HMVS ''Lonsdale'' was a second-class

torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...

constructed for the

Victorian Naval Forces Before Federation in 1901 five of the six separate colonies maintained their own naval forces for defence. The colonial navies were supported by the ships of the Royal Navy's Australian Station which was established in 1859. The separate colonie ...

and later operated by the Commonwealth Naval Forces and the

Royal Australian Navy The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of ...

. She was sunk on mud flats on Swan Island in

Port Phillip Bay Port Phillip (Kulin: ''Narm-Narm'') or Port Phillip Bay is a horsehead-shaped enclosed bay on the central coast of southern Victoria, Australia. The bay opens into the Bass Strait via a short, narrow channel known as The Rip, and is completel ...

in 1912 after being stripped of equipment and machinery. Having been commissioned in 1884, and then officially joining the Commonwealth Naval forces in 1901, the boat was the oldest ship in the Royal Navy, and is the oldest

ship still in existence (though currently buried).

Design and construction

''Lonsdale'' was one of several torpedo boats ordered by the government of

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

in 1882 to protect the colony from a possible Russian or French attack, and was built by John I. Thornycroft & Company. The torpedo boat was long, with a draught of , and a displacement of 12.5 tons.HMVS ''Lonsdale'' & HMVS ''Nepean''
/ref> She was designed with a low

freeboard In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relativ ...

, to minimise her profile. The boat had a maximum speed of , which she would use to close rapidly with enemy vessels before attacking. ''Lonsdale'' was initially armed with two 14-inch torpedoes carried in bow recesses, and a

spar torpedo A spar torpedo is a weapon consisting of a bomb placed at the end of a long pole, or spar, and attached to a boat. The weapon is used by running the end of the spar into the enemy ship. Spar torpedoes were often equipped with a barbed spear at ...

, but in 1888, she was modified to carry the two 14-inch torpedoes in locally developed 'dropping gear'; a

davit Boat suspended from radial davits; the boat is mechanically lowered Gravity multi-pivot on Scandinavia'' file:Bossoir a gravité.jpg, Gravity Roller Davit file:Davits-starbrd.png, Gravity multi-pivot davit holding rescue vessel on North Sea ferr ...

-like device for lowering the torpedoes into the water for launching. She was also armed with 2 Hotchkiss machine guns.

Fate

Records indicate she was sunk on mud flats on Swan Island in

Port Phillip Port Phillip (Kulin languages, Kulin: ''Narm-Narm'') or Port Phillip Bay is a horsehead-shaped bay#Types, enclosed bay on the central coast of southern Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. The bay opens into the Bass Strait via a short, ...

in 1912 after being stripped of equipment and machinery, however a dig later found that she had been buried in Queenscliff.HMVS ''Lonsdale'' - excavation
/ref>"Historical-items - HMVS Lonsdale" Queenscliff Maritome Museum https://www.maritimequeenscliffe.org.au/historical-items/

Discovery

Based on the memory of a ship being buried in a finite location in Queenscliff, a team of marine historians and archaeologists started digging in the area for remains of a ship. There had been longstanding oral history of the ship being buried in this location, and some of the older locals remembered the ship before it was completely buried. When it was buried, the area was originally beach, but with the reclamation of land, the area of the burial was now 1 kilometre inland. A team, using a digger, ground water radar and tools unfortunately found nothing. At this point, the team switched to using a water probe, searching at the depth of 1.5m, which is what they presumed to be the buried depth. In 1983, the remains of a torpedo boat likely to be the ''Lonsdale'' (or possibly the Nepean, as they are both similar) were uncovered. Ironically, they were recovered on the grounds of the

Queenscliffe Maritime Museum The Queenscliffe Maritime Museum is a regional maritime museum in the town of Queenscliff at the entrance from Bass Strait to the bay of Port Phillip in Victoria, south-eastern Australia. It lies within walking distance of the Searoad ferry ...

, so the burial site had become part of a maritime museum's collection. While a great deal of work was put into discovering the boat, after the uncovering of the conning tower, all work stopped, and the boat remains buried on the site and unable to be viewed. Despite the fact the boat is the oldest Royal Australian Navy vessel currently still in existence, and it represents a rare example of a wreck accessible without having to be reclaimed using diving equipment, no effort has been made to reclaim or preserve the vessel. As of 2010, only the boat's conning tower is exposed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lonsdale Lonsdale-class torpedo boats 1882 ships Ships built in Chiswick Ships built by John I. Thornycroft & Company