MV Joyita was an American ship that carried 25 passengers and crew. In October 1955, these people disappeared without explanation in the South Pacific. The ship was later found floating in the ocean with no one on board.

The ship was in very poor condition. Its pipes were damaged by rust, and its radio, though working, could only send signals for about 2 miles (3.2 km) due to broken wiring. However, the ship’s strong ability to float made it nearly impossible for it to sink. Investigators were confused about why the crew did not stay on the ship and wait for help.

Vessel description and history

MV Joyita was a 69-foot (21.0 m) wooden ship built in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for movie director Roland West. He named the ship after his wife, actress Jewel Carmen, whose name, "joyita," means "little jewel" in Spanish. In 1936, the ship was sold and officially owned by Milton E. Beacon. During this time, the ship made many trips to Mexico and to the 1939–1940 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. At one point, Chester Mills was the captain of the vessel.

The ship’s hull was built using 2-inch (51 mm) thick cedar wood on oak frames. It was 69 feet 0 inches (21.0 m) long, with a beam (width) of 17 feet 0 inches (5.2 m) and a draft (depth in water) of 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m). Its net tonnage was 47 tons, and its gross tonnage was about 70 tons. The ship had storage tanks for 2,500 U.S. gallons (9,500 L) of water and 3,000 U.S. gallons (11,400 L) of diesel fuel.

In October 1941, two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joyita was bought by the United States Navy and taken to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There, it was fitted out as a yard patrol boat, YP-108. The Navy used it to patrol the Big Island of Hawaii until the end of World War II.

In 1943, the ship ran aground and was heavily damaged. However, because the Navy needed ships, Joyita was repaired. At this time, new pipes were made from galvanized iron instead of copper or brass. In 1946, the ship was no longer needed by the Navy, and most of its equipment was removed.

In 1948, Joyita was sold to the company Louis Brothers. At this point, cork lining was added to the ship’s hull, and refrigeration equipment was installed. The ship had two Gray Marine diesel engines that provided 225 horsepower (168 kW) and two additional diesel engines for generators. In 1950, William Tavares became the owner, but he had little use for the vessel and sold it in 1952 to Dr. Katharine Luomala, a professor at the University of Hawaiʻi. She rented the boat to her friend, Captain Thomas H. "Dusty" Miller, a British-born sailor living in Samoa. Miller used the ship as a trading and fishing charter boat.

Disappearance

On October 3, 1955, at about 5:00 AM, the ship Joyita left the port of Apia in Samoa, heading toward the Tokelau Islands, which are about 270 miles (430 km) away. The ship was originally scheduled to leave the previous day at noon, but its departure was delayed because the clutch on its left engine failed. Joyita eventually left Samoa using only one engine. The ship carried sixteen crew members and nine passengers, including a government official, a doctor (Alfred "Andy" Denis Parsons, a World War II surgeon traveling to perform an amputation), a copra buyer, and two children. Its cargo included medical supplies, timber, 80 empty 45-gallon (200 L) oil drums, and various food items.

The voyage was expected to take between 41 and 48 hours. Joyita was scheduled to arrive in the Tokelau Islands on October 5. On October 6, a message from Fakaofo port reported that the ship was overdue. No ship or land-based operator received a distress signal from the crew. A search-and-rescue mission was launched, and from October 6 to 12, aircraft from the Royal New Zealand Air Force searched nearly 100,000 square miles (260,000 km²) of ocean, but no sign of Joyita or its passengers or crew was found.

Five weeks later, on November 10, Gerald Douglas, the captain of the merchant ship Tuvalu, saw Joyita more than 600 miles (970 km) west of its planned route, drifting north of Vanua Levu. The ship was partially submerged and leaning heavily (its left deck rail was underwater), and there was no sign of any passengers or crew. Four tons of cargo were also missing. The recovery team found the ship’s radio set to 2182 kHz, a special radio channel used for emergencies at sea.

There was still fuel in Joyita’s tanks. Based on the fuel used, it was estimated that the ship traveled about 243 miles (391 km) before being abandoned, likely within 50 miles (80 km) of Tokelau. The leak probably began after 9:00 PM on the second night of the voyage, with nine hours of darkness remaining.

Although Joyita was found with its lower parts and decks flooded, its hull was intact. Once water was pumped from the hull, the ship floated on a stable and even keel and was easily towed into harbor at Suva. When the ship was moored there, investigators heard water entering the vessel. It was discovered that a pipe in the cooling system of the left auxiliary engine had failed due to a type of corrosion, allowing water to enter the bilges. The crew would have first noticed the leak when water rose above the engine room floorboards, by which time it would have been nearly impossible to locate the source. Additionally, the bilge pumps lacked filters and became clogged with debris, making it very difficult to remove the water.

Maritime inquiry

In February 1956, a formal investigation about the fate of the ship Joyita took place in Apia. The investigation found that the ship was in poor condition. However, it could not explain what happened to the passengers and crew based on the evidence presented. A puzzling detail was that the three life rafts Joyita carried were missing. It would not make sense for the crew and passengers to leave the ship voluntarily. Designed to carry refrigerated goods, Joyita had 640 cubic feet (18 m³) of cork lining her holds, which made the ship nearly unsinkable. Additional buoyancy came from a cargo of empty fuel drums.

The investigation only determined why the ship became flooded. It found that the ship started to flood because of a broken cooling pipe. The bilge pumps, which remove water from a ship, were not working because they became blocked. Joyita had no watertight bulkheads or sections in the bilges to stop water from spreading. Water gradually filled the lower decks. As the ship sank lower, the single remaining engine could not keep the ship moving fast enough to steer. Joyita then tilted sideways into a large wave, causing it to lean heavily, as it was found. Although flooded enough to sink a typical ship, Joyita stayed afloat because of its cork-lined hull and fuel drums.

The investigation also blamed Captain Miller for the events. It found him reckless for sailing on a long ocean voyage with only one engine and many small problems. It also found him negligent for not providing a working radio or properly equipped lifeboat. Captain Miller broke maritime law by allowing Joyita’s license to carry paying passengers to expire.

The investigation did not mention the used medical equipment found on board.

Hypotheses

Joyita is sometimes called the "Mary Celeste of the South Pacific" and has been the subject of many books and documentaries that offer different explanations for what happened. These explanations range from logical and common ideas to strange and supernatural ones. Many theories about the disappearance of Joyita’s crew and passengers were shared when the event happened, and more have been suggested over time. Since the ship’s hull was strong and its design made it almost impossible to sink, investigators were especially interested in understanding why the passengers and crew left the ship if the problem was only flooding in the engine room.

Captain Miller should have known the ship could stay afloat, which led some people to think he might have died or become unable to act. Evidence of an injury was found, such as bloodstained bandages. Without Miller to calm others, the passengers and crew might have panicked when the ship started to flood and used the life rafts. However, this does not explain why the cargo and equipment were missing unless the ship had been abandoned and the cargo taken.

A friend of Miller, Captain S. B. Brown, believed Miller would not have left the ship alive because he understood its construction. He also noted tension between Miller and his first mate, Chuck Simpson, and thought their conflict might have led to a fight, causing both men to fall overboard or be seriously hurt. This would leave the ship without an experienced sailor, which could explain the panic when the ship began to flood.

At the time, the Fiji Times and Herald reported that Joyita had passed near a group of Japanese fishing boats and "had seen something the Japanese did not want them to see." The Daily Telegraph in London suggested that Japanese forces from World War II, still active on an isolated island, might be responsible for the disappearances. Anti-Japanese feelings were strong in parts of the Pacific, and in Fiji, there was anger about Japan’s fishing operations in local waters.

These theories gained attention when workers clearing the ship found knives marked "Made in Japan." However, tests showed the knives were old and broken, possibly left on board during Joyita’s use for fishing in the 1940s.

Another idea was that the ship’s occupants were kidnapped by a Soviet submarine during the Cold War. Early reports suggested Joyita had been in a collision, leading to speculation that pirates attacked the ship, killed the passengers and crew, and stole the missing cargo.

It was also discovered that Miller had accumulated large debts after failed fishing trips. However, it was unlikely the events were insurance fraud, as no seacocks were found open, and the ship would be nearly impossible to sink. Miller relied on Joyita being used for regular trips between Samoa and Tokelau, which would have helped pay off his debts.

A later owner of Joyita, British author Robin Maugham, studied the ship’s history and wrote a book called The Joyita Mystery in 1962. Maugham believed the flooding started from a broken cooling pipe and failed pumps. Mattresses found on the starboard engine were likely used to stop the leak or protect electrical equipment. At the same time, Joyita faced heavy waves and storms.

Captain Miller, knowing the ship was unsinkable and wanting to reach his destination to pay his debts, continued forward. However, Simpson and possibly other crew members wanted to turn back, leading to a mutiny. During the struggle, Miller was seriously injured. By this time, the ship was in heavy weather with winds of about 40 miles per hour (64 km/h). The flooding eventually caused the starboard engine to fail, cutting off all electrical power. Simpson then decided to abandon the ship, taking the navigational equipment, logbook, supplies, and injured Miller with him.

It is still unclear why Simpson would leave a floating but flooded ship to use small rafts in the ocean. Maugham suggested they might have seen an island or reef and tried to reach it, but the strong winds and waves carried the rafts away, leaving Joyita drifting and empty. The damage to the ship’s superstructure was likely caused by waves hitting it while it drifted in rough seas.

Joyitaafter 1955

In July 1956, the ship Joyita was sold by her owners for £2,425 to David Simpson, a man from Fiji (not related to Chuck Simpson). He repaired and improved the ship, and it returned to sea that year. However, legal problems arose because the ship’s official records were changed from the United States to Britain without permission. In January 1957, Joyita ran aground while carrying thirteen passengers in the Koro Sea. After repairs, she began regular trips between Levuka and Suva in October 1958.

In November 1959, Joyita ran aground again on a reef near Levuka. High tide helped it float away, but the ship started taking in water through a tear in its body. The pumps were turned on, but they were installed incorrectly, causing water to flow into the ship instead of out. Because of this, the ship became known as an "unlucky ship" and was left by its owners. It was then beached and stripped of useful parts. In 1966, Maugham bought the broken ship and later sold it to Major J. Casling-Cottle, who wanted to turn it into a museum and tearoom in Levuka. However, the plan was never completed. Over time, the ship was broken down and completely destroyed by the late 1970s.

On 14 March 1975, the Western Samoa Post Office released a set of five stamps about the mystery of Joyita. In 2009, a walkway was named after Dr. Alfred Dennis Parsons near his old home in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2012, two memorials were placed in Apia, Samoa, and Fakaofo Village, Tokelau, to honor the event.

Crew and passengers

As of 2012, all people on the ship were still considered missing. In 2012, the person who organized a memorial event asked for an official statement to declare them dead.