http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Overview/AEhypothesis.html#3
First 4 paragraphs of the TIGHAR Hypothesis (Summer 2009):
Roughly twenty hours into the flight, and with somewhere between three and four hours of fuel remaining, Earhart and Noonan have been unable to make visual or two-way radio contact with Howland Island. They implement the only procedure available to them which will minimize the chance of having to land the aircraft in the sea: they proceed southeastward on a course of 157 degrees. Go there.
Shortly before noon, the aircraft is landed successfully on the reef-flat at Gardner Island at or near low tide on the smooth stretch of coral just north of the S.S. Norwich City, the ship that ran aground there in 1929. Go there.
That evening, the aircraft’s radio is used to send distress calls. Go there.
By a week later, rougher seas and increased surf on the reef have forced Earhart and Noonan to abandon the aircraft which is now obscured from view at high tide. The castaways seek shelter from the sun in the dense bush inland and come upon a cache of provisions left behind by the rescuers of the Norwich City survivors eight years earlier. When search planes from the USS Colorado are heard overhead on the morning of July 9th, Earhart and Noonan are unable to reach the open beach in time to be seen. If anything of the airplane was visible through the surf, its proximity to the Norwich City leads the searchers to dismiss it as debris from the shipwreck. Go there.
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Notice the reference to "a cache of provisions left behind by the rescuers of the Norwich City survivors eight years earlier". A successful rescue effort of survivors would surely contain a reference to the Latitiude/Longitude position of the Norwich City. This info would certainly be in the possession of the ships owners, insurance company, ship loss statisticians ans so forth.
It is too bad Earhart did not mention "Wreck of Steamship Norwich City located at our crash site. We can see it." That should have given the searchers her location following some quick 24-48 hour research on the Norwich City records.
Ah, well, a lot of "What If's" and "Should have Done's" in this mystery.