The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  On 2 March 2010, a national service of thanksgiving and remembrance was held at St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane in memory of those who had served on Centaur. The service was an opportunity for the families to gather and remember their relatives, whether they perished that day in May 1943 or lived to carry the physical and emotional scars for the rest of their days. The cathedral was jam-packed with over 700 people. An indication of the importance the government and the military attached to the service was evident in the long list of dignitaries who attended, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Queensland premier Anna Bligh, Governor General Quentin Bryce, Queensland governor Penelope Wensley, Chief of the Army Ken Gillespie, Chief of the Navy Russell Crane, and a whole raft of lesser VIPs and organization representatives.

  Martin Pash spoke of his narrow escape, and was given a standing ovation for his courage in recounting such a terrible ordeal. Kevin Rudd delivered a moving speech in which he told the relatives:

  The Centaur was a vessel of mercy and it was sunk without mercy by a vessel of war, and its wreck will forever be a sepulchre for those 268 souls who perished, a memorial to the 75 merchant navy personnel, 193 Australian service men and women, doctors, nurses, orderlies, cooks and stewards. Designated now as a war grave. Now protected ever more from intrusion. Forever now a sacred place. Forever now a reminder that the preservation of your freedom was purchased with the blood, the sweat and the tears of those who came before us. You now know the final resting place of your loved ones after so many years.

  Jan Thomas, whose face was etched with the pain of losing her father at such a young age, said of the service that ‘Having the nation stop to remember is a big step forward for us.’ She wrote a longer note to me after the project was finished. I suspect her words come closest to articulating the range of complex feelings many relatives feel when the period of time between loss and resolution is so long.

  It is a time of very mixed emotions for us. Excitement that the detective work has solved the mystery, and trepidation at facing old and unresolved emotions. Also relief that Centaur can now be properly protected – not a vague order over an empty bit of ocean – and there will be no further false claims to the distress of still grieving people.

  I don’t believe in closure. Trauma of this sort doesn’t go away, it has shaped our lives and become part of who we are, but finding Centaur will be a huge help in managing our loss, and healing the wounds.

  Knowing that we had been able to mark the grave with a plaque on the deck was of enormous significance, and we thank you for your guidance and encouragement in creating that plaque.

  Not only knowing where they are, but knowing that they will be protected. We can now say, at least figuratively, that we are bringing them home.

  Later that year I received a letter that caught me completely by surprise. It was from the Australian High Commissioner in London explaining that I was to be awarded an Honorary Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for service to Australia for locating HMAS Sydney II and AHS Centaur. Having lived in England for so many years, I knew all about the honours system, and after the last Centaur press conference Anthony Crack had told me that reporters had asked him whether the country should give me an award in recognition for what I had achieved. But in my heart I was still a kid from New Jersey, where we didn’t have medals, so it did take me some time to fully appreciate the importance of the award, especially as it was an honorary one and they are infrequently given.

  For various reasons my investiture ceremony didn’t take place until the summer of 2012, when Governor General Bryce was visiting London to attend the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The governor general had previously been governor of Queensland, so she was well informed about the Centaur and we were able to have a proper chat about the shipwreck discovery at the reception afterwards. Seeing the investiture also helped my three young children to understand why their daddy was away from home for such long periods of time. I am very proud of the award and it holds great significance for me, particularly as it is connected with two historic events in Australia and two defining moments in my own career. I can only speak for myself, but I would like to believe that Australia has benefited from our relationship as much as I have.

  A final surprise, which I value and cherish as much as the OAM, was given to me by the Centaur Association, who had made a limited number of miniature replicas of the memorial plaque we laid on the bow of the wreck. They give these to organizations that hold regular memorial services or in other ways continue to tell the story of the Centaur, to display as land-based public focuses for the grave site that no one will ever be able to visit. I was incredibly honoured, therefore, when the Association made an exception and offered one to me in appreciation for locating the Centaur and encouraging them to have the plaque made. Their letter, which was signed by the association’s president and secretary, Richard Jones and Jan Thomas, ended with the words:

  We trust you will accept this replica as a token of our gratitude for all you have done for us, without which Centaurs final resting place and the final resting place of our family members would remain a mystery.

  VII

  Esmeralda

  VASCO DA GAMA’S SECOND ARMADA TO INDIA

  Esmeralda

  SUNK 30 APRIL 1503

  One question I am often asked when people find out that I work as a shipwreck hunter is: ‘Have you ever found any treasure?’ Although the treasure I personally associate with most of the shipwrecks I have worked on is of the historical type, I do know what people mean when they ask this: coins and trinkets made of gold, mounds of silver bars piled up like loaves of bread, or precious jewels the size of cat’s eyes.

  You will be hard pressed to find anyone, if they are being honest, who can say they have never dreamt what it would be like to find a fabulous treasure. It is a perfectly natural desire born from childhood games digging for imaginary hoards buried in the garden. To some extent we all possess an inner Indiana Jones that would love to experience the adventure and excitement of uncovering extraordinary riches in an exotic faraway land. And there have been a few high-profile recoveries of shipwreck treasure in the past that have given people hope that they can make their dreams come true. Mel Fisher, whose divers found the mother lode of silver, gold and emeralds from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha in just fifty-five feet of water in the Florida Keys, springs to mind.

  So the question about treasure is understandable. The reality, however, is very different. Treasure salvage of shipwrecks is a highly speculative and complicated business, fraught with risks. I’d venture to say that for every successful project where a profit or break-even was achieved, there have been ten to twenty failures where all the money invested was lost. And of the projects that have been successful, a good number of those wind up in courtroom litigation, with the hard-earned profits frittered away in legal fees. The case of the SS Central America, in which not a single penny has been returned to the investors despite the recovery of gold coins and bars worth some $150 million, is a prime example of how even a successful project can go badly wrong.

  The salvage of treasure from shipwrecks is also an ethical minefield centred squarely on the issue of whether it is right for shipwrecks to be commercially exploited through the selling of artefacts for profit. Archaeologists, who have been pitted for more than two decades against treasure hunters in an increasingly bitter and divisive battle, argue that historic shipwrecks are fragile and rare time capsules that ought to be preserved in situ and only disturbed under certain conditions. In their view, for-profit ventures are incompatible with good archaeology and should be outlawed. When the ethical considerations of one profession demand the criminalization of another, the fighting is bound to get bloody. Some have even likened the archaeological community’s crusade against treasure hunting as a holy war. In such a caustic environment suspicion, scepticism and prejudices abound.

  It was in this environment that I struggled for many years to mount one of the most challenging an
d ambitious projects of my career. The difficulty wasn’t the depth of the wrecks. At Blue Water Recoveries we already held the Guinness World Record for the deepest shipwreck ever found, at 5,762 metres, and had located several others deeper than 5,000 metres. The wrecks I was keen to find this time were so shallow you could reach them free-diving. Nor would scores of relatives be counting on me to find their loved ones, as with Derbyshire, Hood, Sydney and Centaur. No, the challenge with this project was that I was stepping way out of my comfort zone, and into a realm of expertise in which I had no formal training or practical experience. I would be treading on the patch of academic archaeologists, which they guarded jealously and with deep suspicions about anyone with a commercial background like mine. It made no difference that this was a project about passion, not profit, and that nothing would be sold or commercially exploited. I would still wind up in the cross hairs of numerous archaeologists keen to throw cold water on our findings despite the considerable scientific proof we eventually published.

  Finally, I didn’t pick just any ordinary historic shipwreck on which to cut my archaeological teeth. These wrecks would be the oldest precolonial vessels ever found and archaeologically excavated. They were from Europe’s Golden Age of Discovery and had a direct connection to one of the world’s most famous explorers, national hero of a country that would view me as an unqualified outsider messing around with its most important cultural heritage. They were archaeological treasure of the highest order. If I was ever to unleash my own inner Indiana Jones, this project was it.

  Vasco da Gama ranks alongside Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan as one of the most famous and accomplished explorers from the European Age of Discovery, a period when extensive overseas exploration by a handful of competing seaborne powers led to the rise of global trade in concert with the building of colonial empires. Da Gama was already a noble, a cavalier of the Order of Santiago and a fidalgo of the royal household, when in 1497 he was chosen by the Portuguese King Dom Manuel I to be captain-major of Portugal’s most important exploration east to find the direct sea route to India. Since their discovery of Madeira Island in 1418 and the Azores archipelago in 1427, Portuguese ships commanded by their most skilled explorers and navigators had ventured south into the Atlantic Ocean, reaching successively distant locations down the west coast of Africa, in a quest to conquer new lands and to find Christian allies who could help in their costly conflict against the Moors. In 1488, a small Portuguese fleet commanded by Bartolomeu Dias finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of

  Africa, but it ventured no further because his crew became frightened and refused to go on. The Portuguese knew that India was a land rich in valuable spices, especially pepper, and it was the ultimate objective in their plans for economic and territorial expansion. However, it wasn’t until the ambition of Dom Manuel was matched by the bravery of Vasco da Gama that they reached their goal.

  Da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, with an armada of just three ships, has been described by historians as one of the most important events recorded in the history of mankind. This daring and courageous exploit of seamanship and navigation gave Portugal virtually total control of the rich spice trade with India. By the middle of the sixteenth century they dominated the world’s trade, with a hundred-year monopoly in the Indian Ocean over their Dutch and English rivals. Along with the discovery of Brazil in 1500 by Pedro Álvares Cabral, it was one of the crowning achievements in Dom Manuel’s reign, helping to cement his reputation as ‘Manuel the Fortunate’ and one of Portugal’s most important rulers ever. For da Gama, it meant more riches and titles, including being named the first Admiral of the Indies.

  Three years later, Dom Manuel called on da Gama once again, this time to sort out a serious problem with his newly established feitoria (factory) in Calicut. The factory had been established by Cabral, who had commanded the second armada to India and had been tasked by Dom Manuel to negotiate a treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut allowing the Portuguese to openly trade for spices. Although the treaty was signed and some trading did take place, Cabral’s policy of conducting hostile trade, and anger amongst the Arab merchants over the heavy-handed practices of the Portuguese, led to a violent conflict in which fifty-four Portuguese from the factory were slaughtered. In revenge, Cabral bombarded Calicut with his heavy guns, killing as many as 500 people. Cabral’s mission failed on numerous counts. Of his thirteen ships, only five returned with cargo while five others were lost at sea; he failed to establish good trading relations with the Zamorin; the factory at Calicut was massacred; and it was discovered that the Zamorin were Hindus and not primitive Christians as the Portuguese originally believed.

  A fourth armada was subsequently organized (the third armada had already left Lisbon, unaware of Cabral’s news), with the primary aim of retaliation against the Zamorin of Calicut. This was to be a military mission and the largest armada to date: twenty ships brimming with heavy iron and bronze cannons that would give the Portuguese a powerful advantage over whatever enemy they faced on land or at sea. Dom Manuel appointed da Gama captain-major and gave a special assignment to another important nobleman, Vicente Sodré, da Gama’s elder maternal uncle. Vicente and his brother Bras Sodré would lead a smaller sub-squadron of five ships (three naus and two caravels) with independent instructions from the king to ‘guard the mouth of the Strait of the Red Sea’, effectively blockading Arab trading ships from sailing onwards and delivering their cargoes for trade with Europe. There was no doubt about Vicente Sodré’s position in the hierarchy of the twenty captains below da Gama, as he was named to assume the role of captain-major if anything happened to his nephew and the other captains were given the directive to follow Sodré’s orders as if da Gama had demanded them himself.

  Da Gama’s armada reached the Malabar coast of India in late August of 1502 and wasted no time in taking revenge against a large merchant ship carrying Muslims returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. Despite the offer of a considerable ransom and pleas to spare the lives of the passengers, da Gama had the ship bombarded and watched it burn with every man, woman and child still on board. Likewise, he turned down all offers of peace and settlement with the Zamorin, and when they rejected his ultimatum for the expulsion of the entire Muslim settlement from Calicut, he had his ships bombard the city for two days. He also ordered each ship in his fleet to hang captured Moors from their masts and parade them along the coast so people watching from the seashore could see. To inflict even more terror, he had the captives’ hands and feet cut off and sent in a boat to shore while he let the bodies wash in on the tide. A letter he sent with the boat to the King demanded payment not only for the loss of the Portuguese goods in the factory, but also for the gunpowder and cannon balls his ships expended during the bombardment.

  Despite these appalling acts of brutality and violence, the Zamorin would not be cowed into a subservient trading relationship with the Portuguese. The rulers of Cochin, Cannanore and Qulion were more amenable, however, and da Gama was able to finalise commercial treaties with each and establish permanent factories in the former two ports. Vicente Sodré’s squadron primarily served a military function during this period and found themselves in the thick of all the actions against the Zamorin. When da Gama left for Cochin, for example, Sodré remained behind to blockade Calicut and prevent ships and supplies from entering the port. Da Gama had a similar role in mind for his uncle when he set sail for Lisbon at the end of the year with all his trading ships full of cargo.

  It had always been intended for Sodré’s squadron to remain behind as a permanent coastal patrol in the Indian Ocean, guarding the entrance to the Red Sea. His nephew, however, had a more pressing concern. Worried that the Zamorin would attack his newly established factories in Cochin and Cannanore, da Gama ordered Sodré to base his patrol in this area, where he could guard the ports and still be able to capture Arab ships trading between Kerala and the Red Sea in keeping with Dom Manuel’s wishes. Based on hi
s later actions, it would appear that Sodré was more interested in enriching himself and his brother than in complying with his nephew’s orders. Whatever his reasons for leaving the Malabar coast and sailing up to the Gulf of Aden, it set in motion a train of events that would ultimately lead to the loss of two valuable ships along with many lives.

  If Vicente Sodré’s decision to abandon his guard duties was based on a desire to capture rich trading ships as prizes, he picked a good location in the Gulf of Aden. Abetted by his brother Bras, he plundered five Muslim-owned vessels and, continuing their barbarous streak, killed all the crews and burnt the ships. The ruthless and murderous behaviour of the Sodré brothers was matched only by their greed in keeping the best of the stolen goods for themselves, which angered the other captains in the squadron and fermented a poisonous atmosphere amongst the crews.

  With their holds full of pillaged cargo, Vicente took his squadron to the Khuriya Muriya Islands off the south-eastern coast of Oman to shelter from the south-west monsoon and to repair the hull of one of the smaller ships, a caravel. They anchored in a bay off the largest of the five islands (known today as Al Hallaniyah), which was inhabited by a small indigenous population of Arabs who existed largely on the fish and turtles they caught. Despite their avowed hatred for Moors, the Portuguese actually enjoyed friendly relations with the islanders. They stayed for weeks, bartered for food and provisions, and some of the sailors even indulged in the affections of the married women while their men were away fishing.

  In May, the fishermen knew from the behaviour of the fish that a violent storm from the north was about to hit the island. They warned the Portuguese that they should move their ships to the leeward side or risk them being lost in the heavy seas that would come. Vicente took advice from the other captains and his Arab pilots, but in the end decided to ignore the warnings, suspecting that the fishermen just wanted to get rid of the Portuguese as they were unhappy with their women entertaining the sailors. The Portuguese were confident that their iron anchors would hold the three large naus in place, but they took precautions by putting out additional moorings at their bows and by moving the smaller caravels to a safe location on the other side of the island.