The wardroom of the Royal Australian Navy’s (RAN) premier training establishment, HMAS Cerberus, is home to many fine treasures reflecting Australia’s naval heritage. Perhaps the most curious of these is ...
Publications
Nelson’s Coat and the Bullet that Killed Him
Horatio Nelson’s “Trafalgar Coat”, the uniform he was wearing when he was shot, has been reunited with the French musket ball that passed through it and killed him in 1805. ...
The Preservation of Horatio, Lord Nelson’s Body
Much has been written about Nelson in the lead up to this bicentenary of his death at the Battle of Trafalgar and here the author dispels the myth of “Nelson’s ...
HMS Nabob – Survival after U-Boat Attack in the Arctic 1944
Offensive Minelaying – Pacific 1944 (Part 1)
Germany’s Surrender 60 years ago – Admiralty Signal
A lifetime onwards, Navy men and women reflected inevitably during the month of May 2005 as to where they actually were when the German surrender brought about cessation of WWII ...
Anti-Submarine Measures from World War I
Abridged from an article in “History of the World Wars”, previously published in the RAN Corvettes Association Newsletter Vol. 1 Issue 98 and kindly permitted to be reprinted here. AT ...
Two Shipwrecks off Sydney Heads and the Building of Hornby Light
In 1857, two clipper ships came to grief on rocks outside Sydney Heads, and as a result of public alarm, a smallish lighthouse – Hornby Light – was erected on ...
Wounded by a Tin of Peaches
The Tobruk Spud Run 1941 The three Services, Navy, Army and Air Force were as dissimilar as chalk and cheese, yet we were all bent on one purpose, to beat ...
HMAS Adelaide 1918 – 1949
Watchers of the Sea and Sky – 13th Radar
Ken Wright revisits one of Australia’s first coastal radar stations and remembers the time when busy shipping lanes were menaced by enemy ships and planes. The Japanese submarine I-25 lying ...
Book Review: Trafalgar – the Men, the Battle, the Storm
Trafalgar – the Men, the Battle, the Storm By Tim Clayton & Phil Craig London Hodder & Stoughton 2004. rrp $39.95. Reviewed by Bob Nicholls Once upon a time, not ...
Book Review: Blunders and Disasters at Sea. An anthology
Blunders and Disasters at Sea. An anthology By David Blackmore Peribo Books, Mt Kuring-Gai NSW. rrp $75.00. Published 2004 by Pen & Sword Maritime, Barnsley, South Yorks, UK. Reviewed by ...
Tsingtao Incident China Fleet – 1937
Captain John Cooke, HMS Bellerophon
Captain John Cooke, HMS Bellerophon || Killed at Trafalgar 1805 In a small column of the Sydney Morning Herald on 14-15 May 2005 ((Community RSVP)) a plaintive request was noted ...
HMS Britannia at the Battle of Trafalgar 1805
ON RENEWAL OF THE WAR in 1803, Rear Admiral Lord Northesk was immediately appointed to HMS Britannia ((Name of the last Royal Yacht 1953-2001, and the Roman name for Britain)) ...
A Letter from Trafalgar 1805
German Prisoners of War in Australia WW2
After the sinking of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran in 1941, a considerable number of Kriegsmarine survivors were rescued and became prisoners of war. This account details some of their ...
Captain Cook Graving Dock
The sixtieth anniversary of the official opening of the (then) largest dry dock in the Southern Hemisphere by the Governor General, HRH the Duke of Gloucester, falls on 24 March ...
HMAS Watson’s Freedom of Entry Marks Sixty Years of Service
The premier naval training establishment celebrated its 60th anniversary since commissioning at Sydney’s prominent South Head. The ship’s company of HMAS Watson (Captain Ian Middleton, RAN) marched through Double Bay, ...
RAN Minelaying Effort during WW2
This extract is taken from NHSA Monograph No. 179 ‘HMAS Bungaree – Australia’s only Minelayer’ – which was published in 2003, but has not been widely circulated. The Admiralty suggested ...
Anti-Submarine Defences of Sydney Harbour 1942
The British Officer-in-Charge of Australia’s anti-submarine training establishment warned Navy chiefs, four months before Japanese midget submarines attacked Sydney Harbour in May 1942, that the defences against such a raid ...
HMAS Castlemaine a ship re-born
Sixty years on, there it was. The unmistakable motion of the moving deck of an Australian Navy corvette under my feet. I always knew they could roll on wet grass. ...
Hitler’s Indian Ocean Grey Wolves
BY MAY 1943, Germany had lost the Battle of the Atlantic. U-Boat losses had reached an intolerable level for the Germans with the loss of 38 U-Boats for that month ...
Able Seaman Harry Mason
Those of us who were fortunate in knowing him will be saddened to learn of Harry’s death earlier this year, aged 93. Harry was an Englishman, obviously from a good ...