Welcome to our series You're Not Alone, in which Allen Sonter, for many years a missionary educator in the islands of the South Pacific, tell stories that help us to know that God is always watching over us wherever we are.
This episode is entitled The Ship is Sinking. We'll be sailing soon after five in the morning.
The captain had said so. Here I was, standing on the deck of the Kia Kia in Abermamba Lagoon, while the crew busied themselves getting the ship ready to weigh anchor. The sky was just becoming light in the east, but ten tons of copra, the dried flesh of the coconut, was already lying in the main hole.
The stern of the engine room, the deck amidships, was covered with rolls of mats and other baggage belonging to the deck passengers, who seemed to occupy every bit of available space. The Kia Kia, named after a local seabird, was an auxiliary ketch operated by a cooperative trading society. She carried trade goods to the outer islands and returned with copra to Tarowa government and trading center of the Gilbert Islands, now the Republic of Kiribas.
I was running a school on the island of Abermama, about 100 miles southeast of Taroa at the time, and wanted to travel to Taroa, where my wife had gone some weeks earlier to await the birth of our first child. Within a few minutes, the anchor came up and was made fast and under engine power. We moved away from the anchorage out into the lagoon.
The lagoon was several miles across, and a boy a couple of miles from the anchorage marked a reef where we were to change course and head toward the passage into the open sea. The captain stood near the helmsman looking for the boy, and I stood beside him to see if I could find the boy as well. After several minutes, I spotted the boy, just a dark speck on the water some distance away.
The searching look on the captain's face showed me that he had not seen it, so I pointed. There it is. Do you see it? Just a bit to starboard.
The captain looked intently for a few moments and then nodded. Ah, yes, I see it now. That was the first indication to me that all was not well.
The captain, with his years of experience, should have picked up the boy long before a novice like me had seen it. What was wrong? Well, perhaps it wasn't significant. Just one of those things.
After rounding the boy, we headed for the passage out into the open ocean, and by about 630 we were out of the lagoon and had set course for Tarawa. The crew raised the sails to aid our progress and to make things a bit more comfortable by reducing the rolling of the ship in the ocean swells. As soon as we cleared the island, I went to have a look at my cabin, but the stench of rancid copper and diesel fumes were so nauseating that I fled to the top deck as quickly as I could to avoid being sick.
The captain seemed to have no problem with the smell and went into his cabin where he was soon fast asleep on his bunk. To make it easier to follow the rest of the story at this point, I'll give you a brief description of the ship. The Kia Kia was about 20 meters long.
She was laid out with a short bow deck up front, then a longer and lower main deck behind that. The cabins were mounted above with the hold immediately below them. A short stern deck completed the layout.
The wheel was mounted on a small deck forming the roof of the cabins. It was surrounded by a railing and the helmsman was protected from the weather by a canvas awning. Access to the cabins was through a door off the stern deck and a ladder led from the stern deck up to the top deck, where the wheel was located.
Another ladder led down the forward face of the cabins to the main deck from which access was gained to the hold through a door beside the ladder and to the engine room through a low skylighted cover in the middle of the main deck. With the ship under engine and sail, it was quite pleasant to sit on the top deck and enjoy the ocean breeze in front of me. Down on the main deck, the deck passengers made themselves comfortable on their sleeping mats.
The ship lay over as the southeast breeze filled the sails and the gentle throb of the engine completed the peaceful scene. So things continued till around Noond. As the morning wore on, I did notice that the water seemed to be increasingly washing through the scuppers onto the main deck and the ship seemed to be settling lower into the water, but I didn't think much of it at the time.
Suddenly, the captain's shocked face appeared above the edge of the top deck and he came up the ladder from his cabin. Forgetting that captains are always supposed to remain calm and reassure the passengers, he shouted, the ship's sinking. He'd been sleeping peacefully in his bunk when a wave came through the open porthole of his cabin and splashed over his face.
The sudden shock woke him in a hurry and he swung his feet out of his bunk onto the floor to find the floor awash with about 15 water. That was when he went charging up the ladder to the top deck. While I was taking in what was happening, the captain rushed across the deck and down the ladder to the main deck.
He quickly picked his way between the people on the deck who were beginning to sit up and wonder what was going on and opened the COVID to the engine room. As he climbed down the ladder, he soon reached the water which was rising around the engine and by the time he reached the engine room floor the water reached well up to his thighs. The large open flywheel was spraying water all over the room so the captain had no option but to shut down the engine.
By this time the crew members had crawled out of their bunks up in the bow of the ship and there was quite a bit of activity around the main deck and the engine room. The captain was properly awake now and took charge of the operation. He ordered the pump engine to be started to empty the engine room and opened the hole to see how much water was in there.
His worst fears were realized as he saw that the hole was awash with water over the bags of copper. Orders were quickly given to lighten the ship by throwing the copra overboard so bag after bag went over the side until all ten tons were slowly disappearing. Disturbed with the main engine stopped, the sails were providing just enough power to keep the ship moving and enable it to be steered while the copper was being thrown overboard.
The captain switched on the radio and called the Marine headquarters in Tarowa. He explained the seriousness of the situation but was told that there was only one ship in port that could be sent to help. But the crew were all on shore leave and it would take some hours to get them aboard.
Even then we were several hours sailing from Taro so it would be well into the evening before we could expect any help. It looked as though if we were to survive it would have to be without other human help. As I watched the drama unfolding I realized that the situation was indeed serious.
The Kia Kia carried a couple of workboats but these were far too small to hold all the passengers and crew. As was usual on the inter island ships in the 1950s deck passengers crowded every bit of available space and the smaller ships were not policed too carefully to make sure that everything was done according to the law. After all, if everything had been done according to the law we wouldn't now be sinking out of sight of land with no way of getting help.
I naturally turned to God who was always there when we need him, and asked him to bring us safely to harbour. When the crew tried to start the pump engine they found that it wouldn't start because the exhaust pump that passed through the port side of the ship was underwater due partly to the weight of water in the ship but also because the wind in the sails was causing the ship to heal over to port. The captain decided to try to turn the ship around so that the wind would heal it to the starboard and lift the exhaust out of the water.
It was a risky maneuver under the circumstances. The ship was moving very slowly there was a fair swell running and there were tons of water sloshing about in the hull. As the ship began to veer around to starboard, it came side on to the swells and with the wind still in the sails and the water in the hull rolling it further to port, very nearly rolled right over.
I was on the top deck hanging on desperately to the starboard rail, and the deck appeared to hang almost vertically beneath me. I thought we would go over, but it just seemed as though someone grabbed the top of the mast and pulled it upright again. The captain was pale but didn't have time to do anything.
The next swell came. The same thing happened again. By this time the captain had swung the wheel over in a desperate attempt to put the ship back on the original course.
To make a further attempt to turn was to invite disaster, so he decided it would be better to have no pump than to capsize in MidOcean. The captain then ordered a bucket brigade to bail out the engine room. Ropes were tied to buckets and for 4 hours the crew and able bodied passengers lifted bucket after bucket of water out through the engine room hatch.
By late afternoon, the water level in the engine room was low enough to clear the flywheel. So the main engine was started again and we made fair headway in the direction of Tarawa. The captain again called on the radio to report that we were now out of immediate danger and should be able to make harbor under our own power.
Eventually we limped into port. At 02:00 the next morning, a trip that should have taken 10 hours had taken 20. A subsequent marine inquiry revealed that the water had come into the ship through a two inch gap around the propeller shaft.
The captain had known of the problem and for several days had been pumping the bills almost continually, but on the evening prior to sailing had gone on a drinking bout and had slept without pumping all morning, while the ship slowly filled with water. His drinking also no doubt accounted for his failure to see the boy that morning. As a result of the incident, he was fired from his command and stripped of his ticket.
As for me, I believe that God heard my prayers way out there, and I'm sure other passengers were praying too. I was not alone. And you're not alone either.
He is with you when you ask Him to help.
You've been listening to our series You're Not Alone stories told by Allen Sonter that help us to know that God is always watching over us, wherever we are. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to
[email protected] or give us a call within Australia on zero two four nine seven, three three four five.
Six. May God bless you and remember you are not alone. You have been listening to a production of Three ABN Australia australia Radio.
