Maritime Salvage and the Battle off Malaya

It took just two hours for the Japanese air attack to sink HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse in December 1941. For the sailors this should have been their last resting place, in a remote spot some 100 nautical miles east of Malaysia in 50 to 70 metres of water. But a combination of toothless legislation, marauding divers and wholesale looting means that today little remains of this historic naval battle. Early discovery Whilst the British Royal Navy fixed the ships’ locations in the early 1950s and RN clearance divers noted their condition in the 1960s as inverted but intact, it took until about…