shipwrights to have some freedom in how plans were executed). Some of Parkins research was done in London. Parkin's neighbour, history professor Max Crawford, encouraged him to continue the research and publish the results. The research took 13 years, and it then took a further 17 years to find a publisher. In the end John Clarke (best known as a satirist) showed it to publisher Mark Kelly, who in turn recommended it to the speciality academic imprint The Miegunyah Press at the Melbourne University Press. The result was H. M. Bark Endeavour published in two volumes in 1997. It won the Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction and the NSW Book of the Year in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for 1999. Parkin thought himself a little out of place at the awards ceremony, as he put it, "It was funny, though, this doddering old bloke who used to work on the wharves–what did I have in common with the intellectual literary crowd?". Parkin died in Melbourne on 19 June 2005. He was survived by his three children, six grand-children and eight great-grandchildren. In 2005, Parkin's three wartime memoirs were republished in a single paperback volume by Melbourne University Publishing. The volume was reviewed by critic Max Harris who described it as, “probably the finest POW writing in English.” A biography of Parkin, Ray Parkin's Odyssey, by Pattie Wright, was published in 2012. Bibliography Out of the Smoke Into the Smother The Sword and the Blossom H. M. Bark Endeavour: Her Place in Australian History, Miegunyah Press, first edition 1997 (two volumes), second edition 2003 (one volume) . Out of the Smoke; Into the Smother; The Sword and the Blossom, 2003, Melbourne University Publishing, . (See also Publisher's web page.) References H. M. Bark Endeavour, cited above. Be content, frugal, said a wise man by Martin Flanagan, The Age newspaper, 3 February 2003 (Parkin knew Flanagan's father on the Burma-Thailand Railway) Battle Lines: Australian Artists at War, Scott Bevan, 2004, paperback . A 'damnable struggle', but he won, obituary by Tony Stephens, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July 2005 Ray Parkin's Odyssey, Pattie Wright, 2012, hardback www.rayparkin.com.au Australian memoirists People from Melbourne 1910 births 2005 deaths Burma Railway prisoners Australian maritime historians Australian waterside workers Royal Australian Navy personnel of World War II Members of the Order of Australia 20th-century memoirists