$4 Mio search for Centaur Wreck begins
Brisbane, Australia (Global Adventures): The Australian government plans to spend $4 million to locate the A.H.S. Centaur, a hospital ship which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine I-177 14 May 1943.
The Scottish-built vessel was launched in 1924 as a combination passenger liner/freighter and operated a trade route between Western Australia and Singapore via Indonesia, carrying passengers, cargo, and livestock. Following her early-1943 conversion to a hospital ship, Centaur served as a medical transport between New Guinea and Australia. Before dawn on 14 May 1943, while on her second voyage, Centaur was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine. The majority of the 332 aboard died in the attack; the 64 survivors had to wait for up to 36 hours before they were rescued.
In 1995, it was announced that the shipwreck of Centaur had been located in waters 9 nautical miles (17 km) from the lighthouse on Moreton Island, Queensland. That is a significant distance from her believed last position. The finding was reported on A Current Affair, during which footage of the shipwreck, 170 meters (560 ft) underwater, was shown. Discoverer Donald Dennis claimed the identity of the shipwreck had been confirmed by the Navy, the Queensland Maritime Museum, and the Australian War Memorial.
Over the next eight years, there was growing doubt about the position of Dennis' wreck. Two wreck divers, Trevor Jackson and Simon Mitchell, used the location for a four hour world record dive on 14 May 2002, during which they examined the wreck and took measurements, claiming that the ship was too small to be Centaur. The Royal Australian Navy says it now has conclusive evidence that the wreck is not the Centaur. Captain Bruce Kafer, chief hydrographer for the Royal Australian Navy, says the Centaur's true resting place remains a mystery. "What I would suggest is that it is now lying somewhere well east of Moreton Island, probably between 20 and 30 miles and there are various opinions on that," so Kafer. He says that the resting place could be 3,300 meters below the ocean.
The search, to be conducted from the Defense Maritime Services vessel Seahorse Spirit and overseen by shipwreck hunter David Mearns, director of Blue Water Recoveries Limited in West Sussex, England, is scheduled to start in mid-December 2009. He is famous for locating the wrecks of ships lost in World War II, including the British battleship HMS Hood in 2001, and both the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, in 2008. Mearns and his company are in the Guinness World Records for the deepest shipwreck ever found, the German World War II blockade runner Rio Grande, which was located at a depth of 5,762 meters (18,900 ft).
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