The Mariner's Mirror Podcast

The fourth episode on our mini-series on the maritime history of Australia takes us to Perth and the workshop of Gerry Westenberg. Gerry has been hand-crafting scale model ships for well over 50 years and has built more than 130 in that time. He started this lifelong job by trying to modify a 1/600 scale Airfix kit of HMS Ajax to be HMAS Perth...with mixed success. Over time he has improved his skills and found a scale that works for him – 1/192 - based on the Empirical scale of 1 inch to every 16 feet. Over the years Gerry has built ships such as RMS Queen Mary, a Roman bireme, an Egyptian Royal Barge, HMS Hood, HMAS Sydney I, II, III and IV, RY Britannia, and HMS Barham, to name but a few. He has had two exhibitions held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, the first in 2019,

with the second held in 2021, whilst a third exhibition will commence on April 8th this year running for approximately 3 months. The centrepiece of Gerry's collection consists of over 40 Australian fighting ships tracing all major classes from the inception of the RAN to today’s modern fleet. To find out more Dr Sam Willis visited Gerry at his workshop.

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This is the third episode in our mini series on the maritime history of Australia. In episode one we learned about the arrival of the Dutch in Australia; in episode twp we learned about the Dutch ship Duyfken, the first European ship to land men on the Australian mainland; and today we’re moving on in time to hear about William Dampier and his ship HMS Roebuck. Dampier is an extraordinary character. A natural scientist, explorer and pirate, Dampier was the first Englishman to explore any part of Australia as well as the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. Dampier was born in 1651 and died in 1715, and so he lived in this fascinating period in English history in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I and at a time of giant leaps in maritime capabilities. The world was changing at intense speed. Dampier began life in the merchant navy, joined the Royal Navy, fought against the Dutch, joined the buccaneer Bartholomew Sharp’s crew’ and sailed around the world, all the while keeping a diary that would become one of the most important and popular travel narratives of the period. He was then given a ship, HMS Roebuck, and a mission to explore the east coast of New Holland, the land we now know as Australia. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with historian and archaeologist Dr Mac MCarthy – the man who actually tracked down and found HMS Roebuck.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first episode of a new mini-series on the maritime history of Australia. We begin in the port of Fremantle, Western Australia, at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum to learn about the long and fascinating history of the Dutch in Australia. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Elly Spillekom, who worked as the coordinator of the Duyfken 1606 Replica Foundation, is a volunteer at the Shipwrecks Museum and a curator of the Dutch Australian Foundation. As Sam and Elly explore the museum we hear the story of how and why the Dutch were the first Europeans to sight Australia on board the Duyfken in 1606; how they went on to explore the coast; and why so many of the Dutch ships that followed the Duyfken were wrecked off Western Australia.

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This is the second episode of a two-part mini-series on the history of maritime special forces. In this episode we explore the history of combat divers - an elite within an elite.

Combat divers must pass selection twice – firstly into their chosen elite military unit before passing a specialist combat diving qualification. Units are extremely small; they use specialist kit and vehicles; their work is dangerous and lonely; and their operations are cloaked in secrecy. Their history is rich and fascinating and runs from the Second World War to the present day, as so powerfully shown in the recent attack on the Russian Nordstream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. As their kit and equipment has constantly evolved, so has the nature of their work and their capabilities. To find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with former Royal Marines Commando Michael G. Welham, a man with extensive military and commercial diving experience and author of the recent ‘Combat Divers: An illustrated history of special forces divers’. Sam and Mike discuss the Second World War roots of combat divers working in Grand Harbour, Malta to protect allied shipping; managing risk underwater; navigation underwater; equipment and weapons; the use of marine mammals in underwater warfare; and a variety of operations that highlight the changing challenges of special forces divers over time including the actions of Soviet Spetsnaz divers in Swedish territorial waters during the Cold War.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The history of time and how it relates to the maritime world is one of the most significant chapters in global history. The question of time is nothing less than the question of civilisation; the question of us. Time itself has been harnessed, politicised and weaponised; clocks have been used to wield power, make money, govern and control; to exchange knowledge and even beliefs. For the maritime world, the history of time takes us from some of the most ingenious inventors and scientists the world has ever seen to the spread of empires around the globe. To find our more Dr Sam Willis spoke with David Rooney, an expert on the history of timekeeping and civilisation who has worked as the Curator of Timekeeping at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and is the author of ‘About Time: A History of Civilisation in Twelve Clocks.’

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We continue our mini series on maritime disasters with HMS Gloucester a British warship lost in the spring of 1682 off the Norfolk coast. It’s quite a story: here is a ship with an impressive career that takes us from her end on that sandbar in Norfolk all the way to the British presence in the Caribbean during the Cromwellian Commonwealth – a key moment in global history. Her later career was intricately linked with the troubled history of the Stuart monarchy and when she sank one of those on board was none other than James Stuart, the future James II.

The wreck was recently discovered off Norfolk and to find out more Dr Sam Willis spoke with Dr Benjamin Redding - Senior Research Associate on the Gloucester Project at the University of East Anglia. Together with Professor Claire Jowitt, he is writing a cradle-to-grave history of this most historically and culturally significant seventeenth century warship.

This episode continues our mini series on maritime disasters: if you haven’t heard any of these so far do please check them out – we have covered so many extraordinary stories including the shocking wreck of the mighty Vasa in the seventeenth century, that magnificent ship that sank on its maiden voyage within sight of shore; the ss Waratah, a huge passenger liner that simply vanished in 1909; Preussen, the enormous and only five-masted full-rigged merchant ship ever built which sank in the English channel in 1910; the early submarine the HL Hunley which holds the record for the vessel being sunk the most times….and so much more! I should add here that we are also working on a future episode on the wreck of the Batavia – a dutch vessel which ran aground off western Australia in the summer of 1629 leading to one of the most appalling horror stories in all of history let alone all of maritime history…

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