On 1 March 1942 at 11:35pm Rooseboom was steaming in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra when she was spotted by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-59 (which later was renumbered I-159) under the command of Lieutenant Commander Yoshimatsu Tamori and torpedoed.[3] Rooseboom capsized and sank rapidly at 00°15′N 086°50′E,[3] leaving one lifeboat and 135 people in the water. Eighty people were in the lifeboat, which designed to hold 28; the rest clung to flotsam or floated in the sea. The Dutch freighter Palopo picked up two of the survivors nine days later. Until the end of the World War II they were assumed to be the only survivors.[2]

The lifeboat
The story of the survivors on the lifeboat was told by Walter Gardiner Gibson (a corporal from the British Army′s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) in a book in 1952; he is the only known surviving witness of the events that occurred on the lifeboat over the 26 days after Roosebaum sank. 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.

• Stichting Maritieme Historische Data.
  ROOSEBOOM - ID 5579.
• Sensuikan.
  IJN Submarine I-159: Tabular Record of Movement.
• oorlogsbronnen.
• wikipedia.org.
  Rooseboom.