KGS 'Komet'
Kaiserliches Gouvernement Schiff (Imperial Government Ship)
The Governor's Yacht, German New Guinea 1914
German Naval officers with their native crew on the Governor's Yacht Komet
The 977 ton German Government steam yacht KGS Komet was built in Bremerhaven in 1911 and dispatched to German New Guinea as an administrative vessel for the protectorate. She was based at Rabaul on the island of New Britain and fitted out in a luxurious manner for the use of senior German staff.
When war was declared in August 1914 she was at Morobe New Guinea having transported the German acting Governor Dr Eduard Haber there on a visit of inspection. Having narrowly avoided interception en route by the Australian squadron she was able to return to New Britain landing Haber at Herbertshohe near Rabaul.
The Komet was then placed by Haber at the disposal of Admiral von Spee's German fleet and used as a supply vessel to the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Freidrich until late September. As Rabaul had been captured by Australian forces and British ships were known to be in the area, she then sought refuge at a remote location on the north coast of New Britain which became unofficially known as 'Komethafen' (Komet Harbour).
Her presence here was reported to the Australian administrator in Rabaul and at dawn on October 11 HMAS Nusa, an armed yacht which had itself been captured from the Germans some weeks earlier, surprised and captured the Komet. Her crew of 5 Germans and 52 native sailors were removed and the vessel sent to Sydney for refitting.
Following this refit she served with the Royal Australian Navy as HMAS Una. As the Una she served in the islands until 1924 when she was privately sold and renamed the Akuna. The Akuna again served with the RAN during the Second World War until late 1943 when she was returned to her owner. The Akuna was broken up in 1959.
Carl Moeller
The Komet replaces the Seestern which was lost at sea.
Karl Georg Otto Moeller Born 8th of December of the year 1862 Sometime in the 1890s he was a career officer in the North German Lloyd, with a commission in the Naval Reserve, when he heard of a post In the German Colonial Service.
A ships’ master was needed to captain the Governor’s yacht in the South Seas. If every man has his own idea of Heaven. In the end it was a paradise lost, but he had the best part of 20 years of it, and lived on the memory.
He was a romantic man as well as a practical one, and he took to the environment as a salmon takes to its home river. The yacht was, of course, a steam yacht, white painted and graceful with a clipper bow and a raking yellow funnel, and was named Seestern - literally Starfish. Based in Rabaul off New Guinea, she carried the Governor, supplies, mail, missionaries, police and occasionally horses from island to island among the German territories. Once or twice a year there was a trip to Sydney for stores, or to Singapore - about the same distance.
He had a crew of Kanakas with three or four white officers and he ran a happy ship. He loved his "blackfellows” as he called them, admired and trusted them. Sometime in 1909 Carl went on extended leave and handed over command of Seestern to his first officer. She had no radio. Perhaps it was the typhoon season. She sailed over the horizon and was never heard of again. There were no sightings, no wreckage. Nothing. It can still happen in the Pacific, even now.
He must have been near heartbroken, not only for his friends and crew but for his ship. She was his first command, his first real love. He used to say, that she had a dangerously open freeboard that had caused him concern when he brought her through the Indian Ocean. I think for the rest of his life he wondered what had happened to her, and when, and how.
Months of waiting followed, and then he was Instructed to take passage home to Germany. A new yacht was being laid down on the stocks at Wilhelmshaven. He was to oversee her building and commissioning and bring her out. Read more at wrecksite: https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?56296