“Sailors may be struck down at any time, in calm or in storm, but the sea does not do it for hate or spite. She has no wrath to vent. Nor does she have a hand of kindness to extend. She is merely there, immense, powerful, and indifferent. I do not resent her indifference, or my comparative insignificance. Indeed, it is one of the main reasons I like to sail: the sea makes the insignificance of my own small self and of all humanity so poignant.”
While sailing from the Canary Islands in January 1982, Steven Callahan’s ship, Napoleon Solo, was hit by something and swiftly began to sank. Callahan launched his inflatable life raft and had a few minutes to retrieve emergency supplies from his boat before it went down. This raft would become his home for 76 days, drifting 1,800 nautical miles.
He suffered hunger, thirst and countless other medical problems but survived by extraordinary resourcefulness. When he was eventually found by three sailors off Guadeloupe, he had lost 44 lb and was unable to walk.
The book is both poetic and philosophical. He has a real way with words:
“The bag is freed but seems to weigh as much as the collected sins of the world.”
“I arise for a gulp of air. There is none. In that moment I feel as though the last breath in the galaxy has been breathed by someone else.”
“I dive into the raft with the knife clenched in my teeth, buccaneer style, noticing that the movie camera mounted on the aft pulpit has been turned on. Its red eye winks at me. Who is directing this film? He isn’t much on lighting but his flair for the dramatic is impressive.”
There is indeed plenty of drama, from shark attacks to accidentally puncturing his raft and having to constantly pump air into it. He sees nine ships but none of them see him – or if they do, they don’t stop to help. He is utterly alone at sea (“That torn blue desert”) with only his intelligence and unbreakable spirit.
Surprisingly, some of the most interesting passages are those in which he details the minutiae of his survival equipment – the spear gun with which he catches fish, a still with which he desalinates water and so on. These items are illustrated by his own sketches. His technical skill is remarkable and this is clearly one of the things that saved him.
You can tell he has the psychology of a survivor because of the way he adapts his thinking to the extremes of the situation:
“ln these moments of peace, deprivation seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple hours of fishing each day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past life seems. For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed – food, shelter, clothing, and companionship – yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn’t get everything I wanted, when people didn’t meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn’t acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness. Even here, there is richness all around me. As I look out of the raft, I see God’s face in the smooth waves, His grace in the dorado’s swim, feel His breath against my cheek as it sweeps down from the sky. I see that all of creation is made in His image. Yet despite His constant company, I need more. I need more than food and drink. I need to feel the company of other human spirits.”
Moments of occasional euphoria aside, it’s mostly a horribly painful and bleak experience. See day 71, in his final week of solitude:
“Maybe I am the Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the seas forever and never rest again, to watch my own body rot and my equipment deteriorate. I am in an infinite vortex of horror, whirling deeper and deeper. Thinking of what I will do when it is all over is a bad joke. It will never be over. It is worse than death. If I were to search the most heinous parts of my mind to create a vision of a real hell, this would be the scene, exactly.”
And yet he does survive. It’s hugely inspiring.
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