This book tells the extraordinary story of the captain, crewmembers and passengers of the Dutch passenger ship Zaandam of the Holland-America Line (hal) in the beginning of World War II. The Zaandam was a new vessel, with the capacity of 125 passengers and 10,000 tons of cargo. She was put into service in 1939 between Rotterdam and New York on the day that British prime-minister Chamberlain visited the Italian dictator Mussolini to discuss the political tensions in Europe.

In the period that followed the vessels of the hal had begun to experience the first signs of the coming struggle. During the summer an increasing number of German Jews and other opponents of the Nazi Regime were trying to leave Europe. It became worse on September 1^st  when war broke out between Germany, Poland, Great Britain and France. During this period, when The Netherlands staid neutral, her ships, together with those of the United States, bore the brunt of repatriating tens of thousands of Americans, mostly summer tourists who had been stranded in Europe. The British, French and Germans had taken their passenger ships out of service. The London, Paris and Rotterdam offices of the hal were besieged by anxious travellers.

In the fall of 1939 the vessels brought in more and more passengers, far above their regular capacities. Hundreds slept on mattresses in cabins and public rooms. This process brought to The Netherlands the first hot breath of the war and the newspaper publicity on the arrivals of the ships in the United States was tremendous. Movie stars, diplomats, prominent businessmen and even royalty, were forced to travel under makeshift conditions due to the overcrowding.

Several ships were stopped at sea by the fighting countries, some by German U-boats and other by British warships. The rush of repatriates began to decrease within a few weeks when the dangers of travel became greater.

The sinking of several Dutch ships and the many casualties in that period were the reason that the management of the hal decided to withdraw the larger shipsfrom service. The Nieuw Amsterdam (36,000 gross tons) was laid up at her Hoboken pier at New York and the Statendam (28,000 gross tons) at Rotterdam. The service was maintained by the smaller passenger ships. During the winter of 1939 - 1940, three ships of the company, the Binnendijk, Spaarndam and the Burgerdijk, were sunk by mines. Several crewmembers and passengers died.

During the German invasion of The Netherlands on May 10^th , 1940, the Zaandam was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean on its way from New York to Cape Town with passengers and cargo. The final destination was Batavia (Djakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Captain Stamperius had received orders to bring his vessel in the New York-Java Line service. Far from home, but quite safe, ship and crew sailed the year that followed in the Pacific Ocean.

The situation in the Pacific changed on December 7^th , 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. This attack was also the start of their military operations in Southeast Asia. It was the second major catastrophe for The Netherlands, because the Japanese were on their way to conquer the Dutch East Indies.

The day after Pearl Harbour was attacked; the Zaandam was almost ready to depart from San Francisco for Singapore with a hundred passengers and a full cargo. Sailing orders were cancelled and on the l4th the Dutch Government requisitioned the ship's services and transferred her to the Commandant of Sea Forces at Batavia. She finally sailed on December 26th, with her cargo, but during the delay, a four inch gun and two anti-aircraft guns were installed on board, as well as protection for the bridge and the radio room. Third officer Willem Broekhof was trained in San Francisco and became the gunnery-officer.

The route was via New Zealand and the south coast of Australia to Oosthaven on Sumatra. Many warnings of Japanese submarines were received and on February 3^rd the Zaandam arrived in Lampong Bay. There was much confusion at Oosthaven and reports came in that the British had evacuated Malacca and withdrawn to Singapore. Thousands of evacuees, civilians as well as military, had reached Palembang (Sumatra) and had been transported to Java.

On February 8 the ship departed for Tjilatjap (south coast of Java), arriving there two days later to find the river crowded with large and small vessels, as well as United States warships. The next two weeks were spent in trying to get unloaded, but without success.

On February 27, all the ships in the port were instructed to proceed to sea, but the Zaandam was ordered to return, as she had been designated to carry evacuees. She cruised off the coast all night. The next morning three Japanese planes appeared, but when they saw the ships guns open fire, they held off. In the meantime, the vessel began to turn in circles at high speed. After three attacks the Japanese gave up.

Back in Tjilatjap the next day, March l, people started streaming on board. There were British and Australian troops, Dutch air force personnel and their families, the staff of the U.S. Consulate and some civilians of various nationalities, including women and children. There was no check of the embarkations. To complicate matters, the British destroyer HMS Stronghold came alongside with a hundred persons, some injured, she had rescued from the British vessel City of Manchester. It was finally determined that 892 persons came on board the Zaandam. There was a full clear moon. The little motorboat, which was supposed to come out to take off pilot Droste, didn’t show up. Captain Stamperius had no alternative then to take him and the assistant harbourmaster Van Raalte along. As their families were ashore, their agony of mind can easily be imagined. In the evening the Zaandam was escorted by the Stronghold, but left her station during the night for unknown reasons. Later on that night the Stronghold was sunk by Japanese cruisers after a heavy and unequal fight.     

The next day a lifeboat with 30 persons was picked up. They were survivors of the Dutch vessel Tomohon. The lifeboat itself had rescued three men from the Norwegian steamer Prominent. Both ships had also been sunk during the night by Japanese warships. Continuous calls were heard from ships being attacked by submarines, planes and surface ships. On March 6, the Zaandam arrived safely at Fremantle in Australia where the refugees were disembarked.

It was April 27 before the Zaandam had been unloaded and loaded again with wool for Antofagasta, Chile, where she arrived on May 17. There she took aboard a cargo of copper for New Orleans. Despite many submarine warnings in the Gulf of Mexico the vessel arrived at the Louisiana port safely on June 4.

In July, 1942, the Zaandam sailed in a small and fast convoy from Brooklyn with U. S. Army personnel, Sherman tanks and ammunition food for Cape Town. From Cape Town she was part of a British convoy proceeding to the Red Sea and Ismalia in the Suez Canal. Here the men and supplies were discharged to provide the British general Montgomery's forces for his attack on the German general Rommel at El Alamein a few weeks later.

The Zaandam returned to Cape Town, stayed there three days and sailed on October 21. She had 169 passengers, comprised for the most part of officers and crew members of torpedoed American merchant ships. The crew of the Zaandam numbered at that moment 130, so that the total aboard was 299.

On November 2, several hundred miles off Recife, Brazil, the ship was struck by two torpedoes of the U-174 and sank in thirteen minutes. It happened in the afternoon when second officer Willem Broekhof was on duty on the bridge.

The last seen of the Zaandam, were her screws sticking right out of the water. When she went under, bow first as though she was diving, she made a noise like a waterfall and there was a great big wave. There were a lot of bamboo rafts floating around, pieces of hatch covers that had been blown out by the explosion. People were hanging onto the rafts which were built to give a man some support, but not to carry him, to the hatch covers and to any piece of wreckage they could find.

Among the victim’s in this vortex of destruction were captain Jacob Stamperius and captain Jan Pieter Wepster of the Volendam, who was a passenger. Stamperius was 58. Except for a short spell on leave, he had been her commander continuously since her maiden voyage from Rotterdam to New York in January, 1939. He decided to stay on the bridge.

About a month after the sinking, figures were released giving 162 of those aboard accounted for, with 137 dead and missing. For the latter little hope was held.

The 162 men who survived landed at widely divergent points, in three lifeboats. Two boats, under the command of second officer Karsten Karssen, were picked up on November 7 by the American tanker Gulf State and landed at Port ofSpain, Trinidad, on November 13. One boat was carrying 72 men, the other carried 34.

The third boat, commanded by second officer Willem Broekhof, carrying 60 men, landed in a remote part of the Brazilian coast on November 10. Broekhof kept a diary during these eight days. In the early morning of the l0th, land was sighted. He manoeuvred his boat carefully through the surf. The men got out of the boat and kissed the beach.

They found they were half a mile east of Ponte dus Mongues and four and a half miles west of the Rio Perguicas. They found some fishermen who took them five miles up the river to Pharo. In the afternoon Willem Broekhof left on horseback for Barreirinhas, where he arrived at night and reported to the chief of police there. The British consul then took charge and the men were well cared for until they were well enough to travel back to the United States. Two men died during there stay in Brazil.

As harrowing as this experience might have been, it could not match that of a trio of other Zaandam survivors. Three months after the Zaandam went down, the total number of missing persons had been reduced by three, when a raft was picked up by a U.S. Navy patrol craft, PC 576. On the raft were Kees van der Slot, 37, of Rotterdam, an oiler, Nicko Hoogendam, a 17-year old Dutchman from Vlaardingen, and Basil Izzi, 20, from South Barre, Massachusetts, of the American gun crew on the Zaandam. The men had drifted for eighty-three days, from November 2, 1942, to January 24, 1943. It was one of the longest periods that human beings had been known to survive the open sea, surpassing even the history record of Captain Bligh of H.M.S. Bounty. (Later on in the war a Chinese sailor survived for 103 days on a raft)

Originally there had been five men on the raft, which measured only eight by nine feet. George Beezley, an American sailor who had been a passenger on the Zaandam, died after sixty-six days. Ensign James Maddox of the U.S. Navy , who had been in command of the gun crew on board the Zaandam, passed away on the seventy-seventh day.

Rain kept them reasonably well supplied with water, but food was the major problem. They finally managed to catch a bird on Thanksgiving Day, just after they had been passed by the first of three ships that didn't see them. After that they caught a shark, using their toes through a noose as a lure, but the meat would spoil in a few hours. They also snared some small birds, fish and snails from the under-side of the raft.

When rescued by the US Navy patrol boat, PC 576, which detached itself from a convoy whose planes had spotted them, the men were living skeletons and had lost about eighty pounds each in the more than two thousand miles they had drifted. They tried to climb the rope ladders thrown down to them, but their knees buckled under them. Van der Slot was the only man who did not have to be carried aboard, said one of the navy boat's crew, ‘Somehow, with high Dutch pride, he managed to stand up and be assisted, not carried, to the deck.’ Van der Slot took the Dutch flag that had been flown on the raft.

Ship’s journals, diaries, official reports, correspondence, newspaper articles (mostly American) and interviews with relations were used to make a reconstruction of this history. The main characters are captain Stamperius, second officer Willem Broekhof, oiler Kees van der Slot, gunner Basil Izzi, ensign James Maddox and passenger Nicko Hoogendam. But passengers like the Australian soldier Jim Iliffe, the Dutch pilot Droste and the adventurer Job Dutilh also played a role in this history and told their stories.

In the last chapter (epilogue) attention is paid to the return of the Dutch survivors to their homes in 1945 and 1946 and the experiences when they met their families and relatives after five years of absence.