Caller of the Night: Witness to MS Mikhail Lermontov sinking on the experience

This week on In My Day, A witness to the sinking of the MS Mikhail Lermontov opened up about the experience, and there was some extra commentary about visiting the wreck via diving.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
John. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hi.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
So I was working down the Marlborough sounds in the
early eighties for Telecom. We were in tittering E Bay
and during the night we could see spotlights in the
sky and all this noise and carrying on. Who wondered
what was going on? And then we found out in
the morning that the MATEU Leamontoff had gone down in
Gore Bay, which was just across the hill from us.

(00:41):
So we hopped in our landrover and went up to
the top of the hill and we couldn't get down
the road into Gore Bay. They wouldn't let us down there.
But you could see the outline of the ship from
up on the hill there where it's gone and lay
on its side. So that's quite a little yes, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
But what next? What happened next? Did you get the
land rover into four wheel drive, low ratio hurtle down
the hill.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
No, we couldn't get down there. They'd cordoned off the
road at that stage. It was just the muddy dirt
track back then, and most of the sounds was gravel roads.
So it was sort of fourhel drive territory to get
around anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
What series Landra Is it a Defender or a Disco?

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Oh? Just a dirty old series too, Yeah, just a
work vehicle there.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, enough of the dirty please excuse me? A series two?

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Nice? Did it have the split windscreen the metal bar
down the middle?

Speaker 4 (01:40):
Gosh, I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I should be more interested in the shipwreck, shouldn't I.
That's so there's a bit of scandal with the Michail
Lerman top. What was the scandal aspect?

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:50):
There were lots of different theories, and I don't sort
of hold to any of them, but the thing there
was one about Jamison. Captain Jamison put it through the
gap between Port Jackson in the in the rocks there,
and it shouldn't have gone there. And then they claim
that they beached it, and then they reversed it off

(02:12):
the beach so that it would sink, so that people
couldn't get hold of the technology that was on board
that might have been a spy vessel. There were lots
of different theories about it.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yes, did you hear? Did you? I don't know if
this has been confirmed or not or denied or no comment.
But did you hear that Vladimir Putin was on that ship?

Speaker 5 (02:36):
No?

Speaker 4 (02:37):
No, it could have been the guy that disappeared.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Unfortunately that wasn't the case. Yeah, but I know it's
just one of the rumors I did hear about. But
what a great what a great yarn.

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Ye, there was quite something to be well, not part of,
but you know, quite close to it at the time.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Absolutely, cheers John, thank you. Yes, I thought that might
ring a few bells for people. Olivia. Have you got
anything to add to that?

Speaker 5 (03:03):
So, now that it's sunk, it's still visit a bull
and the Go Dive Mulborough owner Dave McFadden has actually
described the wreck as the most accessible wreck cruise ship
in the world because it's within recreational depths. So the
top of the wreck starts at twelve meters, which is
explorable to open water divers, and it goes all the

(03:27):
way down to thirty four meters those areas that you
can go into if you're a technical diver. And because
the area it's in is a voluntary no take area,
which means people have just agreed to not take marine
life from the area.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
All the ship it has a massive amount of marine life, fish,
all that sort of thing, so it be actually really
cool to visit.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, just not for me though, the prospect of being
underwater and then creeping, squeezing your way through an opening
or no.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
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