A retired Australian farmer from Forster has gone from outcast to hero following his discovery of an American naval treasure – a rare old trumpet – lying near the carcass of the USS Houston in the dangerous waters of the Java Sea.
US naval experts are now trying to find the trumpet's owner by analysing any DNA that has been locked inside for nearly 80 years.
Australian Frank Craven, now 68, had only wanted to place some locks of hair from his recently deceased mother Elsie on the wreck of the HMAS Perth. It was where her first husband had died when it was sunk at the same time as the American cruiser the Houston in the battle of Sunda Strait on February 28 and March 1 1942.
After placing seashells containing his mother's hair on the wreck – and sending a text to his family saying "Elsie is now on the Perth" – the relatively inexperienced and out-of-shape retiree braved dangerous currents to dive the USS Houston nearby.
As he descended, Mr Craven could see the Japanese had "blasted hell out of the boat."
The Houston and the Perth had blundered into Japanese warships at night. A survivor of the Houston, Commander Walter G. Winslow, later recalled that on that "nightmare night" the Houston and the Perth had stumbled into around 60 fully loaded Japanese transports, 20 destroyers, and six cruisers. "We were in the middle of this mass of ships before either side was aware of the other's presence."
The allied ships fought valiantly — the Houston fired flares at the enemy when it ran out of ammunition. But the Japanese pounded away with guns and torpedoes.
The Perth sank first, followed by the Houston shortly after midnight March 1, 1942. Around 1100 sailors from both ships died. Those who survived ended up in Japanese prisoner of war camps. For years, Mr Craven's mother Elsie didn't know if her first husband, Les Petty, was a POW or dead.
Diving down to the Houston in 2013, Craven found the trumpet in mud among piles of discarded ammunition on the ocean floor.
"Who was playing a trumpet in the middle of the battle?" he asked himself.
He wondered if the trumpet had been used to sound the abandon ship command on the cruiser that President Roosevelt had sailed on repeatedly.
As Mr Craven surfaced with the trumpet in his hands, he realised his mistake. Desperate to give it to the authorities, he contacted the USS Houston Society who curtly told him he shouldn't have been on the wreck, that it was a war grave and that he was wrong to take anything.
"I just thought this thing had significance, and I never intended to keep it. My mother would have rolled over in her grave (if I had.)"
After seeking advice from Labor MP Tony Bourke, Mr Craven drove to Canberra to hand deliver the trumpet to the US Embassy's Naval Attache, Stewart Holbrook.
"You have found a national treasure," Captain Holbrook said, recalled Mr Craven.
"Generations of Americans will thank you for this," said the attache.
"That was a surprise," said Mr Craven, "because at that stage I hadn't been very popular."
The trumpet was made around 1934. It is a B-flat horn with a bell that was smashed in battle, a missing mouthpiece, and brass tubing that is split and pitted.
Despite its decades on the bottom of the ocean, the instrument may hold clues to its owner, said Robert S. Neyland, head of the underwater archaeology branch of the Naval History and Heritage Command.
Conservators have found the trumpet's serial number, which helped track its date of manufacture by the C.G. Conn instrument company of Elkhart, Indiana.
"If we could recover DNA, and if there are descendants that we could match with . . . [we could] identify who the owner of the trumpet was," Mr Neyland told The Washington Post. "It kind of pushes the technology and pushes the science . . . but it would be pretty exciting," he said.
It's a long shot, but the theory is that the owner may have left his DNA when he took it apart to clean it. Sealed in when he reassembled it and by seven decades of marine encrustation, the DNA may still be there, the US Navy experts hope.
With The Washington Post.
