The name does not refer to the modern nation state of Malaysia, but its original usage comes from an early 19th Century French geographer Jules Dumont d’Urville’s name for the East Indies (1826). In the context of the First World War naval operations, the Malaysia Patrol was initially carried out by a combined force of Australian, British, French and Japanese ships in August and early September 1914. They were searching for ships of the German East Asia Squadron operating out of a base in Tsingtao, China. This squadron commanded by Admiral Graf von Spee included the cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau and the light cruiser SMS Emden. These and other capital ships and armed merchantmen were operating in the area of Dutch and British East Indies colonies. Further patrols were carried out in East Indies waters by RAN destroyers in 1915 through to early 1917. From February 1915, HMA Ships Torrens, Swan and Huon were based at Sandakan in North Borneo and patrolled the waters around British Malaya in the modern-day Malacca Strait and the Philippines before sailing to the Mediterranean in May 1917. Several other RAN vessels were involved in patrolling these East Indies waters at various times, including HMAS Una and HMAS Fantome.
