High tides and dry bodies
No.1 (oncer) has come to the party with a couple of pics of Somerton Beach with the tide in, showing that anybody reclining by the Somerton Beach sea wall would have been awash, soaked, possibly rolled over by any turbulence however slight.#
PC Moss didn’t twig it, despite being told by Lyons that in his opinion the dead body was the same man he spotted the evening before, and Moss knew the beach well.
Detectives Strangeways, Leane, Brown and Canney didn’t question it either. Nobody did until oncer came along.
# here
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10172750904610008&set=pcb.1973152233448224
and this pic of Somerton Beach at high tide from Jo – taken near the steps.
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The Somerton Man .. 
The young lady Jo, made several videos on 1 October 2025 which she uploaded to Facebook and which make for quite interesting viewing. She’s standing on the steps leading down to sea level and you can see the handrail
https://www.facebook.com/722995007/videos/1522451165872602/?idorvanity=1885987812164667
I checked the recorded tides on 1 October 2025 against the tides on 30 Nov / 1 December 1948 and the tides were higher on those days in 1948.
When you think about that compared to her videos, the tide was definitely right up to the sea wall in 1948.
PC Moss was based at Glenelg cop shop and the beach sand is quite wide there at Glenelg
Lyon said the same man was there the night before, so they probably accepted his version of events, but we know different now
SM clothes weren’t wet but damp which means he wasn’t there, or he would have been swamped, and as you see from the videos well and truly washed out to sea.
His clothes were damp because they wicked up the moisture from the hard sand where the tide had been and where he was dumped when the tide had just receded sufficiently
Thanks Jo, nice work (for a different purpose)
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High tide 6:33pm 1 October 2025: 1.4 metres (4 ft 7 in) video
High tide 4:34am 1 December 1948 2.75 metres (9 ft)
On 1 December 1948 in the morning the tide was a massive 1.35 metres (4ft 5 in) higher than what we are seeing in the video
Thanks again Jo, you helped prove beyond all doubt that Somerton man wasn’t on that beach overnight
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There must be an explanation as to why neither the police, the witnesses nor the coroner thought to question the state of the overnight tide, the Lyons couple in particular as it appears they regularly walked along the beach and would have been familiar the reach of the high tide.
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Don’t usually take too much notice of ‘told yous so’ links. In this case I couldn’t resist Jo’s video of the crashing surf scene along Somerton foreshore of last October. Great visual effects I must say. All we can do now is prepare for Gordon’s up date on where Somerton Man’s original position might have been in context; ie apropos where his positioning against the concrete storm wall might have been, in light of it’s not being handy for comparison reference any longer. Steve H might like to give us more lessons from Nick’s original ‘last 24 hours thread that I recomended but to no avail.
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It looks like (on google image) Somerton Beach is a lot narrower than the beach stretching south, therefore much more prone to a high tide reaching the sea wall ..
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1 October 2025 sunset 6:19pm, high tide 6:33pm after sunset
We see the sun above the horizon in the video
I used an app to work out the time of day she was there
Jo said the tide was still rising which is correct from the time of day she was there, and it means the high tide will be further up the seawall than what you are seeing in the video, after sunset
You’re welcome to have GC run the maths on positions then and now
I’ve already done it
It removes all doubt, Somerton man wasn’t on that beach overnight
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No 1 … How soon after the April 1948 cyclone were the Glenelg and Brighton beaches repaired? Maybe one of the local surf clubs might have a record.
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March 25, 27, 29, 2017 @ CM Lead in the Somerton Man’s hair (not pencil) thread. Several posts on the viability of y’man being brought in by ships (Benjo Maru) tender for a dry landing at the landmark Locstat CCH step pre dawn. Theme includes related posts by tide experts Petebowes, Byron Deveson, Milongal, Nick Pelling and a screwball name of John Sanders (not his original handle). A must read for sceptics and open to critique by Steve H., the biggest of all.
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Pipped at the post there GC
Now we have the video and accurate correlation of data
I factored in 25% error margin and that gives water high above the sand at the seawall in 1948 and no Somerton man on the beach overnight
Thanks for watching
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From my own (nobody elses) factual research, no upgrading or permanant repairs were likely undertaken until after the much more devestating storm of 18 May 1953 than the misnomer ‘cyclone’ of 1948. Plenty of press coverage and pretty pictures covering both events that sadly seem to have been passed over by our not so research savy “time & tide” (my words not Steve H’s) investigator C. Gordon Cramer.
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Thanks for that, though I notice that once GC has covered a subject he assumes the rights over it and disapproves of anyone else (me, aka ‘another blog’) daring to write about it in any context.
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If you don’t mind my saying so, our two adversaries seem to be mocking each others theories, whilst supporting the very same non arguments as to whether SM got himself drenched or just lightly dampened, as attested to by Constable Moss (C of E) on Oath (Holy Bible James I) before the ’49 inquest.
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GC changes his tune to avoid agreeing with anyone who might steal his thunder
Say it’s black and he will say it’s white
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Push comes to shove, think I’ll stick with Mossy’s assessment of what he came up with consequence of his time spent at the crime scene X. So he found upon arrival at 6.45 am that there was the fully clothed body of a gentleman. It was found to be cold, stiff, damp and dead as maggot. There was a well smoked bumper at rest on the coat collar, a pack of smokes laying about the body but no matches or Tamam shud slips were found and all his pockets contained were two tickets for suburban travel, coupla combs and fuck all else. Only one thing he definately got wrong I’ll leavy for my host of fans to fight over.
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Yeah … he forgot to secure the half-smoked smoke.
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Anyone for a ‘stick’ of Wrigley Juicy Fruit? Go to America!
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No … he didn’t mention it. Could be that Strangway bagged the bumper along with the rest in the pack etc., but no information came to light. As for the Juicy Fruit, each stick carried a letter code under the wrapper. “If you are looking for specific vintage examples, you can view 1940’s Wrigley artifacts on Etsy or go to the Made-in-Chicago Museum which catalogue gum packaging details.”. Could get lucky though don’t count on it.
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So Strangeway was idiot enough to ignore prime evidence was he?
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Poor old GC he gets himself so confused
He thinks it was said that the tide on 1 October 2025 would have reached the old seawall
When in fact what was said, is that based on the known recorded tide on 1 October 2025, which was clearly shown to be at the base of the new seawall in the video, and applying the maths of that known height in 2025 being 1.4 metres from government records, to the known tide height on 1 December 1948 being 2.75 metres, the tide on 1 December 1948 is 1.35 metres higher than the tide at the new seawall in 2025, and even allowing for a drop in sand level in 2025 on the beach, which was calculated and factored in as well by 25% margin for error, the tide on 1 December 1948 would have covered the sand up at the old seawall.
The tide in 1948 is 1.35 metres higher than the tide you see on the new seawall, and the base of old seawall is not 1.35 metres above the base of the new seawall, and because the tide is over the sand at the base of the new seawall in the video, the tide at the 1948 seawall, on 1 December 1948, is over the sand at the base of the old seawall
The new seawall base in 2025 is the reference for the known tide by government records of 1.4 metres there in 2025, and you then add the additional 1.35 metres and you then know where the tide was on the sand at the base of the old seawall. It’s got nothing to do with how far away things are from each other, it is the heights of things relative to a known tide level in 2025. It’s water levels, not distances
Poor old bloke, so hard for him to understand logic now
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He wasn’t idiot enough to misspell his name as most others are prone to doing. Truth, as I must keep repeating is that Detective Sgt. STRANGWAY was involved as chief witness in the trial of a man charged with raping a young girl, and was in court from 2nd December. Who knows what became of his scenes of crime notes and who took over the case in his abscence, must have been someone higher up the ladder than PCC J. Sutherland, although ‘Scan’ remained the Coroner’s go to man throughout and was last to see SM before his burial on 17 June, 1949.
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Always excuses old mate, sometimes called protecting your arse and many others wearing the same uniform .. been there sport, done that.
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What uniform would that have been old salt? Turramurra baggies and ripple sole brothel creepers be my guess!
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No takers on what Moss got wrong, simple answer is he insists that the SM death scene showed no obvious sighns of it having been compromised, and yet there must have been any amount of equine presence very close by including tramplings and horse shit. Speaking of which, it be most unconscionable that the two local handlers who were first on the scene, Neil Day and Horrie Patching were apparently never interviewed or even identified in any subsequent police reports. Unbelievable and highly suspect.
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Couldn’t have been Nino Farina or Jack Brabham, they came a tad too late, best two guesstimates I can come up with be Pat Malone, helmsman on the Benjo Maru who hated Germans like Hitler hated his Jewish genes; Or else might have merely been an accident and Werner the Kraut @ Somertonman got himself locked in the ship’s cold storage hold at just low enough temp. to keep him above freezing for remainder of the journey across the bite to Adelaide.
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Somerton man wasn’t on that beach overnight
The tide was 1ft up the old seawall. His body would have been covered by water, shifted from that position by the surging tide or even dragged out to sea by it
He wasn’t seen by anyone in a public place, not on a bus, not in the street, nowhere, because he wasn’t there either
Highly likely then he was held somewhere for possibly weeks while the black op was planned. The dates used, the new moon, the location, the tide, the code with the Overland, the train line and level crossing, and all the detail including the Tamam Shud slip, fingerprints, photos, everything, meticulously crafted to create a false story
Who would have been the driver behind it and their reason
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Railway ticket, bus ticket, combs, chewing gum, suitcase, old clothes, envelopes, pencils, knives-everything ‘props’ for this staged production?
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CGC’s latest speel states “Subseqent investigation by this blog and world acclaimed Tidal Expert, Dr. John ‘good luck’ Luick, showed that the man’s body was placed on the beach after the high tide at 4.34am on December 1st”. Bear in mind that time, should have allowed for a correction of ten minutes longer than the Outer Harbor high as a given which was right on sunrise fot 1 Dec. as fortune would have it. give or take a few minutes at most.Then by factoring in the 45 minute gap between emerging daybreak and sunup, plus another half hour for the tidal outflow to commence, we must thereby conclude going by the Dr. Luick guestimate, sparrow fart had come and gone long before the body was put in place … in broad daylight.
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No. 1: Intriguing that such a lot of effort was planned and put into operation relating to this one man. What was so special about this one individual? This leads to the question as to when did he arrive in Adelaide, not on the 30th November, that’s for sure. The question is/was why? If ‘they’ wanted to get rid of him, why not let the sea do its work? By leaving his body on the beach, it was a signal to whom?
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God Almighty Clive, could it have have been a signal to Jess Thomson’s “a Higher Authority” all the while. No One must not have caught Kate’s TV interview and thoughts on her Mother’s claims to such; along with Russian involvement of course.
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Not forgetting the micro-writing on the ‘Taman Shud’ slip. (I’m sure it read, this writing must be read in conjunction with the ROK, which will surface after the inquest in June 1949).
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Sunrise 4:55am. First light, same time as high tide 4:25am.
Tide needs 1 hour to drop 1/12 which is the 1ft tide drop
Body needs to be dumped around 5:30am, or bit before depending on the actual tide height
Won’t look suspicious at all hanging around in daylight. It’s too early for folks to be up and they wouldn’t be on the beach because they know the tide will be up and there is very little sand.
Pull up in front of the steps of the Esplanade, it’s only the Home across the road and nobody will be looking at the steps on the beach and the steps will be hidden by your car. Two blokes drag him off the back seat, down the steps and dump him. Easier if you have a van with a side door.
Nobody comes along and finds him until 6:30am
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