From November 1st Adelaide Now (Australia).
When David Mearns and his team found the HMAS Sydney in March 2008 they jumped around like children. "It was absolute euphoria," said Mearns.
Just under two years later, a similar thing happened when they discovered the final resting place of the AHS Centaur.
At the same, the finds gave closure to hundreds of Australian families who knew their loved ones were most likely dead, but didn't know where.
David Mearns received the Medal of the Order of Australia.
He is director of Blue Water Recoveries and under his direction they've found more than fifty wrecks.
They found the wreck of the Sydney March 16, 2008, leaning slightly over to starboard 2.5 kilometers deep on the floor of the Indian Ocean about 100 nautical miles off the West Australian coast. Four days earlier, they had found the wreck of the German raider Kormoran which sank after sinking the Sydney in a tremendous firefight. All 645 crew members on the Sydney lost their lives. The search for the Sydney covered over 1,500 square nautical miles, more than ten times the area involved in the search for the Titanic.
This past January 10th, they found the AHS Centaur which had been torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-177 off the Queensland coast in 1943, despite obviously being a hospital ship. Of a crew of 332, loss of life numbered 268. The remaining 64 were rescued by an American destroyer after floating on wreckage for 36 hours.
An Award Well-Earned. --DaCoot
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