This ‘Unsinkable’ Ship Stayed Afloat, But Its Crew Seemingly Vanished

Somehow, 25 people had vanished without a trace. And not a single one was ever seen again. So what happened on board Joyita? Over the years, everything from pirates to Soviet submarines and insurance fraud have been proposed as solutions to the mystery. But even now, six decades after the disappearance, the truth remains elusive.

After the horrors of World War II, which had brought Japanese bombs and American air bases to the South Pacific, the Samoa of the 1950s had become a prosperous and lively place. And even though some natives had begun to emigrate in search of a better life, the island nation’s laid-back beach appeal drew plenty of foreign settlers.

Among those who found their way to Samoa’s palm-fringed shores was Thomas T. Miller, an English sea captain who went by the name Dusty. By October 1955 he had found himself in charge of the Joyita, having chartered the vessel from a friend to run fishing and trading trips around the surrounding islands.

But Miller’s idyllic lifestyle was about to come to a dramatic end in a bizarre twist that continues to baffle historians almost 70 years down the line. In the early hours of October 3, Joyita set out for the Tokelau Islands, some 270 miles to the north. On board were nine passengers, including a surgeon and a family of four, and 16 crew.

Other things being equal, the journey between Samoa and Tokelau should have been a straightforward one, with the crossing predicted to take no longer than 48 hours. As a result, Joyita was expected into Fakaofo port on October 5. But when one day turned into the next, with no sign of the vessel on the horizon, the crew were logged as overdue.

Despite the lack of a distress signal, local authorities mobilized to track down Joyita. And for six days, search and rescue teams scanned the blue expanse of the Pacific, covering a distance of 100,000 square miles. Even the Royal New Zealand Air Force, it seems, joined the hunt for the missing vessel. But eventually, they had to admit defeat.

Joyita, along with the 25 people on board, had simply disappeared. And for five weeks, the mystery remained completely unsolved. Then, on November 10, the captain of a merchant ship traveling between Fiji and Tuvalu, hundreds of miles to the west, spotted a vessel drifting eerily off the island of Vanua Levu. And from that point onwards, things only got stranger.

The story of Joyita had already been a long and convoluted one, with the 69-foot vessel adopting a number of different guises. Built by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles, California, in 1931 it had been commissioned as a yacht by Roland West, a director who made his name directing early film-noir movies. 

According to reports, the ship was named after West’s wife Jewel Carmen, with Joyita meaning little jewel in Spanish. But by the time that it had been built, he was already involved in an affair with the actress Thelma Todd. And when in December 1935 she died in mysterious circumstances, he soon found himself a target of suspicion.

Although Todd’s body had been found in Carmen’s garage, some believe that West had murdered her on board Joyita and staged the scene to look like an accident. But whatever the truth, it certainly seems that the director had been keen to get rid of his once-prized yacht. And in 1936 — the year after his young lover’s death — he sold it to someone named Milton E. Beacon.

Under its new owner, Joyita plied the waters between California and Mexico with Captain Chester Mills at the helm, even calling in at San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition. But five years later, with the shadow of war inching ever closer to American shores, the vessel was commandeered by the U.S. Navy and given a new lease of life.

As YP-108, Joyita patrolled the waters of Big Island, Hawaii. And it would have been present when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on the nearby island of Oahu, decisively dragging the U.S. into the war once and for all. Two years later, the vessel was severely damaged when it ran aground, but the Navy couldn’t afford to lose any more ships.

Instead, YP-108 was repaired and sent back into action, with new galvanized iron pipes replacing the old brass and copper ones. Then in September 1945 the Japanese surrendered, signaling the end of World War II. And slowly, the islands of the Pacific returned to the peaceful idylls that they had been before the conflict.

In Hawaii, the Navy had no further need for YP-108 and the vessel was stripped of its military equipment. Reverting to its pre-war name, Joyita returned to private ownership in 1948. And thanks to a series of improvements, which included a buoyant cork lining, it was rendered practically unsinkable by its new owners.

As we know all too well, though, “unsinkable” ships don’t tend to have the best of fortunes. In 1952 Joyita came into the possession of the anthropologist Dr. Katharine Luomala, who loaned the vessel to Miller. And after three years of fairly uneventful charters around the South Pacific, the captain sailed her straight into the annals of the unexplained.

After Joyita’s reappearance on November 10, 1955, the authorities were mystified as to what had occurred. When Gerald Douglas, who had been sailing the Tuvalu north across the Pacific Ocean towards Funafuti harbor, spotted the vessel, it was listing heavily to one side. In fact, the angle was so extreme that the railings on the port side were touching the water. 

Thanks to its cork lining, though, Joyita was still afloat. So where had its crew and passengers gone? As they boarded the vessel to take a look around, Douglas’ men found no signs of life anywhere above or below deck. But they did find several clues that seemed to indicate that something untoward had occurred.

For starters, it wasn’t just the people who were missing. On departing Samoa, Joyita had been carrying various items of cargo including timber, medical supplies, and 80 empty oil drums. Now, around 4 tons of it had disappeared. And the radio was tuned in to 2182Khz, an internationally recognized distress channel. At some point, then, the crew had tried to call for help.

But why? With the empty drums on board, Joyita was even more unsinkable than she had been in the past. And surely an experienced captain such as Miller would have known that the vessel was never in danger, even if it had been taking on water fast? The more the crew of Tuvalu explored the deserted ghost ship, the more the mystery grew.

Clearly, something had happened on board Joyita that had left the superstructure damaged. The ship’s bridge, they found, had been destroyed, with a sheet of canvas stretched across the spot where it had once stood. And there were signs of trouble in the deckhouse, too, where something or someone had broken the windows.

In the engine room, the crew of Tuvalu discovered that only one out of Joyita’s two engines had been operational for at least part of the journey to Tokelau. Bizarrely, one of them lay in pieces on the floor, while its functional counterpart had been swaddled in mattresses. And for some reason, every single clock on board had stopped at 10:25 p.m.

Also in the engine room, the baffled crew saw that a pump had been rigged up — although it hadn’t been connected to anything. But it wasn’t just what they found on Joyita that was confusing. It was what they didn’t find as well. Specifically, there were no signs of the ship’s sextant or chronometer, items essential to navigation.

Mysteriously, Joyita’s logbook was missing as well. And although the vessel had set out from Samoa with three rafts and a dinghy on board, none of them were anywhere to be seen. Clearly, the crew had decided to abandon ship. But why? Without enough lifejackets for the people on board, such a decision wouldn’t have been taken lightly.

In an even stranger twist, the men noticed that a doctor’s bag had been abandoned on the deck. Inside, they found a stethoscope and a scalpel, along with several lengths of bandages stained with blood. Clearly, someone had been injured before the passengers and crew of Joyita had disappeared, but it was impossible to tell exactly what had unfolded.

On closer inspection, it became apparent that the cable connecting Joyita’s radio to the aerial was broken, although the crew might not have realized it. Chillingly, then, it’s possible that they issued a desperate plea for help and waited for assistance that would never come. With this fault, you see, the equipment could only transmit over a distance of 2 miles.

Unable to answer the many questions surrounding the disappearance of its crew, Douglas decided to tow Joyita back to Fiji. And as soon as the water had been pumped out, it returned to floating on an even keel. In the port, investigators examined the vessel, slowly filling in the gaps of this strange story.

Noting the amount of fuel left in Joyita’s tanks, experts observed that the crew had traveled almost 250 miles before the incident occurred, taking them within 50 miles of their destination. And they were also able to estimate when the vessel had begun taking on water: at around 9:00 p.m, with many hours of darkness still to come.

With Joyita now stable on a mooring, investigators soon found the source of the leak. Down in the engine room, a pipe had rusted away, allowing water into the bilge. According to reports, the sea would have come in quickly, soon obscuring the cause of the problem and rendering it impossible for the crew to fix.

Still, though, Miller would have known that Joyita was sound. And while the official inquiry — which was held in Samoa in February 1956 — confirmed the cause of the damage, it couldn’t explain why the crew would have abandoned ship. After all, the rafts were flimsy at best, and certainly no match for the might of the Pacific Ocean.

At first, blame for the incident fell mostly on Miller’s shoulders. Joyita, the inquiry found, had been in poor condition before setting out for Tokelau. And by failing to provide enough life jackets — or a working radio — for the voyage, the captain had been guilty of negligent behavior. But for the relatives of the missing crew, these findings provided little in the way of comfort.

What had happened to their loved ones, they wondered? And would they ever find out the truth? Seven decades later, the mystery remains unsolved, and many have compared it to the story of the Mary Celeste, a famous ghost ship discovered completely deserted near the Azores in 1872. And just like its better-known counterpart, it has inspired countless theories over the years.

One of the most popular, it seems, is the idea that some kind of fight broke out on Joyita, leaving Miller badly injured. That would, after all, explain the damage to the ship, as well as the bloodied bandages. If incapacitated, the captain would’ve been unable to reassure the passengers and crew that the leak was nothing to worry about. And as a result, they may have abandoned ship.

After all, it was noted by those who knew Miller that he hadn’t been on good terms with his first mate. And it certainly seems possible that the two could’ve come to blows. But this theory doesn’t explain what had happened to the cargo that disappeared from Joyita. Unless, as some have suggested, it was looted from the vessel long after the crew and passengers had abandoned ship.

This is, of course, far from the only hypothesis that has been put forward to explain the strange disappearance. According to author David G. Wright, a relative of one of the victims, Miller probably hadn’t been incapacitated, but the crew had refused to believe his claims about Joyita’s resilience. And after a struggle, they’d forced him — perhaps at gunpoint — to leave the ship.

In his 2013 book about the incident, Joyita: Solving the Mystery, Wright highlighted the fact that firearms were also missing from the ship, lending support to his theory. The crew and passengers, he theorized, would have believed that a distress call had been sent and that a rescue mission was on its way. And as such, the prospect of the rafts wouldn’t have seemed so daunting. 

Of course, both of these hypotheses conclude that the people on board Joyita intentionally put out to sea. But if that was the case, then why weren’t they found? Well, in a macabre twist, experts believe that they either drowned or succumbed to the lethal sharks that inhabit the waters of the South Pacific. 

And there have been some more eccentric theories, too. According to some, Joyita had managed to run afoul of a Japanese fishing fleet conducting illicit business in the Pacific, with the crew and passengers killed to conceal any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, others believe that a Soviet submarine had been responsible for sinking the vessel and kidnapping the passengers and crew. 

Or perhaps, as some have argued, pirates boarded Joyita, murdering those on board and stealing the meager cargo? There are even those who claim that Miller was attempting insurance fraud, even though the vessel was both lucrative and impossible to sink. But in the end, no theory has ever been put forward that completely explains the mystery of what happened on board.

Compared to its unfortunate passengers and crew, Joyita itself experienced a far more prosaic fate. Sold into private ownership, it was plagued by a series of accidents and developed a reputation as an unlucky ship. Eventually abandoned by its owners, it was purchased by a writer and then a publicist, each of whom hoped to profit from the mystery. But their plans came to nothing, and by the 1970s the decaying vessel had all but disappeared.