SOSPAN FACH: The Saga of the Little Saucepan
SYNOPSIS – ABRIDGED VERSION
On April 7, 1974, five people leave Auckland, New Zealand, aboard an amateur-built ferro-cement yacht, the Sospan Fach (Little Saucepan), named after a rugby song from in Wales. They are headed for Sydney, Australia. The vessel has no motor, radio, extra sails, or instrumentation. The skipper has a nine-dollar compass and an inexpensive sextant on which he has no professional training. There is a lifeboat designed to carry only one person and a single life preserver. They carry provisions sufficient for a three-week journey. None of the crew has any deep-water sailing experience. Their navigational plan is to sail three days north and then turn left; Australia is so large one couldn’t miss it. The crew ends up stranded for six weeks on Middleton Reef before being rescued by another vessel that happens only accidentally to be in the area.
ITHNAN NICKELSON is a carpenter by trade … now. As a kid in Wales, he sits by the side of the bay and dreams of building and owning his own yacht. Following one scrape after another, he is sentenced to serve in the British Merchant Service, where he continues to get into trouble. Involved in a fight in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Ithnan jumps ship and goes to work at the Bougainville Copper Project on Bougainville Island in the Solomons. After a year at the mines, he returns to Port Moresby and gets involved with the smuggling of exotic pets and brandy.
Stopped at sea by the Aussie Coast Guard, Ithnan discovers that the smuggling of these items is merely a ruse to move large quantities of heroin. He escapes capture, dumps the heroin overboard, and scuttles his boat, much to the chagrin of the syndicate kingpin, Mr. Asia himself, Martin Johnstone, who puts out a contract on Ithnan’s life. Ithnan catches a plane to Brisbane and takes a train to Sydney, where he tries to draw upon the bank accounts he has opened. Unable to do so, Ithnan flees to New Zealand, where for three years he works as a carpenter’s helper and builds his yacht, with the help of TONY BENETTI, a garage mechanic who teaches Ithnan to weld. Benetti’s real name is Terry Clark, an underworld figure operating in the New Zealand drug trade under an alias, and a member of the Mr. Asia syndicate. Aware of who Ithnan is, Benetti will settle the contract score, but not until Ithnan has performed an important service.
PHILIP LUNDQUIST is the oldest sibling of a very large family of boys. He has no job. He has no plans to pursue higher education, and he is about to graduate from secondary school. He lives with his family in a small and crowded home near Melbourne, Australia, and decides he might just as well travel. He knows he can get tourist season work in the hotels in Brisbane, Queensland, on Australia’s gold coast. During his train ride north he encounters another young man desirous to obtain a recruiting bonus if he can persuade Philip to go to New Zealand to pick apples. Philip joins the apple pickers in New Zealand. The work is hard and the money is good. But Philip, who has been a marijuana user, encounters some native drugs, including the so-called “magic mushrooms,” and a root known as Kava, which when ground and placed in an apple drink keeps him a little on the high side. He runs into trouble with the management of the apple picking effort, leaves, and finds work moving furniture. Thoroughly sick of it all, he now decides to go home, but he has no money for the airfare. While living at a hostel in Auckland, he sees a notice on a bulletin board that leads him to think he can get a ride back to Australia for free.
COLLEEN BAKER is an emotionally suppressed graduate of a college in Adelaide, South Australia. The daughter of a passive father and a straight-laced Anglican mother, Colleen is kept at or near home until she has completed her university work. She has a brief romantic encounter with a fellow student who is drafted for, and subsequently dies in, the Vietnam War. After university, she takes a teaching position in Darwin, Northern Territory, where, unfortunately, all the available suitors seem to be troops rotating to and from Vietnam. Running away from that, she accepts a research position with a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. She enjoys her work, and in the process lives with a co-worker from Ireland. Returning from a research trip she discovers that he has a wife and family back in Ireland and, in disgust, she moves out of the apartment they had shared and into an Auckland hostel. It is there that she reads the newspaper and sees the ad.
GEORGINA YARNELL is the stepdaughter of a barren couple who run a poultry farm south of Auckland. Adopted as a child from a Chinese orphanage run by their church, Georgina grows to young adulthood and subsequently pursues nurse’s training at another Auckland hospital. At the end of a very exhausting year, Georgina is faced with the question of how to spend the hiatus between schooling periods. Following a difficult interchange between herself and her supervision, Georgina decides to take a holiday, rather than to go home, and when a co-worker draws her attention to the ad in the newspaper, Georgina decides that a fortnight’s cruise to Sydney would be just the diversion she needs.
The ad is an invitation for an all-female crew for a shakedown cruise to Sydney. Ithnan places it in the New Zealand Herald in the belief that being surrounded by females for the trip could have possibilities. While the ad draws many curiosity seekers, all but two—Georgina and Colleen—take a look at the vessel and at its middle-aged skipper, bewhiskered, unkempt, and possessing sinister-looking eyes, and decide to pass up the offer. Of the two women, Georgina is the more foolhardy, as she spends much pre-voyage time at the boat and is warned against the trip by the man who had designed the rigging, MAX CARTER. Colleen, now close friends with a married doctor, accepts what she sees and what he says, but insists that there be a fourth crewmember, even if that person happens to be male. She places a notice on the bulletin board at the hostel.
Nickelson knows the vessel is ill equipped and he declares that because of his Welsh citizenship, it is not necessary to have the vessel licensed or inspected for approval of a deep-sea voyage by New Zealand authorities. Nobody disavows him of that notion. Further, because he is carrying contraband cargo, Nickelson avoids any potential inspection. To get some tips on handling the vessel, he takes a sailing lesson around the harbor, and grounds the yacht against a sea wall. Upon departure, he experiences an inordinate amount of difficulty leaving the Auckland harbor, and once out of the harbor he ignores the requests of the women to put about and return them to land. He finally “agrees,” but is reluctant to keep his word, owing to the contraband cargo. And suddenly, the vessel and its crew is clear of the northwestern tip of New Zealand and into the Tasman Sea, theoretically heading for Australia. There is physical conflict between Philip and Ithnan. Georgina is too sick to protest much. Colleen whines and complains.
Because of Ithnan’s ineptitude, the vessel runs aground on Middleton Reef, 800 miles off course, and the site of many prior shipwrecks. Within walking distance at low tide is a wrecked Japanese fishing trawler, and the four take up residence on the Fuku Maru #7, where they reside for six weeks, struggling to stay fed and healthy, and dealing with interpersonal relations problems. Philip develops his courage. Georgina finds her voice. Colleen continues to whine. On the vessel, the skipper appears to be going mad, attempting to keep the others from eating the available food and suggesting that he is capable of murder. The other three discuss mutiny. The Sospan Fach breaks up and both Ithnan and Philip discover cocaine powder floating in the bilge water.
DIETER WAGNER is the skipper of a fishing trawler, the Hammerblitz, operating out of Fiji. The vessel has recently received an equipment modification in the New South Wales (Australia) city of Ballina and is undergoing sea trials when a gale comes up and pushes the Hammerblitz 400 miles to the east, into the vicinity of Middleton Reef. Wagner’s crew discovers the presence of people on the stranded Japanese fishing trawler, while those stranded become aware of the new vessel’s presence, several miles away. For several days, until the seas calm, there are signal attempts, and eventually the crew of the Hammerblitz rescues the castaways and returns them to Ballina. Ithnan, aware of the incriminating nature of the contraband cargo, does not mention it. Neither does Philip, owing to a “gentleman’s agreement” not to spill the beans on the other’s contraband. What neither knows, however, is that the cocaine is merely the tip of the cargo, that several million dollars in gold are also secreted in the Sospan. The gold is lost in the Tasman Sea.
Once back on Australian soil, Philip, Colleen, and Georgina meet their parents and return to their respective homes. Ithnan proceeds to Sydney and takes a room in the city’s red light district, intent on using some of the local services. “Representatives” of the Mr. Asia syndicate follow Ithnan and dispense underworld justice. Back in Auckland, now very aware that neither the drugs nor the gold has found its way to Australia, Tony Benetti assumes that his days are numbered, and when syndicate “representatives” come to beat him, he assumes that they are there to kill him, and dispatches the men himself.
Now that there is a contract on him, Benetti adopts another alias and with an accomplice escapes to London, and now traveling under the alias Terence Alexander Sinclair, begins to settle scores all over the world. In the process, Mr. Asia, Martin Johnstone is attracted to London, where Sinclair, aware that he is a syndicate target, is gaily spreading the syndicate’s money. Johnstone personally goes after Sinclair. Johnstone’s syndicate bosses place a contract upon Johnstone and Sinclair picks up that contract. Johnstone’s body is found nude, weighted, hands severed, teeth extracted, and torso gutted in a flooded quarry north of Liverpool. And folks wonder why Sinclair, in the apparent peak of good health dies quite suddenly while in Parkhurst Prison.
