John Christopher Jeremy AM (1942-2025), who died last month, was a great friend and Navy League of Australia colleague of mine.
John had a lengthy and very well-informed interest in Australia’s maritime history. He was a naval architect who rose to become the long-serving CEO of the renowned shipbuilding and repair organisation Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney Harbour.
He also found time to produce several first rate maritime history books and to edit the excellent and informative quarterly magazine of the Australian branch of the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. He was a very keen and successful yachtsman and served on the NSW branch committee of the Navy League of Australia for many years.
His input to my forthcoming book Australia and the Sea – An Encyclopaedic Maritime History was direct and important since he gave me the unpublished manuscript of his last book, Shipshape Downunder: Shipbuilding in Australia since 1788, written with Vaughan Evans and Robert Campbell. I have drawn from it extensively.
Vale, John Jeremy. You will be missed.