HMQS Paluma

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For other ships of this name, see HMAS Paluma.

Career (Queensland and Australia)
HMQS Paluma in 1889
Builder:	Armstrong Mitchell and Co.
Commissioned:	1884
Decommissioned:	1948
Fate:	Scrapped
General characteristics
Displacement:	360 tons
Length:	120 ft (37 m)
Beam:	26 ft (7.9 m)
Draught:	9 ft 6 in (2.9 m)
Propulsion:	Expansion steam engines, 400 ihp
Speed:	10.5 knots
Armament:	1 x 8 in (never mounted) 1 x 1 x 6 in 2 x 1.5 in 2 x MG

HMQS Paluma was a gunboat operated by the Queensland Maritime Defence Force and the Royal Australian Navy. She entered service in 1884 and was decommissioned in 1948.

1 History
2 Class note
3 See also
4 Bibliography

[edit] History

Following the Jervois-Scratchley reports the colonial governments of Australia restructured their defence forces. One of the many outcomes of this report was the formation of the Queensland Maritime Defence Force. To equip the new force the colonial government purchased two gunboats and a torpedo boat.

Commissioned in the United Kingdom as HMQS Paluma during October 1884, she arrived in Brisbane on the 7 May 1885. Over the next few years the ship conducted survey work on the Great Barrier Reef for the Admiralty. The floods of February 1893 ripped Paluma from her moorings and left her well above the high water mark in the nearby botanical gardens. As locals considered how to return her to the Brisbane River another major flood just two weeks later refloated the gunboat and she was pulled clear. The depression of the 1890s saw Paluma and her sister in reserve, being reactivated for annual training at Easter.

With the federation of the Australian colonies, the gunboats joined the Commonwealth Naval Forces in 1901, and in 1911 both were integrated into the newly formed Royal Australian Navy. Paluma was employed mainly around Sydney Harbour during World War I, before being sold in 1916 to the Victorian Ports and Harbours Department who renamed her Rip. In 1948 she was retired, having been replaced the previous year by the converted Bathurst class corvette HMAS Whyalla. Paluma was scrapped in 1950-1951.

[edit] Class note

Paluma was a sister ship of HMQS Gayundah. They were known as Albert class gunboats after HMVS Albert which was also built in 1884 and served with the colony of Victoria, the Commonwealth Naval Forces and the Royal Australian Navy.