The ship first started tipping over to the side and then sank 50 years ago. Ten crew members managed to abandon ship in an inflatable lifeboat, but they spent eight days adrift at sea and one died at sea before reaching shore.
Nine people tried to find the way on foot to call for help, but two more died of exhaustion and hypothermia along the way. The authorities called off the search for the crew.
Although the ship sank on October 13, 1973, the survivors did not find help until two weeks later when they found a way and flagged a car.
said the sole survivor of the shipwreck, Mick Dolman, after finding the wreck
When I last saw the ship I was getting into a lifeboat and trying to get as far away from it as possible.”
For decades, researchers haven’t found the shipwreck, but now they’ve found it in the depths of the sea near Tasmania, so Australia’s biggest maritime mystery has been solved, and they now know what happened to the MV Blythe Star.
In the aftermath of the ship’s disaster, Australian maritime law was changed, which may have saved many lives later.
(guardian / weeks)
