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Dougal Robertson
Dougal Robertson
Born	1924; Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	1992 (aged 67–68); Scotland
Occupation(s)	Author, sailor
Known for	Surviving being adrift at sea with family members

Dougal Robertson (1924–1992) was a Scottish author and sailor who with his family survived being adrift at sea after their schooner was holed by a pod of orcas in 1972, one of the few documented orca attacks in the Pacific.

Early life

Robertson was born in Edinburgh in 1924, the youngest of eight children.^[1] He joined the British Merchant Navy after attending Leith Nautical College.^[2] He left maritime life after the attack on the SS Sagaing at Trincomalee in 1942, during which his wife Jessie and his son Duncan were killed.^[1] Robertson remarried and began work as a dairy farmer.

Voyage

On 27 January 1971, Robertson departed from Falmouth, Cornwall, on board the Lucette, a 43-foot (13 m) wooden schooner built in 1922 which the family had purchased in Malta with their life's savings. He was accompanied by his wife Lyn, 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 their transit of the Panama Canal, the family members took aboard an inexperienced crew member named Robin Williams, who accompanied them on the next stage of their voyage to the Galápagos Islands and beyond to the islands of the South Pacific.

On 15 June 1972, Lucette was holed by a pod of orcas 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.^[3]

Using the dinghy as a towboat powered by a jury-rigged sail, the group made its way towards the doldrums. They got water from their boat before heading away from their old boat. But running out of water, hoping to find rain there so they could collect drinking water, they sailed their way on. When they ran out of water they started drinking turtle blood. They did so successfully, while catching turtles, dorado, and flying fish to eat. They also ate fruit, bread, and biscuits that they grabbed from the boat. The inflatable raft became unusable after 16 days, so the six people crowded into the three-metre (10') 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 the Japanese fishing trawler Tokamaru II^[4] on her 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, on which the 1991 film of the same name was based.^[5]

The story was revisited in his son Douglas' book The Last Voyage of the Lucette.

Death

Dougal later wrote Sea Survival: A Manual, and continued to sail until his death from cancer in 1991. The manual was used to help save the life of Steven Callahan, who was stranded for 76 days in the Atlantic Ocean in 1981.

Aftermath

Lyn kept running the dairy farm.
Douglas joined the merchant navy and later became an accountant.^[6]

References

Robertson, Dougal (1973), Survive the Savage Sea
Robertson, Dougal (1975), Sea Survival: A Manual
Robertson, Douglas (2005), The Last Voyage of the Lucette, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Seafarer Books, ISBN 1-57409-206-5
Brinnin, John Malcolm; Probst, Robert E; Anderson, Robert; Legett, John; Irvin, Judith L (2000), from "Survive the Savage Sea", Elements of Literature, vol. First Course, United States of America: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p. 456, ISBN 0-03-052058-4

^ ^a ^b Robertson, Douglas (2005). The Last Voyage of the Lucette. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Sheridan House. pp. 15–26. ISBN 9781574092066. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
^ Lloyd, Oliver C. (18 December 1974). "Wessex Cave Club" (PDF). Wessex Cave Club. 13 (157): 144 – via Google Scholar.
^ Herman, Robin (9 September 1973). "Six Survive 37 Days on Ocean in 9-foot Dinghy". The New York Times. ProQuest 119831348. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
^ Survive the Savage Sea, p. 171, at Google Books, by Dougal Robertson
^ Dawidziak, Mark (5 January 1992). "ABC's 'Survive the Savage Sea' is an Anchor Dropping Drama". Akron Beacon Journal. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
^ Hattenstone, Simon (23 July 2024). "'We pledged not to eat each other': the family that was shipwrecked for 38 days". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2024.