Poon Lim or Lim Poon BEM was a Chinese sailor who survived 133 days alone in
the South Atlantic. Lim was working as second steward on the
British merchant ship SS Benlomond when it was sunk by a German U-boat on
November 23, 1942. After a few hours in the water, Lim found an 8-foot square
wooden raft which contained some food and water. When the supplies ran low, he
resorted to fishing, catching seabirds and collecting rainwater. On April 5,
1943, he was rescued by three Brazilian fishermen as he neared the coast of
Brazil. After returning to the United Kingdom, he was awarded a British Empire
Medal by King George VI. After the war, Lim emigrated to the United States.
Castaway Lim was born in Hainan, China, in 1918.
In 1942, during World War II, he was working as second steward on the British
armed merchant ship SS Benlomond, which was on its way from Cape Town to
Paramaribo, Suriname and New York. The ship was armed but slow moving and was
sailing alone instead of in a convoy. On November 23, the German U-boat U-172
intercepted and struck the Ben Lomond with two torpedoes in position 00.30°N
38.45°W﻿ / 00.30; -38.45, 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. As the ship sank in two minutes, 53 of the crew of 54 were
lost including the master, 44 sailors and eight gunners, making Lim the sole
survivor. After approximately two hours in the
water, he found an 8' square wooden raft and climbed into it. The raft had
several tins of biscuits, a forty-litre jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of
sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots and a flashlight.
Poon Lim initially kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food
on the raft, but later resorted to fishing and catching rainwater in a
canvas life jacket covering. He could not swim very well and often tied a rope
from the boat to his wrist, in case he fell into the ocean. He took a wire from
the flashlight and made it into a fishhook, and used hemp rope as a
fishing line. He also dug a nail out of the boards on the wooden raft and bent
it into a hook for larger fish. When he captured a fish, he would cut it open
with a knife he fashioned out of a biscuit tin and dry it on a hemp line
over the raft. Once, a large storm hit and spoiled his fish and fouled his
water. Poon, barely alive, caught a bird and drank its blood to survive.
When he saw sharks, he did not swim. Instead he set out to catch one. He used
the remnants of the next bird he caught as bait. The first shark to pick up the
taste was only a few feet long. He gulped the bait and hit the line with
full force, but in preparation Poon Lim had braided the line so it would have
double thickness. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to
make the catch. The shark attacked him after he brought it aboard the raft, so
he used the water jug half-filled with seawater as a weapon. After subduing the
shark, Poon Lim cut it open and sucked the blood from its liver. Since it
hadn't rained, he was out of water and this quenched his thirst. He sliced the
fins and let them dry in the sun - a Hainan delicacy.
On two occasions other vessels passed nearby: first an unidentified freighter,
then a squad of United States Navy patrol planes. Poon contended that the
freighter saw him but did not pick him up because he was Asian, and the crew
may have assumed he was from a sunken Japanese vessel. The Navy planes did see
him, and one dropped a marker buoy in the water. Unfortunately for Poon, a
large storm hit the area at the same time and he was lost again. He was also
once spotted by a German U-boat, which had been doing gunnery drills by
targeting seagulls. At first, he counted the days by tying
knots in a rope, but later decided that there was no point in counting the days
and simply began counting full moons. Land
On April 5, 1943, after 133 days in the life raft, Poon Lim neared land and a
river inlet. A few days earlier, he had known that he was close to the land
because the colour of the water had changed; it was no longer the oceanic
deep blue. Three Brazilian fishermen rescued him and took him to Belém three
days later. During his ordeal, Poon Lim had lost 9
kg, but was able to walk unaided upon being rescued. He spent four weeks in a
Brazilian hospital and the British Consul arranged for him to return to
Britain via Miami and New York. When told no one had ever survived
longer on a raft at sea, Poon Lim replied, "I hope no one will ever have
to break that record." People have lived longer lost at sea; 3 Mexican sailors
floated for 10 months in a disabled fishing boat. In a similar situation,
José Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman from El Salvador, was apparently lost
for 439 days, floating from Mexico to the Marshall Islands. However, as of
2015 no one has broken Poon Lim's record on a life raft.
Aftermath King George VI bestowed a British Empire
Medal on him, and the Royal Navy incorporated his tale into manuals of
survival techniques. After the war, Poon Lim decided to emigrate to the United
States, but the quota for Chinese immigrants had been reached. However,
because of his fame and the aid of Senator Warren Magnuson, he received a
special dispensation and eventually gained citizenship. The writer Alfred
Bester later stated that Poon Lim's ordeal was used in his novel The Stars
My Destination, which opens with a man stranded in space.
Poon Lim died in Brooklyn on January 4, 1991.
See also Steven Callahan, survived 76 days adrift
in the Atlantic. Louis Zamperini and Russell Allen "Phil"
Phillips, survived 47 days adrift in the Pacific.
Dougal Robertson, survived 38 days adrift in the Pacific.
Rose Noelle, trimaran on which 4 people survived 119 days adrift in the South
Pacific. Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, who survived
117 days on a rubber raft in the Pacific Ocean before being rescued.
José Salvador Alvarenga, who survived 438 days adrift in the Pacific
References External links
Judkins Trivia library
SS Ben Lomond