MV Joyita
On 10 November 1955, Captain Gerald Douglas of the merchant ship Tuvalu sighted the MV Joyita in the South Pacific near Fiji. The Joyita had left Samoa in the first week of October and was five weeks overdue to arrive in the Tokelau Islands, a territory of New Zealand, and was nearly 800 miles off-course…
There is something especially haunting about arriving in a place only to find it empty — only relics of a human presence remaining. An empty Main Street in an old ghost town captivates our attention, for a moment at least, as we ponder where is everybody? All the visual cues remain — empty homes, businesses, schools and churches — to remind us that people were here, but now they’re gone.
Where did they go, and why?
The question becomes even more intriguing when it involves a ship found abandoned. You can’t just walk away from a ship on the ocean.
The concept of the ghost ship has long fascinated us, perhaps partly because it’s hard to understand how a ship’s entire human complement could vanish, or why they would voluntarily leave a boat that proved itself seaworthy long after they were gone.
On November 10th, 1955, Captain Gerald Douglas of the merchant ship Tuvalu sighted the MV Joyita in the South Pacific. It had left Samoa in the first week of October and was five weeks overdue to arrive in the Tokelau Islands, a territory of New Zealand, and nearly 800 miles off-course.
Through his binoculars, Captain Douglas could see all was not well. The ship was listing heavily. The port-side deck railing dipped below the surface of the waves and the crew of the Tuvalu had to exercise caution when boarding.
When it left port, there had been 25 people on-board — 16 crew and 9 passengers — plus four tons of cargo.
The boarding party found the ship barren and abandoned.
There was blood, a doctor’s bag, and signs there had been trouble, but nobody was on-board. Much of the cargo was missing and all of the lifeboats.
This is the story of the MV Joyita.
One of the earliest ghost ship legends is that of the Flying Dutchman, a fictional tale, but likely based on highly-romanticized real events during the heyday of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company.
The first literary telling of the story of the Flying Dutchman is brief.
From John MacDonald’s Travels in various part of Europe, Asia and Africa during a series of thirty years and upward published in 1790:
The weather was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the Flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came to the Cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbour but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost and that ever since in very bad weather her vision appears.
Later accounts are more spooky and dramatized. From Chapter 6 of “A Voyage to Botany Bay” by George Barrington:
I had often heard of the superstition of sailors respecting apparitions and doom, but had never given much credit to the report; it seems that some years since a Dutch man-of-war was lost off the Cape of Good Hope, and every soul on board perished; her consort weathered the gale, and arrived soon after at the Cape. Having refitted, and returning to Europe, they were assailed by a violent tempest nearly in the same latitude. In the night watch some of the people saw, or imagined they saw, a vessel standing for them under a press of sail, as though she would run them down: one in particular affirmed it was the ship that had foundered in the former gale, and that it must certainly be her, or the apparition of her; but on its clearing up, the object, a dark thick cloud, disappeared. Nothing could do away the idea of this phenomenon on the minds of the sailors; and, on their relating the circumstances when they arrived in port, the story spread like wild-fire, and the supposed phantom was called the Flying Dutchman.
Barrington’s account is thrilling, and the mental picture it conjures — of a huge, black, ghostly ship appearing out of a dark, roiling cloud, sailing straight for you — is incredible and haunting.
The legend has been embellished and told in varying narratives over the years, with a sighting of the Flying Dutchman becoming both a portent of impending doom, and sometimes, punishment for a crime or misdeed previously committed. It’s no wonder our collective consciousness has embraced and retold fantastical stories of ghost ships over the centuries.
Perhaps that long standing relationship with fictional (or fictionalized) tales of ghost ships has infected our perception of the phenomenon. In the rare instance that a ghost ship shows up in the real world — on the horizon, lazily drifting in the current, afloat but unguided — we immediately imagine the worst.
The tale of the Mary Celeste is one example.
It was a real, 103-foot, two-mast brigantine that hung acres of canvas; sails which still flew when she was found adrift near the Azores in the Atlantic in 1872, her entire crew missing but her cargo of denatured alcohol intact. Ever since, the Mary Celeste has been the subject of fascination and inspired two old-time radio plays as well as numerous modern-day documentaries.
As entrancing as they are, historical accounts of grand ghost ships wandering the seas lack something on the tangibility scale. Nobody alive has ever seen a ship like the Dutchman other than restored relics and those in museums, and it’s hard for the average person to imagine conditions aboard a ship on the ocean in the midst of a vicious squall, when there is no land in sight, the light of daytime becomes ethereal and otherworldly, and every wave is a rollercoaster; like a roadtrip through a valley where the road is always moving, the vehicle constantly rocks back and forth and the landscape will kill you if it gets the chance.
The historic distance from tales like those of the Flying Dutchman and the Mary Celeste could be what makes the tale of the MV Joyita more fascinating. The Joyita was not a masted sailing vessel at the mercy of the wind and mother nature, but a wooden yacht from the era of diesel engines and generators. Surely it was equipped to safely make the voyage… right?
In the beginning, the ship was a luxury yacht for director Roland West, whose silent films of the 1920s and 30s have been described as innovative, proto-film noir. The yacht was a 69-foot, twin-engined vessel constructed in Los Angeles in 1931. It was considered the height of luxury and boasted extras like oversize water and fuel tanks and even an “autopilot.” West named it “Joyita” — Spanish for Jewel — in honor of his wife, Jewel Carmen, a silent-film actress.
The naming is somewhat curious considering Director West had grown tired of his wife of twelve years by the time he commissioned the yacht, and the couple had become estranged. He met actress Thelma Todd on a yachting excursion to Catalina Island in 1930, began an affair, and commissioned the ship the following year.
It was a beautifully-constructed wooden boat made of cedar over an oak timber frame and it made many journeys to Catalina Island in the early years, with West treating his wife, his mistress and his Hollywood admirers to flashy excursions on the water.
Roland West and Jewel Carmen had dark days ahead.
For context, we have to remember this was the age of “the talkies,” and modern motion pictures had begun to supplant silent films with the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927. It was transformational to the industry and history is replete with accounts of silent film veterans who couldn’t make the transition.
Actors with foreign accents found it harder to get work when they were required to speak. Actors from the theater world — so successful in silent films with their big, expressive mannerisms — found themselves handcuffed in films with sound, lest the swish of their clothing or sound of their footsteps ruin the recording.
Roland and his wife were dinosaurs of a dying medium and it surely must have added financial stress to their lives, on top of their marital drama.
The Joyita served as a welcome distraction over plenty of days and nights on the water in the tumultuous years from 1931 to 1935 with West, Carmen, and Todd as passengers. At the same time, the domestic situation at the West estate evolved.
In 1934, Thelma Todd partnered with Roland West and Jewel Carmen to open Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe at 17575 Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades. The ground floor served customers as a restaurant and the second floor housed two large apartments separated only by a sliding door. One apartment was Thelma’s and the other belonged to Roland West. A popular dance club was on the third floor, and the main residence West shared with his wife Jewel Carmen was nearby.
Perhaps the living situation is reflective of views on divorce at the time. In the 1930s, filing for divorce still meant trying to prove adultery or cruelty or abandonment, a scary proposition if you were a public figure like Roland West. Whatever the reason, the unconventional living arrangement continued until just before Christmas, 1935.
On Monday, December 16th, a maid went to Jewel Carmen’s garage to retrieve a car, like she did every morning. She instead found Thelma Todd dead behind the wheel of her chocolate-colored 1934 Lincoln Phaeton convertible.
The story from the Los Angeles Times read, in-part:
Coagulated blood marred the screen comedienne’s features and stained her mauve and silver evening gown and her expensive mink coat when she was found, her blonde locks pathetically awry, in the front seat of her automobile in the garage of Roland West, film producer and director, in front of West’s residence at 17531 Pasetano Road, less than 500 yards from Miss Todd’s Cafe on the Roosevelt Highway.
The days of carefree yachting excursions with his lover were over for Roland West. A very public investigation followed, and despite the finding of carbon monoxide as the cause of death, the police vowed that the investigation would persist.
The LA Times reported that Thelma had recently received several extortion letters from an unknown sender who demanded a $10,000 payment under threat of death.
A dark cloud gathered over West and Carmen and whispered questions made the rounds in Hollywood.
Why was she found in Jewel Carmen’s garage?
Who sent the extortion letters?
One conspiracy theory even involved a scenario in which West killed Thelma Todd on the Joyita, then returned her to the home and staged the scene as a suicide.
To be honest, the death of Thelma Todd deserves an episode all its own, and who knows, maybe we’ll get to that in the future, however, suffice to say, the death of Thelma Todd was ruled “accidental” and West and Carmen moved on with their lives. Both of their careers were damaged by the scandal, however, and neither would ever fully recover.
When exactly West sold the Joyita is unclear, but Roland West and Jewel Carmen officially divorced in 1938, so perhaps it was in the split or not long after.
The boat was owned by screen star Mary Pickford for a time, but by 1941, with the war in the Pacific in full-swing, the Joyita was acquired by the US Navy.
According to Joyita: Solving the Mystery by David G. Wright, it was October of 1941 when merchant vessel Joyita became YP-108 — yard patrol boat number 108 assigned to Pearl Harbor.
Question: What was YP-108 doing on December 7th during the attack on Pearl Harbor? Obviously it survived the attack but unfortunately there are no records that we’ve been able to find documenting what YP-108 was doing on that day.
The US Navy used YP-108 for the rest of the war in the South Pacific until 1943, when it ran aground and was badly damaged. The ship was repaired and put back to sea but by 1946, it no longer met the Navy’s requirements for service. YP-108 was stripped of most of its hardware and pulled from service.
YP-108 was gone and the Joyita was back. In 1948, a private company, the Louis Brothers, bought Joyita based primarily on its two 225 horsepower diesel engines by Gray Marine and also two diesel generators for electrical power. Louis Brothers then retrofitted the hull with cork lining which would make the boat suitable for hauling refrigerated cargo.
The boat changed hands twice until, in 1952, it landed in the hands of Doctor Katharine Luomala, an American anthropologist from Hawaii. She leased the boat to her love interest Captain Thomas H. "Dusty" Miller, a British sailor living and working in Samoa.
Originally Captain Miller attempted to start a fishing business with the Joyita but the venture failed. He was not a fisherman.
For seven months, Captain Miller lived on the Joyita in the Apia Harbor, broke. Err, wait, he was worse than broke… he was in debt.
He made plans to use the Joyita for a charter and transportation business in the islands.
Eventually he secured a merchant contract to make copra runs between Samoa and the Tokelaus. Copra is the dried kernel of the coconut from which coconut oils are extracted and Miller took the promise of an ongoing contract as a serious opportunity.
The voyage began on October 3rd, 1955.
You could say the measure of a person’s courage is proportional to the length of journey they’re willing to take on the South Pacific, but inversely-proportional to the size of the boat. The longer the journey and the smaller the boat, the bolder you are. In this case, the journey was expected to take about two days, from Samoa to the Tokelau Islands — anywhere from 41 to 48 hours, depending on the weather. And the Joyita, a 69-foot boat, would carry 16 crew, 9 passengers, and 4 tons of cargo including 80 empty 45-gallon drums. It’s a journey that for most of us would take a little courage, but for the passengers and crew of the Joyita, travel between the islands of the South Pacific was a way of life.
The Joyita was supposed to leave for Tokelau at noon the previous day but was delayed because of a failed port engine clutch.
The cargo was run-of-the-mill. Food. Medical supplies. Construction materials. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
The 16 crew members consisted of:
● Captain Miller
● Native American Ship’s Mate Chuck Simpson
● a bosun and an engineer, both from Kiribati
● another engineer from Samoa
● 6 seamen, 2 greasers and a cook, all from Tokelau
● and two supercargo workers: James Wallwork from Western Samoa and George Williams from New Zealand.
The youngest passenger was just 3 years old, the adopted daughter of the oldest passenger aboard, 51-year-old pharmacist Takama Lapana and his wife Tokelau Lapana. Their 11-year-old son accompanied them on the voyage.
Other notable passengers included Andy Parsons, a surgeon from Ireland on his way to perform an amputation, and Pete Pearless, a government official from New Zealand.
Unfortunately, the crew had not been able to remedy the problem with the port engine clutch overnight, and Captain Miller chose to leave port with only one functioning engine.
They set out at first light on October 3rd, 1955. The Joyita was expected to arrive in Tokelau on October 5th.
The day arrived in Tokelau, October 5th, and the hours ticked by.
At noon, the Joyita had not arrived. The weather was calm and no passing ships or land-based stations in the region had reported a distress call.
3 o’clock came and went, then 6 o’clock, and as the hours passed and the sun crept toward the horizon, there was no sign of the Joyita.
On October 6th, the port in Tokelau sent out a message.
The Joyita is overdue.
The government search and rescue commenced immediately using Sunderland flying boats from the Royal New Zealand Air Force. For six days they searched more than 100,000 square miles of ocean.
There was no sign of the Joyita.
Then, on November 10th, just after dawn, Captain Gerald Douglas of the merchant ship Tuvalu spotted something in the distance in the waters north of Fiji.
It was a ship.
As the Tuvalu approached it became clear that something was very wrong.
The boat listed heavily to port, the railing bobbing in and out of the sea. There was no sign of anyone on-deck. The name on the hull came into focus.
Joyita.
Everyone onboard the Joyita was gone. The yacht had been equipped with a dinghy and three Carley lifeboats. All were missing. If 25 people had left in the four available boats, each would have been near-capacity.
Before the crew of the Tuvalu had even boarded the boat they could already draw some preliminary conclusions.
The Joyita had obviously been without power and at the mercy of the elements for some time because someone had rigged a makeshift canvas awning as a sunshade over the deckhouse… the kind of thing you do if you find yourself drifting on the open ocean, day after day with no break from the sun.
It was obvious the ship had been battered by waves because the flying bridge was smashed and deckhouse windows were broken. The port-side engine clutch was still disassembled, so investigators knew the Joyita had still been running on one engine when whatever happened… happened. The other engine was covered with a mattress for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.
On deck, a doctor’s bag was found with surgical implements, a stethoscope, and some bloody bandages.
Inside, the radio was found tuned to 2182 kHz — the international marine radiotelephone distress channel. They had apparently been trying to radio for help. Why hadn’t anyone reported a distress call?
The Joyita’s clocks, powered by the electrical generator, stopped at 10:25 and the light switches for navigation and cabin lighting were in the “on” position which seemed to indicate the Joyita lost power at night.
Almost as curious as what they did find was what they didn’t.
The ship’s log book, sextant and other vital navigational aids, plus the firearms Captain Miller kept in the boat, were missing.
Even the absence of the passengers could be seen with suspicion considering one of them was buying copra for his employer and was carrying about $3000 in cash.
The Joyita was towed into Suva, in the Fiji islands, and subjected to a “detailed examination under the strictest secrecy” the Eureka Times-Standard reported. Under the more-controlled conditions in port, much more could be learned.
● Once righted, the Joyita exhibited a degree of barnacle growth on the port side that confirmed the ship had been listing for weeks.
● The radio was found to be in working condition. However a closer inspection of the wire from the radio to the antenna revealed a break which had been painted over and would have limited the Joyita’s radio transmissions to a two-mile radius.
● The Joyita’s fuel tanks still had diesel in them, and when the approximate mileage was calculated based on the remaining fuel, investigators came to the conclusion that the Joyita made it within 50 miles of Tokelau before it lost all power.
Investigators speculated that the mattresses piled on the starboard engine were placed there to shield the engine from spray from the prop — likely because the engine continued running for some time after the yacht began to list and as the port side sunk, the starboard prop rose higher in the water until it eventually flung spray like a kid’s bicycle wheel in a puddle after a rainstorm.
If that conclusion is correct, you can imagine how dire the situation must have seemed, chugging along in the dark on a sinking yacht with one engine. Terrifying.
Someone had also rigged an auxiliary pump in the engine room, presumably to keep the rising water from stalling the engines or generators, but it was apparently not connected, for reasons unknown.
Most importantly, investigators found the source of the flooding in the Joyita’s lower decks. In the initial inspection done at sea, someone had speculated the seacock valves were intentionally opened — either as an act of sabotage or in an attempt to scuttle the ship — to explain the flooding belowdecks, the source of which was not readily apparent.
In Suva, a more thorough inspection revealed a corroded pipe in the raw water circuit of the cooling system had cracked and allowed seawater to infiltrate the bilges. The Joyita did not have watertight compartments and the hull would have steadily filled with water. Due to the location of the leak, by the time the crew noticed it, it would have been nearly impossible to find it and stop it.
Investigators also found the bilge pumps in extremely dirty condition and clogged with debris, which would have made it difficult to pump water out of the ship.
Twelve days after the Joyita was found and with the crew still missing, Harold Gatty, Managing Director of Fiji Airways, still held out hope of finding survivors.
“If they got onto an island or an atoll they could live indefinitely on coconut milk and birds and eggs,” he said.
Likewise, a Hawaiian islander who knew Captain Miller said optimistically “Dusty Miller is one of those indestructible Britishers — the Horatio Hornblower type. Likely as not he’ll come stumbling out of the bush on some island one of these days and write a book and make himself rich.”
As the search continued, a formal maritime inquiry was organized to determine exactly what had gone wrong on the Joyita.
The official conclusions included that the Joyita’s hull was sound, but the yacht had not been well-maintained — to put it bluntly, it was in extremely bad condition. The fractured cooling pipe allowed water to flood the bilges, and as the boat sank lower in the water, the one working engine would have labored and would not have been able to provide enough power to steer. With the hull full of water, it only took one large swell to rock the Joyita on its side and leave it with a heavy list.
Investigators were unable to say, however, what happened to the passengers and crew based on the evidence they found.
And… that is the main question, isn’t it?
The confounding circumstances of leaving the boat. It doesn’t make sense.
You can’t help but feel If we could just answer this question, all the other pieces would fall into place.
In cold northern climates there are certain bits of knowledge that everyone knows and accepts. One of them is: if you’re traveling in a blinding blizzard and your car breaks down or you get stuck in the snow, don’t leave the vehicle.
You just don’t do it.
Although it could be a cold night huddled in the car if the engine stalls, it’s better than no shelter at all and the car makes you a bigger target when search parties come along in the morning.
In the nautical world, it’s likewise common sense that you don’t abandon a floating ship unless it’s absolutely necessary. Experienced sailors know this. It’s yachting 101.
Furthermore, in the specific case of the Joyita, the captain knew it was virtually unsinkable due to the cork lining in the hull combined with the empty drums in the cargo hold.
Captain E.L James, harbor master at Suva, told the Kansas City Times:
“She was a very buoyant vessel, very heavily planked and insulated with 5-inch slabs of cork for fish refrigeration in all three holds. She also had a number of empty drums in the hold. The vessel would never sink unless she broke up… I just can’t understand why everybody would have abandoned her.”
So why leave the boat?
The question gives rise to a number of theories.
Captain Miller was an experienced lifelong seaman of the most knowledgeable sort, descended from seven generations of seafarers, and several people who knew him believe he would never have agreed to leave the boat, leading some to propose scenarios which take the Captain out of the equation.
Perhaps the Captain got injured and lost consciousness. They did find the doctor’s bag and bloody bandages, so somebody got hurt.
With the Captain unable to offer his guidance, the less-experienced crew and panicking passengers chose to leave the listing-but-floating Joyita in favor of a dinghy and three open life rafts made of canvas with a light metal frame.
The “injured captain hypothesis” as it has come to be known also gives rise to another frightening possibility. Was there a mutiny?
There had been friction between Ship’s Mate Chuck Simpson and Captain Miller. The Pasdadena Independent described Simpson as an “American Indian known for his combination of uncanny physical strength and extremely mild temperament.” Simpson had previously told acquaintances that he was done working for Captain Miller and they were surprised to hear he had gone on the voyage to Tokelau.
Captain Miller’s longtime friend, Captain S.B. Brown speculated that perhaps Simpson and Miller had come to blows and both had fallen overboard in a struggle, leaving the Joyita without an experienced seaman aboard.
According to a theory proposed by John Harris in his book Without a Trace: The Last Voyages of Eight Ships, Captain Miller was in debt and desperate to complete his journey and get a paycheck. Despite the mechanical trouble, Captain Miller pressed on until Chuck Simpson and others among the crew revolted and demanded he turn back. There was a physical confrontation and someone was injured, likely the Captain, and everyone then left the ship, with Simpson taking the logbook, navigational aids and firearms with him.
Years later, in an interview with the Honolulu Star Bulletin, a longtime acquaintance of Captain Miller’s gave ammunition to the mutiny theory. Miller, he claimed, was broke and couldn’t afford to be choosy about the crew he hired. He had reportedly inherited some members of another ship’s crew that were rough characters and their previous Captain had died under suspicious circumstances. Writer Gene Hunter suggested “Maybe it Was Murder at Sea.”
As plausible as a mutiny might seem to explain the disappearance of the passengers and crew of the Joyita, it doesn’t explain everything.
Even if we assume the absence of Captain Miller and Chuck Simpson, were the remaining crew members foolish enough to leave a floating boat? Some of them had been working on boats for 3 or 4 decades and even the younger seamen had grown up on boats. Would they really abandon the boat?
V.G. Boivin, chief surveyor of ships in the marine department in Wellington said “So far as I can see from my examination and my investigation of the casualty, the Joyita would have continued to float in the condition in which she was found indefinitely.”
Some theorize that after the Joyita lost power and had been drifting for some time — days or weeks, however long it took for the passengers to erect a makeshift awning as protection from the sun — the boat drifted close enough to a nearby island that convinced the occupants to launch the lifeboats and make a run for it.
Maybe they made it and died as castaways on some remote island northeast of Fiji. Maybe the currents were too much and they never made it to the island — instead swept out to sea to meet their fates as individuals, lost forever in the Neptunian abyss.
Of course, there are more outlandish theories, too.
In the days right after the Joyita mystery broke, more than one small publication with a questionable reputation printed unsourced anonymous rumors that the Joyita had accidentally sailed right into the Japanese fleet and had been killed or taken captive when they saw something they weren’t supposed to.
Similar allegations were made concerning pirates, the Soviets, and mysterious submarines that were allegedly seen in the waters where Joyita was found.
Two knives that were stamped “Made in Japan” gave rise to theories about a raid by Japanese fishermen. The Fiji Times described the Joyita as having been “stripped.” From the story:
“The systematic stripping of the ship does not point very strongly to the work of Islanders, but rather to a raid under expert instruction.”
If you read between the lines, it’s a clear allegation of piracy, and much has been made of a supposed “four tons of cargo” that were reportedly missing from the Joyita. It should be noted, however, that in the course of researching this subject, our team found very little in the way of reputable reports on that missing cargo. The Joyita was carrying little more than some construction materials, food and medicine. The Kansas City Star listed the cargo as flour, sugar, rice, aluminum stripping and copra sacks. Nothing of substantial value. And the knives stamped “Made in Japan” were later determined to be rusty relics which had been on the boat for years.
In February of 1956, an editorial in the Pacific Islands Monthly heavily criticized the bad press the islands were getting for the ridiculous theories and assailed the literary judgment of those who printed them. But the theories persisted.
Some believed a natural disaster could be responsible. While most see the battered Joyita’s bridge and deckhouse as evidence that it was assaulted by the waves during its 800-mile drift, a Fiji government official who saw the ship firsthand said he believed it looked like it had been hit by a waterspout.
A more mundane theory proposed insurance fraud, which to me is an explanation that doesn’t even make sense, so we’ll just leave it at that. If you’re all-in on the insurance fraud hypothesis, feel free to AT me after the show.
Some suggested a rogue wave or a hypothetical underwater sea quake as the potential cause of the Joyita’s condition and the disappearance of the crew — suggestions which could seem plausible on first glance but don’t fit all the facts on closer examination.
Whatever theory you might find yourself favoring, it doesn’t really matter. No sign of the passengers or crew of the Joyita was ever found.
Barring the discovery of the remains of the passengers and crew on some faraway island, we will likely never know what really happened.
The Joyita was auctioned for about 24-hundred pounds in 1956 and the new owner overhauled it and put it back to work, however, several groundings in the South Pacific, in 1957 near Korea and again in ‘59 at Nasova, led the owner to sell the boat.
In 1962 the Kansas City Times trumpeted “South Seas Ship of Tragic Mystery Floats Again” as Robert Maugham, nephew of British playwright William Somerset Maugham, bought the Joyita. He had plans to write a script and make a movie based on the mystery, but it never came to fruition.
The boat was sold again and a number of other plans for the Joyita were proposed, including an idea to make it a museum, but it remained on the beach at Nasova.
In October of 1961, Pacific Islands Monthly published a story that read, in-part:
The Suva City Council is not particularly interested in the fate of the Joyita, which now lies a rotting hulk on the beach at Nasova, near Levuka.
A local artist had proposed the Joyita be turned into a nautical museum. From the Pacific Islands Monthly story:
The council decided that there was no suitable site at Suva for the Joyita, and as far as they’re concerned, it can rot at Nasova.
And that is where the story of the Joyita ends.
Joyita remained on the beach at Nasova, year after year, tide after tide, and disappeared a piece at a time. By the 1970s visitors began to report that the last piece of Joyita had vanished from the beach.
A boat born in the fire of a passionate but illicit Hollywood affair…
YP-108, which patrolled Hawaii during Pearl Harbor…
MV Joyita, merchant vessel, and last known location of 25 people who just vanished from the face of the Earth…
For the foreseeable future, it’s a mystery that will remain Unresolved.
Episode Information
Episode Information
Research and writing by Troy Larson
Hosting and production by Micheal Whelan
Published on March 19th, 2022
Music Credits
Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music
Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves
Sources and other reading
● A Voyage to Botany Bay - George Barrington
● Boats Vanishing Crew Sparks Pacific Mystery - Pasadena Independent, November 22, 1955.
● Body of Thelma Todd Found in Death Riddle - Los Angeles Times, December 17th, 1935.
● Ghost ship Joyita Towed into Suva in Fiji Islands - The Eureka Times-Standard, November 21, 1955.
● Joyita Died a South Sea Enigma - Kansas City Times, May 25, 1972
● Joyita: Solving the Mystery - David G. Wright, Auckland University Press ISBN 1-86940-270-7
● No Home for Joyita - Pacific Islands Monthly, October, 1961
● South Seas Ship of Tragic Mystery Floats Again - Kansas City Times, February 17, 1962
● Talkie Terror: The Transition From Silents To Sound - Devin Faraci, BirthMoviesDeath
● Travels in various part of Europe, Asia and Africa during a series of thirty years and upward - John MacDonald
● Without a Trace: The Last Voyages of 8 Ships - John Harris, Methuen. ISBN 0-7493-0043-4