Australia’s Argonauts: The Remarkable Story of the First Class to Enter the Royal Australian Naval College

This talk focusses on the research and writing of Australia’s Argonauts which is a narrative history of the 28 members of the first class to enter the Royal Australian Naval College. The class members were all born in 1899 and came from every state in Australia. They were witness to, or played a significant role in, some of the most important events in Australian naval history. The book follows the lives of the class after their naval careers and is very much a social history of Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. Cohort histories have distinct challenges and this talk will outline some of them as well as discussing the nuggets unearthed in various archives. Peter Jones is a retired Vice Admiral who is an Adjunct Professor in the Naval Studies Group at the University of New South Wales (Canberra). He is also President of the Australian Naval Institute.