Container searches are patient work. You run the sonar in long parallel lines, you mark anything that looks man-made, and later you send the ROV down to see what it really is. Most targets are rock, or a tangle of old fishing gear. Off Wollongong in May 2022, one of them was not.
The multibeam showed a long, narrow shape sitting proud of a flat sand plain in about 160 metres of water, some 26 kilometres off Port Kembla. Nothing in that area was charted. When the ROV reached the bottom, in conditions that were not kind to a small vehicle on a long tether, the camera found an iron hull resting upright, with heavy damage at the bow and the stern and two anchors lying on the seabed beside it.
We did what you do with an uncharted wreck: logged the position, kept the imagery, and reported it to Heritage NSW.
A hundred and twenty years of not knowing
Heritage NSW had a candidate almost immediately. The SS Nemesis was a 73-metre iron steamship, built as a passenger vessel and later converted to carry coal. She left Newcastle on 9 July 1904 bound for Melbourne with a cargo of coal and coke and 32 people on board, ran into a southerly gale, and was last seen in distress off Wollongong by another ship caught in the same storm. Wreckage and a few bodies came ashore over the following days. The ship itself was never found.
Three of her crew lie in an unmarked grave at Woronora Memorial Park in Sutherland. Families in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have been without an answer for four generations.
Confirming the identity
Our survey gave Heritage NSW a strong lead, but a lead is not a confirmation. In September 2023 the CSIRO research vessel Investigator, on a transit from Hobart to Sydney, altered course to pass over the site. The ship mapped the wreck with its multibeam echosounders and lowered a drop camera for a close look at the hull. The dimensions, the layout and the damage all matched the Nemesis. Heritage NSW announced the identification in February 2024.
The discovery, Heritage NSW's senior maritime archaeologist Dr Brad Duncan said, "may offer some solace to families and friends of those who perished."
Why it matters to us
We are a commercial outfit. We were on that stretch of coast to find containers for a client, and we found them. But the tools we use for that work, careful sonar coverage and an ROV flown by people who know how to read a target, are the same tools that solve mysteries like this one. We are proud to have played the first part in closing a very old chapter.
If you have a family connection to the SS Nemesis, Heritage NSW would like to hear from you at heritagemailbox@environment.nsw.gov.au.