Charlie was born in 1915, the second eldest of the four children of Charles Carey and Janey Loughnan—George, Charlie, Irene and Ray. Their father had enlisted in the first AIF and served in France, but was wounded in 1917 and discharged in 1918 medically unfit for further service. He spent most of the next ten years in Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, and was unable to support his family.
In 1926 when Charlie was just eleven his parents separated, and six years later, 1932, at the age of seventeen, he began his working life as a steward with Howard Smith’s Provedore Department (Queensland Passenger Service), and became a member of the stewards union. He was employed by the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand as a lift boy on the ‘Canberra’. Part of his wages he sent home to his mother.
Two years later, in 1934 he earned his lifeboat certificate which would have been a requirement and highly regarded on a passenger ship. He served on a variety of ships including the Duntroon, Mauretania and the Tarooma (twice) and then back on the Canberra for a further three years.
On 12 December 1940 he was promoted to Utility Steward, and was further promoted on 20 February 1941 to Assistant Steward. It was is in this capacity that he was engaged in Melbourne on 8 March 1943 to sail on the Centaur.
In these early days of the converted Centaur, Charlie would have been involved in the many minor adjustments to beds, surgeries, the galley, etc, that needed to be made during the trial runs up the coast. When more life-rafts were delivered on the last weekend in Sydney, Charlie, the certificated lifeboatman and dedicated unionist, was very active in making sure the ship was properly fitted out for the dangerous waters of the eastern coast.
Six days later, on 14 May, Assistant Steward Charlie Carey went down with his ship.
Ronald Moate, chief pantryman of Williamstown, said he was on the boat deck where the Master, Captain George Murray, from Perth, Jack Stutter from Fremantle and Charlie Carey from Melbourne were trying to launch a lifeboat. “Fire belched up and covered the bridge”, he said, “and the ship started to slide down. I saw a mast break away and then we were sucked down. Only Stutter and I came up.”
Charlie had been well-regarded by his employer who wrote to the Minister advocating for a benefit from Charlie’s pension be paid to his mother as Charlie was partly supporting her.
It meant a great deal to Charlie’s cousin, Alan, and Alan’s son David, to attend the National Memorial Service in Brisbane on 12 March 2010, where the Governor-General, the Governor of Queensland, the Prime Minister and the Premier, plus the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces all paid their respects.