Divers Find "Lost" Dutch Submarine From WWII Off Australia
The wreck of a Dutch submarine that rescued survivors after an Australian minesweeper was sunk by Japanese warships during World War II has been discovered at a famous ship graveyard off the coast of the Australian city of Fremantle. About eight decades after it went missing, the wreck of HNLMS K XI has been identified and is said to be lying in 40 meters of water off Rottnest Island, outside of the well-known Rottnest ship graveyard.
The wreck was discovered by a technical diving group called Wrecksploration on January 1. The Western Australian Museum (WAM) worked in conjunction with the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE) to identify the boat using the group's 3D model of the site. K XI is said to be one of the most significant vessels to have been discarded in or near the graveyard, which is the final resting place for about 50 shipwrecks.
K XI was built in Fijenoord, Rotterdam between 1922 and 1924 for the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN) and was deployed to patrol waters in the colonial Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Commissioned in 1925, the submarine was the first of three boats in the K XI class and one of 25 boats built for the submarine division of the RNN. At least 15 boats were deployed in the Netherlands East Indies.
On March 9, 1942, K XI's crew rescued 13 survivors from the 151 crew of the Royal Australian Navy’s minesweeping and convoy escort sloop HMAS Yarra (II) that had been sunk by Japanese warships. The 13 men had survived in rough waters for five days floating on life rafts and clinging to life through occasional spoonfuls of water and a few biscuits.
For more than three decades, WA Museum has been investigating the Rottnest graveyard, where it believed K XI was resting. When divers discovered the wreck outside of the main dumping site, RCE agreed to finance the photogrammetry work, which was developed into a 3D model and submitted to the WA Museum for identification.
“Over the decades, the use of archival sources, local knowledge, and remote sensing surveys has allowed the Museum to identify a number of significant sites in the graveyard. In this project, we compared archival records with the 3D model created by Wrecksploration to confirm that the wreck was the K XI,” said Corioli Souter, Head of Maritime Heritage at the WA Museum.
During WWII, Fremantle Harbor was the largest submarine base in the Southern Hemisphere and was the second-most important Allied submarine base in the Pacific Theatre after Pearl Harbor, with U.S, British and Dutch submarines operating from Fremantle. A total of 11 Dutch submarines operated out of Fremantle during the time period.
Archeologists say that the discovery of the wreck of K XI provides an insight into the behaviors and practices of ship dumping off Fremantle in the immediate post-WWII period. Apart from K XI, six miniature Welman two-man submarines, eight submersible canoes, four aircraft, and other military equipment are believed to have been dumped at the graveyard.
The wreck of K XI is protected by Australia’s laws as an important heritage site, meaning that divers can visit but cannot damage, disturb, or remove any part.