HMAS Pioneer - Decommissioning and Fate

Decommissioning and Fate

Pioneer was ordered to return to Australia on 8 August 1916, and was paid off on 7 November 1916. Despite being "obsolete and decrepit" she saw more actual combat than any other Australian ship of World War I. Pioneer returned to Garden Island and was used as an accommodation vessel until 1922. She was handed to Cockatoo Island Dockyard for stripping in May 1923, was passed to the control of the Commonwealth Shipping Board in 1924, who then sold the hulk to H. P. Stacey of Sydney, in 1926. The ship was scuttled off Sydney Heads on 18 February 1931.

Following a reorganisation of the RAN battle honours system, completed in March 2010, Pioneer was retroactively awarded the honour "German East Africa 1915–16" in recognistion of her wartime service.