‘Fortunately, they proved capable beyond our dreams and became in fact, corvettes.”

It is an apt description and totally in keeping with the ships histories.

These small, locally designed and built warships did more than could ever have been expected of them when they were first conceived in the uncertain pre-World War 2 years. Sixty of them came from seven Australian shipyards, the most numerous steel warships in the Royal Australian Navy’s fleet.

They weren’t perfect – not by a long chalk. They were slow and cramped. They were poorly ventilated. They vibrated at speed. They rolled unnervingly. But they got the job done, whatever was assigned to them.

This book is not about the people, the flesh, blood and souls of the men and what they achieved. Those stories have been well told. It is a book about the ships themselves, the nuts and the bolts, the steel and the rivets, the very fabric of the ships: their design, construction, armament, fittings, all made clear by the author’s painstaking research, by reference to photographs and by his creation of twenty-four detailed general arrangement drawings at 1:250 scale which illustrate the way in which the Bathurst Class developed.

Sea Power Centre Australia
Canberra ACT 2610