DIVING FOR M2

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 292, 4 August 1932, Page 2

DIVING FOR M2

SEARCH FOR LOST SUBMARINE REYEALS WRECK OF WAR TRANSPORT. Diver George Brown, who helped to raise the British submarine M2, when she was lost with ali hands in D'ead Man's Bay, near Portland Bill — & sinister stretch of English Channel— described a remarkable series of coincidences, when he passed through Sydney recently to visit relatives ih Queensland. The first piece of wreckage' hauled up, said Brown was portion of the shattered stern of one wreck piled oh top of anoth'er, which on examihation proved not to he the submarine. The hauling party was about to dump it, when Brown, up for a breather, noticed the lstters "K.Y." on the barnacle-encrusted steel and teak taffrail, and found, after some scraping, that it was a section of the wreck of the Austr'alian transport Kyarra (A55), sunk by enemy torpedo 14 years ago. Many Initials. Apparently it had hecome detached in the explosion or hy decay and had been carried round the Cape by the currents or through becoming entangled with a moving submarine. • The teakwood rail was covered with initials carved with p>enknives, eith'er by some of the mjmerous troops she carried to and fro from th'e war or by some of' the thousands of gold-seek-ers and other rassengers she carried

previously between Sydney and Western Australia. Here is another coincidence. Brown says he was shanghaied in Portland (Oregon, U.S.), by crimpers as a lad in the company of a Scottish shipwright who, on the construction of the Kyarra and helped his shipmate get a berth there as a shipger. When the ship was commissioned for Australia, Brown took passage with her. He met with luck as a fossicker, only to lose the bulk of his wealth gambling in the Kyarra's smokeroom on a later tfip from Fremantle to Sydney. Five days later he signed her articles as-an A.B. to get back to the* diggings. He was still aboard her when she , sank an enemy submarine off Malta Sh'e was trying to repeat the feat when the submarine sank her. off Portland in 1918. Captain J. P". Donovan, now harbourmaster at Thursday Island, was in command. and Roy Mancer, now witli Beam Wirelgss, ticked out her S.O.S. to the end. While in Australia Brown in hopeful of inaking yet another attempt on a supposed treasure trove at Shark Bay (W.A.) for which he dived in 1914. _ • !