Sinking of HMAS Perth on 1st March 1942, by one of the survivor of the Battle of Sunda Strait. Skeels joined the navy in 1941 at the age of eighteen, and a year later was in the great battles of the Java Sea and Sunda Straits in which the Perth and its allies were sunk. Held in the Japanese death camps until the war’s end, he was shipped as a slave labourer from Java to Malaya, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and finally Japan. Royal Australian Navy. P.O.W. (presented to… on behalf of Fred Skeels (the Author)” inscription. 280315