UPDATE - See note at bottom of blog post.
Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a minor editorial piece, "Giving Sydney the green light." (Previous link has now rolled over to a newly dated editorial) It's on page 30 of the paper. It's meant to be a snide article about the traffic disruption being caused in Sydney wherever President Bush goes. Specifically the (traditionally) anonymous writer refers to yesterday's journey by President Bush "to the National Maritime Museum to visit the bell from HMAS Canberra ..."
However as you know from my piece here, and Mackenzie Gregory's account here, the bell Pres. bush visited is the ship's bell from the USS Canberra, a United States Ship named at the direction of President Roosevelt in honor of the HMAS Canberra. HMAS (His Majesty's Australian Ship) Canberra was sunk in the Battle of Savo Island on the 9th of August, 1942 with the loss of 84 Officers and Men.
The ship's bell of HMAS Canberra can be safely assumed to be resting in the ship's watery grave at
09 degrees 12 minutes 29 seconds south
159 degrees 54 minutes 46 seconds east
off the Solomon Islands.
U.S. destroyers remove the crew from the fatally-damaged HMAS Canberra, off Guadalcanal at about 0630 on the morning of 9 August 1942, following the Battle of Savo Island. USS Blue (DD-387) is alongside Canberra's port bow, as USS Patterson (DD-392) approaches from astern.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives
Photo #: 80-G-13488
Here is today's erroneous bit from the Sydney Morning Herald:
ADDED:
Trevor Cook gives this issue some oxygen.
Someone has been doing some Google searches about "hmas canberra bell" today, bringing them to this blog entry, and also to the US Embassy in Canberra's site for this snippet.
UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald has corrected the error in response to my complaint emailed to their readerlink section. You can see the corrected item online at:
Thanks, Thea and Justine at the Sydney Morning Herald!
Added on 18 September 2007: Here's a photo of President Bush visiting the bell of USS Canberra at Australia's National Maritime Museum on 5 September, 2007. The ship's name "U.S.S. CANBERRA" can be clearly seen in the photo taken by Charles Dharapak for AP.
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