New Show: The Flood - EP3: We are sinking

Summary

Podcast Summary: Sick to Death

Episode Title: New Show: The Flood - EP3: We are Sinking
Host: Cameron Stewart (The Australian)
Date: July 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

Episode 3, “We Are Sinking,” of Sick to Death’s special series “The Flood,” details the harrowing incident aboard the HMAS Dechaineux, a Royal Australian Navy submarine that nearly sank in February 2003 due to catastrophic flooding. Through gripping first-hand accounts from Commander Peter Scott, Petty Officer Geordie Bunting, and sonar operator Melanie Ellerton, the episode reconstructs the crisis, the technical and emotional challenges faced by the crew, and the slender margin between disaster and salvation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Catastrophe Unfolds ([01:29]–[03:26])

• The Incident: On February 12, 2003, a seawater hose burst at the submarine’s deepest operational depth, 50 nautical miles off Perth, flooding the vessel at a rate of a ton of water per second.
• Immediate Response: The crew executed all emergency procedures—blowing ballast, sealing hull valves, increasing engine speed, and angling the submarine upwards—knowing there was no room for error.

Quote:

• “A ton of seawater is the same as 100 crates of your favourite lager coming into your submarine every second…” – Commander Peter Scott [02:00]

2. Inside the Submarine: The Crew’s Ordeal ([03:26]–[07:47])

• Control Room Tension: After exhausting emergency protocols, the crew in the control room could only watch the depth gauge, entering “the longest minutes of their lives.”
• Mayhem Below: Unknown to the Captain at first, chaos reigned in the lower motor room where Geordie Bunting nearly drowned and fellow sailors braved electrified, waist-deep water to stop the flooding.

Quotes:

• “It went very quiet…we haven't won this one yet. So where are we going from here?” – Commander Peter Scott [03:53]
• “Electrocution. We were standing waist deep in seawater for what? Fear.” – Commander Peter Scott [07:03]

3. Sinking Further—and the Anatomy of Fear ([07:47]–[11:46])

• Peril Mounts: Despite their efforts, the submarine began to sink further. Peter Scott reflects on his fear, the crew’s trust in each other, and the sobering knowledge of what hull failure would mean.
• Personal Stakes: Individual crew members describe bracing for death, likening the fate to a crushed Coke can.

Quotes:

• “My heart is beating through my neck… We will be crushed by the pressure before we hit the bottom.” – Commander Peter Scott [07:47]
• “When you're looking at that depth gauge and you're going, that's our limit, and now we're going below that limit—Please, by jolly God, that we come back up." – Melanie Ellerton [10:59]
• “Very much like a Coke can getting crushed. Probably the best way to describe it. It would have been a very quick, very swift… the best way because you wouldn’t feel it.” – Melanie Ellerton [11:25]

4. Survival and Aftermath ([11:46]–[18:01])

• The Miraculous Recovery: After agonizing minutes, the submarine at last responded, ascending to the surface.
• Ongoing Danger: Despite surfacing, the crew faced uncertainty—the extent of damage was unknown, systems could still fail, and sinking remained a risk.
• Reflecting on Leadership: Commander Scott discusses balancing his role as a leader with personal fear and responsibility for his crew and family.

Quotes:

• “It did start to flatten out and recover. And once the boat started moving, it really started moving.” – Commander Peter Scott [15:45]
• “We didn't know the state of our hydraulic systems, electrical systems…once we were on the roof, a really serious damage control battle kind of began." – Commander Peter Scott [16:37]

5. The Long Road Home ([18:01]–[18:57])

• Slow Return to Port: Damage severely limited the submarine’s speed, making the return “a time to reflect and come to grips with what had just happened.”
• Human Moments: Amidst relief, rituals like smoking resumed as normalcy crept back.

Quote:

• “It was a long transit back…I guess, just a time to reflect and come to grips with what had just happened.” – Petty Officer Geordie Bunting [18:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Description | |-------------|---------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | [02:00] | Peter Scott | “A ton of seawater is the same as 100 crates of your favourite lager…” | | [03:53] | Peter Scott | “It went very quiet…we've done everything…we haven't won this one yet.”| | [07:03] | Peter Scott | "Electrocution. We were standing waist deep in seawater for what? Fear."| | [07:47] | Peter Scott | “My heart is beating through my neck…I have the submarine, I say, resuming full command…”| | [10:59] | Melanie Ellerton | “When you're looking at that depth gauge and you're going, that's our limit, and now we're going below that limit…”| | [11:25] | Melanie Ellerton | “Very much like a Coke can getting crushed…” | | [15:45] | Peter Scott | “It did start to flatten out and recover…” | | [16:37] | Peter Scott | “Once we were on the roof, a really serious damage control battle…”| | [18:01] | Geordie Bunting | “It was a long transit back…I guess just a time to reflect…” |

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Important Segments with Timestamps

• 00:28 – Captain and Petty Officer recall personal/family thoughts in crisis
• 01:29–03:26 – Submarine flooding and the crew’s emergency response
• 03:53–07:47 – Depth gauge suspense and leadership under pressure
• 07:47–11:46 – Reflections on fear, crew’s emotional state, and possible outcomes
• 13:08–14:32 – Commander Scott on the impact of leadership and thinking ahead
• 15:42–16:20 – The boat starts to rise; relief begins
• 16:28–17:34 – Damage control after surfacing and continuing risks
• 18:01–18:57 – The reflective journey back and human moments post-crisis

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Tone & Atmosphere

The episode captures a tense, claustrophobic, and deeply human atmosphere, with speakers recalling fear, duty, leadership, and mutual trust in the face of imminent disaster. Cameron Stewart’s insightful questions draw out both the procedural and emotional reality of nearly losing an entire submarine crew, while the sailors’ language is direct, personal, and often darkly humorous.

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Conclusion

“We Are Sinking” offers listeners a harrowing, moment-by-moment account of the Dechaineux’s near-fatal flooding incident. Through powerful storytelling and first-person testimony, the episode underscores not just the technical challenges of submarine service, but the emotional strain, leadership decisions, and bonds of trust that define survival in close-quarters, high-risk environments. This episode stands as a testament to the courage and professionalism of submarine crews—and the razor-thin line between life and death beneath the sea.

Transcript

[Narrator]

The Flood is brought to you by the Australian War Memorial. Some stories define a nation. Others reveal what it means to be human. Through Their Eyes is a new podcast from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers powerful human stories, revealing war through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling. Through Their Eyes we'll be live soon. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Commander Peter Scott]

I'm married. We have a daughter. There are certainly moments when my mind went to them. There was certainly a moment where, you know, just, you know the young lad. So just take a moment.

[Petty Officer Geordie Bunting]

My wife sleeps beside me at night and knows I have nightmares most nights about it. But, you know, what do you do? You either get on the horse and get going or you let it rule your life. And it certainly changed my life, but it's not going to own me.

[Cameron Stewart]

From the Australian I'm Cameron Stewart and this is the flood. Episode 3 We Are Sinking it is February 12, 2003, and the Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Deschano was seconds away from sinking to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, taking her 60 crew with her. A catastrophic flood engulfed the submarine after a seawater hose burst while it was at its deepest diving depth 50 nautical miles off the coast of Perth.

[Commander Peter Scott]

We worked out later that we had a ton of seawater coming into the submarine every second. A ton of seawater is the same as 100 crates of your favourite laager coming into your submarine every second through a hole about that big.

[Cameron Stewart]

But at this moment, Commander Scott had no idea how much seawater had flooded his submarine. He didn't even know for sure if the flood had stopped. His crew had just performed the emergency procedures designed to try to save the submarine and themselves. They'd blow on all of the boat's ballast, shut all of the Deshaino's external hull valves and and increased the motor to full speed while angling the submarine at 20 degree upward tilt, double the usual to try to gather enough momentum to climb back to the surface. There was no margin for error.

[Commander Peter Scott]

I had a well trained crew. I had an exceptional boat with a lot of redundancy. I've been in sticky situations before. I'd seen submarines and I knew that if we kept our cool, did what we knew we needed to do, exercise discipline, bring all the sort of expertise that we had to bear on board, then we would have the best chance of pulling through.

[Cameron Stewart]

The trouble was that in the first few seconds, the crew in the control room did all that they could to save the submarine. They'd initiated all of the emergency operating procedures quickly and flawlessly. There was Nothing more they could do but sit and watch the depth gauge. The men and women aboard the Duchenno were entering the longest minutes of their lives, waiting to see if they had saved their crippled submarine and themselves.

[Commander Peter Scott]

It went very quiet. It went very quiet because we'd kind of done everything we, we knew we could do. There were a few outstation reports and stuff coming in, but, you know, there's a few moments there where we're kind of going, okay, we've done what we've been taught and trained to do, and we haven't won this one yet. So where are we going from here? You get to a point where you've certainly done everything you can with blowing main ballast. But of course, the submarine takes a moment to build up speed. Very powerful main motor, but it's a big submarine and it takes time to build up speed. The more speed you get, the more control you have with your hydroplanes. It's that combination of effect. Blow your main ballast, get rid of that weight, build up the speed, get the boat pitched at the right angle to be heading towards the roof and start pumping to get rid of any other weight that you possibly can. All, ideally, before, you know, that combination goes the wrong way irreversibly.

[Cameron Stewart]

Commander Scott was too busy in the control room to know exactly what was happening in the lower motor room at the back of the submarine where the flood had occurred. He did not know that Petty Officer Geordie Bunting had almost drowned before being saved by his crewmates. He had not yet been told that the flood had been halted by the shutting off of the external hull valves. And he still had no idea how much seawater had flooded into his boat. In short, he had no way of knowing whether the Duchenner was going to make it back to the surface.

[Commander Peter Scott]

There might have been physical mayhem at the back of the boat. I think the crew were actually pretty darn cool, calm and collected. So there are a number of folk stationed after the main water type bulkheads, and they would have been providing reports back up into the control room about where they'd seen the flood, what was occurring and what they were doing about it. But it took quite a while to develop any real understanding of the total damage and the total amount of water and the state of my people back there.

[Cameron Stewart]

Even after Greg Sullivan and Michael Morris had pulled Geordie Bunting out of the flooded lower motor room, the lives of everyone in the main motor room were at risk as the seawater washed over electrical equipment, putting the crew there in grave danger of being electrocuted I'm sure

[Commander Peter Scott]

it would have been pretty terrifying as they saw the submarine pitch up and all the water that had flooded into that motor room move aft and around the main motor, which has got huge voltage and power going through it.

[Cameron Stewart]

At the time, chief engineer John Ryan had run the length of the submarine to jump into the flooded lower motor room to try to identify the source of the flood. But as the water swirled around him, he realised the danger.

[Commander Peter Scott]

I mean, the water was swirling, there was water pouring in there under pressure. We yield up to isolate some of the equipment so that it didn't fry or we didn't fry in the water,

[Cameron Stewart]

because what was the danger there?

[Commander Peter Scott]

Electrocution. We were standing waist deep in seawater for what? Fear.

[Cameron Stewart]

It felt like an eternity. The submarine refused to respond to efforts by the crew to get it to rise. It was travelling at full speed with its hull pointed 20 degrees upwards, but still it did not respond. Then, to the horror of everyone on board, it began to sink further. The submarine was heading into the abyss. Twenty years after the flood, Peter Scott published his memoir, Running Deep, An Australian Submarine Life, which we heard an excerpt from in episode two of this series. Here, Scott vividly recalls the moment his crew's fate hung in the balance.

[Commander Peter Scott]

My heart is beating through my neck. I know, we all know that if we go down in this depth of water, we will be crushed by the pressure before we hit the bottom. Once the pressure hull splits, the ocean's onslaught will be absolute in its violence. Though it be the world to us. The ocean would fill our submarine as effortlessly as it would fill my lungs. Without a moment's hesitation or a scarecrow remorse. There's no coming and we've been here before. We've trained for this. Some of us have trained for our whole adult lives. I have the submarine, I say, resuming full command

[Cameron Stewart]

now. You're at the deepest diving depth. You were looking at the gauge, were you to see whether you were sinking or otherwise? You were already at the deepest diving depth. What did you initially see?

[Commander Peter Scott]

Yeah. So the boat just hung for what seemed like an eternity and then began to slowly sink.

[Cameron Stewart]

What went through your mind then?

[Commander Peter Scott]

This is all about the wrong way. I had enough experience to know that it would take some time for the impact of the high pressure air to blow the ballast out of the. The ballast tanks. And, you know, it wasn't over until it was over kind of thing, but to see that depth gauge going the wrong way at that time was. That was pretty difficult.

[Cameron Stewart]

Did the crew react? They would have Seen the same depth gauge.

[Commander Peter Scott]

Anyone who could see a depth gauge would have been looking at a depth gauge at that stage that probably would have had similar reaction to myself.

[Cameron Stewart]

Commander Scott could feel the eyes of his crew upon him.

[Commander Peter Scott]

So I'm standing in the middle of the control room. Control room's fully crewed. Everything's pretty tight in there. There was a sailor sitting probably arm's reach away on the sonar set. And I remember he turned and looked to me. He wasn't saying anything, but he was very clearly asking, you know, are we going to get out of this? And I was not in a position to say, she'll be right, mate. What I was in a position to say was, we're going to fight like hell to make sure we do, and we'll see how it goes. One of the remarkable things about a circumstance like that was the crew members who were in a position to do something did exactly what they needed to do. There were a lot of members of the crew who were not in a position to do anything. Their job at that time was to trust their shipmates and be ready to lean in when. When they could.

[Cameron Stewart]

Sonar operator Melanie Ellerton was one of those crew members who could only watch the drama unfold around her.

[Sonar Operator Melanie Ellerton]

Okay, like, how far past is this limit gonna go before the submarine says no, can't handle that pressure anymore, to actually saying, we're going back up. But when you're looking at that depth gauge and you're going, that's our limit, and now we're going below that limit, There wasn't a lot going through my head at the Please, by jolly God, that we come back up.

[Cameron Stewart]

Every sailor knew what going down would mean.

[Sonar Operator Melanie Ellerton]

Very much like a Coke can getting crushed. Probably the best way to describe it. It would have been a very quick, very swift, and probably the one. If you're thinking about it now, it would have been the best way to go. If you're going to go on a submarine, it'll be the best way because you wouldn't feel it. That's one saving grace of it all.

[Cameron Stewart]

At that moment, down the back of the submarine, in the motor room, a dazed and drenched Geordie Bunting was trying to recover as seawater washed dangerously over electrical equipment.

[Petty Officer Geordie Bunting]

I didn't know where I was. There was a lot of noise. Despite the fact the hull valves were shut and the flooding was no longer rising, the submarine's still extremely heavy and it wasn't coming up. The angle that the boat was on was pretty scary.

[Narrator]

The flood is brought to you by The Australian War Memorial. What does war look like through the eyes of the people who lived it? Through Their Eyes is a new podcast from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers deeply human stories drawn from the AWM's vast collections, galleries and expert insights. Through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling, each episode brings history to life in a way that's personal, moving and relevant today. Discover the stories behind our history. Listen to Through Their Eyes soon, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Commander Peter Scott]

Very soon after the flood occurred, I was trying to work out how to shape, how to behave, how to think through the problems that we were facing so that we could achieve advantage. A month, two, three months downtrack. Because I knew that the incident was serious enough that it could have long term impact on the ship's company and that would either be long term positive or long term negative. And what was said and the way we behaved and the way we went through the immediate was going to have an impact on the long term. So, you know, my head was in a lot of different places. It was certainly there watching and understanding everything that the ship's company was doing and just tracking all of that as the flood occurred. But it was also part of my mind to how do we shape this to create a long term positive impact at the back end?

[Cameron Stewart]

Now that's Captain Scott, that's you as captain having that responsibility. What about the Private Peter at that moment when the flood happened?

[Commander Peter Scott]

Yeah, you know, there's a few. Private Peters, I'm married, we have a daughter. There are certainly moments when my mind went to them. There was certainly a moment. Where, you know, just, You know, the young lad. So I'll just take a moment. That was not the way the young boy who eventually joined the navy wanted to go. I didn't want to be the guy who took that crew to the bottom.

[Cameron Stewart]

But then a miracle happened.

[Commander Peter Scott]

It did start to flatten out and recover. And once the boat started moving, it really started moving.

[Cameron Stewart]

Collins class submarines can travel at up to 20 knots, just under 40 kilometres per hour. For the past three minutes, although it felt like forever, the crew had been hanging between life and death. Nobody spoke as the boat rose towards the surface, slowly at first, then picking up speed as it went. Finally, the Shano's black hole exploded out of the Indian Ocean and into the summer sunlight.

[Commander Peter Scott]

Yeah, we came through with a bit of speed on and a bit of angle. So we sort of bounced through the roof and then sort of, while I'd back down.

[Cameron Stewart]

Is everything okay at that point or is, I mean, tell us about the dangers that you still faced even though you were now at the surface.

[Commander Peter Scott]

So it comes to the fact that we did not know the state of our submarine. We didn't know the state of our hydraulic systems, electrical systems. We didn't know how much water we had on the boat. We didn't know what casualties we'd suffered and therefore, you know, what expertise we'd lost and so on. We didn't know probably at that point whether there'd been other issues like, you know, had fires started or whatever. So once we were on the roof, a really serious damage control battle kind of began. And that just became a long and difficult battle to understand the situation and get control of where we were at. It took about three minutes from the time of the initial flood to conduct all those eops, get the boat moving and break the surface was probably about three minutes in time.

[Cameron Stewart]

The Duchaino had made it back to the surface, but it was not yet out of trouble. It had blown all of its ballast tanks and there was no certainty that it would not sink again. Could it make it back to port? Was everyone safe? How would the Navy handle this near disaster? What would it mean for the Duchenno and for all of the Collins class submarines which were already under serious scrutiny? Jordie Rockerbunting and John Ryan recall the moment.

[Petty Officer Geordie Bunting]

It was a long transit back. I can remember that because we were severely speed restricted because of the damage that had been done to the main motor cooling gear. There was a lot of work going on to try and get systems back up to get us home safe, and that was obviously carried out. But that time coming back in was, I guess, just a time to reflect and come to grips with what had just happened.

[Commander Peter Scott]

As a general rule, you can't smoke anywhere on the submarine. So I just went to the boss and said, you know, I'm gonna take rocker and we're gonna have a smoke. He said.

[Narrator]

This is episode three of our four part series, which the Australian subscribers hear first at TheFloodPodcast.com and Apple Podcasts. Next week on the Flood.

[Petty Officer Geordie Bunting]

I rang my wife and said, we've had a bit of an issue. Can you come and pick me up and pick up some cigarettes? Mine got wet.

[Narrator]

The Flood is an audio and video investigation for the Australian by Cameron Stewart, executive producer Claire Harvey and editor Jasper Leake. You can watch the video right [e-mail] Our theme is composed by Jasper Leake, cinematography is by Andy Taylor and video editing by Lachlan Clear. Additional footage was shot by Luke Geldard and Peter Aquilina. A graphics are by Sean Callanen and animations by Frank Ling. Special thanks to Kristen Amyot, Ryan Elphin, the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian War Memorial. Captured, Imprisoned, Determined to Survive through first hand accounts from the Australian War Memorial's archives, Through Their Eyes reveals what it meant to endure captivity, maintain hope and survive against the odds. Listen to Through Their Eyes wherever you get your podcasts.