LIM RAFT SURVIVAL FULL

On several occasions he was passed by other vessels. He sliced off the fins and let them dry in the sun. This quenched his thirst, since it had not rained and he was out of water. After subduing the shark, Lim cut it open and sucked the blood from its liver. The shark attacked him after he brought it aboard the raft, so he used the water jug half-filled with seawater as a club. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to make the catch.

LIM RAFT SURVIVAL FULL

It gulped the bait and hit the line with full force, but in preparation Lim had braided the line so it would have double thickness. The first shark to pick up the taste was only a few feet away from his raft. When he saw sharks, he refrained from swimming and sought to catch one, using the remnants of birds he had caught as bait. Lim, barely alive, caught a bird and drank its blood to survive. Once, a large storm hit and spoiled his fish and fouled his water. When he captured a fish, he would cut it open with a knife he had fashioned out of a biscuit tin, and dry it on a hemp line over the raft. He also dug a nail out of the boards on the wooden raft and bent it into a hook for larger fish. He took a wire from the flashlight and made it into a fishhook, and used hemp rope as a fishing line. He could not swim very well, and often tied a rope from the boat to his wrist in case he fell into the ocean. 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. Lim was ultimately the only survivor of the sinking 53 of the crew of 54 were lost at sea, including the master (John Maul), 44 crew, and eight gunners. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty-litre (8.8 imp gal 11 US gal) jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots, and a flashlight. After approximately two hours in the water, Lim found and climbed aboard a wooden liferaft. īenlomond sank in approximately two minutes, allowing only six survivors, including Lim, to abandon ship. As the ship was sinking, he took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship's boilers exploded. The ship sank 250 miles (400 km) from the nearest land to the south, but ocean currents took him west to Belém. On 23 November, German submarine U-172, a German U-boat, intercepted and hit the Benlomond with two torpedoes at coordinates 0☁8′N 38☂7′W / 00.30°N 38.45°W / 00.30 -38.45, some 750 miles (1,210 km) east of Belém, Brazil, where Lim ultimately landed. The ship was armed but slow moving, and was sailing alone instead of in a convoy. 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 and New York. Lim was born on China's Hainan Island on 8 March 1918.

Lim raft survival