‘We’d like the two periscopes’: the mission to save a piece of Australia’s first submarine

AE1 enters Cookatoo Island dockyard in Sydney Harbour in June 1914. The submarine was lost only a few months later, as it took part in the early actions of the first world war. Photograph: None

The wreck of Australia’s first submarine is disintegrating, sparking a new mission to salvage a relic from it for the Australian War Memorial.

HMAS AE1 disappeared with 35 crew on board while on a mission near the Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea in September 1914, less than two months after the outbreak of the first world war.