The Amazing Survival of Alain Bombard
He sailed across the Atlantic without food or water
Robinson Crusoe was lucky. He managed to survive the trauma of being shipwrecked — in his case by landing on a desert island that was able to sustain him until rescue arrived. However, thousands of others have not been so lucky, with many pulling away from sinking ships in lifeboats only to die of thirst or starvation.
The Theory
In 1953, Alain Bobmard, a French doctor, took the view that many of these deaths were unnecessary. He believed that a castaway, adrift without food or water and with only an open boat and his own resources, should be able to keep himself alive far beyond the known limits of human endurance. He was prepared to put his theory to the test by being his own guinea-pig.
On 19 October 1953, he set off from the Canary Islands in a 15 foot rubber cockleshell of a boat with the aim of crossing the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the West Indies. To make the experiment as realistic as possible he took no provisions — not a scrap of food nor a drop of water.
The Voyage
Bombard did not accept the popular belief that drinking seawater sends a thirsting castaway mad and hastens his death. His theory was that shipwrecked men who suffer this fate…
