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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Sea Hawk (radio play)

1938 radio play by Vance Palmer

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ124691347 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Sea Hawk is a 1938 Australian radio play by Vance Palmer. It was one of is most notable works.

The play was based on a short story by Palmer that won the 1934 Melbourne Centenary Short Story competition.

The play was successful and produced again in 1939, 1942, and 1953.

Premise

"It tells of old Gundersen and his fishing boat, The Sea-hawk.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “The Sea Hawk (radio play)” as 1938 radio play by Vance Palmer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hawk, radio and play.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938, 1934, 1939, 1942—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Hawk, radio and play providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Sea Hawk (radio play)”, the useful work is to connect “1938 radio play by Vance Palmer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124691347. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1934, 1939 and 1942.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Sea Hawk (radio play)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Sea Hawk (radio play) primary sources, The Sea Hawk (radio play) archive and Hawk 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.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Sea Hawk (radio play)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Sea Hawk (radio play)” 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.