Submarines
Association
Australia
14/08/2026
SubmarinesAssociationAustralia14/08/2026 |
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Just a normal sailor on AE1
1068 Petty Officer (SG) Robert Smail,
HMAS AE1 Accidentally killed: 14 September 1914
Today we remember and pay tribute to Petty Officer Robert Smail.
Robert Smail was born on 26 January 1888 in Galashiels, Scotland, the son of Robert and Elizabeth Smail.
He attended school in the village of Spott, south of the coastal town of Dunbar. After leaving school at the age of 16, Smail joined the Merchant Service. He served on the Baltic trade route before joining a four-masted sailing ship Loch Tay with a cargo bound for Port Melbourne.
During the journey Loch Tay was becalmed and the cargo had to be offloaded to another ship. As a result, the crew were discharged in Australia. Smail then joined a ship, possibly the SS Cooma, as it plied its trade along Australia’s eastern sea board.
Smail joined the Commonwealth Naval Service on 3 August 1908, signing on for five years. With his previous service as a merchant sailor taken into account, he was awarded the first of his good conduct badges in January 1909.
He was sent to Scotland along with other sailors to commission the Commonwealth Naval Forces ship Yarra, a 700-ton torpedo boat destroyer. The ship was commissioned in early September 1910 and sailed for Australia shortly after in company with her sister ship HMAS Parramatta. The ships arrived in Australia in November. During the ship’s voyages around Australia Yarra stopped in at Launceston, where Smail had friends.
In mid-June 1911 Smail was promoted to petty officer. A year later he was sent to the shore establishment HMAS Cerberus. On 1 July he signed on for a further seven years’ service with the navy and sailed for England with men who had been selected to crew the now Royal Australian Navy’s new E Class submarines.
Arriving in England, he travelled to the Vickers Shipyard in Barrow, Furness, Scotland, and witnessed the building and launch of HMAS AE1.
While in England, Smail took every opportunity to visit his family, and convinced them to move to Australia, paying for their travel and a deposit on a house in Melbourne.
Smail’s second good conduct badge, which would have been for his leadership and drive during the sea trials of AE1, was awarded in January 1914. In March, AE1 and AE2 sailed from Portsmouth, bound for Sydney.
The journey was arduous, with both vessels suffering mechanical problems. At times the operating temperature inside the submarine would reach 38 degrees Celsius, and the air became toxic, polluted by gases from the engine room.
In May 1914 the submarines reached Sydney and were met with intense curiosity from the public. To the imaginations of the Australian people, the underwater capsule of Jules Verne’s novel 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea “was the stuff of science fiction”.
When the First World War began in August 1914, the submarines were assigned to the RAN component of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, providing forward protection to the fleet as it made its way to New Britain.
The ANMEF went into action on 11 September and captured the radio station at Bitapaka late in the afternoon. Three days later, AE1 and HMAS Parramatta departed Blanche Bay to patrol Cape Gazelle.
AE1 was last seen by HMAS Parramatta at around 2.30 pm. When the submarine had not reported in by 8 pm, ships were sent to look for the missing vessel, but despite searches of the area, “no trace of the AE1 was ever found, not even the tell-tale shimmer of escaping oil in the water.” The crew of three officers and 32 sailors were believed to have drowned. Robert Smail was 26 years old.
It was a sore blow to the fledgling Royal Australian Navy. The loss of HMAS AE1 with all hands was the first loss of an RAN vessel.
Despite searches, the wreck of HMAS AE1 was unable to be located. In December 2017 a multi-national team aboard the survey vessel Fugro Equator located the wreck of AE1 off the Duke of York Islands. The ensuing investigation found that the sub’s loss was caused by a ventilation valve in the hull which had been partially open. It was not clear if it had been human error or a mechanical fault, but as the sub began its dive, water flooded the engine room. When AE1 reached its 100 metre crush depth, an implosion is believed to have torn through the vessel, killing all on board instantly.
Today Robert Smail and his crewmates are commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial in the United Kingdom.
He joined the Royal Navy on 15 September 1898 at HMS BRITANNIA where he was under training until 14 January 1900. and was appointed to the cruiser HMS ENDYMION and then to the cruiser HMS AMPHITRITE in 1902 where he served until 1903. After his Lieutenant's Courses he served in destroyers HMS HEARTY, HMS FAIRY and HMS VIXEN before being appointed to the battleship HMS RUSSELL in 1904.
Thomas Besant was first appointed to the Submarine Depot Ship HMS THAMES at Portsmouth ‘for Training in Submarines’ in 1905. He was promoted to Lieutenant and re-appointed ‘for Command of Submarines’ in 1906. In 1907 he took command of HMS C12. In 1910 he returned to the Surface Fleet for his ‘Big Ship’ time with an appointment to the battleship HMS KING EDWARD VII and, in 1911, to the battleship HMS HERCULES.
His next submarine appointment came in 1912, in command of HMS C30. In 1913 he was ‘loaned to the Royal Australian Navy for Submarine Service’ to take up his new appointment to the Submarine Depot Ship HMAS PENGUIN ‘for Submarine AE1 in Command’.
Thomas Besant was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in December 1913 and, after a ‘Commissioning Ceremony’ at Portsmouth, HMAS AE1 made the passage to Australia, arriving in Sydney in May 1914. After refitting at Sydney HMAS AE1 joined the Australian Forces at the Bismarck Archipelago but disappeared with the loss of all hands off the Island of New Britain in the Pacific on 14 September 1914.
25 April 1915
HMA Submarine AE2 was Australia’s second submarine. Launched in June 1913, it had a crew of both Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy officers and sailors under Lieutenant Commander Henry Hugh Gordon Dacre Stoker RN.
Following service elsewhere at the start of the war, AE2 met with the second convoy of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in Albany. It then sailed for Suez, via Colombo, on 31 December 1914. The following February, AE2 joined a Royal Navy squadron based on the island of Tenedos in the Aegean Sea. From there, it supported the unfolding Dardanelles campaign.
Prior to 25 April, AE2’s role had been minor. That was until Vice-Admiral John de Robeck, Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet, approved plans by AE2’s commander, Stoker, to force entry through the Dardanelles Strait into the Sea of Marmora. If AE2 could achieve this, it would stop enemy shipping from transiting between the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. It would then stop the reinforcement and resupply of Turkish troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
All previous attempts by Allied submarines to pass through the strait had failed. This was due to an effective sea denial operation mounted by the enemy. Several factors contributed to making the Dardanelles seemingly impenetrable:
minefields
fixed and mobile gun batteries
searchlight surveillance
patrolling Turkish warships
natural navigational hazards.
AE2’s first effort, on 24 April, was abandoned when the submarine’s forward hydroplanes failed and had to be repaired.
On 25 April 1915, just hours before ANZAC troops landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Stoker braved the gun batteries and mines and attempted to penetrate the Dardanelles. Though pursued by surface ships and at times under fire from the shore, AE2 passed through the ‘Narrows’ late in evening. Stoker surfaced to communicate this success to his superiors aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth.
The commanders, who had been at that moment discussing a general evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula, were convinced to keep Allied forces on the peninsula. They used the news to boost morale and convince troops ashore at ANZAC Cove to dig in.
AE2 entered the Sea of Marmora on 26 April and, over the following few days, patrolled for ships and transports to sink, but was unsuccessful on several occasions. Nevertheless, Stoker proved the value of submarines. AE2’s presence tied up numerous Turkish assets.
On 30 April, AE2 was hit by a Turkish torpedo boat and sunk, and the crew was captured. Four sailors died in captivity; the rest of the crew were released in 1918.
Images of AE1 and 2 in Australia and O/S
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So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy (RN) to bear the name Trump. She spent the majority of her life attached to the 4th Submarine Squadron based in Australia. She was kept in service following the war and was refitted for greater underwater performance, and was the final RN submarine to be posted in Australia, departing in January 1969. She was sold off and broken up for scrap in August 1971.
Design and description
HMS Trump was one of the group three of T-class submarines. She was part of the second batch of the third group to be ordered, in 1941. She was one of a number of boats which had an all-welded hull which increased diving depth to 350 feet (107 m), an increase of 50 feet (15 m). The torpedo armament was the same as the earlier group two, although by the time group three was coming into service it was realised that external torpedo tubes had major problems and affected the streamlining of the boats; the external tubes were abandoned in the following Amphion class. Due to expected use in tropical climates, boats of group three were equipped with freon blowers in order to deal with the increased temperatures.
Service World War II
Trump was commissioned in July 1944. After trials and a work-up in the North Sea in mid-October she was sent to Perth in Western Australia. On arrival, she joined the 4th Submarine Squadron, supported by the depot ship HMS Adamant. From Perth, Trump carried out four patrols before the end of the war.
During her Far East service, Trump sank the Japanese guard boat No. 15 Shosei Maru on 13 May; a Japanese sailing vessel on 24 May; and two coasters, one on 29 May and the other on 1 June. She sank a tanker on 5 June and together with her sister boat HMS Tiptoe, she sank a Japanese cargo vessel on 9 August.
Also with Tiptoe, Trump carried out an attack on a convoy on 3 August. Although it was escorted by a Japanese patrol boat, they successfully sank Tencho Maru, an army cargo ship, with the sinking credited to Tiptoe.
Post war
Trump survived the war and continued in service with the Royal Navy. Trump was one of several all-welded T-class submarines rebuilt for greater underwater performance. This "Slippery T" or "Super T" conversion involved the removal of the deck gun and the replacement of the conning tower with a streamlined "fin". Extra batteries were installed below the control room and additional electric motors were accommodated by cutting through the pressure hull and adding in a new 20 ft (6.1 m) hull section inserted aft of the control room. The diesel engines were modified and supercharged with output increased by 300 brake horsepower (220 kW). The gun armaments and external torpedo tubes were removed, and the bow reshaped. Trump was one of two submarines, the other being HMS Tabard, which had the bridge incorporated into the added fin section; and was the last to undergo this conversion.
In 1960, Trump, along with Taciturn and Tabard, rejoined the 4th Submarine Flotilla at Sydney, Australia. There, they operated with units of the Far East Fleet, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal New Zealand Navy. In June 1964, she participated in the "NEWS EX" anti-submarine exercise in the Hauraki Gulf off the coast of New Zealand.
Trump underwent refits at Cockatoo Dockyard, between January 1962 and April 1963, and again between August 1965 and October 1966. She was the final Royal Navy submarine to be on station in Australia, departing on 10 January 1969 when the 1st Australian Submarine squadron was formed from the RN 4th Submarine Squadron. She was temporarily assigned to the Royal Australian Navy while boats of the Oberon class were under construction, but remained a Royal Navy submarine. Trump was scrapped at Newport from 1 August 1971.
During his state visit to the United States in April 2026, King Charles III gifted the original bell from the submarine to the United States president, Donald Trump, and added, "Should you ever need to get hold of us, well, just give us a ring!"
