Ocean refuses to give up "South Africa's Titanic"
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticl...17§ion=newsJOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A shipwreck hunter who spent two decades searching for a steamer dubbed "South Africa's Titanic" says he is ready to abandon his quest after yet another expedition ended in failure.
The Waratah, a British luxury liner returning from its second trip to Australia, disappeared without trace in a storm off South Africa's east coast in 1909 with the loss of all 211 passengers and crew. Years of searching has produced nothing.
"I can not continue indefinitely ... I've spent 22 years of my life searching for the ship," Emlyn Brown, a wreck hunter and filmmaker, told Reuters on Monday. "I've exhausted all the options. I now have no idea where to look."
Backed by millionaire American novelist Clive Cussler who wrote "Raise the Titanic," Brown has been involved in the search for the Waratah since the 1980s.
He used sonar to scan the seabed in a 200 square km area where the ship is thought to have foundered, but completed his sweep of the area last week without finding the wreck.
Like the more famous Titanic that sank three years later on its maiden voyage, the Waratah was deemed to be unsinkable.
It had separate watertight compartments to stop it sinking, but its captain complained it was top heavy and unstable.
One seasoned traveller who left the ship in Durban before it continued on its ill-fated voyage to Cape Town told an inquest into the ship's disappearance how he dreamt the Waratah was rolled over and sunk by a big wave.
When the ship failed to arrive in Cape Town on its way to London, British Royal Navy ships went searching for the Waratah but found nothing. Subsequent searches have been in vain.
A plane pilot once reported seeing the outline of a ship on a clear, calm day, but lost sight of it when a gust of wind hit the water, and a wreck thought to be the Waratah turned out to be a cargo ship torpedoed by a German submarine during World War Two.
"I certainly don't regret it," Brown said. "But I think it's time I got a job."