Images(2)

HMCS PROTECTOR and TORRENS

Artist George Frederick Gregory [Jnr] (1857 - 1913)

Date1880s

Object number00054270

NamePainting

MediumWatercolour and gouache on paper

DimensionsDisplay dimensions: 930 × 1275 mm G fini

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Collections

Ship portraits

Terms

DescriptionPainting by George Frederick Gregory junior of HMCS PROTECTOR and the sailing ship TORRENS. These two vessels were of tremendous significance to South Australia, to the peopling of the colony and to its defence posturing. HistoryIn 1882 the South Australian government resolved to purchase a ship to protect its territorial waters. William Armstrong & Co in Britain built the ship and in 1884 it was delivered to the colony at a cost of 65,000 pounds sterling. For fifteen years, PROTECTOR patrolled the uneventful South Australian waters. In 1900, the Australian colonies took their first steps into East Asian conflicts when they sent support to the British at the Boxer War. This was a joint action by several nations including Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia and the USA to crush a violent uprising against foreigners in China. The term Boxer was a Western corruption of the original Chinese name. South Australia lent PROTECTOR with a crew of 110 to assist the British Royal Navy. Victoria and New South Wales sent naval brigade contingents totaling 462 men. Arriving after the main conflict was over, their main duty was guarding and policing in Tianjin (Tientsin) and Beijing (Peking). The Australian colonial forces all returned home by May 1901 leaving seven Australians behind - six who had died of illness and one suicide. PROTECTOR had returned to Australia by November 1900 and, after Federation in January 1901, was transferred to the Commonwealth Government and based mainly in Sydney. In 1913 it became a tender to HMAS CERBERUS naval training base in Victoria. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, PROTECTOR began service as a parent/depot ship to two Australian submarines, AE1 and AE2, and escorted them to German New Guinea. After the surrender of these colonies in September, PROTECTOR remained based at Rabaul until early October 1914, when it sailed for Sydney in the company of HMAS FANTOME. In October 1915 the vessel was deployed to the Indian Ocean to report on the wreckage of the German ship EMDEN, which HMAS SYDNEY had engaged in battle in November 1914 and which had washed ashore on Keeling Island. PROTECTOR arrived back in Australia in December 1915 and returned to duties as a tender to HMAS CERBERUS for the remainder of the war. In April 1921, PROTECTOR was renamed CERBERUS (the old CERBERUS renamed PLATYPUS II), and continued to serve at the naval training base. In 1924 the vessel was decommissioned and sold. The vessel served the next years as a wool lighter called SIDNEY until it was requisitioned for war service by the US Army in 1943. After a collision with a tug near Gladstone, SIDNEY was abandoned, but its hull was later towed to Heron Island, off the coast of Queensland, to be used as a breakwater. It is still there today. SignificanceThe work represents the work of one of Australia's prolific port painters and families in George Frederick Gregory junior, when he was living in Adelaide in the mid 1880s. Both the PROTECTOR and the TORRENS were favourite subjects for his clients and he is known to have produced several views of these ships - together and separately.