Her Majesty's Australian AE1 Submarine
was a technological marvel of her time. The E-class vessel,
complete with four 18-inch torpedo tubes, was a constant and feared threat to all her enemies.
Built just in time for World War 1, the Royal Australian Navy had grand plans for the submarine.
She was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, known as an exemplary leader,
and was the first submarine to serve in the Navy.
However, her military career came to an abrupt halt when she was lost
at sea with all hands near Papua New Guinea, only six months into the war.
For over a century, the disappearance of the AE1 submarine had been Australia's greatest
naval mystery, but a shocking discovery in December of 2017
finally shed some light on the unsolved conundrum…
The Vessel of the Future
The establishment of the Royal Australian Navy in 1911 coincided
with an era of revolutionary changes in naval technology.
Foreseeing the immense value that submarines would have in future naval warfare,
Admiral Sir John Fisher, British Admiralty's First Sea Lord,
recommended their use to the Commonwealth's newest Navy.
Thus, Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin
approved the construction of two new submarines for the upcoming fleet.
AE1 was the first submarine to be built. Measuring 181 feet long,
the E-class boat had a maximum diving depth of 100 feet,
or 200 feet with the addition of watertight bulkheads that further strengthened her hull.
An arrangement of two propellers driven by an 8-cylinder 800-brake-horsepower engine
and a 420-brake-horsepower electric motor gave the
submarine a maximum speed of 15 knots while surfaced and 10 knots submerged.
While there were no fitted guns aboard, the AE1 had four 18-inch torpedo tubes placed in the bow,
stern, port, and starboard to protect the submarine and the crew
in case of warfare encounters, and it also had an extra spare torpedo for each tube.
Built by Vickers Limited at Barrow-in-Furness, England,
the AE1 was laid down in November of 1911, launched in May of 1913,
and officially commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy in February of 1914.
The Royal Australian Navy's forces were still limited and minuscule
compared to the other world powers at the time, with a fleet consisting of only a battlecruiser,
four light cruisers, three destroyers, and two new submarines.
AE1’s complement, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas F Besant,
consisted of 34 men. Officers were Royal Navy personnel,
while the junior enlisted sailors were a mix of ratings drawn from the Royal Navy
and new recruits from the Royal Australian Navy, and only one New Zealander.
After commissioning, AE1 and AE2, her sister ship and the second submarine
ever built for the Australian Navy left England for Sydney on May 24, 1914.
Only two days after the novel submarine's arrival in Australia,
Europe became embroiled in chaos when Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, which was likely
to be rejected. War seemed inevitable, and it would involve the British Empire.
Then, on August 5, Australia received news that Britain and Germany were officially at war.
A Major Loss
Following the official announcement, AE1 joined the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary
Force, or ANMEF, and departed towards German New Guinea. The Expeditionary Force was tasked with
seizing and destroying enemy wireless stations in the surrounding southwest Pacific islands.
These combined operations were highly successful and resulted in the capture
and subsequent occupation of German Pacific colonies on September 13, 1914.
Then, on the morning of September 14, AE1 departed Rabaul to patrol German
warships in a mission with torpedo boat destroyer HMAS Parramatta.
According to several documents logs, the sea was smooth, albeit with strong currents in some areas.
After drifting apart during the late morning, the two vessels rendezvoused in the afternoon,
and Parramatta's crew lost sight of AE1 off the Duke of York Islands at 3:20pm.
Assuming that the submarine had returned to Rabaul,
Parramatta's commander was not concerned and gave the order to return to port on her own.
When AE1 failed to return by sundown, the Royal Australian Navy started a frantic search,
with several Australian warships looking for the missing submarine using flares and searchlights.
The search party did not find anything despite covering a vast area that followed
AE1's most probable return course south and east of the Duke of York Islands.
Only one Australian crew spotted an oil slick in the distance, but the occurrence
was quickly disregarded as it was over 30 miles northwest of the submarine's last known position.
After three days of searching,
with no trace of the submarine or even a single clue to her disappearance,
the Australian Navy called off the mission and listed HMAS AE1 as lost with all hands.
The mysterious and tragic disappearance of the AE1 submarine and her crew of 35 men would be
regarded as the Royal Australian Navy's first-ever naval disaster.
Aftermath
On September 19, Admiral Patey, Commander of the Australian Fleet in charge of naval operations,
officially announced the disappearance of AE1 to the Australian media,
followed by messages from the Minister for Defense and Prime Minister Andrew Fisher.
A whirlwind of speculation and rumors immediately took off, especially as the submarine's commander,
Lieutenant Commander Besant, was well known for his skills and alertness.
Although initial rumors naturally credited the missing submarine to German treachery, an enemy
interference was never officially suspected, as no significant ships were sighted around the area,
and the only enemy vessel spotted in the surroundings at the time was a small survey ship.
If gunfire coming from German-occupied York Island had sunk the AE1,
the shots would have certainly been heard by other ships in the Australian fleet.
An inquiry concluded that the submarine practiced an unscheduled dive
and struck a submerged reef, subsequently sinking.
However, the deep waters where the submarine was last seen were not regarded as dangerous
or the sort of area in which a vessel could hit a reef, unless she approached the shore. The
theory was that she may have come up so close to a coastal reef that the rocks shredded her sides.
As for the complete lack of oil and debris, the inquiry suggested
that AE1 might have been caught under an overhang formed by a natural reef.
Despite the successful seizure of the German colonies in the South Pacific and New Guinea,
the loss of the AE1 with her entire complement of three
officers and 32 sailors marred the operation.
In a country trying to recruit as many eager and young volunteers as possible,
this unexplained and terrible loss so early in the war struck a deep chord in its morale.
Over the next four years, the new Australian Navy was thrown into one
of the most significant and devastating conflicts the world had ever seen,
suffering a massive amount of casualties, and the submarine’s disappearance became
the country's most enduring naval mystery, remaining unsolved for an entire century.
One Hundred Years Later
For more than 60 years, the submarine and her crew were largely forgotten amid the growing
Australian Navy. But interest in finding AE1 was reignited in the 1970s when John Foster, an
Australian Navy officer interested in the story, convinced his superiors to deploy a survey ship.
Although HMAS Flinders found potential sonar contact in 1976, the ship did
not have a sophisticated enough side-scan sonar to make a definitive determination,
and the ship conducted several failed searches.
Further deployments continued throughout the decades,
including one led by famed French naval officer Jacques Cousteau in 1990.
Sonar technology continued to evolve,
but subsequent search missions from the 2000s to the 2010s were also unsuccessful.
According to the Australian Navy,
volcanic activity disrupting the local magnetic field with earthquakes and underwater eruptions
were the main contributors to the difficulty of finding the missing submarine.
Additionally, the depth of the water where the vessel was last seen limited
the number of techniques and tools that could be used during the missions.
However, it all changed in December of 2017 during the
13th search attempt conducted off the Duke of York Islands.
The expedition was funded by the Commonwealth Government and the Silentworld Foundation, and
assisted by the Submarine Institute of Australia and the Australian National Maritime Museum.
As a result of this joint effort, the first Allied and Royal Australian Navy submarine lost in World
War I was finally found after a 103-year search off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The missing submarine was found at a depth of 980 feet by Dutch survey ship Fugro Equator;
it was still preserved in one piece, with the rear torpedo tube fully opened.
According to top Navy officials, the previous searches helped narrow down
where the wreck was located, and improvements in technology allowed its final uncovering.
Several experts who analyzed the wreck believed that the submarine sank after a ventilation valve
in the hull was left open during a dive, which would have caused the engine room to flood.
Nevertheless, if the mistake was due to human error or a mechanical failure will never be known.
To protect the wreck site from unauthorized attempts to visit it, the vessel's exact
location was not announced by the Australian government at the time of the discovery,
and the missing submarine's resting place was treated as a war grave,
commemorating the lives of those lost in the tragic incident.
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