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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"

Manunda (Adelaide Steam)

In pre-war times carrying up to 312 passengers, Manunda commenced her Hospital Ship role by bringing back Australian wounded from the 1941 Middle East campaigns. In Darwin in 19 February 1942, having been unable to complete a Sydney-Singapore voyage, while not being attacked at the start of the Japanese air raids, soon after suffered a direct hit which killed twelve and set it afire. Taking aboard during the day casualties for evacuation southward, she later sailed under great difficulty for Fremantle and repair. Service in the Milne Bay and successive island battle areas culminated in participation in the repatriation of released Australian prisoners-of-war from Singapore.

Then came the deployment to Japan of medical elements of the Australian Component of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. Her owners received her back in September 1946.

THE FLEETS

In Remembrance

Manunda (Adelaide Steam)