A British archaeologist claims to have found an Australian warship that disappeared in 1941 with all 645 of her crew.

Tim Akers says that HMAS Sydney lies two miles (3.2km) beneath the Indian Ocean, and that he pinpointed the ship’s location from the comfort of his home in Wetherby, Yorkshire.

Mr Akers found the ship, and other lost hulks like it, using a computer program that analyses aerial and satellite photographs, using infra-red, ultraviolet and X-ray. “Light passes through matter,” he said.

“So long as you have an optimum-quality photograph, you can use my program to analyse what lies beneath.”

He said that his program, Merlindown, could peer 75m into the earth and 16,000 metres beneath the seas.

To find Sydney, he bought high-quality satellite images for a strip of ocean 100 miles long and ten miles wide, covering the region where the ship was thought to have fought her last battle with a German raider. “I found at least 31 vessels,” he said.

He showed the images to Professor Andrew Lambert, a leading naval historian at Cambridge University. “He spotted one of the forward guns,” said Mr Akers.

Professor Lambert was more cautious. “The Sydney may be there. But we really need a better image to confirm,” he said.

Mr Akers has offered to provide the coordinates of Sydney free of charge to the Australian Navy.

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