The amphibious assault ship, also known as an LHD or landing helicopter dock, is being built in Spain, where former official war artist Peter Churcher captured its creation in a series of paintings unveiled by the Australian War Memorial today.

It will be the third Australian ship to bear the name of the nation's capital, and will join a long naval legacy.

According to the navy, the first HMAS Canberra was a County Class heavy cruiser. It served in World War II, earning battle honours in the East Indies (1940-41), Pacific (1941-42), Guadalcanal (1942) and Savo Island (1942), where she was lost on August 9 after being struck by two torpedoes on her starboard side and more than 20 salvos of 8-inch shellfire from three Japanese cruisers at close range.

War Memorial historian Chris Clarke, speaking on the 60th anniversary of the battle, said the ship was "not caught napping".

"Canberra was seconds away from opening fire, just as soon as an aiming point could be established in the dark, when she was hit with a torrent of shellfire from the Japanese at 1.44 am. Within minutes the ship's port side was smothered by at least 27 hits, leaving her on fire amidships," he said.

"One enemy shell had struck the radio room, preventing the sending of a warning message to other ships that had been ordered. Japanese shells and torpedoes also damaged Chicago, and although this was nothing compared to the devastation caused to Canberra, it was enough to render the American cruiser ineffectual.

"Canberra had not even fired a shot in her own defence, because within moments of the enemy's opening fire, the Australian cruiser had abruptly lost all power. There are good grounds for suspecting that she had been inadvertently struck on her starboard side by a torpedo fired by an American destroyer, Bagley, which was also attempting to engage the Japanese but had failed to take account of the evasive manoeuvres by Canberra."

HMAS Canberra lost 84 men in the battle and in its honour, the United States commissioned the Baltimore class cruiser USS Canberra - the only US ship to be named after a capital city outside America – in 1943 at the request of President Franklin Roosevelt. USS Canberra was converted to a guided missile cruiser in the 1950s, took part in the Cuban missile crisis blockade and completed five tours of duty in Vietnam before being decommissioned in 1970 and broken up in 1980.

A year later, in March 1981, HMAS Canberra took to the seas again, this time as an Adelaide Class guided missile frigate in the Australian navy.

She spent October and November 1985 shadowing a Soviet Surface Action Group led by the 25,000-tonne nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Frunze through the Malacca Straits, and served in the Middle East in 1992 helping enforce United Nations sanctions on Iraq, returning to the region in 2002 as part of Operation Slipper before being decommissioned. She was scuttled off Ocean Grove, Victoria in 2009 to create an artificial reef and diving site.

The latest version of HMAS Canberra is expected to be in service in 2014. The 231m 27,500 tonne ship will be able to transport up to 1000 soldiers, plus crew, and their equipment, and be involved in humanitarian support operations. It can carry up to 18 helicopters or up to 110 vehicles – which can be deployed through a stern ramp - and travel fully laden at 19 knots.

It is largely being built at Spanish company Navantia's Ferrol-Fene shipyard in that country's north-west. The hull will then be shipped to Williamstown shipyard in Victoria, where the island structure will be installed.

The navy says the ship is being built in a modular approach, where each section is built and fitted out as discrete units before they are welded together to form the completed ship.

Churcher said the construction process was very different to what he was expecting, and he tried to detail this in the six paintings, of HMAS Canberra and its sister ship, HMAS Adelaide.

"I was trying to capture a sense of the scale and complexity of the project. We are not talking about the construction of a truck, or even a building. A ship on the scale of a small town or a small city in terms of, this ship is an air craft carrier, they have hospital units, they have intensive care units, they hold crews of thousands of people," he said.

"So I wanted to get a sense of what it looks like in the 21st century, how a ship of this scale is constructed, because it is different to the past. Ships are now constructed in blocks and assembled almost like Lego. Whereas in the past they used to build the hull of the ship in dry dock, work from the bottom up. Of course I just learned all this once I got there ... I was expecting to see ribs of the hull. In fact it is all just blocks. There is a lot of steel and a lot of welding going on."

He largely painted the works in situ at the shipyard over eight days, before finishing them in his Barcelona studio over a couple of weeks.

Australian War Memorial art curator Warwick Heywood said it was a rare opportunity to get the whole history of a ship. The memorial had only just received the paintings and had not decided where or when it would display them.