1 March 1901
With the federation of the six Australian colonies on 1 January 1901, the governor-general became Australian commander-in-chief. On 1 March that year, the former colonies transferred their naval and military forces to the federal government. The Commonwealth Naval Forces (CNF) and Commonwealth Military Forces (CMF) came into being.
The ships that the CNF inherited from the colonial navies were old and inadequate, even for training. There was little hope for early improvement. The CNF’s budget for the financial year 1901–1902 was just £67,000, compared to the CMF’s allocation of £638,000.
A dilapidated Australian navy was not a major national concern. This was because it was thought that Britain’s Royal Navy could continue to provide maritime protection, as it had done for the colonies. The Australian Government’s payment of a subsidy towards maintaining Royal Navy vessels in Australia reinforced the idea that naval policy was a matter for the British Admiralty.
Some local naval authorities, however, feared the withdrawal of British forces if war was to break out. Led by Captain William Creswell, they argued that Australia was open to attack by sea, as it lay at the end of the world’s sea routes and had no land frontier. If an enemy could cut Australian communications and shipping, economic devastation would follow.
As Creswell observed caustically in a 1902 parliamentary report, ‘The spectacle of some 5,000,000 Australians, with an Army splendidly equipped, unable to prevent the burning of a cargo of wool in sight of Sydney Heads, is only the ordinary consequence of a policy of naval impotence’.
Creswell gradually developed the idea of a more capable navy, with Australian personnel. This was under the Commonwealth’s executive direction. Once he became director of Naval Forces in 1904, he embarked on a program designed to breathe new life into the CNF’s operations. Despite the restricted budget, Creswell was credited for:
- bringing several gunboats into commission
- bringing several torpedo boats into commission
- renewing training exercises to improve combat readiness.
Creswell found an ally in Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, who also preferred active cooperation in defence rather than subsidies. In December 1907, Deakin announced that the CNF would grow to include a flotilla of submarines and coastal destroyers. In February 1909, Australia’s naval representative in London requested tenders for the first three vessels. They were the destroyers:
- HMAS Parramatta
- HMAS Yarra
- HMAS Warrego.