HMAS AE 2
His Majesty’s Australian Submarine AE2 was launched in the yard of Vickers Ltd at Barrow-in-Furness, England on 18 June 1913 and commissioned at Portsmouth under the command of Lieutenant Commander Henry Hugh Gordon Dacre Stoker, RN. Her crew of 35 comprised officers and ratings from both the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy and she was the second of two E Class submarines built for the fledgling RAN.
AE2 is best remembered for her heroic penetration of the Dardanelles on 25 April 1915 during the ANZAC landings on the Gallipoli Peninsular.
- Commissioned
28 February 1914 - Decommissioned
30 April 1915 - Fate
On 29 April AE2 met the British submarine E14, the first of several vessels intended to follow AE2 into the Sea of Marmara to effectively close it to Turkish ships bound for the Gallipoli Peninsula. As AE2 surfaced to rendezvous with E14 on 30 April, the Turkish torpedo boat Sultan Hissar opened fire, hitting it directly in the engine room. The crew had no choice but to abandon ship, and all were captured by Sultan Hissar, and became prisoners of war.
