At Jutland she was a newfangled seaplane tender named Engadine. Now she was the Corregidor, a dumpy, inter-island steamer, and doom hung above her as she pulled away from the dock at Manila.
Aboard her were a few commercial men, headed south for stops in the Visayans and Mindanao, and a great many men, women and children who wanted only to leave Japanese-bombed Manila. Of the 860-odd passengers, hundreds had no tickets, had crowded aboard with only one thought: to get away.
Blacked out, she was led by a Navy launch toward the minefield sown in the harbor's mouth beyond Corregidor's forbidding heights....
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