Battle Between HMAS Sydney and German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran - Memorials

Memorials

The main memorial for the loss of Sydney is located on Mount Scott at Geraldton, Western Australia. Planning for the memorial commenced in late 1997, after a speech by researcher Glenys McDonald at the local Rotary club. A temporary memorial (consisting of a large boulder, a flagpole, and a bronze plaque), was installed prior to 19 November 1998, and was used in a remembrance ceremony that year. During the Last Post, a large flock of seagulls flew over the participants and headed out to sea in formation; this inspired the design of the permanent memorial. The memorial included four major elements: a stele of the same size and shape of the ship's prow, a granite wall listing the ship's company, a bronze statue of a woman looking out to sea and waiting in vain for the cruiser to come home, and a dome (dubbed the "dome of souls") onto which 645 stainless steel seagulls were welded. The memorial (minus the stele, which was not completed in time) was dedicated on 18 November 2001, and used the next evening for a commemoration ceremony marking the battle's 60th anniversary. By 2011, the stele had been completed, and a fifth element—a pool of remembrance containing a map of the region and the marked position of Sydney's wreck—had been added.

Other memorials commemorating the loss of Sydney include an oak tree planted at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance, and an avenue in Carnarvon lined with 645 trees. The service of Sydney, along with the other ships of the same name, is commemorated by a stained-glass window at the Garden Island Naval Chapel. The names of those killed aboard Sydney are inscribed at the Australian War Memorial, while those from Kormoran are inscribed in the Laboe Naval Memorial.

The "HMAS Sydney Replacement Fund" was established to help finance the acquisition of a replacement ship. The AU£426,000 raised was used to help purchase Australia's first aircraft carrier in the late 1940s; the Majestic-class carrier was named HMAS Sydney upon her commissioning in December 1948. The Kormoran name was carried on by the German fast attack craft Kormoran, a Seeadler-class fast attack craft of the West German Navy commissioned in 1959. East Germany also operated a Kormoran; a small corvette borrowed from the Soviet Navy from 1970 to 1974.