Poon Lim or Lim Poon

Our position is 40 miles southwest of Monrovia now and this afternoon we came across this empty raft. We passed close by, just to check if it was really empty. Can you imagine yourself on a raft with a vessel passing without noticing it?

It happened a couple of times to the all time record holder longest period on a raft. It is the story of Poon Lim
Poon Lim, or Lim Poon, was born on a Hainan Island in 1918. In 1942, during World War II, he was working as second steward on the British merchant ship SS Ben Lomond, which was on its way from Cape Town to Dutch Guiana. The ship was armed but slow moving and was sailing alone instead of being in a convoy.
On November 23, a German U-boat intercepted and torpedoed the ship. As the ship was sinking, Poon Lim took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship's boilers exploded. After approximately two hours in the water, he found an empty life raft and climbed into it
The raft had several tins of biscuits, a ten-gallon jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots and an electric torch.

Poon Lim initially kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food on the raft, but later resorted to catching rainwater in a canvas tarp and fishing. 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 electric torch 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 cut it open with a knife he fashioned out of a biscuit tin and dried the fish on a hemp line over the raft. Once after a large storm had spoiled his fish and fouled his water, Poon, barely alive, caught a bird and drank its blood to survive.

On two occasions other vessels passed nearby: first a freighter, then a squad of US Navy patrol planes. Poon contends that the freighter saw him but did not pick him up because he was Chinese. 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. It did not offer assistance.

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.
On April 5, 1943, Poon Lim reached 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 and was no longer the ocean deep blue. Three Brazilian fishermen rescued him and took him to Belém three days later.

During his ordeal, Poon Lim had lost 20 pounds, but was able to walk unaided upon being rescued. He spent two weeks in a Brazilian hospital, and the British consul arranged for him to return to Britain via Miami and New York. He later found out that only 11 others of the ship's crew of 55 had been rescued.

King George VI bestowed a British Empire Medal on him, and the British Navy incorporated his tale into manuals of survival techniques. After the war, Poon Lim decided to immigrate to the United States, but the quota for Chinese was full. However, because of his fame and the aid of Senator Warren Magnuson, he received a special dispensation and eventually gained citizenship.

He died in Brooklyn on January 4, 1991