Johnnie and Mehmet Johnnie and Mehmet  

During World War I, Australia’s only remaining submarine, HMAS AE2, made a daring and hazardous incursion into the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara, playing a game of cat and mouse with the Ottoman torpedo boat Sultanhisar.

Entitled Johnnie and Mehmet, the two figures - sailors from AE2 and Sultanhisar respectively, former enemies - meet again today at the museum in the context of the friendship between Australia and Turkey. They perform a visual ceremony of remembering which is kinetic and aural, signalling to each other in semaphore-like movements derived from maritime languages, punctuated by sounds from the maritime world, ceremonial and atmospheric at the same time.

As early as 1911 Australia and New Zealand were commencing strategic military and political planning in the event of war with Germany, while also hoping to limit Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Two E-Class submarines were ordered and constructed in Britain for the new fleet that was to be the backbone of Australia’s own naval force – the Royal Australian Navy. These two submarines were commissioned in February 1914 and called AE1 and AE2. 

Submarines were a relatively new arm of the force and was considered by many in the upper ranks of the British Admiralty submarine to be ‘underhand, unfair and damned un-English’, in the words of Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson vc. They were also still somewhat experimental and not the safest of vessels to serve on with many crew joining for the ‘extra allowances as danger money’ 

When war began in August 1914 the submarines AE1 and AE2 were sent with the Australian naval forces attacking German-held colonies in New Guinea and other Pacific islands. Unfortunately after departing for a routine patrol on 14th September, 1914, AE1 did not return and so was lost with all hands. It was only located 103 years later off the coast of the Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea. 

Find out more about AE1

After the German Pacific colonies were quickly taken by the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, AE2 was directed to the Mediterranean where a grand naval assault was planned on the Dardanelles Strait prior to the Gallipoli Campaign. Following a failed naval assult on the 18th of March, 1915, the job of forcing the straits was given over to submarines.

Just as the Gallipoli landings on the 25th of April were about to commence, AE2 was tasked with trying to get through to create havoc among Turkish shipping in the Sea of Marmara and assist with delaying reinforcements from eastern Turkey crossing to the Gallipoli peninsula. They were the first Allied submarine to traverse the heavily defended Dardanelles and 'ran amok' in the Sea of Marmara, attacking several vessels and damaging at least one Ottoman gunboat.  The raid was successful in its objective to divert Ottoman resources and disrupting shipping and supply lines.

Several days later, on the 30th of April, it encountered the Ottoman torpedo boat Sultanhisar and while attempting to dive and escape, the submarine suffered mechanical difficulties, was forced to surface, and was damaged by gunfire from Sultanhisar. The crew abandoned AE2, but scuttled their vessel to prevent it from falling into Ottoman hands. Sultanhisar’s crew subsequently rescued all of the submarine’s personnel and took them into custody where they became prisoners-of-war in Turkish camps.

Under the direction of Lieutenant Commander Henry Stoker, AE2 and it's crew demonstrated that submarines could safely negotiate the Dardanelles, paving the way for other Royal Navy vessels to disrupt Ottoman maritime supply lines in the Sea of Marmara. Its success has also been credited with boosting the morale of the Allied forces assaulting the Gallipoli peninsula. 

In addition to the ongoing work to preserve the wreck 70 metres below the surface in the Sea of Marmara, the museum commissioned an interpretive art piece to commemorate the crews from both AE1 and the Sultanhisar and help inform visitors about the events from both nations’ perspectives.

Following an extensive consultation and selection process, Melbourne artist Alexander Knox was selected to create a bold new art installation that plays with the idea of animus, memory, the machinery of war, and to a degree geopolitics. His response to the brief is striking and effective. He conceived a bold work in the form of two stylised elongated figures, each five metres in height. They are machines, and together evoke a hybrid distillation of ideas about submarines as machines of war and men as servants of empire.

By naming the two steel figures Johnnie and Mehmet, Knox helps to personify the two former adversaries. There were three crewmembers named John on AE2’s trip through the Dardanelles: Lieutenant Commander John Pit Cary, Leading Stoker John Kerin and Able Seaman John Wheat. Research is under way into the names of Sultanhisar’s crew.

Johnnie and Mehmet was installed at the museum in August 2016 and enlivens the foreshore with its moment, engaging form and contemporary approach to communicating stories of encounters from Australia’s rich maritime history.