Mysteries abound in the Pacific but one which continues to perplex many is the fate of the vessel Joyita, which was found floating in the Pacific Ocean without crew or passengers back in November 1955.
MV Joyita was a merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
Just like the Titanic, the Joyita was considered unsinkable and both captains liked to boast about it.
But fate would have it that tragedy would visit both vessels, albeit, on different sides of the planet and at very different periods in history.
The MV Joyita is one of the more endearing mysteries of the world, and takes its rightful place beside the disappearance of the Marie Celeste, the ship found adrift in the Atlantic in 1872, with no visible damage half-eaten meals on tables and no people.
The discovery of the Joyita weeks after it disappeared worked on the imagination of many as people devised their own theories as to what happened to the cargo and crew, from seaquakes and explosions to pirates.
When the ship was discovered on November 10, 1955 it was in very poor condition, including rusted pipes and a radio which, while functional, only had a range of about two miles as a result of faulty wiring.
Nevertheless, the extreme buoyancy of the ship made sinking nearly impossible leaving investigators puzzled as to why the crew did not remain on board and wait for help.
The 69-foot (21m) wooden ship was constructed in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for Roland West, who named the ship after his wife, actress Jewel Carmenille — joyita in Spanish meaning “little jewel”.
After being was sold and registered to Milton E Beacon, she made numerous trips south to Mexico and to the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.
Considered virtually unsinkable the ship’s hull was constructed of two-inch thick cedar-on-oak frames.
According to Wikipedia, the Joyita was 69 feet (21m) long, with beam of 17 feet (5.2m) and a draft of 7ft 6in (2.3m). Her net tonnage was 47 tons and her gross tonnage approximately 70 tons. She had tanks for 2500 gallons (9500 litres) of water and 3000 gallons (11400 litres) of diesel fuel.
The ship would go on to be used in World War II.
Just before the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Joyita was acquired by the US Navy in October 1941 and taken to Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, where she was outfitted as patrol boat YP-108, Wikipedia reports.
The navy used her to patrol the big island of Hawaii until the end of World War II. In 1943 she ran aground and was heavily damaged. Since the navy needed ships, she was fixed.
At this point, new pipe work was made from galvanised iron instead of copper or brass. In 1946, the ship was surplus to navy requirements and most of its equipment was removed.
In 1948, the Joyita was sold to the firm of Louis Brothers and it was at this point, cork lining was added to the ship’s hull along with refrigeration equipment.
The ship was fitted with two Gray marine diesel engines providing 225 HP, and two extra diesel engines for generators.
In 1952 the boat was sold to Dr Katharine Luomala, a professor at the University of Hawaii who eventually chartered the boat to her friend, Captain Thomas H. “Dusty” Miller, a British-born sailor living in Samoa. Miller used the ship as a trading and fishing charter boat.
According to official reports, at about 5am on October 3, 1955, the Joyita left Samoa’s Apia harbour bound for the Tokelau islands, about 270 miles (430 km) away.
“The boat had been scheduled to leave on the noontide the previous day but her departure was delayed because her port engine clutch failed. The Joyita eventually left Samoa on one engine,” Wikipedia states.
“It was to be a mercy mission of sorts. The Tokelau islands were dangerously short of food and they had radioed that there was an urgent medical problem as well, a man with a gangrenous arm,” noted author Kim Gravelle in a report of the Joyita mystery published in his book, Fiji’s Heritage, a History of Fiji.
According to Gravelle, the Western Samoan Government had refused to charter the vessel since it was a foreign registered one and that it had not been cleared of its papers at its last port in Pagopago.
The Joyita was reportedly carrying 16 crew members and nine passengers, including a government official, a doctor by the name of Alfred “Andy” Denis Parsons, a World War II surgeon on his way to perform an amputation), a copra buyer, and two children.
The ship’s cargo consisted of medical supplies, timber, 80 empty 45 gallon oil drums and a variety of foodstuff.
The voyage to Tokelau was expected to take between 41 and 48 hours and she was scheduled to return with a cargo of copra.
The Joyita was scheduled to arrive in Tokelau on October 5.
However on October 6 a message from Fakaofo port in Tokelau reported the ship was overdue.
What made authorities more concerned was that no ship or land-based operator reported receiving a distress signal from the crew.
Within a short time a search and rescue mission was launched and, from October 6-12, Sunderland aircraft of the Royal New Zealand Air Force covered a probability area of about 100,000 square miles (260,000 km²) of ocean during the search.
However there was no sign of the Joyita nor any of her passengers or crew.
The mystery grew even further when finally five weeks later, on November 10, Gerald Douglas, captain of the merchant ship Tuvalu, en route from Suva to Funafuti, sighted the Joyita more than 600 miles west from her scheduled route.
The Joyita had been discovered drifting north of Vanua Levu partially submerged with her port deck awash and listing heavily.
There was not a trace of any of the passengers or crew along with four tonnes of cargo which was also missing. Reports noted a considerable cargo that included bags of flour, sugar and copra.
Those who recovered the vessel noted that the radio was discovered tuned to 2182 kHz, the international marine radiotelephone distress channel.
“Friends of who knew Dusty Miller swore he’d never leave the boat and that he frequently boasted it was unsinkable … particularly if the choice was a raft-like boat which was all that Joyita had,” noted author Gravelle.
But the decks were charred, the telltale remains of a fire that broke out on board and there was also an open seacock.
* This is the first of a two-part series about the Joyita.
