It all began in 1989 with the Red Academy which fell under the Depth Recovery Unit based in Cape Town Harbour. From there the Academy moved into the maritime field aboard the “RSA” training ship under the watchful eye of the Training Centre for Seamen in 1991. The maritime medical courses were found to be exceptionally basic and very land based and because the Academy identified this problem we took it upon ourselves to make these courses maritime based. Seamen trained by us could fall in with these courses, because of the very special problems they find on board their ships. We even went as far as sending the Academy’s lecturers to sea aboard the "MV Voortrekker", "MV Pericles" and “MV Pentow Skua” so that they could get all the necessary experience and information needed to enable us to make these courses more realistic.

From these humble beginnings the training manual, “Medical Emergency at Sea” was written as the, ”text book” to be used by students during their training. The Academy also went as far as changing the Ship’s Captains Medical Courses to include practising Traumacologists and other Specialists in their respective fields to teach the Medical Officers onboard the very latest techniques and methods used in the emergency medical field to make their jobs onboard a lot easier.

The Academy of Maritime Medicine was established in late 1999 as a direct result of agreements between the Academy of Offshore and Diving Medicine, and the South African Navy. The Academy was selected from numerous training facilities to assist with the medical training of the Fleet staff as well as the Diving School of the South African Navy. With this combination of expertise, it enabled the Academy to pass this knowledge down to their students to benefit from this unification.

Today, the academy can count itself as one of the pioneers and expertise in the maritime field as we have a very strong background and it is striving into the future with the latest information and expertise. The Academy has also increased its accreditations to include Survival and Marine Fire Fighting and can now offer all the tertiary courses required by the STCW – 95 Convention.