China salvaging sunk WW2 British warships

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An illegal Chinese salvage operation is raiding two United Kingdom World War II warship wrecks off the coast of Malaysia for scrap steel, aluminum and brass fittings, prompting a statement of concern from the Royal Navy, USNI News has learned.

Chuan Hong 68 used a large dredging crane to pluck scrap from the wrecks of battleship HMS Prince of Wales (52) and battlecruiser HMS Repulse, according to local press reports. Both were sunk on on Dec. 10, 1941, days after Pearl Harbor, by Japanese bombers, resulting in the loss of 840 sailors.

Professional diver Hazz Zain flagged the illicit commercial operation local authorities after local fisherman spotted the dredger over the wreck sites, reported the New Straits Times this week.

The illegal salvage has thrown a sharp spotlight on how vulnerable historic heritage sites are to thieves intent on plundering war graves, the director general of the Museum of the Royal Navy said in a Tuesday statement.

“What we need is a management strategy for the underwater naval heritage so that we can better protect or commemorate these ships. That may include targeted retrieval of objects,” Dominic Tweddle said.
“If resourced correctly, the existing Royal Navy loss list can be enhanced to be a vital tool to begin to understand, research and manage over 5,000 wrecks before they are lost forever.”

The wreckage site is in the extended economic zone of Malaysia. Authorities there told news organizations they are investigating the reported looting of the two ships and the discovery of material in a beachside scrap yard that could have been from them.

The battleship is resting upside down in 223 feet of water near Kuantan in the South China Sea. The wreckage of the battlecruiser is several miles away.

News reports from the U.K. and Australia say salvage vessel Chuan Hong 68 was dredging with a deep-reach crane for the “high-quality steel” used to build the two warships. The steel could be smelted for other uses. The value comes from the steel’s production before the use of nuclear weapons and testing and is important for use in manufacturing some scientific and medical equipment.

The salvage vessel has been operating in the region since early this year, new agencies reported.

British news organization have often reported about previous illegal dredging of this site and others for steel, copper and specially manufactured propellers. For example, The Guardian reported six years ago that at least 40 vessels have been destroyed in these operations.

In addition to the British warships, the same waters off Indonesia and Singapore contain wreckage sites of 40 Australian, Dutch and Japanese warships and merchantmen that have already been destroyed.

On 10th December 1941, the Royal Navy ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were attacked and sunk by aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with the loss of 842 men, in what was one of the worst disasters in British naval history.

Their sinking sent shock waves through the country and occurred just days after Pearl Harbour.

The loss shocked the nation and at that time forced the navy to re-evaluate how they had fought for centuries. Now air power was the key to projecting maritime power and today, the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike Group is a legacy of this shift in focus.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously recalled in his post-war memoirs:

“In all the war, I never received a more direct shock... As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbour, who were hastening back to California. Across this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”

The bells of HMS Prince of Wales (still on display) and HMS Repulse (no longer on display) at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard Credit NMRN

Professor Dominic Tweddle, Director General of The National Museum of the Royal Navy said:

“Ours is the leading voice for the heritage of the Royal Navy and core to our mission is to memorialise and remember the role that men and women fulfilled in serving their country.

“We are distressed and concerned at the apparent vandalism for personal profit of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. They are designated war graves. We are upset at the loss of naval heritage and the impact this has on the understanding of our Royal Navy history.

“What we need is a management strategy for the underwater naval heritage so that we can better protect or commemorate these ships. That may include targeted retrieval of objects.

“We want the Royal Navy to develop a policy we can help deliver. If resourced correctly, the existing Royal Navy loss list can be enhanced to be a vital tool to begin to understand, research and manage over 5,000 wrecks before they are lost forever. 

“A strategy is vital to determine how to assess and manage these wrecks in the most efficient and effective manner. Above all, we must remember the crews who served on these lost ships and all too often gave their lives in the service of their country”

JAKARTA -

Indonesia will ask Malaysia to transfer custody of a Chinese salvage ship that was caught illegally operating in Indonesian waters last month but fled across the maritime border, Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti said Friday.

"I will contact the Malaysian fisheries ministers for facilitating bilateral discussions to transfer the MV Chuan Hong 68 vessel to Indonesian authorities so it can be processed legally," he said.

On April 20, the Indonesian Navy found the 8,352-ton Chinese vessel collecting scrap metal from shipwrecks near the Anambas Islands of Riau Province and brought it to shore, detaining 20 crew members -- 16 Chinese, three Indians and one Malaysian -- who claimed the captain was not among them.

But at 1:30 a.m. on April 22, the navy discovered the vessel missing.

Indonesia coordinated with Malaysian's maritime enforcement authorities to find it, which they did on April 28, off the eastern coast of Malaysia's Johor state.

The listed owner of MV Chuan Hong 68 is Shanghai Chonghe Marine Industry Co.

Indonesian officials said the vessel had salvaged metal from three Japanese shipwrecks in Malaysian waters, including the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Sagiri that was sunk off Borneo during World War II, and two other vessels in Indonesian waters, namely a Swedish supertanker and an Italian steamship.

May 5, 2017 | KYODO NEWS

EAST JAVA, Indonesia: Deep-sea diver Dave Yiu has done countless dives to Asia’s World War Two shipwrecks over the past 20 years.

He imagines what life was like aboard the ships, and is awed by their historical value and the surrounding marine life.

In recent years, however, he has also witnessed their destruction first-hand.

Two wrecks that he has often visited are the British Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship) Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales. They sank off the coast of Kuantan, Malaysia on Dec 10, 1941 under Japanese attack.

On a trip in 2013, he noticed a propeller missing from the stern of the 242-metre-long Repulse, which lies about 50 metres underwater at its shallowest point.



“We’re talking about a huge propeller, bigger than the size of a bus,” he told the programme Undercover Asia. “It’s gone. We used to see small-time salvagers, and they just dive for scrap metal, but this is something else altogether.”

There has been more of the same happening since then, and he has even seen boats that have carried out the demolition.

The sinking of the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales marked a major setback for the British in the war, and more than 800 men on both ships died.

“There’s a lot of reverence for the men of war who died,” said Yiu, a Singaporean diver with Tech Gas Asia, which offers a range of scuba gear and services. “Human remains? We see them, we don’t touch them.”



Seeing the Repulse “eaten up” by looters is “heartbreaking” to him. The plunder of Southeast Asia’s wartime shipwrecks has even been dubbed the world’s biggest grave robbery.

More than 40 have been identified as damaged or removed. Hundreds more are suspected to be damaged or are considered vulnerable. Thousands of American, Australian, British, Dutch and Japanese sailors went down with the ships.

WHO DISTURBED THE GRAVES?

News of the illegal salvaging and desecration of war graves has sparked outcry in countries such as the Netherlands.

The Dutch, the colonial rulers of Indonesia, lost three ships when Japan defeated the Allied forces in the Battle of the Java Sea on Feb 27, 1942.



Some 915 men went down with the HNLMS (His/Her Netherlands Majesty’s Ship) De Ruyter, Java and Kortenaer. In total, 2,300 lives were lost in the battle, which sought to prevent Japan’s occupation of the Dutch East Indies.

Who has destroyed these war graves and why? Investigative journalist Aqwam Fiazmi Hanifan is one of those who have tried to uncover the mystery.

He went to East Java, where stories had emerged of human remains found alongside scrap metal from a Dutch vessel dredged up.

Taking small valuables and scrap metal is a tradition in Java's coastal communities, who have fished the seas a long time. And locals around Brondong Port confirmed that they had sorted out parts from the warship.



Aqwam found, however, that they could not have been responsible for the large-scale removal of the wrecks, which required modern machines.

As for the human remains, a former scrapyard supervisor said bones and skulls were found. Some of the remains were buried at the Suko cemetery in Brondong, but official investigations found the bones to be from animals.

The former supervisor had another lead: Pioner 88, the name of a salvage ship. Aqwam traced its ownership to an Indonesian company, but his attempts to track down its boss were unsuccessful.

He shared his findings with the police, but officers found no evidence that the company had broken the law.

“We couldn’t find the big metal pieces to match the investigation of their metals,” an officer told him. “Also, their (salvage site) co-ordinates are different (from those of the wartime shipwrecks). We need to stick to the facts.”



Aqwam’s investigations hit a dead end, but doubts remain in his mind. According to him, the location for a government licence issued to Pioner 88 in 2015 was near the plundered wreck of British destroyer HMS Electra.

“Mostly these licences didn’t even mention any co-ordinates. We can see that, especially for the Pioner 88 crane ship, it doesn’t explain specifically the co-ordinates of which shipwrecks they can collect,” he noted.

Based on locals’ testimonies, ships sometimes operate outside the location stated on those licences anyway, he added. “Sometimes the areas they work in are quite far from the sea lanes they’re supposed to be working in.”

In 2017, another vessel, a dredger called Chuan Hong 68, was caught by the Indonesian Navy for allegedly looting a sunken Swedish supertanker.