Reports of Proceedings, HMA Ships and Establishments

Reports of Proceedings (ROPs) are the official record of activities of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). They were submitted by commanding officers to the Navy Office either monthly or quarterly in both wartime and peacetime. The archival series AWM78 comprises ROPs of HMA Ships and Establishments accumulated from September 1939 onwards.

The information contained in the ROPs is dependent upon the commanding officer submitting the records. For shore establishments, these files cover promotion tests, mess activities, accounting, training, exercises and social events. For the ships, they cover arrival and departures from ports, visits, official calls, operations, exercises, weather conditions and outstanding incidents. There is also a very brief summary of the performance of the ship’s machinery and other systems. ROPs can also include photographs and newspaper articles. In some cases, especially in the early years of the Second World War, reports were in the form of 'war diaries'.

The ROPs are organised into the five general groups:

HMA commands
Vessels
Shore establishments
Administrative authorities and
Installations

Within these groups the ROPs are generally arranged alphabetically and then by date range. For most ships operating in the Second World War and the immediate post war years there are, additionally, items containing duplicate copies of ROPs. Duplicate items are not necessarily a copy of the original and often are incomplete.