By Alan Jacobs Alan Brian Jacobs was born at Port Lincoln on 28 January 1922; on leaving school he worked for the major stock and station agents Goldsbrough Mort. Aged ...
Biographies and personal histories
An Interesting Naval Family
By John Smith John Clement McFarlane was born in Melbourne in 1887, his forebears having arrived there in 1838. At some stage, he joined the Royal Navy as a sailor ...
Winston Churchill and the Navy
As fifty years have now elapsed since his passing this article may serve as a small tribute to the memory of this great wartime leader. A meteoritic rise upon the ...
Peter Hibbs Remembered
By Norman Rivett Peter Hibbs has a unique association with Garden Island that is not generally known. He was born at Ramsgate in Kent in 1757 and is buried at ...
Mary Bryant’s Open Boat Voyage from Sydney to Timor in 1791 – Opportunist convict or our most magnificent heroine?
By Marsden Hordern Mary Bryant nee Broad This is the story of Mary Bryant, the convict woman with two babies who in 1791 helped steal a naval cutter in Sydney ...
A Tailored Solution: Chief Petty Officer Alfred Lyall Glendinning
Most members of the RAN past and present will have set foot in a Glendinning store but where does the name come from? This small tribute has been compiled with ...
Letter: Our First Fleet Commander (March 2015)
Tony Nichols, our Canadian correspondence comments: I always enjoy reading the NHR. What caught my eye in the article you wrote on Admiral Patey was the name Seydlitz which you describe ...
The Naval Ode and Laurence Binyon
By Driftwood There are moments when we first gaze upon a work of art, whether in the pictorial or written form, and are drawn to its beauty and are inspired. ...
Able Seaman Frank Boston: Covering the Gallipoli Landings
This story first appeared in the April 2014 edition of Chatterbox, a magazine published by the Brisbane Water (NSW) Branch of Legacy and is reproduced with their kind permission. Frank ...
An Isolated War Grave: Warrant Officer John Henry Davies
This article was first published by the Military History & Heritage Society of Victoria and is reproduced with their kind permission and that of the author. In the far north ...
The Sydney Cenotaph and its Guardians
By an unknown serviceman The majority of our members will have paid their respects at the Cenotaph in Martin Place and gazed at its two imposing cast bronze sentinels. These ...
Occasional Paper 130: Our First Fleet Commander – Admiral Sir George Patey
By Walter Burroughs A summary of this paper was presented at a conference held from 30 September to 01 October 2014 at the Universidad Andres Bello, Chile on the maritime ...
Lieutenant Commander Arthur Callaway, DSO, RANVR and the courage of HM Trawler Lady Shirley
Courage of HM Trawler lady Shirley Tow hundred miles west-south-west of the Canary Islands the Atlantic rollers surge endlessly eastward towards the African shore. In October 1941, these were dangerous ...
Cry Havoc
Brian Luttrell entered the RANVR in September 1939; a short while later he was off to war as an Ordinary Signalman in HMS Kanimbla. More than two years elapsed before ...
The Early Years of the Electrical Branch in the Royal Australian Navy
By Des Miller Most generations can look back upon significant changes but in our modern naval history there have only been two revolutionary changes, from wood to iron and then ...
They Also Served: Able Seaman Herbert Charles Willans RANR (1888 – 1914)
By Leyland Wilkinson On a recent visit to the Bita Paka War Cemetery near Rabaul I came across a single headstone to the memory of Able Seaman Herbert Charles Willans, ...
Letter: A Postcard from Afghanistan
Most postcards gratefully received at the Boatshed are of the colourful glossy variety of well known landmarks sent to us from globetrotting members. Recently your Editor received one of a ...
Up the Dardanelles and Back
By Ken Wright This article covering the exploits of Commander Norman Holbrook, VC, RN, is a timely reminder of these events which occurred a century ago. Surprisingly, looking through back ...
The RAN on D-Day
By Greg Swinden With 2014 being the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day landings it is timely to remember the part played by the Royal Australian Navy in Operation Overlord on ...
Manus Island in 1949
By Cdre Des Miller, RAN, Rtd Given the present level of political concern with events in these islands the attached commentary by one of our distinguished members who served there ...
Fiji and two Commodores
By Walter Burroughs The Fijian Islands are strategically situated in the southwest Pacific straddling the trade route between the eastern seaboard of Australia and the west coast of the United ...
Instructor Captain Richard Gerard Fennessy DSC RAN
By Noel Burgess This extraordinary story concerns a country schoolmaster who mainly served through WW II in one ship in which he won the DSC and afterwards rose to become the ...
Tales from the Dockyard – Lawrence Beare Westaway
By Norman Rivett During the period 9 February 1889 to 15 February 1991 at HM Naval Establishment Garden Island (later referred to as HM Naval Dockyard) there were, in addition ...
Memoirs of George William Rayner 15 Oct 1886 – 18 July 1962
These important memoirs provided by Robert Rayner are taken from his grandfather’s handwritten notes discovered in the family’s Sydney home in 2007. Early Life in Prison! I was born at ...
Louis Brennan (1852-1932) – the Wizard of Oz
By Mike Turner Louis Brennan was a brilliant and prolific inventor. Two of his best known inventions were a gyro-stabilised train for a monorail and a type of helicopter, but ...