First dive of SS Nemesis reveals secrets of storm-ravaged ship lost off NSW coast

Australia Broadcast Center

24-06-2025

The SS Nemesis steamship was carrying coal from Newcastle to Melbourne when it sailed into a fierce winter storm and disappeared in 1904.
Debris and bodies washed ashore at Cronulla Beach in the days that followed, but despite an extensive search, the main wreck was not found until last year.
"This wreck is exceptionally historical with regards how long people searched for it," Sydney Project diver and leader, Samir Alhafith, said.
The wreckage was accidentally discovered by a company hired to locate shipping containers lost during storms off the coast in 2022.
Using sonar and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), an unusual object was found 26 kilometres off Port Kembla, about halfway to the continental shelf.
Mr Alhafith said it took about an hour and a half to sail out to the wreckage site from Wollongong harbour last week.
"It's sitting in about 160 metres of water, which makes it quite a challenging dive," Mr Alhafith said.
The group used a shot line — a weighted rope — to mark the site and guide their descent.
But currents dragged the line off target, forcing them to reposition and lose valuable time.
Eventually, the team made the nine-minute descent, spending nine minutes exploring and filming the wreck before beginning the six-hour decompression ascent back to the surface.
Mr Alhafith said the team had an idea of what to expect thanks to earlier CSIRO scans of the wreck.
But he said nothing compared to seeing it firsthand.
"When you land on a wreck you've never dived before, you don't know where the layout is, you need to do orientation," he said.
"But in this case, because we already had a little bit of an idea, it made it a little bit easier to make our way around."
Divers who landed near the front of the vessel were immediately struck by the extent of the damage.
"This shipwreck is a little bit unique to others because the bow and the stern, so the front and the back of the ship, are both collapsed, pretty much to the sand line, which is unusual," Mr Alhafith said.
"I have never seen that before."
He said the severity of the wreckage indicated the ferocity of the storm that sank the Nemesis.
"It looks like something extremely violent happened to the wreck," he said.
With visibility exceeding 30 metres and warmer-than-expected water temperatures of about 19 degrees Celsius, the divers were greeted by thriving marine life.
"Normally, I say fish just get in the way, they're a menace, but because they've never seen divers before, they were a bit curious."
He said the warmer conditions also brought an unexpected variety of species to the site.
"There's a lot of wobbegongs, I even noticed a couple of species of tropical fish," Mr Alhafith said.
He said the team hoped to return to the site to complete a full map of the wreck and continue the search for definitive evidence confirming the ship's identity.
"We want to get back there and do a complete sweeping map of the scan," he said.
Mr Alhafith said while sonar and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) were valuable, nothing compared to having divers on site.
"The quality of the images and what we can do down there is far superior to robotics," he said.
Heritage NSW, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water director of assessments, Tim Smith, said the deep-sea dive was an incredible feat.
"These four divers have shone a light on the vessel's rich legacy, capturing never-seen-before footage of the ship up close," Mr Smith said.
Earlier this month, Heritage NSW said the identities of two SS Nemesis crew members lost in the 1904 shipwreck have been confirmed as William Coull from Adelaide and Norman McLeod from Sydney.
The department said it planned to install commemorative headstones at Woronora Cemetery, where their unmarked graves had remained for more than a century.