“What ship are you”? and was dumfounded when a bearded and deeply tanned man standing near the schooner’s wheel responded, “USS Lanikai, from Manila.” The pilot was equally surprised that the weather-beaten and somewhat dilapidated ship was apparently part of the U.S. Navy, and that she had safely navigated more than 3,000 miles of Japanese-dominated ocean.
December 8, 1941 – Just before 5 a.m. on December 8 Lanikai’s radioman awakened Tolly with a short but startling message that had just arrived from Hart’s headquarters. The first sentence, “Orange War Plan in Effect,” informed the schooner’s skipper that the United States was at war with Japan, and a second line ordered Lanikai to return to Cavite. Once back at the Navy Yard Tolley learned the details of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He and other officers were also told that a Japanese assault on the Philippines could be expected at any moment, and that they should make themselves and their ships ready to undertake whatever missions Hart deemed necessary.
Lanikai spent the first weeks of World War II in the Pacific running errands in and just outside Manila Bay—moving equipment and personnel, patrolling, and attempting to avoid the Japanese air attacks that were systematically reducing American installations to smoking rubble. The steady southward advance of enemy ground troops from their landing beaches on Lingayen Gulf made it clear that the entire Manila area would soon come under direct attack, but on December 24 General Douglas MacArthur—commander of U.S. Army Forces Far East—declared Manila an open city, meaning that it would not be defended so that the Japanese would not destroy it. His pronouncement, made without prior consultation with Hart, completely undermined Navy plans for a prolonged defense of the installations surrounding the bay. The Asiatic Fleet commander had no choice but to order the destruction of all remaining facilities and the scuttling or dispersal of surviving vessels. Hart himself would eventually make his way by submarine to the relative—and temporary—safety of Dutch-controlled Java, but for many of those in his ravaged command the future held only capture, imprisonment and death.
Fate had something else in store for Lanikai and those aboard her, however. Tolley and his crew—now numbering seven Americans and 12 Filipinos—made a final sweep of abandoned storehouses for food, water, diesel fuel, an additional machine gun, ammunition and other essential gear. After being quickly camouflaged with salvaged green paint and taking aboard six additional men—two Navy officers, three enlisted men and a Dutch naval officer who were also seeking to escape the oncoming Japanese—under cover of darkness on December 26 Lanikai turned her bowsprit toward the open sea.
Specifications:
Displacement: 150 long tons (152 t)
Length: 87 ft 3 in (26.59 m)
Beam: 9 ft (2.7 m)
Propulsion: Sails and diesel engine, 1 shaft
Speed: 7 knots (13 km/h; 8.1 mph)
Complement: 19
Armament:
1 × 3-pdr 1.85 in (47 mm) QF rifle
1 × .50 cal. machine gun
1 × .30 cal. machine gun
References:
Stephen Harding – The Daily Beast
*Noteworthy
1813 – Premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
1914 – World War I: A squadron of Britain’s Royal Navy defeats the Imperial German East Asia Squadron in the Battle of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.
1941 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares December 7 to be “a date which will live in infamy”, after which the U.S. declares war on Japan.