Dougal Robertson
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Dougal Robertson (1924-1992) was an English author and sailor born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He joined the British Merchant Navy after attending Leith Nautical College. After leaving maritime life, Robertson began to raise a family and to work as a dairy farmer.
On January 27, 1971, Dougal departed from Falmouth, England on board Lucette, a 43-foot wooden schooner built in 1922 which the family had purchased with their life's savings. He was accompanied by his wife Lynn, daughter Anne, son Douglas, and twin sons Neil and Sandy. Over the next year and a half, they sailed across the Atlantic, stopping at various ports of call in the Caribbean. Anne retired from the voyage in the Bahamas.
During the their transit of the Panama Canal, the family members took aboard an inexperienced crew member named Robin Williams (no relation to the comedian of the same name), who was to accompany them on the next segment of their voyage to the Galapagos Islands and beyond to the islands of the South Pacific.
On June 15, 1972, Lucette was holed by a pod of killer whales and sank approximately 200 miles west of the Galapagos Islands. The group of six people on board escaped to an inflatable life raft and a solid-hull dinghy with little in the way of tools or provisions.
Using the dinghy as a towboat powered by a jury-rigged sail, the group made its way towards the doldrums, hoping to find rain there so they could collect drinking water. They did so successfully, while catching turtles, mahi-mahi and flying fish to eat. The inflatable raft became unusable after 16 days, so the six people crowded into the three-meter long dinghy with their supplies. They then continued to use the wind and current to their advantage, moving to the northeast towards Central America. By their 38th day as castaways, they had stored dried meat and fresh water in such quantities that they intended to begin rowing that night to speed their progress. However, they were sighted and picked up that day by a fishing trawler on its way to the Panama Canal. Robertson, who had been keeping a journal in case they were rescued, recounted the ordeal in the 1973 book Survive the Savage Sea, which served as the foundation for the 1991 film of the same name. The story was revisted in his son Douglas's book The Last Voyage of the Lucette..
Dougal went on to write "Sea Survival: A Manual", and continued to sail until his death in 1992.
[edit] References
Robertson, Dougal (1973), Survive the Savage Sea
Robertson, Dougal (1975), Sea Survival: A Manual
Robertson, Douglas (2005), The Last Voyage of the Lucette, ISBN 1-57409-206-5
Brinnin, John Malcom; Probst, Robert E; Anderson, Robert; Legett, John & Irvin, written at United States of America, from "Survive the Savage Sea", vol. First Course, Elements of Literature, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (published 2000), p. 456, ISBN 0-03-052058-4
[edit] External links
[edit] See also
- Steven Callahan, survived a stint adrift for 76 days in the Atlantic
- Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, survived 117 days adrift in the Pacific.
- Rose Noelle, trimaran on which 4 people survived 119 days adrift in the South Pacific.
