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HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203)

1979 Fremantle-class patrol boat

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ5630334 ↗
Source-derived summary

HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203), named for the city of Fremantle, Western Australia, was the lead ship of the Fremantle-class patrol boats, entering service in the Royal Australian Navy in 1980 and decommissioning in 2006. Fremantle was the only ship of the class not constructed in Australia, and it is claimed that her delivery voyage from England to Australia was the longest ever made by a patrol boat.

Design

Starting in the late 1960s, planning began for a new class of patrol boat to replace the Attack class, with designs calling for improved seakeeping capability, and updated weapons and equipment. In 1976, Brooke Marine of England won the contract to produce the lead ship.

The Fremantles had a full load displacement of 220 tonnes (220 long tons; 240 short tons), were 137.6 feet (41.9 m) long overall, had a beam of 24.25 feet (7.39 m), and a maximum draught of 5.75 feet (1.75 m). Main propulsion machinery consisted of two MTU series 538 diesel engines, which supplied 3,200 shaft horsepower (2,400 kW) to the two propeller shafts. Exhaust was not expelled through a funnel, like most ships, but through vents below the waterline. The patrol boat could reach a maximum speed of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph), and had a maximum range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph). The ship's company consisted of 22 personnel. Each patrol boat was armed with a single 40 mm Bofors gun as main armament, supplemented by two .50 cal Browning machine guns and an 81 mm mortar, although the mortar was removed from all ships sometime in the late 1990s.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203)” is 1979 Fremantle-class patrol boat. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through HMAS, Fremantle and FCPB, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1980, 2006, 1976—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, HMAS, Fremantle and FCPB is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1979 Fremantle-class patrol boat” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5630334. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2006 and 1976.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203) primary sources, HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203) archive and HMAS research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “HMAS Fremantle (FCPB 203)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.