17 days on a lifeboat in the Atlantic

When Bob Talley's ship was sunk by a U-boat in 1942, those in his lifeboats weathered storm, sharks and stress before they were rescued.

https://ww2thebigone.com/2016/07/06/17-days-on-a-lifeboat-in-the-atlantic/

 

Good story indeed.

 

A moving story , I like the cigar episode.

 

Does anybody find the story of Poon Lim rather incredible?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yDE612DJeo

I was astounded by the story of the 8ft wooden raft, he found floating so I had to check:





Holy cow, those things were real!

 

In 1980 we were sailing from San Juan to Baltimore and found a drifting boat awash in the Gulf Stream. It was a typical fiberglass recreational boat probably 30 feet long with a small day cabin, but of an old design, perhaps 1950(ish) or so. It was marked Havana, and was completely awash with just a few feet of the top of the cabin visible. This was near the end of the big Cuban Mariel exodus, so we thought at first it was just another abandoned boat, the inhabitants rescued and taken to Miami or the Keys. When we got close we could see the top of the cabin was ringed with rope and tied into it were pieces of human arms; forearm bones, wrists, hands. The flesh was picked away by birds, but many of the bones and ligaments were still attached. The bodies had broken off, and just the skeletal arms remained. Sobering. We had a big crane for handling buoys, so some guys went down and chopped holes in the hull to let the water out and we slung the whole boat up onto the deck and took it into Baltimore. Somebody there would try to ID the boat and those who were on board so families in Cuba could be notified.

The striking thing is that during that period the entire strait between Cuba and south Florida (90 miles) was filled with every craft the Coast Guard and Navy could send down, the skies filled with search craft. Yet, this one boat had taken on water and drifted through all of that, with those people clinging to the top. It likely went down due to overcrowding. God only knows how many people were jammed into that little craft when they shoved off. They would have gone right up the current, through the strait, through the crowded Bahamas and into the south Atlantic. And nobody saw them. The ocean is a big empty place even in crowded waters. From the surface, even the smallest chop creates a haze that hides things a few miles away. From the air, it's just as bad. Anything white becomes just another breaking wave, while black, blue, green, any dark color is almost as invisible. We only saw it because it was right in our path, a white cabin bobbing around. Mere chance, and weeks too late to do them any good.

 

Just in case this is new to someone: 2 crewmembers of the S.S.AngloSaxon survived a 70 days voyage after their ship was sunk by the german auxiliary cruiser Widder.
http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30004040

 

I was just going to mention that. 133 days on that tiny raft in the middle of the Atlantic must have been a heck of an experience!

 

..how did they survive without cell phones??!!!