Ten days adrift then stranded as mates died: last survivor Mick Doleman reveals the full story of Australia’s Blythe Star disaster

The last survivor of a horror shipwreck reveals the untold story: ten days adrift, stranded on a remote Aussie shoreline, mates dying around him – and the love story behind it all.

In 1973, 18-year-old seaman Mick Doleman reported for a routine short trip aboard the freighter MV Blythe Star. Less than 24 hours after leaving Hobart for King Island the ship sank without a trace and with no distress signal. Now Mick, the last surviving crewman, is sharing his extraordinary tale in a new book.

The grey ocean swell blended into the grey horizon of the clouds, and light rain swept across the scene. It was the sort of view that would feel cosy if you were sitting by a roaring fire with book and tea in hand, curled in the window seat of a seaside cottage. Clinging to the deck of the Blythe Star at 90 degrees, it was anything but. It was 8:25am, less than half an hour since the freighter had first inexplicably lurched sidewards.

Since he’d been thrown from his bunk minutes earlier Mick Doleman had been in constant motion. Muscles taut as he held himself to the ship, Mick noticed the captain coming from around the starboard side of the bridge toward him. ‘Did you get a mayday away?’ he yelled across at Captain Cruikshank.

‘No,’ the captain yelled back simply.

Sole survivor … Mick Doleman is the last left alive from the 1973 Blythe Star disaster off Tasmania. Photo: Nick Cubbin.

The moment passed and Mick scrambled across toward the boat deck, where the crew were gathering one by one as they escaped from below deck.

It only took a second for Mick to survey the scene and get the drift of what was happening. Mal McCarroll was casting around wildly for an axe to hack one of the wooden lifeboats free from its ropes.

It would be a desperate move. With the ship leaning so heavily, cutting the lifeboat free was a dangerous proposition. The falling boat might well collect them all on its way down. But desperate was exactly what they were as they watched the ship sink inexorably lower in the water with every passing moment, visceral panic flooding through them.

‘Where’s the axe?’ Mal yelled in anguish.

The crew looked around at Mal. The axe was meant to live in the lifeboat. What did he mean where was it? Then Mick Power called a reply. ‘It’s in the bridge.’

Not much f***ing use there.

Mal and Mick realised that, without the axe, there was no hope of getting the lifeboat away.

‘This was how it was going to end’ … Mick Doleman after his ordeal.

They abandoned their efforts and turned their attention to reaching the poop deck. There, a rectangular-shaped white box about a metre long was now their only hope. Tucked inside it was an emergency life raft. It didn’t have the sturdy wooden sides of a lifeboat, nor the oars or manoeuvrability, but it was all they had.

Tas Leary was in the cramped space where the raft was stowed, trying to get it out; there was no room for anyone else to help. Powerless, Mick watched.

What a miserable way to go, he thought. He was certain that this was how it was going to end, standing on a ship as it took on more and more water, freezing cold in nothing but his jocks and waiting for the water to claim him.

‘BEATEN TO A PULP’

The 10-man crew of the Blythe Star all got into the raft – just – then drifted for days enduring wild weather, hunger and dehydration. Ailing engineer John Sloan, whose vital thyroid medication had gone down with the ship, perished.

The weather worked the ocean up into such a fury that a wave crashed over the top of the raft, forcing water inside the opening and drenching them. Without pausing to contemplate what could happen next, the men jumped to it. Someone picked up the small plastic jug and started bailing. Now their thoughts were not so much of rescue, but of the far more immediate task of keeping their raft free enough of water to stay afloat. If they ended up in the water they’d suffer hypothermic shock in a matter of minutes.

As the raft plunged into the trough of each wave its rubber sides would rise up to meet each other in some bizarre embrace. The men inside were thrown bodily into each other, arms and legs flailing. It felt like they were being beaten to a pulp. Still they desperately tried to keep bailing.

Crewman Clift Langford was among those rescued after 10 days at sea.

Fellow Blythe Star survivors Alf Simpson (L) and Malcolm McCarroll.

Routine voyage that became a true horror … the MV Blythe Star.

Lost then found … the wreckage of the Blythe Star was discovered in 2023.

As the Tasmanian Transport Commission was finally calling through to the Marine Operations Centre in Canberra to let them know they didn’t have comms on one of their ships, the crew of the Blythe Star stared down the barrel of another night at sea. Never before had they realised how torturous the human body can be when it is cold, unfed and thirsty. This vessel of flesh and blood that held each being, suddenly became like an enemy of the mind. Unable to shut off the cold that pierced their skin, or the soaking chill from sitting in 20 centimetres of water, their bodies would take over their brains.

Like a demon it would hijack their thoughts until they could think of nothing else but the cold. And the despair would creep in, that morning would never come. Night holds terrible things, but none so terrible as the things hidden in the mind, just waiting for circumstance to unleash them.

‘THEY MUST HAVE IT WRONG’

Search parties were scrambled when the Blythe Star failed to dock but found no trace. Approaching two weeks without any sign of ship or crew, Mick’s girlfriend Joanie finally had to accept he was gone.

The days dragged by. Each morning Joanie would wake and refuse to let herself think that Mick was dead. Instead, she’d tell herself that today was the day he’d be found.

How can a big ship like that just disappear? Today would be the day they’d find it. Mick was a fighter. Joanie was used to seeing him at a music concert in some scrap or other. The fighter in him would get him through.

But the gnawing emptiness in her stomach, the heaviness in her limbs and the tightness of her chest held the fear she refused to acknowledge.

‘Where are you?’ … Mick with Joanie a few months after he was rescued.

‘Mick was a fighter’ … Joanie and Mick more recently.

She’d speak to him, hoping that maybe, wherever he was, he might feel her thoughts flying through the wind to him. ‘Where are you?’ she would say. ‘People are worried about you. We want you to come home.’

No amount of pleading brought an answer. The simple act of getting through the day seemed hard, she felt like she was barely functioning. Her mind was foggy and drifting; the not knowing was a weight that was always there. Inescapable.

Around her in Mick’s hometown of Doveton, Melbourne, Joanie could see hope fading from people’s eyes. Where there had been long discussions about where they might find the ship, now there were declarations that the ship must have sunk.

Sunday found Joanie again at the Doleman house, where Mick’s dad Tommy was as belligerent as ever that his son was not gone. The television was on, tuned to the news, of course, with an anxious crowd gathered in the living room.

‘The search was being called off’ … a newspaper clipping from the time.

The newsreader introduced an item on the still-missing Blythe Star; the chatter died down. The crisp, clipped tones of a news reporter came through.

It took a moment to comprehend what the journalist was saying. Tomorrow would be the last day they would look for the Blythe Star. The search for the ship was being called off.

The silence was complete. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone looked at each other, uncomprehending. Surely they must have it wrong? The authorities would have rung them, would have told them.

Wouldn’t they?

‘WE’RE OFF THE BLYTHE STAR’

After nine days, the crew eventually washed up in a remote bay. Perilously weak, near starved, their initial attempts to climb out through wild bush failed and two more perished. With the others incapable of moving, Mick Doleman, Mal McCarroll and Alf Simpson set out on one final quest to find help – or die trying.

The three men had spent a freezing night huddled together in the open. Come morning, the thirst that had dogged them for days in the raft was clawing at their throats again. They lowered their faces to moss that covered the logs and branches around them, sucking whatever moisture they could from the cold, wet foliage to try to satiate their thirst. Then they picked themselves up and figured they better keep moving, to try to generate some warmth in their stiff limbs.

Rugged and inhospitable, but it was land … Mick Doleman revisits Deep Glen Bay, where he and his fellow crewmen washed ashore.

Tough landscape … another view of Deep Glen Bay. Mick, Mal and Alf had to get out to survive.

At around 11am, they were looking ahead when they noticed what seemed to be a thinning of the bush. They pushed forward a little faster and found what appeared to be an old logging slide. It was the first indication of human activity they’d seen for days, a reminder that they weren’t alone out there. Somewhere, if they could hang on long enough, there were other people, families waiting with warm houses and soft beds.

They took the easy passage it offered and followed it downhill. Finally, they could walk without being dragged back every step by unwilling foliage. Able to move more freely, they made fast time to the bottom. There, at the end of the slide, was what looked to be an old logging trail, rough dirt and gravel carving through the bush. They stared at it. Should they go left or right?

Literally facing a fork in the road, with seven lives hanging in the balance, they made a choice. They went right.

Their shadows shortened as the sun passed overhead. By early afternoon they were dragging themselves footstep by footstep along the road. Mick was walking beside Mal, with Alf out of sight around a bend ahead. Mick paused for a moment, holding his breath. ‘Mal, did you just hear what I just heard?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘We’re off the Blythe Star’ … Back From The Dead is out on July 29.

‘I’m bloody sure it’s a truck,’ Mick said, excitement flooding through him and animating his tired voice. ‘Whatever we do, we don’t want to scare this bloke off.’

They waited, every nerve taut as they listened to the crunching of a truck changing gears, getting closer. After twelve days speaking only with their shipmates, the sound of another human life seemed almost surreal. Their attention was now totally focused on the sound inching toward them.

Finally, a red logging truck appeared around the corner.

Dirty, scratched, and dressed in what looked to be rags, they jumped from the undergrowth and raced to the vehicle, grabbing any purchase they could.

‘You’re not going to believe me. I bet you don’t know where we’re from,’ Mick blurted out.

‘You look like you’re escaped convicts,’ forester Rod Smith replied.

‘We’re off the Blythe Star,’ Mick said.

This is an edited extract from Back From The Dead by Piia Wirsu with Mick Doleman. It will be published by ABC Books on July 29 and is available for pre-order now.

Originally published as Ten days adrift then stranded as mates died: last survivor Mick Doleman reveals the full story of Australia’s Blythe Star disaster