Surabaya

And anyhow, we...

Eventually, we dragged ourselves out of Singapore to Surabaya in Indonesia.

We landed there and refueled and rode ashore individually.

They didn't like us at all.

And unfortunately, it is not good news.

On September 12th, the ferry Virgo Transport 8 left Surabaya bound for Benjarmasan, carrying 243 people, 213 passengers and 30 crew.

She lost contact in the early hours of the next morning after running into bad weather and capsized in the Java Sea.

As of yesterday, 12 days into the search, Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, Basarnas, put the numbers at 143 people evacuated, 108 of them alive, and 35 recovered dead, with 99 still missing.

But look at what's on it.

Bangui in the Central African Republic, N'Djamena, Vientiane, Kinshasa, Katanga, Burundi, Kingston, Jamaica, Luxembourg, Bern, Santo Domingo, Tegucigalpa, Medan, and Surabaya in Indonesia, Lahore, Quito.

Bern.

Bern.

The other main ones to mention would be the Institute of Technology Bandung, or ITB, and Bogor Agricultural University, which is IPB.

Both of those started off as campuses of University of Indonesia, as did many other significant universities, particularly University of Ilangga in Surabaya and Hasanuddin in Makassar at the bottom of Sulawesi.

Quite a few other notable universities.

They'd probably be the big ones to mention.

King's College London, set up in Malang, which is in eastern Java.

Georgetown University, set up in central Jakarta.

And Western Sydney University has recently set up a campus in Surabaya, which is also in eastern Java.

It's Indonesia's second biggest city.

It was not until 2 o'clock that afternoon that they heard they could now move out.

Because of the late start, they decided to fly only as far as Surabaya, 350 miles away.

On the way, what had been failure of engine instrument for Amelia now became failure of navigation instruments for Fred Noonan.

He could not get his most important long-range instruments to function properly.

Reaching Surabaya, they turned around and flew back to Bandung.

To go on without aids for the difficult navigation that lay ahead, especially over water, would make the rest of the world flight extremely dangerous.

Before they left Surabaya to retrace their steps, A.E. was called to the telephone.

It was G.P. calling from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where his United plane was refueling before continuing on to California.

1976.

The American merchant vessel Petrox Explorer has just set sail from the port of Surabaya in search of oil.

What they find will shock the world.

We may be sailing into the history books.