David Mearns

There was a very, there was a high chance that we would not have succeeded.

And I encourage people to go back and listen to the podcast we did just after you guys got back from that first expedition, both with you and with Antoine and David Mearns.

Because it was pretty touch and go stuff.

A

Well, this is interesting because it was under the command of not Vasco da Gama, but his uncle, Vicente Sodre.

They first discovered it in 1998 and then extensively excavated by the team led by David Mearns.

They found it in 1998, and they started digging it out in 2013 to 2015, and it was the oldest shipwreck recovered from the European Age of Exploration.

And then they got this one, the Gribbenschunden.

That never happened, and Ballard withdrew his offer to lead the team.

American shipwreck hunter David Mearns first learned of the Sydney-Kormoran story at a conference in 1996 and began his research in 2001.

Working with historians and the Western Australian Museum, he focused on primary source documents and discovered several archival files and diaries from Kormoran's crew that had been thought lost.

These documents convinced him the German accounts were reliable, and the debate over the search area was, for the most part, settled.