Poon Lim BEM (8 March 1918 – 4 January 1991) was a Chinese seafarer.
He was born on the island of Hainan, China.
1942
In 1942–43 he survived 133 days alone in the South Atlantic.
Lim was Second Mess Steward on SS Benlomond (1922), a British cargo ship that the GS U-172 sank on 23 November 1942.
He survived on an 8 ft wooden raft with supplies.
When the supplies ran low, Lim resorted to fishing, catching seabirds, and rainwater collection.
In 1942 Lim 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.
Benlomond was capable of about 12 kn.
She was defensively armed, but her voyage was unescorted.
On 23 November, U-172 intercepted and hit Benlomond with two torpedoes at position 0.3°N, -38.45°W, about 250 mi north of the coast of Brazil.
Lim, who was in his cabin, took his life jacket and went to his boat station, where two officers and a seaman were trying to launch one of the lifeboats.
They had raised the boat off its chocks, and were about to lower it, when Lim was washed overboard.
The ship sank within about two minutes of being hit, and Lim was dragged underwater.
When he resurfaced, he found only a few planks floating, one of which he used for extra buoyancy.
After about two hours in the water, Lim found and boarded a wooden life raft.
In the distance he saw another raft, carrying four or five men, who waved to him to join them.
Lim thought they were some of the ship's DEMS gunners.
But Lim had no means to propel his raft, and the two rafts drifted apart.
The raft was stocked with a can of fresh water containing 10 impgal, six boxes of hardtack, 2 lb of chocolate, ten cans of pemmican, five cans of evaporated milk, one bottle of lime juice, and one can of massage oil.
It also had flares, two smoke pots, and a flashlight, with which to signal for help.
Lim at first kept himself alive by drinking the water and eating the food on the raft, but later resorted to fishing, catching seabirds, and collecting rainwater in a canvas life jacket covering.
He could not swim well, and often tied a rope from the boat to his wrist in case he fell into the sea.
He took a spring from the flashlight and made it into a fishhook, unravelled hemp rope to make a fishing line, and crushed pieces of hardtack to make bait.
He dug a nail from the boards on the wooden raft to make a stronger fish hook.
When he caught a small fish, he used it as bait to catch bigger fish.
He improvised a knife from part of a pemmican can.
The water tank had an iron key, which Lim also used as a tool.
When gulls settled on his raft, he caught and killed them.
He soaked their meat in seawater to salt it, then dried it on deck to make jerky.
When Lim saw sharks, he caught one, using the remnants of gulls he had caught as bait.
Lim had braided his fishing line to double thickness, and had wrapped his hands in canvas to give them a little protection.
The shark attacked him after he hauled it aboard the raft, so he used a water container to beat it to death.
Lim cut it open and sucked the blood from its liver.
This quenched his thirst, since it had not rained and he was out of water.
He sliced off the fins and let them dry in the sun.
Lim had lost all of his clothes except his shirt and vest.
1943
On 5 April 1943, three Brazilian fishermen rescued Lim as he neared the coast of Brazil.
After Lim returned to the United Kingdom, King George VI awarded him the British Empire Medal.
After the Second World War, Lim emigrated to the United States.
