Captain Hector Waller on the open bridge of the HMAS Perth.

Captain Albert H. Rooks inspects the USS Houston’s band.

HMAS Perth I was the home of Red Lead, her ship’s cat.

British sailors escape the sinking battleship HMS Prince of Wales on 10 December 1941.

The sinking of the USS Houston on 1 March 1942, twenty minutes after the Perth was sunk by the Japanese Navy. Painting by Joseph Fleischman, 1950

The train from Bandung to Batavia in 1942.

Sergeant Peter Chitty, winner of the Changi Brownlow, 1943.

Corporal Wilfred ‘Chicken’ Smallhorn, 1933 Brownlow Medallist, at Changi Prison.

Dr Frank Cahill (left) at Changi Prison.

Iron trucks filled with prisoners of war en route through Malaya to Thailand, early 1943.

Prisoners of war on the Thai–Burma Railway, 1943.

Colonel Sir Ernest Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop.

Trek of the ‘swimmers’, the very ill and volunteer medicos to Thanbaya.

Prisoners of war at Changi in August 1945.

Red Lead’s paw prints painted on the current HMAS Perth III. Adam Harvey/ABC News

The silhouette of Red Lead on the bridge of HMAS Perth III. Naval Historical Society of Australia