The passengers on the Dona Paz departed Tacloban on Leyte Island and were heading to Manila to celebrate Christmas with families and friends. Most of them were in a festive mood as they crowded onto the ferry in anticipation of enjoying the holiday season with loved ones. They were resting, many sleeping, some four to a cot due to overcrowding, when without warning the MT Vector plowed into the port side of the MV Dona Paz. Both ships burst into flame within minutes of the collision. Passengers were either burned to death or drowned. Corpses found bobbing and floating in the aftermath were charred over most of their bodies, many beyond recognition. Only 108 dead bodies were recovered from the sea, a tiny fraction of those who had been aboard both ships. Only twenty-six passengers lived to tell the tale, two from the sixty-six man crew of the Vector, twenty-four out of 4,368 from the Dona Paz. There was no way of knowing exactly who was on board because the overage was due to travelers boarding illegally without tickets under cover of darkness or the many who bought tickets once on deck. None of the names of these people would have showed on the manifest, such as it was. The nameless, charred, and mutilated corpses washed ashore on nearby islands where the locals respectfully buried them according to their native religious rituals.
The tanker MT Vector was fully loaded with a cargo of 8,800 US barrels of oil, gasoline, and kerosene. The Dona Paz was lethally overloaded with passengers. It was an accident that never should have happened. It was not an act of God, the weather, or a mechanical malfunction. Lawlessness, cutting corners, carelessness, and greed were the culprits—the exact same reasons why so many of our man-made tragedies occur. Journalists labeled it the Asian Titanic, the worst maritime disaster in the history of the world. With the Titanic, 1,517 passengers out of 2,223 were lost in freezing water of the North Atlantic. The Dona Paz lost 4,360 souls in water that was ablaze on its surface with 280,000 US gallons of disgorged oil. It literally was a fiery sea.
Both ships were travelling slowly: the Dona Paz at 26 km/hour; the Vector at 8km/hour. They were surrounded by thirty-seven square miles of wide-open sea, more than enough elbow room, so to speak, to avoid a collision had it not been for human negligence. Both crews appeared to have been celebrating the Christmas season early. The crew of the ferry was seen drinking beer in the galley. The Dona Paz carried no radio. Her lifejackets were locked away. Her crew was minimally trained for such an emergency.
Seconds after the Vector exploded in flames, fire quickly leapt to the Dona Paz and enveloped her, as well. Both ships were blazing while the crew of the Dona Paz ran around as panicked as their passengers.
Still, investigations after the event lay the blame with the Vector. She had no license. Her lookout was not a qualified Master, and she was deemed unseaworthy before setting out. Both ships sank in 545 meters of water, 1,788 feet, prime depth for pelagic (deep-water) sharks. The Dona Paz went down in two hours, the Vector in four. No ships came to the rescue for eight hours. With the exception of the victims, no human being even knew the collision had occurred, although it stands to reason that the resident sharks did.
Four thousand, four hundred and twenty-six people—what happened to them?
These were heavily shark-infested waters with one of the largest and best-studied families known as requiem sharks, a family that embraces somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty separate species. Depending on the specific species, requiem sharks grow from four and a half to twenty-five feet, 850 to 1,900 pounds, and they eat everything. These include the tiger sharks and oceanic white-tips. Tiger sharks are known as swimming garbage cans. Coal, tin cans, bones, books, clothing, wine bottles, chicken coops, drums, unexploded munitions, rubber tires—all these items have been found in their bellies. Carrion is also a delectable morsel—human carrion, as well as animal. Human remains have been found in their bellies, and human carrion is what was floating in the water the night of the deadly collision.
Tiger sharks are only second to the great whites in attacks on human beings, or so most experts say. Actually, the oceanic whitetip probably accounts for more. Whenever an airplane or a ship goes down in open ocean waters, the whitetip is there, its jaws eager to clamp shut and devastate the victim’s flesh with distinctive sawing motions that enable it to tear off hunks of meat and swallow them whole. If the tiger shark is the swimming garbage can, the whitetip is the trash compactor or food processor. These were the species that attacked the survivors of the troop ship USS Indianapolis after it was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine in World War II, probably the most infamous shark encounter in history.
To be fair to the deadly bull shark, another member of the requiem family said to account for more attacks on human beings than others, it may be true that the tiger and oceanic whitetip are a particularly devastating duo, but the bull shark inhabits shorelines and is able to swim inland in freshwater, thus gaining greater opportunity and access to hominid prey. Bull sharks, or also known as the Ganges shark, are feared in the Ganges River in India, for example, when Hindu pilgrims enter the sacred waters. Bull sharks attack in murky water, and the Ganges (or inshore beaches) are perfect habitats for them to make their strike.
Regardless, it is a certainty that either tigers or oceanic whitetips fed on fresh killed and charred carrion the night of the Dona Paz tragic disaster. One hundred and eight bodies were recovered, most showing shark bites. What happened to them? They drowned. They burned. And that night one, possibly two deadly species of requiem sharks sank their teeth into human barbeque. At least, as corpses are already dead, these unfortunate folks were spared the horror of an attack.
Requiem. What a strange name for a shark! A family of deadly predators named after a holy, somber, and heartfelt celebration for the repose of the souls of the dead. In reality the word derives from the French “rest” meaning death or “reschignier” meaning to grimace while baring teeth. Both definitions seem superbly appropriate. In their own inimical manner, the sharks celebrated the dead.
Yes, it’s true that most sharks are not dangerous to human beings, even the sand tiger shark, no relation to the tiger shark but closely related to the great white. Yet, the sand tiger shark has a deadly proclivity, as well—intrauterine cannibalism or adelphophagy, which literally means “eating one’s brother.” In this case, the most developed embryo will feed on every one of its siblings. That’s why, at its actual birth, it sports a fully formed set of teeth. Whichever is born first is the one that will survive.
Prevailing wisdom has it that you are more likely to be hit by lightning than attacked by a shark. Nonetheless, many sharks do attack, seemingly unprovoked, only who knows what the shark is “thinking” when it finds a strange creature frolicking in the surf or swimming in open ocean? This is their territory, and you have invaded their underwater province, so when such an invasion takes place, an attack is possible depending upon the time of day or the hunger level of the predator. Think of it this way. It is the middle of the night. You and your family are sound asleep on the second floor of your home when suddenly you awaken to a crash of glass and discover a burglar has broken into your house. What would be your response? You would grab your shotgun and God help the thief who stalks upstairs and jiggles the knob of your bedroom door! Given a parallel circumstance, expect the shark to strike when its home is invaded.
And, yet, here is an interesting item: statistics from 1987, the year of the Dona Paz/Vector disaster, report that, globally, there were eighty people bitten by sharks, but there were 1,587 cases of humans biting humans (and that was recorded in New York alone). Human bites are the third most common bites seen in emergency rooms after dogs and cats. Moreover, the risk of infection and disease from human bites is great and can even lead to the destruction of joints—in other words, human bites might well be the first step in long-term suffering. Is there any good news here? If one is fatally attacked by a shark, there is no long-term suffering, no staph infections, no hepatitis C and B, no herpes, HIV, or rabies—perhaps you’ll experience the horror of an imminent attack, feel an in
stant of pain, and then certain oblivion. One looks for the bright side wherever one can find it.
Here is still one more interesting item: the skin of a shark, when magnified, is made of tiny but exceptionally sharp teeth, denticles, replicas of those in the mouth, millions of very tough, minute scales that form a mesh of sandpaper-like protein, the exoskeleton and armor of the bearer. Even the skin of the shark can cause substantial damage.
Because sharks play such a common role in film, literature, and television documentaries, it seems as if we know a lot about them. Except we don’t. Sharks are mysterious creatures. They lead secret lives. Given the advent of tagging, scientists can track individuals for months; however, sharks live on for decades after the tag is no longer functional. Therefore, we don’t know many of the crucial details of their daily existence, for instance, their migration and mating patterns.
Also, finding them is not easy. Their travels that can take them immense distances are mostly hidden beneath the water that separates our world from theirs. The appearance and disappearance of this fascinating beast are usually unexpected. Perhaps that is why our fear is born. We don’t know where they are. We don’t know if they are down there looking up at us, or down there at all, only to erupt from the water when we least expect it, shredding the peace of our dreams and forever altering our lives. That gaping jaw of this apex predator, that killing machine with its mighty phalanx of merciless, dagger-like teeth poised to snap at 1.8 tons of force (twenty times greater than the force of a human bite), must rank at the top of the list of the most frightening sights ever experienced by a human being.
And if, suddenly, this miscreation, this fiend bred in the black depths of Hell, appears next to you? Its coal-black and malevolent eyes gleaming in a refraction of light through the ocean’s surface, its mouth agape revealing jagged, angular, misshapen, horrendous teeth in what looks in an instant to be a frenzied smile. A sudden surge toward your midsection as you flail and punch … you feel searing pain and the water clouds with bubbles from your exertions but also from your own blood. In that moment, do you think of man’s dominion over wild creatures, and all we’ve proved of our species since Neanderthal days through our growing and expanding intelligence and accumulation of knowledge? It’s all meaningless in the face of this brutal attack, and you then understand that the shark only wants to survive and you’re an invader and also food. This is not your world, you’ve intruded into a foreign realm—Inner Space—and you’ve been eliminated, your life has ended by tooth and jaw. That fits the very definition of unspeakable horror.
SS CAPE SAN JUAN
Though considering that more than 1,400 men were on board the Cape San Juan, the casualty toll was not overwhelming after the ship was torpedoed off the Fiji Islands in 1943; initially, 117 men died from the explosion and its aftermath, although many faced their end at the gruesome jaws of sharks. Rescuers who arrived hours after the initial explosion found men in the sea in rafts or clinging to life jackets, blinded by fuel oil, and defenseless against sharks.
As horrific, tragic, and terrifying to contemplate as the sinking of the USS Indianapolis was in 1945 in World War II, before that came the sinking of the troop transport ship SS Cape San Juan in 1943 in the South Pacific. There are many parallels between the two disasters. A submarine (Imperial Japanese Submarine 1-21, led by Commander Hiroshi Inada) torpedoed the Cape San Juan on Thursday, November 11, 1943—now known as Veterans’ Day in the US and Remembrance Day in Canada—as an Imperial Japanese Submarine did to the Indianapolis (Imperial Japanese Submarine 1-58) two years later at the end of June and beginning of July, and near the end of the war. The Indianapolis delivered components of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, as reported in this book’s chapter “What I-58 Caused.” The Cape San Juan was about 300 miles off Fiji in the South Pacific, unescorted, heading to Townsville, Australia. Many of the 1,464 aboard (one newspaper report said 1,429) belonged to one of three units of the US Army Air Corps:
855th “All Negro” Engineers (Aviation) Battalion—811 officers and enlisted men;
1st Fighter Control Squadron—367 officers and enlisted men;
253nd Ordnance (Aviation) Company—162 officers and enlisted men.
While the sinkings were similar, the aftermaths were completely different.
A common consequence of both wrecks was fuel oil pouring onto the water’s surface from the ships—it was a nuisance and a blight, coating the Indianapolis survivors and sickening them; but it blinded many of the Cape San Juan survivors, rendering them sightless and easy prey for marauding sharks. The sharks appeared quickly and seized on the Cape San Juan survivors immediately. The Cape San Juan had 1,464 on board (records show different numbers, but this number was common to several historical reports), and in what might be considered a maritime miracle, many survived and were rescued—meaning other records show that 117 died from the torpedo blasts or from sharks or drowning. One online sources tells a different story, reporting that fewer than 500 survived. However, it appears that the rescue ships and seaplane saved more than that. As many as 800 could have been lost. It’s clear that more survived than after the sinking of the Indianapolis, after which fewer than 400 out of 1,100 on board survived the explosions of the torpedoes, the exposure of being adrift in the sea for days, the associated madness that set in among many—and then the sharks, thought to be oceanic whitetips. No less a marine-life authority than Jacques-Yves Cousteau advised that oceanic whitetips are especially dangerous because their curiosity makes them bold: they don’t seem to possess a fear of man. Maybe they simply have no fear at all. Although other sharks seem to circle or ambush their prey, oceanic whitetips want to inspect their meals first and often bump or nudge the prey before attacking. This is a fearsome attribute that creates the impression of a robotic eating machine relentlessly in pursue of a kill. All the survivors of the Cape San Juan in the water could do was wait their turn, pray, or thrash in an attempt to frighten away the sharks. Their ship was sinking, they were adrift in the South Pacific, and they were surrounded by terror—from the sharks and from an enemy submarine likely still in the area. Would they be eaten by a shark, or shot through by a Japanese machine gun?
The Cape San Juan was on its second voyage when it was sighted by the Japanese submarine I-21. The ship’s history was: It was delivered June 10, 1943, to the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. and was almost 420 feet long, a conversion of a small dry-cargo freighter. It was slower than other Navy ships, and perhaps that made it a target for a submarine attack.
The configuration of the ship, according to Master Walter Mervyn Strong: “An additional deck house had been built on deck over troop exits thru 1, 2 and 3 hatches. This deck house was used as a washroom and was also used as a means of exit from the troop quarters in #1, 2 and 3 upper ’tween deck.”
Strong reported that “the deck house covered a deck area extending fore and aft over the watertight bulkheads where they were fastened to the main deck. The purpose of this was to cover the troop exits that came from #1, 2 and 3 ’tween decks with the one deck house. The deck house was watertight to the sea and weather, but no provision was made inside the deck house itself to separate the deck openings, which were close together.”
Of the three full decks below the main deck, it is assumed they were full of cargo. The ship had six lifeboats, four wooden rafts, and thirty-six Carley floats that held twenty, forty, and sixty people. Everyone on board had a life vest and lifesaving suits were available, though not needed because the location was the South Pacific.
The ship was under a blackout order, and under orders to zigzag. It was turning to starboard when the torpedo hit. Various eyewitness accounts described what followed:
“Two water spouts seen at a distance of approximately 2,000 yards; relative bearing 120 degrees. Wake seen on water when 15 yards distant from the ship; very straight path; approximately 2 feet wide; went aft of vessel, missing stern by 20 yards. Wake was light greenish color; water itself was deep dark gre
en. Left slight white foam on surface.”
Another eyewitness claimed to see the wake of this torpedo some 300 feet out on the starboard quarter and claimed that it missed the ship’s stern by only fifteen feet. A few seconds after the first torpedo passed aft of the vessel, several armed-guard lookouts saw two water spouts, described as from six to ten feet high and from two to three feet wide. They were described as egg-shaped by one witness; as fan-shaped by another; and as being “in the shape of a pine tree” by a third. Both spouts did not rise simultaneously. The second came up as the first settled. These were described by some as “narrower than whale spouts.”
For the Japanese submarine, the offensive occurred from a relatively short distance. More commonly, this type of submarine was known to fire a spread of two to three torpedoes from about twice the range as the Cape San Juan attack—I-21 fired from hundreds of yards away, not the thousands of yards of a more typical attack; the distance was desired if not required to avoid detection by the enemy, of course—with the intent to immobilize the target. Then the submarine would release another one or two torpedoes to finish off the target. A piston system similar to the one perfected on German submarines eliminated a release of compressed air (clearly the water spouts mentioned in the above passage) during submerged firings, which would otherwise betray their position. Perhaps the submarine experienced a system malfunction, or an error was made by the Torpedo Officer, or they simply weren’t concerned about it, so confident that the ship would be sunk. The Cape San Juan almost certainly defended herself—the submarine was within range of the ship’s defensive guns—with the Navy Armed Guard returning fire immediately, judging the location of the submarine from the direction of the torpedo. One of the 20 mm guns jammed, records show. All guns fired intermittently for about ten minutes. Occasional shots were fired throughout the day to let the enemy know troops were still aboard and would defend themselves.
Unspeakable Horror Page 11
