  This is the second in a series of papers presenting observations and results
for a sample of 76 ultra-steep-spectrum (USS) radio sources in the southern
hemisphere designed to find galaxies at high redshift. Here we focus on the
optical spectroscopy program for 53 galaxies in the sample. We report 35
spectroscopic redshifts, based on observations with the Very Large Telescope
(VLT), the New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the Australian National
University's 2.3m telescope; they include five radio galaxies with z>3.
Spectroscopic redshifts for the remaining 18 galaxies could not be confirmed:
three are occulted by Galactic stars, eight show continuum emission but no
discernible spectral lines, whilst the remaining seven galaxies are undetected
in medium-deep VLT integrations. The latter are either at very high redshift (z
>~7) or heavily obscured by dust. A discussion of the efficiency of the USS
technique is presented. Based on the similar space density of z>3 radio
galaxies in our sample compared with other USS-selected samples, we argue that
USS selection at 843-1400 MHz is an efficient and reliable technique for
finding distant radio galaxies.

Astrophysics