Top-selling author reveals link to Joyita mystery

Development

By Michael Field

Atop-selling British author has revealed her link to one of the strangest mysteries of the South Pacific - one that saw 25 people completely disappear off the face of the Earth.

Forty-four years later, no one is any clearer about what happened to the boat Joyita somewhere between Samoa and Tokelau in 1956. Joyita was found, and still sails today, but the souls aboard have never been found and their fate is completely unknown.

Many theories have been advanced including alien abduction - but Joyita is the Mary Celeste of the Pacific.

Among those who disappeared was Andy Parsons, an Irish doctor who had emigrated to New Zealand. He had been posted to Samoa, then a New Zealand territory.

His New Zealand-bom daughter, Julie Parsons, is author the best-selling dark thrillers “Mary, Mary” and her latest, “The Courtship Gift”. In an interview with the Times of London Parsons says the disappearance of her father was influential in developing her psychologically tormented characters.

“You could say, because of what happened to our family, that I have a very strong sense of the unexpected, that the underpinnings of my life are fragile,” she told the Times.

“Inevitable, I suppose. You’re five and Daddy never comes back. How does a child explain that to herself? Logic has nothing to do with it, or with the fears that follow. The phobia - my fear of heights - first came to the surface when 1 was 14.”

The Joyita mystery has defied explanation, despite a Commission of Inquiry that sat in Samoa and found all kind of clues, none of them very satisfying.

Joyita was a twin screw motor vessel, 21 metres long, and thickly lined with cork insulation that made her virtually unsinkable.

She had two marine diesel engines and was regarded as very sound, as the drama proved.

In November 1955, Joyita, under Captain Dusty Miller, a Welshman, was chartered by New Zealand to make the 38 hour voyage from Samoa to Tokelau, a group of three isolated atolls. Five and a half weeks later Joyita was found drifting, water-logged and completely without trace of people. There had

been three government officials, six Tokelau and two other passengers, an American mate and 12 Samoan crew, as

well as Miller. They had fuel for 4800 kilometres and plenty of food and water - all of

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which was onboard when the boat was found.

Evidence at the Commission of Inquiry later pointed out that the port engine had often given trouble and the shaft had worn its bearings. Cooling water may have failed to reach the port auxiliary engine.

Joyita had sat in Apia harbour for five months before the trip and the bilges would have been filled with rubbish.

She had no lifeboat and only three lifejackets. The radio was useless.

When the New Zealand Air Force located Joyita among Fiji’s northern islands - well to the west of its course - she was flooded and listing to port. Evidence showed that the engine cooling system had pumped sea water into the ship while fuel consumption showed it had got to within 48 kilometres of Tokelau.

There were signs that the people aboard

had jettisoned some cargo to make room and efforts seem to have been made to increase buoyancy and the radio was set on a distress frequency.

Even to the most desperate it was clear Joyita offered the best chance of survival but the people vanished.

The inquiry concluded that it “must regard the fate of the passengers and crew as inexplicable on the evidence submitted.” ■