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THE FLEETS

In Remembrance

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"

Iron Knight (B.H.P.)

In early February 1943, a ten-ship merchant convoy under escort was en route Melbourne-Newcastle, the leading vessel being Iron Knight, fully laden with iron ore. Off Eden on the new South Wales coast, she was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I.21, sinking immediately. Crew lost totalled thirty-six and included the Master. Fourteen survivors, recovered from a raft, were taken to Sydney.