Kelat

Kelat

By ScubaDownUnder Team · 2026-06-15

The Kelat is the oldest of the ships lost in Darwin Harbour as a result of the Japanese air raid of 19 February 1942. Launched in 1881 as a three-masted iron sailing ship, she carried cargo under sail for 33 years and then spent more than two decades as a coal hulk, and she was moored in East Arm as a coal depot for the Navy when the bombers came. She sank at her moorings a few days later. After salvors cut her down in 1959 and 1960, what remains is about 70 metres of ship floor in roughly 10 metres of water.

Under sail

Richardson, Duck and Company built the Kelat at Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England in 1881 for E. Bates and Sons of Liverpool. She was an iron-hulled sailing ship of 1,894 tons and about 80 metres, with three masts. She first worked in the Calcutta trade, carrying goods from the East Indies and Britain to Australia and New Zealand. In 1903 she was sold to L. Gundersen of Fredrikstad, Norway, renamed Hovding, and kept trading between Britain, Europe, South America and Australia.

In 1914 a severe storm off south-eastern Australia left her badly damaged, and she was condemned as a trading ship at Melbourne. Sold as a hulk, she was converted to carry coal, took back the name Kelat and was towed to Albany, Western Australia, where she was one of the coal hulks that bunkered ships in Princess Royal Harbour until 1941.

War and sinking

The Royal Australian Navy requisitioned her in July 1941 and towed her from Albany to Darwin in late 1941 or early 1942. There she was moored in East Arm, laden with coal, as a stationary bunkering depot for the Navy's coal-burning ships.

The NT Government lists the Kelat among the seven ships sunk in Darwin Harbour as a result of the 19 February raid, but she did not go down that day. A few days later she sank at her moorings, settling on the bottom with her masts above the water. The cause is not known: AUCHD, the Australasian Underwater Cultural Heritage Database, says it was either damage from enemy gunfire or a failure to keep her bilges pumped in the confusion after the raid.

For months afterwards, working parties kept grabbing coal out of her holds. In early 1943 the Commonwealth Salvage Board tried several times to refloat her by building a cofferdam on and around the wreck, then abandoned the job six months later. In 1959 and 1960 the Fujita Salvage Company of Japan cut her down to the mud line with explosives and a thermal oxygen lance, and lifted the large sections out with a floating crane.

What is left

AUCHD's account of inspections in 2012 is the best description. The Kelat sits upright and flat on her keel with the bow to the north-west, across an area about 70 to 80 metres long and 12 metres wide. Only the ship floor and the very bottom of the hull remain, and most of it rises less than half a metre off the seabed. The bow end slopes down and disappears into the sand. Towards the stern the sides stand 1 to 1.5 metres high, with ribs and some hull plating, and the tallest pieces are vertical posts and I-beams along the starboard side, up to 3.5 metres high.

Across the floor lie collapsed iron framing, broken mast sections, hull plating, hatch coamings, pipe fragments and two winches, along with what is left of her coal and a patch of clay bricks amidships. Sediment covers much of the wreck, and soft corals have colonised all of the ironwork. Three cast iron wedge clump anchors of about 2.5 tons each, with studlink chain, are from her permanent moorings; two of them lay in a dredging area and were raised and moved closer to the wreck.

Can you dive it?

The Kelat is protected under the NT Heritage Act and the Commonwealth Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018. Under the Commonwealth Act you must not disturb, damage or remove anything, and any new find must be reported within 21 days. AUCHD records no protected zone around her, and she is not one of the two Darwin Harbour sites under a harbourmaster's closed-waters order (the Booya and Catalina 6). The NT Government's advice is to contact the Heritage Branch to find out whether you may dive a wreck and whether you need a permit.

In practice the Kelat is not a ready-made dive. No operator advertises it by name, and we found no published account of anyone diving it recently. She lies in East Arm, the industrial arm of the harbour, and AUCHD's position for the wreck is a little over 100 metres from the edge of the East Arm shipping channel defined in Darwin Port's Port Notice PN011, which bars vessels from anchoring in a shipping channel except in an emergency. Shallow does not mean easy here: the tides, currents and silt that limit every Darwin Harbour wreck apply just as much at 10 metres.

Conditions

Port Darwin's tides have a maximum range of 7.8 metres, a mean spring range of 5.5 metres and a mean neap range of 1.9 metres, and the currents they drive are complex and strong. The NT Heritage Branch's brochure for the USS Peary, another 1942 wreck, talks in terms of diving on a well-planned neap tide.

Visibility is the other limit. No figures are published for this wreck. For the Mauna Loa, elsewhere in the harbour, the NT Heritage Branch says the seabed is silty and easily stirred up by divers and tides, and that visibility rarely exceeds two to three metres even on a well-planned day. 50 Great Dives gives 5 to 15 metres and a water temperature of 27 to 30°C for the same wreck and rates the dry season best. The dry season runs from about April to September.

Box jellyfish are most likely in NT waters from 1 October to 1 June, but stings have been recorded in every month, and their venom can kill in under five minutes. NT first aid for a sting is vinegar, never fresh water. Saltwater crocodiles are abundant in the Territory again, and the Parks and Wildlife Commission runs a crocodile survey and trapping program in Darwin Harbour itself.

Site Access and Logistics

The Kelat would be a boat dive, with no shore access. Dive Darwin runs five-hour guided harbour wreck tours from Dock 2, Stokes Hill Wharf (Sea Darwin Cruises), from 7am to 12 noon. Each tour visits two of the harbour's roughly 90 wreck sites, which also include Cyclone Tracy wrecks and sunken illegal Indonesian fishing vessels. Scuba gear, a guide, permits and lunch are included, groups are capped at nine, and in October 2026 the tour was listed from AUD $440. Dive Darwin requires PADI Advanced Diver certification and a minimum age of 15. The booking page does not say which wrecks a tour visits, so ask whether the Kelat is possible before you book.

For any dive outside an operator's permitted tour, contact the NT Heritage Branch first (08 8999 5039, heritage.branch@nt.gov.au).

The Larrakia people, who call themselves the Saltwater People, are the Aboriginal people of Darwin and its harbour. The SS Zealandia lies about 3.5 kilometres to the north-west at the entrance to East Arm, the Darwin Catalinas guide covers the flying boats sunk in East Arm in the same raid, and the Darwin Harbour Wrecks site page covers the harbour as a whole.

Sources

- AUCHD: Kelat HMAS - Wikipedia: Kelat (ship) - NT Government: Maritime heritage (nt.gov.au/leisure/arts-culture-heritage/visit-a-cultural-or-heritage-site/maritime-heritage) - DCCEEW: Visiting underwater cultural heritage sites - DCCEEW: Underwater heritage protected zones - DCCEEW: A Guide to the Protected Zones declared under the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act (PDF) - Darwin Port: Port Notices - Darwin Port: Port Notice PN011, Shipping Channels (PDF) - Wikipedia: Darwin Harbour - NT Heritage Branch: USAT Mauna Loa brochure (PDF, linked from the NT Government maritime heritage page) - NT Heritage Branch: USS Peary brochure (PDF, linked from the NT Government maritime heritage page) - 50 Great Dives: USAT Mauna Loa (1942) - NT Government: Box jellyfish (nt.gov.au/wellbeing/emergencies-injuries-and-accidents/bites-and-stings/box-jellyfish) - Be Crocwise, NT Government: Saltwater crocodile policy (becrocwise.nt.gov.au/crocodile-management/saltwater-crocodile-policy) - Dive Darwin: Darwin Harbour Wreck Tours booking page (divedarwin1.rezdy.com/708255/darwin-harbour-wreck-tours) - Dive Darwin: Home - Wikipedia: Larrakia people

Header photo: A half-submerged sailing hulk with masts and rigging standing above the water in Darwin in 1942, probably the Kelat, by Northern Territory Library (Ron Urquhart Collection), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.