Dive Into History

On a dark, stormy night on Oct.14, 1944, the 7,000-tonne Japanese supply ship, the Eikyo Maru, was steaming North-east from Labuan towards the Palawan Passage. She was the biggest in a convoy of a dozen warships rushing to the Philippines to play a part in what was to be the Battle of Leyte - the biggest naval battle in history.

Meanwhile, the American submarine, the USS Dace was prowling the waters just north of Sabah, near a cluster of islands called Mantanani, when its sonarman hushed the crew. The periscope went up.

Barely visible in the heaving seas against the night sky were the prickly silhouettes of several destroyers. Mine-carrying escorts that were looking to turn American subs into oil slicks. The target was set; the torpedoes loaded.

When the USS Dace crept into firing range at 5 miles, the silent torpedoes were fired. A very long minute later, one torpedo struck the hulking mass of the Eikyo Maru broadside, disembowelling her. She sank almost immediately. The other torpedo found one of the destroyers and delivered a fatal blow to her stern. She limped on for another mile, capsized and sank, too.

In those dying months of WWII, no exact records were kept of sinking locations. Only rough co-ordinates were entered into the captain's logbook. The USS Dace went on to play an important role for the remainder of the war.

In time, her sinking of the Eikyo Maru, one of the Japanese fleet's biggest supply ships, soon became a forgotten footnote in a theatre of war that saw thousands of similar encounters.

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In 1998, something happened that can only be described as synchronicity. A young English marine biologist, Gilly Elliott, came to run a small dive resort next to a Bajau village on Mantanani's main island.

The Bajau, she came to learn, are sea gypsies who may technically be Malaysian but are very proud of their own language and independence, gleaning a living from the sea.

As she got to know some of the older fishermen on the island, they told her of one of their favourite fishing grounds. The area is haunted, they say, lies well out to sea, but is home to massive shoals of fish. The only trouble is, their nets often get caught on 'something' down there.

Gilly also heard rumours of Japanese treasure buried among these islands. And almost as if to prove it, old Japanese coins can be found in most homes as jewellery or charms. There is even a story among the highly superstitious Bajau of a cursed silver object (they have never revealed to Gilly exactly what it was) that was sold last year by a greedy villager to the Philippines up north.

A few days later, a typhoon struck the island with a fury that caused widespread damage and destroyed some houses. Gilly was intrigued.

Around the same time, she came across a tattered old book called "Cruisers for Breakfast" by John G. Mansfield Jr. It just happened to be an account by two USS Dace veterans of their sinking of the Eikyo Maru, among others!

In this little-known retelling, they gave the approximate co-ordinates of their encounter on that fateful night nearly 60 years before. Their co-ordinates matched the description of the old Bajau fishermen...