unsuccessful. A clause in the Harbour Trust regulations provided that all vessels moored along any wharf shall be at the sole risk of the owners and master.
The action against the Commonwealth which had taken over large parts of the harbour was also unsuccessful. It could not be established that the Commonwealth was responsible for dieselene being a hazard on the water.
An appeal was instituted direct to the High Court. These were the days before the Federal Court. The appeal hearing took 9 days. The company fared no better.
What may have made the pill more bitter to swallow was the judgment of the Chief Justice Sir John Latham. He wrote that the company might have made a case that because the timber of the wharf at berth 8 where the SS Panamanian lay was impregnated with oil, the wharf was therefore in a dangerous condition for which the Harbour Trust was responsible. The Trust had a duty to keep the wharf in good repair. But he added no case was made by the company founded on this theory.
Ouch.
A few reminders of Fremantle’s wartime past remain if you look carefully enough.
The part of the wharf which had been destroyed was replaced.
Nothing remains of the SS Panamanian.
Mr Durnin died in 1977, long after the flames his inadvertent actions had caused that hot January day.
(Adapted from Eastern Asia Navigation Company Ltd v Fremantle Harbour Trust Commissioners and The Commonwealth of Australia (1949) 51 WALR 94; Eastern Asia Navigation Company Ltd v Fremantle Harbour Trust Commissioners (1951) 83 CLR 353.)
