Western Australian identity Hugh Edwards has died aged 90, following a fall. Hugh is well-known as an author, journalist, shark expert and underwater explorer. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2009 for services to Western Australian maritime history, in recognition of his writings about Dutch East India Company shipwrecks on the Western Australian coast. His best known book is Islands of Angry Ghosts, which recounts the story of the 1629 Dutch treasure ship Batavia, and which won the Sir Thomas White Memorial Prize for best book written by an Australian in 1966. Journalist Peter FitzSimons dedicated his own book Batavia (2011) to Hugh and to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, for their roles in the expedition that located and first explored the Batavia shipwreck, submerged off the Abrolhos Islands. Hugh served as consultant on the 1972 docudrama The Wreck of the Batavia, directed by Bruce Beresford.

A subsequent book, Wreck on the Half Moon Reef, recounts the loss of another Dutch ship, Zeewyk, in 1727.

Among Hugh’s 35 or so published works are histories of Broome and of the Kimberley, Joe Nangan’s Dreaming (1976, co-authored with Indigenous lawman Joe Nangan), books about sharks and crocodiles, and books for children.

Hugh Edwards published two autobiographical books: Gods and Little Fishes (1962) and Dead Men’s Silver: The Story of Australia’s Greatest Shipwreck Hunter (2011). He is survived by his daughter Caroline, from his marriage to Jennifer Lejeune, by his daughter Petrana, from his marriage to Marilyn Georgeff, and by their children. His son Christopher predeceased him, in 2019. In Hugh’s later years his companion Athena Paton was his rock.