AUSTRALIA, INDONESIA

Australia, Indonesia making joint effort to protect WW2 wreck

March 1, 2017

Australia and Indonesia are to send divers to inspect the wreck of a warship torpedoed off the coast of Java during World War II to determine how best to protect the site from looters who have stripped numerous other WW2 wrecks.

The Australian cruiser HMAS Perth was sunk by Japanese forces off the northwest tip of Java during the Battle of Sunda Strait in 1942. Of the 681 crew on board, 353 lost their lives.

"A physical dive on the site with archaeologists will be the only way to gain a clear picture of what remains of Perth," said Kevin Sumption, director of the Australian National Maritime Museum.

Divers discovered in November that the wrecks of two Dutch warships sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea, in which the Perth also took part, had been completely stripped by marine salvagers, who have ransacked many other wrecks lying in Indonesian waters.

“We are doing everything we can, working in close partnership with our Indonesian colleagues, to secure formal protection of the site,” Sumption said.

Australia, Indonesia and the United States are yet to ratify the 2001 United Nations Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.

David Steinberg, president of the Australasian Institute of Maritime Archaeology, said the case of the Perth and other wartime wrecks showed the importance of ratifying the convention.

A joint dive with Indonesia's National Research Centre of Archaeology was originally planned for October but was postponed due to the early onset of the monsoon season, and a later attempt at a sonar survey proved inconclusive. However, the survey was able to show that the wreck of another ship, the USS Houston, sunk in the same battle as HMAS Perth, was found to be largely intact.

The results of the March dive will likely take experts several months to analyse.

#22055 Published: February 14, 2017