The Right of Wreck
Reading time: 8 minutes
With howling westerly winds and in freezing rain, the unforgiving waves push ships closer to the treacherous rocks of the merciless Cornish coastline. The crew has travelled miles with precious cargo, desperately trying to right their course with no modern navigation. In an attempt to save the vessel and themselves, they begin to throw goods overboard.
How the British navy hid the heroic voyage of crippled second world war submarine HMS Triumph
Reading time: 5 minutes
In September 1941 the British press enthralled its readers with a story of naval heroism that the public, battered by German bombing and strict rationing, was crying out for: a tale of survival against the odds.
The Scrap Iron Flotilla – Speaker: Mike Carlton via Zoom
Live Presentation via Zoom August 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm AEST (UTC+10)
When war broke out in the Northern Hemisphere in 1939, the British called upon their Australian allies for support. The Australian government responded by sending five navy destroyers – HMAS Stuart, Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager and Waterhen.
From ‘Australia’s Titanic’ to deadly mutineers: 4 infamous shipwrecks found on the Great Barrier Reef
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Great Barrier Reef is incredible, with turquoise water, stunning reefs and white sandy cays. Yet its name infers something quite different – a barrier: treacherous, dynamic and dangerous to navigate.
For millennia, people navigated and traded across the northern coast of Australia and the Coral Sea.
When early European seafarers came face-to-face with the world’s largest coral reef system, it was not the beauty they saw, but a nearly unnavigable structure that could easily sink their ships.
Has Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour been found? Debate rages, but here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a shipwreck
Reading time: 6 minutes
The Australian National Maritime Museum has announced a shipwreck found in Newport Harbour, off Rhode Island in the United States, has been confirmed as Captain Cook’s ship, HMB Endeavour.
Women in the Second World War: The sinking of SS Khedive Ismail
Reading time: 7 minutes
On the afternoon of 12 February 1944, travelling in a convoy from Mombasa to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), troopship SS Khedive Ismail was struck by two Japanese torpedoes just south-west of the Maldives. Hit directly in the vicinity of its engine and boiler rooms, the ship sank within just two minutes of the attack. Of the 1,506 passengers and crew on board, mostly military personnel, there were little more than 200 survivors.
Plague Ahoy! Maritime quarantine in the 18th century
Reading time: 8 minutes
On 23 August 1720 at the Council Chamber in Whitehall, the Privy Council issued an order to the commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs ‘to prevent the landing any goods, passengers, or seamen from on board any ships coming from the Mediterranean’. Diplomats and statesman had been in correspondence for weeks about the worrying state of affairs developing in the south of France. Writing to Secretary of State James Craggs, the diplomat Robert Sutton related ‘the melancholy news of a pestilential distemper being crept into Marseille by the infection of some bales of cotton brought from Sidon (in modern day Lebanon)’. Other letters reported that the seamen on the said voyage had died, with many others taken sick and transported to infirmaries. Four porters, who had opened the goods carried on the ship, died suddenly as the distemper spread from ship to shore killing as many as 24 people in one street. Quarters of the city were barred up and houses and their contents were burned. The plague had hit Marseille.
Meeting Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s pirate queen
Reading time: 8 minutes
There are many surprising finds when one peers into the intriguing annals of piracy – none more so than the life of Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Ní Mhaille).
Born in 1530 to an Irish chieftain of the O’Malley’s of Murrisk, situated in a remote north-western corner of County Mayo, she forged a career in seafaring and piracy spanning over 40 years. Aside from this she was frequently active in regional politics and in native opposition in Connaught to encroaching English rule.
The wreck of Endurance is a bridge to a bygone age, and a reminder of Antarctica’s uncertain future
Reading time: 6 minutes
week broadcast around the world. Found by the Endurance 22 Expedition using a state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicle, we now have images almost as iconic as those taken of the stricken ship by Australian photographer and expedition member Frank Hurley in 1915.
A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World – Audiobook
On his first journey Cook mapped the east coast of Australia, on his second the British Admiralty sent him into the vast Southern Ocean. Equipped with one of the first accurate chronometers, Cook pushed his small vessel not merely into the Roaring Forties or the Furious Fifties but become the first explorer to penetrate the Antarctic Circle, reaching an incredible Latitude 71 degrees South, just failing to discover Antarctica.
The German naval threat in the Indo-Pacific 1914–15
Among the flood of centenary anniversaries and commemorations, one that slipped past without comment was the destruction of the German cruiser Konigsberg in East Africa on 11 July 1915. Although less well-known than her sister raider Emden, Konigsberg managed to survive for eight months longer. By then, she was the last of the original batch of warships and armed merchant […]
Early Raids Of the Pacific War
Less than two months after the devastating surprise attack at Pearl Harbour, the US Navy was on the offensive. They carried out several raids on Japanese territory in the Pacific. The Raid on the Marshall and Gilbert IslandsFebruary 1, 1942 The first offensive operation by Task Forces of the United States Pacific Fleet in the […]
After Jutland: the North Sea operations of 18–19 August 1916
One of the Great War’s abiding myths is that the German High Sea Fleet never emerged again after the Battle of Jutland to face the Grand Fleet until the ignominious internment of its major units in November 1918. In reality, the Germans mounted another operation before the summer of 1916 had ended. As soon as […]
DISASTER AT SAVO ISLAND, 1942
The Battle of Savo Island The Battle of Savo Island occurred early in the morning on 9 August 1942 when the the Japanese 8th Fleet surprised the Allied Task Force shortly after the landing at Guadalcanal. In approximately 37 minutes, the Japanese Navy destroyed four Allied heavy cruisers and killed more than 1000 American and Australian sailors, handing […]
Scrap Iron Flotilla: The Royal Australian Navy at its Best
To the Axis Powers, the Australian flotilla that fought in the Mediterranean during the Second World War appeared to be no threat. Anyone looking at the old, small and slow destroyer group would think the same. Soon, however, the Axis and the rest of the world would learn just how formidable it was. The ‘Scrap […]
The voyage of Nicolas Baudin and ‘art in the service of science’
The real-life story of French navigator Nicolas Baudin’s sea voyage to map the unknown coasts of Australia is more gripping than any fictionalised account. In the wake of the French Revolution in 1789, the French were experiencing a maelstrom of political, social and cultural change. By the turn of the century Napoléon Bonaparte’s rise to […]
The Battle of Cape Spada: The Australian Navy Proves Its Mettle
Reading time: 9 minutes
The Battle of Cape Spada was a short, violent encounter on the 19th of July, 1940 where the cruiser HMAS Sydney of the Royal Australian Navy sank one Italian cruiser and severely damaged another off the coast of Crete. In this article, we go over the events of that day, as well as what life was like for the crew of the ship.
From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia’s ‘blackbirding’ past and its roots in the global slave trade
There are moves afoot to scrub colonial businessman Benjamin Boyd’s name from the map. The owners of historic Boydtown on the NSW south coast are planning to change its name, while Ben Boyd National Park may also be renamed. Residents in North Sydney will take part in a survey to rename Ben Boyd Road, too. The reason: […]
Threat or trading partner? Sailing vessels in northwestern Arnhem Land rock art reveal different attitudes to visitors
The rock art of northwestern Arnhem Land is world-renowned and represents one of the world’s most enduring artistic cultures. Rock art is a continuing tradition. It includes images of “outsiders”: people and objects brought to Australian shores by Macassans from southeast Asia and, later, by Europeans. Paintings of sailing vessels, smoking pipes, firearms, domesticated animals and other […]
HMS Terror wreck found – but what happened to her doomed crew? Here’s the science
It remains one of history’s best-known naval tragedies – and mysteries. The loss of all 129 men of the 1845 Royal Navy expedition led by Captain Sir John Franklin to navigate a north-west passage through the Arctic remains an enigma. The only informative document to be recovered from the expedition was a single page that reported initial […]
Jutland: Why World War I’s only sea battle was so crucial to Britain’s victory
By Andrew Lambert, King’s College London. Modern understanding of World War I is dominated by the immense human cost of the war on land with its trenches, artillery and machine guns – but the war was won by sea power. In August 1914 Britain, the greatest naval power of the age, controlled the oceans, cutting […]
Cook – Man or Myth
2020 marks the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook and the HMB Endeavour charted the East Coast of Australia. The Australian National Maritime Museum has a great many events, activities and displays related to this, as well as being one of the most interesting museums to visit in Sydney. They hosted a discussion featuring two […]
Military Marine Mammals
It has recently emerged that the Russian Navy used specially trained marine mammals, probably seals, for harbour defence in Syria in 2018. This is part of what has been a very long lived program by the Russian Navy. Dolphins are trained in anti-diver warfare, seen here in Sevastapol harbour. The marine mammal deployment in Syria […]