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. 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.

01 AE1 Commissioning axe and plaque donated to the museum by Mr Tony Todd. ANMM Collection 00055185 Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM 02 An unused postcard commemorating the loss of AE1. ANMM Collection 00055179

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01 The inscription on the commissioning axe. ANMM Collection 00055185. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM 02 Service medals and AE1 sweetheart brooch belonging to Able Seaman James B Thomas RN. From left: 1914–15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. ANMM Collection 00055239. Image Andrew Frolows/ANMM

The AE1 sweetheart brooch attached to Thomas’ service medals is the only one of its kind in an Australian museum collection and may be the only surviving example in existence

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Commissioning axe In June 2017, the commissioning axe was kindly offered as a donation to the museum by Tony Todd, a British citizen whose mother-in-law, Winifred Knowles, bequeathed it to him on her death. A commissioning axe is an axe or hatchet used to ceremonially sever the line that holds a ship within the ways where it is constructed. The donated example is a wooden-handled hatchet, the steel head of which has been engraved as follows: ‘WITH THIS AXE Mr H. Warton Successfully Launched Submarines AE1 & AE2 from the Works of Vickers Ltd, Barrow 22/5 & 18/6 1913’. The notation is surrounded by scrollwork and topped by an engraved scene featuring a stylised submarine upper pressure hull and fin exposed above the waterline. Flanking the submarine is a stylised maritime landscape featuring a lighthouse atop a sheer cliff at background right, and an opposing cliff face in the left background. Interestingly, the scene approximately resembles the entrance to Sydney Harbour, with the lighthouse at South Head and the promontory of North Head. A small flock of seabirds is depicted flying above the submarine.

Winifred Knowles was the daughter of Thomas Wharton (b 1892), who was employed as a saw doctor at the Vickers shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness. He was the nephew of Henry Wharton (b 1867), who was originally employed as a joiner at Vickers, but is believed to have been a charge hand by the time AE1 and AE2 were launched. As a charge hand, Henry Wharton would have been foreman for most – if not all – of the shipyard workers. This is probably why he was given the honour of symbolically launching both submarines. Curiously, Henry Wharton’s last name is spelled erroneously (as Warton), but this is probably a transcription error that occurred when the axe head was inscribed.

Medals awarded to AB James B Thomas RN

Shortly after learning of the commissioning axe, the museum was informed that a set of service medals belonging to an AE1 crewman was to be sold at auction in November 2017. The museum successfully bid on the medals and accepted them into the National Maritime Collection in February 2018 – only two months after AE1’s discovery. The medals were posthumously awarded to Able Seaman James Benjamin Thomas, who served as a torpedoman aboard the submarine at the time of its loss. The service medal set comprises the 1914–15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. Often awarded together, the medals were known colloquially among Commonwealth servicemen as ‘Pip, Squeak and Wilfred’. Pinned to the ribbon of the British War Medal is a diamond-shaped ‘sweetheart brooch’ that belonged to Thomas’ wife, Emma. It features the name ‘AE1’ in large block letters within a central medallion, which is flanked on each side by two stylised submarine propellers. Although sweetheart brooches bearing the names of RAN warships were common during the First World War, that attached to Thomas’ service medals is the only AE1 brooch in an Australian museum collection and may be the only surviving example in existence. Two additional objects sold with the medals included a replica copperalloy memorial plaque (or ‘death penny’) bearing James Thomas’ name and an unused archival postcard with a photograph of AE1 on its obverse side. The postcard must have been acquired after Thomas’ death, as it features the chilling notation ‘Submarine AE1 (now sunk)’. Thomas, like many of AE1’s crew, was seconded to the RAN from the British Royal Navy. He was born at St Helen’s, Worcester, England, in May 1883 and commenced service in the RAN on 16 May 1913. Within a year, he was training aboard submarines, and was assigned to HMAS Penguin (the base for AE1 and AE2) in May 1914. Thomas set up residence on Petersham Parade (present-day Petersham Road) in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville in preparation for the arrival of Emma and their two children, who followed him to Australia. Tragically, on the day the family disembarked at Sydney, they were met on the wharf by Thomas’ Marrickville neighbour with a telegram advising he was missing. Although suddenly alone in a strange country with two small children, Emma Thomas remained in Australia and eventually received a war gratuity from the Commonwealth. She never remarried. Additional members of the Thomas family emigrated to Australia from the United Kingdom in subsequent years.

Dr James Hunter is the museum’s Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology.