By Tony Caro The December 2020 edition of this magazine contained a tribute to Teddy Sheean, our Victoria Cross recipient. Also mentioned were survivors rescued by HMAS Kalgoorlie, and amongst ...
Pearls of Controversy: Broome’s British White Divers 1912-1913
By Kate Reid-Smith In February 1912, a group of ex-Royal Navy (RN) men arrived in the northern West Australian town of Broome. They had left Britain on 23 December 1911 ...
Occasional Paper 105: Naval History – Does it Matter?
What is the point of naval history? Is it to provide a rich framework through which contemporary Naval debates can be viewed or is there something more there? Must it always say something about the World we live in today while also addressing the one we hope to inhabit in the future? ...
Occasional Paper 107: Dutch Submarine K IX, Netherlands East Indies Naval Forces, Under US Navy Operational Control, then RAN Control as HMAS K9 In SWPA During WWII
By Peter Dunn OAM The Dutch submarine K IX is known to many who are familiar with the Japanese midget submarine attack in Sydney Harbour on the night of 31 ...
Trouble with the Neighbours
By Colin Randall Garden Island has always had trouble with the neighbours. The earliest recorded was in 1788 and the latest in January 2020. Over the intervening 232 years neighbours ...
The Percy Islands and some Visitors
Continuing the series on islands around our coastline we venture a little further south down the Queensland coast, dropping the pick at that wondrous yachtie escape, Middle Percy Island. The ...
Singapore Dockyard: The ‘Truncated Scheme’ and construction of the ‘missing’ wharf walls 1938–1941
By Bernard Mennell This article was published in the May 2019 (Vol 24/No 1) issue of Dockyards, the newsletter of the Naval Dockyards Society (UK) and is re-published with kind ...
Captain Valentina Orlikova – Soviet Maritime Hero
By Alexandra Murtazaeva Readers may remember Alexandra who while completing her studies in Australia helped out as a volunteer at the Boatshed. Now back at home in Moscow, she tells ...
Commander Guy Alexander Beange DSC RAN
By Hector Donohue Commander Guy Alexander Beange DSC RAN served with the Royal New Zealand Navy Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War and trained as a Fleet Air Arm ...
Exmouth Gulf – Submariners’ Haven
By Colin Randall Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia In 1618, the Dutch East India Company ship Mauritius, under command of Willem Janszoon, landed near North West Cape and named Willem’s River, ...
Occasional Paper 98: Life Line- the Rescue of Tony Bullimore
The rescue of yachtsmen in the Southern Ocean has been headline news on several occasions in recent decades. Of particular interest was the rescue of Tony Bullimore in January 1997. ...
Occasional Paper 97: The Lost Patrol
By Eric Deshon The following story was first published in the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) Volunteers’ Quarterly newsletter ‘All Hands’, Issue 103 in June 2018. It is based on ...
Occasional Paper 91: Invidious Choices – The German East Asia Squadron and the RAN in the Pacific, August to December 1914
By Lieutenant Commander Desmond Woods RAN This paper was first published by the Australian Naval Institute online and in an abbreviated form the by the UK Naval Review and by ...
The Dominion Yachtsmen Scheme – Australian Volunteers in the Normandy Landings, June 1944
By Janet Roberts Billett This article follows from Part 1 by the same author on the contribution made by members of the Dominion Yachtsmen Scheme, which appeared in the December ...
Heart of Oak and Jolly Tars: a short reflection
By John McGrath The refrain of Heart of Oak (yes, it is Heart not Hearts) are our ships, begins: ‘Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men’. ...
An Essay on the Forming of the Royal Australian Navy
By Midshipman Lloyd Skinner Lloyd Skinner attended Melbourne Grammar School, where he discovered a passion for Australian political and military history. Shortly after completing secondary education in 2019 Lloyd joined ...
The Ephemeral Commission of the Fremantle Naval Volunteers, Western Australia, 1879 – 1888
By Ron and Ian Forsyth New information on the Fremantle Naval Volunteers, the only naval defence force to be established in the Colony of Western Australia, is documented in our ...
MV Ramses – Blockade Runner
By Alan Bourne This paper was prepared by Alan Bourne, son of Herbert (Bill) Thomas Bourne. Herbert was christened Hubert, which he disliked, and he enlisted in the RAN under ...
Occasional Paper 86: Royal Australian Navy in the Pacific War
By Richard H Pelvin and Jozef H Straczek This paper was provided courtesy of the Sea Power Centre – Australia. It was first published in 2003 and is available on ...
Occasional Paper 84: Operation Musketeer – the 1956 Suez Crisis, RAN Members’ Involvement
This paper was written by Society volunteer, Commander Martin Linsley RAN Rtd. Its genesis was a list of the RAN participants in the Suez Crisis compiled by Mike Fogarty a ...
Kings Cross in World War II
By Nick Hordern In 2020 we celebrate the 75th anniversary year of the opening of the Captain Cook Dock which joined Garden Island to the mainland and we gained a ...
Occasional Paper 80: The Early Years (1970-1971) of HMAS Brisbane (DDG-41)
The following paper was delivered by Captain Ralph T Derbidge MBE RAN (Retired) at a reunion (mostly of commissioning crew members and those who deployed to the Vietnam War in ...
Palm Islands – a Naval Connection
By Walter Burroughs The Palm Islands and Challenger Bay affords a large sheltered deep-water anchorage, the last such facility on Australia’s east coast before reaching the northern extremity of the ...
Occasional Paper 77: HMAS Assault. WWII Combined Operations Directorate Establishment – Port Stephens NSW
By Dennis J Weatherall JP TM AFAITT(L) LSM – Volunteer Researcher HMAS Assault, also known as the Amphibious Training Centre to American personnel, was a combined operations establishment for training ...
Occasional Paper 75: The Vietnam War and the Royal Australian Navy
The following address was delivered by Captain Ralph T. Derbidge MBE RAN (Retired) at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance to mark Vietnam Veterans Day on 18 August 2010. It describes ...