Diving at Its Best in Southeast Asia (Part 2)Found: Hms Repulse
Prepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
It’s not for the casual scuba diver to go diving on lost wrecks, which I mentioned last week. But for those interested in scuba diving, it’s nice to know there are no limits in Southeast Asia. The bottom of the ocean floors of Southeast Asia is littered with wrecks, both ancient and recent, wrecks that are waiting to be discovered.
That’s the way it was with the British Battleship HMS Repulse, waiting to be discovered. That was back in the mid-1980 and the location of the wreck off the Malaysia East Coast was not known to any degree of certainty. In the fifty years that had passed since the sinking of the vessel by Japanese dive bombers there had been only one group of divers, as far as we knew, who had actually dived on the wreck.
Having my own schooner Third Sea I had made many voyages along Malaysia’s East Coast, and while at Redang Island I heard fishermen talking about their nets getting tangled in some sort of debris on the ocean floor not too far south of the island. They also said bits of oil was rising from the bottom. It had to be a wreck. After checking we discovered it was the approximate location of the sinking not only of the HMS Repulse but also the other mighty British Battleship, HMS Prince of Wales. Prince of Wales, the records showed, had been sunk in waters over two hundred feet, making diving on it risking. Repulse on then other hand was in 180 feet and diving on it, although sill risky, it was possible for exploring. But still not for the amateur diver. The next step was to recruit interested experienced divers who wanted to take up the challenge. The quest was on.
In the 1980s that wasn’t too difficult finding divers. Off-shore oil rigs, and there were many, had scores of professional divers who usually worked two weeks on and two weeks off. In a very short time we had a half dozen professional drivers interested. Heading the list was Bill Mathers, an ex-US Navy diver with many years experience.
Once at the location, but not quite certain of the coordinates of the wreck, we dragged a nylon line with a hook on the end until it snagged on something solid. Our first diver hastily went to the side to check. Since he wasn’t spending time on the bottom he could surface immediately. He returned filled with excitement. “Gradually I began to see this enormous dark shape of the hull take form,” he said. He then told how when he neared the stern it looked like the four fingers of a dead man’s hand reaching up to grab him.
We would begin our dives early the next morning.
Fortunately the weather was right. We were aware storms can come up in the China Sea without warning. Attached, as we were, to the hull 180 feet below by the one-inch nylon line, the line would also serve as support line for our divers. It was an eerie, foreboding feeling, knowing that below was a war grave with the bodies of perhaps 500 sailors entombed within the hull.
I decided to sleep on deck that night, but sleep was impossible. I couldn’t help looking up at the sky, searching through the puffs of clouds, listening for the distant sounds of engines. I was looking into the past and not the present, for here on this very spot, at 10:15 AM, on December 10, 1941, it happened when the two mighty, unsinkable warships, H.M.S. Repulse and H.M.S. Prince of Wales and three destroyers were steaming northward to stop the invasion of Malaysia and Thailand by Japanese troops. It was the day after Pearl Harbor had been bombed and war with Japan had started. The British ships had left Singapore the night before and were heading up the coast in a last minute effort to intercept the Japanese invasion. Their success could have changed the course of the war, but success was not in their cards. A Japanese reconnaissance plane spotted them. Ninety minutes later, a mere ninety minutes, the indestructible H.M.S. Repulse and H.M.S. Prince of Wales lay on the bottom of the South China Sea, sunk by Japanese torpedo planes.
Now, after five decades, we had located Repulse and were preparing to dive on her. There were dangers: the storms that I mentioned, plus treacherous currents. We could only spend 17 minutes of the bottom, or we would suffer from nitrogen narcosis, and we did not have a decompression chamber aboard. There was the danger of us being sucked into the hull by the strong current, or loosing our way when we kicked up fine sediment that block visibility. Then there’s the threat of shark attacks.
We were fortunate we had the plans and diagrams of the construction and armament of Repulse. Every bit of knowledge would help us on the bottom. It was clear why she was thought to be unsinkable. She had six fifteen-inch guns and nine four-inch guns, ten 21-inch torpedo tubes and her decks were lined with 50-caliber machine guns. She measured 650 feet long and weighed 36,800 tons, and her sides carried nine-inch armor platting and her decks 15 inch platting.
But the British high command refused to believe aircraft could sink battleships. Aboard Prince of Wales was Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Tom Phillips and his staff. Less than an hour’s flight away, standing by at Seletar Air Base in Singapore, was a squadron of Australian-piloted Brewster Buffalo fighters. Phillips refused to call them. Why? That was the question.
Tom Phillips was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Fleet in late 1941, an action which raised some controversy in the higher echelons of the Royal Navy, where he was considered a "desk admiral". He was appointed Acting Admiral, and he took to sea on 25 October 1941 en route to his headquarters in Singapore. He travelled with a naval detachment then designated as Force G, consisting of his flagship, the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales, together with the veteran World War I era battleship HMS Repulse, and the four destroyers HMS Electra, HMS Express, HMS Encounter, and HMS Jupiter.
It was intended that the new aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable would also travel out to Singapore, but she ran around on her maiden voyage in the West Indies, and was not ready to sail from England with the other ships. Phillips and the vessels arrived in Singapore on 2 December 1941, where they were re-designated Force Z.
Without a formal declaration of war, the Japanese landed in Malaya on 8 December 1941, on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor (on the other side of the International Date Line). Phillips had long held the opinion that aircraft were no threat to surface ships, and so he took Force Z, consisting of HMS Prince of Wales, HMS Repulse, and four destroyers (HMS Electra, HMS Express, HMS Vampire and HMS Tenedos) to intercept the Japanese without air cover. He was unable to find the Japanese, but the Japanese aircraft did find them. Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by 94 Japanese bombers and torpedo bombers based in Saigon
It was an exciting moment the next morning as our divers prepared their equipment for the dive. The conditions we had were much the same as on that eventful day in 1941. A mere 40 minutes after sighting the battleships, Japanese bombers were on the scene. Despite Admiral Phillip’s conviction that the Japanese would dare attack them, Japanese aircraft were zooming in on them. First came the high level bombers, and then the torpedo bombers. The came so low, crewmembers could see the Japanese pilots staring out of their cockpits at them. Wave after wave they came. Four torpedoes struck the Prince of Wales with such force they lifted the vessel from the water. She began to list to the port. Pilots now came in at point-blank range before releasing their torpedoes and breaking away. One torpedo blew a hole through the ships bow and came out the other side. She began sinking and the fighters now turned their attention to Repulse.
After avoiding at least 16 torpedoes aimed directly at her, Repulse took three hits on her port side. Eleven minutes after the torpedoes hit, she rolled over on her side. Her stern rose high out of the water with her propellers still turning, and then sank below the surface.
As we prepared to dive, more excited than ever now, it we were also tempered with tension. Each diver was lost in his own thoughts.
With all these details fresh in our minds, especially the locations of the torpedo holes, we made our final preparations. We dropped below the surface two at a time. Using NTL tables, we made our descent, with an allotted bottom time of 17 minutes. That first view of Repulse was overpowering, even frightening. At 20 feet the faint outline unfolds. At 60 feet she begins to take shape and form. You can make out details. But now as you drop deeper, the hull begins to take over, to dominate the ocean floor. It’s impossible to see the ship in its entirety. You begin to concentrate upon one feature, maybe a torpedo hole. Everything you heard or read about Repulse may not have seemed real, until now. All that horror of how that mighty ship sank into this dreadful grave suddenly registers. You can almost hear a pounding from inside the hull, from the sailors trapped there, until you realize it’s your own pulse beat gone wild.
The ship was lying over at an angle of about 140 degrees with most of the guns and superstructure underneath. There was so much sea life that most of the time a diver’s view was blocked. Schools of barracuda.
Each diver returned to the surface with his own impressions. One marveled at the torpedo holes that ripped through the nine-inch platting. Another diver was impressed with the four huge propellers. Everyone commented on the trailing fishing lines and nets that had been lost by Malay fishermen over the years, and how these added to the eeriness and overall effect. Each diver told his story of the schools of fish, of the large barracuda, manta rays and the sharks, cautious and weary. One diver reported finding airplane engines still in their crates mid ship. A few divers commented on the strange cracking sound they picked up near the bottom. And there was even laughter when one diver told how he poked his head into a torpedo hole and saw a four-yard long shark basking inside. He joked he couldn’t turn around fast enough.
Repulse remains in remarkably good condition with little deterioration. Sections of the teak deck still remain in tack, despite her long years at the bottom of the sea. Two of our divers located the heavy brass nameplate and brought it to the surface. It is now in the naval Museum in London.
At night, with the cabin light reflecting on the damp faces of weary divers, we talked in easy voices about the ill-fated Repulse that entombed 540 sailors and lay silently below us. And later, when we turned in and lay in our bunks, we could imagine helpless voices calling out on that black December day. How long had the trapped men survived after the ship went down, hours, days? A Royal Marine, who survived the sinking, stated that he could never forget the terrible screaming and shouting coming up from the ventilation shafts from those men trapped below.
After three days of diving on Repulse, we unhooked our mooring line and drifted down wind from the wreck. Our thoughts, however, remained in the deep. What might have happened had the Japanese reconnaissance plane not spotted the British fleet? Could the British have stopped the invasion of southern Thailand and Malaya? Could they have helped stop the Japanese advance on the Philippines? Could they have prevented the fall of Singapore?
Maybe, but they didn’t.
Captain John Catterall Leach and Admiral Tom Philips went down with their ship.
Next week there is more excitement when I bring to readers Royal Orchid Holidays “The Great Escape.”
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q. Dear Mr. Stephens. I would like to visit Myanmar and I heard that I could do it from Thailand at the Three Pagoda Pass and Mae Sot. Will I need a Burmese visa? Al Podell, NYC
A. Dear Al. You will not need a visa but the Burmese will only give you a day pass, and that is only to visit the border town. To visit Myanmar properly you must fly from Bangkok to Yangon (Rangoon) and for that you must have a visa. —HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
