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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"

Merkur (Burns Philp)

On the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941, the Australian Government requisitioned Merkur as a Fleet Victualling Store Issue Supply Ship, providing support to Allied naval units in the Western Pacific, from Noumea to the Philippine Islands.

She carried out this role to war’s end, and reasonably well armed by 1945, was fortunately never singled out for individual enemy attack. However while in Seeadler Harbour during the assembly of the fleet for the Philippines re-capture, she sustained minor damage when an American-marked aircraft (pilot unknown), flying fast at masthead height, hit a neighbouring ship loaded with ammunition, blowing it out of the water with a massive explosion.

From 1946 Merkur remained under charter to the Australian Government, being employed in the transport of service personnel and stores to the Kure, Japan base of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force’s Australian Component. She continued in this role until 1948, being handed back to owners after refit the following year.

THE FLEETS

In Remembrance

Merkur (Burns Philp)