"She was laid down and launched in the same year, nineteen thirteen, by Harland and Wolff shipbuilders of Belfast for the Singapore Pacific Steamship Lines. Her original name was Lanai. Gross tonnage of just under eleven thousand tons, over-all length of four hundred and ninety-seven feet and a sixty-foot beam, she was rather a good-looking ship for her day." He paused and held up the book to show a photograph of the ship sailing over a flat sea with a trailing wisp of smoke from her single smokestack. The photo was tinted and revealed the traditional black hull with white superstructure topped by a tall green funnel. "She could carry five hundred and ten passengers, fifty-five of them first class," Perlmutter continued. "She was originally coal-fired but converted to oil-firing in nineteen twenty. Top speed of seventeen knots. Her maiden voyage took place in December of nineteen thirteen when she left Southampton for Singapore. Until nineteen thirty-one, most of her voyages were between Singapore and Honolulu."

"It must have been a comfortable and relaxing experience sailing across the South Seas in those early days," said Julia.

"Passengers were not nearly so harried and occupied eighty years ago," Pitt agreed. He looked at Perlmutter. "When did the Lanai become the Princess Dou Wan?"

"She was sold to the Canton Lines out of Shanghai in nineteen thirty-one," Perlmutter answered. "From then until the war, she carried passengers and cargo to ports around the South China Sea. During the war, she served as an Australian troop transport. In nineteen forty-two, while unloading troops and their equipment off New Guinea, she was attacked by Japanese aircraft and severely damaged, but she returned to Sidney under her own power for repair and a refit. Her war record is quite impressive. From nineteen forty to nineteen forty-five, she transported over eighty thousand men in and out of the war zone, dodging enemy aircraft, submarines and warships and suffering extensive damage inflicted during seven different attacks."

"Five years of sailing through Japanese-infested waters," said Pitt. "It's a wonder she wasn't sunk."

"When the war ended, the Princess Dou Wan was returned to the Canton Lines and refitted as a passenger ship again. She then went into service between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Then in the late fall of nineteen forty-eight she was taken out of service and sent to the scrappers hi Singapore for breaking up."

"Breaking up," Pitt echoed. "You said she sank off Central America."

"Her fate gets vague," said Perlmutter, pulling several loose sheets of paper from the book. "I accumulated what information I could find and condensed it into a brief report. All that's known for certain is that she didn't make it to the scrappers. The final account came from a naval station radio operator at Valparaiso, Chile. According to the radio operator's records, a ship calling herself the Princess Dou Wan sent out a series of distress signals, saying she was taking on water and badly listing under a violent storm two hundred miles west. Repeated inquiries brought no answers. Then her radio went dead and she was never heard from again. A search turned up no sign of her."