Hundreds of sailors from Perth and Houston, along with Japanese from enemy boats, lay in the water looking up at the remaining vessels. Once the grand men on grander ships, they were now buoys bobbing, some helplessly, in the swirling sea of oil. Around them were scores of small rafts and lifeboats, some busted, others intact. Fire ripped across the ocean, fuelled by oil and loose wooden planks, and parts of the smashed ships. Men called out to each other. Some swore; others made crude, sarcastic jokes. This was the Aussie way of showing bravado or avoiding a hideous fear, the fear that they were all doomed.
Ships in the black night, made darker by the obscuring of the otherwise bright moon, bore down on the stranded survivors at a speed suggesting they didn’t care if men were run over. Then the sea was lit up by searchlights undulating over the uncoordinated human fish; some on rickety lifeboats and rafts, others gripping onto planks, tiny balsa wood squares and the solid little wooden boats similar to the one that had spirited Red Lead away. Oddly, those relying on little craft as swimming aids to their kicking legs were travelling more adroitly than the lifeboats, some of which carried twice as many men as they normally would. The currents were crisscrossing, some into the nearby island coasts, and that of Java about 11 miles away.
A Japanese destroyer, looking like a giant, galloping department store, bore down on the swimmers, who expected any moment to be drilled with machine-gun bullets. The destroyer stopped, its engines winding down. Immaculately white-suited Japanese sailors looked down from the deck. A few had binoculars.
A swimmer begged for help and was quickly abused by other Australians, who, it seemed, would rather drown in the suffocating oil than plead for assistance from the enemy.
Then a surprise. A Japanese officer with a loudhailer said in a well-modulated tone, probably from being stationed in Australia or the UK in the 1930s, ‘Who are you? Which country?’
‘Australians!’ a Perth sailor yelled back. ‘And bloody proud of it!’
‘We bloody good boys now, eh, Aussie?’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ a second Australian said, rather than yelled.
‘Couldn’t. His Jap dick would be too small,’ a third said, loudly enough to bring guffaws from those within hearing distance.
Japanese sailors could be seen manning machine guns. The Australians and Americans in the water wondered if they were going to be murdered. Spotlights roamed over the bobbing heads and waving hands, and the survivors realised the Japanese were only searching for their own men overboard. ‘The filthy fuckers are looking for their own fuckers!’ a disgruntled sailor, big of voice and small of thoughtful alliteration, yelled.
After another fifteen minutes, to the Allied men’s surprise and relief, the destroyer’s engine kicked to life and the ship was away, before stopping again a few hundred yards further on.
Other Japanese destroyers stopped and took more than a hundred Allied sailors out of the water. To their great shock they were treated humanely. The captured men were ordered to remove their dirty, oil-soaked garments and were given kerosene and cotton to clean themselves up. They were issued with G-string underwear, and fed with hard biscuits. Even cigarettes were passed around.
Salvation, it seemed, depended on the whim of the Japanese captain on any given ship, whether destroyer or troop carrier, now ploughing by to Javanese ports and unhindered by Allied fire.
Still in the water, hundreds of Allied sailors spread over 2 miles were struggling on, swimming or clinging to any small craft or debris they could find. Many who were injured, exhausted or not capable swimmers were drowning.
There were scores of enemy sailors doing the same, but everyone was intent on survival rather than futile fighting in the swirling oil-riven water. Spot fires on small craft and drift-wood made swimming in any direction hazardous.
Anyone thinking about making it to shore had first to negotiate the debris. If any sailors were strong and lucky enough to clear the smashed ships, they might encounter sharks. They were close to shore but keeping their distance, for the moment, from the detritus of war and the deadly hot choking oil.