HMAS Moresby (1918)
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| period of service | |
| Builder: | Barclay Curle , Glasgow |
| Keel laying: | November 27, 1917 |
| Launch: | April 12, 1918 |
| Commissioning: | May 25, 1918 |
| Fate: | Decommissioned on March 14, 1946, scrapped in 1947 |
| General properties | |
| Ship type : | Sloop |
| Displacement : | 1,320 ts as escort ship 1,650 ts as survey ship |
| Length: | 84.3 m |
| Width: | 10.5 m |
| Draft : | 5 m |
| Drive : | |
| Speed: | 17 knots as escort ship 14 as survey ship |
| Range: | |
| Crew: | 50 |
| Armament: | 1 x 4 inches - gun 1 × 12-pounder gun 2 × 20 mm Oerlikon -Flak |
The HMAS Moresby was built for the Royal Navy as HMS Silvio during the First World War . She was a sloop of Racehorse class whose vessels after racehorses were named. The Royal Navy designated quite slow escort ships primarily for fighting submarines as sloops. Sloops were distinguished from corvettes and escort destroyers by a greater range, which is why they were predestined to accompany convoys even in remote areas.
Commissioned in late May 1918, she escorted convoys in the area off Northern Ireland during the First World War . Between 1922 and 1925 she was converted into a research and survey ship. In 1925 the Royal Australian Navy took over the ship and named it after the discoverer John Moresby .
From September 1925, the ship was used to survey and map the Great Barrier Reef . In December 1929 the ship was taken out of service for economic reasons, four years later it was put back into service to carry out strategically important surveying tasks and the drive was converted from coal to oil. Until 1939, the Moresby carried out surveying tasks in northern Australian waters, in May 1937 she was ordered to the Rabaul area at short notice to support relief operations following a volcanic eruption at Matupi .
From the beginning of the Second World War , the Sloop was used as a training ship for submarine hunting , from January 1941 until the outbreak of war with Japan , she then carried out further surveys in the area of New Guinea . From the beginning of 1942 to November 1943 she was then used as an escort ship on the Australian east coast. During this time, there were three attacks on ships escorted by the Moresby . On April 11, 1943, the Yugoslav freighter Recina was sunk by a submarine. The hunt for the submarine carried out together with the corvette HMAS Bendigo was unsuccessful. The Ormiston was damaged in a later attack , the third attack had no consequences. From the end of November until the end of the war , the Moresby carried out surveying tasks in the area around Darwin . In September she was used to reoccupy Timor . On September 11, 1945, Brigadier General Lewis Dyke accepted the declaration of surrender by the Japanese in West Timor , the Netherlands, on board the Moresby as the prelude to the surrender ceremonies .
On March 14, 1946, the sloop was decommissioned and scrapped in 1947.
