By Hector Donohue Port Clearance Parties, or P Parties, were established in the Royal Navy (RN) in late 1943 and were trained to clear the ports and harbours of Northern ...
Naval Historical Review
George Hermon Gill: Writer of History
The name George Hermon Gill might mean little to a new generation of men and women serving in the RAN but in your careers you will almost certainly come across ...
HMAS Melbourne Refugee Rescue Mission
By John Ingram ‘Oh, hear us when we cry to thee, For those in peril on the sea’. Some of the immortal words of the Naval Hymn composed by ...
The Distribution, Design, Construction and Sustainability of Indigenous Watercraft in Australia: Part 2
By David Payne This is a continuation from Part 1 of this series which was published in the March 2021 edition of this magazine. The dugout canoes from the top ...
The Willis Islands
By Walter Burroughs This article continues a story from Weather Islands published in the March 2021 edition of this magazine. The first article told us a lot about the weather ...
Two wrecks linked by one Family
By John McGrath Given that the front cover of this magazine depicts a recent postage stamp with a magnificent image of HMVS Cerberus, this story by one of our contributors ...
Able Seaman Russel Caro RAN: A Survivor’s Story
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 ...
A Tribute to Norman Rivett
Norman (Norm) Rivett, an esteemed founding father of the Naval Historical Society, passed over the bar on 8 March 2021 just shy of his 96th birthday. He will be ...
Memories of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
News of the death of Prince Philip was received with great sadness when he recently crossed the bar just short of his century. Not only was he a magnificent consort ...
The Navy’s Secret War in the Pacific
This article was the first to appear in the very first issue of the Australian Naval Historical Review in 1971. It retains its historical interest, and is very much in ...
The 50th Anniversary of the Naval Historical Society of Australia: The Story So Far
This year, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Naval Historical Society of Australia. Following the Melbourne/Voyager/Frank E. Evans collisions and sentiment turning against an unpopular Vietnamese ...
Book Review: Schoolies: Selected Service Stories of the Royal Navy Instructor Officers’ Association
Schoolies: Selected Service Stories of the Royal Navy Instructor Officers’ Association. By John Nixon and Michael S. Rose. Hardcover with illustrations, 228 pages. £20, available through Pinewood Hill Publishing. Bravo ...
Book Review: Atomic Salvation
Atomic Salvation by Tom Lewis. Big Sky Publishing, Sydney, 2020. Soft cover, 352 pages with b&w photographs. Booksellers at $29.99. In this book the author constructs an argument supporting the ...
Book Review: Believe it or Not – The Bill Ripley Story
Believe it or Not: The Bill Ripley Story. By Stuart Ripley. In two volumes of 800 pages, these hard cover books are produced to a high standard. Available from ripleysturat@gamil.com, ...
Letter: Formation of the Royal Australian Navy
Re: Naval Historical Review Vol. 41 No 73 Sept. 2020, An Essay on the Forming of the Royal Australian Navy by Midshipman Lloyd Skinner Dear Editor I read Lloyd’s essay ...
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 ...
The Solomon Islands Part 2: from WWII to Present
This article forms part of a trilogy covering the history of the Solomon Islands and Bougainville Island. Part 1, discussing the Solomon Islands from European discovery to the Second World War, ...
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, ...
The HMAS Parramatta Memorials
In this our 50th year it is well to reflect on some of the more important projects undertaken by the Society and none is perhaps more worthy than conceiving a ...
A Tribute to Ordinary Seaman Edward Sheean VC RANR
After many years of failure to gain recognition for the heroic deeds performed by Ordinary Seaman Edward Sheean, the posthumous award of his Victoria Cross came as a sudden but ...