The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  Of the nearly 1,200 men on board Indianapolis, perhaps as many as 900 survived the attack and sinking. A relatively small number of those who went into the water alive would not have made it through that first night. These were the most seriously injured men, with extensive burns and other trauma. For them the end was mercifully quick. By daybreak, the survivors were scattered across the water, clinging to whatever means of support they were able to find among the flotsam that Indianapolis had left behind. The ship had sunk so fast, there was no organized abandoning; no ship’s boats were launched and not every man was able to grab a life jacket or belt before they either jumped overboard or were swept away as the sea closed over the rapidly sinking hull. Some would have been carrying minor injuries – burns, broken arms and twisted ankles – while nearly all would have been covered with a thick layer of oil that burned their skin and made them violently sick.

  Survival now depended on how quickly rescue ships could reach their location, which was roughly at the midway point of their 1,171-nautical-mile voyage from Guam to Leyte. If the radio operators had been able to transmit a distress message giving their most recent position, the chances of survival for the large majority of the men would have been very good. Whether a distress message was actually received or acted upon is a highly contentious issue that haunts the navy to this very day. What we do know, however, is that no ship was sent to rescue Indianapolis’s men. Worse than that – and this is the most controversial failing and the crux of the tragedy – none of the navy operational commands who had been informed of Indianapolis’s routing was responsible for noting whether the ship had actually arrived in Leyte as scheduled. So when the Indy didn’t arrive she wasn’t listed as overdue and no action was taken to investigate her whereabouts. In fact, the marker plotting her assumed progress towards Leyte was removed from the plotting board at 11.00 local time on 31 July (the ETA) even though she clearly hadn’t arrived.

  The bottom line of this bureaucratic bungling between the various commands and fleet commanders was that Indianapolis wasn’t just forgotten, she was effectively erased from the face of the earth. The scene had been inadvertently set for the worst sea disaster in American naval history. In total, 880 of Indianapolis’s men lost their lives, with as many as 580 suffering the most horrific and slowly painful deaths due to exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks. The 316 who did survive owed their lives to a bomber pilot, Lieutenant Wilbur Gwinn, who on a routine patrol searching for Japanese ships and submarines spotted an oil slick containing some thirty men splashing wildly to attract his attention. Gwinn’s report at 11.20 on 2 August, eighty-three hours after the Indy had sunk, set in motion one of the largest air and sea rescue missions conducted by US forces during the war. It was given top priority by the navy’s most senior commanders, who, upon learning that the survivors were from the USS Indianapolis, immediately realized what a black stain this would be on their records.

  Captain McVay, who was luckier than most, having crawled into a life raft he had found on the first night, was one of the last to be rescued, just before midday on 3 August, nearly four and a half days after his ship had sunk. He was as confused as anyone as to why it had taken so long before the rescuers came looking for him. McVay was taken to a naval hospital on the island of Peleliu, arriving there on the 4th. A press conference was organized, with reporters flown in on the 5th. By now McVay would have been informed about the huge number of men killed under his command. He would have known there was nothing he could have done differently to avoid the torpedo attack or save the ship. In his comments to the press, his frustration was clearly directed at others:

  We were due at our anchorage at 1100 hours. I should think by noon or 1300 they would have started to worry. A ship that size practically runs on train schedule. I should think by noon they would have started to call by radio to find out where we were, or if something was wrong. So far as I know, nothing was started until Thursday [2 August]. This is something I want to ask somebody myself. Why didn’t this get out sooner?

  On Monday 6 August, Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, leading to the surrender of Japan and the end of the war. McVay and his men had done their duty, and despite their horrific ordeal could take pride in the role they had played in shortening the war. On 15 August, the day that all of America was celebrating Japan’s formal surrender, the country also learned about the loss of the Indianapolis. The navy had decided to embargo the story until after President Truman’s historic announcement that the war was over. For anyone who noticed the story of the lost cruiser amidst all the celebrations, they may have accepted it as a necessary cost to end the war.

  Despite the navy’s decision to use the end of the war as a good day to bury the bad news about Indianapolis, they inexplicably decided to prolong the scrutiny of this sad event by court-martialling Captain McVay on a charge of ‘hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag’. It was an extraordinary decision that would hoist upon McVay the dubious dishonour of being the first American commanding officer ever to be court-martialled for losing his ship as a result of enemy action. To add to his ignominy, the navy even flew 1–58’s commander, Mochitsura Hashimoto, from Japan to give evidence in court against him. McVay’s orders had clearly stated that the decision to zigzag was at his discretion, dependent on weather conditions. Hashimoto, however, testified that zigzagging would have made no difference in making his attack.

  McVay was cleared of the charge of failing to order his men to abandon ship in a timely manner, but he was found guilty on the charge of hazarding his ship by not zigzagging. The press and many other people saw that he was being made a scapegoat for the errors of others. Even Congress criticised the navy for conducting a hasty trial before a detailed investigative report was completed. The navy had backed itself into a corner and struggled to find a way out of the quagmire they had created. In the end they remitted McVay’s sentence, but not his conviction. His naval career would continue, albeit with the black mark of the court-martial on his record and the loss of so many men on his conscience. It was the loss of the men that deeply troubled him, and he was never able to rid himself of the guilt he felt, no matter how unjust the accusation. He also suffered in his personal life, with the loss of his second wife to cancer and a grandson he adored to a brain tumour. On 6 November 1968, at the age of seventy, McVay took his own life using his service revolver, and thus became the final casualty of the Indianapolis. In his hand he held the tiny toy sailor he carried for good luck.

  Nothing further could possibly be learned about the loss of the Indianapolis, or the conduct of Captain McVay, from investigating the shipwreck. When found, it will be very badly damaged, testament to the devastation that two torpedoes can cause and how the fate of the ship was instantly sealed the moment they struck. So why search for it if there are no questions to answer or mysteries to solve?

  In 2000, a search for the wreck did take place with the approval of the USS Indianapolis Survivors Organization. Four crew members from the Indy participated in that search, which unfortunately was plagued by equipment failures. I played a small role assisting the leader of the search, Craig Newport, who was a friend and former workmate at Eastport International. The intention then, as it will surely be in the future, was to use the wreck as a powerful visual tool in telling the story of the Indianapolis and the price her men paid in completing their secret mission to deliver the bomb that helped end World War II. Back in 1945, the deaths of 880 men were deliberately overshadowed by the announcement that the war was over. It is about time that wrong was righted.

  The men of Indianapolis haven’t been completely forgotten with the passage of time. A number of books, films and television productions have come out that tell the full story. The plight of the crew reached its highest point in public awareness in the 1975 film Jaws, when Captain Quint, the crusty shark hunter played by Robert Shaw, delivers what is now considered one of the most famous monologues in movie history, describing how he was on the Indianapoli
s and how the survivors were attacked by swarms of sharks. More recently, a documentary film ten years in the making ( USS Indianapolis: The Legacy) tells the story almost entirely through the first-hand accounts of the largest number of survivors ever interviewed. The survivors have been having reunions since 1960 and still assemble every year to pay tribute to their shipmates, even though the youngest amongst them is now ninety and there are only about twenty of them still alive.

  Despite the failure of the 2000 search, I have no doubt that the wreck of Indianapolis will be found before too long. It will be a challenging search because of the extreme depth and the rugged seabed geology in that part of the world. However, as each year passes, more ultra-deepwater search systems are being built, and various groups have set their sights on finding the Indy. I would love to be involved if the call ever comes, and I have no doubt that images of the wreck will be able to convey the story of the men’s sacrifice better than anything else. The wreck is, after all, the grave site of the majority of men who died in the attack, and although their physical remains won’t be seen, their presence will be felt everywhere.

  Shackleton’s Endurance

  THE GREATEST SEARCH OF ALL

  SUNK 21 NOVEMBER 1915

  All survived

  For a shipwreck hunter who likes challenges, there can be no greater challenge than the Endurance. The shipwreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s polar yacht, sunk in the heart of the Weddell Sea during his International Trans-Antarctica Expedition (ITAE) is, without question, the hardest there will ever be to find. I have studied every single aspect of searching for Endurance for more than fifteen years and I consider it to be the ultimate shipwreck search challenge. In mountaineering terms it is the K2 of shipwrecks.

  Finding Endurance is the ultimate challenge for one reason alone. It is not because of the depth: even though 3,000 metres is quite deep, I have found many wrecks that are deeper. It is not because Endurance was made of wood: thankfully the two main types of mollusc that bore their way into wood structures cannot survive in the cold, deep waters of the Weddell Sea. And it is not because we don’t know where Endurance lies: I have analysed every single piece of navigation information recorded by Shackleton and his crew, in particular the logbooks of Captain Frank Worsley, and I judge the data regarding the sinking position to be of excellent quality. The reason is unlike any other difficulty I have faced searching for wrecks. It is the same reason why Endurance sank in the first place, and it is also what makes the challenge very special. The challenge is the ice.

  The Weddell Sea of Antarctica is almost permanently covered by a constantly moving pack of ice that can be as thick as two metres. The pack ice froze Endurance in its icy grip, then crushed the stern, allowing water to flood in. Shackleton and his twenty-seven men had no option but to abandon the ship and set up a temporary camp nearby with tents, three lifeboats and all their provisions. As the ice floe drifted north, the sun began to heat the ship, causing the ice holding it to melt and the hull to sink deeper. Finally, on 21 November 1915, the Weddell’s frozen grip broke and Endurance plummeted to the bottom, 3,000 metres below. Shackleton was the hardest of men, but even he was gutted by the loss of his ship. The few lines he wrote in his diary reveal the depth of his anguish: ‘At 5 p.m. she went down by the head. The stern, the cause of all the trouble, was the last to go under water. I cannot write about it.’

  The pack ice remains the overriding danger to any ship – even the world’s most powerful and modern icebreakers – that enters this part of the Weddell Sea. The first lesson all ship captains learn about navigating in ice is to avoid the ice: skirt around it, or penetrate it through leads that open up between large ice floes. However, to find Endurance we will not have the luxury of avoiding the ice. On the contrary, we will have to ram our way through as much as 250 nautical miles of it before reaching the search area. Once we get there, the truly hard part begins, because to conduct the search and then film the wreck we will need to remain stationary above it while thousands of tons of ice move inexorably in the opposite direction. The success of the entire expedition will hinge on whether the icebreaker we use can resist that overwhelming force.

  At this point you might ask: is Endurance really that special that it warrants attempting something so ridiculously hard? I am clearly biased, but I think that without a doubt it is. In a nutshell, it is one of the world’s most famous and iconic ships, whose loss set the stage for arguably the most epic survival and rescue story of all time, led by one of the greatest explorers in history. Even people who don’t follow exploration will have surely marvelled at the exceptional and timeless photos of Endurance taken by the famed photographer Frank Hurley. And they will undoubtedly recognize the name Shackleton as the legendary leader who by his dogged and relentless efforts saved all twenty-seven of his men in the most dire and hopeless of circumstances.

  While we plan to conduct meaningful science at the wreck site to make sure a legacy is created from this unique expedition, I believe it will be the photographs we take of Endurance that excite and inspire people around the world. Using the best sonars, cameras and lighting we’ll be able to create a virtual three-dimensional reconstruction of the shipwreck that will fascinate and amaze people. In the same way that Hurley’s photographs have, for a century, inspired people to gaze in awe at the beauty of Antarctica, my hope is that the images we bring back of the wreck site and the bottom of the Weddell Sea will have the same lasting effect, standing alongside Hurley’s photographs to tell the story of Endurance and Shackleton’s ITAE expedition to new generations.

  People say I have a dream job. Well, if I do, this is the project I dream about. It is the one I most want to complete and the one I have worked hardest to make happen, with the help of scores of supporters. In addition to a large sum of money, the main thing we need is the right type of heavy icebreaking ship that can also double as an expedition vessel. There are very few such ships located in the southern hemisphere, which has led to me travelling the world looking at various options. During this time, I have had the Shackleton family, led by Sir Ernest’s granddaughter Alexandra ‘Zaz’ Shackleton, firmly in my corner. Zaz is now a lifelong friend. Of all the information I uncovered during my research, the discovery that pleased me most was that the family are still the legal owners of the shipwreck.

  I am not the hero-worshipping type, but Shackleton has definitely become a hero to me, and I have used his example in the past when I have found myself in tough spots. I have learned from him the virtue of waiting, of having patience. It is not a natural characteristic for me, but it was the only way I got through all the problems and setbacks we had during the Sydney search without rushing into a bad decision. I just had to remind myself of Shackleton’s genius in naming the spot where he and his twenty-seven men lived on an ice floe for over three months as they drifted north: he called it Patience Camp. The effort to obtain the funds and ships we’ll need to search for Endurance has certainly taken a lot of patience, but I can wait. I learned that from Shackleton.

  Illustrations

  Me (third from left) and my siblings Susan, Gina and Bobby in our back yard in Union City, New Jersey.

  This green moray eel would attack me every day I worked on an artificial reef in St. Croix. As he refused to relocate to a nearby reef, my only choice was to be bitten or kill him.

  Standing watch over the EG&G 259-4 side-scan sonar recorder during a survey in the Bahamas.

  Udo Proksch surrounded by his staff at der Demel pastry shop in Vienna. Proksch gave the captain of Lucona one of Demel’s famous torte cakes, knowing that the bomb he loaded on board would kill the ship’s crew.

  The crowded back deck of the Valiant Service. The ship was home for the Ocean Explorer 6000 and Magellan 725 systems for 15 months.

  Lifting the Ocean Explorer off the deck prior to launch. I’m wearing a radio headset that allowed me to direct the crane and ship drivers during the launch.

  Recovering the Ocean Explorer sonar in the Me
diterranean Sea. The back deck was the most dangerous place to work on the Valiant Service.

  This innocuous box, resting upside down, contained all the evidence to prove the ship we found was Lucona. Stencilled on its side was the codes (XB 19 and B10), manifest number (02354) and company name (ZAPATA SA) connecting the cargo to Udo Proksch.

  The investigative journalist Hans Pretterebner managed to find this photograph of the actual cargo Udo Proksch had shipped in Lucona. It helped us identify the exact same pieces of machinery we found lying on the seabed in the debris field. Compare the object circled in both photographs.

  The search for Derbyshire, and the DFA’s quest to learn the truth about her loss, frequently made front-page news in the UK.

  Every bright yellowish target in this sonar image represents a piece of Derbyshire’s shattered hull.

  This diagram shows the location of the controversial Frame 65 section of Derbyshire just forward of the bridge.

  © NATIONAL MUSEUMS LIVERPOOL

  Mark Dickinson bravely backed ITF’s search for Derbyshire. He is now the General Secretary of Nautilus UK, the Maritime Officers’ union.

  The plaque we laid on Derbyshire’s bow meant so much to the families it made me determined to do the same with Hood, Bismarck and Centaur.