Diving Thoughts

Steven Schwankert is a diver and journalist based in Beijing. He has been along to SCDC’s Thursday night club night on a number of occasions, and gave a hugely entertaining talk on diving Lake Khovsgol in Mongolia. Around that time he had embarked on a new project which is just now coming to fruition. He was researching into the story of HMS Poseidon.

HMS Poseidon was a Royal Navy Parthian class submarine which sank after a collision on 9th June 1931, north of Weihai in Shandong province. In the first ever successful deployment of proto-scuba escape equipment, 6 of the 26 crew managed to get back to the surface after the sinking.

But wait… There’s more…

China secretly salvaged the submarine in 1972 and the final resting place of the remaining crew is unknown.

Steven has written a book – “The Real Poseidon Adventure: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine”, which should be published shortly. He has set up a Facebook group for people who are interested (from where I borrowed the photo above).

I’ll post more information about this as it becomes available. And if we’re lucky we might even get Steven along to give us another talk the next time he’s in Hong Kong.

HMS Victory was Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, but it was the 6th ship of that name to serve with the Royal Navy. Its predecessor was also a 100 gun ship of the line and was  launched in 1737. However it sank in 1744 in the western approaches to the English Channel with the loss of 1100 men, after hitting a major storm near the Channel Islands. Its topmast was washed up in Guernsey but until 2008 that was the last anyone had seen of her.

In 2008 the salvage company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, found the ship and is in negotiation with the UK’s Minstry of Defence (MOD) trying to come to an agreement to salvage the wreck in exchange for a cut of the profits.

Recently marine archaeologists have found a human skull and rib bones underneath a cannon on the wreck.It has not yet been decided if these should be recovered and then either re-interred, or studied.

Two cannons have been recovered from the wreck, a 12 pounder and a 42 pounder.

There is more information from the Guardian’s website, from which the above photo came.

The BBC website has a video of the wreck of the Centaur, an Australian World War 2 hospital ship. It sank in May 1943 with the loss of 268 lives after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

You can see the video on the BBC website.

The AHS Centaur, a hospital ship that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in May 1943 has been found near Brisbane in 2059m of water. There were 332 people on board when it was hit and only 64 survived. The wreck is located about 30 nautical miles east of the southern tip of Moreton Island. Filming of the wreck from an ROV is due to start in January according to David Mearns, the search director.

There are more details on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

William Lindesay OBE is presenting a lecture called “Great Wall Revisited” at The Royal Geographical Society – Hong Kong on Thursday 17 December 2009. Mr. Lindesay is the first person in modern times to walk the whole 2,500km length of the wall, in 1987, following in the footsteps of William Geil who published the first ever book on the wall in November 1909. Over the last 5 years, Mr. Lindesay has been comparing Mr. Weil’s wall of 100 years ago with the Wall today. He will be presenting photographs and commentary of this comparison.

The talk is at 2/F Olympic House, So Kong Po, Causeway Bay. Drinks Reception 6.30 pm; Lecture 7.30 pm

There are more details on the RGS – HK website.

Some of the relics from Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, are being shown for the first time. The warship sank in 1545 in the Solent and was raised in 1982. It is now in a drydock in Portsmouth’s historic dockyard. Volunteers are now attempting to raise the final GBP 4 Million that is needed to build a new museum which will allow the relics to be housed much nearer to the ship itself. Currently the Mary Rose museum is near the entrance to the historic dockyard, a long way from the drydock containing the vessel which is near HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar.

The Mary Rose itself is currently being sprayed continuously with polyetheylene glycol, which is a was-based solution. This is due to be completed in the next couple of years, and then the ship will be gradually dried.

There is more information on this plus a video on the BBC’s website.

In 1928, renowned Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, was on a Latham 47 flying boat which disappeared on its way to Spitzbergen. He was attempting an expedition to rescue Umberto Nobile, an Italian, whose airship had crashed on a return journey from the North Pole. He and the surviving crew were marooned on pack ice. No-one knows exactly what had happened, although the plane had flown into foggy conditions, and it’s possible they had to put down on the water, which may have been too rough for the flying boat.

Now an expedition is going to try and find the plane. They believe that the last radio message was received while the Latham 47 was 19 miles south of Bear Island. Two ships are going to search 45 square miles of seabed using state of the art technology. They hope to find the engines, as the rest of the plane was made mainly of perishable materials.

You can read more in this BBC article, from which the above photo was taken.

Last year a replica of a 16th century junk was built with the intention to demonstrate that Zheng He, China’s greatest admiral, could have reached North America nearly 600 years ago.  The Princess Taiping was 54 feet long and powered by cotton sails on three masts. It was built according to Ming dynasty specifications.

After a 10 month voyage from Taiwan to various ports on the US west coast, it sank 30 miles off Suao, a port in north-eastern Taiwan. All 11 crew were rescued. It was apparently hit by a freighter.

The Taiwanese captain describes himself as really ashamed for failing at the last minute. I find that a little harsh, since the chances of such a junk colliding with a freighter large enough to sink it 600 years ago is pretty remote. So as far as I’m concerned by getting from Taiwan to North America and within 30 miles of home, the team did demonstrate that Zheng He could have reached North America 600 years ago. The jury is still out on whether he actually did of course.

More from the BBC website, from which the above photo was taken.

The ongoing inquiry into the 1941 sinking of HMAS Sydney has concluded that a body which was washed up on Christmas Island in February 1942 came from the ship. It had drifted in a life raft called a Carley float for 3 months and is the only body to have been recovered. A theory for what happened to the others was raised ealier at the inquiry.

The body was buried on Christmas Island by a district officer, and there were doubts as to whether it was an Australian or a sailor. However it was exhumed in 2006 and forensically examined before being reburied with full military honours in Geraldton last year.

The examination of four press studs showed that they had the markings of “Ca Au”, which inducated they had been made by an Australian company. Fragments of textiles that were attached to the press studs indicated that he had been wearing a boiler suit of the type worn by Australian sailors.

The commissioner of inquiry into the sinking, Terence Cole, QC, found that the remains were those of a sailor from the HMAS Sydney. A fragment of metal taken from the skull contained manganese, chromium and silicon, all of which were used by Germany to produce armour piercing shells.

Here is a link to an article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Evidence from an inquiry into the sinking of HMAS Sydney in November 1941 contradicts a theory that crewmen were machine gunned in their life raft by men the German ship Kormoran.

All 645 men from the Sydney were lost. The theory grew up because one life raft was recovered by HMAS Helos shortly after the battle, and it had  a large number of holes in i. However expert witnesses have studied the 339 ruptures in the float and believe they were caused by shrapnel from a shell exploding rather than by bullets.  The damage came from a horizontal angle and was more likely to have happened when the raft was on the ship’s deck, whereas if they had been caused by bullets, the angles of entry would have been from the top. The metal that was recovered from the float also looks more likely to have come from the casing of a German shell than bullets.

This seems to vindicate the German survivors from the Kormoran, which also sank after the battle, who have always denied shooting Australian sailors after the Sydney went down.

HMAS Sydney was a light cruiser and was sunk on 19 November 1941 by the Kormoran, a German auxiliary cruiser. Last year both wrecks were  found off Western Australia.

You can read more about the inquiry from the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Mary Rose was built in Portsmouth in 1509-1510 and was one of the most powerful warships afloat in the Tudor era. She sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545, but was rediscovered and finally raised  in 1982. She now lies in a dry dock in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard, very close to Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory. There is also a museum about the ship, but this is half a mile away near the dockyard gates.

Now planning permission for a new GBP 35 million building has been granted, and this building will be built around the dock containing the ship.  Galleries shaped like the ship’s missing port side will be built and will hold items from the wreck displayed in their original context. Galleries at either end of the ship will contain other artefacts and exhibits. At the moment only 6% of the 19,000 artefacts from the ship are displayed, so a lot of items will be displayed for the first time.

Building work is expected to start in the autumn.

Last June we posted a story about an Elizabethan warship that had been found off Alderney dating from around 1592. Further research seems to be confirming some of the initial findings, that Elizabeth I’s navy was becoming more professional and effective. Tests seem to show that was carrying powerful cast iron guns of a uniform size, firing standard ammunition. This was in stark contrast to the Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, which carried a wide variety of different weapons, many of which had been designed for land warfare.

The Alderney wreck was a pinnace, which would have carried 12 cannon, two of which have been recovered. Using these, replicas have been built and tested, which seem to show that they were capable of throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. While the guns are relatively small, theywere powerful enough to hit a target up to a mile away. Although whether they were accurate enough is another question. However, at a more typical fighting distance of around 100 yards, they packed enough of a punch to have been able to penetrate the oak planks of a ship and go out the other side.

Elizabeth’s navy seems to have worked out that a lot of smaller guns all firing at once, was more effective than a few larger guns. Presumably there would also have been a significant benefit in standardising gun sizes and ammunition. Although drawing the conclusions about standardisation when they have only recovered 2 of the cannons, is perhaps a bit of a stretch.

There is a good article on this from the BBC website, along with video of the tests they carried out on one of the replica cannon.