Post by LSDeep on Mar 2, 2005 8:36:59 GMT -5
SYDNEY, Australia (28 Feb 2005) -- A team led by one of the world's leading shipwreck hunters, David Mearns, has set itself a deadline of August to find the wreck of HMAS Sydney.
Mearns has been researching the Sydney since 2003, but was hired this month by the Finding Sydney Foundation, a group of volunteers leading the latest search for the RAN ship sunk off Western Australia by a German raider in November 1941.
The foundation wants to find the wreck before the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II later this year.
There has been little progress in solving the mystery of the Sydney since a 1999 Senate inquiry into the disaster recommended a government-funded search. "It's about time we found it," the deputy chairman of the 1999 Senate inquiry, Roger Price, said yesterday. "I think it is a bit of a disgrace we have never mounted a major expedition nor ever found it. I was very disappointed that Australians had not held an inquiry earlier."
By the time the first official inquiry was launched in 1997, a "staggering 21.6 shelf kilometres" of documents relating to the Sydney had been collected by Australian Archives, the Senate report noted.
The inquiry called for the Federal Government to provide "not only moral support but also tangible assistance" of up to $2.1 million. The Finding Sydney Foundation has received nothing in government grants, although donations have been made tax deductible. The foundation has raised about $80,000 mainly from the mining and oil industries.
Dozens of searches for the Sydney - and the ship that sank it, the Kormoran - have failed. But Mearns believes he will succeed using the latest sonar technology and new details about the ship's final battle, as recorded by the Kormoran's captain, Theodor Detmers.
Among the German records of Kormoran survivors contained in the British Naval Historical Branch, Mearns found a box containing a typed, personal account of the battle by Detmers, in straight German, not coded. The account concurred with a second, 12-page coded account Mearns obtained from the personal collection of Maria Hehir, the daughter of Australian naval captain John Hehir, who interrogated Detmers while he was a prisoner of war in Australia.
Mearns had this decoded by Peter Hore, a former Royal Navy captain, linguist and author of HMAS Sydney II: The Cruiser and the controversy in the archives of the United Kingdom.
This decoding enabled Hore to correct crucial mistakes in earlier accounts of the disaster, says Mearns.
In Hamburg, Mearns tracked down a dictionary belonging to Detmers. The dictionary had a third account created by the secretive captain, encoded in dots underneath key letters. This account was also translated by Hore, and supported Mearns's ideas for where to concentrate the search.
"Captain Detmers's versions were nearly always identical, so I concluded he was always telling the truth," says Mearns. "No other shipwreck hunter has had so many vital clues [about the Sydney's resting place] before."
Mearns has located more than 20 sunken vessels and aircraft but is best known for discovering the pride of Britain's World War II fleet, HMS Hood, in the North Atlantic in 2001.
"Australia's HMAS Sydney is like the Hood, the pride of a nation's naval fleet which took more sailors to a watery grave than any other single shipwreck," he says . Britain's Hood lost 1415 crew while Australia's Sydney lost 645 - everyone on board.
Not everyone approves of the search. Patrick Burnett, son of the Sydney's captain, Joseph Burnett, has said he would prefer the wreck be left in peace. "I don't need any more closure, but I know that's a minority view and a lot of Sydney next-of-kin would feel it would be some sort of closure for them," Burnett said at an annual commemoration service in November 2003.
However, Mearns says finding the Hood gave thousands of English relatives closure. "I would like to perform the same service for Australian relatives of those who died on Sydney," he said on a visit to Sydney this month to finalise a contract with the foundation.
The pride of the RAN, the Sydney was a 7300-ton battle cruiser, with its crew drawn from all around the nation. The Sydney had sunk the enemy Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Mediterranean in 1940.
On November 19, 1941, the Kormoran - some reports say it was disguised as an unarmed merchant ship - sank the Sydney after a battle south-west of Carnarvon. The Kormoran was so badly damaged that it was scuttled, and 317 out of its 397 crew - including Detmers - rowed ashore in lifeboats.
The loss of the Sydney's crew was Australia's largest loss of life in a naval battle. There was no inquiry at the time and none in the years after the war.
"Sydney was seen drifting rather than sailing, and little more than a flaming hulk ... she gradually faded into the darkness, apparently making for Perth," says the Report on the Loss of HMAS Sydney, the result of a 1999 Senate inquiry.
Few items were ever found from the ship. One bullet-riddled life raft, known as a Carley float, with a decomposing body in it, washed ashore on Christmas Island in February 1942.
The corpse, dressed in a boilersuit, and missing the eyes, nose and right arm, could not be identified. The sailor, now buried on the island, was probably from the Sydney, the inquiry concluded.
A second life raft, empty and missing most of its wooden flooring, was found at sea soon after the Sydney sank. It is now in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Despite a range of expeditions, seminars, books and official and non-official inquiries, the Sydney's final hours remain one of Australia's greatest mysteries.
Some believe the ship was blown up during the battle, killing all crew. Others say the ship dragged most of the life rafts down with it. Some say the German crew machine-gunned survivors in the water before Kormoran sank (an allegation strongly denied by German survivors).
Even if the Sydney is found, it's not certain that there will be any answers.
The search will concentrate on a 1400-square kilometre area below the co-ordinates of 111 east and 26 south, about 290 kilometres south-west of Carnarvon. Most previous searches have been south of this area.
The wreck would be in deep water - "2200 metres down at best, or 3800 metres at worst", says Mearns. But even at the greatest depths the task is not impossible, he says.
Mearns lays claim to finding one of the deepest wrecks, the SS Rio Grande, a German blockade runner sunk by US naval ships in 1944. Discovered in 1996, the Rio Grande lay on the floor of the South Atlantic at a depth of 5762 metres. "The [Sydney] wreck is nowhere as deep as Rio Grande," he says.
Mearns also believes his research will lead to the location of the Sydney's adversary.
"Detmers's information has also provided vital clues for the location of his own ship, Kormoran, and I cannot really find Sydney unless I also find Kormoran," he says.
The expedition plans to use a state-of-the-art deeptow search sonar that can cover up to 90 square nautical miles per day.
Such equipment doesn't come cheap. The entire expedition will cost about $4 million, assuming suitable equipment is available in Australia.
If found, the wreck site would be protected "as the final resting place of so many Australian servicemen" under recommendations by the 1999 Senate inquiry.
Mearns and his team have no plans to touch either the wreck of the Sydney or the Kormoran. He would lower a memorial plaque containing the 645 names of its crew onto the deck of HMAS Sydney.
Sydney Morning Herald
Mearns has been researching the Sydney since 2003, but was hired this month by the Finding Sydney Foundation, a group of volunteers leading the latest search for the RAN ship sunk off Western Australia by a German raider in November 1941.
The foundation wants to find the wreck before the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II later this year.
There has been little progress in solving the mystery of the Sydney since a 1999 Senate inquiry into the disaster recommended a government-funded search. "It's about time we found it," the deputy chairman of the 1999 Senate inquiry, Roger Price, said yesterday. "I think it is a bit of a disgrace we have never mounted a major expedition nor ever found it. I was very disappointed that Australians had not held an inquiry earlier."
By the time the first official inquiry was launched in 1997, a "staggering 21.6 shelf kilometres" of documents relating to the Sydney had been collected by Australian Archives, the Senate report noted.
The inquiry called for the Federal Government to provide "not only moral support but also tangible assistance" of up to $2.1 million. The Finding Sydney Foundation has received nothing in government grants, although donations have been made tax deductible. The foundation has raised about $80,000 mainly from the mining and oil industries.
Dozens of searches for the Sydney - and the ship that sank it, the Kormoran - have failed. But Mearns believes he will succeed using the latest sonar technology and new details about the ship's final battle, as recorded by the Kormoran's captain, Theodor Detmers.
Among the German records of Kormoran survivors contained in the British Naval Historical Branch, Mearns found a box containing a typed, personal account of the battle by Detmers, in straight German, not coded. The account concurred with a second, 12-page coded account Mearns obtained from the personal collection of Maria Hehir, the daughter of Australian naval captain John Hehir, who interrogated Detmers while he was a prisoner of war in Australia.
Mearns had this decoded by Peter Hore, a former Royal Navy captain, linguist and author of HMAS Sydney II: The Cruiser and the controversy in the archives of the United Kingdom.
This decoding enabled Hore to correct crucial mistakes in earlier accounts of the disaster, says Mearns.
In Hamburg, Mearns tracked down a dictionary belonging to Detmers. The dictionary had a third account created by the secretive captain, encoded in dots underneath key letters. This account was also translated by Hore, and supported Mearns's ideas for where to concentrate the search.
"Captain Detmers's versions were nearly always identical, so I concluded he was always telling the truth," says Mearns. "No other shipwreck hunter has had so many vital clues [about the Sydney's resting place] before."
Mearns has located more than 20 sunken vessels and aircraft but is best known for discovering the pride of Britain's World War II fleet, HMS Hood, in the North Atlantic in 2001.
"Australia's HMAS Sydney is like the Hood, the pride of a nation's naval fleet which took more sailors to a watery grave than any other single shipwreck," he says . Britain's Hood lost 1415 crew while Australia's Sydney lost 645 - everyone on board.
Not everyone approves of the search. Patrick Burnett, son of the Sydney's captain, Joseph Burnett, has said he would prefer the wreck be left in peace. "I don't need any more closure, but I know that's a minority view and a lot of Sydney next-of-kin would feel it would be some sort of closure for them," Burnett said at an annual commemoration service in November 2003.
However, Mearns says finding the Hood gave thousands of English relatives closure. "I would like to perform the same service for Australian relatives of those who died on Sydney," he said on a visit to Sydney this month to finalise a contract with the foundation.
The pride of the RAN, the Sydney was a 7300-ton battle cruiser, with its crew drawn from all around the nation. The Sydney had sunk the enemy Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Mediterranean in 1940.
On November 19, 1941, the Kormoran - some reports say it was disguised as an unarmed merchant ship - sank the Sydney after a battle south-west of Carnarvon. The Kormoran was so badly damaged that it was scuttled, and 317 out of its 397 crew - including Detmers - rowed ashore in lifeboats.
The loss of the Sydney's crew was Australia's largest loss of life in a naval battle. There was no inquiry at the time and none in the years after the war.
"Sydney was seen drifting rather than sailing, and little more than a flaming hulk ... she gradually faded into the darkness, apparently making for Perth," says the Report on the Loss of HMAS Sydney, the result of a 1999 Senate inquiry.
Few items were ever found from the ship. One bullet-riddled life raft, known as a Carley float, with a decomposing body in it, washed ashore on Christmas Island in February 1942.
The corpse, dressed in a boilersuit, and missing the eyes, nose and right arm, could not be identified. The sailor, now buried on the island, was probably from the Sydney, the inquiry concluded.
A second life raft, empty and missing most of its wooden flooring, was found at sea soon after the Sydney sank. It is now in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Despite a range of expeditions, seminars, books and official and non-official inquiries, the Sydney's final hours remain one of Australia's greatest mysteries.
Some believe the ship was blown up during the battle, killing all crew. Others say the ship dragged most of the life rafts down with it. Some say the German crew machine-gunned survivors in the water before Kormoran sank (an allegation strongly denied by German survivors).
Even if the Sydney is found, it's not certain that there will be any answers.
The search will concentrate on a 1400-square kilometre area below the co-ordinates of 111 east and 26 south, about 290 kilometres south-west of Carnarvon. Most previous searches have been south of this area.
The wreck would be in deep water - "2200 metres down at best, or 3800 metres at worst", says Mearns. But even at the greatest depths the task is not impossible, he says.
Mearns lays claim to finding one of the deepest wrecks, the SS Rio Grande, a German blockade runner sunk by US naval ships in 1944. Discovered in 1996, the Rio Grande lay on the floor of the South Atlantic at a depth of 5762 metres. "The [Sydney] wreck is nowhere as deep as Rio Grande," he says.
Mearns also believes his research will lead to the location of the Sydney's adversary.
"Detmers's information has also provided vital clues for the location of his own ship, Kormoran, and I cannot really find Sydney unless I also find Kormoran," he says.
The expedition plans to use a state-of-the-art deeptow search sonar that can cover up to 90 square nautical miles per day.
Such equipment doesn't come cheap. The entire expedition will cost about $4 million, assuming suitable equipment is available in Australia.
If found, the wreck site would be protected "as the final resting place of so many Australian servicemen" under recommendations by the 1999 Senate inquiry.
Mearns and his team have no plans to touch either the wreck of the Sydney or the Kormoran. He would lower a memorial plaque containing the 645 names of its crew onto the deck of HMAS Sydney.
Sydney Morning Herald