HMAS Townsville (FCPB 205)
1981 Fremantle-class patrol boat
HMAS Townsville (FCPB 205), named for the city of Townsville, Queensland, was a Fremantle-class patrol boat of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Built by NQEA, Cairns, the ship was laid down in 1979, and commissioned into the RAN in 1981.
Assigned to the naval base HMAS Cairns, Townsville was primarily assigned to fisheries protection and border patrol operations in northern Australian waters. In December 1981, the patrol boat recaptured an escaping illegal fishing vessel. The next year, she was used for filming of the Patrol Boat television series. Townsville was deployed to Fiji as part of Operation Morris Dance in May 1987.
Townsville was decommissioned in May 2007. The ship was gifted by the Department of Defence to the Townsville Maritime Museum for preservation.
Design and construction
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. 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).
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5630626. Authority coordinates are -19.256, 146.827. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1981, 1987 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “HMAS Townsville (FCPB 205)” 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.