Johnno The
pp. 83-97 · Read in the full issue
Diver
Diver Johnstone Was
born at Liverpool in the U.K. in
1891. His grandfather, William,
had been a Navy diver since 1865, on the China Coast, and Johnno’s two brothers were
divers, too.
John Edward Johnstone
started serving his time as a shipwright in Liverpool, then came out to NSW in 1911 and finished his time on the Manning River, where his last ship was the Hall Caine.
Johnno qualified as a shipwright surveyor and when war broke out in 1914 he went home to England and enlisted in the 17th King’s Liverpool Regiment. He was put to work at the Portsmouth Dockyard and finished his training at the Royal Naval Salvage Section at Invergorden, where he qualified as a deep-sea diver.
For the rest of the war he was employed on war-time salvage jobs around the UK.
In 1919, he returned to Australia, working at Williamstown Dockyard, Melbourne, on the screeve-board for the building of the standard “D” and “E” ships for the Common wealth Line until 1923.
When the Union Company’s SS Karitani was wrecked on Deal
(Continued on page 99)
A Bren Wilder Profile
:id, in Bass Strait, she was laden 484 tons of blister copper from Mt. Lyell mines in Tasmania, copper was worth £7O a ton, so imo borrowed a diving suit and :d into the job. :iis salvage was a success, and :ino was able to buy a suit and uimself up in business as a diver. ;e then he has had no time ianything else, and his life has i packed with successful ad jures. is biggest and most publicised was in 1940, when the Niagara lost on a mine just north of kland, carrying millions of ids worth of gold. Another war !s job was the Bantam, on the ;t of New Guinea, but his jobs e been so many and varied that ir telling would take several mes. is present job is at Manus Island.
supervising the final clean-up of war-time scrap in that area. He has an interest in the results as well as the official job of Liaison Officer for the Anglo-Pacific Trading Com pany, who have sub-let the contract to the Matsukura Company of Tokyo.
In the last nine months, with a work force of only 46 men, they have shipped away 5,000 tons of scrap. They keep two small vessels busy and their present monthly production is 1,200 tons of scrap metal.
Johnno has a wife, Edith, living at Ivanhoe, near Melbourne; he has two sons and two daughters, and eight grandchildren. His life, his work and his adventures have formed the material for two books by the late James Taylor.
The first was about the Niagara and was called Gold From the Sea, published in Sydney, 1942. The second was Spoils From the Sea, about Johnno’s other adventures, published in Sydney and by Harrap’s, London, in 1950.
A third volume is at present in the press; it is to be called Johnno the Diver, a boys’ adventure book, edited by J. Lennox Kerr, and is being published by Harrap’s, Lon don.
This should complete the story of his life, providing that he can be persuaded by his wife to retire to a quiet suburbia. He is very fit and very active, but despite his excit ing life he has a gentle disposition which endears him to all who come
in contact with him.-