A TOURING exhibition from the Australian Maritime Museum opening at Hawkesbury Library includes the tale of an old maritime mystery – the complete disappearance of Australia’s first submarine, the AE1.
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The AE1 and sister vessel AE2 were launched in 1913 in England and came to Australia. The Australian War Memorial says at the outbreak of World War I they were sent from Sydney to German New Guinea with Australian forces to help capture the German colony.
On September 14, a day after the official German surrender of the colony, the AE1, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, left Rabaul harbour to patrol Cape Gazelle.
The Australian National Maritime Museum said that after parting company with HMAS Parramatta at the start of the day, the two vessels reunited at 2.30pm, two miles to the east of Duke of York Island. Visibility was five nautical miles in the afternoon haze. The Parramatta left and by 3.20pm had lost sight of the AE1, assuming it had headed back to Rabaul as they were under orders to return by nightfall.
“At 8.15 pm Lieutenant Stoker on AE2—who was awaiting AE1 with arrangements to make the repairs it needed—reported to the flagship HMAS Australia that AE1 had failed to return to harbour,” the ANMM account said. “A search was ordered and that night Parramatta and Yarra swept around the Duke of York Islands with searchlights and flares. No trace was found. An oil slick was discounted as being from a passing ship. In a period of just a few hours AE1 had vanished without a trace.”
The official line is that it probably hit an uncharted reef in the waters round the Duke of York Islands group and sank.
The crew of 35 comprised 14 Australians, 20 Englishmen and 1 New Zealander. For the record, the 14 Australians were Robert Smail, James Fettes, John Messenger, Gordon Corbould, Jack Jarman, James Thomas, Arthur Fisher, Cyril Baker, John Maloney, Charles Wright, William Waddilove, Percy Wilson, Ernest Blake and Richard Holt.
Jack Jarman from St Kilda, was only 21. Many others would have been a similar age.
The ANMM said there was an extensive search by multiple boats over the next two days, around the Duke of York Islands and along the northern coastline of New Britain Island. Some of the Melanesian locals said they saw the submarine during the day on the 14th, but had no further information.
Unfortunately, the search party in September 1914 did not question the Mioko Islanders,who for generations had handed down stories of events between 11 and 14 September that year. One story describes a ‘monster’ that approached the reef off Mioko Island, stopped and then moved off to the north-east.
“In the 1970s the Mioko Islanders told Commander John Foster of the Royal Australian Navy that they saw the ‘devil fish’ approach Mioko Island from the north-east on the surface,” the ANMM site said. “The submarine then stopped, went backwards, then disappeared. They described how their ancestors observed this event from some sea caves on the eastern end of Mioko Island, very close to Wirian Reef.
Extensive searches in that area have so far failed to find it.
To tell the story of AE1 and other maritime tales, the panel exhibition ‘War at Sea – the Navy in WWI’ draws on the personal accounts of Navy service staff through their diaries, mementoes, ship’s logs and letters home.
Their incredible stories of bravery and sacrifice amidst the drudgery of life at sea, patrolling, blockading and escorting troopships can be experienced at Hawkesbury Library at Windsor from August 8 until September 29.
