In 1904, the steamship SS Nemesis was transporting coal to Melbourne, Australia, when it was overtaken by a storm. Over the next few weeks, the bodies of the 32 seamen washed up on shore, but their ship was never seen again. That is, until September 2023, when a shipwreck discovered in 2022 off the coast of Sydney, Australia, was identified as the SS Nemesis.
The New South Wales Ministry of Environment and Heritage (NSW) confirmed that the ship was found. Subsea Professional Marine, a marine surveying company, first found the shipwreck when looking for lost cargo boxes, but it was not named until 2022 when The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an Australian government agency for scientific research, investigated. They used underwater imagery echosounders to identify the unique structure of the ship. Based on the images, the scientists were able to piece together the story of what happened that night. Off the coast of Wollongong, about 50 miles from Sydney, a large wave crashed over the ship and caused it to sink too quickly for the crew to deploy the lifeboats.
This mystery has plagued the families of the lost crew for the past 120 years. Finding out what happened to the ship was very important to the Australian government. The 32-man crew was made up of people from many areas, but about half of the crew were from the United Kingdom. Captain Alex Lusher, chief mate T.A. Renaut, and second mate W.D. Stein were 3 of the crew members on the ship. For scientists, discovering this wreckage site was the “holy grail,” and the full story of the SS Nemesis will soon be told.
