HMCS Protector

In a comment on my recent blog post, Kev Robertson indicated that he was thinking of building a model gunboat to use with his newly-acquired 15mm Essex Miniatures sailor figures. In reply, I suggested that he ought to think about building a model of HMCS* (later HMAS) Protector.

Protector was an unusual ship in that she was designed and built for the Government of South Australia and combined elements of the Elswick flatiron gunboats and the small colonial cruisers/gunboats operated by the Royal Navy. She was designed and built by Armstrong, Mitchel & Co (the owners of the Elswick shipyard) and cost £65,000.

Laid down on 16th November 1882, she was launched in May 1884, and commissioned on 19th June 1884. Protector sailed for Australia on 27th June 1884 and went via the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to Columbo (in Sri Lanka) before sailing on to Port Adelaide. She arrived there on 30th September 1884.

HMCS Protector as built.

Her characteristics were:

• Displacement: 921 tons
• Dimensions:
• Length: 185ft (54,9m)
• Beam: 30ft (17.1m)
• Draught: 12ft 6in (3.7m)
• Propulsion: 2 horizonal compound surface condensing steam engines, each driving a propeller shaft
• Speed: 14 knots
• Complement: 90
• Armament:
• 1884: 1 x 8-inch Mk.VII breech-loading gun; 5 x 6-inch breech-loading guns; 4 x 3-pounder quick-firing guns; 5 x 10-barrelled Gatling machine guns (She also carried 200 x 0.45-inch Martini-Henry Mk.IV rifles, 100 x breech-loading revolvers, 100 x cutlasses, and 30 x boarding pikes so that her crew could serve ashore as part of a naval brigade)
• 1912: 3 x 4-inch Mk.III quick-firing guns; 2 x 12-pounder quick-firing guns; 4 x 3-pounder quick-firing guns

From 1884 until 1899, Protector spent most of her service in South Australian waters or undertaking training exercises in Largs Bay. When the Boxer Rebsllion broke out in 1900, she was offered for service in China, and this offer was accepted although for legal reasons she had to be temporarily commissioned into the Royal Navy and a Royal Navy officer appointed to act as her captain. She arrived in Hong Kong on 11th September 1900 and remained in Chinese waters until early November 1901. During her service there, Protector acted as a despatch and survey vessel.

Protector was transferred from South Australian service to the Royal Australian Navy when the RAN was formed in 1911 and she was subsequently rebuilt in 1912 and used as a gunboat.

HMAS Protector after her conversion into a gunboat.

At the beginning of World War I she acted as tender for the two Australian submarines AE1 and AE2 at Port Jackson. She also took part in the capture of Samoa from the Germans and then spent most of the rest of the war on patrol in Australian waters.

Once the war was over, HMAS Protector served as the tender to HMAS Cerberus. In April 1921 she was renamed Cerberus when the existing Cerberus was renamed Platypus II. She was sold in 1924 for conversion into a merchant vessel. As a result, all her armament, removable equipment, boilers and engines were removed and she became an unpowered lighter.

In 1932 her hulk was renamed Sydney and she was used as a wool lighter by the Victorian Lighterage Company. She was requisitioned by the US Army in 1943, but whilst under tow to New Guinea she was damaged in a collision with a tug. She was then sold and beached off Heron Island, Queensland for use as a breakwater. Her remains still exist today, albeit in a deteriorated state.

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* HMCS stood for Her/His Majesty's Colonial Ship. When the Royal Australian Navy was formed, this was changed to HMAS.