A RETIRED Southport construction worker has uncovered his link to one of the greatest maritime mysteries of World War I involving the loss of the Australian Navy’s first submarine the AF1 while researching his family tree.

John Stoker, from Southport, is now an active member of a group trying to persuade the Australian Government to mount a well-resourced search for the submarine, AE1, which sank without trace on September 15, 1914, and has never been found.

The AE1 was captained by Liverpool man Thomas Besant, who Mr Stoker believes deserves greater recognition from the city of his birth.

A total of 35 crewmen – made up of an equal number of Australians and English – were lost when the submarine went down during the campaign to seize the colony of German New Guinea, now Papua New Guinea.

It failed to return from a patrol to guard against heavy German warships which could have disrupted the Australian seizure of the colony’s German communications station.

The AE1, which was on loan to the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), was one of a group ordered by the fledgling RAN service from Britain and built at Barrow-in-Furness.

The missing submarine remains the Australian Navy’s greatest maritime mystery because no trace of the submarine or its missing crew was ever found.

It was the first Australian naval loss of the war and the first submarine ever to be sunk on the Allies’ side.

Mr Stoker’s interest in the mystery was sparked when he discovered the captain of the AE1’s sister submarine, AE2, was his distant cousin Henry Stoker.