Sub Lieutenant Frank Larkins (Mt Evelyn), Submarine J2: As the submarine travelled through the Karimala Strait, between Sumatra and Borneo, crew members discovered the empty blankets on the bunk of Sub Lieutenant Larkins. He was soon reported missing, believed to have fallen overboard while sleeping on top, something that was common for the crew to do due to the oppressive heat of the tropics. All the submarines and ships in the convoy immediately conducted a search and spent the next twelve hours looking for him until late in the afternoon without success. The following day the J2’s Captain held a burial service with all the crew mustered, one of them later wrote ‘they were a band of downcast men who stood there bareheaded’. He is 20 years old and as he has no known grave he is remembered on the Plymouth Naval Memorial in England.

He was the last local volunteer to become a casualty in World War One and out of all of the shire’s volunteers, he had served the longest, enlisting in the Royal Australian Navy in 1912 at the age of 14 years old, that is some six and a half years’ service all up.