Poon Lim

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Poon Lim
Born (1918-03-08)March 8, 1918
Hainan, China
Died January 4, 1991(1991-01-04) (aged 72)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

Poon Lim or Lim Poon BEM (March 8, 1918 – January 4, 1991) was a Chinese sailor who survived 133 days alone in the South Atlantic.[1][2]

Lim was working as second steward on the British merchant ship SS Benlomond when it was sunk by a German U-boat on November 23, 1942. After a few hours in the water, Lim found an 8-foot square wooden raft which contained some food and water. When the supplies ran low, he resorted to fishing, catching seabirds and collecting rainwater. On April 5, 1943, he was rescued by three Brazilian fishermen as he neared the coast of Brazil. After returning to the United Kingdom, he was awarded a British Empire Medal by King George VI. After the war, Lim emigrated to the United States.


Lim was born in Hainan, China, in 1918. In 1942, during World War II, he was working as second steward on the British merchant ship SS Benlomond, which was on its way from Cape Town to Paramaribo, Suriname and New York. The ship was armed but slow moving and was sailing alone instead of in a convoy.

On November 23, the German U-boat U-172 intercepted and struck the Ben Lomond with two torpedoes in position 0°18′N 38°27′W﻿ / ﻿00.30°N 38.45°W﻿ / 00.30; -38.45, some 750 miles east of the Amazon. As the ship was sinking, Poon Lim took a life jacket and jumped overboard before the ship's boilers exploded.[3][4] As the ship sank in two minutes, 53 of the crew of 54 were lost including the master, 44 sailors and eight gunners, making Lim the sole survivor.[5][6]

After approximately two hours in the water, he found an 8' square wooden raft and climbed into it. The raft had several tins of biscuits, a forty litre jug of water, some chocolate, a bag of sugar lumps, some flares, two smoke pots and a flashlight.

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

When he saw sharks, he did not swim. Instead he set out to catch one. He used the remnants of the next bird he caught as bait. The first shark to pick up the taste was only a few feet long. He gulped the bait and hit the line with full force, but in preparation Poon Lim had braided the line so it would have double thickness. He also had wrapped his hands in canvas to enable him to make the catch. The shark attacked him after he brought it aboard the raft, so he used the water jug half-filled with seawater as a weapon. After subduing the shark, Poon Lim cut it open and sucked the blood from its liver. Since it hadn't rained, he was out of water and this quenched his thirst. He sliced the fins and let them dry in the sun - a Hainan delicacy.

On two occasions other vessels passed nearby: first an unidentified freighter, then a squad of United States Navy patrol planes. Poon contended 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.

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, after 133 days in the life raft, Poon Lim neared 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; it was no longer the oceanic deep blue. Three Brazilian fishermen rescued him and took him to Belém three days later.

During his ordeal, Poon Lim had lost 9 kg, but was able to walk unaided upon being rescued. He spent four weeks in a Brazilian hospital and the British Consul arranged for him to return to Britain via Miami and New York.

When told no one had ever survived longer on a raft at sea, Poon Lim replied, "I hope no one will ever have to break that record." People have lived longer lost at sea; 3 Mexican sailors floated for 10 months in a disabled fishing boat.[7] In a similar situation, José Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman from El Salvador, was apparently lost for 439 days, floating from Mexico to the Marshall Islands. However, as of 2015 no one has broken Poon Lim's record on a life raft.


King George VI bestowed a British Empire Medal (BEM) on him, and the Royal Navy incorporated his tale into manuals of survival techniques. After the war, Poon Lim decided to emigrate to the United States, but the quota for Chinese immigrants had been reached. However, because of his fame and the aid of Senator Warren Magnuson, he received a special dispensation and eventually gained citizenship.[8] The writer Alfred Bester later stated that Poon Lim's ordeal was used in his novel The Stars My Destination, which opens with a man stranded in space.[9]

Poon Lim died in Brooklyn on January 4, 1991.[10]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ "In their disabled boat, 3 Mexicans drift 9 months across Pacific". International Herald Tribune. 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-24. Among other recorded cases of people surviving long periods stranded at sea, in 1942, a Chinese sailor named Poon Lim survived four months alone in the South Atlantic after a German U- boat torpedoed the British merchant ship he was working on. 
  2. ^ "Tells of 132 Days on Raft". United Press in New York Times. May 25, 1943. Retrieved 2008-04-24. Poon Lim told in detail here tonight how he got that "Chinaman's chance" and lived in nakedness 132 days on a life raft in the South Atlantic after being the only survivor of fifty-five men aboard a torpedoed English merchantman. 
  3. ^ [1]
  4. ^ "S.S. Ben Lomond, Allied Ships hit by U-boats" by Gudmundur Helgason, Ed. Retrieved on 27 November 2008
  5. ^ [2]
  6. ^ Tennant, Alan J. British and COmmonwealth Merchant Ship Losses to Axis Submarines 1939-1945. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2001 (page 287).
  7. ^ Mexican trio back after 10 months lost at sea
  8. ^ "Poon Lim Awarded Medal for 133 Days on Life Raft.". Chicago Daily Tribune. July 17, 1943. Retrieved 2008-04-24. 
  9. ^ [Bester, Alfred. "My Affair with Science Fiction", in Hell's Cartographers ed. by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, 197]
  10. ^ Social Security Death Index; Lim Poon; 123-20-0128

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