Jack of all Trades - The Voyage of HMAT Tyche

New York Harbour - 14 September 1946 - 11pm

It’s not like I wanted to be a stowaway. I’m not some romantic seafaring rebel. I just didn’t want to go to jail in America. That’s all. That’s the goddamn truth.

I was twenty. Smart, supposedly. Fulbright scholar from Melbourne, first in my family to set foot in the USA. I attended Harvard, Massachusetts. I spent the first six months broke, working my ass off and trying not to argue with my professors too much about Marx and Engels. They told me I didn’t understand the American condition. Which I didn’t because I was Australian - where we had a healthy respect for socialism.

It didn’t take long before my name started getting attention. Pamphlets got printed with my quotes on them. Honestly I was mainly intent on cultivating an image of dilettante intelligencia to get laid. But it was stupidly timed. Anti-communist sentiment was on the rise and, after my scholarship was rescinded, I was expelled, my student via was cancelled and I got blacklisted, it seemed more than likely that my stupid actions would get me thrown into jail. I needed to leave… and I didn’t even get my leg over!

And that’s how I ended up in New York, well the Brooklyn Naval Yard actually, looking up at the distant hull of the HMAT Tyche, full of cockiness and fear, trying to figure out how to climb aboard without alerting the dockside MPs. I did mention I was broke right?

The Tyche was an old troop carrier, a rusting monstrosity that looked like it had seen Gallipoli and Kokoda. They were loading her with her freight of people - a steady line of Australians and Europeans.

From what I could tell the Australians were mostly the last of the armed forces from the European theatre finally seeking repatriation - injured soldiers and emaciated prisoners of war. A few nurses and other professionals.

The Europeans looked to be refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons answering Australia’s post war call to populate or perish. Families, couples and lone individuals. Victims of war.

Security was lax as the port was mainly being used to decommission excess naval vessels for scrap. Not really something you could steal. Ironically the Tyche looked more in need of being scrapped than the other boats there. I watched for an hour, gradually sneaking forward, cutting through the mesh fence painstakingly with wire cutters, watching the security forces move about. Then, seeing an opening, I dashed up the service ladder and onto the ship.

Midnight was safest —any Yank with half a brain would be lazy at this time of night, and most of the Aussie staff on board were inside playing two-up or smoking Chesterfields. My fingers shook as I opened a hatch and slipped into the ship. It smelled like rust, oil, and home.

Jack Duke, son of a railway worker and a schoolteacher, try hard socialist, amateur boxer, failed student and romantic, now officially a criminal. Welcome aboard.

I walked past crates stamped with PROPERTY OF COMMONWEALTH MILITARY AUTHORITY. Medical supplies. Powdered milk. Tin helmets. I picked a hiding spot under the canvas covering a lifeboat on C-deck. A rat skittered past my foot, gave me a look like, what the hell are you doing here, mate? I had no answer so I kicked it away.

Tomorrow morning, I planned to stay quiet, count the rations in my backpack, maybe sneak out for some food once we were far enough from port. I didn’t want to get caught, at least not until we were too far from port that they wouldn’t turn back.

I shut my eyes to the hum of the ship’s engines warming up and told myself this was the right move. Tomorrow, the Tyche would set sail. Home.