Word: raft
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...that manner either. ... It was Aldrich, even tho a "lad" that provided the most of the food on that voyage. It was he who sighted the islet. . . . You see, I received a telegram from headquarters, saying that my son would recount his experience adrift in a rubber life raft in an interview over NBC Blue network. . . . And it was the "Aldrich lad," that led that little band in the Lord's Prayer (even tho Dixon was old enough to be his father), and every evening thereafter they held prayer services. . . . I am very proud...
...life raft bumping the waves of the Windward Passage near Haiti looked no bigger than a cork when the Catalina patrol plane first sighted it; but when Ensign Francis E. Pinter eased his ship down to 200 ft., he could make out 17 people crowded upon it. To attempt a landing in such a choppy sea was a risky business for a plane that was toting a pair of depth charges, beaching gear, and a crew of eight, but Ensign Pinter figured that the plane had burned 300 gallons of gas since it left San Juan, Puerto Rico, was therefore...
...rough sea it was impossible to taxi alongside, so he moved up windward, drifted down on the raft. The 16 men and a woman on the raft were weak after 60 hours at sea without food or water. Distributing them aboard a Catalina built to accommodate only its crew took a lot of doing. Some were stowed in the bombing compartment, one on the deck between the pilots' seats; the woman was put in a bunk...
...useless. But he kept to the watch. Said he: "I seen this object with my naked eye. It looked like a yaller box, maybe three miles off." The bridge could not see it, pooh-poohed his warning until a ruby-red SOS light appeared. "It" was an orange life raft from a torpedoed ship. Six survivors, one of them already prostrate from exhaustion, were picked up. Commended by the Third Naval District's Rear Admiral Adolphus An drews for his uncanny eyesight, bashful, young (18) Bill Lowans had to admit that he did not know the color...
...Storm-Blast Came. When the hurricane struck a few days later, the men used their shirts and trousers to bail out the mountainous combers breaking over the raft. One wave flipped the raft completely over. Then the men lost everything, including their clothes. Exhausted, when the storm subsided, they were stark naked. When the sun came out again, their only shelter was a tiny piece of fabric ripped off the oar pocket. On the 33rd day the raft capsized once more. "For the first time," Dixon said, "I was ready to give up." His nerves were so frayed that...