The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  I credit the well-known and highly respected Australian maritime archaeologist Graeme Henderson with first making me aware of HMAS Sydney. We were at a conference together at the International Maritime Organization in London in early 1996 when Graeme first told me how Sydney had been taken by surprise by a slower and seemingly less powerful German raider and in the ensuing battle had been thoroughly defeated. I vaguely knew about German raiders: how they were essentially warships disguised as merchant vessels let loose by the Kriegsmarine in World War II to patrol the oceans and either destroy or, better yet, take as prizes Allied supply ships. But I had never heard of the Sydney.

  Two things stuck in my mind about the story Graeme told me. The first was that not a single soul from Sydney survived. I knew of other ships where everyone had died in battle, but this was a relatively rare occurrence and it was even more surprising in light of the large number of Germans who did survive. The other curious thing was that no one seemed to have a clue where Sydney had sunk. Graeme explained that because there was such a cloud of uncertainty about where the battle had taken place, there was essentially no starting point at which to begin a search and therefore the two ships were bound to remain lost forever.

  This discussion with Graeme had started with me saying how I believed that virtually any shipwreck could now be found, regardless of how deep it was, if the latest deep-water search equipment was being used. I gave some recent examples of wrecks I had found with Blue Water Recoveries to make my case, but I could see Graeme wasn’t swayed by my confidence. As a sixteen-year-old, he had found the first seventeenth-century shipwreck, the Dutch Vergulde Draeck, discovered in Australian waters, and he was one of his country’s top maritime archaeologists. So he knew the simplest truth about shipwreck hunting as well as I did: that to find a wreck you needed to be looking in the right place. I had to accept that he knew what he was talking about: that finding Sydney was impossible because no one knew where to look. However, I couldn’t hide my doubts about there being no documents or information of any sort to point to the wreck location. Graeme must have sensed my scepticism, or perhaps he was simply annoyed by my questioning attitude, because at this point he issued a surprising challenge: ‘If you’re so good, why don’t you come to Australia and find the Sydney?’

  People had asked me before which shipwrecks I wanted to find, but no one had ever put such a challenge to me so bluntly. It was a remarkable meeting and one that I never forgot. Although the opportunity for me to get seriously interested in a search for the Sydney was still years away, I did have this feeling afterwards that my conversation with Graeme was a fateful one, and that one day I would take up his bold challenge.

  By the time I started to think seriously about searching for the Sydney, some two dozen books had already been published about her fatal battle with Kormoran. Of these, none was more provocative than Who Sank the Sydney? by Michael Montgomery, whose father was the ship’s navigating officer. Michael’s 1981 book made several sensational claims, including that Detmers signalled an SOS to lure Burnett into lowering a boat to assist the stricken Kormoran; that he fired on Sydney using an underwater torpedo tube while flying a neutral (Norwegian) flag in violation of international law; that a Japanese submarine assisted Kormoran in the defeat of Sydney by firing the final torpedo that put her down; and most egregious of all, that the Germans brutally machine-gunned Sydney’s survivors in the water before setting fire to the oil slick enveloping them to destroy any evidence of their evil deeds.

  Along with the release of newly declassified documents that had been kept closed for thirty years after the war, Who Sank the Sydney? effectively opened the floodgates for a prolonged national debate that became increasingly angry and divisive. Barbara Winter was the first historian to tackle Michael’s claims head-on. Relying on exhaustive research and the first use of German naval documents, her book HMAS Sydney — Fact, Fantasy and Fraud dissected and debunked more than forty rumours put forth by various conspiracy theorists. Despite her excellent work, in some circles her book polarized people’s opinions to an even greater extent. Wildly opposing positions were being staked out by an increasing number of researchers and amateur historians, with the occasional relative of a Sydney sailor being sucked innocently into the fray. People either believed the German accounts of the action or they didn’t, instead coming up with their own scenarios that to a greater or lesser extent depicted Detmers and his men as liars.

  The lack of consensus about the battle and the conduct of Kormoran’s crew fuelled the debate that ran on unchecked into the 1990s. Its nature was about to change, however, as the recent discoveries of the Titanic and Bismarck shipwrecks raised the possibility for the first time that the wrecks of Sydney and Kormoran could also be found and investigated to shed new light on what had actually happened. These deep-water discoveries stimulated a symposium organized to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the battle and held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum (WAMM) in Fremantle, a key institutional player in deliberations about Sydney owing to the fact that it had responsibility for the wrecks under the Historic Shipwrecks Act of 1976.

  The symposium’s main objective was to determine whether the spread of floating wreckage and German lifeboats recovered after the battle could be used to pinpoint where the ships sank, and whether that position agreed with the testimony of Captain Detmers. While the conclusion of the assembled experts was that a search for the wrecks wasn’t feasible because the area to be searched was far too large, the focus of the debate had clearly changed in a positive way. Everyone’s attention had shifted to determining where the wrecks might be located and what physical evidence could be obtained from them to help uncover the truth about what had happened.

  Ten years passed before a second symposium was held, in 2001. This Wreck Location Symposium was also convened at the WAMM, but it was a mark of the progress being made that this time it was sponsored by the RAN Sea Power Centre. The symposium, and the RAN’s involvement, stemmed from one of the recommendations of a 1997–1999 joint parliamentary committee that was asked to conduct a fresh inquiry into the loss of Sydney. The inquiry was remarkable in a number of ways. First, that it was taking place at all: it was truly unique that a government committee was openly considering the possibility of mounting a search for a sixty-year old shipwreck in order to answer historical questions. Second, the breadth of the inquiry and the public’s response to it was astonishing. The committee held public hearings across the country and considered submissions from 201 persons and organizations, which were subsequently published in nineteen volumes totalling 5,281 pages. This was an unprecedented level of interest for such an inquiry. It seemed that nearly everyone in the country had either an opinion or some evidence to offer about the loss of Sydney.

  As its name implies, the aim of the 2001 Wreck Location Symposium was to more accurately define the potential search area for the wrecks. The participants were all volunteers well known for their research on Sydney and/or expertise covering the key aspects involved in potentially defining a search area. The RAN, represented by the deputy chief of the navy at the time and the military historian Professor Peter Dennis, fully expected the presentations to be passionate, but what they obviously hoped for in the end was that there would be some consensus about where to look for the wrecks. Without such a consensus it would be impossible for the RAN to support a search or recommend to the government the outlay of the millions of dollars required. Professor Dennis summed up his closing remarks to the symposium on this discouraging note:

  I have to say, as a concluding comment, that I am disappointed that several years on from the parliamentary report and given all the work various groups here today have been doing, a greater measure of agreement and precision does not yet seem to be emerging. Until it does, talk of mounting searches at this stage is still premature.

  When the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral David Shackleton, announced his decision in June 2002 following an evaluation of the Wreck Location Symp
osium report, it was predictably negative. In deciding that a suitable basis did not exist for a government-sponsored search for Sydney, Shackleton specifically pointed to a ‘lack of consensus among historians and researchers as to where the wrecks might be, and hence the huge size of any potential search area’.

  Reading the symposium report myself when it arrived on my desk months later, I could see exactly why Shackleton had decided against supporting a search. The two main workshops in the symposium dealing with the question of location couldn’t have been more of a contrast, in both their methodologies and their conclusions. One workshop, chaired by Glenys McDonald and based on the oral testimony of people living along the coast who reported witnessing signs of the battle itself, pointed to a location in about fifty metres of water less than thirty miles off the coast north-west of Port Gregory, whereas the other workshop, headed by Wes Olson and based on archival records, recommended a location 185 nautical miles away in water depths of 2,700 metres. Faced with a stark choice between the two locations, which was bound to be highly controversial whatever he decided, Shackleton chose neither.

  Looking back now, I can hardly believe that this was the moment I decided to commit myself to becoming involved in a search for the Sydney. Shackleton’s decision was unequivocal. It dashed any hopes that the government would risk public funds in mounting a search for the wrecks, which was arguably the key recommendation of the parliamentary inquiry. On top of this, the Wreck Location Symposium had revealed that the field of Sydney researchers was already a very crowded, competitive and acrimonious space that was probably not going to be very amenable to an outsider elbowing his way in. Professor Dennis’s colleagues warned him as much, describing his assignment as ‘a poisoned chalice, a minefield, and a vipers’ nest’.

  Perhaps a more realistic or rational person would have steered clear of the Sydney at this time and waited for a change of opinion or a shift in the government’s position. I didn’t see it this way, though. Despite all the research that had been done previously by many others, I had a definite feeling that there were gaps in the archival record and that some key documents hadn’t been found. I kept thinking about the quotation in the parliamentary inquiry report at the top of the chapter on documentary evidence: ‘There has to be a large box somewhere holding all these missing documents.’ If I could find that box, or any new documents, it might just help to reverse the navy’s position. I realized it would probably take something dramatic to get people’s attention, like the discovery of a previously unseen primary source document, or one whose significance had been overlooked by other researchers. Most importantly, the information would have to have a direct bearing on the precise location of the battle. Nothing less would do. I knew these were big expectations, but I felt it was worth trying, given that Shackleton himself had left the door slightly open by saying: ‘Notwithstanding this conclusion, the navy remains interested in hearing from anyone who believes they may have information that might help in locating the final resting place of so many Australian sailors.’

  I’ve had some great days in archives making important discoveries, but I don’t think anything will compare with 16 January 2003, the first day I began serious research into the loss of Sydney. I was in the UK’s Naval Historical Branch (NHB), which at the time was still based in London, to review some documents I had pre-ordered from the archivist, Kate Tildesley, over the phone. I had given Kate a reference number, PG/11875/NID, which I knew to be a British registration number assigned to documents captured from the German navy after the war had ended, but was wondering why this particular number was on a document from the National Archives of Australia shown to me by Peter Hore, a historian and retired RN captain. Peter had been part of the archive record workshop with Wes Olson, and was now, along with Wes, helping me in my search for fresh information.

  When I arrived at the NHB, I was shown into the office of the head of the branch, Captain Chris Page, where Kate was waiting for me with an old-style archive box resting on her lap. Chris began explaining to me the origin of the box and how Kate had found it lying uncatalogued in their basement after her investigation of the PG reference number I had given her. I found it almost impossible to take in what he was telling me, however, as my attention was drawn to the spine of the box, on which was written in very large block letters the single word KORMORAN.

  Outwardly I remained calm, but my pulse quickened as my mind raced with excitement about what kind of new or secret information might be inside the box. From the way Chris and Kate were acting, taking the time to carefully explain how it had become effectively lost in their archives, I sensed that whatever documents it contained had to be very important. Because the box was uncatalogued, it didn’t appear in any of the normal indices or finding aids that archivists and independent researchers use when searching for records. This meant it was unlikely that anyone had seen the documents it contained since 1947, the year the box was created. Even Peter Hore, who had supplied the document that had led me to the box and who had spent a full year on behalf of the RAN Sea Power Centre searching all the UK archives, including the NHB, for new material on the disappearance of Sydney, was unaware of its existence. It seemed too good to be true, but on my very first day in the archives I appeared to have stumbled across the ‘large box’ of missing documents mentioned in the 1998 parliamentary inquiry.

  The mindset that drove the way I conducted this research was the same one I adopted for every shipwreck I attempted to find. I was single-minded in my determination and persistence to find the right documents, and I focused on two things. The first was a strict reliance on original primary source documents as the starting point or backbone for my research. Because information can change or degrade with the passage of time, or as it is passed from one person to another, my aim was always to use the earliest documents created by the key participants or well-placed witnesses to an event. The principle is similar to that used by a court of law in determining what testimony the jury is allowed to hear. While the testimony of credible participants or eyewitnesses is allowed, the testimony from second- or third-hand witnesses is considered hearsay and is not. In researching Sydney’s loss, this meant I started with historical documents in archives before reading other people’s published books. Peter Hore called my approach getting back to the ‘factual ground zero’.

  My second focus was to devote all my study and analysis to the navigational clues about where the battle between Sydney and Kormoran took place. These clues — courses, speeds, ranges, bearings, positions in latitude/ longitude, wind and sea conditions — were the only things that mattered to me because ultimately they were the pieces of information that would lead me to the wrecks. Whereas other researchers were concerned with how the battle was fought, for example, I wouldn’t allow myself to get bogged down with questions that didn’t directly relate to where the ships sank, which was my sole focus. I knew that the truth about the battle could only be revealed by a damage assessment of the wrecks. So from my perspective, finding the wrecks was all-important and for this reason my research was 100 per cent focused on location, location, location.

  While waiting for the NHB to catalogue and scan the documents in the Kormoran box so that they could be released to me, I switched my attention to an account that Wes Olson told me was the master copy of an encoded report made by the German Captain Detmers. A coded account found on Detmers when he briefly escaped from a POW camp in January 1945 was already known to researchers, but referring to a document as a ‘master’ implied it was the first ever created and therefore one I needed to see. Unfortunately, finding this account looked like it could be a real problem. First off, it was contained somewhere within Detmers’ personal dictionary, so it was privately owned and thus not publicly available. Secondly, the dictionary had last been seen thirteen years earlier by Barbara Winter, but Barbara had moved on from the Sydney saga after her book was published and had given most of her research materials away.

  If I wanted to get my hands
on the dictionary, therefore, my only choice was to retrace Barbara’s steps and hope the current owner would allow me to see it. The only information Barbara could give me was that Detmers’ widow Ursula had died in 1997, and as they had no children, the dictionary was most likely with a nephew, Hans-Günther Janzten, who probably lived in Hamburg where the Detmers had also lived. With the help of a German naval contact I’d met during my research on Bismarck, I was able to quickly turn those two probabilities into a reality, and within days I was speaking with Hans-Günther, who did indeed have his uncle’s dictionary containing the all-important master account. Most importantly, he readily agreed to show me the book and answer any questions I had about his uncle.

  Looking back now on these breakthroughs, which occurred less than two weeks apart, I can safely say that it is highly unlikely I would have remained so committed to solving the problem of where the ships had sunk without having so much good fortune so early in my involvement. I knew there was an element of luck in how I stumbled on the box of Kormoran documents in the NHB, but I feel that fate also played its part. Like my conversation with Graeme Henderson in 1996 that first piqued my interest in Sydney, or my work on Bismarck that gave me the contacts to find Hans-Günther Janzten and gain access to Detmers’ dictionary, I believe I was destined to find the missing documents that started the process for reversing the RAN’s negative stance about a search for the Sydney. Everything in my career up to this point, both the successes and the failures, had equipped me with the skills and experience to tackle this enormous challenge. I wasn’t just ready to find the wrecks; I was confident I could do it.