Bill Smith (marine archaeologist)

Bill Smith is a British marine archaeologist, underwater search specialist and engineer known for his work surveying historic shipwrecks and conducting underwater recovery operations. By use of side-scan sonar, he has been successful in finding large and small objects in deep water. He has collaborated extensively with the UK police and other authorities, and has been featured in television documentaries about maritime archaeology.

In 1995, Smith, working alongside co-diver Paul Cairns, conducted an expedition to explore the wreck of the German battleship Tirpitz.^[1] The vessel had been sunk by Allied bombing on 12 November 1944 near Tromsø, Norway, during the final stages of World War II.^[2] The wreck is located in a Norwegian fjord approximately 32 kilometres (20 mi) north of the Arctic Circle. The site had previously been explored by Jacques Cousteau.

From 2005, Smith returned to the Tirpitz site using side-scan sonar in a search coordinated with Carl Spencer to find the wreck of X5, one of a group of X-craft midget submarines used in a raid on the battleship,^[3]. This search proved unsuccessful, and in tribute to Spencer who died whilst exploring the wreck of HMHS Britannic in 2009, diving to further explore Tirpitz was ceased.

In August 2000 under his own initiative, Smith located and imaged the wreck of HMS Unity, a U-class submarine that had served in the Royal Navy since 1938. The submarine was discovered off Blyth on the Northumberland coast, where it had sunk after being accidentally rammed by the Norwegian vessel Atle Jari on 29 April 1940. The wreck was found at a depth of 46 metres (151 ft), sitting upright but listing to starboard with damage to the port side where the steel hydroplane had been detached.

Smith participated in investigations of the wreck of HMHS Britannic,^[4] a sister ship to the ocean liner Titanic, to determine the cause of its sinking. The wreck, which was first located by Cousteau in 1975, is classified as a war grave by the UK government, requiring strict diving permissions. In September 2003, Smith provided sonar expertise for an expedition led by Spencer.^[5] The expedition was notable for being the first to explore the wreck of Britannic using closed-circuit rebreathers exclusively. Smith's sonar work located several naval mine anchors near the wreck site, corroborating German U-boat records indicating that Britannic was sunk by a single mine, with damage exacerbated by open portholes and watertight doors. The expedition was broadcast internationally by National Geographic.

The ship of the Royal Canadian Navy was sunk on 8 August 1944 by German submarine U-667 off the north coast of Cornwall in the Bristol Channel. Smith's sonar images which related to this wreck and others were used in the TV series Deep Wreck Mysteries^[6].

In the vicinity of this search, additional sonar images were made of HMHS Glenart Castle which had been sunk in 1918 towards the end of WWI, and HMHS Rewa, also sunk in 1918 by a torpedo from German U-boat U-55.

Smith has worked closely with police diving units on several underwater search and recovery operations.

In 2002, Smith recovered the body of diver Clifford Purdham from Ullswater in the English Lake District^[7]. Purdham had gone missing during a diving expedition nearly four years earlier, and previous recovery attempts by Lancashire and Cumbria diving teams had been unsuccessful due to the challenging conditions in the deep, silted area of the lake. Smith used side-scan sonar to locate the body by detecting echoes from the victim's gas tanks.^[8]

In 2006–2007, Smith recovered the bodies of three young Sikh men who had drowned in Ullswater during a recreation of a Sikh Dipping Ceremony involving 26 participants.^[9]

In 2004, Smith assisted police officers in the reopened investigation into the disappearance of Carol Ann Park, known as the "Lady in the Lake" case.^[10] Using sonar equipment, Smith conducted searches of Coniston Water between January and February 2004. During the investigation, Smith and police divers discovered a piece of Westmorland green slate that matched the stone used in the wall of the family's bungalow, providing crucial evidence for the prosecution.^[11] Smith served as an expert witness in the case.

Smith led the recovery operation for Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7 after successfully locating the wreck on the lakebed of Coniston water at a depth of 142 feet (43 m).^[12] The recovery presented significant technical, legal, and ethical challenges, as the craft had broken into a dozen or so pieces and Campbell's body had remained undisturbed since the fatal crash of January 1967. Smith negotiated agreements between various stakeholders with differing perspectives to secure approval for raising the vessel^[13]