Qualla: MV Mamutu

MV Mamutu: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

William "Billy" Griffin survived by pretending to be dead. As Japanese machine-gun fire raked the water around him, the mixed-race engineer floated motionless among the bodies of 114 men, women, and children who moments earlier had been passengers and crew aboard the MV Mamutu. It was August 7, 1942, and in the warm waters of the Gulf of Papua near Murray Island, a routine evacuation voyage had become one of the most harrowing maritime atrocities of the Pacific War.

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MV Mamutu: A Small Ship in a Big War

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Mamutu was never built for heroics. Constructed in Hong Kong in 1938, she was a modest vessel of 300 gross tons, 113 feet long with a 25-foot beam, designed to haul cargo between the islands of New Guinea for Burns Philp & Company. But when war reached the Pacific, modest shi...

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MV Mamutu: Three Hundred Meters

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The submarine that found her was Ro-33, a Japanese boat under Lieutenant Commander Shigeshi Kuriyama. With a surface speed of 19 knots, she closed the distance quickly. At 300 meters, Kuriyama gave the order to fire the 3-inch gun mounted forward of the conning tower. The first s...

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MV Mamutu: Twenty-Eight Lives

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Of 120 people aboard, only 28 survived. Billy Griffin, who had escaped the machine gunners by playing dead, would prove essential to a second set of survivors as well. When a Royal Australian Air Force rescue plane, the Calypso, crashed during the rescue attempt, killing one of i...

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MV Mamutu: The Reckoning

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Justice, when it came, was swift and absolute. Three weeks after sinking the Mamutu, Ro-33 torpedoed another Burns Philp vessel, the 3,310-ton Malaita, as she left Port Moresby under escort by the Australian destroyer Arunta. While the Malaita was towed back to port, Arunta's cre...

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