HMAS Sydney remains - Handle with Care

By Carmelo Amalfi
Shipwreck experts say human remains are not expected to have survived the ravages of time, pressure and seawater since HMAS Sydney sank off the WA coast in 1941.
A close-up survey of the World War Two wreck is planned once cyclonic conditions in more northern waters clear up over the next few days.
If skeletal material still exists at the wreck site off Shark Bay, it probably will be beyond camera view, inside compartments or rooms buried in the wreck's twisted remains discovered in 2.5km of water.
Underwater video will only be able to survey the outside of the damaged wreck, the first images expected to be available by next week.
Any remains identified at Australia's newest war grave will be left to the sea - the Federal Government having placed protection zones around the wrecks of both the Sydney and German raider HSK Kormoran.
How they will be managed will differ greatly when compared to other wreck sites such as Batavia's Graveyard off Geraldton. Or should it?
In Sydney's case, the issue is closer to home whereas the Dutch ship was wrecked in the Abrolhos in 1629, affecting fewer people.
Shipwreck archaeologists and historians say any Sydney remains should be treated no differently to those found on other shipwrecks including Batavia or Titanic - with respect and care, particularly during excavations and exhumations on land.
At sea, the same treatment should apply, the Sydney discoverers having stated there are no plans to touch the broken ship.
HMAS Sydney was found about 12 nautical miles from Kormoran and eight nautical miles from the scene of the fiery battle on November 19, 1941.
Most of Kormoran's sailors survived the encounter while Sydney's entire 645 crew perished, except possibly a Sydney sailor whose liferaft reached Christmas Island about three months after the sinking off the Gascoyne coast.
The Australian light cruiser was discovered this month, its largely intact hull resting upright in deep water about 112 nautical miles west of Shark Bay.
The sea at these depths is cruel to such shipwrecks, its internal structure disintegrating as chemistry, temperature, currents and great pressures take their toll over time.
And it is no less obliging to human souls and the cultural artefacts they carry.
WA Maritime Museum conservator Ian MacLeod said it was highly unlikely human remains would be found on Sydney. Inside the ship, it could be a different picture.
He said bacteria and sea life would have quickly broken down the bodies of the dead sailors and most of the belongings they had on them when the ship sank.
The sea did the rest, dissolving the calcium carbonate in bones as the temperature dropped in the face of crushing pressures. This made bone unstable.
Dr MacLeod, the executive director of collection management and conservation, said skeletal material has been found on other wrecks, including Titanic, Batavia and Mary Rose.
In 1993, when some of the first material was brought up from the Titanic, Dr MacLeod was asked to inspect it and recommend ways of conserving objects which had not seen the light of day in 81 years.
Dr MacLeod recalls handling a 1911 copy of the Sydney Sun newspaper: "It wasn't the paper, but a page of it. It was used to wrap kangaroo skins one of the passengers was taking back to the United States to start a new export business."
Tom Lewis, editor of Australian Warship, explains in the latest issue of the magazine published before the HMAS Sydney wreck was found, that no remains will be found because there would be no compartment of Sydney left unflooded under the extreme sea pressures.
"The ship will be open fully to the sea, and it is almost certain human remains will not be present," Dr Lewis writes.
"Paper disappears, breaking up, eaten by fish. Wood becomes porous and crumbles. Bones are corroded by salt water and remains are dispersed by tide and fish.
"This takes a comparatively short time."
Dr MacLeod said how wrecks such as Sydney are managed often is determined by ethical and legal standards applied to artefacts discovered on wrecks.
Human remains usually complicate the issue, particularly if they are found on more younger wrecks.
Studying remains of Roman sailors will affect people differently than those which turn out to be from victims of the Batavia and Titanic tragedies.
The loss of Sydney's men continues to be felt deeply, nearly 67 years after the naval nightmare off WA.
How the sea grave will be managed will depend largely on the hopes and wishes of families and friends who now have a place to point to and honour.
To visit, if they can, the final resting place of loved ones.

Copyright 2008

DNA hopes to identify "Unknown Sailor" from HMAS Sydney

By Carmelo Amalfi
The Federal Government wants relatives of 13 HMAS Sydney crew members, including two canteen workers and two British sailors, to provide DNA samples as a way of identifying Australia's "Unknown Sailor".
The badly decomposed body of the young sailor, possibly one of two or more Royal Australian Navy sailors to have survived the 1941 battle off Carnarvon, was carried in a bullet-ridden liferaft that washed ashore three months after the November 19 battle with Kormoran.
Residents buried the remains in an unmarked grave on Christmas Island (shown here in this Sydney Morning Herald image) after an autopsy was held on the island.
After several unsuccessful attempts to find the grave, searchers funded by the Federal Government returned to the island in 2006 and exhumed the remains of what they now believe to be a sailor from Sydney.
According to analyses so far, it appears the sailor who was tall for the time suffered horrific head wounds when he struggled onto the life raft, possibly with a second sailor whose identity is marked on a single shoe.
The 1999 Senate Committee report to Parliament on the ship's loss concluded: " ... on the balance of probability, that the body and the Carley float found off the shore of Christmas Island in February 1942 were most likely from HMAS Sydney".
Dressed in a bleached blue boiler suit, the corpse had its arms outstretched and the flesh stripped from its face. The lower portion of the sailor's body was in water which had collected in the raft during its three-month journey north. The sailor's right arm was partly eaten off and a small crab found inside its mouth during the 1942 autopsy on Christmas Island.
The bullet or pieces of shrapnel in his skull was overlooked. The parliamentary inquiry heard that Christmas Island harbourmaster Reg Smith, who recovered the sailor's corpse, noted the carley float had a bullet hole in its wooden decking while remains of another were found in the kapok filling.
Smith apparently kept one of these bullets on his watch chain but his wife, who died in Perth several years ago, did not recall him wearing it.
The sailor's remains were buried in a purpose-built coffin on Christmas Island after a solemn ceremony and military escort by a few volunteers including a Sikh policeman who sounded the Last Post.
The 2006 search for the sailor’s grave turned up an odd-shaped coffin that measured about 1.2m by 980mm by 500mm deep.
With the threat of a Japanese invasion, Captain Smith sailed to Perth with the autopsy report and part of the Carley float - both of which were destroyed or lost after they were handed over to naval authorities.
The Christmas Island searchers had just about given up hope in 2006 when, "virtually the last thrust of a crowbar caught the edge of the coffin".
The first discovery was an ankle bone then a skull lying face down with the hands underneath the body. It was in a foetal position, explaining the odd shape of the coffin and condition of the corpse at the time of burial.
The rusty press-studs, timber and nails from the coffin have been analysed by experts at the University of Sydney and Australian War Memorial. The bullet and shrapnel holes in the navy-issue float suggest the unknown sailor was from HMAS Sydney.
A canvas topped shoe which was stamped Australian Government issue and bearing the name McGowan or McEwen was also found in the raft. Both were seamen on the Sydney. The shoe did not belong to the corpse.
The identity search has eliminated 500 Sydney crew members based on dental records and historical and physical anthropological
research.
This left nearly 150 crew members who have not been excluded on scientific grounds. To reduce this number to a manageable level, the outcomes of analyses conducted on artefacts found with the remains in the grave have been considered.
Australian War Memorial analysis of cloth fragments caught within press-studs suggested the sailor was buried wearing white coveralls. Initial historical research concluded that the sailor was most likely to be an officer or warrant officer (they were entitled to wear white coveralls), but DNA testing showed this may not be the case.
The DNA search will focus on the 11 officers and warrant officers who have not been excluded on dental or anthropological grounds. Two civilian canteen workers also will be considered as potential matches.
Work is underway to locate surviving relatives of these 13 crew members.
Ballistics analysis on the remains has ruled out speculation the sailor was shot in the head by German sailors in motorised boats. Former Minister Assisting the Defence Minister, Bruce Bilson, said the tests revealed the fragment was probably a piece of shrapnel: "That examination reveals it's not a small calibre fire-arm round as was originally thought after visual and X-ray assessment. It looks more like a fragment from munition, a piece of shrapnel embedded in the skull of the victim."
He said that a number of German survivors reported significant shrapnel injuries: "That may be the case with these remains, but we're carrying out further examination of the metal itself to see if we can match the metal to other kinds of metal held from the event or from munitions at the time."
The 13 crew members DNA experts want to sample include:
* Sub-Lieutenant James Irvine CLIFTON, RAN, born 7 November 1916, WA
* Lieutenant Thomas Garton BROWN, RAN, born 22 January 1920, NSW
* Lieutenant Eric Elton MAYO, RAN, born 28 July 1912, SA
* Lieutenant Robert Ernest RIDOUT, RAN, born 4 September 1914, VIC
* Surgeon Lieutenant Mervyn Clive TOWNSEND, RAN, born 5 February 1917, VIC
* Lieutenant Ian Thomas Roy TRELOAR, RAN, born 10 April 1919, VIC
* Schoolmaster Percy Francis SKEWES, RAN, born 28 November 1914, QLD
* Sub-Lieutenant Alexander Vinrace EAGAR, RAN, born 13 March 1917, QLD
* Lieutenant Commander Michael Morgan SINGER, RN, DOB 5 Dec 1909, UK
* Warrant Officer Gunner Frank Leslie MACDONALD, RN, UK
* Flying Officer Raymond Barker BARREY, RAAF, born 23 July 1916, SA
* Salvatore ZAMMITT, canteen manager, family believed to be in Sydney
* Samuel PSAILA, canteen assistant, no other details
Anyone with knowledge of the whereabouts of surviving family members of the above HMAS Sydney crew are urged to make contact with the Christmas Island Investigation Team by email on xmasisland.generalenquiries@defence.gov.au, or by letter to: Christmas Island Investigation Team, R1-4-C070, Russell Offices, Canberra, ACT, 2600.

"There are probably very few parents of sailors who were lost on HMAS Sydney who are still surviving, but there are many wives, children, brothers, sisters and other relatives who are. They are part of the Sydney family, and most would wish to know the identity of the sailor on Christmas Island." - ex-Melbourne magistrate and HMAS Sydney researcher Ted McGowan, whose older brother Tom celebrated his 21st birthday the day before Sydney's loss.

Copyright 2008

Loaded pistol survives 1941 Sydney-Kormoran battle encased in coral

By Carmelo Amalfi
In the days following the loss of HMAS Sydney and its 645 crew off Carnarvon, a German survivor of the World War Two naval disaster, in one of two crowded lifeboats approaching "enemy territory", threw his loaded pistol into the surf at Red Bluff.
Only a few rounds were missing from the officer's wooden handled weapon. Settling on the bottom in the week after the sinking of the Australian light cruiser and German raider HSK Kormoran on November 19, 1941, the palm-sized handgun lay undisturbed until last year.
Few artefacts survived the battle, including a bullet-ridden carley float, life vest and possible human remains of a Sydney sailor whose liferaft reached Christmas Island in 1942.
Amazingly, a young Geraldton electrician stumbled across the coral-encrusted gun while he searched for fishing lures in just a few metres of water about 50m from the shore.
"I was diving on the reefs when I spotted a row of brass bullets glittering in the water," Tom Goddard, 20, said after the chance find.
"They were all lined up. I went down and cleaned away the rocks and sand and there was a whole pistol. I couldn't believe it."
Wanting to keep the maritime treasure in public hands, Tom contacted WA Maritime Museum archaeologists and gun experts who returned to inspect the site.
The detailed investigation since then has yielded a national maritime treasure and one of only a handful of artefacts recovered after the HMAS Sydney loss.
WA Museum archaeologist Mike McCarthy said the 1934 model handgun was issued to officers in the Kriegsmarine or German Navy.
Thought at first to be the larger Luger pistol, the Fremantle team confirmed the remains as those of a mauser, usually carried by German navy officers. It fired eight bullets.
Fragments of wood used in the handle of the smaller weapon also were recovered from the Red Bluff site.
"The German Navy-issue gun was much smaller than a Luger," Mr McCarthy said. "The mauser was something a navy officer would carry in his pocket, rather than in a holster."
He said Kormoran officers would have carried the pistol to keep order on the crowded life boats heading for the Gascoyne coast. Some sailors, who were forced to take turns standing up, tried to jump overboard. Its other use included keeping at bay hungry sharks.
"Officers from Kormoran carried the handgun," he said. "In this case it was probably used to maintain discipline on the lifeboats after the loss of Sydney.
"It is a national treasure for both Australia and Germany."
Most of Kormoran's nearly 400 crew were either rescued at sea or taken prisoners of war once they reached WA. Two lifeboats reached the coast on November 25. One carried 46 survivors to Red Bluff and the other 57 to 17-Mile Well.
Mr McCarthy said the Red Bluff find had also yielded an unexpected surprise - a second German gun.
While investigating the origins of the mauser, the museum was alerted to the discovery of a Luger many years earlier from the 17 Mile Well site. Only a photograph of the Luger survives, confirming its existence, the gun probably destroyed by police authorities.
Other artefacts from Kormoran included a life belt, flashes and a set of keys.
One of the Kormoran survivors, Fritz List, reportedly hid a Leica still camera with images of the HMAS Sydney battle in the caves at Red Bluff. No trace of it has been found despite several searches.
Interestingly, the owner of the mauser can be corroborated by Kormoran eyewitnesses and Australian authorities such as former Victorian POW guard Jonathon Robotham, who interviewed some of the Kormoran prisoners.
Kormoran survivor Fritz Englemann, who visited WA in 2001, also confirmed the identity of the German gun owner.
"Robotham talks about the mauser having been thrown into the water by the lifeboat's lieutenant-commander, Bret Schneider," Mr McCarthy said.
"Fritz Englemann confirmed it was Schneider. He said he saw the lifeboat commander ditch it in the water when they landed at Red Bluff."
Museum conservator and trained warrant officer Dick Garcia said that Mr Goddard had been careful to remember where he found the pistol.
He said photographs of the remains on the seabed gave the team a good picture of the shape of the gun stock and material it was made from.
The corroded remains of the firing pin spring also survived its underwater coral entombment.
The butts of the well-preserved bullets (copper and brass are highly resistant to underwater corrosion) revealed the German war factory that made them.
A report on the museum team's gun analysis has been sent to experts at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Copyright 2008

Last letter from a lost HMAS Sydney sailor

"The Indian Ocean has seen quite a bit of us or else it is the other way round but so long as we are on top is all that we worry about. At the moment, we are waiting for an enemy ship to show up." HMAS Sydney sailor Ernest David Rolley, 21.


By Carmelo Amalfi
A LETTER posted by a HMAS Sydney steward before disappearing off WA on November 19, 1941, offers a poignant reminder of why the ship's discovery was worth the 66-year effort to find the World War Two wreck.
Stuffed inside a teapot until its discovery a few years ago, the handwritten letter by Ernest David Rolley, 21, is a rare snapshot, not into where to possibly find the wreck, but that moment when the Queensland-born sailor found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A casualty of Australia's worst naval disaster. One of 645 sailors who never came home.
Ernest joined HMAS Sydney only after his ship, the coastal defender Cerberus, sailed while he was attending his mum's funeral on March 12, 1941.
He would not have been on Sydney.
But by Easter of 1941, the third of four sons from Herberton in Far North Queensland who worked in Brisbane as a hotel and "picture theatre" worker was sailing west on escort duties that would bring him face to face with the German raider Kormoran, whose wreckage was found about 12 nautical miles from Sydney's remains.
The steward thanks Nancy Francis, president of the Returned Soldiers, Sailors and Airman’s Imperial League (now Returned and Services League) for her postal note or money order he received, "the last time in harbour".
Miss Francis' grand-daughter Ros Fielding inherited the letter in the teapot after her father died several years ago.
"It was all wrapped up and put into a box, which I almost threw out," she said from her home near Townsville. "We used a lot of teapots then."
Having served in the Army, the former radio operator and Australian spy said she realised the correspondence could be important, and passed it on to friend Mary Hilbig, a volunteer at North Queensland Military Aviation Museum who contacted the WA Maritime Museum in Fremantle.
Rolley's brother Stan, who lives near Brisbane, said his older brother by nine years was posted to HMAS Sydney on April 7, 1941: "He had been on Cerberus since September 1940. When my mum died, he returned to Herberton for the funeral, and missed Cerberus, which had sailed."
Stan said he couldn't believe it when his older brother's letter turned up in Ros' teapot: "It had been around for more than 60 years. "Luckily, Nancy Francis' family did not throw it out."
Wes Olsen, WA author of Bitter Victory: the Death of HMAS Sydney, said Rolley's letter provided a personal chronology leading up to the tragic loss of HMAS Sydney.
"The letter is an important reminder that HMAS Sydney's sailors, who lost their lives protecting Australia, had hopes and dreams," Mr Olsen said.
"Rolley talks about mundane things, the weather and his long time at sea."
HMAS Sydney left Sydney on April 11, 1941. By Easter Sunday on April 13, the ship was, as Rolley writes, at sea and headed for Fremantle via the Great Australian Bight.
Admiral Ragnar Colvin, Chief of Australian Navy Staff, also was on board, bound for an American-British-Dutch defence meeting in Singapore.
"Rolley notes a change in temperature," Mr Olsen explains. "From the bitter cold which probably refers to the passage through the Bight and the heat of the tropics in Singapore."
Rolley says one week it is bitter cold and miserable and the next, "it is just the opposite, we can't get cool". HMAS Sydney arrived in Singapore on April 19, where it stayed for three days before reaching Fremantle on April 27 for maintenance and training work.
Mr Olsen said this would have been the best opportunity for Rolley to post his letter to Miss Francis and the Women's Auxiliary in Queensland.
Rolley also says that the Indian Ocean, "has seen quite a bit of us or else it is the other way around but so long as we are on top is all that we worry about".
Asked which enemy ship Rolley refers to, Mr Olsen said it was not Kormoran. Both Sydney and Kormoran were believed to have sunk each other about 120km west of the Gascoyne coast, off Shark Bay.
By the time the Sydney sailed into the Bight towards Fremantle port, Kormoran was rounding the Cape of Good Hope having sunk seven ships and captured one in the Atlantic before running into Sydney.
Mr Olsen said HMAS Sydney was after the German battleship Admiral Scheer which entered the Indian Ocean in February 1941.
HMAS Sydney Captain John Collins, who was replaced by Captain Joseph Burnett on May 17, wanted to sink the Scheer with the combined might of HMAS Australia and HMAS Hobart.
He said the only raider naval authorities were aware of at that stage was the deadly auxiliary cruiser Atlantis, which left Australia for the Pacific in August until it finally met its match against HMS Devonshire off Ascension Island in the Atlantic on November 22, two days after HMAS Sydney sank off WA.
"There was no other threat except Scheer and enemy merchant raiders," he said. "Sydney was here protecting Australia's shipping routes."
WA Maritime Museum archaeologist Mike McCarthy said Rolley's letter was one of many written by members of Sydney's crew.
"It is one of the most interesting accounts confirming HMAS Sydney's state of readiness," he said.
"The letter is extremely important, carrying references both to the desire to remain afloat being all that was important to this young sailor and to their waiting to sink an elusive enemy ship."

Ode to the HMAS Sydney

Ode to the HMAS Sydney

T'was Banjo who did wrote it, and to you I will quote it
No foe shall gather our harvest, nor sit on our stock yard rail
Now this is a tale of the ocean blue, of an Aussie vessel brave and true
The HMAS Sydney and the boys that didn't fail
- Alexander Fullarton 2001 (full poem below)

Carnarvon commemorates Sydney discovery

By Carmelo Amalfi
On St Patrick's Day this year, WA solar farmer and taxation lawyer Lex Fullarton shared a quiet beer with his late father, Z Force commando and Carnarvon's longest serving public servant Robert Francis, or "Bob" to his friends and family.
It was the 11th anniversary of his dad's death and the day Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the discovery of HMAS Sydney off Shark Bay.
For Lex, it was a day to celebrate and commemorate.
Lex says "Bob" never stopped talking about the day German survivors of the Sydney battle landed on the coast in lifeboats, having later taking leave without pay from Carnarvon's harbour and lights department to go on suicide missions in the South West Pacific.
He says Carnarvon played an important yet largely unrecognised role in the HMAS Sydney story in the days and weeks following the naval disaster on November 19, 1941.
That role extends to the discovery last week of the Sydney and Kormoran wrecks.
He says Carnarvon was drawn into the wartime mystery after members of the rifle club, including his father, acting as emergency reservists under the Defence Act of 1908, rounded up the German survivors of HSK Kormoran at Red Bluff and 17-Mile Well.
His 19-year-old father was in the armed posse sent to Red Bluff.
Their orders were to guard the eyewitnesses to Sydney's disappearance until military authorities arrived to truck survivors south to be interrogated in Perth and later the eastern States until their repatriation to Germany after the war.
"The Germans were found in good shape, killing a sheep at Quobba station," Lex said exclusively for this blogsite.
The Kormoran survivors landed in two lifeboats, those landing at Red Bluff apologising to late Quobba station owner Keith Baston for killing one of his sheep for food.
They were taken into custody by local police sergeant Stan Anderson and Dr J.W. Piccles, who wanted to know why more guns were needed to bring in the German "aliens".
"What do you want more men for? You've got me," Dr Piccles tells Sgt Anderson, the 1941 exchange recorded by leading HMAS Sydney author Barbara Winter in her 1984 book on the ship's loss.
Lex said extra information about the 1941 beach confrontation emerged in 2001 when he met Kormoran survivor Fritz Englemann, who visited Carnarvon during the Fremantle Maritime Museum wreck seminar that laid the foundations for the search for and discovery last week of the Sydney and Kormoran wrecks.
Lex, 52, learnt from Fritz that a few Nazi Party members who came ashore wanted to overpower the Australians then make their way north, possibly rejoining other Kormoran survivors.
That is, until they ran into Bob and his ".303".
"My father started to raise his rifle but Arthur Snook, (of Gascoyne Trading which provided trucks to transport the POWs), spoke German and welcomed them to Australia. It was a bit of a stand-off, but Snook convinced them to give it up."
Lex said his father was a "dead eye", earning the reputation as one of the finest shots in the Australian army.
"He could shoot a target the size of a man's head from 1000 yards, every time."
Lex has kept his father's weapon, a rare 1908 British small arms rifle, firing it every year to signal the start of Carnarvon's Anzac Day commemorations.
Lex's family has lived in the Carnarvon area since 1885. He is the president of the RSL Club, bagpiper for weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs and is completing a PhD on taxation law at the University of New South Wales.
"Z Force" was the unofficial popular name given to Australia's Z Special Unit that operated behind enemy lines in the South West Pacific during World War Two.
Consisting of Australian, British and New Zealand units which trained around the country including Garden Island, it was the elite forerunner to the Australian SAS. They operated in many missions including a canoe raid on Singapore Harbour and contacting headhunters to help boost resistance against Japnese.forces.
Lex says people had to accept the fact that the Kormoran sank Sydney, aided by some bungling that allowed the German crew to catch Sydney off guard.
He says for those who still remember 1941, Sydney's sacrifice runs deep: "It's fairly certain that had the Sydney not intervened in Kormoran's plans (to lay mines in Carnarvon's harbour), my family would have been casualties, as all were engaged in shipping either as employees or passengers. Either way they would have been aboard one of the State Ships or other wool ships."
Winters, in HMAS Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, agrees: "He (Kormoan captain Theodor Detmers) would go to Shark Bay and leave some 'visiting cards' at the approaches to Carnarvon."
The Kormoran had more than 300 mines on board when it crossed paths with Sydney, their explosion after the battle forcing the Germans to abandon ship.
Most of the Kormoran reached Carnarvon's shores, the rest including Detmers were rescued at sea.
"We, the older community of Carnarvon that was around in 1941 and their descendents, (There are not many of them as the population was only about 300 in 1941) are eternally grateful to David Mearns and his crew for finally locating the ships And proving what we have been saying is true," he said.
"The media continues to ignore Carnarvon's role in the sinking of the Sydney by stating it was off the WA Coast and in some news reports still of the Mid West Coast. "It was off Carnarvon. To steal a man's property is a crime, to steal his name is abhorrent, to steal his honour is the lowest to which a person can sink."
"Dad couldn't be here physically to witness this but it is a nice touch that the finding of the HMAS Sydney was on the 11th anniversary of his death."



Lex's "Ode to the HMAS Sydney"

T'was Banjo who did wrote it, and to you I will quote it;
No foe shall gather our harvest, nor sit on our stock yard rail:
Now this is a tale of the ocean blue, of an Aussie vessel brave and true;
The HMAS Sydney and the boys that didn't fail:

T'was race day in Carnarvon and the sun was going down;
When the boys from HMAS Sydney were sailing passed our town:
Another job was over; they'd made another run;
When they chanced upon this bastard, called raider 41:

The enemy had travelled far to bring destruction here;
But they'd reckoned not on Sydney, and this would cost them dear:
They swung towards the setting sun; they made for it a chance to run;
They thought that they would sneak away, did Raider 41:

The sharp eyed crew of Sydney saw the Raiders flight;
They closed the gap; they knew they had a fight:
They'd fought before had every mothers son;
They thought that they would capture her, this Raider 41:

But the Germans were so clever they had a nasty plan;
She held their destruction did the bowels of Kormoran:
The cloak of her mystery she soon would throw aside;
As she thought to hammer Sydney with shell from side to side:

They set to work with grim profession; they knew their grisly task;
The Sydney, she would sail no more and home had seen them last:
"They've torn our bloody guts out, we'll never make it home;
We'll never see our loved ones or the seas again to roam";

The layer of the turret gave out an anguished cry;
Then we'll take this Bastard with us, cried the boys from turret Y:
They snatch another round; they mount to their six inch gun;
They target their tormentor, this Raider 41;

Their ears they are a bleeding, their muscles strain to lay;
Their shot must be a true one in the twilight of the day:
They aim her at his engine room, and there's a mighty crack;
And now these sons of Hitler will never journey back:

Now we'll leave them lying there, their souls have gone to rest;
There passing but a brief one and Carnarvon town was blessed;
Their lying out there somewhere, toward the setting sun;
The HMAS Sydney, her crew, and Raider 41.


Written by Lex for the 60th anniversary of the Sydney loss off Carnarvon in 1941. Lex is the son of one of the armed men who retrieved the Germans from Quobba station after the battle.

Sydney found. Now the how and why?

By Carmelo Amalfi
HMAS Sydney author and WA train driver Wes Olsen says the truth to why none of the 645 sailors survived is written in the World War Two hulk sitting upright in 2.5km of water off Shark Bay.
Instrumental in the archival search for HMAS Sydney and the German raider ship HSK Kormoran, which were discovered within days of each other, Mr Olsen says video images of the wrecks will reveal how the ships sank on November 19, 1941.
More importantly, their discovery ends a 66-year wait for news of the final resting place of Sydney and its crew.
"The find is significant for the families of those lost," he said after a long shift hauling trains through the wheatbelt.
"The search was about providing closure for the families. They now know where their loved ones are.
"Now we have closure for a large number of Australians including British because there were Royal Navy people on board too."
Mr Olsen, whose contact over the past few years with British-based shipwreck hunter David Mearns and other Sydney researchers helped lead searchers to the Sydney site about 250km off WA, says he was lost in endless rail lines when he heard Kormoran was found.
That was on Sunday. On Monday, he was heading back from Merredin when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the discovery of Sydney just 12 nautical miles from Kormoran.
Mr Rudd described the historic find as a turning point in the search to find closure for Australian relatives and friends of the Sydney.
Most of the crew came from NSW and Victoria, 91 from WA; their loved ones converging on war memorials on November 19.
Why none of the Sydney crew survived the battle remains a mystery until video images of the seabed, expected to be available this week, sheds light on the wrecks’ war wounds.
“The bottom line is we trusted the German accounts and built the search pattern around their statements and hey presto we found the ship where it is supposed to be,” Mr Olsen said.
"Sydney is so close to Kormoran it's not funny. Everything fits with what the Germans said occurred."
That included the coordinates of the action given by Kormoran captain Theodor Detmers - 111 degrees east, 26 south, about 112 nautical miles west of Steep Point.
He said Kormoran caught fire during the sea battle and brief barrage from Sydney, flames threatening hundreds of mines which later exploded, the crew abandoning ship.
Most of the Kormoran crew, 317 out of nearly 400, arrived on the WA coast or were rescued at sea.
"The front section of Kormoran should be relatively intact," Mr Olsen explains. "The Sydney, from the German statements, was severely damaged on the forward superstructure and on fire, having also received a torpedo hit under the forward turret region.”
The survivors reported that Sydney was hit 50 times by the disguised raider's heavy guns, the firestorm causing severe casualties on its bridge and open decks.
The remaining 30 Kormoran crew, who meet each year to commemorate the batttle, maintain the 6830-ton light cruiser came too close and was unprepared for the battle.
"The best case scenario is Sydney took on so much water that she lost her buoyancy.
"The ship simply capsized and sank."
Mr Olsen says this was supported by initial reports indicating the hull is relatively intact: "In other words, we have 560 feet of ship, which is what we started with, and it's sitting upright on the seabed."
Mr Olsen said he did not expect to see much left above Sydney's waterline; big ships lose their turrets, masts and guns.
"The forward bridge superstructure will be badly smashed if not gone completely," he said.
"Guns, funnels, aircraft catapults and ship planes will be gone, leaving just a basic ship structure. The best we can hope for is the Sydney's four-inch guns."
He said torpedo tubes and other damaged sections of the ship structure would reveal how the ship fought her last action off WA.

HMAS Sydney wreck found near German nemesis

By Carmelo Amalfi
“I told them,” Carnarvon resident and HMAS Sydney researcher Lex Fullarton said after learning of the discovery of the World War Two wreck off Shark Bay.
“I was only 15 miles off.”
Mr Fullarton, whose father Bob Fullarton helped capture Kormoran survivors who landed at Red Bluff in 1941, said his sea charts now held at the WA Maritime Museum were not far off from where Sydney and Kormoran have been found.
The German raider was found on March 12 near the position Kormoran captain Theodor Detmers gave to his Australian captors - 26 degrees south, 111 degrees east.
HMAS Sydney was discovered a few days later in about 2.5km of water 240km south-west of Carnarvon and just 12 nautical miles from the Kormoran wreck.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the discovery of the Sydney wreck on Monday.
“I’m a little sorry they found it,” Mr Fullarton said from Carnarvon where the 1941 battle is commemorated on a memorial cairn in the main street.
“I’m worried about souvenir hunters. If they can steal the safe off the Titanic and bell off the Bismarck, they can take artefacts from Sydney.”
The Federal Government yesterday issued interim protection declarations for both sites to avoid people searching for souvenirs.
The first sonar images of the Sydney wreck were posted online by the Perth-based search company, Finding Sydney Foundation.
The grainy image, reproduced here, is a magnification of HMAS Sydney’s main hull. The acoustic shadow to the left of the hull is used to help identify structures that have height. Careful analysis and measurements of the hull length suggest that while the hull is sitting upright on the seabed and is largely intact, a portion of the bow could well have broken away. This could have led to its sinking and loss of all 645 crew, the foundation says.
A remotely operated vehicle is due to be deployed next week to capture still photographs of the wreckage strewn over 1700m of seabed. There are no plans to raise the ships.
Most people, including family and friends of Sydney sailors, who have commented since the discoveries say the Sydney wreck should be declared a war grave at sea.
The WA Government has promised to provide funds for Anzac Day or other ceremonies to mark the finding of HMAS Sydney.
Chief of Navy Rear-Admiral Russ Shalders said the next part of the Sydney mystery is to determine what happened, which will take some time.
“It will be helped by the ROV activity that, we hope, will happen next week. It will take some time to try and ascertain what happened that day 66 years ago."

The Road to Finding Sydney

By Carmelo Amalfi
They were only 19. University age. Old enough to drive, old enough to die for "king and country".
In late 1941, in the tense weeks leading to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the crew of HMAS Sydney was deployed along the remote coast of Western Australia where it crossed paths with the disguised German raider HSK Kormoran.
Most of the Kormoran crew survived the battle. None of the 645 Sydney sailors survived.
Until either wreck was found, their last hours at sea would remain a mystery.
Nearly 67 years after Australia's worst naval tragedy, the hunt for the World War Two wrecks has yielded its most important clue to finding Sydney - Kormoran. HMAS Sydney could be found any day.
"One of the most exciting aspects in any shipwreck search, but particularly this one, is the wreck(s) in questions can be found at literally any time," HMAS Sydney search leader David Mearns explains in his March 12 blogpost - on the same day the first Kormoran images appeared on his computer screen aboard the survey vessel SV Geosounder.
The search for the shipwreck began in haste soon after its sinking, with RAAF pilots and WA naval authorities scouring the Indian Ocean for signs of life, wreckage, clues.
But days turned into weeks, months and decades, the disaster clouded by conspiracy theories and claims of government cover-ups, followed by parliamentary inquiries, popular books and fruitless searches for the Sydney wreck.
By late 1945 controversy still raged over the fate of HMAS Sydney - culminating in a Royal Australian Naval Intelligence order to prohibit, "anything further concerning this action and its results".
Government censorship of information only fuelled a generation of public suspicion over how the Sydney crew vanished, seemingly without a trace.
Only a few artefacts have been found since the sinking, including the skeletal remains of a Sydney sailor whose decomposed body was found in a lifeboat washed ashore on Christmas Island in 1942 - three months after the Sydney-Kormoran battle.
A more recent archaeological find reported by this author in The Australian newspaper last year included the discovery of a badly corroded gun thrown into the water in 1941 by a Kormoran officer who reached the WA coast in a lifeboat.
The gun was found by a young electrician fishing for old lures lost off Red Bluff.
Kormoran survivors were rescued either at sea or landed at Red Bluff, south of Carnarvon, where they were arrested and held in custody in WA and Victoria until their repatriation to Germany after the war.
Of Kormoran's 397 crew, 317 survived the battle. The only eyewitnesses. Sydney and its crew sailed away, on fire and steerless - disappearing over the horizon, helpless and lost, in a south-south-east direction.
The 2008 search off WA is based largely on German accounts of the 1941 battle. More specifically, searchers are counting on the accuracy of Detmers' account, which the Nazi Party member hid from his captors while he was held in Australia.
People believed the shipwrecks would not be found because Detmers lied about the battle and sinking position of his deadly raider, given as 111 degrees east, 26 south.
Last week, the Kormoran was found pretty much near where Detmers said he had sunk it.
The account of the actual battle remains controversial, despite Detmers' records and supporting archival material. They still argue that the Germans lied to cover up a war crime in which Komoran survivors in motorised boats shot to death Sydney sailors in the water. Finding the wrecks could provide answers to what went down in the final hours of their tour of duty at sea off WA.
With Kormoran found, searchers expect to find Sydney nearby, possibly within 35km to 50km.
Search leader David Mearns is relying on Detmers' detailed account as the primary source of information about the Sydney battle.
Detmers recorded his account of the battle in a German dictionary, placing faint dots under specific letters to describe details such as coordinates and engine room logs. The 1941 code was cracked when Mearns with Peter Hore, a former Royal Navy captain and linguist, started the archival documentary search for clues to how Sydney sank.
Mearns, who discovered the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic in 1941, brought Detmers' dictionary to the launch last year of the Sydney search.
A packed crowd including Royal Australian Navy representatives, war veterans and widows of the Sydney sailors gathered at the WA Maritime Museum listened intently as the shipwreck hunter held up the book.
Mearns described Detmers' account of the battle as the "factual ground zero" for all other sources of information about the loss of HMAS Sydney.
"There are many theories about where the engagement between Kormoran and Sydney took place. However, the search area chosen is the only one that has any supporting evidence. It is for that reason it has been chosen as the area to be searched."
Mearns said the first-hand document concurred with a 12-page 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.
Mr Mearns had the Cassel German-English account decoded by Mr Hore, who corrected mistakes in earlier interpretations of the 1941 disaster.
"Capt Detmers's versions were nearly always identical, so I concluded he was always telling the truth," Mearns explained at the launch. "No other shipwreck hunter has had so many vital clues about the Sydney's resting place."
Those clues include the memories of the surviving Kormoran crew who meet each year to commemorate the loss of both ships. The German survivors, of which 30 remain, maintain Sydney captain Joseph Burnett is to blame for the tragedy because he came in too close to the disguised raider before all hell broke loose.
"I believe Detmers' accounts are credible, accurate and precise," Detmers said. "And that's the basis on which you can then go to find a shipwreck in the middle of ocean at depths of 3000m to 4000m.
"There is no way you can write this out, in a narrative, and get it correct unless you actually plotted it first. I just don't think that Detmers made all of this up to the point that he actually made a false plot first and then made the narrative to fit the plot."
This week, Mearns was proved correct.
He said their research brought them back to the same spot - Kormoran. Find the Kormoran, they argue, and Sydney will be found.
"The search for the wreck of Sydney can only be conducted after the wreck of Kormoran is found," the search website states.
"The simple reason for this is that the navigational coordinates recorded by Kormoran’s captain, Theodor Detmers, and other physical clues such as the location of floating debris recovered by Australian ships days after the sinking, are all referenced to the position of Kormoran and not Sydney.
"While there is reasonable information about where Sydney may have sunk and thus where to begin the search for her wreck, this information is relative to the final position of Kormoran and thus dictates that the wreck of Kormoran is found first.
"Once Kormoran is found, the search for Sydney can begin in earnest."
That search has begun.
Mr Mearns' team does not plan to disturb the Sydney or Kormoran wrecks. Once HMAS Sydney is found, he plans to lower a memorial plaque containing the names of the 645 dead sailors. The Federal Government plans to announce the find.
A wreck that is declared an historic shipwreck is granted legal protection. This means the wreck, any human remains and relics are protected from damage, disturbance or removal. To further protect the site, the Historic Shipwreck Act allows the minister to declare a protected zone of up to 200 hectares around the wreck site.
It then becomes an offence to engage in any underwater activity within the protected zone. The penalty for breaching the Act is a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment for a period of up to five years.
The sites will be managed by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts in Canberra under the Historic Shipwreck Act 1976.
The Finding Sydney Foundation said the Royal Australian Navy is the recognised legal owner of the HMAS Sydney wreck: "It is not planned at this stage to remove any artefacts from the wreck of HMAS Sydney II or HSK Kormoran.
"If removal of artefacts is considered, the appropriate approvals would need to be sought from the (Federal Government)."

The

Searchers zero in on HMAS Sydney

By Carmelo Amalfi
HMAS Sydney could be found within the next few days after Australian searchers discovered its German nemesis HSK Kormoran off Shark Bay, nearly 67 years after the World War Two ships sank off WA.
The German raider, which was scuttled after a fiery battle with the Australian light cruiser on November 19, 1941, was found near 26 degrees south, 111 degrees east.
Debris believed to be from HMAS Sydney was found nearby.
The WA searchers led by British-based shipwreck hunter David Mearns said they were closer to finding the final resting place of the Sydney and its 645 crew now that Kormoran's sinking position had been established using high quality sonar imagery.
Kormoran's wreckage consists of several pieces of hull among a dense debris field located in the northeast section of the 1768 square nautical mile search box about 150km west of Shark Bay. The ship's remains were found in about 2560m of water.
Mr Mearns said the wreckage fit perfectly with the testimony of the German survivors who were rescued and imprisoned after the battle: "The vessel suffered a catastrophic explosion after its cache of some 320 mines stored in the after cargo holds four, five and six detonated. This section of the vessel's hull has been obliterated."
He said there were four big pieces of hull left on the seafloor. The two biggest pieces are located hundreds of metres outside the main debris field and approximately 1200m from each other on a line running roughly north-south.
"The biggest piece of hull measures approximately 106m long by at least 20m wide and has been identified as the forward half of the ship that extends roughly from the engine room to the stem," he explained as news of the discovery was released to the public on March 16.
"It is sitting upright on the seabed with a height of approximately 13m. The distant locations of these pieces indicate they sank after the explosion and/or took different glide planes in their descent to the seabed."
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the discovery by the WA Finding Sydney Foundation at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Sunday.
"We are one step closer as a nation to hopefully finding Sydney," Mr Rudd said. "This is an important part in solving a 65-year-old puzzle."
Mr Mearns said as Kormoran left the battle intact, having drifted north with the prevailing current and winds after losing engine power, it was logical to conclude this debris could not have come from Kormoran.
"This debris," he said, "must have come from HMAS Sydney as we know she had been gravely damaged by a torpedo hit and was being heavily shelled by Kormoran."
He said in such a situation, Sydney would have been losing pieces of its structure and other parts of the ship, as was described by the German eyewitnesses in 1941: "The approximate north-north-east to south-south-west trend of this debris trail fits with the Sydney's course as it altered course south to avoid Kormoran's fire."
Mr Mearns, who has discovered more than 40 shipwrecks, said confirmation of Kormoran's sinking position had allowed him to refine the most probable sinking position of Sydney and outline a new search area for her wreck. This search is underway.
"Compared with the extremely large search area for Kormoran, the initial search area for Sydney is relatively small and covers several hundred square nautical miles," he explained.
"Key to this initial search area are certain assumptions made about how far Sydney could have travelled away from the scene of action given the grave damage she had suffered, now proven by the extent and size of her wreckage found at the scene of action, and how long she could have remained afloat in such extreme conditions."
According to Kormoran survivors, Sydney was blasted by Kormoran early in the engagement which included losing the top of the housing of her 'B' gun turret.
She also suffered a torpedo hit beneath her two forward turrets. It is likely that this wreckage could have been shed from HMAS Sydney as a result of the battle and lie near the initial engagement.
"Based on the location of Kormoran and the high quality sonar imagery collected by the Williamson and Associates sonar team, I am confident that if the wreck of Sydney lies within our search area we will find her.
"He said should the initial search prove unsuccessful, the search area would be enlarged until the HMAS Sydney wreck is found.
Chief of the Navy Vice Admiral Russ Shalders told reporters in Canberra: "What has now been found will allow us to proceed towards finishing something that has been a mystery, Australia’s major maritime mystery.
"It will be a long, hard and difficult and highly technical search from this point onwards and so we should not hope that this will be resolved quickly.
The Navy looks forward to the day that we can find the Sydney and perhaps more importantly find out why the battle turned out the way it did."
Federal Minister for Defence Science and Personnel Warren Snowdon said yesterday the Federal Republic of Germany had been advised of the discovery of the HSK Kormoran.

Ophelia turns on Sydney search

By Carmelo Amalfi
CYCLONIC seas have hampered initial efforts to find HMAS Sydney off WA, according to search leader David Mearns' March 6 report.
"Tropical Cyclone Ophelia, a category one storm packing gale force winds, decided to change course and turn directly for our location," Mr Mearns said. "Whilst it is hard to find a silver lining as a cylcone bears down on you, I am grateful that Ophelia is not as severe as the Western Atlantic hurricanes I am used to.
"Still we are facing certain weather downtime, which although expected and budgeted for, is hurtful to our progress at this early stage in the search. There is an old saying that the sea doesn't give up her secrets easily and it appears Ophelia has dropped in to remind us of that."
But he said the first twist was, "a particularly cruel one" - the sonar towfish was experiencing problems, affecting the imagery of the seafloor while trailing the survey ship at the end of a 6000m towline.
Another immediate problem involved an electrical cable that was found to be nicked, allowing water to penetrate the cable and cause short circuiting. It was replaced.
The search resumed on Saturday, March 8.
Mr Mearns said the search area was extremely large: "In marine terms it measures roughly 1,800 square nautical miles ... or about 2.5 times larger than the ACT. It is by far the largest area I have ever set out to cover in a shipwreck search project."
He said another way to appreciate the scale of the search was to put yourself in a location on land and imagine a box that extends 39km in every direction.
The land will have areas that are flat and sandy, rocky and hilly. Within that area, the search team is looking for an object about 171m metres long and 17m wide (HMAS Sydney).
"Finally, imagine the land you are searching is flooded with several thousands of metres of water and this will give you an idea of the challenge we face," Mr Mearns explains.
He said while it was frustrating to have had such an unlucky start to the search, he was confident better weather was due and that problems with the sonar towfish would be resolved.

"I would like to see the ship found in my lifetime. This would help in the healing process. It would be a great comfort to all the relatives of HMAS Sydney."
Marie Elizabeth Bell, 86

By Carmelo Amalfi
"BETTY" Bell married Frederick Harold Schoch, a 24 year old engineer on HMAS Sydney, in 1941, just weeks before the newlyweds were parted forever by war and death at sea off WA.
The young couple spent a couple of nights together, in love, in Bunbury just a few weeks before the World War Two warship sailed to her doom at the hands of the German raider HSK Kormoran on November 19.
It was Harold's first trip.
"We were in love," she said a few years ago during the short drive from her home to Monument Hill overlooking the port of Fremantle.
Betty's father was a top architect who won the competition for the best design for the Monument Hill war memorial that today serves as a sacred meeting place for the families and friends of Australia's lost service men and women.
The old memorial overlooking the port from where thousands left to fight in foreign wars includes a commemorative plaque to Sydney, where hundreds of people from around WA meet each November to remember the loss of the 645 sailors, including Harold.
Asked to comment on the search for Sydney, Betty, who passed away last year, said finding the ship was the first step in laying the dead to rest and helping those left behind to move on. It would mean peace for all relatives of the lost Sydney men.
She said the actual position of the ship should be marked as a war grave, which she would like to visit before she died - to lay a rose for Harold.
Betty said in the months before her death that finding HMAS Sydney would bring Australians closer to understanding what happened when the light cruiser and Kormoran crossed paths off WA nearly 67 years ago.
"We have no option but to look," Betty said after learning of renewed efforts to look for the shipwreck off the coast of Shark Bay. "If it can't be located this time, perhaps people in the future will try.
"We owe it to those boys to do what we can."
*At the start of a Federal Government-funded search for HMAS Sydney and its wartime nemesis HSK Kormoran, Murdoch University honours student Carmelo Amalfi explores the historical and contemporary challenges facing media coverage of WA shipwrecks and, more importantly, the discovery of human remains, treasure and other cultural materials.
Amalfi, who teaches journalism at Curtin University of Technology, is an award-winning science writer with a passion for WA maritime and military history and has been involved in the discovery and media coverage of shipwrecks such as British explorer William Dampier's Roebuck (1699) and French explorer Louis de Freycinet's L'Uranie (1821).
For many years, he reported extensively on the loss of and contemporary search for HMAS Sydney for WA's daily paper, The West Australian, which he left in 2005.
Last year, his report on the discovery last year of a handgun thrown into the water by a German survivor in the days after the Sydney battle appeared in The Australian newspaper and online.
He is a freelance writer for and contributor to a number of leading print and online news organisations including Perth's The Sunday Times and The Australian newspapers, Cosmos Magazine, AAP and ScienceNetworkWA.
His reports on the Sydney search will be shared by universities, media groups and, more importantly, the wider public in WA and around Australia.

Copyright 2008




SEARCH FOR SYDNEY UNDERWAY OFF WA

By Carmelo Amalfi
SHIPWRECK searchers have arrived at the site of one of Australia's most enduring wartime mysteries - the final resting place of HMAS Sydney and its 645 sailors.
British-based shipwreck searcher David Mearns is leading a Federal Government-funded search off the Western Australian coast where the light cruiser and its entire crew disappeared on November 19, 1941.
Contracted to The Finding Sydney Foundation based in Perth, the American-born discoverer of more than 45 wrecks, including the German warship Bismark, hopes to find Australia's World War Two wreck by locating the German raider that sank with Sydney.
HMAS Sydney was the largest vessel of any country (6830 tons) to be lost with no survivors. Its sinking represents the greatest ever loss of life in an Australian warship.
HSK Kormoran, which sank with Sydney, is believed to be in about 2.5km of water.
According to German accounts of the 1941 sea battle, the well-armed raider was scuttled by Kormoran captain Theodor Detmers, whose crew reportedly blasted Sydney into submission by destroying its bridge and open upper decks.
Of the 397 Kormoran crew, 317 survived the action and were rescued at sea or land.
Sydney sailed away in a southerly direction, disabled and on fire, the Kormoran survivors later told Australian interrogators. It could be resting in waters up to 4km deep and possibly within up to 35km to 50km of the Kormoran wreck site.
To search for such ships at such depths requires advanced subsea technologies and navigational skills. Now focused on an area 120 nautical miles southwest of Carnarvon, the searchers are sailing back in time to pinpoint where both ships sank in the 1941 battle off WA.
The search would begin with a bird's eye view of the site, gradually zooming in on the wrecks over an area of ocean covering 1500 square nautical miles.
It took 45 days to find Titanic in 1985. Today, searchers can cover the same area in two days. The search box for the British frigate HMS Hood was 620 square nautical miles. It took Mr Mearns about three hours to find the wreck and 39 hours to relocate the Bismarck.
Finding Sydney was like pinpointing a row of 10 houses in a search area from Wanneroo to Mandurah and inland to York.
The wreckage, once identified on the seafloor, will provide important clues researchers will use to determine what happened to the ships after the exchange of fire at sea.
Searchers will scour the seabed for big metallic objects and lunar-like craters they created when they hit the bottom at high speed.
The Foundation has awarded the sonar search contract to Seattle-based company Williamson and Associates Inc, which has found an Israeli submarine in the Mediterranean and a US submarine which sank in 1942 off Alaska.
The vessel and survey positioning contract was awarded to DOF Subsea Australia Pty Ltd, whose survey vessel SV Geosounder arrived in Geraldton from Singapore on February 26.
Securing a vessel was challenging as schedules had to be matched with the weather window of opportunity to conduct the search and mobilisation of the side scan sonar equipment from Seattle.
Leading the team of geophysicists and marine sonar experts on the SV Geosounder is Williamson operations manager Art Wright.
The company's low frequency, deep towed side scan sonar search system will cover a defined area of approximately 1800 square nautical miles, about 120 nautical miles from Steep Point in water depths of between 2300m and 4200m.
Mr Mearns said phase one of the search was similar to mowing the lawn, "albeit a very large lawn”.
“We will be systematically towing a sonar 'fish' along a grid of overlapping track lines that covers the seabed in areas where we believe the wrecks sank," he explains on the company's website at www.findingsydney.com.
"Given the large size of the search area we will be using sonar that can cover this area at an extraordinarily fast rate. Once any contact of a potential wreck is made, we will then make a series of higher resolution narrow swathe passes to confirm the dimensions and characteristics of any target, with any debris field being mapped.”
Project manager Patrick Flynn said the search company was glad to have come this far in the road to solving the mystery behind where Sydney sank.
He said that the 70m-long survey vessel with ROV (remotely operated vehicle) capacity had undergone an extensive refit.
Having worked previously in Australia waters, the vessel with a crew of about 30 people also accommodates the "back deck operations" in which Williamson's deep tow side scan sonar technology was deployed.
"That also includes 10,000m of cable, or Perth to Fremantle," he said.
Mr Mearns, who holds the Guinness World Record for the deepest shipwreck ever discovered - a German blockade runner sunk during WWII at a depth 5762m - will work back to back in shifts, sailing SV Geosounder in a grid pattern over the target area.
Australian Minister for Defence Science and Personnel Warren Snowdon - whose electorate takes in Christmas Island where the Unknown Sailor believed to be from Sydney washed up on the beach in 1942 - said the 2008 search was a turning point in solving the war mystery.
"If we can establish where Kormoran is, maybe we can find Sydney," he said from his Alice Springs office on the eve of the long-awaited search off WA. "It may not end the controversy surrounding Sydney's sinking, but it will mean closure to a lot of people."
The federal member for the Northern Territory describes himself as a history buff, describing HMAS Sydney as a great Australian warship whose young crew sacrificed their lives to ensure the future and freedoms of a country at war.
"It will be a great day when the Sydney is found," he said. "The ship and her crew form a significant part of Australia's history and maritime heritage."
WA Maritime Musuem archaeologist Mike McCarthy, who has provided expertise to solving the Sydney mystery for the past 25 years, said the discovery of one or both wrecks would attract protection under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976.
"This allows restriction zones to be established around the wrecks," he said.
The zones could measure up to half a square kilometre in size and require visitors to apply for permits to enter them.

Copyright 2008