#Blood island no biscuit full

A few days earlier, he had realized that he was nearing land because the color of the water had changed it was no longer a deep ocean blue. On 5 April 1943, after 133 days in the life raft, Lim neared land and a river inlet. Poon Lim in conversation with Rear admiral Julius A.

#Blood island no biscuit full

He was also once spotted by a German U-boat, which had been doing gunnery drills by targeting gulls.ДЄt 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. Unfortunately for Lim, a large storm hit the area at the same time and he was lost again. A squadron of United States Navy patrol seaplanes did see him, and one dropped a marker buoy in the water. Lim contended that they would not rescue him because he was Asian and they may have assumed he was a stricken Japanese sailor, although another explanation is that German U-boats often set a 'survivor' on a raft as a trap to get a rescuing ship to stop which made it a sitting duck to be sunk. The first was an unidentified freighter whose crew saw him but did not pick him up or even greet him despite his proficient shouts in English. On several occasions he was passed by other vessels. He sliced off the fins and let them dry in the sun. Since it had not rained, he was out of water and this quenched his thirst. 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 weapon. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to make the catch. He 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 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. 53 of the crew of 54 were lost at sea, including the master, John Maul, 44 crew, and eight gunners. Lim was ultimately the only survivor of the sinking. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty-litre (8.8В impВ gal 11В USВ 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 raft. Д«enlomond 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 (400В km) from the nearest land to the South, but ocean currents took him west to BelГ©m. On 23 November, German submarine U-172, a German U-boat, intercepted and hit the Benlomond with two torpedoes in position 0вЃ8вЂІN 38в‚7вЂІW п»ї / п»ї 00.30В°N 38.45В°W п»ї / 00.30 -38.45, some 750 miles (1,210В km) east of BelГ©m, 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.