Cruise of the Lanikai - Kemp Tolley

Kemp Tolley was a young naval officer who was given command of the Lanikai in early December 1941, almost immediately after it was chartered by the Navy from a private owner and made an official “warship”, as much of one as a 25 year old schooner that topped out around 8 knots could be. They slapped a 3-pound cannon and a couple of machine guns on it, attached a few naval personnel, as well as some Filipino crewhands, and called it good. His mission was said to be, take the Lanikai to a position off the Indo-China coast and observe and report on Japanese ship movements. Never mind Admiral Hart already had all his seaplanes doing just that. Quite how he was supposed to report on anything, given they had no radio with transmitting capability (and barely any receiving capability), is largely beside the point. Tolley’s working theory, and it’s one he’s found a fair amount of corroboration for in various radio communications, and the records people kept of conversations in the White House, is the Lanikai (and two other ships) were essentially to be sacrificial lambs to draw the U.S. into World War 2. Since nothing else had worked (including a few American warships having run-ins with the Nazis), FDR was hoping the loss of a few, expendable “warships” to Japanese attack would be sufficient to get Congress to declare war. Fortunately for Tolley and his crew, the Japanese went ahead and attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, where the Lanikai would be departing from, rendering the point moot.

The book discusses - in much greater detail than I expected – what information the government would have had about Japanese disposition to attack, and why certain people didn’t have it (there’s a lot of interservice rivalry and jockeying among various cryptographic units, for one thing); FDR’s various discussions with Churchill and his major advisors on how to get the U.S. into the war, and the unfortunate fate of the Asiatic Fleet, of which the Lanikai was a minor part, and Tolley’s theory about his ship. None of that was something I counted on, and though it was interesting, the main draw was the Lanikai’s story. How Tolley and his crew of Americans, Filipinos, at least one Dutch Naval officer (who was really a cavalryman) got this little boat down the Philippine coast, with little to no instrumentation - their compass was salvaged from a P-40 that landed on the beach, out of gas, in a cove where they were holed up for the day – charts that are either incomplete or have no information at all, the Japanese Navy all around them, behind, ahead.

But they pulled it off, and then managed to get out of the Dutch Indies, again about a half-step of the Japanese, right about the time the Langley and Pecos (along with most of the rest of the Asiatic Fleet in other places) were being systematically wiped out, and make it all the way to Australia. They had near misses with Dutch patrol planes, some distantly-sighted Japanese naval vessels, typhoons, malaria, an alarmed local constabulary. Tolley had gotten in contact with various higher-ups, including Admiral Hart, which helped him piece together some of the facts he didn’t have about his ship at the time, and also provides a different perspective. Since the Lanikai was essentially cut off from the world when it was at sea, they had no idea what was going on all around them except when they hit a major port. In some ways, it’s a bit of a travelogue, Tolley describing the various places they hid their ship during the day, the near misses with reefs, the locals who were friendly, but also a bit of a reminisce. Tolley knows Russian, and it wasn’t too long after reaching Australia he was reassigned to a diplomatic group in the Soviet Union. He doesn’t speak about that, and you get the feeling he really enjoyed that time on the little schooner, in spite of the challenges, and the high probability they could have been killed a dozen different ways during the trip.

There were also these brief spots in the book, usually when there’d be a holiday during the voyage, where Tolley would describe a date he had in Shanghai with someone, a young woman presumably, who he missed dearly. Those were kind of sweet – the wistful affection is clear – but never quite seemed to fit. I expected there to be some result from it, he returned there after the war, and found her again. But I guess his point was that on the ship, moving slowly at night through a seemingly empty ocean, there was time to reflect.

It’s a well-written book, Tolley takes a fairly conversational tone in his recounting, and clearly gets a kick talking about how they acquired some of their gear, or obtained “permission” to leave this port or that before it was too late. There’s also a whole section about their stay in Bali, and how appreciative the crew was of the Balinese practice of women not wearing shirts or any other sort of covering for their upper bodies. Which at least plays into the odd nature of the voyage. It’s the start of a war, but these guys are stopping to fish every day, trading with any locals they meet, using a modified oil drum as a cook stove. It makes sense, because it would have been crazy for them to travel in the day, and they needed more provisions than they could carry, but it still gives the whole thing the feel of a bunch of friends on a cross-country road trip, albeit one with the possibility of violent death around every corner.

‘Actually, the Far East chit system had so wholly supplanted ready cash in pocket that money took on another character. The question was not how much money you had but how good your credit was. One signed for every conceivable thing, including the collection in church, settling at the end of the month. Thus, it was no great financial wrench when war came along. Then even chits were forgotten. If something was not too tightly screwed down, or too heavy, take it and welcome! Tomorrow it may be bombed. Grab it. Drink it. Eat it. Jump in and drive off in it. Pay? Forget it!’