Organisations/flyingangel.html
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Flying Angel Club
76 Queen Victoria Street, 1966
There are hundreds of Flying Angel clubs in the world. They began as one priest's Mission to Seamen in 1835. It's now The Mission to Seafarers.
I believe there may be an indirect connexion between Rosa Smith's Sailors' Rest in Marine Parade (1899) and the present club. I'm guessing that the Anglican Church took over the mission some time in the 1920s (Rosa Smith having retired in 1921) or 1930s, because ...
There has been a Seamen's Chapel in High St, from 1937. (I don't think it has a street address, being between 2 and 4 High St.) The Church of England bought the Union Bank building (4 High St) on the corner of High and Cliff Sts in 1930 for the Flying Angel Mission to Seamen. The small building next door was the Seamen's Chapel 1937-1960. It was deconsecrated in 1966 when the church moved their current premises in Queen Victoria St. The building is unchanged, and is now part of Notre Dame University.
The RC equivalent of the Flying Angel Club is in the same block: Stella Maris ('star of the sea', 1947) is at 16 Queen Victoria Street.
Roel Loopers:
One Fremantle feel-good social service organisation that often flies under the radar is the Flying Angel Club on Queen Victoria Street.
The Flying Angel is part of the worldwide Mission to Seafarers charity network that provides support, care, transport and accommodation to merchant sailors.
Each year, the Flying Angel Club in Freo deals with around 10,000 seafarers who visit our port.
It runs a fleet of mini buses to pick them up from their ships, bring them into the city centre and drop them back to the berth. It also provides accommodation at the club for seafarers leaving or joining a ship, or those who are sick. They have 25 rooms to accommodate people.
Flying Angel helps sailors get medical appointments, obtain necessary documentation while in port, and it frequently delivers personal items to sailors at gangways and provides a ‘listening ear’.
References and Links
Website of the Fremantle Flying Angel Club.
Wendy & Ari Antonovsky, notes about Rosa Smith in their Heritage Walk.
Some of the history of The Mission to Seafarers.
Wikipedia page for Mission to Seafarers.
Webpage for Stella Maris Fremantle.
Article about the mission in Fremantle Shipping News, to which thanks for the photo.
Roel Loopers' blog entry, with photos.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 7 July, 2017 and hosted at freotopia.org/organisations/flyingangel.html (it was last updated on 24 April, 2024). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.