As the weather closed in we tucked ourselves into the shoreline, as there was a blow up from the south west monsoon , tucking into the east coast reduced the effects of wind driven waves.The calmer waters gave us a chance to video the wrecks of the Hatsutaka/ Prince of Wales and the Repulse, before heading up the straights of Mallaca and our next exploration mark .
A few years ago I got interested in a British minelaying submarine called HMS Porpoise. She was sank in the vicinity of Penang by an aeroplane. The problem with locating this sub is that with air attacks there is no position given for the initial contact, only a vague “in the vicinity of” ,to make it more complicated .The submarine was also last seen going over the horizon, trailing oil, with no bearing given. Its down to guess work on where she could be -we knew the attack was conducted after she had laid a string of mines near Penang, and we have a good idea where the minefields were by looking at the positions of the unfortunate ships that strayed into them, one of which we were to look for next .
When looking at the chart, my mind tried to imagine what the captain would have done base the starting point close to the minefield and the max speed submerged while trailing oil what bearing the captain would have taken in those frantic momments of the attack my logic would point to a straight forward dash to get some depth under her keel and avoid damage from rebounding resonance off of a shallow bottom .With this in mind we decided to look due west of a known field, concentrating on a fisherman’s mark around 30 nautical miles away. My local contact had told me of three likely positions here, but we only had time to explore one , so I targeted the mark that was the best guess of my fishing contact .
As we approach the mark a huge return showed on the sonar and we all rushed to get kitted up. The bottom showed to be 75 mtr and already had a nice 18/35TMX the current was also slack: another piece of luck.We jumped in and followed the line into the mark, passing Dave on the way down, at the bottom we found the shot hanging over the side of a large bridge, next to an opening where a cast iron whb sat, unmoved since the day she went to the bottom. The back of the bridge dropped away to the sand. Just forward there was a cargo hold. The construction appeared to be that of a small coastal cargo vessel, the type of which was commonly requisitioned by the Japanese to help keep their supply routes open.
The portholes were poorly constructed, with little beauty in her design . The electrical cable was more modern indicating a post war ship, not the result we were looking for, but still an interesting find. With only a 25min bottom time, further investigation will have to be put off. The list is growing for ship wrecks we need to return to .
