It has been 50 years since the Blythe Star sank in Australia's unforgiving southern waters. Now, survivor Mick Doleman is telling the full story of how the crew lasted nearly two weeks in hostile seas, and helping give a voice to those who didn't return.
1.
Boarding the Blythe Star
On October 13, 1973, Mick Doleman was jolted awake while on the cargo ship Blythe Star.
The 44-metre-long steel coastal freighter was on a two-night voyage heading towards King Island off the north-west coast of Tasmania.
As the ship dipped to a 45-degree angle, Mick could see it was taking on freezing-cold water.
He knew it was a race against time to get a life raft free, otherwise no-one was going to survive.
The 10 crewmen scrambled into the 2.5-metre-round life raft as the vessel began to slip below the surface — Mick, who didn't have time to even get dressed, sat shivering in nothing but his jocks.
He would become part of one of the wildest and most unimaginable stories of survival in Australia's recent history.
Loading...For the love of the sea
Mick had recently met the love of his life, Joanie. She was a bridal shop worker he was smitten with and someone he never thought he'd actually win over.
With help from her family, Mick landed a first date — Joanie recalls it being at Pizza Hut as she had never had pizza before.
"When I did go out with Mick, I realised that he might be rough around the edges, but he was fun and he always makes you laugh," she says.
Before Mick met Joanie, he had envisaged his entire life would be lived on the high seas, hoping to be a seafarer like his dad.
Yet when he joined the 10-man crew of the Blythe Star in Hobart, he sensed things seemed a little off.
"I got down to the ship and there was no power. The ship was in complete darkness as I got there at night and they were all sitting in darkness," Mick says.
"They told me that for some reason, someone had pulled the power cord and thrown it in the drink, so they had to get divers down there the next day to get the shore power. It was a bit mad."
The ship departed Hobart on Friday, October 12 at 6.30pm.
Each of the crew took turns at the wheel overnight and as the sun came up Saturday morning, light drizzle fell while the ship navigated a gentle rolling swell.
Other crew members had already woken, including the cook Alf Simpson and World War II veteran Cliff Langford.
"I felt some pressure on me pushing me up against the bulkhead, which is the outer ship," Mick says.
In minutes he was thrown off his bunk as adrenaline pumped through his body.
Loading..."By this time the ship is at 90 degrees [angle], you're basically walking on the walls," Mick says.
The crew knew if they ended up in the cold water with nothing, they wouldn't have much hope of survival.
"All I could think of was what a miserable way to go — freezing cold water, a pair of jockettes on and nothing else. I was convinced I was gone ... well, we all would be gone."
With the ship quickly sinking, the crew realised one of their mates, Ken Jones, was missing.
Ken was down in his cabin and couldn't push it open due to the weight of the water on the other side.
He watched the water pouring into his cabin until the pressure equalised and he could force his way out, holding his breath and swimming for his life.
"It was one of the most spectacular sights I've ever seen with the ship [as it was] rising out of the water with the bow up in the air and then nothing at all," Mick says.
It took less than half an hour for the ship to sink.
All 10 crew members — George Cruickshank, Ken Jones, John Eagles, John Sloan, Stan Leary, Malcolm McCarroll, Cliff Langford, Mick Power, Alfred Simpson and Mick Doleman — made it out alive and were now sitting close to one another in a raft the size of a three-person tent.
Mick Doleman asked the captain, George Cruikshank, if they had portable radios, did they get a mayday out, or did anybody know where they were going — the answer for all three questions was no.
"The captain wasn't on the bridge, and had he been on the bridge there's every chance he could have got a mayday away or had gotten a message off before we sunk, we would have all gotten off and out," Mick says.
"The reality sort of sinks back into you, that we're still in a bit of shit and that this is going to be a much more serious set of circumstances that we're in."
2.
Lost at sea
The main thing on Mick's mind when he and the crew were bobbing in the water was that his new love Joanie might never know what happened to him.
What the crew didn't know was that the Blythe Star had almost rolled three months earlier and it had been recommended that deck cargo never be loaded to the weight it was when Mick climbed aboard.
It was cold and the crew shared the few clothes they had as Alf organised the raft's rations, which weren't much to write home about.
They were allowed one egg cup full of water a day, glucose powder and a couple of old, dry biscuits.
John Sloan, the second engineer, told the crew that if he wasn't picked up within two or three days he would be in trouble as he didn't have his medication for a thyroid condition.
But bad weather was coming.
George Cruickshank was semi-comatose, unable to paddle and sitting hunched over and silent.
During this time, first mate Ken Jones stepped up to lead the crew, becoming the glue that kept them together, especially when John Sloan began to fade in front of his shipmates' eyes.
It was his sixth day without medication and the group had increased his water ration to keep him alive, but even so he no longer knew what was going on around him.
Mick had never been near a dying man before.
"He just became super quiet and didn't talk or do much, he really wasn't well."
The next day at dawn, Mick knew John had gone.
Loading...The crew covered him as the sun came up and decided to keep him on board hoping they would be rescued soon, but as hours ticked by they realised they might never be found.
The men decided to give John a seafarer's burial, slipping his body over the side of the raft and into the sea.
The crew were struggling to handle the physical and psychological stress.
"One night all of us had a madness; I don't know what it was, but we had our tins of water and we opened them all and drank them," Mick says.
"We thought we were drinking beer and every one of us had the same imagination of the event."
There was no water left, they had drifted all the way around the southern tip of Tasmania, and only nine men remained.
They had to save themselves.
3.
Where have they gone?
Tony Parsey was the lighthouse keeper at Maatsuyker Island off the south-west coast of Tasmania, one of the wildest places on Earth.
On October 13 he was doing a last check when he saw a ship going past.
"I still remember that ship just like it was yesterday to be quite honest, and I was a bit astounded as to how low it was in the water as the waves were breaking over the bow," Tony says.
A few days later, a lighthouse keeper on Cape Bruny called to say he had received a message from Marine Operations in Canberra wanting to know if Tony had seen the Blythe Star go past the day before.
He said while there were no ships the previous day, one had passed days earlier.
Tony would be the last person outside of the crew to see the Blythe Star before it sank.
To worry or not?
The Tasmanian Transport Commission oversaw the Blythe Star and was responsible for its whereabouts, and the phones at the commission were now ringing off the hook.
Neil Batt, transport minister at the time, was given very little information about what had happened to the boat.
He and the Transport Commission hired a light plane and went looking for the ship themselves — they didn't spot a thing.
For the families involved, many heard about their loved ones via the news.
Robyn Simpson was getting ready for school when her mum took the call saying her dad Alf, the cook on the Blythe Star, was missing at sea.
At four o'clock that afternoon, Robyn got a card in the mail from her father. It was for her 16th birthday.
"When I opened it up, I just said, 'It's a birthday card from Dad', and here's this card and it's funny, it's got little kittens and bunny rabbits on it.
"Inside it said, 'Missing you, love Dad', and we all said, 'We're missing you too Dad'."
Alf had posted the card the day he sailed from Hobart.
For Mick's love, Joanie, she had started work for the day at the chemist when Mick's mum came to break the news to her.
The minute she finished work Joanie ran to Mick's place, which was full of family, friends and people from the union.
"It was an eerie feeling. Everybody had their own opinions about what could have happened and all the women, of course, they brought cakes and food," she says.
Loading...Where are the answers?
Young journalist Trevor Sutton had landed a story like no other, but getting any information was proving difficult.
Days after the Blythe's Star sinking, a search finally got under way — far too late according to Trevor.
The authorities mounted one of the most extensive air-sea searches ever conducted in Australia involving 14 aircraft, but they didn't really know where they were looking.
And lighthouse keeper Tony Parsey's sighting of the ship was discounted.
The search found no trace of the missing ship or crew. They were left for dead.
4.
Searching for land
Mick Doleman and the crew were still floating aboard the life raft when Ken Jones spotted a fishing boat. He decided to light a flare, burning his hand and forearm in the process but lighting up the sky.
By now the raft had floated towards the Tasman Peninsula, a finger of land off Tasmania's south-east known for Mother Nature at her wildest.
Back on land, Joanie spent most of her days in Mick's family living room which was usually packed with friends all holding onto hope.
Loading...Nine days after sinking, the remaining crew washed into Deep Glen Bay, an austere place surrounded by vertical rock faces.
"We ended up being washed up on the rocks. I jumped into the water, because we were that close to the rocks, and Mick Power also jumped in and we pulled the raft up onto the rocks," Mick says.
"We kept collapsing … our legs had lost their functionality because we were in a rubber raft for all those days."
Along with the other eight crewmen, Mick crawled ashore.
Loading...They spent hours trying to scale the vertical rocks and push through the scrub to get out of the pit of the bay.
"I ended up coming back as I just couldn't get anywhere," Mick says.
Some of the crew thought they should get back into the raft and find somewhere else to land, but Mick wasn't having a bar of it — he got out a knife and cut it up.
Loading...Waking up to loss
Time was running out and their bodies were shutting down.
Ken Jones, the man who had kept them all going, passed away looking out to sea.
"He'd died of exhaustion, and he was our stand-out leader. That bloke was the last I would have rated to die at Deep Glen Bay. I was so shocked he died, it was really, really sad," Mick says.
While Mick tried to comprehend what had happened, he spotted chief engineer John Eagles near the water … he too had passed.
"We knew if we don't get help, there's going to be more of these blokes dead in the next few days," Mick says.
"Alf, Malcolm McCarroll and myself had a bit of a chat and we said we're going to walk out, and we'll keep going to the point that we'll either die trying or get help."
5.
Courage like no other
As logging contractor Rod Smith finished work on October 24, he checked the radiator of his bulldozer like he did at the end of each day.
On that day, he dropped the radiator cap and spent half an hour looking for it before giving up.
Rod hit the road in his red Ford D800 truck, made the steep climb out of the bush and was surprised to see three gaunt, haggard men at the side of the road.
Loading..."Mick said to me, 'You're not going to believe me but we're off the Blythe Star'," Rod says.
When Rod told them that the authorities had given up on them, Mick, Malcolm and Alf were dumbfounded — they expected people to still be searching.
That half-hour Rod spent looking for the radiator cap was the difference to saving the seven remaining crew.
He took the men into the little country town of Dunalley, straight to the police station, but no-one was there so they tried the post office.
The postmistress helped Rod contact the police and fed and clothed the men.
An ambulance came for the men as Rod headed back to town in his truck.
"I started thinking the whole thing through and I thought, well, they're tough bastards," he says.
News for the families
The day before Alf Simpson's memorial, his daughter Robyn left school early.
She had a feeling she needed to be home, and the minute her brother dropped her off she heard the phone ring.
Loading...She didn't know what to do at first, so she rang her mum who fainted when she told her. Robyn then went out into the street yelling:
"My dad's alive, my dad's alive."
Joanie was working at the chemist when a telegram arrived.
Her mum had rushed out of the hairdressers with her hair half done, half wet to see if she'd heard the news that the crew had been found.
Then Mick called her.
"I burst into tears. I couldn't believe it," Joanie says.
"He's going, 'It's OK, it's OK, I'm all good, I'm fine'. I said, 'Are you sure you're OK?' And he said, 'Yep, no, I'm fine and I'll be home soon'."
6.
Coming home
Journalist Trevor Sutton was getting word the crew had been found but he needed confirmation from police.
He remembers how invasive the media were to the survivors.
"It was a terrible sight. The man that was sitting on my side, he had something wrong with his feet, his skin was funny, it was blotchy and things ... they didn't look well, certainly didn't look well."
After a few days the men who were in better shape were allowed out of hospital with clothing bought for them by the Transport Commission.
It was then that Mick was able to meet Joanie again.
"It felt like forever waiting for him to come to drive into the driveway, and when he arrived I opened the door and I was shocked at how skinny he was," Joanie says.
"I do remember grabbing Joanie and giving her a big kiss," Mick adds.
Alf's welcome home was similar; his family put on a party and his friends turned up with a bunch of receipts for the suits they had dry-cleaned for his memorial service.
"He paid for their dry cleaning and months later he paid for his own death notice; not many people can do that," Robyn says.
For the family of chief engineer John Eagles, it wasn't such a celebration.
His family were waiting for his body to be released so they could organise his funeral and for son Mark to say goodbye.
"When someone dies, that's a completely different scenario," he says.
"We were ecstatic that other members of the crew had survived, but on our side, we've got death and mum and us were left to fend for ourselves."
For the families of the three men who died, a years-long battle for compensation began, fighting the Transport Commission for a fair sum for what their lives were worth.
The surviving men had to attend an inquiry to determine what had happened, but if you ask Mark Eagles, it came down to one thing.
"The ship was overloaded with deck cargo and as a consequence of that, dad lost his life."
Loading...Life goes on
Mick continued to live his life at sea, but the size of the boat would always be a consideration for him — he dedicated the next 50 years of his life to securing better rights and safety for seafarers.
"I hope people think of me as a man of endurance who had to do what happened to save his life and fellow shipmates' lives," he says.
Joanie and Mick are still together today.
"He's my best friend, I still love hanging out with Mick, and plenty of nights we'll sit at home and have a drink and chat, turn some music on — I love being around him," Joanie says.
And as the only crew member still alive to tell the tale, Mick hopes people remember the story of survival.
"I didn't talk about it earlier for years and years because it was such a difficult period," Mick says.
"I didn't want to be seen to be a storyteller, and that would seem to me to be disrespectful.
"I'm a reasonably modest man. I don't look for fame or any of that caper. I just want to do the right thing and I think I have up to this point."
Credits
- Words: Jessica Hinchliffe and Piia Wirsu
- Illustrations: Sharon Gordon
- Audio production: Grant Wolter
- Digital production: Adam Connors
- Researcher: Helen Shield
- Images: Helen Shield, Liz Gwynn, Piia Wirsu, Archival, ABC
- Additional production: Liz Gwynn and Helen Shield
- Editor: Daniel Franklin