This is the speech by Lieutenant Commander Desmond Woods, RANR, at the Australian Merchant Navy Day of Remembrance, 8 April 2018.
The maritime history of Australia in peace and war has been until recently a largely neglected subject. Many Australians are just not ‘sea-minded’. Though our National Anthem mentions that we are “girt by sea” most Australians think of the country as being “girt by beach!” This national sea blindness has meant that after both world wars ended there was little collective memory of the scale of effort necessary to win the War at Sea.
