4 August 1914
The main ships of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) fleet had arrived in Australia in October 1913. As a result, the Navy was unusually well prepared when the First World War broke out less than a year later.
Common training standards for the RAN and the Royal Navy (RN) meant that both officers and ratings served effectively in both navies. The concept of the RAN fleet unit was that, in times of war, it could operate as part of the RN.
On 3 August 1914, with war seeming likely, the Australian government placed the RAN under British Admiralty control. However, before events overtook other duties, Rear Admiral William Rooke Creswell RAN, the First Naval Member, sought and received authority for the fleet to seek out the main enemy threat in the Pacific: the German East Asia Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf Von Spee.
The East Asia Squadron had its homeport in Tsingtao (Qingdao), China. However, they left port at the first hint of war. Australian authorities were then unsure of their location.
The following ships carried out a night raid on Rabaul in New Britain.
- the cruiser HMAS Sydney
- the battlecruiser HMAS Australia
- the destroyers HMA Ships Yarra, Warrego, and Parramatta.
They had hoped to catch the Germans there, but the harbour was empty.
In fact, it was Australia’s presence that led Von Spee to entirely avoid the south-west Pacific. A battlecruiser of the Indefatigable class, Australia outclassed every German ship in the Pacific. Its presence effectively deterred any enemy activity on Australia’s east coast.
Von Spee himself wrote ‘by itself, [Australia] is an adversary so much stronger than our squadron that one would be bound to avoid it’. Instead, Von Spee and his squadron took their chances off the coast of South America. There, British ships similar to Australia eventually sent all of them to the bottom of the ocean.
In 1914, the RAN had 3,800 personnel and 16 commissioned ships; by the end of the war in 1918, it had grown to more than 5,000 men and boasted a fleet of 37 ships. The first class of the Royal Australian Naval College had graduated at the end of 1916, laying the groundwork of an Australian naval officer cadre.