Transcript
KATHRYN SPURLING: They came out from England and they broke all the underwater records, the furthest travelling records - the furthest submarines had every travelled. And it was actually quite brave of the Australian Navy to decide to purchase these two little submarines on which between 35 and 40 men would travel. And when you think of the conditions it must have been fantastic for these men to have done this. When they arrived in Australian waters, it was an amazing feat in itself and as soon as the war started they were both sent to Rabaul in New Britain to look for German shipping.
DON WISEMAN: The war had only been going two weeks hadn't it?
KS: Yes.
DW: Were they involved in combat through that period?
KS: Well this is one of the mysteries that I put in my book, The Mystery of AE1, there were vessels with German crews in little pockets and coves around New Guinea, Rabaul and whether the submarine, which was sent out on patrol on the 14th September came across one of those - and there was no gun on the deck. unfortunately the only means of defence was to submerge and to fire torpedoes. There was no gun deck. So had the boat found a German vessel, if it had come out of a cove, and surprised the submarine, they may well have attempted to submerge. So we don't really know what happened, because the submarine on the 14th September never returned. The captain of the submarine was called Thomas Besant. Now he was a very technical, studious man and he had a bad engine and he knew the engine was going to fixed as soon as they returned to Rabaul Harbour that night, after this patrol. There is no way I believe that this man would have deliberately put his crew in jeopardy and dived unnecessarily. And unfortunately this was not necessarily agreed by the [British] Admiralty, which of course controlled the Australian Navy in World War One, and they blamed him. And I think it was a travesty because some of the suggestions have been that the boat did submerge and it hit an outcrop of coral and broke open. But if that happened there would have been a huge oil and wreckage spill and nothing was ever found. Absolutely nothing. So if he had submerged unintentionally, due to some catastrophic failure of the other engine, that could have happened. If he had run into a German vessel that was armed, he may have had no choice but to dive. But as it was there were 35 men entombed in this little submarine and they have been there for 104 years. The descendants are a very active lot. They really felt this for generations because it seemed nobody cared why we didn't go and find this submarine and find out what happened to it. So this is amazing news, and I wrote the book in 2014, The Mystery of AE1, and I am just so delighted for all those families that we have finally found and hopefully just now find out what happened to it and clear the men's names.
DW: It's in very deep water isn't it?
KS: Yes absolutely and this is why underwater cameras found it and this is why the Navy, which has had several explorations to try to find this submarine, have not been able to because the equipment they had just doesn't go deep enough.
DW: This time round it was done very quickly.
KS: Yes it was with the deep sea water equipment, which I was saying for years should be used to find the submarine. It's wonderful. Perhaps the imagery will be able to detect any burst areas, any wreckage and we might be able to make sense of it. But when you think there are 35 men entombed in that submarine, our first submarine, and if it had been as a result of German activity, because the submarine had to dive to defend itself, that would be the first Australian unit lost in battle. And this happened on the 14th September, a long time before Gallipoli.
DW: And among those 35, two New Zealanders.
KS: Yes that's right. Who were members of the Australian Navy.
DW: This idea of a submarine. I mean submarines at the time were very unusual craft. There would have been minimal exposure to them any seamen. It arrived in May 1914 and was off to war four months later. The crew would have been pretty inexpert wouldn't they?
KS: Yes, actually half the crew were Royal Navy who had transferred or were on exchange and about half the crew were Australians and they did some training in England before they boarded the submarine to bring them back. So there was a certain amount of expertise. There were some senior NCOs, who were very seasoned, if you can be seasoned in 1914 in submarines. So it was a wonderful mix. Some brought their families from Britain, they decided they would transfer to a new country and hopefully find a better life. And one of the sailors, his family came out and when they arrived they were met by the landlady where he had been living and setting up a little home for them, and told that the submarine had gone missing. So this young widow arrived with two small children and she decided to actually stay in Australia. She sent for her sister who came out and they started a dress making business. And that daughter was actually still alive and living in New South Wales - she was 101 - when the centenary of the loss of the submarine in 2014 was held.
