An article by two of the UK’s leading Maritime Archaeologists and a UK Government expert in nuclear radiation may just have put paid to one of the longest lasting assumptions in marine salvage and particular in the looting of historic military shipwrecks such as HMS Prince of Wales off the coast of Malaysia. That is that the salvors and looters are trying to recover “pre-nuclear steel”. which was manufactured before the explosion of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere beginning in July 1945. Pre-nuclear, sometimes termed Low Background, steel has often been said to be in demand because it is needed in the manufacture of sensitive medical and scientific instruments, and even space craft, so consequently fetches a premium price on the metals exchanges. However the new research has failed to find any evidence that the use of pre nuclear Steel is either commonplace, or that it provides anything other than circumstantial benefits to industry.
The article, published in the UK Defence Journal, is authored by UK Government Scientist Laurence Jones of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, who is an expert in measuring nuclear radiation, working alongside maritime archaeologists Jessica Berry, CEO of the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST) and Giles Richardson, Chief Operating Officer at MAST and senior analyst with the investigatory body, the Maritime Observatory and the authors conclude that there is little evidence that pre-nuclear steel from shipwrecks has anything like the significance which is often claimed for it.
Indeed, the research points out that the most likely route of problematic nuclear contamination in steel products is the accidental introduction of nuclear material, for example from medical sources, into the manufacturing process and not nuclear explosions in the atmosphere over half a century ago.
Meanwhile the popular case that pre-nuclear steel is anyway in particular demand is further undermined by the observation that monitoring over decades shows that there has been a substantial reduction of atmospheric contamination since the Partial Test Ban treaty of 1963, more than sixty years ago.
The researchers also point out that there are a number of practical reasons as to why the importance of pre-nuclear steel seems to have been overstated. In particular they have not been able to identify either a clear demand for the hundreds of thousands of tons of this specific material taken from dozens of wrecks, nor have they found a clear production chain from seabed, to furnace, to market, to instrument manufacturer. In any case, they add that any genuine requirement for low background material is met from other, more traditional, manufacturing sources within the metals industry.
Finally, the team suggest that the manufacturers of the high end instruments alleged to be the destination of the steel would be unlikely to accept the potential reputational damage resulting from using material of dubious, or even illegal, origin.
The work discussed in the UK Defence Journal comes as an extension to the investigation by the UK based Maritime Observatory into the looting of historic military wrecks, where in recent years the wreck sites of warships belonging to the United States, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands and Japan, as well as the British Royal Navy, have all been heavily damaged or even destroyed across a number of jurisdictions ranging from the North Sea to the Pacific.
The Maritime Observatory, which is a partnership between MAST and the not for profit OceanMind (OM), has set out to harnesses the increasingly powerful imaging capabilities of the commercial satellite sector to protect shipwrecks and other underwater heritage at sea from unauthorised salvage. This activity does not just damage historically important shipwrecks. It can also trigger environmental damage such as the release of fuel oil into the sea and it is the analysis of the satellite data, showing vessel movements, as well as incidents such as oil spills, coupled with other intelligence sources, which provides the evidence for the activity of the looters working in contravention of the UN Salvage Convention which protects military vessels lost on active duty as Sovereign Immune.
Under the Convention such wrecks should not be disturbed without the permission of the flag state, for example the UK Ministry of Defence in the case of Royal Navy warships. In the worst cases documented so far, including the Dutch cruiser De Ruyter and the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, both sunk in the Java Sea in 1942, all that remains of vessels which weighed thousands of tons, is some scattered debris and a ship shaped hole in the seabed.
In the case of HMS Prince of Wales, sunk alongside HMS Repulse in December 1941 with the loss of over 800 Royal Navy personnel, the Maritime Observatory was able to show that the culprit in the looting was the purpose built, Chinese flagged, crane barge Chuan Hong 68.
Chuan Hong 68 unloading wreckage from HMS Prince of Wales at Kamung Belungkor on 28th March 2023.
[The Maritime Observatory, Sentinel-2 data copyright ESA 2023]
To give an idea of the scale of the problem facing law enforcement bodies and regulators, the hold of that vessel alone is capable of carrying up to three thousand tons of scrap and the barge was shown to have made multiple visits to the wreck of HMS Prince of Wales and other sites in the region, prior to its arrest by the Malaysian Government in May 2023, when the initial destination for the stolen metal, a scrapyard on the Johor Strait opposite Singapore, was also raided by the Malaysian authorities.
Of course, undermining a popular, well imbedded media preconception about why such looting takes place is one thing. It remains to be seen whether the new research will have any impact either on Government policy towards what the UK Ministry of Defence classes as “maritime military graves”, or on the activities of the more unscrupulous parts of the marine salvage industry. Indeed the issue is complicated by geo-political factors such as the controversial and growing role of Chuan Hong 68’s flag state ,China, in the Asia Pacific region.
Nonetheless, it now seems clear that while many people, not least veterans and relatives of lost crews, regard military shipwrecks as graves and memorials and, as such, to be the moral, although not legal, equivalent to war graves on land, the unauthorised salvage industry has been driven almost entirely by the chance to make a fast buck out of high quality steel, armour plate and non-ferrous metals from propellers and engine room plant.
The work of the three authors show it should no longer be explained, let alone whitewashed, by hints of a higher purpose to support scientific research and medical diagnostics.
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Featured Image: HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 [Official US Navy Photograph Public Domain via US National Archive 80-G-190724]
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