Escape from Singapore

Captain Paul Henson, Master of the ‘Pacific Trader’ knew that Singapore harbor was not the place to be with the Japanese Army taking all before it as it made its way relentlessly down the Malayan Peninsula towards Singapore in the later part of 1941. World War II had now commenced in the Pacific with a violence not previously experienced. His attempt to escape the Japanese by navigating the ‘Pacific Trader’ South out of Singapore Harbour towards the Lombok Straits was fraught with danger which quickly became a reality when a Japanese Submarine blew the ‘Pacific Trader’ apart, leaving only two survivors to make it ashore on the Sumatra Coast. Being thrown together by circumstances with two other survivors from another torpedoed boat, a beautiful Australian Army Nursing Sister and a lovely young Malaysian woman fleeing the Japanese, and using radio equipment salvaged from a coastal boat wreck, they inadvertently became Coast Watchers for the remainder of the war. From these dangerous and unusual circumstances love was to blossom and reach its climax as a total commitment in the early post-war years.