Events of one hundred years ago when the first Commonwealth Parliament was opened by George, Duke of Cornwall and York, in Melbourne, on a stopover during the Royal Tour around ...
History - general
Royal Australian Naval College
Salutes – Why 21 Guns for Royalty?
I was intrigued to see the great interest which was aroused in the Montreal press over the firing of the 21 gun salutes to welcome the Princess Royal on her ...
The 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the RAN Participation
Book Review: Australian Fighter Aces 1914-1953
AUSTRALIAN FIGHTER ACES 1914-1953, by A.D. Garrison (Published and distributed jointly by Air Power Studies Centre and Australian War Memorial 1999, 250x175mm, 117 b&w photos, 10 tables/lists, ix/188pp, card cover, ...
Heaven’s above – A yarn with Harv
The Gin Pennant – The signal for all celebrations
The origins of the Gin Pennant are uncertain, but it seems to have been used since the 1940s and probably earlier. The distillery manager of Plymouth Gin was quoted ...
The Countess of Hopetoun Incident, December 1915
Letters – Australians at War documentary
The 1999-2000 Federal Budget provided $5 million for the production of a TV documentary series, Australians at War, which will cover the major conflicts in which Australia has participated, and ...
The Grave of Annie Dorrington – Australian Flag Co-Designer
It doesn’t mean we owe allegiance To a forgotten Imperial dream: We’ve the stars to show where we’re going And the old flag to show where we’ve been. (from a ...
NZ Scow ECHO – role in World War II
The New Zealand scow was developed from the Canadian/US log barges that plied the Great Lakes during the 1800s. First built in New Zealand in 1873 for Septimus Meiklejohn of ...
Loss of HMS Orpheus
Serving in Harmony – The Band of the Royal Australian Navy
England’s First Naval Victory-The Battle Of Sluys (AD 1340)
Mateship
There has been a lot spoken and written recently on this subject. Perhaps it can he best described in the following terms: There’s a sort of bonding that develops out ...
Garden Island – The Barracks Building
Letters: Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
Most of our readers will have been aware that the Queen unveiled the huge re-gilded statue of both her and her husband’s great-great-grandfather, Prince Albert, in London in October 1998. ...
Book Review: Our Shetland Heritage and Emigration to Australia
“Our Shetland Heritage and Emigration to Australia” by Janet Halcrow Basically, this is a family history of the fifth, sixth and seventh generations of the Halcrows, probing their Shetland background ...
Letters – Location of Sensuikan 1-124
Concerning the Japanese submarine I-124 (Sensuikan I-124 by Tom Lewis and reviewed by T.R. Duchesne – NHR Vol. 19 No.2), its wreck is shown on the approaches to Darwin chart ...
Napoleon’s Fleet – Found Buried in Seabed off Egypt
CAIRO – Two centuries after a historic battle destroyed Napoleon’s hopes of crushing the British Empire, the French Emperor’s fleet has been discovered entombed in the depths of an artifact-rich ...
A Brief History of the Royal Marines Buglers
Captain Harvey Newcomb RN – Newcomb Building, HMAS Watson
On October 28, 1997 the Royal Australian Navy’s Surface Warfare School Building was formally renamed the “Newcomb Building”, commemorating the service of Captain Harvey Mansfield Newcomb. At the end of ...
Nelson’s coffin – Yet another version
Here is another version of the story of Nelson’s Coffin: Captain Hallowell sent a party to salvage wood from L’Orient. Months later, when he was afraid that the adulation being ...
The Nelson Touch – a Trafalgar Day address
[Trafalgar Day Address 1997 to the Naval Officers’ Association, Western Australia, by Captain John Lancaster AM RAN (Ret’d)] Trafalgar Day provides the embodiment of what in our waning years, we may ...
Book Review: Shipmates
Many of our readers will be familiar with Vic Cassells as the author of “For Those in Peril“, which chronicled the loss of RAN ships and men in past conflicts. ...