The sixteen people on the launch included one woman, two middle-aged men who were not expected to do much work, three Naval Reserve Officers and a rating. The rest were men from various Government Departments. Not an impressive list for crewing any vessel on the high seas.

As for my galley job, my principal qualifications were that I knew how to work a Primus stove. Vic Smith helped me to keep those going. The galley was well stocked, the variety of menu surprising, and we set to on preparing a meal.

We had not gone far - just into the swell of the open sea - when the wooden minesweeper began to give trouble, and the tug skipper decided to abandon her. We hove-to until the tow lines had been cast off, then the other vessels made fast as the minesweeper drifted away astern. From our position at the end of the tow we could see the other craft bobbing about like corks, the towlines slackening and then pulling taut, the craft sitting on the top of a swell, then jerking forward and seeming to stand still until the next wave lifted them to pull on the lines again. Progress was painfully slow, about four knots.

Darkness fell, and we took to our watches. There was a look-out in the bows, one amidships, and one at the stern. The officers took watches at the helm. There was of course no engine. Lights were forbidden. The one small cabin was occupied by the woman and a deaf old man. Most of the deck space was occupied by water barrels and drums.

In the darkness the burning Island could be seen, flames fringing the coastline and bursting into sudden flashes of yellow light as another oil tank or store building caught alight. I thought of the petrol storage tank my colleague and I had opened up to discharge its contents into the surrounding bund. To this day I have been troubled by the thought that our act led to the harbour installation going up in flames.

It was like sailing away from Hell. And what Hell it was, according to later reports; for the Japanese had taken Tengah airfield, northwest of Bukit Timah, on the fateful 9 February, and shortly afterwards they established their HQ at Bukit Timah, having converged to that point from their beachheads on the west coast and from the Causeway. So our little PWD detachment working on roads in the rubber had in fact been located right in the area to which the Japs had headed. All in eight days.

After the evening meal I sat in the stern, chin in hands, and remembered. Just over a year ago I had stepped onto the lovely island of Penang and into a new life. Full of hope and ambition, I had worked and studied and set up house ready for the end of the first tour of duty, so that I could marry and settle down to a career in the East; with all my books, lecture notes, my clothes, the gifts I had saved from childhood, my photographs, everything ready for that time. And in the old Chevrolet parked at Thorneycroft's slipway there was a parcel of souvenirs which I had started to accumulate ready for my first leave.

The thought of the car reminded me that I still had the ignition keys in my pocket. I took them out and tossed them, perhaps a little dramatically, into the sea.

Then something happened. Sitting on the deck of that small craft somewhere in the Straits of Singapore, in the cool night air, the sky dark save for the dull red glow of Singapore burning, I came to terms with life and established the foundations for my personal philosophy. None of the goods left behind meant anything any more. By and large, they could be replaced. They were materials for living, necessities and luxuries, but they were nothing in comparison with what I had on that small launch. For I had my health and strength, my freedom, and the will to live. So simple, so fundamental, - so childlike.

By middle watch the launches were riding a heavy swell, and the cases in the galley and cabin were sliding and bumping against the bulkheads with rhythmic thuds. With no engine, there was the uncanny sensation of gliding noiselessly except for the thuds below deck, lifting and falling, rolling and pitching in the silent sea on a moonless night.

I was on the middle watch, keeping amidship, patrolling port and starboard sides within call of watches fore and aft. A rating on the forward watch asked me to tell the skipper that the tow lines were surging, and I passed on the message. Examination in the darkness revealed nothing amiss; I was relieved of my watch and went to sleep on deck, my feet pressed against the rail so as not to slide overboard.

We were jolted back to wakefulness by the skipper. The Panglima was bumping about, boards creaking, crockery smashing below, the small vessel heaving and pitching in the swell.

"Get your kit together; the tub's going down and we shall have to go onto the forward launch" shouted the captain.

As we scrambled round, collecting what we could, we learned that the launch was opening up at the bows under the strain of the tow, and the forward capstan was carrying away, pulling the timbers with it.

We hove to, and the forward launch was carried nearer to us by the swell. Somebody threw a line and it was hauled aboard and made fast.

"Have you a heavy line there?" called the sub-lieutenant in charge of the forward launch. "None except the four on the tow" replied our skipper. "Then we'll have to pass you the anchor chain, we've nothing else."

They hitched the line to the chain and we hauled it across and made fast to a bollard.

The gap between the two vessels was about fifty feet. It would be necessary to pull in the anchor chain until the space between us was narrow enough for the woman and the older men to jump across. Half a dozen of us took hold of the chain and hauled. We had about five feet of width in the bows for standing room, and no footholds.

For ten minutes or so we heaved and strained at the clumsy chain, pulling in quickly as the swell narrowed the gap between the launches, and holding on grimly when they fell away. The chain tore at our hands and jerked at our arms as if to tear them from their sockets. A rating took up the slack on the bollard, and the vessels crept closer. Once the sailor's hand was caught in the chain, and we had to heave madly to keep the bight slack until he could pull himself free.

At last the launches were within a few feet of each other, and one of our men jumped across the heaving gap to help on the other craft. He mistimed his jump, and just managed to grab a corner post on the stern of the launch with one hand, to be pulled aboard by his coat and shoulders.

The small items of luggage were thrown across, then we took turns at jumping across the varying gap onto the six feet or so of the deck at the stern of the forward vessel. A dinghy occupied that part of the deck, so that we had to jump into that. Incredibly we all got across unhurt, and about five o'clock the last man opened the Panglima's sea cocks and cut her adrift to sink.

As the foundering launch fell away, the lieutenant who had commanded her down Malaya's western coastline and who had tried so hard to keep hher out of the hands of the Japanese, called in farewell; " Well, good-bye, Panglima, by God!"

Daylight next day - Thursday - allowed us to explore our new launch. She was almost ready for the sea, with engines partly installed and other fittings in position. There was even a refrigerator, empty.

The skipper of this vessel had had no time to victual it. There was a little corned beef, a few tins of condensed milk, about thirty small hard biscuits and half a tin of jam. We had about three gallons of drinking water. The scuttled Panglima had had enough food and drink for everybody. We had no idea how the other boats were fixed, but would have had to heave to again to get anything from them.

We agreed to work out rations. One meal a day, each of the twenty-two on board to get one biscuit covered with corned beef and one with jam. The daily drink would be a quarter of a cup of water with a quarter cup of condensed milk. That would last three days.

Then somebody suggested that the water tanks might be full. After a great deal of fiddling we loosened a circular plate on the deck, and sure enough the water was there, but it would have to be bailed out by the cupful. Still, it was there.

The towing tug had turned south, and soon the coast of Sumatra came into view. We were making better speed with the lightened tow load; we all felt cheerful and optimistic.

On our port quarter in the distance we could see a convoy of ships, and we watched it bear down on our slow-moving line of three. They drew up on our port beam, a quarter of a mile away, steaming steadily towards Sumatra. They had a cruiser and a destroyer escorting them.

Then the Japanese aircraft appeared. They dived on the convoy, and were engaged by the escort vessels, but still they came, diving steeply and releasing their bombs. The convoy broke up as the two warships gave battle, disappearing in vertical walls of spray and reappearing as the bombers climbed away. We lay in the scuppers and wished the convoy had not been so near to us. Then the bombers flew off after circling briefly, but two of them dived over us to see what we were up to. We weren't up to much - just about four or five knots, with no sign of activity aboard - not worth so much as a burst of gunfire. The two Japs divided and flew off.

We had not gone much further when we came upon a Malay fisherman's house standing in the water, an attap shack with four thin legs. It was so far from land that we examined it closely as we drew near. Suddenly somebody called out "There are Europeans there!"

At the entrance to the shack, by the top of the tangga, were several khaki-clad figures. A launch was tied up to one of the posts. The men waved to us, and two of them came across in the fisherman's sampan.

The tug and its vessels in tow had hove to, and the men came aboard. In the meantime the tug skipper had worked out his supplies of fuel and water. He had used two thirds of his bunkers and had come one third of the way to the next port where he could refuel.

The skippers of the three vessels agreed to abandon the tow and to cut the launches adrift. They would be rammed, and we would all finish up on the tug.

We transferred all we could, jumped aboard the tug, and rammed the launches after taking their machine guns and opening their sea-cocks. There were forty six people on board, including the woman and two old men, Naval Officers and ratings, engineers from Thorneycrofts and United Engineers, and Government officers ranging from architects to accountants.

Once aboard, we were able to find out a little more about the tug and its crew. The vessel was an ocean-going tug from Port Swettenham on the West coast of Malaya, and its skipper was a Port Swettenham Pilot. The crew comprised almost entirely survivors from the ill-fated Prince of Wales and Repulse. There was plenty of food aboard, but only enough fresh water for drinking and cooking.

Once more someone decided that I was suitable for the galley, and to my subsequent delight I found that I was to assist a youngster from the Prince of Wales. He was a chirpy Welshman with a permanent sniffle. His sniffs involved nostrils, lips and lungs; a less sibilant and more vocal sniff would have been a snort. He enjoyed having an older man as his scullion, and I enjoyed his antics and nasal punctuations. We were firm friends in no time.

All the younger men were summoned to the bridge, where the skipper gave us a clear statement on the situation. Three ratings had been on continuous stoking duty all the way from Singapore, and they were all in. We would have to take our watches in the stokehold.

As far as I was concerned, there was first the job of preparing a meal for all aboard. Snifty - his real name was David - prepared tinned potatoes, tinned meat, vegetables and soup. There was tea, coffee, cocoa, and malted milk. The galley was about a yard square, and there was a coal oven across the far wall. The steel cubicle was like an oven itself, and as we entered it the heat hit out at us and brought instant beads of perspiration to our faces and arms.

When my stokehold watch came round, I stripped to the waist and went below. I had never been in a stokehold before, and had no idea about the stoking duties.

The tug was designed for heavy work over short periods, and it had huge engines, but only three fire-holes. On a continuous run the boilers were far too small for the cylinders, and a great deal of hard work was needed to maintain a pressure of even 100 lbs. per square inch. For most of the time the gauge showed about 50 lbs. The fires ate up the fuel as fast as it was shovelled in.

A rating from New Zealand, with experience of stoking, was on the watch with me, and he showed me how to go about things. I can use a shovel with either hand, which was useful in the cramped stokehold, but the rest I had to learn.

To me the worst part of stoking was the slicing; the long chisel-like bar had to be slid down between the firebars to loosen the slag and stir the fire. The bar had to be slid all the way to the back of the fire, so that at the end of the stroke the stoker's face was within a foot or so of the door.

No air came down the ventilator shafts, and we were very soon covered in perspiration, to which clung the fine hot dust from the ashes which we had to rake out of the ash-holes. We drank copiously from the bucket of dusty water provided, and went above for fresh air once an hour.

After my stokehold watch I washed as best I could in salt water, then returned to my job in the galley. The only place to sleep was on the bare deck, with a coil of rope if you were lucky.

All this was done on the Equator in breathless weather, with no chance of a proper bath, nowhere to sleep or cool down properly, and no proper food to maintain strength for the next watch; and it was marvellous.

As night fell we were doing six or seven knots, sailing south off the Sumatra coast, with our fuel running out. But we were getting somewhere, doing something. We had to rely on our own resources; we were free.

The comradeship amongst us was wonderful, our spirits high. We sat around the cook's table listening to the lower deck version of the sinking of the Prince of Wales according to Snifty. Mealtimes produced quips and jokes as we dished up the dreadful stew of bully beef and potatoes washed down with tea laced with a saturated solution of sugar and condensed milk. The enamel plates had to be washed hurriedly for use by the next man, and the older men were the washers-up. They had to learn how to fill a bucket with seawater. When a bucket is lowered on a rope it bounces on the water and refuses to fill. Then at last it tips over and fills, almost wrenching the arm with the resistance to the current; and the trick is to get it out of the water before it is struck on its side and empties again.

We all learned a lot on that overcrowded tug.

The next day was Friday the 13th. To the superstitious that was likely to be the day for our luck to desert us. One pessimist worked out that we were to have another Friday the 13th in March.

The day was in fact almost uneventful. The Captain took the tug to Bangka Island, which is a large island lying off the northeast coast of the southern end of Sumatra, in the hope of obtaining fuel. He was told we could not refuel there, so he turned westwards towards Sumatra and the Palembang river.

As we approached the mouth of the river a Dutch patrol launch ran out to meet us and led us over the minefield to safety. We dropped anchor and spent the night sleeping, no stoking or submarine watch or cooking in the hot galley to disturb our slumbers.

Dawn was breaking as light rain wakened us from deep sleep. Our skipper spent half an hour ahoying the officer aboard a Pilot vessel anchored nearby. At last he came aboard, and we got under way upriver towards Palembang.

The ten miles or so of the river to Palembang was fringed with swamp and palms and Malay dwellings on each bank. Fishermen waved to us from their sampans as they passed on their way to the fishing grounds. The river flowed sluggishly, carrying with it grass and earth from the swamps and refuse from the dwellings.

A siren wailed distantly ahead, then somebody called out "They're here, coming straight for us!" We lay down in the scuppers and craned our necks to see.

Three huge aircraft were gliding quietly downstream along the east bank, at a height of a hundred feet or so. They were flying towards the mouth of the river from inland. We heard distant machine-gun fire, but saw no other aircraft.

A Dutch merchant vessel bore down on us from our port quarter. As the ship drew up on our beam one of its officers hailed us.

"Is there anything wrong there?" he asked us in moderate English.

"No, but there's an air raid on," replied our skipper gratuitously, not intending to be funny.

"Look out for paratroops; the Japanese flag is flying on the east bank downstream" warned the Dutchman.

"Thankyou very much" was all our skipper said, but it was a gem of phlegmatic dialogue which made us laugh.

A little further upstream one of our men drew attention to an RAF plane which had fallen into the swamp on the west bank. Then suddenly we saw something moving in a tree. It was the pilot, waving to us for help.

A boat was put out, and the pilot came aboard. He was a Scotsman aged about twenty two. He told us that there had been a 'big scrap' over the aerodrome, and he had had to make a forced landing owing to lack of fuel. Another fighter had crashed not far away, landing upside down. He said he hadn't been to see what had happened to the pilot, but he was sure he was dead. Blunt speech disguised his emotions.

We reached Palembang and tied up at a wharf on the west bank. There was no coal there; we would have to cross to the east side of the river.

The tug crossed over and tied up at the other wharf. When we went ashore we were told the story of the Paratroops. The Japs had landed parachutists on the oil refinery, and their planes had landed on the aerodrome. Dutch and British forces were trying to round them up, but the situation was grave. The Police urged us to take the train to Oosthaven that evening, and to let the tug go, for we could not hope to get downstream and out to sea again.

It was agreed that the tug's Naval officers and ratings would remain behind to take the tug out should the Japs be cleaned out. The rest would go by train as suggested.

We took our baggage to the station and were met by a young Police Officer, who gave us tickets and saw us aboard. The station was crowded with Dutch women and children being sent away for safety, and with Javanese and Eurasian families. Several Dutch and Javanese Volunteers in their green uniforms and German-style helmets - were saying goodbye to wives and children. The atmosphere was charged with emotion.

The train started at 7.15 pm, and we relaxed. We were unwashed, filthy, unshaven, reeking of sea salt and soot and sweat. Our clothes were black from the stokehold, and had not been changed since we left Singapore.

Several young Dutch women shared the railway coach with us, and in spite of language difficulties we developed some sort of conversation. Soon we were being regaled with cigarettes and chocolates, recounting our experiences, relaxing and even cracking jokes in the friendliest of atmospheres. The young policeman bought cigarettes and sweets when the train stopped at a station.

Eventually we were dozing off, and I was glad to stretch out on the floor. When I awoke it was dawn and still miles from Oosthaven.The train had stopped at several places to pick up troops and RAF personnel. A squadron had arrived from the Western Desert and had disembarked at Oosthaven a few hours earlier. They were heading for Palembang aerodrome, but were being sent back because it had fallen to the Japanese.

The train journey took fifteen hours, and we arrived in Oosthaven at ten o'oclock on Sunday. A large Dutch liner was in dock, and troops were off-loading their Bren gun carriers, trucks, anti-aircraft guns and equipment. We felt sure that they were going straight into the enemy's bag.

Dutch police met us at the quay, and we were told that our train was the last to leave Palembang, which was now in Japanese hands. Our young police officer escort could not go back, and he had only the clothes he wore. He decided to come with us to Batavia. We went aboard as soon as the troops had disembarked, and the liner sailed at five o'clock.

The passengers on that voyage were the strangest possible assortment. American Oil company men, Dutch of all stations, ragged, dirty Englishmen, clean Europeans, poor Javanese families huddled on deck near the galley, wounded men on stretchers, soldiers, evacuees, escapees, filling the decks and cabins. We were on the same deck as the Javanese, and we queued for food at the galley.

The food was atrocious. Curry and rice; strong tea in filthy cups, or reheated coffee with condensed milk. Meat awaiting preparation was blackened and covered in dust, vegetables were rotten, fish was stinking. Water was obtained from a communal tap on deck.

The ship tied up at Tanjong Priok, port of Batavia, on the afternoon of the following day, but there were so many passengers that the Customs and Immigration officials were overwhelmed, and we did not leave the vessel until ten o'clock that night. Heavy rain drenched us through our thin shirts and shorts as we made our way to the Police station to await our orders.

After an hour or so we were driven into Batavia, where accommodation had been arranged for us. In my case the place was a large impressive office block of the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij Factory. Upstairs, behind the Java Bank building, we were led into a spotless canteen, to be met by a jovial lady of about sixty and her daughter, a large, jolly girl whose name we soon discovered was Marie.

Marie and her mother fed us with thick ham sandwiches and delicious coffee; it was the first bread we had seen since leaving Singapore. We were shown our beds, and given two quinine tablets each before retiring.

Our Dutch hosts could not do enough for us. They tended to our needs and fed us without stint. On the following morning our Malayan ringgit (dollar) currency was collected, and within the hour we received guilders in exchange. One old man had lost his baggage in the transfer from one launch to the next, and he had no money. Shorts and shirts of his size materialised, then a set of white clothes, and then a huge assortment of boots and shoes arrived, and we were told to take as many as fitted. We were all given changes of clothing. A wireless set was rigged up in the dormitory, and magazines were provided.

Two days later, in which time we had changed and washed all the clothes we had worn for six days, removed a week's growth of beard, and had haircuts, we felt that we had imposed enough on our hosts. Perhaps we should move on to other accommodation. They seemed hurt, and asked if everything had been satisfactory; if so, why were we thinking of leaving? So we stayed, happy that they wanted us with them.

Victor Smith and I walked round the shops, window shopping in the main, but buying necessities with our limited funds. We called frequently at the Consulate for information about sailings. We shared a common aim; to get home. Our jobs in Malaya had gone, and once home we could start again.

The atmosphere in Batavia was of growing unrest. British and Dutch troops filled the streets with vehicles, there was a constant flow of refugees, and occasional alerts created a climate of tension which told those of us who had seen it in Malaya that this was the prelude to the fight.

At last we were summoned to the Consulate, and told that two ships were leaving in a day or two. One would go to India, one to Australia. Thin strips of paper were prepared, each bearing the name of a vessel. We took a paper each, by chance, a sort of lottery with our futures at stake.

The name on the slips of paper Vic and I drew in this lottery was SS Marella. We then found where the vessel would be taking us.

To Australia.