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Royal Australian Navy

Read more about the article He survived the Voyager tragedy
Des Corrigan, aged 17, at the time he joined Voyager. The middle image shows an unofficial medal struck for Voyager survivors.

He survived the Voyager tragedy

Des Corrigan likes to tell people that, in his career in the Royal Australian Navy: "I sank a ship, paid one off and commissioned another". He has scores of anecdotes from his eventful life at sea and ashore, but the sinking of HMAS Voyager in February 1964 looms largest. It is also the one he has spoken least about. For the first four years of their long marriage even his wife, Robyn, didn't know Des had been on the Voyager. Now he's about to turn 80 and has decided to break his long silence. Des with…

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Read more about the article Newcastle schoolboy’s shipwreck story
A sketch, from a New Zealand newspaper, of the sinking Helen B Sterling.

Newcastle schoolboy’s shipwreck story

Stockton schoolboy Leslie Harris was 10 years old on January 5, 1922, when he went aboard the four-masted schooner Helen B Sterling, along with his mother Edith and his father George - the captain of the ship. The first mate, whose surname was also Harris and who may have been a relative, also had his wife aboard. The ship was carrying coal from Newcastle, NSW, to the Society Islands (part of French Polynesia) and San Francisco in the USA. Aside from the members of the Harris family there were 15 crew members aboard. The schooner was…

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Read more about the article The end of HMAS Australia
HMAS Australia in Sydney Harbour in 1920

The end of HMAS Australia

The Indefatigable class battlecruiser HMAS Australia was the Australian Navy’s first flagship, whose arrival in Sydney in October 1913 is popularly regarded as marking the coming of age of the nation’s naval service. In fact, it might be said that the acquisition of the expensive capital ship by Australia was mostly a way of inducing the dominion to contribute to Britain’s naval arms race against Germany, with the knowledge of a war fast approaching. Arrival of HMAS Australia at Sydney, October 4, 1913.Arrival of HMAS Australia at Sydney, October 4, 1913. The ship had been ordered…

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