It will also have a surprising significance for at least two of his surviving relatives - grandson Ray Hanley in Mayfield, and grand-niece Cheryl Langford from Umina on the Central Coast.

Although Rudd died in February 1969 - he drowned while fishing in a tinny - talking about him still reduces Langford to tears.

"I don't know why, but I just get very emotional about it," she said.

Hanley, a normally garrulous retired Hunter school principal, pauses every so often when talking about his grandfather, a World War I hero.

"He was a good fellow. A real, real good fellow," he said.

It does not surprise Hanley that Rudd would end up on a list of 13 men under consideration for retrospective Victoria Crosses, and the subject of controversial federal government Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal hearings.

The hearings were launched after criticism of a system that left the Australian navy without even one Victoria Cross winner, and because of public sentiment for an award to Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick - Gallipoli's Simpson and his donkey.

But Hanley and Langford believe Rudd trumps the 11 other naval heroes, and even Simpson, when it comes to having the most colourful story to tell.

Only Rudd was jailed for leading a mutiny in 1919, and freed after public outcry and months of passionate debate in Federal Parliament.

"Every part of his life was exciting," Hanley said. "A Victoria Cross would just be another chapter."

Dalmorton Rudd was born in June 1896. The name Dalmorton was inherited from his father, who was born in Dalmorton, near Griffith. The family is not related to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Papers for Rudd in the National Archives of Australia show he signed up for service with the merchant navy in October 1913, and was part of the New Guinea force from August 1914.

Rudd earned a place on the defence appeals tribunal list for his part in an operation known as the Zeebrugge Raid on April 23, 1918.

The raid was an attempt by the British navy to neutralise the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge which was used by the German navy as a base for its U-boats and light shipping. As many as 35 torpedo craft and 30 submarines were sheltered there at any one time.

The plan was to sink older British ships in the canal entrance to prevent German ships from leaving port, including an initial diversionary attack on the heavily fortified Zeebrugge Mole, or causeway.

Rudd was one of the few Australians in the storming parties that attacked Zeebrugge Mole.

Naval Despatches in the London Gazette in 1919 recorded the dramatic raid in which 227 British navy men died, 356 were wounded, six men were awarded the Victoria Cross and 20 received the Distinguished Service Order. Many more were decorated, including Rudd, who received a Distinguished Service Medal.

Hanley said his grandfather spoke about the raid only once, while the two were fishing off the Central Coast about six years before Rudd died.

The storming parties came under heavy fire even before leaving their ships after HMS Vindictive landed about 300 metres away from her target area.

Naval despatches record the storming parties were decimated. Several lost their leaders.

Hanley remembers Rudd talking about how scared men were.

"I remember him saying while they were waiting to go fellows were literally shitting themselves," he said.

"I asked if that included him.

"He said 'I was shitting myself so much there was nothing left'."

Rudd's small storming party led the first charge and found itself on a raised breakwall under heavy machinegun fire. They fought the enemy behind guns on the breakwall, were shot, and rescued the wounded.

Naval despatches noted that although the storming parties had to disable some batteries on the Zeebrugge Mole, the missed landing point left the parties exposed to hundreds of metres of machinegun fire. The mission still had to be completed to ensure the raid was successful.

The small number of men "pressed their attack most gallantly, and it appears probable their fire prevented the 4.1 inch battery at the Mole head coming into action".

Hanley remembers Rudd describing a mess after the raid. A day earlier, the mess area had been crowded. Afterwards, there were too many empty chairs.

Rudd was unsuccessful in a ballot for a Victoria Cross for his unit, but was awarded his Distinguished Service Medal in July 1918.

Less than a year later he was charged with taking a leading role, along with his brother, Leonard, in a non-violent mutiny aboard the battle cruiser HMAS Australia in the Western Australian port of Fremantle as men returned home after four years at war.

In his book Mutiny, Terrorism, Riots and Murder: A History of Sedition in Australia, author Kevin Baker noted the ship received a "rousing welcome and extensive hospitality" from the people of Fremantle.

But when the ship's British officer ordered the festivities to end, and stopped a planned "thank-you" celebration thrown by the ship's crew for the town, more than 80 HMAS Australia crew "straggled onto the quarter-deck" on June 1, 1919, and asked for an extra day at the port.

Tired, hungover, and happy to be home, it was "a mob rather than an orderly deputation", a court martial aboard the warship Encounter was told.

Dalmorton and Leonard Rudd were two of five men charged after the incident, after evidence the Rudds had threatened or persuaded stokers to quit the boiler rooms so the ship could not leave.

They pleaded guilty. Leonard Rudd was sentenced to two years' jail followed by dismissal, while Dalmorton Rudd was sentenced to 18 months' jail, dismissal, and the stripping of his bravery medal.

The case outraged the Australian public who were particularly incensed about the treatment of Dalmorton Rudd.

It also fanned anti-war and anti-British feeling, and ranged Australian politicians and the public on the side of the Australian sailors, and the British naval hierarchy and the commanders who led the Australian ship on the other.

It also highlighted Australian objections to the imposition of the British Naval Discipline Act on the Royal Australian Navy, after parliament was repeatedly told the act was unnecessarily harsh and essentially foreign.

The Australian Government released the men from jail after six months without consulting the navy.

Dalmorton Rudd did not appear bitter towards the navy or the defence force. He served again in World War II.

It was only recently that Cheryl Langford discovered the Rudd brothers' younger brother, Royston, 15, died of a congenital condition only days before the mutiny. Dalmorton Rudd's young wife had died in 1918. He had not seen her since 1915.

"It eats me up that these men had been at war for four years, had risked their lives and lost their brother; that Dalmorton had basically been on a suicide mission and lost his wife, and when they came home they couldn't even celebrate and then they were thrown in jail," Langford said.

"They were such different times.

"They put their lives on the line

and that's the thanks they got."

After the tribunal hearings spokesman James Cannon acknowledged the awarding of bravery medals was a "complex, demanding and very emotional event".

"The fact of life is we're talking about records going back in one case to 1915," Cannon said.

"We're talking about a lot of the people involved who have now left us, and we're talking about the whole issue of retrospectivity - should we be doing this at all?

"So the tribunal has some serious questions to deal with."

Langford attended the tribunal hearing earlier this year and listened to histories of other naval officers nominated for Victoria Crosses, including World War II heroes Robert Rankin and Edward Sheean.

She acknowledged the tribunal's reluctance to award retrospective Victoria Crosses.

But the failure to award any Victoria Crosses to Australian navy heroes, a situation that occurred because Australian governments could award VCs to army and air force heroes while the Admiralty in London awarded VCs to Australian navy heroes until after World War II, was a driving force behind the tribunal reopening the matter.

Langford and Hanley are agreed on a number of things. If Dalmorton Rudd is awarded a VC it will not be held by any members of his family.

Both want any award to be held by the public, either at the navy base at Sydney's Garden Island, or at the Australian War Memorial.

They are also agreed that their interest in a man who died years ago lies in the selflessness of his most courageous act.

"I was 12 when he died, but when I first started learning about him I wanted people to know. This is my dream, that he wouldn't be forgotten," Langford said.

Hanley believes the growing interest in Australia's wartime history is in part because younger generations know much more about the courage of the past than the children of war veterans because material is more readily available.

"These men came home and they didn't talk about what they had done," Hanley said.

"My grandfather only spoke to me about it once. The word is selflessness."

He has another theory about the passions stirred up by people who have died at war.

"People need heroes." Hanley said.