Jeff’s Reviews > Survive the Savage Sea by Dougal Robertson > Status Update

Looking back on their experience, they thought it was rather exciting and in fact, two days out from Liverpool on our return to Britain, Neil, bored with the shipboard routine, said "I'm fed up, Dad, I wish we were back on the raft!"

If any single civilized factor in a castaway's character helps survival, it is a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. It helps the castaway to laugh in the face of impossible situations and allows him, or her, to overcome the assassination of all civilized codes and characteristics which hitherto had been the guidelines of life.

This goes a long way to show the lessons learned from Bligh's mutiny: "...any departure into the realm of orthodox authority at this stage is specious nonsense, and the crass idiocy of creating work for "idle" hands should be instantly exposed as such. There is usually plenty of time for discussion about policy decisions and if people know why they are doing a thing it helps them to do it."

Remember that it is easier for exhausted castaways to travel by sea than by land, and to destroy one's craft making a useless landing on an uninhabited island which won't support life, or on a part of the coast which is cut off from habitation, is to waste the effort expended on reaching it.

"I have noticed tropic birds four hundred miles out in the Atlantic from Barbados, and if they can travel as far as that, they can go much farther. "

Not the soundest logic.

Interesting that Robertson embraces Cook's anecdote about drinking turtle blood, but he tells us to ignore the ship's surgeon's experience, who sees the blood making sailors sick.

Definitely could use more evidence for this claim: "Robin, who refused the enemas, showed no particular disability because of it, unless his delirium could be regarded as a sign that he was perhaps more dehydrated than the rest of us."

Based on the authors' writing and my own understanding of survival techniques, if I had to choose between the two opposing views of drinking seawater presented here (Robertson against, Bombard for) I would trust Robertson. That being said, Bombard lasted almost twice as long as the Robertson family, and he was able to walk to a rescue station, whereas the author admits he collapsed after reaching the rescue boat.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that survival conditions are not the same as those voluntarily undertaken by brave men who wish to help survivors fight for their lives. The physical conditions may be quite similar, but the moral incentives, the attitude of experimental interest as opposed to that of escape from catastrophe, can alter a person's judgment of what is right or wrong and this difference can kill!

The suggestion that a castaway should stop alleviating his despair when he feels the need for the substance he is using to allay it is a useless nonsense, and I propose to show by quoting from actual shipwreck experience that there is indeed nothing to be gained, and much to lose, from following this most dangerous advice.