USA
Chapter 36

Copyright© 2016 by Old Man with a Pen

During the late 1920's and most of the 1930's, while Japan was busy buying the debris of the world, she was also exploring the Pacific. Small trading vessels ... most about the size of the Vellamo II ... some 90 feet ... were voyaging to the islands.

The crews were exceeding competent; they should be, many were officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy. While the trader was bartering for whatever wealth there may be, the crew was mapping heights, taking soundings of anchorages, locating obstacles in lagoons, and being very thorough about it.

They were polite, caused no trouble, did their assigned tasks, paid a little better than the Germans, French, Belgians and Australian traders ... but not enough to be suspicious. They generally explained that they were newly come to the field and thought to plow better than the others.

"We're new and want your business," they said.

And it seemed to work. The other nationalities stopped coming for cargo ... bid out of business, I suppose; or disappeared in the typhoons.

Tens of thousands of ships ... and their crews litter the bottoms of the oceans and seas. The sea is a harsh mistress. She exacts a price of those who dare to tread on her.

The newcomers began to arrive at this or that island either just before or during the visits of the established traders. Visiting like neighbors with common goals, the Imperial Japanese Navy men were shown around the competitions small ships.

Those ships that the newcomers visited seemed to be the ships that never returned.

It wasn't unusual ... the captains and the crews were hard men and hard men gain enemies. There was quite a going business to be made of crewing for a voyage.

Shanghaiing, the drugged drink, the false papers; all the tricks of fact and legend supplied crews for the small ships that eked out a living doing whatever it took.

Plus ... the pirates. Not professional pirates. No, the fishing boat that stumbled across a smaller fishing boat. Dead men tell no tales ... and make no complaints. Life is cheap in the Orient.

Men did not always come home from the sea. Women grieved and life was for the living.

"What happened?"

"No one knows, they didn't come back."

And, still ... men go down to the sea and sail away.

The crewmen of the Japanese traders were less trouble than the other nations. The local law liked that.

Polite and efficient.

Nobody thought to mention deadly.

The unexpected fire in the galley, the leaking stuffing box, the engine room explosion. Who knows? No survivors. No witnesses. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Nobody lived to put the ship visits of the smiling Japanese men together with the missing ships. Nobody was really interested. Except the insurance companies ... and many of the missing had no insurance ... too small ... too expensive.

The sea.

Today, we say, "Shit Happens."

So ... when we picked up six people, survivors ... their stories seemed fantastic.

"There was an explosion..."

"There was a fire..."

"The crew abandoned us..."

"I don't know, I was asleep..."

"My sister..."

"I saw a stick in the water then I saw a white line in the water..."

"I don't know what kind of an explosion..."

"The fire? It at the back of the ship..."

"They took the lifeboats and just left us..."

"My sister is still on the boat..."

"No, the stick wasn't flat ... it was standing straight up..."

"It was just a bang and the stern lifted and started burning..."

"It spread really fast..."

Sobbing..."My sister is dead..."

"The line in the water came from the stick..."

"The whole back was burning...

"They rowed away ... really fast..."

The one recurring theme..."They left us to die."

So ... maybe the voyage from the Galapagos wasn't so boring after all.

 
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