Survivor: The Autobiography

by Lewis, Jon E.

  I see my vessel, my companion, my child, swallowed up like a crumb too small for the deep Atlantic to taste. Waves bury her and pass. Solo’s white decks emerge. She’s not going down, not yet. Wait until she goes before cutting the painter. Even though I have added canned water and other gear to the raft’s supplies, I will not live long without additional equipment. Wait and salvage everything you can. My body shakes even more with fright and cold, and my eyes sting from the salt. I must get some clothes, some cover, anything. I begin hacking off a piece of the mains’l. Don’t cut the raft, be careful, careful. Once cut, the sailcloth rips off easily. The raft flips about as I pull the horseshoe life preserver and man-overboard pole off of Solo’s stern. Foam and sea continue to sweep across her, but she rises each time. My mind coaxes her. Please don’t go, not yet, please stay up. The watertight compartments that I designed and installed have combined with pockets of air trapped inside of her. She fights back. Her jib snaps with loud report. Her hatch and rudder bang as the ocean beats her. Perhaps she will not sink after all. Her head is under but her rear hesitates like a child at the shore, unable to make the final plunge.

  I ache with cold; the stench of rubber, plastic and talc fill my nostrils. Solo may sink any moment now, but I must get back inside. There isn’t much time. I pull up to the side of the boat, climb aboard, and stand for a second feeling the strange sensation of being in the sea and on deck at the same time. Waves rear up and bury the boat, but time after time Solo struggles to the surface. How much battering will she take before water feels its way into the few remaining air spaces? How many moments are left before she will disappear for the last time?

  Between towering crests that wash over me, I lower myself into the hatch. The water below is peaceful compared to the surrounding tempest. I duck into the watery tomb, and the hatch slams shut behind me with a crack. I feel for the emergency bag and cut away the lines that secure it. Waves wander by, engulf us, and move on. I gasp for air. The bag is freed but seems to weigh as much as the collected sins of the world. While struggling in the companionway, pushing and tugging to get the gear on deck, I fight the hatch, which beats against my back. Heaving the bag into the raft requires all the strength I have.

  As it tumbles into the raft, I turn to re-enter the hatch. My hand turns aft and finds a piece of floating cushion wedged against the overhead. Jerking at it, 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. The edge of the sea suddenly rips past. I see the surface shimmering like a thousand candles. Air splutters in, and I gasp as the clatter of Solo becomes muffled by the coming of the next wave.

  I tie the cushion to the end of a halyard and let it float about while I submerge to retrieve my bed. Bundling up my wet sleeping bag is like capturing an armful of snakes. I slowly manage to shove, pull, and roll the bag into the raft. With the final piece of cushion, I fall in behind. I have successfully abandoned ship.

  My God, Solo is still floating! I see her slowly rolling farther on to her side as I gather up items that float out of the cabin one by one: a cabbage, an empty Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee can, and a box containing a few eggs. The eggs will probably not last long, but I take them anyway.

  I am too exhausted to do any more. I will not part from Solo, but should she want to leave I must be able to let go. Seventy feet of 3/8 inch line, tied to the end of the mainsheet, allows me to drift well downwind. Solo disappears when we dip into the waves’ troughs. Great foaming crests of water grind their way towards us. There is a churning up to windward like the surf on the shore. I hear it coming; I hear the clap and bang and snap that are Solo’s words to me, ‘I’m here.’ The raft rises to meet the head of the wave that rushes towards me. The froth and curl crash by just to port.

  The entrance fly on the tent-type cover snaps with a ripping sound each time the Velcro seal is blown by the wind. I must turn the raft or a breaker may drive through the opening. While on a wave peak, I look aft at Solo’s deck mounting on the next swell. The sea rises smoothly from the dark, a giant sitting up after a sleep. There is a tight round opening in the opposite side of the tent. I stick myself through this observation port up to my waist. I must not let go of the rope to Solo, but I need to move it. I loop a rope through the mainsheet which trails from Solo’s deck and lead it back to the raft. One end of this I secure to the handline around the raft’s perimeter. The other I wind around the handline and bring the tail through the observation port. If Solo sinks I can let go of this tail and we will slip apart. Wait – can’t get back in . . . I’m stuck. I try to free myself from the canopy clutching my chest. The sea spits at me. Crests roar in the darkness. I twist and yank and fall back inside. The raft swings and presents the wall of the tent to the waves. Ha! A good joke, the wall of a tent against the sea, the sea that beats granite to sand.

  With a slipknot I tie Solo’s line to the handhold webbing that encircles the inside of the raft. While frantically tying all of my equipment to the webbing, I hear rumbling well to windward. It must be a big wave to be heard so far off. I listen to its approach. A rush of water, then silence. I can feel it rising over me. There is a wrenching rubbery shriek from the raft as the wave bursts upon us and my space collapses in half. The windward side punches in and sends me flying across the raft. The top collapses and water shoots in everywhere. The impact is strengthened by the jerking painter, tied to my ship full of water, upwind from where the sea sprang. I’m going to die. Tonight. Here some 450 miles away from the nearest land. The sea will crush me, capsize me, and rob my body of heat and breath. I will be lost, and no one will even know until I’m weeks overdue.

  I crawl back to windward, keeping one hand on the cord to Solo, the other hand clutching the handline. I huddle in my sodden sleeping-bag. Gallons of water slosh about in the bottom of the raft. I sit on the cushion, which insulates me from the icy floor. I’m shivering but begin to warm up. It is a time to wait, to listen, to think, to plan, and to fear.

  As my raft and I rise to the crest of a wave. I can see Solo wallowing in the following trough. Then she rises against the face of the next wave as I plummet into the trough that had cradled her a moment before. She has rolled well over now, with her nose and starboard side under and her stern quarter fairly high. If only you will stay afloat until morning. I must see you again, must see the damage that I feel I have caused you. Why didn’t I wait in the Canaries? Why didn’t I soften up and relax? Why did I drive you to this so that I could complete my stupid goal of a double crossing? I’m sorry, my poor Solo.

  I have swallowed a lot of salt and my throat is parched. Perhaps in the morning I can retrieve more gear, jugs of water, and some food. I plan every move and every priority. The loss of body heat is the most immediate danger, but the sleeping-bag may give me enough protection. Water is the first priority, then food. After that, whatever else I can grab. Ten gallons of water rest in the galley locker just under the companionway – forty to eighty days’ worth of survival rations waiting for me just a hundred feet away. The raised stern quarter will make it easier to get aft. There are two large duffels in the aft cabin, hung on the top sides; one is full of food – about a month’s worth – and the other is full of clothes. If I can dive down and swim forward, I may be able to pull my survival suit out of the fore-peak. I dream of how its thick neoprene will warm me up.

  Waves continue to pound the raft, beating the side in, pouring in water. The tubes are as tight as teak logs, yet they are bent like spaghetti. Bailing with the coffee can again and again, I wonder how much one of these rafts can take and watch for signs of splitting.

  A small overhead lamp lights my tiny new world. The memory of the crash, the rank odour of my surroundings, the pounding of the sea, the moaning wind, and my plan to reboard Solo in the morning roll over and over in my brain. Surely it will end soon.

  5 February, day 1 I am lost about halfway between western Oshkosh and Nowhere City. I do not think the Atlantic h
as emptier waters. I am about 450 miles north of the Cape Verde Islands, but they stand across the wind. I can drift only in the direction she blows. Downwind, 450 miles separate me from the nearest shipping lanes. Caribbean islands are the closest possible landfall, eighteen hundred nautical miles away. Do not think of it. Plan for daylight, instead. I have hope if the raft lasts. Will it last? The sea continues to attack. It does not always give warning. Often the curl develops just before it strikes. The roar accompanies the crash, beating the raft, ripping at it.

  I hear a growl a long way off, towards the heart of the storm. It builds like a crescendo, growing louder and louder until it consumes all of the air around me. The fist of Neptune strikes, and with its blast the raft is shot to a staggering halt. It squawks and screams, and then there is peace, as though we have passed into the realm of the afterlife where we cannot be further tortured.

  Quickly I yank open the observation port and stick my head out. Solo’s jib is still snapping and her rudder clapping, but I am drifting away. Her electrics have fused together and the strobe light on the top of her mast blinks goodbye to me. I watch for a long time as the flashes of light become visible less often, knowing it is the last I will see of her, feeling as if I have lost a friend and a part of myself. An occasional flash appears, and then nothing. She is lost in the raging sea.

  I pull up the line that had tied me to my friend, my hope for food and water and clothing. The rope is in one piece. Perhaps the loop I had tied in the mainsheet broke during the last shock. Or the knot; perhaps it was the knot. The vibration and surging might have shaken it loose. Or I may have made a mistake in tying it. I have tied thousands of bowlines; it is a process as familiar as turning a key. Still . . . No matter now. No regrets. I simply wonder if this has saved me. Did my tiny rubber home escape just before it was torn to pieces? Will being set adrift kill me in the end?

  Somewhat relieved from the constant assault on the raft, I chide myself in a Humphrey Bogart fashion. Well, you’re on your own now, kid. Mingled with the relief is fright, pain, remorse, apprehension, hope and hopelessness. My feelings are bundled up in a massive ball of inseparable confusion, devouring me as a black hole gobbles up light. I still ache with cold, and now my body is shot through with pain from wounds that I’ve not noticed before. I feel so vulnerable. There are no backup systems remaining, no place to bail out to, no more second chances. Mentally and physically, I feel as if all of the protection has been peeled away from my nerves and they lie completely exposed.

  English soldiers. In 1966 they rowed the Atlantic in an open dory, English Rose III.

  By the end of my ‘stag’ the breeze had freshened to a steady wind, and when John next woke me to replace him at the oars a big sea was running and I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of wind and waves.

  John pointed to the sky. Heavy black clouds were racing low, overhead, and I felt the first big spots of rain on my face.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve made any headway at all in the last hour,’ John bellowed in my ear. ‘If anything, I’ve been losing ground.’

  ‘Well, let me give it a try,’ I shouted back. ‘The wind’s pretty strong, so perhaps the storm will blow over quickly.’

  He shrugged his shoulders and crawled under the canvas. I did not really believe the storm would pass over quickly, but hated to admit right at the start that my two hours’ slogging at the oars was not going to carry us more than a few yards nearer home. It was depressing to work so hard and know that gradually, hour by hour, the sea was pressing us back to the West.

  The slamming jar of the waves on the end of the oars at the start of every stroke had an accumulative effect on both mind and body when the wind was in the East. It was a form of punch drunkenness. I found I could sit there for an hour without a single thought in my head and be so little aware of the soreness of my hands that my arms might have been ten yards long.

  At those times the brain worked slowly, but the imagination was a vivid thing, and I terrified myself with thoughts of primeval creatures rising from the incredible depths to seize and destroy our boat. When in this condition neither of us wanted our food. The pummelling from the oars combined with fear and tiredness to kill our appetites.

  That day marked the beginning of a new phase in our voyage. Far from passing over quickly, the storm lasted for nearly a week. For three days and nights we were unable to row and unable to sleep. We had both known fear many times before in our lives – but never anything like this. The sea was like something out of hell. Lacking keel, sail or motor, we could not keep ‘Rosie’s’ head into the sea, and she thrashed piteously like a mad dog in convulsions. We knew that this could not be over tomorrow, or for many tomorrows. It was like being rubbed down with rough sandpaper.

  By then we had lost track of how many storms there had been, knowing only that each one left us progressively weaker and one step nearer defeat. At 2 p.m. on 27 July we shipped oars and hauled the mildewed canvas canopy into place on its metal frame. There was no longer any use trying to disguise the fact that we were running into trouble.

  The situation was already serious. That morning while trying to pick up a BBC news bulletin a freak wave had broken right over the boat and swamped our radio. We tried to persuade ourselves that it had only been temporarily put out of action. But neither of us really believed this.

  ‘Perhaps when it’s had a chance to dry out it will be all right,’ said John. ‘The water has probably got to the points and it is shorting out.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t work?’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to rely on the watches to time our sighting,’ he said. ‘I expect they’re pretty accurate. And if they’re not there’s damn all we can do about it now.’

  Until then we had been able to check and reset the watches by the radio time signals. They had never been more than a few seconds out. But in three weeks those seconds could mount up and eventually cause a serious error in calculating our position.

  Our log notes were running to double the length of previous entries. We scribbled away in the hope that by writing down our problems we would unload some of the worry.

  On Thursday, 28 July John wrote: ‘As darkness falls it is apparent that we are unable to row any longer, as each changeover between men entails a swing off course, and the energy required to bring her back is too much.

  ‘All the time we are slowly slipping back. As we eat our curry and drink our cocoa we decide to slip the sea anchor . . . We have been almost stationary for so long there are several small fishes under the boat, and as I put the sea anchor over Blyth tries to sniggle one in best Scottish fashion. The fish is about eight inches long and fairly deep and mottled brown and white in colour.

  ‘We didn’t catch it. Neither of us wanted our food. This was caused in me by an amalgamation of pure fear and seasickness. We now realise our position and are both simply afraid. With the sea anchor over we both curl up under the canopy in the stern – both wet before it started. The salt is extremely irritating to our skin, and the position very cramped and a nightmare for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia. A grim, grim day.’

  My own log was equally stark. ‘We have been rowing against this south-east wind now for three days,’ I wrote. ‘Now we’ve reduced it to one hour on and one hour sleeping. My hands are very sore indeed. I can’t clench my fists. It seems all the tendons and muscles and all my fingers have been pulled. Before I start my hour’s sleep I put lanoline on my hands, but they are so painful it doesn’t seem to help. When I wake up it’s a nightmare those first few minutes. My hands won’t do anything. When you take a stroke you get this fantastic jerk on your arms and hands. How I pray the wind will change to the West.

  ‘There’s been some fish following us all day. When we throw some paper over the side they dart out to it and then back to the stern. We rowed all day and then the seas gradually built up. At 10.00 GMT it was getting dark and the seas were very large by this time. We decided to put over the sea anchor. The
first time for over a month or more – I can’t really remember. The night was spent in the two sleeping positions. Very uncomfortable and not a great deal of sleep. I got soaked all down my legs and behind. The water rushed in under the canopy into my boots and down my trouser leg. This only happened once, but it was enough.

  ‘We used water bags inflated as pillows and to put next to us where something would be sticking into us. I slept next to the pumps, but was very lucky. I only had to get up four times to pump out. I only hope the sea anchor holds the night.’

  On 29 July we emerged only once from beneath the canvas canopy, and that was to check the sea anchor. To have lost it at that point would have been a disaster. For nothing could have stopped us being blown West with the wind, and we could easily have lost fifty miles.

  We spent the day huddled together in the stern in a space measuring no more than five feet by four feet. John felt very sick and tried to sleep as much as possible.

  The waves were like mountains and bigger than any we had seen up till then. Their tops were sliced flat by the wind, and they came towards us frighteningly fast and with a noise like a plane on full throttle. We learned to judge by their speed and sound which waves were going to pass under us, which would break into the boat and which would hit us smack on.

  The constant battering of hundreds of pounds of falling water on the canvas canopy finally proved too much for the metal frame. It collapsed and introduced yet another form of personal discomfort. We tried to prop the edges up with two stout poles from our emergency kit. Every half minute or so the wind would lift the canvas. The poles would dislodge and the whole soggy mess would come tumbling down on our heads. We were driven almost to the point of hysteria.