For more than a decade, warships sunk in World War II have literally been disappearing from the ocean floor.  Illegal scrappers operating grabs from barges have been looting of Australian, American, British, Dutch, and Japanese warships for scrap metal in south-east Asian seas.

 Recently, USNI reports that the Royal Navy has expressed concern over reports of looting of the wrecks of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse off the coast of Malaysia. The Chinese barge Chuan Hong 68 is reported to have used a large dredging crane to pluck scrap from the wrecks.

Both ships were sunk on Dec. 10, 1941, days after Pearl Harbor, by Japanese bombers, resulting in the loss of 840 sailors.

Now Malaysia’s maritime agency has detained the barge registered in Fuzhou, China, on Sunday for anchoring without a permit off southern Johor state.  The agency found a cannon shell believed to be from World War II on the Chinese-registered vessel and was investigating if the barge carrier was involved in the looting of the two British warship wrecks in the South China Sea.