Caught on the Montevideo Maru, around 1,000 Australian POWs died. The sinking of this Japanese ship, which took place on July 1, 1942, in the midst of World War II, is the worst maritime disaster in Australian history. And it was caused by friendly fire.
The ship, which was carrying soldiers and civilians who had been captured in the fall of Rabaul, New Britain, a few months earlier, was torpedoed by the USS Sturgeon submarine off the Philippine coast. The American sailors did not know that they were sinking a ship full of allies.
For 80 years, the exact location of the Montevideo Maru had been a mystery. Until an expedition financed by the Silentworld Foundation of Sydney, in collaboration with the Dutch company Fugro, a specialist in deep-sea studies, has finally found the whereabouts of the Japanese transport ship at a depth of more than 4,000 meters, deeper. than the Titanic.
The lives of approximately 1,080 people, both military and civilian, were lost in the attack. The ship went down with at least 850 Australian service members and 210 civilians from up to 14 countries, ranging from a 15-year-old boy to men in their sixties. Almost twice as many Australians died on the Montevideo Maru than in the entire Vietnam War. Significantly more lives were lost than in the 1941 sinking of HMAS Sydney (645) and the hospital ship Centaur (268) in 1943.
The search for the Japanese ship began on April 6 in the South China Sea, about 110 kilometers northwest of Luzon (the largest of the islands in the archipelago). After just 12 days, the marine archaeologists recorded a sighting with the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with built-in sonar that they used.
“The discovery of the Montevideo Maru closes a terrible chapter in Australia's military and maritime history,” says John Mullen, director of Silentworld, who has spent five years preparing for this mission. The families of the deceased waited years before learning of the tragic outcome of the sinking.
“Some never fully accepted that their loved ones were among the victims. By finding the vessel, we hope to bring closure to many families devastated by this terrible disaster”, adds the businessman, explorer and philanthropist of maritime history.
One of the lineages that suffered the most was that of the Turners. His three inseparable young sons - Sidney, Dudley and Daryl - enlisted together in the Australian Army and perished together in the attack on the USS Sturgeon submarine. The case of the researcher Andrea Williams, who participated in this expedition, is also surprising: both her grandfather and her great-uncle were part of the civilians who died in the tragedy.
