The HMAS Fremantle

Did any of you realise we have the actual ships wheel of a minesweeper known as The HMAS Fremantle sitting in this club?  

No?  What does it mean to us they cry?  

Well this club has had a long history of Captains and Commodores visiting the club with some of them leaving plaques from their ships to commemorate their visit and there are apocryphal tales of a visiting group of Yankee sailors having to be bedded down by members as they were too tired and emotional to return to their lodgings in the city.  

To the Fremantle’s wheel, a dark timber wheel bound in brass, with a boss at the centre hiding the nut that held the wheel firmly to the pedestal with the axle running through it. It was the steering control for a Bathurst –class Corvette constructed during WWII in Brisbane and served two lives.  

She was in service from April 1943 to January in 1946 during the war and served on the east coast before becoming an escort between Darwin and Thursday Island in August 1943. From there she was sent to New Guinea to act as a guard ship until the end of World War II. She received two battle honours for her wartime service. “Darwin 1943” & “Pacific 1943-45”. Following that she was sent to Hong Kong where she was involved in mine clearance in Chinese water. She briefly visited her namesake city in November 1945 and was paid off into reserve in January 1946.  

Her second life was from 1952 as a training vessel for the National Service Trainees and based in the Port of Fremantle, she worked as well for fisheries protection, keeping an eye on the Japanese pearling fleets and hydrographic surveys. She was decommissioned in 1959 and her wheel came to the South of Perth Yacht Club as a memento of her service.   

The archives group have been searching for a while for this wheel and it finally turned up in plain sight. 

In the Barnacle Bar, buried behind large TV’s and wedding regalia.  

Surely there is better place for this ships wheel than hidden behind the detritus of a wedding, or better can we use the Barnacle Bar properly as a spot where the slips workers can have a quiet beer or a meal as it was originally intended.  

The Archives Team