by Jim Haynes
Four hours after his first observation, Barry Spencer was back over the Palapa in the Coastwatch de Havilland. The boat had drifted west and away from Christmas Island. Otherwise nothing much had changed: people were still rowing and jumping up and down on the roof waving life jackets. He stayed over the Palapa for at least half an hour, videoing the scene and taking more photographs. Spencer could see there were far more people on board than he first thought. He now put the number at ‘200 plus’. He also tried, without success, to raise the boat on the radio. But the Palapa had no radio—indeed no communication equipment of any kind. Spencer was running out of fuel and returned to his base on Christmas Island.
The Palapa was clearly in grave difficulties: drifting helplessly on the Indian Ocean with a very large number of people on board. A second Coastwatch report on the boat reached the Rescue Control Centre in Canberra early in the evening. It was a decisive moment, but no text of this report has ever surfaced. One summary reads: ‘Report from Coastwatch indicating vessel appears to be in distress.’ That would seem to require an immediate call to shipping to go to the Palapa’s rescue. A less urgent version of the same report was later supplied to the Senate: the Palapa only ‘appeared to require assistance’.
The Rescue Control Centre was worried enough to ring Coastwatch to discuss the Palapa’s predicament. Again, no notes of this conversation have ever been produced. The summary reads: ‘Coastwatch advised . . . the vessel did not indicate distress.’
In a formal sense this might be justified. True, passengers waving their arms is a recognised signal for distress, but there was no Mayday, no SOS. Yet rescue authorities knew this was not a vessel operating under the ordinary rules of commercial shipping. It was a smugglers’ hulk crammed full of human beings.
Australia put out no call to shipping that night, but did inform the Indonesian rescue authority, BASARNAS, that there was a vessel requiring assistance in its rescue zone. In 1990, Australia and Indonesia drew a line east–west across the Indian Ocean, dividing it into zones of responsibility. Christmas Island lay inside the Indonesian zone. The boundary simply recognised that Indonesia was ‘best placed’ to respond to emergencies in its zone. That’s about all. The agreement is a very slender document. Contrary to all that would be said over the next days and weeks by Australia’s leaders, the 1990 arrangement does not oblige Indonesia to carry out every rescue in its zone.
Sea rescue does not work that way. What matters first and foremost is saving lives, not which country takes charge of the rescue or looks after the survivors. Clive Davidson, chief executive officer of AMSA, explained: ‘The responsibility on all search and rescue agencies around the world is to respond comprehensively and completely to every search and rescue event, wherever they may be.’
Instead of seeing to the rescue itself, the Australian Rescue Control Centre concentrated its efforts on trying to whip BASARNAS into action. The last time it had gone to such lengths to pass responsibility for a rescue to the Indonesians was two years earlier, for a fishing boat with only half a dozen lives at stake. It knew only too well that BASARNAS, responsible for a huge archipelago full of fishing boats and ferries, was under-resourced and overwhelmed. Rescue Control Centre officers joke that BASARNAS ‘is great, one time in ten’.
The fax sent to BASARNAS alerting it to the Palapa ended, ‘Please confirm receipt of this fax by return fax.’ BASARNAS did not respond. At some point in the evening someone from Australia’s Rescue Control Centre rang the BASARNAS headquarters in Jakarta. Davidson said: ‘When we called the Indonesian search and rescue agency there was nobody that competently spoke English to talk to.’
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) were, however, worried about the fate of the Palapa. At about 3 a.m. Canberra time, the head of the AFP’s People Smuggling Strike Team rang Coastwatch ‘concerned about this vessel’ and was told the Palapa ‘has the right of passage until there are signs of distress’. Even then Australia would not leap to the boat’s rescue. ‘If there was a distress, would advise Indonesia.’
‘Dark came again and we were alone,’ said Khodadad Sarwari. ‘The plane did not come back. Then we lost hope. That was the hardest night we had on board because there were glimpses of hope and they disappeared.’
The sea had been rising all day. Video taken of the Palapa in the afternoon showed it already wallowing in a deep swell. Towards nightfall the weather turned nasty, and at about midnight the Palapa was hit by a violent storm. Waves began crashing across the lower deck. It was extremely dangerous. As the boat rolled, people scrambled to the high side of the deck, which then plunged the boat even deeper as it rolled to the other side. Everyone was urged to sit still. They tied themselves and their children to the boat with their clothes but the waves still threw them around the deck. ‘The skin was torn from our backs and arms,’ said Sarwari. ‘There was blood everywhere.’ Strangely, in all this turmoil, some continued to sleep, only waking to grab at something to stop themselves being washed overboard.
On the lower deck, the men tried to form a human wall in a futile attempt to keep out the waves. A hole opened in the hull. It was stuffed with plastic and someone sat on this crude bung all night to keep it in place. There were no buckets to bail with. The pumps were just able to cope, but needed all the power the generator could produce. There was nothing left to run the lights so all this horror took place in pitch dark. They could hear the storm above them, the boat groaning as the waves hit and, from both decks, shouts, cries and prayers. Hamid said: ‘We were expecting that any moment the sharks come and eat us piece by piece.’
The upper deck was working loose. ‘The nails were coming out that held the top deck in place,’ said Assadullah Rezaee. ‘The deck was moving and we thought it might fall from the boat. It was coming loose. The posts were held only by nails, no bolts or screws, only nails.’ Women and children tried to move down to the deck below but there was no room for them there. They had no choice but to stay as the flimsy structure plunged from side to side. Someone below found a lump of metal and bashed the nails back into place all through the night.
The Indonesian crew retreated to the wheelhouse. They had abandoned responsibility for the boat. Three or four times during the storm the young mechanics stopped the engine for a while to let it cool down. For a horrifying half-hour it would not restart, but the men got it going again. Without the pumps they knew there was no hope. In the wild emotions of those hours, these people of deep faith took the presence of children on the boat to be a sign that the Palapa might last the night. ‘Sometime my wife said it was so frightening and so difficult I would like to die,’ said Rajab Ali Merzaee. ‘But I said no. We understand if God wants to take the adults because we have done something wrong, but the children haven’t done anything. He might show them mercy.’
As the sun rose, the storm died. The refugees had faced death in that storm and feared the boat could not survive another night like that. They asked the captain where they were. He looked at his box compass and wept. He had no idea. They were furious with him for the deal he had done with the smugglers, for the shoddy state of the boat, for sailing with a wrecked engine. But what was the use? They would share the same fate. ‘The water does not make this judgment whether you are Afghan or Indonesian. The water will kill anybody. Indiscriminate.’
Canberra’s priority that Sunday morning was to bully BASARNAS into action. It was still very early in Jakarta, but a little after 8 a.m. Jakarta time the Australian Embassy sent naval attaché David Ramsay around to BASARNAS to ask firmly that the agency get moving. This had no result except to put a number of Indonesian noses out of joint, and make Australia’s dealings with Indonesia even more difficult over the next few days.
Barry Spencer took off again at about 7 a.m. Christmas Island time. Part of his mission that morning was to ‘relocate’ the Palapa and ‘advise Canberra of its position’. Though the stricken vessel was only 85 nautical miles from the island, it was two hours before the de Havilland was once mor
e over the boat.
The asylum seekers had used that time well. They had begun to wonder if the Australians did not realise they needed rescue. Perhaps it was not a failure of heart. Perhaps the Australians didn’t know they were in trouble. They searched the boat for writing materials and something to write on. In the end they used engine oil on scarves. One of the English-speakers traced out the words and a man with a bit of sign-writing experience in Kabul finished the job. The banners were just ready when the plane appeared. One read SOS and the other HELP. ‘The plane went far and come back, far and come back,’ said Rajab Ali Hossaini. But then it left and again they were plunged into despair.
Australia could not delay a rescue any longer once those words appeared. Spencer saw ‘the people on board the vessel were holding up flags that read “SOS”, “Help” and were waving orange rags . . . it then became a marine search and rescue operation which was then handed over to the pilot.’
Australia’s Rescue Control Centre got the news ten minutes later, then spent another twenty hectic minutes trying to pressure BASARNAS—first by fax, and then through the defence attaché in Jakarta, calling him once again ‘to assist obtaining response from Indonesian search and rescue authority to coordinate response to incident’. At this moment, DIMA made an unprecedented attempt to interfere in a search and rescue operation, with a call to the Rescue Control Centre ‘asking if vessels that respond to Australian search and rescue broadcast can tow the stranded vessel to Indonesia’.
The call to shipping that might have been issued 18 hours earlier finally went out at 12.48 p.m., Canberra time: ‘Subject: Distress Relay. A 35-metre Indonesian type vessel with 80 plus persons on board adrift in vicinity of 09.32.5 south 104.44 east . . . vessel has SOS and HELP written on the roof. Vessels within 10 hours report best ETA and intentions to this station.’
Arne Rinnan’s response was automatic. He plotted a fresh course for the Tampa and calculated it would take four hours at full sea speed, 21 knots, to reach the Indonesian boat’s position. Then he acknowledged the Mayday. ‘We are on a voyage from Fremantle to Singapore via Sunda Strait,’ he told Australia’s Rescue Control Centre. ‘We have changed course and are headed for position of distress . . . Please advise further course of action. A Rinnan, Master.’
Rinnan was a salt-dried sailor with a sharp eye and a cocky sense of humour. He was one of the last of his kind to rise all the way through the ranks from deckhand to captain. After this voyage, only one more lap of the world awaited before retirement. At 61 he still cut a bit of a dash in a stiff white shirt and epaulettes. His bony Scandinavian face with a potato nose and a sweep of silver hair would soon be known around the world.
So would his practical, fractured English. But the recognition and honours coming his way so late in his career were not because Arne Rinnan was an absolutely exceptional mariner. He was a good man and a good sailor who had been a long time at sea driving cargo ships. He knew the rules and was not going to be bullied into breaking them. Rinnan was also backed by a determined company, for whom he had worked nearly all his career since joining the Wilhelmsen Lines Tennessee in 1958.
He did not seek permission from the line before changing course. He knew he was doing what the line expected, Norwegian law demanded and Australian rescue authorities requested: steaming to the aid of a vessel in distress. After two hours, he received a rather odd direction from the Rescue Control Centre: ‘Please note that Indonesian search and rescue authorities have accepted coordination of this incident.’ He tried and failed to get through to BASARNAS, yet this was clearly still an Australian operation because over an hour later a Coastwatch de Havilland Dash 8 appeared to guide the Tampa to the vessel, which still lay out of sight over the horizon.
Rinnan’s ship was a 44,000-tonne floating warehouse three city blocks long, with rust-red containers stacked six high on its weather deck. The Tampa was on a voyage through the East to China and Japan, on to North America and eventually home to Norway. On board was a crew of 27—Scandinavian officers and Filipino men— and a cargo of steel pipes, dried milk, food, timber and second-hand earth-moving equipment worth about $20 million.
The Tampa was not just a passing cargo boat. The Wilhelmsen Line had been a presence in Australia since the 1890s, when its ships began carrying wool to Europe. Its links with Australia were old and intimate. For most of the next century the Norwegian line was the third biggest shipper of Australian goods to Europe.
Arne Rinnan was still half an hour away from the Palapa when he saw a mirror flashing an SOS. The Coastwatch plane guiding the Tampa was now running low on fuel and radioed that it was returning to Christmas Island. Where should he land the survivors, Rinnan asked? The officer said he didn’t know and the plane disappeared over the horizon.
The Tampa slid alongside the Palapa sometime after 2.30 p.m. From the bridge, Rinnan looked down on a ‘20 metre, grey coloured, wooden vessel in poor condition with damage to stern and superstructure’. The upper deck was crowded with people. Some were throwing documents into the sea. Rinnan positioned his ship to shelter the Palapa from a fresh breeze and a two-metre swell. He would remain on the bridge all afternoon manoeuvring the Tampa with its thrusters to try to keep the two boats together.
Complicating the rescue was the need to keep the Tampa’s aluminium ‘accommodation ladder’ well above the Palapa to stop it being smashed to pieces as the little boat rose on the swell. The survivors would all have to be lifted to safety. In charge of the operation was the first officer, Christian Maltau, a bluff young Norwegian with a short, blond beard. With him at the foot of the ladder was a very strong young engineer, Kai Nolte, who lifted the first survivor—a child—to safety at 3 p.m. The rescue continued all afternoon to the rhythm of the swell. Nolte said after a while, ‘This is just like fishing.’
The survivors had to leave everything behind. ‘It would slow the rescue operation if everyone was going to bring their bags and suitcases and plastic bags and whatever, and also we were afraid of pirates and concealed weapons.’ Anything they brought to the foot of the stair was thrown back into the boat. A third sailor came down to join Maltau and Nolte so one could rest while two lifted. ‘The whole operation went very smooth,’ said Maltau. ‘No-one was injured.’
When lines to the Palapa kept breaking, Maltau jumped across and coiled ropes around the whole wheelhouse to secure the boat. He had a look around. The Palapa was disintegrating and what he saw left him with profound contempt for the smugglers. The cheap Chinese life jackets the adults were wearing had no whistles or lights, and would not keep an unconscious person’s head out of the water. There were none for children. There was no galley— just a few scraps of food in plastic bags. From the wheelhouse he souvenired an old box compass. Apart from that there was no navigational equipment at all. ‘No sextant, no log, no charts, no nautical publications, no electronic navigation devices, no GPS. They didn’t have communication equipment, no radio, no nothing. So finding Christmas Island from their position—which actually was pretty close—would be like finding the famous needle in the haystack, considering also the strong westerly monsoon current.’
The smugglers wouldn’t even invest in a global positioning satellite (GPS) system to get their passengers to the island. ‘You can go to Radio Shack and buy a $150 GPS receiver this big and that’s all it takes.’
As the tally of survivors kept rising, Oslo upgraded the rescue operation from ‘fairly substantial’ to ‘major’. No Wilhelmsen ship had ever been involved in a rescue on this scale. By the time the last person left the Palapa at 5 p.m., the fishing boat had disgorged 26 females (two pregnant), 43 children (the youngest about one year old) and 369 men. Total: 438. Maltau judged the hulk impossible to tow, so it would have to be abandoned with all the luggage: the survivors would be left with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs. Lost on the Palapa were boxes, bags, backpacks, medicines, documents, toys, clothes and shoes.
Pacing hot decks under the tropical sun over the n
ext few weeks, the survivors particularly regretted those lost shoes.
Footnote
This story is an extract from Dark Victory, by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2003), which tells the true and tragic story of the Tampa rescue and the refugee ‘crisis’, which became a major factor in the 2001 Australian federal election.
Just 28 of the asylum seekers on the Palapa were eventually accepted into Australia. Some were accepted into other countries, including New Zealand; 179 were sent back to Afghanistan, where as many as twenty have been killed by the Taliban in their homes and villages. Others have died trying to escape again.
‘At the Tide’s Will’
Roderic Quinn
When the tide came surging in
To the beach it bore
Drift-wood and brown weeds—
These—and nothing more!
As the stranded weeds and wood
Borne by the sea,
Tossed at the wind’s will,
Even so are we!
When the tide went out again
From the beach, it bore
Drift-wood and brown weeds—
These—and nothing more!
Little peace is ours indeed,
Little rest we know—
Weeds at the Tide’s will
Tossed to and fro!
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.
Martin Buber
Mystery of the Venus mutineers
ANTHONY BROWN
SAMUEL RODMAN CHACE WAS the much-relieved master of the brig Venus when she dropped anchor in Lagoon Bay, Port Dalrymple, at the mouth of the Tamar River, on the morning of 16 June 1806. The passage from Port Jackson (Sydney) to Van Diemen’s Land had been fraught with problems; stormbound for five weeks in Twofold Bay (Eden), the crew had turned unruly, clashing with the local Aborigines and, worse, stealing from the cargo.