A few thousand more escaped to the nearby Netherlands East Indies and from there to Australia, Ceylon or India in any ship that could be found.

Rooseboom under Captain Marinus Cornelis Anthonie Boon, was taking around 500 passengers (mainly British military personnel and civilians) from Padang to Colombo in Ceylon.

His tale was told to the British authorities after the war but was first heard publicly in court in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1949 in order to confirm that Major Angus Macdonald was dead so that his estate could be settled.

Boon and the senior surviving British officer Brigadier Archibald Paris (who had commanded the 15th Indian Infantry Brigade during the Battle of Malaya).

[5] Paris, MacDonald, Blackwood and number of the other military passengers were among a selected few of the most proven fighters chosen to be evacuated instead of being lost to a POW camp.

Towards the end Gibson realised that all who remained alive were himself, another white man, a Chinese woman named Doris Lim and four Javanese seamen.

[6] The lifeboat fetched up on Sipora an island off Sumatra and only 100 miles (160 km) from Padang where Rooseboom started her journey 30 days earlier.