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Flagship’s sailors remember WW2 tragedy as HMS Prince of Wales passes battlefield site
9 July 2025
Sailors aboard the nation’s flagship HMS Prince of Wales paused to reflect on past sacrifices as the aircraft carrier sailed on the latest leg of her deployment to the western Pacific Rim.
After a high-profile week in Singapore, the Portsmouth-based warship is leading her Carrier Strike Group towards northern Australia for the meatiest element of the eight-month deployment so far, a major exercise hosted by the Commonwealth nation which begins later this month.
Since arriving in the Indian Ocean in early June, the multi-national force has followed much of the path taken by Royal Navy warships in 1941/42 as they tried to hold back the Japanese tide sweeping through South East Asia.
It’s been making its way through the Java Sea – sandwiched between the Indonesian islands of Borneo, Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi to the east.
In late February/early March 1942, these waters were the scene of two major naval encounters – collectively the Battles of the Java Sea – which left the Japanese in undisputed control of the waters of South-east Asia and sent several warships to the ocean floor, including heavy cruiser HMS Exeter.
Despite the pummelling she suffered, most of her sailors survived… among them Stoker 1st Class Patrick Joseph ‘Rusty’ Cawley, from Burtonwood, near Warrington, who escaped the horrors of the engine room and made it to a liferaft.
As with many of his shipmates, he was subsequently picked up by the Japanese and spent the remainder of the war as their prisoner.
Eight decades later, and HMS Prince of Wales’ passage through the same waters, re-awakened Lieutenant Commander Dominic Garner’s family history – he knew Rusty Cawley simply as ‘Uncle Paddy’ – and a desire to remember a battle largely eclipsed either by the loss of the previous HMS Prince of Wales and battle-cruiser HMS Repulse, or the fall of Singapore.
Like many of his generation he never shared his experiences with his family, but Dom, from St Helens, has attempted to piece together some of Paddy’s history through research and conversations with former shipmates.
Paddy Cawley probably ended up at the infamous Makasar Camp near Celebres (modern day Sulawasi, an island east of Borneo) where inmates were put to work building railways and military infrastructure.
It was when Dom was training at Dartmouth in 2013 and attended a service for the wartime Exeter attended by small band of survivors that his interest in the fate of the ship, her crew and ‘Uncle Paddy’ was renewed.
Amazingly, the veterans recognised some of their old shipmate’s features, not least his bright ginger hair.
“We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sharing stories as they told me their tales of each other and my great uncle during the battle and the rest of the war as prisoners of war together,” the 30-year-old naval officer said.
“That afternoon and the profound feeling of belonging I had as a young midshipman has stayed with me throughout my career.”
Now, a dozen years later, he’s had the opportunity to honour them and remember his great uncle.
“Being deployed in HMS Prince of Wales and operating in the Java Sea where some 83 years ago my uncle and his shipmates were sunk, fighting as the ship went down, makes me feel so proud to serve today,” he added.