Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

44 Missing Pieces
No enemy merchant ship captured should be sunk unless the strongest
military reason exists. Every ship may be of the greatest value as the
war progresses. If a prize crew cannot be spared at the moment one
possibility is to leave the ship stopped with caretakers on board. 106
On the Australia Station, this mode of warfare was expected as British advice had shaped
the RAN for trade protection duties. But the Admiralty had requested and achieved
the detachment of the bulk of the Australian cruiser force for service in British and
Mediterranean theatres of operations. By July 1940, six HSKs had been deployed, and
later that year, when the first indications that raiders were active in the Pacific and
Indian Oceans came, there were only two cruisers on the station. 107
HSK Pinguin, with her prize Passat, a Norwegian ship captured off Western Australia on
7 October 1940, mined the approaches to Bass Strait and major east coast ports before
returning to the Indian Ocean in November. 108 Two others, Orion and Komet, attacked
traffic to the east of New Zealand before turning north to Nauru, where they sank five
phosphate ships between 6 and 8 December. Although alerted by authorities on Nauru,
Australia had no warships to send. The survivors from these and other attacks were
landed on Emirau Island in New Guinea by the raiders later that month.
The German raider Pinguin