archerships | Survival at sea

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During WW2 a British ship was sank. One survivor. A Chinese
gentleman who had worked aboard in the laundry and as a tailor. He
had his clothes and an empty wood lifeboat.

I forget exactly, but he managed to live either 4 or 6 months before
being rescued.

The fellow kept his boat very clean. In early morning hours, if
nothing else, he licked dew which collected on the sides. If it
rained, with his boat clean, or relatively so, he had an instant water
barrel.

He said that he used finger nails and teeth to chip away wood, it took
some time, until he extracted a nail. Which he bent, using teeth
which he chipped and cloth to protect his hand. He did have a small
section of rope on the boat and patiently extracted the small fibers
to make a line. His first attempt at fishing, he bit pieces from his
fingers. Wasn't very successful.

He was getting very hungry and and didn't have much water, just the
dew on the boat sides. So he was conserving his strenght. During the
height of the sun he draped his outer shirt over his head and arms and
remained as still as possible. After a few days, a sea bird which had
been drifted over him for some time, decided to land on the boat. The
bird was nervous at first by the man was patient and waited.

It took until the next day. But finally the bird was careless enough
and came close enough so that the man managed to grab it.

Being thirsty, he drank the blood from the bird and ate the eyes.
Stripped the feathers and ate some of the bird. He kept some, pulled
it into strips of me he laid out to dry. Kept the bones.

Using a couple of cracked bones (for hooks), more line, a couple of
feathers for flash and action and some bits of entrails for bait he
set out a couple of lines and started fishing again. The bones worked
better than his makeshift (and dull) nail hook. The feather and
actual bait on each line also improved things. Soon he had a fish.
Not much of one, but a fish.

And so it went for the following months. Mostly fish. Sucking as
much juice from them as possible and eating the eyes for water
content. Eating the flesh, occassionally laying some of the meat out
to dry. For a change of taste as he put it. Occassionally he would
lay a bit of meat or entrail on a spot on the boat. And stay as far
from it as he could. This way he was occassionally able to tempt a
sea bird to come and eat it. After a couple such feedings often the
bird would grow to trust him. At which time he'd catch the bird and
eat it and have more bones for the making of fish hooks.

By the time he was found the fellow had collected enough bird wings,
which he dried and tied together that he had formed a small
sunshade/roof to help protect him from the sun and rain.

The ship's doctor who first examined the man after his rescue was
rather amazed that the fellow was in good shape and had in fact lost
little weight from his ordeal.

Later, when asked if he had any words of wisdom, the fellow simply
said, "Keep your boat clean and if you see a bird, be very, very
patient."

Little story comes from a publication I read years ago. A DOD study
of people thrown into various survival situations. They were trying
to determine why, in similar situations, some lived and some died.
They had many examples to study from the war. They finally came to
the conclusion that the only real common denominator was mental
attitude. Essentially it appeared that the mental attitude of simply
being unwilling to give up made as much as a 50 percent difference in
a human's ability to withstand hardship and deprivation. Was more of
a critical factor than physical condition or anything else they could
find.

Bob