38. Cut Off in Enemy Waters
When the Japanese kicked off WWII in the Pacific, the Abraham Crijnssen was based in Surabaya. Things started off bad for the Dutch and the Allies, and soon went from bad to worse. By February, 1942, following Allied naval defeats in the battles of the Java Sea and the Sunda Strait, all Dutch and Allied ships were ordered to evacuate the now-inhospitable region and withdraw to Australia.
The Crijnssen was originally supposed to sail to Australia as part of a four-ship Dutch convoy, but the Japanese Navy sank the other three vessels, leaving the minesweeper to make her to safety as best she could, alone. Too weak to fight off Japanese warships or Japanese airplanes, the Crijnssen’s sole hope for survival lay in figuring out a way to sneak past the enemy without being spotted. The lush Dutch East Indies were dotted with tropical islands, so the ship set out to camouflage itself as a tropical island.