Australia places its fleet on a war footing alongside the Royal Navy

On 30 July 1914 a coded telegram from London reached Melbourne, then the seat of the federal government of Australia. The British government reported that war was likely and instructed that the so-called precautionary stage, provided for in the defence plans of the British Empire, be put into effect. Prime Minister Joseph Cook was away in the country at the time, so the first member of the government to read the message was the Minister for Defence, Edward Millen.

The navy reacted fastest. Still on 30 July, before the cabinet had met, the Australian Naval Board began preparations, and the ships of the Royal Australian Navy took up war stations in line with the procedures of the British Royal Navy. The young fleet, created only in 1911, was the most valuable contribution Australia could make at once to the defence of the empire. Its core was the modern battlecruiser HMAS Australia, supported by light cruisers, destroyers and two submarines.

Political decisions were taken in unusual circumstances. Australia was in the middle of a campaign before the federal election scheduled for 5 September, and both main parties were vying with each other in declarations of loyalty to Great Britain. On 31 July the Leader of the Opposition, Andrew Fisher, declared that Australians would stand beside the empire “to our last man and our last shilling”.

On 3 August the Cook government formally offered the British Admiralty control of the Australian ships in the event of war, as well as the dispatch of 20,000 soldiers to any destination, at Australia’s expense. After the outbreak of war the Australian fleet passed under Admiralty command. Its ships took part in the capture of German New Guinea and in the search for the German squadron of Admiral Maximilian von Spee in the Pacific.

Chroniclers of the period recorded 30 July as the day on which Australia placed its fleet at the Admiralty’s disposal. The government’s formal offer did come a few days later, but it was on 30 July that the Australian navy in fact began to operate as part of the empire’s common fleet, before Great Britain was even at war.