1899: Former Victorian gunboat ALBERT at work in Port Phillip Bay. Smallest of the five 'flat iron' gunboats built by Armstrong Mitchell and Co. Ltd for three Australian colonial navies - in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia - in 1884, we seem to recall reading somewhere that the 350 ton HMVS ALBERT had been regarded to be too small to be effective in open waters. The 8-inch [203mm] muzzle-loading gun in her forward citadel had been designed to fire over bows barely 4ft above the waterline.

 

HMVS ALBERT

1899: Former Victorian gunboat ALBERT at work in Port Phillip Bay - A.C. Green [1878-1954, SLV. 

6140. Smallest of the five 'flat iron' gunboats built by Armstrong Mitchell and Co. Ltd for three Australian colonial navies - in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia - in 1884, we seem to recall reading somewhere that the 350 ton HMVS ALBERT had been regarded to be too small to be effective in open waters. The 8-inch [203mm] muzzle-loading gun in her forward citadel had been designed to fire over bows barely 4ft above the waterline.

 

She is seen above, with the skipper in solitary splendour at the wheel up above, after her 1897 sale to the Victorian Public Works Department, which used her for towing and general duties.

 

Named in honour of Queen Victioria's Consort, ALBERT had carried the 8-inch gun forward, and a 6-inch brreach loading gun aft, along with several smaller guns including two Nordenfelt machine guns.

 

During WWI ALBERT was acquired by the RAN and taken to Cockatoo Island dockyard in Sydney to be converted to a naval tug, a project ultimately abandoned as uneconomic. We had a photo of her in this sad period at Entry NO. 1282, here:

 

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/4415653165/

 

In 1917 she was sold to an oil company in Sydney for conversion to a lighter. It's the last trace we have of her. There is, by the way, an interesting array of ships at Port Melbourne [right] and a sailing ship offshore [left] in this image, which maritime author John Bastoick [see below] has dated as 1899.

 

Photo: Allan Charles Green, Green Collection, State Library of Victoria [La Trobe Library] accession NO. H91.350/250/1209, publicly released, it appeared in John Bastock's book 'Australia's Ships of WQar' [Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1975] p22.