Rhonda Powling

Most Australians seem to know about Gallipoli and Western Front battles of World War 1. I know something of the Forts at Queenscliff and Point Nepean and the pilot oat service, having many holidays in Queenscliff as I was growing up. There would be many who do not know much about the imminent dangers of a German fleet of warships so close to home. It is a view of WWI that you don't normally read about with most of the action was happening on the other side of the world. James Phelps has written a book that explains just how real the dangers of a German fleet of warships was in the early days of WWI. This book narrates the remarkable story of an Australian Naval Academy teacher, Frederick William Wheatley, who broke the German codes at the very start of WWI and other Officers in the fledgling Australian navy who backed him. In 1914 just after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip. A quick-thinking officer, he used his wiles to audaciously discover and seize a top-secret German naval code-book. However, they needed to locate the right person to de-code it, if they were to make use of their find. They found the right man in Frederick Wheatley, who was recruited by shrewd Australian Naval Officers who understood his value. He was a maths expert and a German speaker. Wheatley worked night and day to comprehend the basic principles of the code and his discoveries allowed the Australians to track the movements of the German Navy's powerful East Asia Fleet, led by the experienced Maximilian von Spee. Although the Australians took his information seriously, it took much longer for the English Admiralty to listen and make use of the information. The information he discovered should have avoided the British Navies losses at Coronel from the attack by the German Pacific fleet but the English Admiralty didn't respond to the warnings they were given. However, this former Australian teacher, and his mostly female team, kept on cracking Germany's codes as they were made more complex. The methods he used to break the codes eventually paved the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I. Australian Code Breakers was a great WWI story, told from an Australian perspective, about a resourceful captain, a mathematician/ teacher, and a captured code-book. It was fast paced and with just enough detail to inform readers about code-breaking without overwhelming them with maths and algorithms. There were some great Black and white photographic reproductions that added "colour" to the story and characters but one other thing I would have liked to have been included in the book was a map so that readers can more easily follow the action especially through the Pacific Islands.