After jumping ship, Dan Bolt shed his inflatable lifejacket and his clothes except for his black football shorts, an undershirt and light deck shoes. He spent the next two hours in the water, helping other sailors to life rafts, small boats and floating planks before fatigue set in. He had to tread water for half an hour before considering his alternatives. There were godforsaken small rock and volcanic islands within a few miles, with the infamous, never extinct volcano Krakatoa in the distance. He had heard others on rafts saying they were heading there. In the end, he considered he’d have a better chance of living if he swam to Java, an estimated 10 miles.
Bolt thrived on swimming races of 440, 880, 1500 and 5000 yards. He had exceptional lung capacity and an outsized heart, which doctors had told him was as big as a horse’s and lying on its side. He had another extraordinary physical feature, or abnormality. His webbed toes on each foot gave him exceptional kicking power, as if Bolt had a genetic throwback from an amphibian ancestor. He could hold his breath underwater for five minutes, which put him in the class of Harry Houdini, the great Hungarian–American escapologist.
Whatever the analysis, he loved the water. Before he joined the navy, and whenever he was on leave, Bolt swam every day near his Brighton beach, Melbourne, home, even in freezing winter weather. He had a powerboat; he sailed in yachting competitions with the Sandringham Club; and every second weekend in summer he rode a motorbike to Point Leo surf beach to volunteer his time as a lifesaver
Bolt was short at 5 feet 6 inches, but he had 16-inch biceps, never having pumped iron in a gymnasium or done any special labouring. He had won every distance swimming race he had ever competed in; the longer the better. His last big win was in a 5000-yard event in the Yarra River, Melbourne, in 1939, just before he gave up his veterinary studies to join the navy. He had yearned since a little boy to be on boats and in the navy, far more than in a vet clinic. It was his dream. That it coincided with war was incidental. The navy was where Bolt saw his future, his life.
Rough ocean conditions never made him fearful. They were a challenge. The bigger the wave when boating in Port Phillip Bay, the better. He loved the battle against the elements. In the decade he’d spent as a lifesaver at Point Leo, he had saved several hundred people from drowning, and on not one occasion did he feel he would die because of a drunken fool, or a manic individual. This certainty was mainly due to his physical strength. Bolt’s most outstanding and heroic act or acts as a lifesaver occurred not at Point Leo, but at a Port Phillip Bay beach at Dromana. He and his fiancée were enjoying a day trip when he was on leave in the summer of 1940. On the beach was a group of eleven mentally and physically handicapped people, who could not swim. A nurse led them out to a sandbar, to which they could walk and wade. The weather changed and a storm began brewing. A tide came in fast and trapped the group on the bar about 50 yards from the shore. The nurse and members of the group began screaming for help. Bolt dashed into the water. One by one he started swimming the stranded individuals to shore. After he managed to take six people to the beach, onlookers began screaming: ‘Shark! Shark!’
A 9-foot shark was circling in the deepened water around the sandbar. Bolt ignored pleas from his fiancée not to go on.
‘It’s a grey nurse,’ he said, breathing hard as he dashed into the swirling water. ‘They don’t take humans.’
That didn’t calm onlookers, his fiancée or those left on the ever-shrinking sandbar. Bolt carried on as he had most of his adult life in more dangerous surf beaches and got everyone, including the traumatised nurse, to safety.
After that super-human effort, he lay on the sand like a beached whale, recovering as the bar disappeared and the shark swam over it.
In his biggest water challenge since then, Bolt paced himself in the Sunda Strait, which was variously turbulent and swirling, more from passing ships than any other factor now the furious battle was long over. The currents were treacherous. If you fought them, as he could hear men in the dark doing, the eventual tiredness would pull you under. If you went with them limply, you could be dragged out to sea and become shark fodder, or simply give up and sink. Now Bolt used all his Point Leo surf beach experience of rips, which could at times defeat even the strongest swimmers. It was a matter of 20 yards in one direction to be hauled back 10 yards, with the occasional bonus of a 50-yard swim. He mainly did the overarm crawl, but added backstroke and, the least taxing of all, breaststroke.
He was covered in stinking black oil and doing the breaststroke allowed him to see and avoid oil clogging up his eyelids. It also helped him to see how close he was to land. He could see ship lights at a port. Lighthouse beams now and then swept the ocean. Bolt did not wish to be pushed into Japanese territory on Java, but he was at the mercy of the currents to an extent. It would be anyone’s guess where he might make shore.
As the hours ticked by, he began to succumb to fatigue, like any mortal, despite his special attributes. The thin fingers of dawn spreading over the ocean inspired him to kick on. He had managed to defeat the night, currents and any mental demons that seeped into his mind.
The dawn of a new day was a psychological lift.
After about seven hours in the water, he realised he would have to get ashore where he could, even if it meant capture. He struggled to keep clear of any port and rode a surging current that dumped him within 20 yards of a sandy beach.
At first, he could not stand. He stumbled and fell to his knees several times before crawling onto sand. He dragged his body up the beach and slumped onto his back. Bolt believed that this swim was the greatest physical challenge he’d ever overcome. His heart was thumping and his lungs heaving after seven hours’ exertion.
Bolt fell into a deep sleep for two hours. He awoke to the sounds of cries for help. His lips were parched. The sun was already beginning to burn his skin. He sat up. The reality of the night’s horrific events flooded his mind. He got to his feet and peered out to sea. He could see other survivors being swept along the coast, from about 1000 yards out to several miles. Some had rafts but the currents would not allow them to be manoeuvred into shore.
Then he noticed a man, covered in black oil, 200 yards from shore, waving his hands and in distress. Instinct overrode Bolt’s near-cramped legs and he hobbled down to the water. It was as if he were back at Point Leo in his one-piece swimsuit and cap tied under his chin. He didn’t hesitate. He dived into the foaming surf and swam hard to the man. He looked up 30 yards away. The man’s face was black. Bolt heard the plaintive cries for aid. Was it English? He swam closer. Bolt noticed the man was in a sailor’s suit.
It was not Australian or American or Dutch.
When he was just a few feet away, the man held a knife high and screamed in anger. He was Japanese. He swiped at Bolt who ducked underwater. He swam around behind the Japanese sailor, and gripped him with powerful arms, locking him in a half-Nelson hold. He jerked the man’s neck and head forward, and pulled him under. The enemy sailor let go of the knife in a desperate effort to free himself from the hard lock. Bolt dragged him down 2 yards to the ocean floor, and squeezed him until he struggled no more. Then Bolt surfaced.
The fight had taken less than two minutes.
He took a further two minutes to regain his composure and then dived to the ocean bottom again, searching for the knife. He found it a few yards from the limp body, which had already risen a few feet. Bolt swam to the sand again.
He slumped near the water’s edge, fatigued and in shock. For the first time he had killed another human being, in an act in which he had saved countless others. This time, instead of swimming the man to safety, and working hard to empty his lungs of water, he had fought to empty his lungs of air so that he was sure to take in water and die.
Bolt looked up as several aircraft flew overhead. He felt a pang of fear. Had he been spotted for his act of self-defence? The planes were too high. He could not tell if they were friend or foe. He found himself in the shallows trying to wash off the foul-smelling, cloying black oil while attempting to gather his wits. He shuddered at the thought of the Japanese learning he had killed one of their own.
Bolt looked around the beach. He needed food. The area was fringed with palms. Beyond them he could see yellow fronds. He walked to them and found they were coconut trees. Further on, about 30 yards, there was shimmering green sword-grass, then banana trees with light green fruit hanging low.
He found one coconut on the ground, and was happy for the 9-inch, serrated knife he had just retained. He had thought of it first as a weapon for his own defence. Now he used it to hack open the coconut. He drank the nutritious fluid, and sliced off its white, succulent flesh. Bolt shook another coconut from the tree and sat in the much-needed shade to feed again. Later he plucked a bunch of bananas but considered them too green to eat, except for one, which was hard but edible.
I’ve had worse breakfasts, he thought to himself.
He was distracted by the sight of a body floating near the water’s edge. It was that of his victim. Bolt shuddered at the thought, and wanted to move away. Just as he was contemplating going inland in the hope of finding Dutch soldiers, or even Australians, he saw movement in the water about 50 yards out. Bolt hesitated. If it were another enemy, he was not going in. He strode to the water’s edge.
‘Mate!’ came a cry, ‘Help! Mate!’
There was no doubt about the person’s nationality. Bolt hurried into the surf and swam to the man.
‘Don’t struggle,’ Bolt said, ‘let me take you in.’
Bolt followed the time-honoured lifeguard’s drill of getting behind the person so they wouldn’t drag the rescuer under. Bolt knew that in nine cases out of ten, the drowning person would struggle with the rescuer. There was no reason in the battle to survive, just instinct. And instinct was to grab hold of anything. Bolt kept talking coolly, never angrily.
Swimming on his back, with the man afloat and his head up, Bolt eased him slowly into shallow water. He put the man’s arm over his shoulder and helped him to the sand, where the man slumped. He began coughing up water. Bolt got behind him.
‘Relax your body,’ he ordered and applied moderate pressure to the man’s chest so that he vomited the sea water. Bolt repeated the act, gentler and gentler until there was nothing left in the man’s strained lungs. The man was wearing trousers, with one pant-leg shredded. It exposed a bruised and swollen knee.
Neither man said a further word for half an hour. After that time, the man sat up. He shook Bolt’s hand, firmly enough under the circumstances.
‘Thanks,’ he almost mumbled, with a depth of laconic Australian sincerity and brevity, which said so much.
They introduced themselves to each other.
‘I’m Al Bright, LS.’
Bright, a leading seaman aged 24 and of average height, had a completely shaven head, one of the few in the RAN who preferred his scalp denuded. His jut jaw and close-set eyes had earned him the nickname ‘Bulldog’, which he did not appreciate.
Bright looked Bolt over.
‘I know that T-bone chest,’ Bright said, indicating Bolt’s chest hair. ‘You saved Red Lead!’
‘Not really. That damned animal would have made the shoreline on its own.’
Bright’s face flickered a smile. His admiration for his saviour was building.
‘Did Collins get her off?’ Bolt asked.
‘Dunno, sir,’ Bright said. ‘The captain had ordered him to take the cat with him long before … long before last night.’ The pain of the memory of Perth’s demise surfaced. ‘I dunno if Collins made it.’ He paused and added, ‘I only know that you and me have made it. I saw plenty who didn’t.’
‘Boatloads will make it,’ Bolt assured him. ‘Besides, I reckon the Japs will pick up plenty.’
‘Dunno about that. A couple of their bloody destroyers nearly hit many of us last night.’ He thought again. ‘Although I did see one ship stop and send out searchlights, looking for bloody Nip sailors.’
Bolt helped Bright, also blackened with oil, to shade under palm trees. He knocked down two low-hanging coconuts and opened them for the new survivor. Bright was wolfing down the food when he noticed a body lapping on the shoreline. He got to his feet with difficulty.
‘Leave it,’ Bolt said. ‘It’s a dead Jap. We can bury him later.’
Not far from the Japanese sailor, a 6-feet-long skiff, with curved sides, had washed up. The two men examined it and decided it must have come from an enemy boat. There were scratch marks on the inside. Bolt took a closer look at something on the skiff’s floor. He prodded it with a small stick.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘That’s a small animal turd.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Pretty well. I’ve worked in vet surgeries and animal refuges and seen plenty.’
‘You don’t think … ?’ Bright said.
‘Red Lead? You are an optimist!’
‘I do look on the bright side, sir.’