a visit to fremantle's maritime museum

A couple of weeks back, while I was still having the holiday mood here, I suggested to my friends that we visit WA’s Maritime Museum located at Victoria Quay, Fremantle. As the name suggests, the museum houses a collections of boats/yachts as well as telling the stories of WA’s early explorers, trading routes etc, in general the maritime past of Western Australia.

Western Australia Maritime Museum - link

Paying a discounted rate of $8 for the museum entrance(student rate using one of our University metric cards, cause technically we were are still students,right?), we were also given a guided tour of the highlight of this visit, the Oberon class HMAS Ovens Submarine which was docked beside the museum.

Our Australian guide, who incidentally used to stay in Sunset Way, in Clementi, a couple of years back, was very professional and detailed in his tour. Throughout the entire tour, no effort was spared in letting us know the mechanism of how certain elements of the submarine works. I think his name is Gary, and if you do happen to drop by for a visit to the museum & so happened to meet him as the guide for that day, help me commend him for a job well done ya?



Gary did a good job explaining how a submarine sinks and surfaces as we walked along the perimeter of the submarine. The submarine has ballast tanks and auxiliary tanks, that can be alternately filled with water or air to control its buoyancy. To float on the surface, the ballast tanks are filled with air such that the submarine's overall density is less than that of the surrounding water. To dive, the ballast tanks are flooded with water and the air in the ballast tanks is pushed out from the submarine, with air bubbles seen in the starboard and portside of the submarine, like what you see in the movies. When its overall density is greater than the surrounding water, the submarine will have attained a state of negative buoyancy and start to sink. The compressed air available, both for human consumption and surfacing, is maintained aboard the submarine in air flasks. As such, the air is rarely pumped intensively into the ballast tanks, thus decreasing the rate of ascend.

However, sometimes for emergency surface drills or dramatic/showoff effect, the pressurized air is pumped into the ballast tanks at a greater rate such that the submarine will literally pop up onto the surface seemingly out of nowhere. A good periscope lookout and sonar sweep are required to ascertain no boats will be in the area where the submarine will surface, however accidents still occurred in recent history of which the case of the American submarine USS Greeneville which you might recall. In 2001 the USS Greeneville was demostrating to members of the public onboard it an emergency surface drill. Unfortunately when it surfaced, the submarine struck and sank a Japanese ship, killing 9 aboard the ship.

this is how the sonar of a submarine looks like

the bow of the submarine

All this time while listening to Gary’s explanation on the working mechanism of the submarine and accidents that had occured, we were still standing on the docks of the submarine. Personally I was feeling a bit impatiently already, as I can’t wait to play hide-and-seek explore the submarine.

The 90m long HMAS Ovens

at the entrance on top of the submarine

view from bow of submarine

To get into the submarine, we had to climb a flight of stairs, roughly 4 storeys high. The entrance was at the bow of the vessel which was quite narrow, but it was to be expected for a submarine. There wasn’t much room width-wise, even though it was the main deck. The sleeping area was pathetically crammed, with beds line up one on top of another. The captain’s quarter, though much more spacious compared to that of the crew’s, wasn’t very luxurious either, but at least he didn’t have to put up with the snores of his crewmates.

Crew quarters - Economy class


Captain's Cabin - Raffles Class?

Circular hatches separated each section, and we really had to bend down and go over carefully to avoid hitting our heads on the solid bulkhead. In one of the section, there were 16 cylinder diesels, which are used to drive electric motors. The electric -motored meant that the submarine was truly a silent vessel. The Oberon class submarines were considered state of the art conventional subs of its time, despite being based on a late-WWII German hull design. Its dimensions were generally 90m x 8.1m x 5.5m with a top submerged speed of 31km/hr.

i just noticed there's a padding at the top of the circular hatch - probably just in case u whack ur head on the solid bulkhead

Diesel-electric generator room

The control room is where the main operations of a submarine occur. The torpedo guidance system, allows at a single time several torpedoes to be fired and guided on to the desired target.

Torpedoes guidance control

Torpedoes launch hatch


Torpedoes - Mk 48 Torpedo i think

Helm station

The entire experience inside the submarine took about 30-40 minutes, which surprisingly wasn’t too stuffy or hot (probably because the kind folks from the museum installed fans and improved the ventilation system before opening the submarine to public viewing). For just $8, I got to step into a submarine for the first time in my life, with an experienced guide who knows what he’s saying. It was definitely worth every penny.

exit via stern of submarine