Season 09 Episode 06: Full Fathom Five

me if you have the time. Anyone taking part will be entered into a prize drawer for a chance to win one of ten signed copies of the Unexplained book. You can find the survey on our website at Unexplained podcast dot com, forward slash survey. That's Unexplained podcast dot com. Forward slash survey. Thank you so much again for all your support and for taking the time to listen to the show. The dark tropical sky was tinged with lemon as.

Palm trees swayed lazily in the warm early morning from somewhere out in the harbor of Apia, the capital of Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean. Muffled metallic clangs and hammering sounds had been ringing out all night, but now as dawn broke, they finally went quiet. They were coming from a small merchant vessel whose crew had been working tirelessly to try and fix a faulty engine to no avail. The ship's captain, a British seafarer named Thomas Dusty Miller,

looked harassed and frustrated in the gathering light. He told his crew that they'd be setting out that morning, regardless their departure had already been delayed enough as it was. Captain Miller had been charted by the Samoan government to take cargo and passengers to Tokalau, one of a remote group of Polynesian adols. His boat, the Hoyeta, should have left port at noon the previous day, halfway between Hawaii

and New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago of Tokalau was around two hundred and seventeen nautical miles to the north of the Samoan capitol. One of the passengers due to travel on the boat was a doctor who'd been tasked with performing an amputation on a patient out there. Another, a pharmacist with urgently needed medical supplies for the island. Along with several other passengers, four tons

of cargo were also on board. Captain Miller was no doubt mindful of the urgent medical situation on Tokalau, and with the engine at least functioning, perhaps he reasoned the Hoyta's cork lined hull would keep them afloat regardless come what may. Having arrived on Samoa seven months earlier, Captain Miller was known for fine seamanship, but he'd also developed

a reputation for recklessness and head drinking. He was said to be in some considerable debt to Recently, however, he'd secured a contract to carry copra between Samoa and the Tokelaus. Copra is the dried white flesh of coconut from which coconut oil is extracted and used to make soaps and cosmetics.

The transportation of this lucrative commercial product, along with the carriage of passengers and medical supplies to Tokelau, had given the captain a viable business opportunity which he desperately needed to ease his financial troubles. At daybreak on Monday third of October nineteen fifty five, the Hoyita's sixteen strong crew, which included two men from Samoa and nine from Tokelau

began welcoming the passengers on board. They included a government official as well as the doctor, a veteran of the Second World War, a copper buyer by the name of mister Williams, the pharmacist, and two children, the youngest of whom was only three years old. There was nothing immediately remarkable about any of them, except for mister Williams, that is, who was apparently carrying somewhere in the region of one hundred thousand US dollars in cash to buy copper, well

over a million in to day's money. As the ship steamed out of port, it was an ordinary enough day, hot and clammy, but not yet the rainy season, the ocean waves undulating gently, but there was a deep sense of unease among some who saw the ship off. The wife of mister Williams, the coppera trader, later said that as she waived her husband goodbye, she was suddenly reminded of a dream she'd had the previous night, or rather

a nightmare filled with visions of disaster. While on board, some of the Samoans traded nervous glances, concerned that Captain Miller seemed to be a little worse for wear from drinking, and with that the engines fluttered into life, and the anchor was pulled from the water. Of the captain's orders, the boat eased out toward the open seas as mister Williams's wife waved it off. The Hoyita eased steadily out at the harbor. Before long it was completely out of

sight and beyond all radio contact. It would not be the last sighting of the ship, but it would prove to be the last time that any of the crew or passengers were ever seen again. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The Hoyita had not always

been a merchant vessel. It was originally commissioned and built in Los Angeles in nineteen thirty one for the American film director Rowland West, a doyen of early fil noir in the silent movie era of the nineteen twenties and thirties. The sixty nine foot twin engine pleasure cruiser was considered the height of luxury for its time, boasting advanced features such as autopilot and large fuel tanks for maximum usage time,

but the ship's construction did not go smoothly. One Portuguese worker had a fatal fall from scaffolding while helping to build it. Some say in response, the man's widow placed a curse on the ship. Perhaps this didn't bother West, or maybe he never even heard about it. Either way, he went through with the purchase. After all, it was a beautifully crafted vessel made from two inch thick cedar

planks over an oak timber frame. He named it Hoyita Mexican for Little Jewel, after his wife, the silent screen actor Jewel Carmen. At first, the gleaming vessel was everything West had hoped, and he eagerly took it out whenever he got the chance, usually on trips across to California's Catalina Islands. The voyages would be lavish affairs, with West always keen to share the experience with his many glamorous friends from Hollywood. But West and his contemporaries were living

through the dying days of the silent screen era. Despite being a leading light of his time, West's nineteen thirty one film Corseir was his last as a director. Perhaps looking to mitigate the choppy waters ahead, West and his wife, Jewel Carmen, opened a restaurant together with fellow silent film star Thelma Todd. Around the same time, West and Tod

began an affair. In truth, West and his wife jul had been estranged for some time, but had remained married to avoid the messy publicity that would inevitably come with divorce. The three of them lived together in the same complex alongside the restaurant, with West and Todd sharing apartments situated directly above the restaurant, which were separated by a sliding door. West and Todd's relationship was said to be a volatile one, with West in particular known to be aggressive and controlling

over Todd. Perhaps it was just coincidence that West's tendency to anger appeared to worsen almost the moment he brought to the Hoyta. After all, the purchase did coincide with a stressful downturn in his professional fortunes and in his relationship with his wife. But thinking back to the apparent curse placed on the vessel, perhaps it wasn't a coincidence

at all. It was one mid December day in nineteen thirty five that dule Carmen's maid went down to the garage to retrieve a car for her mistress and found Thelma Todd dead behind the wheel of her Lincoln Phaeton convertible. Though the cause of death was eventually ruled as suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, some believed that Roland West had murdered her, and some also say he had in fact killed her first on the Hoyita before transporting her body

to the garage. In the wake of Thelma Todd's death, Roland West and Duel Carmen finally filed for divorce in nineteen thirty eight. One of the first assets sold to finance it was West's much loved Hoyita. Over the next fourteen years, the ship changed hands a number of times and was even used as a patrol boat by the U. S.

Navy in the Second World War. Then, in nineteen fifty two, now known as the m V Hoyita, the ship was acquired by a doctor, Katherine Luamala, an American anthropologist from Hawaii, who made the semi permanent loan of the boat to her then boyfriend, Captain Thomas Dusty Miller. Miller intended to start a fishing business in Samoa, but the m V

Hoyita was no fishing boat and Miller was no fisherman. Thankfully, after a listless seven months living on board the boat, he managed to secure the contract to take cargo and passengers between the capital Apia and the atolls of Tokelau.

That trip that he and his twenty four passengers and crew set out for on that fateful journey of October third, nineteen fifty five, should have taken no more than forty eight hours, having been expected to arrive by mid morning on Wednesday the fifth, when the sun sunk toward the horizon later that evening, there was still no sign of

Mislaer or the Hoyita. The weather on route had been relatively calm, and no passing ships or coastal stations in the region had received a distress call, suggesting the vessel was likely fine but had just been held up somehow. On Thursday sixth, however, with still no sign or word from the boat, officials based in Fakara Foe, another atoll in tokal Out, reluctantly sent out a message to the

wider world that the Hoita was overdue. An immediate search and rescue effort was launched by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, searching an area of more than one hundred thousand square miles, but they found nothing. The Envy Hoyita had vanished off the face of the ocean. Tapula Tavita lived in Arpia and was editor of Samoa's only weekly newspaper, the Samoa Bulletin. Several months earlier, he'd enjoyed a day's fishing trip on the Hoyita and had subsequently got to

know Captain Miller quite well. Tavita was also acquainted with some of the passengers, including the doctor whom he'd played golf with and who had even delivered one of his children. In the days after the Hoyita was reported missing, Tavita

spent long hours with a friend at the Arpia radio station. Together, the two men sat anxiously maintaining a constant radio watch with the dial tuned to twenty one eighty two killer hertz, the international distress frequency, but no distress calls ever came. During those early days of the search and rescue operation,

no one was especially worried. Most shared the view that with the Hoyita's wooden construction, cork insulated holds, and cargo, including many empty but sealed oil drums, the vessel had more than enough buoyancy to keep it aflowt There were also plenty of supplies on board for the passengers and crew should they have ended up adrift somewhere. Aside from that, it was just a case of waiting. But as the

days passed, the rainy season well and truly arrived. People on both Apia and Tokalau, along with the authorities, became frantically worried for their friends and loved ones safety. Days turned to weeks, and then a month. After thirty six days, the search was called off. It was just after dawn on the tenth of November when Captain Gerald Douglas of the merchant ship Tuvalu, en route from Fiji to Tuvalu Island,

spotted a dark shape bobbing listlessly in the distance. The idea that it could possibly be the missing Hoyita couldn't have been further from the captain's mind at the time. His ship was near Udo Point, on the easternmost tip of Fiji, one thousand meters off the course the Hoyita would have taken to Tokalau. As Douglas guided his vessel toward the strange object, he brought his binoculars to his eyes.

He saw then that the shape was in fact a small boat, and something was clearly very wrong with it. The vessel appeared to be derelict and was listing heavily, with its port side railings bobbing just below the waves. There was no sign of anyone on board. Then the name on the hull came into focus, m V Hoyita. Anxiously, Douglas maneuvered his ship alongside it, and a small party hastily jumped out and boarded the vessel. What they found was a ghost ship. Everyone on board was gone. The

boats dinghy and three lifeboats were also missing. But why exactly this was the case was a deep and trouble mystery. Captain Douglas's crew spread out across the eerily quiet vessel and began to investigate. Most alarmingly, there was significant damage to the main structure, the flying bridge, a raised open air deck had been ripped away. The windows on the main wheelhouse had also been broken, while a makeshift canvas

awning had been rigged up behind it. They also discovered barnacles on the port side, high above the normal waterline, suggesting the Hoyita had been listing heavily for some time before they found it moving. Inside the vessel, they found that, strangely, the starboard engine had been covered by mattresses, while the port engine was still in the partially disassembled state from

the day it had left Arpia. An auxiliary pump was also found nearby, suggesting the crew and passengers were still on board when the boat started taking on water, though any effort to bail it out had clearly been in vain, and yet when Captain Douglas later ordered a diver to inspect the hull, they found no sign of damage or anything else to explain how the boat had been so

severely flooded, and the discoveries just got grimmer. The ship's radio was tuned to twenty one eighty two killer hertz, the international distress frequency, but on closer inspection a break was found in the cable between the set and the aerial, which seemed to have been painted over to obscure the damage, had someone sabotaged it to prevent a distress call from

being made. Then Captain Douglas noticed something else unsettling. All the clocks on board that were wired into the vessel's generator had stopped at ten twenty five, with the switch for the cabin lighting and navigation lights all found to be in the on position. It seemed that the generators and all light had shut off in the middle of the night. The ship's log book and navigational equipment, as well as the firearms the Hoyta's captain was known to

keep on board, were all missing. The starter motor for one of the engines was also missing. One of Douglas's crew called out for the captain to come and look at something. The man had found a leather bag on deck, inside which was a stethoscope, a scalpel, and a whole heap of bloodied bandageses. Captain Douglas took it all in, then looked about at the stricken vessel. None of it made any sense. Having seen enough, Captain Douglas ordered his crew to pump the vessel out in preparation for taking

it back to land. Once the water had been removed, it slowly righted itself and proceeded to float stably on an even keel. It was a relatively easy task to tow it into the nearest harbour on Fiji. Once there, a more thorough inspection revealed that a pipe forming part of the boat's cooling system had become so corroded it

had breached, flooding the boat from the inside. It seemed very likely that the Hoyita's crew would not have realized the boat was taking on water until it began rising above the engine room floor, at which point it would have been almost impossible to locate the source. Also, the bilge pumps that had not been fitted with strainers to keep out debris were found to be completely clogged and

barely functioning. Judging by the Hoyita's fuel levels, the vessel had likely gone around two hundred and forty miles before it was abandoned. Tragically, this was probably no more than fifty miles from her intended destination. Hopes of finding survivors persisted for weeks, with loved ones clinging on to the slim possibility that maybe all or at least some of them had made it to a remote island where they

might still be waiting to be rescued. However, if all twenty five people had abandoned ship, each of the available lifeboats would have been crowded to capacity, and the Hoyita had not been equipped with enough life jackets for everyone on board. In any case, a prolonged search found no one. The international media ran the story under headlines that referred to the Hoyita as the Marry Celeste of the South Pacific.

As explored in Unexplained, Season four episode six, The Silence of the Sea, the Marry Celeste was a merchant ship discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean close to the assaults in December eighteen seventy two. It had been sailing from New York to Genoa, and, like the Hoyita, was found in a disheveled but seaworthy condition, with its lifeboats missing. Unlike the Hoyeta, however, the Marry Celeste was still amply provisioned when found, cargo intact and the captains

and crew's personal belongings undisturbed. It was as if everyone had simply got up and left for no apparent reason. But just like the Hoyita, none of those who had been on board were ever seen again. As with the Marry Celeste, the question on everyone's lips was why had the Hoytas passengers and crew left the ship. Captain Miller knew that, even partly flooded, his vessel was effectively unsinkable.

Why would he have taken the dangerous decision to get into crowded lifeboats and risk everyone's lives on the open ocean. One suggestion was that of freak water spout, which develops when cool air passes over warm water, sucking up water

to produce a spout effect like an ocean tornado. Fair weather water spouts typically last only a few minutes before petering out, but winds inside them can be incredibly strong, over sixty miles per hour, rotating rapidly, and have been known to tear rigging and even masts off sailing ships even capsize them. In August twenty twenty four, the luxury super yacht the Baysian, belonging to billionaires Mike Lynch and his wife Angelo Bacariz, was anchored off the scenic fishing

village of Porticello in Sicily. The yacht was fitted with a two hundred and forty six foot mast, the world's second tallest at the time. Mike and Angela were asleep on board the boat, along with their daughter and a number of friends, when the yacht was hit by a sudden, violent storm, which generated water spouts. It's thought the force of the strong wind was enough to push the yacht over sideways and force the mast below the water line.

It took just sixteen minutes for the souper yacht to sink. Seven of the twenty two people on board died, including Mike Lynch and his eighteen year old daughter Hannah. Perhaps the Hoyita suffered something equally terrifying that was enough to scare the passengers and crew into abandoning the boat. Either way, a formal inquiry confirmed only why the vessel had become flooded and how the single engine that wasn't faulty would not have been able to generate enough power to steer it.

As a result, much of the responsibility for this chain of events was placed on Captain Miller, who'd wrecked the set out with only one working engine and numerous other faults. It was also discovered that the Hoyita's license to carry fair paying passengers had expired some time before the trip. In the end, the fate of the passengers and crew of the Hoyta was determined to be inexplicable on the

evidence submitted. No mention was made of the bloody bandages found on board, or why the Hoyta was abandoned while still afloat, or where all its cargo had gone. Numerous theories have been put forward to explain the Hoyita mystery. One is that Captain Miller had died or become incapacitated on board for some reason, and that without his experience, the remaining crew panicked and took to the lifeboats. Author David Wright, who researched the mystery extensively, spoke with two

of Miller's former crew. They described him as a negligent and reckless man who behaved uncaringly and dismissively toward his crew. Did simmering hostility among the Hoyita's crew boil over in the rapidly deteriorating conditions. Others spoke of tension between Miller and his American first mate, Chuck Simpson. Did Miller and Simpson come to blows resulting in one or both of

them becoming seriously injured? Perhaps that would explain the bloody bandages at The remaining crew and passengers then abandoned the Hoyita, whose cargo was then raided by the crew of a later passing ship. Another theory comes heavily laced with anti Japanese sentiment, which was still strong in parts of the Pacific at the time of the incident, especially in Fiji, where locals were resentful of the Japanese for being allowed

to operate fishing fleets in their waters. The Fiji Times and asserted that an allegedly impeccable source had informed them that the Hoyita had passed through a fleet of Japanese fishing boats during its trip, and those on board had seen something the Japanese crews did not want them to see, although it was never specified what that might have been exactly.

Without much evidence, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph chimed in by suggesting that some Japanese forces were still active from World War II and might have attacked the Hoyita from a secret island base, perhaps drawing on tales of isolated combatants who had yet to learn the war was over. Men clearing the salvaged Hoyita reportedly found knives on board

stamped with made in Japan. However, the knives turned out to be old and broken, quite possibly just relics from when the Hoyita was used briefly as a fishing boat. Another theory was that the Hoyita might actually have been at hacked by pirates, who, having killed the passengers and crew, simply cast their bodies into the ocean before making off with the missing four tons of cargo and the one

hundred thousand dollars in cash. In the summer of nineteen fifty six, the salvaged Hoyita was auctioned off to a Fijian islander who refitted the vessel and once more put it out to sea, but the ship assisted in living up to its cursed existence. After running aground twice in nineteen fifty nine, it was eventually stripped of all useful

equipment and put up for sale once again. One british Man author, Robert morm became so obsessed with finding out the truth about what had happened to the Hoyita and all those on board back during that ill fated voyage of nineteen fifty five, he decided to buy the vessel. After several years investigating the incident, he published his findings

in his nineteen sixty two book The Hoyita Mystery. He concurred with the official conclusion that events started with the flooding from the broken cooling pipe and the failed effort to pump out the water. He theorized that the mattresses found covering the starboard engine were either an attempt to stem the leak or to protect the electrical switchboard from spray being kicked up by the engine's flywheel as the

water level rose. Marm went on to speculate that once the ship became impossible to steer, Captain Miller argued violently with his first mate and possibly some of the other crew, who demanded that he turned back. When Miller refused, the crew mutinied, and Miller was incapacitated in a subsequent fight.

Morm then argued that in the worsening weather and with the engine room flooded, it would have been Simpson who warded everyone to abandon the ship, taking the navigational equipment, log book and supplies, as well as the injured Miller with them. He suggested that perhaps the crew had seen a nearby island or reef which they thought they could

reach in lifeboats. Perhaps that turned out to merely be a raised sandbank exposed by low tide, and in the end everyone has simply been carried out to the open ocean, where they eventually capsized and drowned. In nineteen sixty six, the Hoyita was sold to a major, Kaslin Cottle, who ran a tourist and publicity bureau in a port town in Fiji. Kaslin Cottle intended to turn the ship into a museum and tea room, but the plans were eventually abandoned.

Over the next few years, little by little, the hulk of the once beautiful Hoyita disintegrated into oblivion. Decades on, only six of the twenty five passengers from the hoyitas fate for nineteen fifty five voyage have been officially declared dead.

None of the Pacific Islander crew who afforded the dignity of final closure, despite numerous efforts by relatives in nineteen fifty five Tokelau and Western Samoa were both under New Zealand administration, and since the New Zealand government has so far refused to issue formal death certificates, nineteen of the victims are still officially classified as missing. Just what exactly

happened to them all remains to this day unexplained. This episode was written by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Thank you, as ever for listening. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,

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