Before the Titanic, there was the Waratah. A luxury passenger liner on her maiden voyage, she was coal-fired and boasted eight watertight compartments. They said she was unsinkable.
On July 27 1909 the Waratah was rounding South Africa, halfway through her voyage from Australia to England, when she vanished.
The flagship of the Blue Anchor Line fleet had left Durban bound for Cape Town but never arrived. Despite repeated searches no trace was found of the 211 people aboard, the cargo, or the vessel.
This week, almost a century later, the mystery may be solved when scientists sail from Durban armed with sonar equipment and fresh information about the wreck’s possible location.
Funded by the novelist Clive Cussler, who wrote Raise the Titanic, the expedition hopes to find the Waratah near the Xora and Bashee river mouths off the Transkei wild coast.
”It’s been a difficult one to crack, but I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Emlyn Brown, the expedition leader, on Sunday.
The account of a pilot who thinks he glimpsed the wreck has been analysed to identify the likeliest site, now thought to be in two blocks of seabed measuring a total of 48 square kilometres.
The most famous ship to be sunk until the Titanic three years later, the Waratah had no radio or telegraph to send a distress message.
Some experts blamed a top-heavy design, liable to roll; others said it was a freak wave or a ”hole in the ocean”, a phenomenon whereby winds and currents cleave cavities big enough to swallow tankers.
The 16-strong expedition will sail in a converted fishing trawler which will trail a sonar device to create an image of the seafloor. If a wreck is located a diver and possibly a submarine will inspect it.
The mission will last four days. Ramsay and Brown thought they had found the Waratah in 1999, but two years later realised the wreck was that of a transport ship sunk by a German U-boat in the second world war.
Since then they have revised their approach and stumbled across Bill Elston, a Cessna pilot who flew over the Transkei coast on an unusually calm, clear day in 1962 and spotted a complete passenger ship below the sea.
The former engineer, now in his 80s, said: ”Of intermediate size, comprising the hull and superstructure — but as I recollect, without funnel or masts — the vessel appeared to be listing considerably to starboard, though not completely on its side.
”Through the outer covered decks, cabin portholes and doorway apertures were clearly visible.” A light breeze rippled the ocean and dissolved the image, and Elston never saw it again.
He hoped the expedition would verify his sighting. ”I’m very excited about it,” he said.
Named after the emblem flower of New South Wales, the 140m Waratah was built by Barclay Curle & Company in Scotland in 1908, for the emigration route to Australasia.
Her maiden voyage to Australia went smoothly and she headed back to England with 211 people — and 6 500 tons of cargo — on board.
There were bad omens. The experienced captain, Joshua Ilberry, reportedly complained that the ship was top-heavy; and in Durban a seasoned traveller called Claude Sawyer disembarked and cabled his wife: ”Thought Waratah top-heavy. Landed Durban.”
Complaining of nightmares, Sawyer was not aboard when the ship resumed its journey. He recalled a dream: ”I saw the Waratah in big waves. One went over her bow and pressed her down. She rolled over on her starboard side and disappeared.”
On July 27 the vessel steamed straight into a storm which smaller ships survived. The alarm was raised when it failed to reach Cape Town. The Royal Navy joined the hunt, but no debris was found. A three-month search organised the following year by relatives also yielded nothing.
In 1929 a soldier, Edward Joe Conquer, came forward to claim he had actually seen the ship roll and disappear through his telescope while undertaking live-shell practice near the Xora river mouth.
Dismissed by many as a fantasist, Conquer may be on the verge of vindication. – Guardian Unlimited Â