- Author
- Davies, Jim
- Subjects
- 19th century wars, History - pre-Federation
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- March 1999 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Fremantle and Albany had no defences at all and feared invasion. The coal supply at Albany for the mail steamers was felt to be a tempting prize and the unannounced arrival of two warships seemed to be the threat becoming reality. They turned out to be Royal Navy ships sent from the east to guard the port.
Even after .the immediate scare died down, the underlying situation of the vulnerability of the WA colony remained. Later that year the British Government offered to supply guns for fortifications at Fremantle to be built and manned at the colony’s expense. The Australian colonies were urged to provide for Albany as part of the whole Australian system of defence. There was another scare in 1888 when the overseas telegraph broke and Australia was cut off from the world for some days.
In the case of Fremantle, the WA Legislative. Council (because WA had not yet achieved self-government there was as yet no Legislative Assembly) accepted the offer of two 7″ guns and three 16 pdrs. Battye takes up the story in the Cyclopedia of Western Australia. “‘The two heavy guns duly arrived. The works, however, were not gone on with, and the guns, after lying in the sand at the port for some considerable time, were afterwards placed on their carriages under cover at Karrakatta, and finally found a resting-place in King’s Park, Perth.”
Much the same thing happened in Adelaide. The third fort at Glenelg was not built and after rusting in the sandhills for years, the guns delivered for the fort were mounted in an Adelaide park. A few years ago they were put on display in the fort at Semaphore.
Following discussions in 1887 and further proposals from Britain in 1889, the Federal Council, a body set up by the colonies, agreed to the construction of the forts at Albany. They were completed in 1893 and armed with modern 6″ guns. Fremantle had to wait until 1904, after the new harbour was opened and defence had become the responsibility of the new Commonwealth Government.
The Kings Park guns were brought to the park in late 1905 and were mounted on Mount Eliza in 1906. At the same time the captured Krupps gun was placed at the South African Memorial. In 1932 the naval guns were in the way of the new War Memorial concourse. Fraser Avenue was re-routed. The old rifle range butts were levelled and the guns sold for scrap. The carriages were broken up and the barrels, one with its muzzle end cut off, buried under the earth spread from the butts. In the 1960’s the buried barrels were located, dug up and placed on wooden mounts where they stand today.
To round off the story, the next flurry of activity was in the 1930’s when, as part of the system of Empire defence, 9.2″ guns were emplaced on Rottnest and at other Australian ports and the great 15″ guns were installed at Singapore.
The Kings Park guns were familiarly known as “bottle guns” and officially as RML, 7 inch, 6.5 ton, Mk1 guns. They fired a 112lb (50.8kg) shell to a range of about 4000 yards (3650m). Another source gives a 115lb (52.3kg) shell and a charge of 30lb (13.6kg) to a range of up to 5,500 yards (5,000m).
REFERENCES
Ian V Hogg – A History of Ammunition
Ian Hogg and John Batchelor – Naval Gun, 1978
J S Battye – The Cyclopedia of Western Australia, 1912
Doak – Australian Defence Heritage, 1988
Colin Jones – Australian Colonial Navies, 1986
Donald S. Garden – Albany, 1977
Special information came from The Royal Australian Artillery Historical Society of Western Australia (Inc.)
Photographs courtesy Margaret Smyth