THE HISTORY OF WORLD naval aviation began, tentatively, in the lighter-than-air era. As far back as November 1861, during the American Civil War, the Union Army – employing maritime techniques – released the Washington balloon from a remodelled coal barge, the G.W. Parke Curtis, to observe the enemy at Budd’s Ferry. ...
Publications
HMAS Matafele: 1938 – 1944
A great deal has been recorded concerning the more famous ships of the Royal Australian Navy which served during the Second World War. Nobody would deny that these vessels and ...
Tokyo Bay – 2nd September 1945
The signing of the surrender document on Tokyo Harbour on 2nd September, 1945, ended World War II. These two photographs depict the scene on that memorable day. Representatives of all ...
Australia Station ships – HMS Torch and HMS Sealark
HMS Torch joined the Australian Station in February 1897 Originally the Consuelo, HMS Sealark joined the Australia Station in 1910 ...
The Maxim was the Maximum
THE MAXIM GUN was adopted by the Royal Navy in the 1880s. It was used with good effect in the Benin Campaign (modern Biafra) in 1896. The two seamen of ...
Seapower Saved Australia A 28 Year Old Lesson in Naval Strategy
On December 10 1944 the First Naval Member, Australian Commonwealth Naval Board, Admiral Sir Guy Royle, KCB, CMG, in an address to the Fleet expressed the opinion printed below. The ...
Confrontation at Constantinople
HMS Chatham – New Zealand’s First Cruiser
Rankin of Yarra
HMAS Diamantina – The Last of the RAN River Class Frigates
Late 19th Century Naval Journals and Memoirs as History
The Victorian Navy
Captain H. M. L. Waller DSO and BAR, RAN
Two of a Kind – but Different
The Battle of the Coral Sea – May 4-8,1942
Old Fighting Ships Began Navy Tradition
HMAS Parramatta – the RAN’s First Fighting Ship
HMAS PARRAMATTA, the first fighting ship of the Royal Australian Navy. PARRAMATTA now [Ed. August 1972] rusts on the mud flats above Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River but in the next ...
HMAS Sydney in the North Sea
The four photographs in this series are from the collection of Rear Admiral G. B. Moore, C.B.E. HMAS SYDNEY operated in the North Sea in the last years of World ...
Shenandoah at Port Melbourne, 1865
The arrival of five American ships including the Confederate raider SHENANDOAH in early 1865 startled the residents of Port Melbourne. The raider’s visit triggered an international crisis and involved the British Government in ...
HMS Orlando at Cockatoo Dock – 1887
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British Pacific Fleet- 1945
The Touch and Go War
Coastwatching Remembered
Admiral Dumaresq-A Son of Australia
SYDNEY CAN CLAIM with a great deal of pride that it is the birthplace of a man who has made not only Australian, but Commonwealth Naval History. In the harbourside ...
