More than 100 years before Australia signed up to buy eight nuclear-powered submarines, our first sub notched a world first.
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In 1915 the AE2, half the size of a modern-day sub and with 35 crew on board, was the first and only Allied sub to breach The Narrows and sail up the Dardanelles Strait.
In doing so, the submarine dodged a torpedo boat destroyer, mines, gun batteries and a fort that opened fire on its 75-kilometre voyage.
It became grounded off Gallipoli on the eve of April 24 before breaking free and sailing out to open waters, where the crew were eventually captured by the Turks and spent the next three-and-a-half years as prisoners of war.
The story of the AE2 is remarkable. Built in Britain, it was considered at the time to be a superior vessel, running on diesel rather than petrol engines.
It was built for the fledgling Australian Navy and sailed from England for Australia on March 2, 1914, arriving in Sydney on May 24; at that time, the longest ocean transit of any submarine.
The AE2 was under the command of Dublin-born lieutenant-commander Henry Hugh Gordon Dacre Stoker.
He was initially ordered to sail his vessel to help capture the German colonies in New Guinea.
Stoker (who began his career as a 14-year-old sea cadet and ended it as an actor and playwright) then sailed the AE2 to help fight in Suva.
Always a free spirit, Stoker then decided to return to the northern hemisphere and serve with the British submarine flotilla operating in the Mediterranean.
It was from the island of Tenedos in the Aegean Sea that the AE2 operated in support of the unfolding Dardanelles campaign.
The heroic voyage of the AE2 prompted Commodore Roger Keyes to write: "An Australian submarine has done the finest feat in submarine history and is going to torpedo all the ships bringing reinforcements, supplies and ammunition into Gallipoli".
Stoker's achievements may have been overlooked had it not been for discovering the AE2 in 1998, lying in 72 metres of water off Kara Burnu Point in Turkey.
Years later, divers returned to take photos of the sub's remains. They clearly show its control room and the ship's speed, head and light switches. The divers also found a portable wireless telegraph pole and antenna wire.
