Dangers of Service at Sea The fire onboard HMAS Westralia in May 1998 in which four members of the RAN were killed and the loss of six yachtsman in the ...
History - general
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. ...
Letters – The Senior Service
Which Service Came First? “Snow” Mackrell, a member, has forwarded some correspondence concerning his contention that the Navy is the “Senior Service” as, “after Federation, it was the Navy which ...
Navy Square – Port Melbourne
The concept of a naval memorial in Port Melbourne arose in May 1997 when it was observed that following the 1994 decommissioning of HMAS Lonsdale, there was no feature in ...
HMAS Canberra’s Crest – Return from P&O Liner Canberra
On the 24th April, 1964 a small group of survivors from HMAS Canberra met on board the P&O Liner Canberra to present to the captain a replica of HMAS Canberra’s crest, i.e., the ...
The Hammock
The issue hammock, the beloved pusser sack – one of man’s most endearing inventions – has vanished, alas, from Navy messdecks and establishments. It has been replaced by the impersonal ...
In Remorse Mode about the Morse Code!
Extracts from The Sydney Morning Herald (Kendall Hill) and The Sun-Herald (Peter Robinson) It revolutionised the way humans communicated long before the likes of the telephone, the radio and e-mail. ...
Letters: Astern Refuelling: HMAS Brisbane (1)
Re Naval Historical Review December 1997: HMAS BRISBANE The photograph of HMAS BRISBANE shows the ship under way and fuelling by the astern method. The tanker in this case is almost certainly ...
The Epaulettes of the Father of the RAN – Vice Admiral Sir William Creswell KCMG KBE
Sir William was born at Gibraltar in 1852. At age 13, he entered the Royal Navy, joining the “Britannia” as a Cadet. As a Midshipman in H.M.S. “Phoebe” he enjoyed ...