Murder on HMAS Australia: the wartime crime that made legal history

Pacific War. 1942. HMAS Australia hunts down Japan’s naval presence with little success. Morale is low, homosexuality rife. Two stokers – Albert and Ted – are accused of murder. Only one of them is guilty. A court martial sentences both men to hang. On appeal, the High Court of Australia holds the sentence wrong in law. Together the ship’s captain, the stokers’ defence counsel and a senior Labour minister seize this legal impasse as a political opportunity to claw back naval power from Whitehall. Albert and Ted, meanwhile, await their final sentence by spending eight bleak years in three prisons suffering one another’s company. In this true personal story, it is Albert who proves himself a fighter and a man of spirit.