Captain Sidney Baddeley:
Sidney Baddeley was born in West Ham in 1896, the son of William Herbert Baddeley (born in St Helens, c. 1871) and Margaret Ellen Baddeley, also of St Helens. He died in Estcourt, South Africa, in 1960. He received a master-mariner certificate (i.e. he was qualified to be in charge of a vessel) in Liverpool in 1922, and later served as Marine Superintendent of the Straits Steamship Company in Singapore. With his with wife Ruby (née Stagg, 1892-1973), the Baddeleys lived at 5 Holt Road, Singapore, presumably at a property owned by Alfred Holt or the Blue Funnel Line. His brother, Noel, was also a master mariner in the Merchant Navy before emigrating to New Zealand where he became a harbour master in Auckland. Baddeley was captured in 1942, and held as a prisoner-of-war in Muntok, Banka Island in Sumatra and Fukuoka in Japan. After the Second World War, the Baddeleys returned to Liverpool and then back to Singapore but they could not settle and consequently emigrated to South Africa in 1950, settling near Winterton where Sidney bred pigs. Sidney and Ruby had two children, Philip (1920-2007) and Margaret (1925-1985). Sidney died at home in 1960 while his brother Noel was visiting from New Zealand.


Prisoner-of-war:
In early 1942, only two ships of the Straits Steamship Co., SS ‘Relau’ and ‘Rantau’, remained in Singapore. Baddeley took command of ‘Rantau’ and his assistant, F.W. (Frederick William) Chamberlin, took command of ‘Relau’. In the midst of the Battle of Singapore, the two ships left on 13 February 1942. ‘Relau’ stopped twice to pick up survivors from other ships which had been attacked by Japanese warships. Having been separated, ‘Relau’ was captured by the Japanese in the Berhala Strait and taken to Muntok [Mentok] where ‘Rantau’ had already been taken. The two ships and their passengers joined others from captured or sunk vessels fleeing Singapore in being interned in prisoner-of-war camps at Muntok and later Palembang. The exact sequence of what happened next to Baddeley and Chamberlin is not entirely clear but can be broadly sketched as follows. In September 1942, Baddeley was billeted as a prisoner-of-war on the MV ‘Hauraki’. In October he was transferred to the MV ‘Tokyo Maru’, an overcrowded vessel with about 1,000 passengers, which sailed to Japan via Sasebo. In December 1942, Chamberlin spent time at the Sasebo camp, briefly reuniting with Baddeley, before being sent to the main naval interrogation camp at Ofuna. Baddeley and Chamberlin did not see each other again until after the end of the war. In 1943 Chamberlin was sent to the Mitsubishi Shipyard Camp (Tokyo-01D-Yokohama) for shipyard labour and ship construction, and later he was sent to Kamaishi, an iron mill work. Baddeley was sent to Fukuoka, a labour camp for construction and quarry work. Fukuoka was liberated in September 1945.


Source: family papers; Chamberlin’s account; Tregonning, ‘Home Port Singapore: a history of the Straits Steamship Company Limited 1890-1965’, pp. 182-3, 221, 224; list of internees at Padang and Bankinang, Muntok Peace Museum: https://muntokpeacemuseum.org/?page_id=629.