Ship crew to reunite daughter with fallen sailor

When HMAS Parramatta left Geelong last week, it did so with a new, important mission close to the heart of a Geelong family.

A vase containing the ashes of Aileen Taylor was on board, with the ship’s crew tasked with returning Aileen to her father, Charles William Barclay, who lies in the Mediterranean Sea.

Able Seaman Barclay died aboard the ship’s predecessor during World War Two when it sunk at the hands of a German ship and caused a lifetime of heartbreak for his young daughter.

But Barclay’s descendants said the final resting place for Aileen’s remains would provide comfort and closure for the family when the pair are reunited.

The Parramatta’s crew welcomed the family onto the ship last week when it docked at Geelong for Anzac Day commemorations in the city, which included presentations from local man and Parramatta Commander David Murphy.

Descendants of Barclay and another of the fallen Parramatta crew, Max Cranston, had an exclusive tour of the warship on Anzac Day morning from its current crew that included a breakfast and revealed never-before-seen information about the 1941 sinking.

Geelong man Phil Taylor, Aileen’s son, was among the family members who received the special naval treatment.

“The respect and honour shown to the two families that day was something incredibly special and will never be forgotten,” he said.

The magnitude of the occasion was not lost on Mr Taylor, a keen family and war historian, who said his family’s war history stretches even further than his grandfather’s service.

Mr Taylor speculates that Barclay likely enlisted to follow in the footsteps of his own uncle, John Lemon, who was among the Australian troops who disembarked at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

Like his uncle, Charles Barclay’s service was doomed to end with his death.

Barclay was aboard the Parramatta II on a mission to deliver ammunition to Australian and Allied soldiers at Tobruk, in north Africa, in late 1941 before the ship was sunk by German torpedoes.

Barclay was one of the 138 men lost with the ship, leaving behind his wife Olive May and daughter Aileen.

Mr Taylor said his mum rarely spoke of her father, but her grief was evident in her two harrowing, lasting memories of him – putting on her best dress as a nine-year-old to wave goodbye to Barclay out the window of a train, and of receiving the telegram that her dad wasn’t coming home.

“When my grandfather was killed overseas, for his daughter and wife, and family, there was no closure,” Mr Taylor said.

“As there was no closure for thousands of other families who never go to say goodbye or as in our case, be able to visit a grave.

“I know for my mum, there was always a hole that this left in her life.”

The hole in Aileen’s heart was partially healed in 2016, when she travelled with her family to Sydney for the 75^th anniversary of the sinking of Parramatta II to properly farewell her dad alongside other veteran’s descendants.

“After that day, my mother could finally be at peace with the loss of her father,” Mr Taylor said.

Aileen died three years later.

Mr Taylor has kept his mum’s ashes since her death with the plan to commemoratively bury the ashes in the ocean with her dad.

But the Parramatta IV visit presented the ideal opportunity for the current crew to help pay tribute to a fallen comrade.

“We were going to scatter them at sea ourselves,” Mr Taylor said.

“But on Monday, her ashes were placed in a vase that I had made, sealed with a champagne cork and wax, and delivered to the Parramatta IV for a sea burial which they will undertake over the coming weeks.”