At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) had 3,800 personnel and 16 commissioned ships, with the main ships of the fleet having arrived the year prior; by the end of the war in 1918, it had grown to more than 5,000 personnel and boasted a fleet of 37 ships.
The RAN’s first task was to seize or neutralise German territories in the Pacific. These territories represented a formidable network of intelligence and logistic support to the Imperial German Navy’s East Asia Squadron, based in Tsingtao (Qingdao), China.
On 30 August, HMA Ships Australia and Melbourne, with Royal Navy (RN) ships and a French cruiser, escorted 1,400 New Zealand troops to occupy German Samoa. Faced with this force, the colony surrendered without a fight.
Submarine HMAS AE1 with the battlecruiser HMAS Australia (I) in the background.
In September, Melbourne steamed to the German wireless station on Nauru and landed 25 personnel. They likewise captured the territory without opposition. Closer to home, Australia sought to seize German wireless stations in New Guinea and New Britain. The hunt for von Spee led the German Admiral to steer clear of the region and keep his ships near South America, where they were eventually sunk by the RN in the South Atlantic.
RAN ships supported the landing at Gallipoli and also supported operations in the North Sea and the Adriatic.
Though fewer than three dozen personnel were killed in the conflict, the First World War was a formative moment in the history of the RAN. Not least it saw the formation of the Royal Australian Naval College, which graduated its first class of officers in 1916. Moreover, its activities under the command of the RN were suggestive of its future as an autonomous force committed to the defence of Australia and contributing to stability in the Indo-Pacific.
Selected feature histories:
The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force