David L Mearns - The Shipwreck Hunter: A lifetime of extraordinary discovery and adventure in the deep seas

First published in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin in 2017

First published in Great Britain by Allen & Unwin in 2017

Copyright David L. Mearns, 2017

The moral right of David L. Mearns to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

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All images included in the photo inserts have been supplied by the author, unless otherwise noted.

The following images within the text are reproduced with kind permission of the following parties: MV Lucona p. 19 courtesy of Capt. E. Gerardo da Costa Duarte, www.sealegacy.com ; MV Derbyshire p. 51 HMSO; HMS Hood p. 109 Michael Mason/HMS Hood Association; Esmeralda p. 327 Telmo Gomes, Navios portugueses, seculos XIV a XIX, LISBOA,1995; Endurance p. 365 Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Print ISBN 978 1 76029 521 9

eBook ISBN 978 1 92557 633 7

Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

Front cover photographs: HMAS Sydney (Australian War Memorial, 007888) / Shutterstock / HMAS Sydney lifeboat wreck (authors collection)

For Sarah, Samuel, Alexandra and Isabella

Dedicated to the survivors and the families who preserve the memories of those lost at sea

Contents

For seven days the shipwreck, lost for fourteen years and lying broken somewhere on the abyssal plain over four kilometres beneath us, had eluded our new-fangled sonar: so brand new it was still on its first full operational dive. This was to be the last of nine search lines covering the 430 square nautical miles where we thought the best chance of the wreck being located was. If this line, like the eight we had already searched, was negative, we would be left with one simple question: was the shipwreck we were trying to find hidden within the mountainous terrain that occasionally cropped up throughout our search box, or were we simply looking in the wrong location?

I was doing my best to hide my uncertainty and inexperience from both my team and the clients, who were on board the small support vessel with us, but I could feel the pressure rising. It would make no difference to anyone that my company had performed amazingly well to design, build and mobilize in the ridiculously short period of five months all the specialist equipment we were using, or that the actual search operation had gone remarkably smoothly, without a second of lost time. Unless we found the wreck, our work would be deemed a failure. We had won this important and potentially lucrative search contract in the face of fierce competition from two far more experienced companies. When they vigorously protested the award and predicted that we would fail, in part because I personally was too inexperienced to lead such a challenging project, it put even more pressure on us to succeed.

Yet even the huge gamble my bosses had taken with the companys future and reputation in tackling this complicated project paled in comparison with what was at stake for our clients. For them it was quite literally a matter of life and death. The life in question belonged to the man who was being criminally prosecuted for sinking the ship, while the deaths were those of the crew he was accused of callously causing. There are a number of reasons why someone might be compelled to spend several million dollars to find a shipwreck lost in the deep ocean. To solve a multiple murder case is arguably the most sensational.

I wasnt sure what made me more nervous: that we still hadnt found the wreck despite having nearly completed our search box; that having been appointed the expert witness for the search I would be held personally responsible should we fail; or that the trial judge was actually at sea with us monitoring every move and decision I was making.