O Arbiru
 The O Arbiru
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The O Arbiru ( tetum The Invincible ) was a small Portuguese cargo ship owned by the Serviços de Transportes Marítimos (STM) of the Portuguese Timorese colonial government . The ship connected the colonial capital Dili with the other coastal towns of Portuguese Timor, especially Pante Macassar , and occasionally went to neighboring countries, for example Singapore . It became known nationwide through its demise in 1973, in which around 25 people were killed.
description
The coaster had a superstructure arranged aft with facilities for a few passengers and a bridge house above the machinery which was also behind. The cargo handling of the central cargo hold could be carried out with its own loading gear . The loading mast with front and aft loading booms was located between the two hatches . In addition, the general cargo ship had two cargo tanks in the double floor for oils up to a flash point of 65 ° Celsius. The capacity of the ballast water tanks was 127 tons. The partially riveted and partly welded hull with heavy coverings had a forward-falling Steven without bulbous bow on. The main engine consisted of a six-cylinder four-stroke diesel engine from the Mannheim manufacturer MWM, whose output was 550 hp. The drive power was transmitted to the fixed propeller by a reduction gear.
Construction and use
The ship was built in 1962/63 on behalf of Portugal at the Estaleiros São Jacinto shipyard in Aveiro and delivered in 1963 as O Arbiru . The new building with a measurement of 486 GRT was used under the management of the Portuguese Overseas Ministry (Ministério do Ultramar) as a means of transport for goods and people in Portuguese Timor between the individual coastal towns of the colony and the outside world. The operation of the O Arbiru was of great importance, since Pante Macassar in the exclave Oe-Cusse Ambeno was otherwise only accessible via Indonesian territory and the roads in the interior of the island - if passable at all - were of poor quality.
Whereabouts
The O Arbiru sank late on April 29 in a heavy storm in the Flores Sea , approximately in the range of position 8 ° 0 '0 "S, 122 ° 0' 0" O . The last radio contact with the ship was on the night of April 29th. Two days earlier she had left the port of Dili on a ballast trip to Bangkok. On May 7th, the O Arbiru should have arrived in Bangkok , from where it was supposed to bring rice to Portuguese Timor. The captain and chief engineer were NCOs of the Portuguese Navy, the other crew members were civilians. In addition to the 19 crew members, there were one male and four female passengers on board (according to other information: 22 crew members). One of the women was the wife of the locally known Lieutenant Pacheco Medeiros , which is why the disappearance of the ship was seen as a great tragedy among the Portuguese of the colony.
A few days later, Portugal asked all neighboring countries for help in the search. Indonesia searched the affected region with five aircraft. The Indonesian police reported that the ship was seen on April 29 near Tolitoli off the northwest coast of Sulawesi , which would have been far from the actual route of the O Arbiru . The ship could not possibly have reached this position in such a short time since it left port. On May 20, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that a surviving Timorese seaman had been found near Flores . The survivor Paulo do Rosario had clung to a piece of driftwood after the sinking and was brought to Bonerate by fishermen . The suspected sinking site is about a thousand kilometers from the place where the Indonesian police wanted to see the O Arbiru and was on their regular route.
reception
The East Timorese writer Luís Cardoso tells the story of the O Arbiru in his novel O ano em que Pigafetta completou a circum-navegação , in which, in addition to the O Arbiru, he introduces two other ships that are important for the history of East Timor . With the novel, the story of O Arbiru became a local legend, which goes hand in hand with the cultural beliefs of the Timorese. Here the motif of the recurring, living spirit is taken up. According to the historian Geoffrey C. Gunn, the O Arbiru is still present in the memory of the East Timorese people. For the 50th anniversary of the commissioning of the ship, a poem was written about the O Arbiru .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Register of Ships, MZ, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, London, 1970/71, p. 431.
- ↑ a b c d Sydney Morning Herald: Ship survivor found , p. 4, May 20, 1973 , accessed May 25, 2016.
- ↑ a b c The National Archives - Archival Databases: Cable 1973JAKART05715_b , May 14, 1973 , accessed May 25, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d José Luís Leiria Pinto: Timor 1973/75. Recordações de um marinheiro , Academia de Marinha, May 22, 2012 ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 25, 2016.
- ↑ Overseas Ministry: Decree 45083 , accessed on 15 October 2018th
- ^ A b c Norman Hooke: Modern Shipping Disasters 1963-1987 . Lloyd's of London Press, London 1989, ISBN 1-85044-211-8 , pp. 342 .
- ^ A b c Geoffrey C. Gunn: New World Hegemony in the Malay World , p. 246, 2000 .
- ↑ Archive.org: State Dept cable 1973-90348 , accessed May 25, 2016.
- ↑ Sapo: Escritor timorense Luís Cardoso em Díli para lançar última obra , November 22, 2013 ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 26, 2016.
- ↑ Isabel Moutinho: Historicity and Storytelling in East Timorese Fiction in Portuguese, PDF, La Trobe University, Melbourne, in: ellipses (2012): 101-122, American Portuguese Studies Association , accessed May 26, 2016.
- ↑ Poem and picture of Arbiru (Portuguese) on poetagod.blogspot.de
