10 July 1911
By 1909, Australia had stopped paying a subsidy to the Royal Navy to ensure its defence of Australian waters. Instead, Australian authorities ordered a flotilla of destroyers from Britain. They intended to bolster the capability of the Commonwealth Naval Forces (CNF).
Australian authorities intended that this flotilla would take full responsibility for coastal defence. However, by the time the first of the new destroyers, Parramatta and Yarra, arrived in Australia, Australian naval policy had made an even greater advance.
The Royal Navy found itself hard pressed to maintain its global naval supremacy. It decided to support a more substantial Australian contribution towards regional defence. At the 1909 Imperial Defence Conference, the Admiralty suggested that the CNF expand to include a self-contained ‘fleet unit’. This would be based on a battlecruiser and several light cruisers.
The combined package represented an ideal force structure:
- small enough to be managed by Australia in times of peace
- capable of effective action with the Royal Navy in wartime.
Australia’s Cabinet gave provisional endorsement in September 1909. They then ordered the additional ships. Just as important was the passing of the Australian Naval Defence Act 1910. It provided clear legislative authority for a navy that would no longer be limited to Australian territorial waters.
On 10 July 1911, King George V granted this new navy the title ‘Royal Australian Navy’. The change in title reflected the progress made in the ten years since Federation. During that time, Australia had transformed a collection of obsolete vessels into a true fighting service.
The Navy’s first decade also marked a major step in Australian national thinking. The decision to acquire a sea-going navy represented growing awareness that Australia, not Britain, was responsible for the defence of Australian national interests.
In 1914, the German East Asia Squadron had plans to carry out cruiser warfare in the Pacific. They were deterred by the existence of the Australian fleet. Had it not been for the Navy, wartime Prime Minister Billy Hughes later declared, ‘the great cities of Australia would have been reduced to ruins, coastwise shipping sunk, and communications with the outside world cut off’.