On 12 February, 1942, Kofuku Maru, a small nondescript Japanese fishing vessel slipped out of the chaos of Singapore and headed for the safety of Sumatra. The boat, commandeered by Bill Reynolds, set sail from the island moments before the last bastion of the British Empire fell to the Japanese.

In September 1943, eighteen months after Reynolds' amazing escape to Australia, the vessel now renamed Krait, returned to Singapore on a clandestine visit. In what was the most daring Allied commando raid of WWII, her crew, all members of a highly secret missing known as Operation Jaywick, entered the harbour and mined enemy shipping under the very noses of the Japanese.

But the story of Krait - a tale as varied and as colourful as the many men who sailed in her - continued beyond Operation Jaywick. Attached to special operations, Krait spent the rest of the war based in Darwin, before disappearing into the jungle-lined rivers of Borneo. Rediscovered in 1958, she eventually returned to Australia - not to genteel retirement but to the most turbulent and controversial period of her sixty-year history.