This is another amazing, but rarely reported WWII story. Poon Lim spent 133 days alone on a makeshift raft in the south Atlantic in 1942/1943. He was a Chinese merchant sailor working on a ship en route from Cape Town to Dutch Guiana.
On November 23, the German U-boat U-172 intercepted and torpedoed the ship in position 0°18′N 38°27′W00.30°N 38.45°W, some 750 miles east of the Amazon. As the ship was sinking, Poon Lim took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship’s boilers exploded. Of a crew of 54, only he survived.
After approximately two hours in the water, he found an empty Carley float life raft and climbed into it. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty liter jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots, and an electric torch.
When I was much younger, I spent a lot of time reading about sailing exploits in the 18th and 19th centuries. You see, the 20th century had so little of interest for me because of the impending reach of technology… to me, the stories were less dramatic. Nonetheless, I would keep running into the ‘Poon Lim’ story from WWII as the epitome of sea going hardship.
He adapted to life on the seas, as his stores of emergency rations gave way he was forced to learn how to use a tarp to gather rain water. He made a ‘jury rigged’ fishing line from a hemp rope, made a hook from an electrical wire. He was seen by a freighter which (he later contended) wouldn’t deign to pick him up because he was Chinese. He had been spotted by a German u-boat (during gunnery exercise…
He almost made it to South America on his own, and was rescued by some Brazilian fishermen. As with the Korean POW’s, Poon Lim immigrated to the US where he lived in Brooklyn NY…
Poon Lim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poon_Lim
Poon Lim – the greatest survivor
http://tomahawksadventuretravel.blogspot.com/2009/12/poon-lim-greatest-survivor.html
