100 Live Shells Discovered Aboard Ship Suspected Of Looting WW2 Wrecks
Malaysia’s coast guard has discovered at least 100 live shells believed to be from World War Two aboard a Chinese dredging ship accused of plundering the wrecks of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales.
Laksamana Pertama (Maritim) Nurul Hizam bin Zakaria, the head of the Johor branch of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, said that the agency had boarded the Fuzhou-registered ship at 12:45PM local time on Sunday, after a patrolling MMEA ship found that the ship was anchored without permission off the state’s east coast.
The ship was subsequently detained, with the ship searched by a joint unit of 15 coast guards, 12 police bomb disposal team members, seven members of the Department of National Heritage, and one member of the Maritime Department. The search discovered scrap metal aboard the ship, as well as unexploded shells the MMEA suspects to be connected to the discovery of unexploded ordnance in Tanjung Belungkor on May 19.
All of the shells have been removed for safe disposal according to Nurul Hizam, who said that the MMEA would be cooperating with the Royal Malaysian Police, Department of National Heritage and Maritime Department to identify them and confirm whether they are from World War Two.
Nurul Hizam said that he could not rule out the involvement of the detained ship in the looting of the wrecks of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales off the coast of Pahang. He added that there may be a “mothership” involved in the transport of scrap metal stripped from the wrecks to China. According to him, the crew had sought to conceal themselves from MMEA search efforts by disabling their GPS and WiFi connections.
International attention to the plundering of the wrecks came after a member of Pahang’s diving community posted photographs of what he alleged was a Chinese-registered barge that had been attempting to break up the wrecks for scrap metal in mid-May on Twitter, claiming that his attempts to contact Malaysian police, the MMEA and the Royal Malaysian Navy about the barge’s presence over several months had been ignored. The Museum of the Royal Navy has issued a statement that it was “distressed and concerned” over the “vandalism for personal profit” of the warships, but neither London or Putrajaya have issued official statements on the incident or plans to prevent a recurrence.
It is believed that the barge and other scrapping operations reported to be active in the region since the 2010s are after “low background” metals from shipwrecks from World War Two and earlier. Low background metals get their name from their extremely low levels of radioactivity due to their creation before the start of nuclear weapon testing, making them desirable for use in highly radiation-sensitive equipment like Geiger counters and sensors for spacecraft.