Comet (ship, 1911)
.jpg) As Una
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The Komet was the government yacht of the German colony of New Guinea . After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, it was captured by Australian troops and put into service as the sloop HMAS Una . She worked as an Akuna in pilot service from 1925 and was scrapped in 1955 .
history
The Komet was the replacement for the government yacht Seestern, which went missing in 1909 . From 1911 to 1914 the Komet served the Gouvernement German New Guinea and carried the official flag of the Reich Colonial Office , the so-called Reich Colonial Flag . The steamer was stationed in Rabaul . The yacht was well equipped and therefore also suitable for high-ranking employees of the colonial government who regularly went on inspection trips to German companies. The yacht also served as a troop transport for the New Guinea colonial police . In addition to the European officers, only natives of the colony served as crew .
When the war broke out in August 1914, the Komet was in Morobe , where it had brought the incumbent German governor Eduard Haber for an inspection. The Komet barely managed to avoid contact with Australian warships and brought Haber back to Rabaul.
Haber made the Komet available to the East Asia Squadron under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee , in which it served as a supply ship for the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich until the end of September 1914 . When Rabaul was occupied by Australian forces and the presence of British ships in the area increased steadily, the comet was relocated to Comet Harbor , a distant place , in order not to fall into the hands of the AN & MEF (Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force) the north coast of New Pomerania . There it was picked up on October 9, 1914 by AN & MEF troops using the Nusa of the Royal Australian Navy , a former German steam yacht captured a few weeks earlier , and brought to Sydney with its German crew . After the conversion, the ship was placed in the service of the Australian Navy on November 17, 1914 as Una . She served as a patrol boat and multi-purpose vessel in New Guinea, New Britain , the New Hebrides and in Malay waters. When the Australian steamer Matunga went missing in August 1917 , the Una took part in the search along with other units of the Australian Navy, the Royal Navy and the Japanese Navy , while the German auxiliary cruiser Wolf with the Prise Matunga was cruising in the same waters in the the Una operated.
In December 1918, the Una was sent to Darwin during the Darwin Uprising to protect the governor's seat. She stayed there until she was replaced by the Encounter in early January 1919 .
In 1920 the Una was removed from the list of warships. From 1925 she served as Akuna in Port Phillip with the Port Phillip Pilot Service as a pilot boat . It was decommissioned in 1953 and broken up in Melbourne in 1955 .
literature
- Erich Gröner : The German warships 1815-1945 . Volume 7: Landing units (II), landing vehicles i (m). e (actual). Sense). (Part 2), landing ferries, landing support vehicles, transporters; Ships and boats of the army, ships and boats of the sea pilots / air force, colonial vehicles, Koblenz 1990, p. 223f. ISBN 3-7637-4807-5
- Richard Guilliatt / Peter Hohnen: The Wolf. A classic adventure story of how one ship took on the navies of the World in the First World War , London 2010.
Web links
- Ship data and picture of a model of the Komet at www.pngaa.net
- Photo of the HMAS Nusa together with the comet in Comet Harbor, probably taken in October 1914, along with a brief history of the comet and its conquest on the homepage of the Australian National Maritime Museum