WHEN Michael Patrick O'Brien was accused of being a spy by the Shanghai police in 1952, he fled to Macau. He had no papers and was ordered to leave the enclave. As he hadn't any money, he stowed away on a ferry to Hong Kong called the Lee Hong.
The British authorities refused to let him land in Hong Kong and the Portuguese would not let him return to Macau. O'Brien spent the next ten dreary months on the ferry chugging back and forth between the two ports. He became known as the ''Human Yo-Yo''.
At one stage in Shanghai he had worked as a bodyguard for K.V. Starr the insurance taipan. Starr paid for his food and the ferry passengers bought him drinks. Occasionally he got drunk and had to be locked up in the ship's brig by the long suffering Captain Rowe. When the Lee Hong went into dry dock so did O'Brien.
Eventually he was given a visa for Brazil and left Hong Kong in August 1953; but when he arrived in Rio de Janeiro they would not let him in. He was soon to be found yo-yoing again between Italy and France. Eventually he ended up in the Dominican republic where it is said he became Minister of Culture. The Curt Jurgens and Orson Welles film The Ferry to Hong Kong is based on his story.
Throughout this saga patriotic Irishmen were demanding a fair deal for this unfortunate son of Erin. They got very upset when they discovered that O'Brien was not Irish at all. His real name was Steven Ragan and he had been born in Budapest. When he was two years old his family went to America. O'Brien never took American citizenship and was deported after serving seven years hard labour for armed robbery in Oregon. He had arrived in Shanghai without papers in 1931.