Word: rafts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...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...
With My Crossbow. That night an albatross landed on the raft. Aldrich killed it with the pistol and Dixon, the only one who could swim, dived overboard and retrieved it. The men ate the organs and the entrails, but put the unplucked flesh away to save. In the night it glowed with phosphorescence and Dixon threw it overboard. That was a tough thing to do. But during the night it rained again. "The drawers worked fine," Dixon said. "We all had a good drink...
...seventh day Aldrich slashed out with the pocketknife again, this time gilled a four-foot shark and yanked it aboard. It flopped down on Pastula in the bottom of the raft. He rolled over and pinned it like a wrestler. With their pliers the men ripped the shark open. Dixon remembered reading that sharks stored up vitamins in their liver. They joked about that. The liver was "very tasty," so were two sardines in the shark's stomach which the men said "must have been partly digested because they tasted as if they had been cooked...
...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...