Amazing Sea Survivors

5. Steven Callahan

Steven Callahan was an avid sailor, naval architect and inventor, and was planning to sail from the Canary Islands across the Atlantic to the Bahamas, in a 6.5 meter self-built boat. About a week into his journey his boat was damaged during the night in bad weather, by something unknown (possibly a whale). He was forced to abandon ship and just managed to rescue his emergency supplies from the boat and inflate the life raft, before the boat sank. Among the emergency supplies that he saved were a sleeping bag, food and

water rations, navigational charts, a speargun, flares, solar stills (for condensing sea water into fresh drinking water) and a copy of Sea Survival by Dougal Robertson.

Knowing that no one on land was expecting to hear from him for a few weeks, his survival instincts kicked in. Over the next 76 days he drifted with the south equatorial current and the trade winds.

After finishing the supplies saved from the ship, he tried his hand at spear-fishing, and he ate primarily mahi-mahi, tiger fish and flying fish. After he exhausted his water supplies, he used the solar stills to obtain some precious water during the day (all the stills combined produced about 500ml of water per day). On one occasion, the spear of his spear gun broke off in a fishes back, and as the fish continued to swim beneath the life raft, the spear ripped a massive hole in the bottom inflatable tube of the raft. This caused the raft to become impossible to stand on but Steven managed to repair the raft using some of the shade tarp.

On the 76th day at sea, being able to spot land for the first time in months, Steven had finally reached his destination. He was picked up by fishermen right off the coast of Guadalupe. He was taken to a local hospital, but didn’t even stay the night; instead he spent a month recovering on the island and then proceeded to hitchhike on boats through the West Indies.

4. Richard Van Pham

Richard Van Pham was a 62 year-old man from Long Beach, California. He set out in May, on a 3-4 hour sailing trip to the resort Island of Catalina. Hitting stormy weather on the way broke his engine, mast and communication equipment. Unable to navigate his way back, he succumbed to the current and floated with his little boat for over three months.

He managed to catch and kill a turtle, which he ate and used as further bait. He would leave pieces of meat on the deck and when sea birds came to near to take the bait, he clubbed them on the head. He managed to evaporate seawater and used the salt to preserve the meat. He also managed to build a distilling device to evaporate and purify seawater to obtain fresh drinking water and he roasted seagulls on a small makeshift grill, using wood from the boat as fuel for his fire.

Every day he looked out over the horizon in hopes of spotting land or another boat, but almost every day he saw nothing. Then one day whilst looking out at sea, he saw a plane. The plane dipped its nose, as if to say “hi” and a couple of hours later a rescue boat came to his rescue after nearly four months at sea.

On a side note to this amazing feat of survival, Richard Van Pham was donated another sail boat after his rescue. This new boat had all the latest communication and navigation equipment on board. Not even two years later, he was discovered floating in the ocean again, luckily only for a couple of days, without a trace of the expensive equipment. After this rescue he was fined for not having the appropriate equipment on board.

3. Maurice and Marilyn Baily

Marilyn and Maurice had been sailing their 31 ft yacht from South Hampton for quite a few months before disaster struck. They set out in June and were planning to sail and immigrate to New Zealand. By February the next year, they made safe passage through the Panama Canal, and that was the last anyone heard from them. About a week after their safe passage, their boat was violently struck by a whale. Seeing the huge hole in the side of the hull, through which water was gushing, they immediately inflated the life raft and an inflatable dingy (which Maurice had insisted they take along). They threw whatever possessions they had into the raft, and tied the two inflatables together. They managed to save some tins of food, a small oil burner, a map, a compass, a water container, knives, plastic mugs, passports, and some extra rubber and glue (for patches), before watching their yacht disappear into the ocean.

For the first few days, they ate the cans of food that they rescued, and drank rainwater. When their food ran out, they ate raw sea turtle, seabirds, fish and even sharks that they caught with their bare hands and small hooks fashioned from safety pins.

They counted seven ships that passed them but did not stop. With each passing ship, their hopes of rescue where crushed. As the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months, their clothes rotted on their bodies and they developed severe sores and sunburns. Their inflatable raft and dingy deteriorated to the point where they needed to be inflated daily.

On 30 June 1973, their ordeal finally came to an end, when a Korean fishing boat, spotting the small blob in the vast ocean, decided to turn back for a closer inspection. By the time the raft was hauled closer, they were both slipping in and out of consciousness, in what we can only presume was to be their last hours alive. They had each lost over 20kg and couldn’t stand or function by themselves. Finally, after drifting over 2400km and 117 days, they were saved.

2. Poon Lim

Poon Lim is a record holding sea survivor. As a 25 year-old Chinese seaman, Poon Lim was appointed second steward on a British Merchant ship. The ship left Cape Town with a crew of 55 on 23 November 1942. Just a few days after, they were torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat. The ship was sinking rapidly and Poon made the decision to jump over board. After the ship had disappeared beneath the ocean, he gasped for air between each wave, desperately looking for a life raft that could have inflated while the ship sank. Finally after struggling to stay alive for two hours, he spotted a life raft. He swam over to it and hauled his exhausted body on board

Also on board, Poon found a metal water jug, some tinned biscuits, some flares, an electric torch and a small supply of fresh water. He rationed himself to eat just two biscuits and drink just a few sips of water per day, calculating that he would be able to survive almost a month on the supplies he had. By the end of the first month, after seeing several ships but not being rescued, Poon realized that he would have to float on the raft until he found land.

He caught fish using the wire from the torch as a hook, with a piece of biscuit as bait. After he had caught one fish, it became easier, as he used some of the previous fish as bait for the next. He also managed to catch seagulls and sharks, whose blood he drank to quench his thirst. He made notches in the wood of the raft to keep track of his days at sea and went swimming twice a day as exercise and to prevent his muscles from atrophying.

On the 131st day, Poon saw a change in the color of the water and he saw more sea birds and kelp. On the 133rd day he saw a small sail on the horizon, and soon the small boat came to his rescue. He was at the mouth of the Amazon River, and had crossed the Atlantic. Poon lost only 10kg throughout his ordeal, but managed to keep his strength up and could walk unaided after his rescue. Poon still holds the record for longest survival on a life raft and said that he truly hopes no one ever has to beat his record.

1. Mexican Fishermen

Lucio Rendon, Salvador Ordonez and Jesus Eduardo Vivand, along with two other companions set out in a 25 ft fiberglass boat, on a three day shark-fishing trip, early on 28 October 2005 from the port of San Blas Nayarit, Mexico. After baiting and placing their shark-fishing equipment, they celebrated and prepared for the big catch that was coming in the following day. The following day they returned to where they thought they had left the rigging, but it was gone. They spent the next couple of hours, and all their fuel looking for the expensive equipment. By the time they had run out of petrol, they were too far away from shore to row back, and the winds, combined with the westerly current swept them out into the wide ocean.

They had supplies for about four days, but after this time had passed, they became increasingly aware of their growing thirst. There was no more fresh water, and they had run out of food. For three days they drank and ate nothing. On the third day, the men succumbed to their intense thirst and drank some sea water. This only made them feel sick, but by that night definite moisture could be felt in the air, and by the fourth day without water, a light drizzle started falling. They cut the tops off their plastic fuel containers, rinsed them with sea water and when the rain came down more heavily, they were able to fill four fuel bottles, giving them 200 liters of fresh water. Food was not so easy. Lucio said, “We only ate twice in November. Hunger like I had never before imagined.” The first meal they had was a sea turtle that surfaced for some air. They lifted it out of the water, cut its head off and drank its blood. Then they shared the flesh between the 5 of them and ate it raw. Their two other companions could not stomach the thought of eating raw flesh, and died from starvation in late November.

They continued to catch turtles (Salvador made a turtle tally on the side of the boat which came to 103 turtles by the time they were rescued) and seabirds, and after a few months, they made hooks from nails and screws and used the barnacles that started building up on the hull of the boat as bait. They would use the barnacles to catch small fish and then use the small fish as bait to catch larger fish and using this method, they managed to catch dogfish, sharks, sawfish and dorado.

They salted and dried some of their meat to save it for times when they couldn’t fish. It is believed that the only reason that the men did not get scurvy, was because of the large amounts of fish which, if eaten raw, contains small amounts of Vitamin C.

The men drifted until 9 August 2006, when they were spotted on the radar of a Taiwanese fishing trawler. The trawler investigated and came across the three very skinny, but healthy men. They were saved! Spending over nine months lost at sea had landed them in the record books as the longest sea survival ever. They were found about 200 miles from the North coast of Australia, and had drifted over 5500 miles, across the Pacific Ocean. By the 25th, they were back at home, where their town’s people believed their survival to be a miracle. A miracle that happened to three men, whose names incidentally mean savior (Jesus and Salvador) and light (Lucio).