The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a wonderful story, but would you really want to be stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean? Here are four true stories of shipwrecks and castaways.
Alain Bombard was a 27-year-old French doctor who thought it strange that shipwreck survivors on life rafts tend to die quickly. A person can live up to six weeks without food and go up to 10 days without water, so why do so many castaways die within days of being set adrift? The common belief was that they drank salt water, which robs their body’s tissues of water. Bombard disagreed. He felt sure that the reason people died was because they waited until their bodies were already dehydrated before drinking the seawater out of desperation.
In 1952 Bombard set out to prove that the ocean will support a castaway indefinitely and that drinking seawater is not detrimental to one’s health. He decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone in a rubber raft without food or water, taking only emergency supplies in a sealed container to be used as a last resort.
Bombard set out from the Strait of Gibraltar in a 15-foot inflatable sailboat dubbed L’Hérétique, French for “The Heretic.” He sailed first to Casablanca, which took a week, then to the island of Grand Canary, which took 18 days. From there, he set out to cross the Atlantic, leaving on October 19, 1952.
Bombard caught fish, drank seawater, and even ate a bird that landed on his boat. By straining seawater through fabric, he collected plankton, which provided vitamin C and warded off scurvy. Bad weather resulted in constant bailing, but storms brought fresh rainwater, a welcome change after drinking nothing but saltwater for the first 23 days. He lost weight, began to suffer from saltwater boils, got diarrhea, and became depressed.
On December 6, he wrote out his last will and testament. Then, 53 days after leaving Grand Canary, he encountered the freighter Arakaka. But instead of asking to be rescued, Bombard only wanted to know where he was—and his location turned out to be 600 miles away from where he thought he was. It meant he had at least another 20 days to go. Bombard was miserable, but he refused all assistance except the offer of a hot shower and fresh batteries for his radio. Then he went back to his rubber raft.
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Two weeks later, he made landfall on Barbados. It was the day before Christmas. After surviving on nothing but fish, seawater, rain (and a bird), Bombard had lost 55 pounds—a little less than a pound per day, typical for castaways. He developed a slight case of anemia, he had diarrhea, weak spells, blurry vision, he’d lost of a few toenails, and had a skin rash. But overall he was in fairly good health. And he proved that a person can indeed survive on salt water (most survival experts still insist that it’s better to drink nothing at all).
Maurice and Maralyn Bailey were aboard their 31-foot sloop Auralyn on their way to the Galapagos Islands on March 4, 1973, when their boat was struck by a wounded sperm whale. The Auralyn started sinking—an hour later it was gone. They left the ship in a four-foot inflatable life raft tied to a nine-foot inflatable dinghy. They had all their survival supplies with them with one exception—they forgot the fishing gear. Still, they had a 20-day supply of food and water.
Three hundred miles from the Galapagos Islands, the Baileys spent three nights rowing as hard as they could trying to reach land, but it was futile and they gave up, allowing the current to sweep them farther out to sea. On the eighth day, a ship passed nearby but failed to see them, and they wasted three of their six flares. When food ran out, they survived on sea turtles. Then, using turtle scraps as bait and safety pins as hooks, they were able to catch some fish. To pass the time, they played cards and dominoes.
On the 25th night, another ship went by without seeing either their flare or their flashlight. On the 37th day, another ship passed, and two days later another one. They set off an improvised smoke bomb—kerosene-soaked cloth strips in a turtle shell—but weren’t spotted. Another ship went by on the 45th day, but they couldn’t get their “smoke bomb” to light. One of the main float tubes of their raft collapsed on the 55th day and couldn’t be repaired—after that, they needed to pump it up every 20 minutes. Gradually, their health began to fail.
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In June torrential rains came, providing fresh water to drink but the deteriorating canopy above their raft failed to keep them dry. By their 100th day afloat, they had to eat the birds that constantly landed on their raft. They even began catching and eating sharks. On June 30, a Korean ship appeared and saw them waving their jackets. Amazingly, after 118 days at sea, they were able to climb aboard under their own power.
In August 1985, Gary Mundell set out to sail solo from California to Hawaii aboard his boat Petral. Everything went well for the first few days. But then one night, he was jolted awake by a bump. Getting up to investigate, he discovered that the boat had run aground on Caroline Island, one of the most remote pieces of real estate in the Pacific. Mundell had gone to bed thinking the island was at least 15 miles away. Had he miscalculated? It didn’t matter now—he was stranded on a deserted island. The island, seven miles long and one mile wide, was completely uninhabited. He couldn’t get the boat free and couldn’t reach anyone on the radio.
He transferred absolutely everything movable from the boat to the shore using his inflatable raft, and set up camp under a grove of coconut trees. As the days passed, Mundell found plenty of food: coconuts, crabs, and fish. He caught rainwater in his sail and filled the many discarded bottles and jugs that washed up on the beach until he had more than 60 gallons. He never had to ration water—and even filled his raft and had a bath.
After the first month passed without spotting a ship or plane, Mundell considered sailing to the nearest inhabited island 460 miles away, but decided to stay put…where at least he had food and water.
On the 50th day, he spotted a ship a few miles away. Taking no chances, he did everything he could to get the crew’s attention—flares, smoke signals, and mirror flashes. The ship, the French research vessel Coriolis, answered with their searchlight. Rescue! Once aboard the Coriolis, he discovered how he had miscalculated his location: he hadn’t—Caroline Island was actually 15 miles east of its charted position.
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In 1974 Ray and Ellen Jackson, experienced sailors, bought a 42-foot yacht called Spirit and spent the next year outfitting her with every safety feature money could buy. They left California in 1975 and cruised 8,000 miles all over the Pacific. But after Ray injured his back in Hawaii, they decided to fly home and asked Ellen’s brother, Jim Ahola, to sail the boat back to California.
Ahola had considerable experience with the Spirit but still decided to hire more experienced help, Bruce Collins to captain and Durel Miller to crew. His girlfriend, Camilla Arthur, and her friend, Nancy Perry, asked to come along, too. On September 12, 1976, the Spirit left Hawaii bound for California.
On the morning of September 27, without warning, there was a huge bang and the ship keeled over. Had the boat been hit by whales? Did it strike floating debris? Had a submarine surfaced beneath them? They never found out. Although the Spirit righted itself, there was a hole in the bow and it quickly began to sink. Flying debris had smashed the radio—so no SOS could be sent. There were two life rafts on board, but the survival kits had been washed away. Collins, Ahola, and Arthur got into one raft and Miller and Perry took the other. Five minutes later the Spirit was gone. They were 750 miles from land.
The castaways tied the two rafts together and distributed the meager supplies. They had no food, no fishing gear, and little water. Eleven hours later, the tether broke and the two rafts drifted apart. The raft carrying Miller and Perry drifted for 22 days. Miller was an experienced seaman but Perry was a complete stranger to the sea and was debilitated by seasickness. By the 12th day, she was incoherent and helpless. By the time they were rescued, she had lost 43 pounds (she only weighed 113 pounds to start with). Miller lost 55 pounds but cared for her constantly, kept a lookout, and flagged down a ship called the Oriental Financier on the 22nd day.
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A subsequent search for the second raft covered nearly 200,000 square miles. On the sixth day of the search it was found, but with only one survivor on board, Captain Bruce Collins—Ahola and Arthur were dead. Collins reported that they ran out of fresh water on the 12th day and he had survived by drinking the foul-tasting rainwater he collected from the canopy of the raft. The others had refused to drink it, fearing it was poisonous. Ahola died on the 19th day. His death devastated his girlfriend, and she died two days later.
Camilla’s mother sued the Avon life raft company for failing to provide enough survival gear to keep her daughter alive. A court awarded her $70,000, but the company appealed. It was settled out of court.
• First takeout pizza. In 1889 King Umberto and Queen Margherita of Italy wanted to sample the Neapolitan street food but didn’t want to go out. So she asked pizzeria owner Raffaele Esposito to bring the pizzas to her. He made three kinds, including one with tomato paste, fresh basil, and a new ingredient, mozzarella cheese.
• First pizzeria in the United States. Opened by Gennaro Lombardi in 1905, on Spring Street in New York’s Little Italy.
• The first mozzarella cheese. It was made from the milk of water buffaloes, first brought to Italy from India in the seventh century.
• The first deep-dish pizza. Invented in the 1940s by Chicago’s Pizzeria Uno.
• The first commercial pizza-pie mix. Called Roman Pizza Mix, was produced in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1948 by Frank A. Fiorello.
• The first frozen pizza. Marketed by Celentano Brothers in 1957.
• The first Pizza Hut. Opened in 1958 by two brothers attending Wichita State University.
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