Sam was born in September 1937, in Harbin, the ice city of North Eastern China, but grew up in Tintsin (Tianjin), the coastal metropolis adjacent to Beijing. His parents were ...
Article topics
Escape from Singapore – the Last Boat Leaves
The June 2019 edition of this magazine contained an article The Naval Evacuation of Singapore – February 1942 which lists MV Kembong amongst forty-five vessels that escaped. Her captain is ...
HMS Australia and the William Droudge Mystery
We know much about the WWI vintage battlecruiser HMAS Australia (I) and the WWII vintage heavy cruiser HMAS Australia (II) but very little about the first warship to carry our ...
Battleship Mikasa – Restoration
By Colin Randall After many years of visiting Japan for coal business I took my family on a holiday to this interesting country. One of the sites visited was the ...
Occasional Paper 60: Naval Gigs: Past and Present
August 2019 By Dennis J Weatherall JP TM AFAITT(L) LSM, Volunteer Researcher, Naval Historical Society of Australia Subsequent to the recent recovery of an HMAS Australia (1) Gig from bushland at ...
Occasional Paper 61: From a Periscope to a Cricket Pitch in a Matter of Days: The Surreal Nature of War
August 2019 By Florence Livery My father, Panos (known as Pino) George Livery died in 1996. Fortunately for us, he left behind a very rich source of history, his World ...
Haida, Tribal-class destroyer; Royal Canadian Navy
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Occasional Paper 59: Francis James Ranken
July 2019 Early Career Francis James Ranken was born in 1864 at ‘Saltram’, Eglinton, near Bathurst. He was the eldest son of James Australian Ranken and was educated at All ...
Occasional Paper 58: Postcards Home
July 2019 An interest in philately has led to a collection of post cards from a century past showing the Pacific colonies of the German Empire. These help bring to ...
Occasional Paper 57: The Naval Ode and Laurence Binyon
July 2019 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. ...
Occasional Paper 56: Recollections of founding the Naval Historical Society
June 2019 In 1970 Lew Lind, Rod Atwill, Alan Payne and myself found ourselves with the responsibility of putting together an association which we were to call the Naval Historical ...
Occasional Paper 55: Reuben Mitchell DSM, RAN – Survivor of HMS E14
June 2019 The following story is of an Australian Able Seaman whom some military historians believe should have been awarded the Victoria Cross for his courage and compassion while under ...
Book Review: A Hazardous Life
A Hazardous Life, by R. K. Forsyth and I. K. Forsyth, charts the stormy life and times of Western Australia’s first Harbour Master. Paperback, 270 pages with many illustrations ...
Letter: Victoria Crosses awarded to Civilians
The topic of Victoria Crosses (March 2019) never ceases to arouse interest and we have two similar emails from Ken Green and Tony Maskell who invite us to visit the ...
Letter: They Also Served– LCDR Frank Derek Simon RD RANR (S)
Mike Turner says he found the article on Frank Simon (March 2019) most interesting, particularly the Merchant/RANR(S) overlap. However, one small error is noted on page 22: It is ...
The Special Service Squadron – An episode in the peacetime history of theRoyal Navy 1923-1924
Rohan Goyne The ‘World Cruise’ of a special service squadron of the Royal Navy was an inter-war episode of flag waving across the world’s oceans from arguably a declining world ...
‘Up and Downers’ save the day
By Bob Hetherington This story was first published in All Hands, the magazine for volunteers at the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), and is reproduced with their and the author’s kind ...
The Naval Evacuation of Singapore – February 1942
Singapore – a bastion of the British Empire, an impregnable fortress, fortified to withstand attack and prevent siege. With that in mind, thoughts of evacuation were therefore unnecessary. What the ...
Four things people ‘know’ about swords
By John McGrath For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. ...
Prime Minister William Morris Hughes and his impact on Australian naval and maritime affairs: All at Sea with Billy
To the returning servicemen Hughes was ‘the Little Digger’ a symbol of Australian self-confidence. Geoffrey Button Formative years William Hughes, the father of William Morris Hughes, came from ...
Booby Island and its Post Office
By Peter Brigden An article in the March 2019 edition of this magazine titled They Also Servedcovers the memoirs of LCDR Frank Simon RD, RANR. I was lucky enough to ...
HMAS Reserve in the Liberation of the Philippines and the Not-so-Little Tug that Could
By Paul Baker On Christmas Day 1944, just as the 34 members of the crew of HMAS Reserve celebrated the occasion aboard their ship in San Pedro Bay in the Philippines, ...
An Essay on Autonomous Ships
By Lieutenant M. De Angelis, RFD, RANR Mario De Angelis enlisted in the Royal Australian Naval Reserve, Melbourne Port Division on 22 January 1974. Initially joining as a Cook, he ...
Matthew Flinders: A personal assessment
Peter Ashley (2005) perhaps encapsulates an apt description of Flinders as a person: Driven, ambitious, sometimes arrogant and occasionally reckless, few navigators had a greater share of misfortune than Captain ...
Occasional Paper 54: The Church Pennant
May 2019 The Church Pennant: A Naval Furphy While researching naval history Society’s Senior Researcher, John Smith regularly encounters mythology which is perpetuated over time unless cation is taken to ...