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MV Joyita was an American merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared in the South Pacific in October 1955.

She was found adrift with no one aboard. The ship was in very poor condition, with corroded pipes and a radio which, while functional, had a range of only about 2 miles (3.2 km) because of faulty wiring. However, the extreme buoyancy of the ship made sinking nearly impossible. Investigators were puzzled as to why the crew had not remained on board and waited for help.

MV Joyita was a 69-foot (21.0 m) wooden ship built in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for movie director Roland West, who named the ship for his wife, actress Jewel Carmen — joyita in Spanish meaning "little jewel". In October 1941, two months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joyita was acquired by the United States Navy and taken to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she was outfitted as yard patrol boat YP-108.

About 5:00 AM on 3 October 1955, Joyita left Samoa's Apia harbour bound for the Tokelau Islands, about 270 miles (430 km) away. Joyita was scheduled to arrive in the Tokelau Islands on 5 October. A search-and-rescue mission was launched and, from 6 to 12 October, Sunderlands of the Royal New Zealand Air Force covered a probability area of nearly 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) of ocean, but no sign of Joyita or any of her passengers or crew was found. Five weeks later, on 10 November, Gerald Douglas, captain of the merchant ship Tuvalu, en route from Suva to Funafuti, sighted Joyita more than 600 miles (970 km) west from her scheduled route, drifting north of Vanua Levu. Although Joyita was found with her bilges and lower decks flooded, her hull was sound and once the water was pumped from her hull she floated on a stable and even keel and was easily towed into harbour at Suva.

It found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry." An especially perplexing point was that the three liferafts Joyita carried were missing, but it would not make sense for the crew and passengers to voluntarily abandon the vessel. While flooded to an extent which would sink a conventional vessel, Joyita stayed afloat due to her cork-lined hull and cargo of fuel drums.

Given the fact that the hull of Joyita was sound and her design made her almost unsinkable, a main concern of investigators was determining why the passengers and crew did not stay on board if the events were simply triggered by the flooding in the engine room.

However, tests on the knives proved negative and it turned out the knives were old and broken - quite possibly left on board from when Joyita was used for fishing in the late 1940s.

However, it would have been difficult to see the events surrounding Joyita as insurance fraud, given that no seacocks were found open and the ship would be almost impossible to scuttle.

A subsequent owner of Joyita, British author Robin Maugham, spent many years investigating the vessel's past, and published his findings as The Joyita Mystery in 1962. Maugham proposed that they sighted a nearby island or reef and tried to reach it, but in the strong winds and seas the rafts were carried out to sea, leaving Joyita drifting and empty.

In July 1956, Joyita was auctioned off by her owners for £2,425 to a Fiji Islander, David Simpson (no relation to Chuck Simpson). Joyita again ran aground on a reef in November 1959 at Vatuvalu near Levuka.

Quick Facts

• Investigators were puzzled as to why the crew had not remained on board and waited for help.
• She was found adrift with no one aboard.
• A subsequent owner of Joyita, British author Robin Maugham, spent many years investigating the vessel's past, and published his findings as The Joyita Mystery in 1962.
• The ship was in very poor condition, with corroded pipes and a radio which, while functional, had a range of only about 2 miles (3.2 km) because of faulty wiring.
• While flooded to an extent which would sink a conventional vessel, Joyita stayed afloat due to her cork-lined hull and cargo of fuel drums.

Source material: Wikipedia - "MV Joyita". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.