January 18, 2016
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 5
Ocean search for Malaysian airliner finds second shipwreck
UNIDENTIFIED IRON SHIP. A sonar image taken on January 2,
2016 and released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on January
13, 2016 shows a shipwreck on the ocean floor off the coast of Australia.
The undersea search for the Malaysian airliner that vanished almost two
years ago has found a second 19th-century shipwreck deep in the Indian
Ocean off the west Australian coast, according to officials. (Australian
Transport Safety Bureau via AP)
By Rod McGuirk
The Associated Press
C
ANBERRA, Australia — The undersea search for
the Malaysian airliner that vanished almost two
years ago has found a likely 19th-century
shipwreck deep in the Indian Ocean off the west
Australian coast, according to officials.
A sonar search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370 found what appeared to be a manmade object
on December 19, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau
said in a statement.
A follow-up investigation using an underwater drone
captured high-resolution sonar images on January 2 that
confirmed that the find was a shipwreck, said the bureau,
which is running the search for the Boeing 777 which
vanished on March 8, 2014.
The Shipwreck Galleries of the Western Australian
Museum conducted a preliminary review of the images
and advised that the wreck was likely to be a steel or iron
ship dating from the turn of the 19th century, the bureau
said.
The bureau later corrected the potential age of the
wreck to the middle of the 19th century or later.
“It looks like a large iron or steel sailing ship sitting
upright and very intact dating from mid-to-late 19th,
possibly early 20th century,” museum maritime
archaeologist Ross Anderson told the bureau in a
statement.
“It appears it is collapsing in classic iron ship
fashion with the bow and stern triangles upright and
intact and side plating collapsing out to starboard,”
Anderson added.
Anderson said he was not able to identify the name of
the ship based on the image or say whether it had three or
four masts, which would narrow the possibilities. He
estimated it was 260 feet long.
“It is all but impossible to identify ships or their country
of manufacture/port of origin without being able to do
more detailed artefact studies, as so many have been lost
over the years,” Anderson said.
“Often the best clue is something like crockery that may
have visible the name of the shipping line or similar,” he
added.
The wreck was found under water 12,100 feet deep,
1,600 miles southwest of the Australian port of Fremantle
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where the three search vessels are based, the bureau said.
The sea hunt similarly found what appeared to be a
manmade object in March last year 12,800 feet deep. But
it wasn’t until May that a closer look confirmed that it was
not plane wreckage but the wreck of a cargo ship built in
the mid-to-late 19th century. Hundreds of such ships were
lost during voyages across the Indian Ocean. Neither ship
is likely to be identified because of the cost of mounting
closer examinations.
Flight 370 is thought to have crashed in the Indian
Ocean with 239 passengers and crew aboard more than
1,100 miles southwest of Australia after mysteriously
flying off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing.
Searchers have been combing a 46,000-square-mile
part of the Indian Ocean since late 2014. A wing flap
found in July on the other side of the Indian Ocean
when it washed up on Reunion Island is the only debris
recovered.
More than 30,000 square miles of the seafloor have
been scoured so far, and the search is scheduled to wind up
by the middle of the year if nothing else of Flight 370 is
found.
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