Australian-owned ships and their crews - deck, engine-room, catering and pursering departments - helped win the Second World War, particularly, but not only or exclusively, in the Asia-Pacific theatre of operations.
This website details the ships involved and the corporations that owned them. It will provide for some recollections and diary records of experiences of the people who crewed them and it acknowledges the allies alongside whom they served.
It is dedicated to mercantile mariners who, across the ages, have carried the world's goods from producer to user, but in particular it is intended as a tribute to all the Merchant Seamen who served in the 1939-1945 conflict, and indeed universally and especially to those who did not return, those who have no known grave but the depths of the oceans.
"They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters"
Rabaul operated in international waters as part of the Allied cause until, while still under requisition, she was shelled and sunk in the South Atlantic on 14 May 1941. The survivors became prisoners of war until the end of the war.