The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru: Britain's Forgotten Wartime Tragedy

8 - The Long Swim: 2 October, p.m.

8The Long Swim: 2 October, p.m. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground - long heath, brown furze, anything . The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death. The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 1 At this moment, some 1,750153 British Prisoners of War were in the water. Non-swimmers unable to find anything to cling to disappeared first, but for those who could swim or who had adhered themselves to the plentiful flotsam, the situation - initially - seemed survivable. The sea temperature off Shanghai at the end of the summer is not unpleasant, the weather was calm, and initially most men were in sight of others. But it was now over an hour since the ship had sunk, and most men had been in the water for more than two; not a single one had yet been rescued. John Inglis: "To my relief I saw a Japanese Naval Officer throw a rope towards me. I swam towards it and with all my remaining strength began to haul myself up the side and reached the top and hung on grimly to rest before making the final attempt to gain the hoped-for safety of the rescue vessel. The Japanese Naval Officer disappeared but his place was taken by a soldier. 'Give me a hand' I begged and then to my surprise and horror, not to mention fear, he began to try to batter my hands. I swung from hand to hand, dodging the blows while I cursed him roundly. He stopped doing this, much to my relief, and I looked up as I saw a glint of a bayonet. This he fastened quite deliberately to his 94 THE SINKING OF THE LISBON MARU rifle and leaning over, he made every effort to bayonet me. I'd had enough and with a cry of 'bastard!' I pushed out and away and dropped once more into the sea." Bill Spooner: "There were a few Jap naval ships in the area and they threw life lines over the side. Some of the drowning men climbed up them. As they climbed, the Japs gradually lowered the lines to the sea again. If any of the POWs managed to reach the deck rails, a shot would ring out, and a body would fall into the water. After this, we kept clear of the Jap ships." Alf Hunt: "The ships were ofvarious sizes; one was steaming among the swimmers intent on running them down. None seemed to be making any attempt to pick up survivors, so I headed for land which could be seen in the distance." Time moved slowly, but eventually most of the Prisoners of War realized that as they had already been in the water for several hours, there was little likelihood that they were going to be picked up in a hurry. They continued to try to swim, or paddle themselves to the green and rocky islets they could see above the wave tops. They did not know it yet, but these were the easternmost islands of the Zhoushan Archipelago on the East China Sea outside Hangzhou Bay, to the northeast ofZhejiang Province. * * * The Zhoushan Archipelago is an oceanic maze of rugged islands, waves, and currents. China's leading fishing ground and the largest of China's offshore island groups, it consists of over six hundred islands ranging from small uninhabited outcrops to larger populated land masses. Their names evoke the sound of the spray of waves hitting rocky shores: Daishan, Liuheng, Jintang, Taohua, Zhujiajian. Zhoushan Island, the largest of all, has an area of 524 square kilometres. At the junction of warm and cold currents, the sea surrounding the islands is shallow and fertile, the outpourings of the Yangtze and Qiangtang rivers providing abundant sustenance for a wide variety of fish. Even today, the waters are famous for large and small yellow croakers, cuttlefish, and hairtails. With its scenic peaks and temples, Putuo Island is one of the four famous sacred hills of Chinese Buddhism, but at the south easternmost extent of the Archipelago are five distant, seldomnamed islands. These five, Huangxing Dao, Miaozihu Dao, Qingbang Dao, Xifu Shan, and Dongfu Shan - remote enough to form, between THE LONG SWIM: 2 OCroBER, P.M. 95 them, their own mini archipelago called Dongji - were about to witness the most tumultuous event in their long history.ls4 * * * In a seaborne...