It was October 3, 1955, Captain Thomas H. "Dusty" Miller embarked on routine merchant passenger run, leaving out of the capital city of Samoa, Apia. The ship was headed 210 miles (430 Km) to the Tokelau Islands. Onboard, the ship was 16 crew, 9 passengers, 4 tons of cargo, including medical supplies, timber, 80 empty 45-gallon oil drums, and various foodstuff.
Due to setbacks of the port engine and the clutch had failed but adequately fixed, the captain opting to leave with only one engine working. Even though there was only one engine and left a day late, the boat was still seaworthy.
The trip was expected to last only two days, arriving on October 5, 1955. It was declared overdue on October 6, 1955; it was thought that they encountered some difficulties or slowed down due to just one engine. Plus no distress signal was received. One day turned into five weeks without a word, during this time the Royal New Zealand Air Force launched an extensive search and rescue. They searched 100,000 square miles (260,000 km) with no sign of the vessel.
November 10, 1955, A captain aboard merchant's vessel Tuvalu spotted the Joyita off of Fiji Island, 600 miles off course. It was floating aimlessly, with no sign of anyone on board, the crew and passengers were missing, 4 tons of cargo, except for the empty oil drums. The ship's lifeboats were also gone, even though they were designed with distress beacons designed to be located quickly, they weren't found.
The ship was in poor condition, the flying bridge destroyed, windows smashed, and there was barnacle growth on the port side. The ship had obviously been listing rather heavily for some time. The large hole in the ship's' superstructure that led to heavy flooding of the lower deck, an awning made of canvas had been hastily set up over the deckhouse behind the bridge.
Once it was boarded there were other strange things, a doctor's bag on the deck filled with bloodied bandages, it was discovered that the ship's logbook and navigational equipment such as the sextant and chronometer, were missing, as well several firearms were also gone. The lights were all on in the cabin as well as the navigational lights. All the electrical clocks stopped at 10:25 possibly due to the generators shutting down. The radio on the ship was functional and set to the international distress channel, it had a two-mile range due to faulty wiring, but it appeared that no signal was sent.
The starboard engine inexplicably covered with mattresses in a misguided effort to plug the leak. There was heavy clogging of the bilge pumps rendering them useless, and the auxiliary pump was rigged up in the engine room to fight to flood but wasn't connected to any power source.
The mysterious circumstances surround this boat; there are more questions then there are answers. The only thing that was known was the reason for the leaking below deck; corroded pipe in the engine cooling system which had been fractured and flooded the bilges. It was determined that the amount of water would have made the ship's single-engine unable to gain enough speed to steer. The fuel tanks had a good amount of fuel, and the boat traveled around 243 miles before being abandoned possibly as early as the second night of the voyage.
Captain Miller was transporting passengers with an elapsed license and doing so was a direct defiance of the maritime law. He was found negligent for having decided to leave harbor with only one working engine. There weren't enough lifeboats on the ship to accommodate all the passengers. This means that their only choice was for many of them to take to the water with vests. Why would anyone opt to leave the vessel? The hull was intact even with extensive leaking in the lower deck. It was fitted for carrying refrigerated cargo, 640 cubic feet of cork lining the holds, making her virtually unsinkable, further buoyancy was provided by a cargo of empty fuel drums.
Those who knew Captain Miller said he would not willingly abandon his pride and joy. So with plenty of supplies, provisions, and water on board what happened is a mystery. It further deepens when a distress signal was never done. Why was the boat abandoned, risking the lifeboats, if the problem was merely the flooding in the deck of an otherwise seaworthy vessel?
There are many theories as to what happened on the boat. Captain Miller could have been killed or otherwise taken out of commission, leading to the rest of the crew perhaps panicking in the face of flooding; therefore abandoning the ship. Another possibility is the Captain and the first mate; Chuck Simpson came to blows, they had a strong dislike for each other and often were known to quarrel.
There were also suggestions of the boat was attacked by outside forces such as pirates, causing the crew and passengers to flee aboard the life rafts in a hurry or possible even slaughtered. There are also people who believe that it was captured by a Soviet submarine and the crew, passengers, were then kidnapped. Speculations that there were secret Japanese forces operating in the Pacific from some top secret island base after World War II being unaware that the war had ended. Several news publications in Japan reported that the ship had set upon by Japanese fishing a fleet and seeing something that they weren't supposed to see. This theory carries weight due to controversy in Fiji over Japan's operation of fishing fleets in their water.
Perhaps a mutiny due to fear. There are also theories of insurance fraud, the work of aliens, ghost, or some creature from the sea. Captain Miller was supposedly spotted alive in far-off places such as Singapore, West Indies, and Honolulu.
