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.
Read more about this topic: HMAS Pioneer
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow’s morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)