When was the Battle of Cape Spada?

On the morning of 19 July 1940, off Cape Spada on the northwest coast of Crete, during World War II.

Who fought at Cape Spada?

The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and five British destroyers, Hyperion, Hero, Hasty, Ilex and Havock, against the Italian light cruisers Bartolomeo Colleoni and Giovanni delle Bande Nere.

Who won the Battle of Cape Spada?

The Allies. Sydney's gunfire stopped the Bartolomeo Colleoni, which the destroyers sank with torpedoes. The Bande Nere escaped.

Who commanded HMAS Sydney at Cape Spada?

Captain John Augustine Collins of the Royal Australian Navy. He brought Sydney south at full speed as soon as he heard the destroyers' report.

Was HMAS Sydney damaged at Cape Spada?

Only slightly. A single shell burst on her forward funnel, and there were no serious casualties.

How was Sydney welcomed home?

With huge crowds in Sydney in February 1941. Schoolchildren were given a holiday, the crew marched to a civic reception at the Town Hall, and the city presented a commemorative plaque and medallions.

What happened to HMAS Sydney after Cape Spada?

She was lost with all 645 men aboard in a battle with the German raider Kormoran off Western Australia in November 1941. Her wreck was found in 2008.

Battle of Cape Spada, 1940: HMAS Sydney sinks the Bartolomeo Colleoni

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Cape Spada?

On the morning of 19 July 1940 two Italian light cruisers, Bartolomeo Colleoni and Giovanni delle Bande Nere, ran into four British destroyers sweeping the north coast of Crete. As the destroyers fell back, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney under Captain John Collins came up and opened fire at about ten miles. In a long chase her gunfire stopped the Colleoni, which the destroyers Hyperion and Ilex then sank with torpedoes off Cape Spada. The Bande Nere escaped. Sydney was hit only once.¹

Cape Spada was a small action by the standards of the war at sea, a single cruiser and a handful of destroyers against two cruisers, over in a morning. In Australia it became something much larger, a moment of national pride, as the Royal Australian Navy still calls it, celebrated in the newspapers for days and remembered for the cheering crowds that welcomed Sydney home. The Anzac Memorial calls it a swift and decisive victory that won her crew a reputation for courage.²

Dark locator map of the sea around western Crete, with the southern tip of the Greek mainland and the island of Kythera to the north, the Aegean islands to the northeast and a gold star in a glowing circle off the northwest cape of Crete — Cape Spada, today Cape Spatha, is the northernmost point of western Crete. The fighting ran south and west from here, past the islands off the island's northwest corner, toward the open sea between Crete and the Greek mainland. Drawn for this article from Natural Earth data, with no modern borders. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

Background: a new front in the Mediterranean

Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940, and the Mediterranean became a front overnight. HMAS Sydney had joined the British Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria on 26 May and began patrol sweeps only hours after the declaration. Before Cape Spada she had already sunk the Italian destroyer Espero and fought at the Battle of Calabria, the first fleet action against the Italian navy.³

HMAS Sydney, a long light-colored cruiser with two tall funnels and two masts, crew lined up along the deck, lying still in a misty harbor in 1935 — HMAS Sydney in 1935, the year she was commissioned: one of three Modified Leander-class light cruisers the Royal Australian Navy bought from Britain shortly before the war, with eight six-inch guns. The Argus (Melbourne), HMAS Sydney, photograph, 1935, State Library of Victoria H98.105/2529. Public domain (photograph published in Australia before 1955), via Wikimedia Commons

Sydney was one of three Modified Leander-class light cruisers bought by the Royal Australian Navy shortly before the war, her sisters being Perth and Hobart. She had begun life in a British yard as HMS Phaeton and was renamed in honor of the first HMAS Sydney, which had destroyed the German cruiser Emden in 1914. In the Mediterranean she served with the Royal Navy's Seventh Cruiser Squadron.⁴

Armies and commanders

On 18 July two British forces sailed from Alexandria into the Aegean. Four destroyers, Hyperion, Hero, Hasty and Ilex, were to hunt for submarines along the north coast of Crete and intercept Italian shipping. Sydney, under Captain John Collins, with the destroyer Havock, was to cover their flank and raid shipping in the Gulf of Athens. The Italians, for their part, had sent the sister cruisers Bartolomeo Colleoni and Giovanni delle Bande Nere from Tripoli toward the Aegean island of Leros.⁵

The Italian ships belonged to the first group of the Condottieri, light cruisers named after the soldiers of fortune of Renaissance Italy; the Colleoni bore the name of a fifteenth-century captain general of Venice. They were designed in the late 1920s for speed above all, to outrun anything that could outgun them and to outrange and destroy enemy destroyers. The Naval Historical Society of Australia, presenting the Italian side of the story, notes that their armor barely kept out splinters and that their crews nicknamed them cardboard boxes; the Italian naval history site Regia Marina Italiana describes them as cruisers built to fight destroyers. Admiral Ferdinando Casardi commanded the division.⁶

On paper the Italians had the advantage. The two cruisers were faster than Sydney and far more powerful than the destroyers. The commemorative plaque Sydney's city later gave the ship spoke of a gallant fight against superior speed and weight of armament.⁷

The battle in phases

The destroyers fall back. At dawn on 19 July the Italian cruisers sighted the destroyers off the northwest corner of Crete and opened fire. Outgunned, the destroyers turned away to the northeast and called for help. The Naval Historical Society of Australia's account, drawn from the British reports, describes the Italian shooting as erratic, perhaps because the gunners were firing into the sun.⁸

Sydney arrives. Sydney was out of sight to the north when the destroyers' report came in. Collins at once turned to close at full speed. The Royal Australian Navy notes that the destroyer commander had thought Sydney too far away to help, but Collins had brought her much closer than either side realized. Around 8:20 the Italian cruisers came into sight about 23,000 yards away, and a few minutes later Sydney opened fire at roughly ten miles.⁹

The chase. Sydney's arrival took the Italians by surprise, and she scored hits on both cruisers. They turned away to the southwest at high speed, making heavy smoke, and a stern chase began along the west coast of Crete, Sydney shifting her fire between the two ships as the smoke allowed while the destroyers raced to close the range.¹⁰

Sailors of HMAS Sydney in white uniforms, steel helmets and anti-flash hoods manning two long four-inch guns on deck at sea, 1939 or 1940 — Sydney's crew at her four-inch guns in 1939 or 1940. At Cape Spada the main work was done by her six-inch turrets, which by the end of the chase had almost run out of ammunition. The Argus (Melbourne), 4 inch guns on HMAS Sydney, photograph, 1939 or 1940, State Library of Victoria H98.105/3249. Public domain (photograph published in Australia before 1955), via Wikimedia Commons

Turning point

The Italians were faster, but not fast enough. An Italian shell burst on Sydney's forward funnel, her only hit of the day, and did no serious harm. Then the Colleoni was seen to be on fire and losing way, and soon she stopped altogether off Cape Spada. Sydney had knocked out both her boilers, the Australian War Memorial and the Anzac Memorial write; the Royal Australian Navy describes a hit in the boiler that brought her to a halt.¹¹

Collins ordered the destroyers to finish her with torpedoes and went on after the Bande Nere. Hyperion and Ilex closed in. A torpedo from Ilex blew away the Colleoni's bow, a fire and explosion wrecked her bridge, Hyperion fired again, and she rolled over and sank. The Western Australian Museum puts the whole fight, from first salvo to sinking, at about an hour and a half.¹²

Aftermath

The Bande Nere got away. Running low on ammunition, Sydney had to give up the chase, and the Italian cruiser disappeared into the haze to the south. The destroyers stayed to pull the Colleoni's men out of the water. Italian bombers then attacked; the Anzac Memorial records that the bombing and strafing killed some of the Colleoni's survivors, and Havock was damaged on the way home. Hundreds of Italian sailors were landed at Alexandria as prisoners.¹³

The figures for the Colleoni's losses differ. The Naval Historical Society of Australia counts 545 officers and men landed as prisoners from a crew of about 630; Regia Marina Italiana writes that more than 525 were rescued and that 4 officers, 17 petty officers and 100 sailors died. Her captain, Umberto Novaro, was badly wounded, and both accounts record that he died of his wounds at Alexandria a few days later. The Bande Nere reached Libya; Regia Marina Italiana names Benghazi as her refuge, while the society's account has her reported back at Tripoli on 26 July.¹⁴

When Sydney and the destroyers entered Alexandria on 20 July, the other ships of the fleet cheered them in.¹⁵› Battle of Cape Spartivento, 1940

Several hundred sailors of HMAS Sydney in white uniforms crowded on deck and climbing the mast and rigging after the action off Cape Spada, 19 July 1940 — Sydney's ship's company gathered on deck for a group portrait after the action of 19 July 1940, with men crowded into the rigging. Captain John Collins later gave the photograph to the Australian War Memorial. Photographer unknown, HMAS Sydney's company after the action with the Bartolomeo Colleoni, July 1940, Australian War Memorial. Public domain (photograph taken in Australia before 1955), via Wikimedia Commons

Legacy and memory

News of the victory dominated Australian newspapers. When Sydney returned home in February 1941, crowds lined Circular Quay and the harbor foreshore; children in New South Wales were given a holiday to watch the crew march through the city to a civic reception at the Town Hall. On 11 February the Lord Mayor, Alderman Stanley Crick, unveiled a commemorative plaque, and each member of the crew was to receive a silver medallion of the same design.¹⁶

The story ended in tragedy. In November 1941, off Western Australia, Sydney was lost with all 645 men aboard in a battle with the German raider Kormoran. Most of the Cape Spada medallions, kept in the purser's office or the ship's safe until they could be presented, went down with her; after requests from survivors and families, a second issue was struck in 1944. The wreck was found in 2008.¹⁷› HMAS Sydney and the Kormoran, 1941

The Royal Australian Navy still presents Cape Spada as a reminder of Australia's part in the Allied war at sea: the Mediterranean Fleet was powerful, it writes, but Australian warships played a vital part in defending the sea lanes that kept North Africa, the Suez Canal and Australia's own supply routes open. Original medallions survive in the collections of the Australian War Memorial and the Anzac Memorial in Sydney.¹⁸