QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Kreuzerbesucher

Germany’s interests on the far side of the planet were represented directly by ‘His Majesty’s Ships’ calling at Australian ports. It was part of the standard program of a visiting warship for the captain, officers and crew to establish contact with the German ‘colonies’ in the ports and environs. Joint events were arranged, either with tea and biscuits on board, a banquet in the club houses or a picnic ashore, even a ball on the ship’s deck. It was also a means of collecting local intelligence, less on defence matters, rather reporting back to the Reich on the state of the well-being, heritage and language of the migrants abroad. Imperial Navy officers and crews visited German Australian townships and settlements by prior agreement with the Australian authorities, which generally encouraged this as a means of making and cultivating contacts with the old country. Southern ports received the lion’s share of this attention, but Brisbane was not overlooked, particularly for its more northern proximity to German colonies in the Melanesian islands and New Guinea. One older and unarmoured ‘third class’ cruiser generally operated out of Sydney for most of the decade before the First World War, to ‘show the flag’ in the South Seas and maintain administrative order ashore. The six small ships of the Bussard (Buzzard) Klasse were all named after birds of prey and built as economical gunboats for far-flung colonial service. Generally spending a year on station, each crew was partially relieved every six months on rotation from Germany. SM S ( Seiner Majestät Schiff – His Majesty’s Ship) Cormoran was launched on 17 May 1892 and two years later, with sistership Condor voyaged out to German East Africa and the East Asian colonies. Below: SMS Geier (‘vulture’) showing the original three-masted rig which was typical of the transitional era from sail to steam. Cormoran lost one of her masts after she ran aground on a reef en-route to Samoa on the night of 23/24 March 1899, before her first visit to Brisbane four years later.

Cormoran paid her first visit to Brisbane in March 1903, but was relieved by Condor a few months later and sent home for repair and rebuilding; her second and final appearance in the Brisbane River was to be eight years later. After her first visit in September 1903, Condor ’s next visit was postponed twice, from April 1904 to October 1905, then to March 1906, because of commitments in East Africa. Thereafter she became a regular visitor to Moreton Bay and the Gardens Reach of the river, spending five weeks in February 1908, a fortnight in March 1909, two days in February 1911, and a final two-day visit a year later before she too was called home. Each visit to Brisbane was eagerly followed and often reported in considerable detail by the press, as was customary of the time . Above: Condor ’s first visit on page two of the Brisbane Courier, 22 September 1903, and (below) the postponed return on 10 March 1906. Background image below: Grainy picture of Condor on her first visit, reported on p.41 of The Queenslander in October 1903; the Kangaroo Point cliffs are behind the cruiser. Images courtesy Trove / National Library of Australia

Dimensions: length 82.6m (271ft), beam 12.7m (41ft 8in), draft 6.4m (21ft) Armament: 8 x 105mm (4.1in) guns, 5 x MGs, 2 x torpedo tubes Weight: 1,019 GRT Built: 1892 (Cormoran and Condor)

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