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This is the first year that Australia will join the UK in celebrating Merchant Navy Day on September 3 and Port Adelaide is leading the way.

Port Adelaide to celebrate Australias first Merchant Navy Day

With its rich maritime history, it is fitting that Port Adelaide will celebrate Australias first national Merchant Navy Day on Wednesday September 3 in nautical style.

All local families with links to the sea are being invited to assemble for the Merchant Navy Day Community Commemorative March at the Seafarers Centre at 11 am that day.

The march will start at Fishermen's Wharf Markets and go along the wharf to the back of the old Ports Building . Serving and former merchant seamen, their families, the Maritime Union of Australia and other maritime groups will march behind a Royal Australian Navy contingent. The march will conclude with a special commemoration at the superb Navigator memorial to Lost Seafarers by local sculptor Karen Genoff.

A service will be conducted by new Port Adelaide Chaplain Rev Roger Trebil**** and a light lunch will be served. In granite, lyten steel, breakwater rocks and timber, the Navigator memorial stands outside the old Ports building.

It was unveiled in 1992 for the SA Department of Marine and Harbours Port Adelaide. This sculpture is to be incorporated in a new waterfront Seafarers Memorial for Port Adelaide.

Karen Genoff is working with the Land Management Corporation in the projected removal, transport and placement of this sculpture at a waterfront site to be selected.

Port Adelaide MHR Mark Butler MP has been working on the memorial project with a Port Adelaide Seafarers Memorial Community Committee.

The Committee includes representatives from the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, Semaphore Port Adelaide RSL, Merchant Navy Association SA, Vindicatrix Association SA, the Port Centre Co-ordination Group, the South Australian Maritime Museum , Maritime Union of Australia, Port Adelaide Visitor Information Centre, National Trust Port Adelaide and Port Adelaide Historical Society.

As Minister Griffin has said, the unsung stories of Australian and Allied merchant mariners, particularly during World War II, are a unique part of Australias wartime and maritime heritage.

Merchant Navy Day provides due recognition of the service of the merchant navy in securing the Australian homeland and our region in times of war and emergency.

Extracts below from the Australian Merchant Navy website.

Australia has used merchant ships to despatch its colonial or national armed forces personnel to war-fighting or peacekeeping operations since 1885, when a New South Wales contingent went to the Sudan .

Forces from several colonies were transported to the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902.

Post-Federation Australian forces deployed to the Boxer Rebellion 1900-1901 and to the First World War (The Great War) 1914-1918.

By far, Australias largest commitment of armed forces was to the Second World War 1939-1945, one in which, besides other menaces, the Japanese threat to Australia itself was very real.

It was in the Battle for Australia period of the Second World War that the nations merchant mariners collectively served their most extensive and dramatic role.

It was a role involving great heroism and sacrifice, to date largely unrecorded, unrecognised and unsung.

All of this has had a marked effect on the Port Adelaide Maritime Community over the years.