Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Wednesday Weird: MV Joyita

In lieu of the missing/vanished Malaysian flight this weekend, I thought it would be a good time or post another disappearance.

I already tackled the Valentich Disappearance and I'm way too lazy today to even begin to write up all the info there is on Amelia Earhart so instead I'm going to talk about the MV Joyita.

MV Joyita was a merchant vessel that set sail from Samoa for a two day voyage to the Tokleau Islands October 3rd, 1955. MV Joyita carried 25 people (16 crew and 9 passengers (including a doctor, a government official and two children)) and medical supplies, timber and empty oil jugs.

Four days later, its destination port sent out a message that the Joyita never arrived as expected.

Immediately a large search effort was organized, even thought the Joyita had never sent out any sort of distress signal or contact to anyone. Even with the extended search (over 100,000 square miles), though, the Joyita wasn't found until over a month later.

The Joyita was listing and flooded to the point of being partially submerged. It was found 6000 miles from Samoa. And also there was nobody on board.





Besides the missing crew, the navigation equipment, the ship's logbook, three lifeboats, a dinghy and all the food were also missing. The radio, however, was still on board, and in perfect working order. It was even set to the emergency frequency, but, due to some mismanaged wiring, the radio only had a range of about 2 miles.

So, yeah, it seems like everyone abandoned ship for some reason. Not that crazy.

But, the ship was completely seaworthy. It did have a large hole in in it's structure, showing that there had been some sort of collision with something, but the hull itself had not been breached. In fact, the little bit of water that was actually inside the boat was due to it bobbing along for a month.

And what happened to the crew and lifeboats? One lifeboat vanishing? Okay. three and a dinghy? Little more weird.

Also, the windows on the boar were all smashed. Only one of the engines was working and the other one was covered in mattresses. One of the passengers was a doctor, but his doctor's bag was found abandoned on the ship, instead of taken like the food and equipment. The bag was missing several tools, and was also stuffed with bloody rags. And, because let's up the creep factor a bit, all the clocks on the ship had stopped at 10:25 pm.

None of the crew or passengers were ever recovered and it remains a mystery today.

Thoughts, theories?

 

5 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

You could go in a lot of directions with that one. Why cover the engine with mattresses? Seems like a good way to start a fire.

Maria Zannini said...

How sad. Since the ship was still seaworthy, it almost sounds as if they were forced off by someone.

Leandra Wallace said...

I agree w/Maria- sounds like the work of pirates. And there were children on board? So sad! I'm just going to pretend like they survived and someone took them under their wing and they spent their days playing on a beach somewhere.

Rena said...

It sounds like pirates, but Why 10:25? That's a strange detail. The bloody rags, sadly, are self explanatory with a violent egress. But why not take the doctor's bag? That would have been useful.

mshatch said...

I have no clue what might have happened but pirates seems a likely possibility.. . This reminds me of the Mary Celeste, a ship that was discovered unmanned and abandoned on the Atlantic Ocean in December of 1972.

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