Collections
Remembering Australia’s first submarine Collection objects commemorate AE1’s launch and loss
September 14 marked the 107th anniversary of the loss of Australia’s first naval submarine, AE1, and its 35 officers and crew. Dr James Hunter describes two of the museum’s unique mementos that commemorate the submarine and those who went down with it.
LAUNCHED AT THE SHIPYARD of Vickers Ltd in the English port of Barrow-in-Furness in May 1913, AE1 was commissioned at Portsmouth on 28 February the following year. Along with its sister-submarine, AE2, it made a record-breaking voyage to Australia and arrived in Sydney shortly before the outbreak of World War I. After hostilities began, both submarines joined a flotilla of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) vessels that comprised part of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force sent to capture German New Guinea (part of present-day Papua New Guinea). AE1 was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant RN and had a complement of 35 officers and ratings. The town of Rabaul, on the island of New Britain, was captured on 13 September 1914. The following morning, AE1 departed Rabaul’s Blanche Bay with the Australian destroyer HMAS Parramatta (I) to patrol for German warships rumoured to be in the area. After parting company with Parramatta in the afternoon, AE1 failed to return to Rabaul and was never seen again. The disappearance of the submarine and its crew constituted Australia’s first naval loss during wartime and had a devastating effect on the nation’s morale. 66
Signals 137 Summer 2021–22
AE2 went on to serve during the Gallipoli campaign and, after harassing Ottoman naval vessels and troop transports in the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara, was fatally damaged by the torpedo boat Sultanhisar on 30 April 1915 (see Signals 113). All those aboard safely abandoned ship but scuttled the submarine to prevent its capture. AE2’s crew were subsequently incarcerated in Turkish prisoner-of-war camps, and four died in captivity. AE2’s wreck site was discovered by Selçuk Kolay of Istanbul’s Rahmi M Koç Museum in June 1998. It has since undergone archaeological investigation and site preservation efforts by a collaborative team of Turkish and Australian researchers. In December 2017, a search for AE1 undertaken by another collaborative team successfully located and identified the submarine’s final resting place off Papua New Guinea’s Duke of York Islands (see Signals 122 and 124). In the months leading up to AE1’s discovery, two historically significant objects associated with the submarine were acquired by the museum and accepted into the National Maritime Collection. One is the commissioning axe used to launch AE1 and AE2 in 1913, and the other a set of service medals posthumously awarded to one of AE1’s crew.
