From:
The Australian Merchant Navy | British Fleets
Many other ships of British merchant fleets were part of the Allies' Pacific and Indian Oceans war effort. While the major part of this site relates to Australian coastal and adjacent Asian and Pacific waters, and while it is ot possible to tell the full story of the British fleets on the wider oceans, one event, of a tragic, horrendous nature must not go without mention. Merchant seamen and many others know it as the "
Behar Massacre".
The 111 souls aboard the P & O Hain Lines'
Behar (85 crew, 17 Artillery/DEMS gnners and Asdic operators and 9 passengers including two women) were to experience from 9 March 1944, en route from New Zealand and Melbourne to Bombay, an unimaginable ordeal. An account of the events is summarised here, but to learn more, click on
Narratives.
On the morning of 9 March, the Japanese heavy cruiser
Tone intercepted and opened fire on
Behar in the vicinity of the Cocos Islands. The victim was quickly ablaze and sinking, with three of its complement lost by the time four lfeboats were launched, the remaining crew and passengers being taken on board
Tone.
That night, on
Tone's deck, the calculated murder of 72 of them took place - 53 crew, 15 gunners and 4 passengers (though the women were spared) - by felling and beheading. Those remaining were landed at Tandjong Priok, to see the war out as prisoners of war, with all the privations that meant.
The War Crimes trials brought some justice, but the
Behar Massacre became yet another example of the many dangers, and horrors, faced by merchant mariners.