Poon Lim

Poon Lim BEM (; 8 March 1918 – 4 January 1991) was a Chinese seafarer. In 1942–43, he survived a record 133 days alone on a life raft in the South Atlantic.

Poon was Second Mess Steward on , a British cargo ship that the sank on 23 November 1942. He survived on an wooden raft with supplies. When the supplies ran low, Poon resorted to fishing, catching seabirds, and rainwater collection.

On 5 April 1943, three Brazilian fishermen rescued Poon as he neared the coast of Brazil, having drifted westward about . After Poon returned to the United Kingdom, King George VI awarded him the British Empire Medal. After the Second World War, Poon emigrated to the United States.

Early life Poon Lim was born to a peasant family in Qishan , a village part of Gongpo, Wenchang County, Hainan. His father was a travelling martial arts teacher. In 1936, Poon was sent to British Hong Kong, where he was trained as a sailor.

Shipwreck

In 1942 Poon was Second Mess Steward on the Ben Line cargo ship Benlomond, which was en route from Suez to New York via Cape Town and Paramaribo. Her officers were British, but most of her crew was Chinese. She was defensively armed, but her voyage was unescorted.

On 23 November, U-172 intercepted and hit Benlomond with two torpedoes at position , about north of the coast of Brazil.

Poon was spotted by the crew of U-172, but instead of rescuing him, they laughed at him and waved him away.

Poon at first kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food on the raft. After around 55 days, the food ran out, followed by the water supply fifteen days later. After spending five days without water,

When Poon saw sharks, he caught one, He was so weak that his rescuers had to lift him off his raft. But he ate well, and when the fishermen landed him at Belém, three days later, he was able to walk again, although he was still weak.

Aftermath After being in the hospital for 45 days, His citation states that "Poon Lim displayed exceptional courage, fortitude and resource in overcoming the tremendous difficulties with which he was faced during the long and dangerous voyage on the raft". At the same ceremony, Ben Line presented Poon with a gold wristwatch.

After the war, Poon wanted 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 in 1952.

Poon surpassed the previous known record of life raft survival of five crewmen of MV Zaandam, also torpedoed by a U-boat, two months before his rescue. 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. , no one has broken Poon's record on a life raft.

The writer Alfred Bester later stated that Poon's ordeal was used in his novel The Stars My Destination, which opens with a man stranded in space.

Poon died in Brooklyn, New York, on 4 January 1991, aged 72.