Capricorn Group
Protector HMCS (1943)
South Australia's warship of 1884 was the largest gunboat any Australian colony bought, and the only ocean-going warship South Australia ever had. She went to China in 1900 and captured a German steamer at Rabaul in 1914. Stripped of her guns and engines, she ended up as a cargo barge in Melbourne, renamed Sidney. In September 1943, while being towed to New Guinea for the US Army, she was rammed by a tug at Gladstone, which tore a hole in her hull. Heron Island's resort owner bought the wreck for £10 and sank her on purpose beside the island's new boat channel, as a breakwater to shelter it from the waves. She is still there, the last ship of her kind, slowly rusting to pieces. Nobody died.