“Did
I come this far to die” / By Sheldon Kelly
“On the night of February 4, 1982, Doris Callahan
was awakened in her Dover, Massachusetts, home by a terrible vision of her son
Steven. At the time of the revelation, Steven was sailing alone in a small yacht
in the mid-Atlantic. “I could actually see him,” Doris told her husband, Edgar.
“He was clawing up through dark, murky water.”
Doris tried to set her dream aside.
For Steven, the nightmare was just beginning.”
It was nearing midnight when Steven Callahan, 29, lay
down on the bunk of his seven-metre sloop Napoleon
Solo. In the seven days since leaving the Canary Islands, off the coast of
Africa, he had sailed 1,300 kilometres. This was the last leg of his round-trip
crossing of the Atlantic, a demanding test for the boat he had designed and
built as the prototype of a small ocean-cruising yacht. With fair winds he
would reach the Caribbean island of Antiqua ahead of his scheduled arrival date
of February 24. But tonight, February 4, a storm was brewing.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous crash against the hull.
In seconds Callahan was waist-deep in water, and the boat seemed about to sink.
He grabbed a knife and tried to cut loose his survival duffel bag. The boat
listed more steeply. She’s going down,
he thought, taking me with her! He
broke through the hatch. Waves lapped over the deck, and the bow was completely
submerged.
Callahan cut loose the life raft, then jerked the cord to
inflate it. Placing the knife between his teeth, he leapt to the raft as the
mast’s anti-collision strobe light short-circuited and began flashing surreal
shadows against the roiling ocean.
Floating close to the sinking boat, Callahan cut away a
section of the mainsail, and grabbed two floating cabbages and a tin of coffee.
It would not be enough! His life
depended upon getting that survival duffel bag. He tied the raft to the stern,
re-boarded, and then ducked into the pitch-black water that filled the cabin.
Disaster strikes.
He
surfaced for air several times as he cut away at the bag’s tie-downs. Finally
he freed the bag. When he turned to leave, the hatch was sealed shut by water. This is it! Callahan thought. He clawed
at the escape route, struggling for his life.
Suddenly, the hatch blew open, and Callahan emerged,
gasping for air. He boarded the raft and tied a long cord to the stern of Solo. If
the ship remained afloat, he, would re-board her in the morning and
gather more provisions.
Just before dawn, the cord snapped. Callahan watched as
the mast’s flashing light grew smaller, then vanished. Adrift on a tiny raft,
he thought first of trying to keep warm, and then of the creature—probably a
whale—that had shattered the sloop’s hull.
The sky remained dark and rainy throughout the day. Waves
rose to six metres in gale-force winds, often completely submerging the
two-metre circular raft. Callahan bailed with his salvaged coffee tin.
Salt-water sores had developed on his knees and elbows; deep cuts on his thighs
and back—suffered in Solo’s flooded
cabin—made movement painful. During lulls, he took stock of what were now his
life’s most precious possessions.
Included in the survival duffel bag were a kilo and a
half of food, ten days’ supply of water, a spear gun, a beacon-sending radio,
ropes and cords, a Boy Scout utensil set, two flashlights and three solar water
stills—each capable of producing by condensation about half a litre of fresh
water daily. He also had a rocket gun, flares and an air pump, a plastic box
containing navigational charts and a sea-survival book.
Too far.
Callahan listened to the signals being broadcast from his
radio and studied the chart. He was 565 kilometres east of the nearest shipping
lanes, drifting in a north equatorial current, and weeks away from potential
rescue. The survival manual stated that one could live 30 days without water.
Without sunshine the solar stills would not function, so Callahan limited
himself to a quarter litre of water daily. He ate sparingly.
His thoughts drifted home to his parents, his two brothers
and sister, and his small farm and boat-building shop in Lamoine, Maine. I’m going to survive, he vowed. Somehow, I’m going to make it.
After 36 hours of steady SOS signals, Callahan shut off
the radio, knowing that no one could hear the beeps.
The storm finally ended four days later. During lulls in
the weather, Callahan had spotted an occasional dorado—a dolphin-like game fish
that follows and frolicks around ocean vessels. Now the number of fish around
the raft grew, circling, leaping, always just out of spear-gun range. Although
the solar still hadn’t yet functioned and his food supplies were almost gone,
Callahan was heartened by the presence of the dorados. They represented life,
food and even companionship.
Lonely peril.
While
the dorados cavorted, Callahan worked feverishly on the stills, stopping
occasionally to study the chart and the log notations. Calculating his
approximate speed by timing the passage of heavy seaweed, he believed he was
averaging 25 to 50 kilometres every 24 hours. His direction was checked nightly
by sighting the North Star and the Southern Cross, and rechecked daily by
marking the positions of the rising and setting sun. By lashing pencils into a
crude sextant sighted simultaneously on the North Star and the horizon, he had
calculated his latitude. He was attempting to reach the shipping lanes and the
Caribbean.
Suddenly a large shark approached and began tearing at
the ballast tanks—water-filled pockets hanging below the raft. Callahan jabbed
it fiercely with the spear gun until it retreated. He had never felt more
alone. Yet, whenever he looked, the dorados were there, swimming ever closer to
the raft.
Doris Callahan
could not shake off the vision. “I won’t rest,” she told the family, “until the
twenty-fourth arrives and I know that Steven is safe.”
On
his tenth day adrift, Callahan spear-gunned a spiny triggerfish. The next day
he speared his first dorado. That night he feasted on the delicious meat, and
during the following days he extracted every bit of fluid and meat from the
fish, eating eyes, organs, roe. Maybe he could survive—if the dorados stayed
with him.
On the 14th day, the solar stills began
producing water. Sharks often hit the raft during the night, but he drove them
away with sharp prods of the spear gun. After each attack, his fears for the
raft increased.
Every third or fourth day Callahan managed to spear-gun
another of his treasured dorados. When the rubber band that released the spear
from the gun broke, he lashed the shaft of the spear to the gun, making it into
a hand-held spear. The dorados moved closer—as if to allow him to make the
kill. He was profoundly moved. They are
actually helping me, he thought.
On the 8th
of March, 12 days after his scheduled arrival, Callahan’s family reported to
the US Coast Guard that he was missing. A check of possible ports of departure
and arrival was begun, and ships were notified. When no trace of the boat was
found by March 17, the Coast Guard called off the search.
The following week, the Callahan’s
eldest son, 34-year-old Edgar, Jr –once a commercial deep-sea diver—arrived
from Hawaii. He immediately organized a search centre in the family kitchen.
“If I know Steve,” he said, “he hasn’t given up. We’ve just got to locate his
position.
In
his log, Callahan carefully noted navigation, water and food intake and weather
conditions. Should he die and the raft wash ashore, the data might prove
valuable. Perhaps that is my reason for
existence, he thought wildly. To
drift at sea, suffering until no more suffering can be borne, so that others
may learn of man’s limitations.
I cannot live another week, he
thought one baking-hot afternoon. Then, standing painfully to search the
horizon for ships, he saw a full rainbow, inset with a smaller one. Its beauty
on the glistening sea overwhelmed him. Callahan had never been particularly
religious, but at that moment he believed he saw the scheme of nature, the
beauty and the horror, all fitting strangely into life’s cycle. He began to
pray, awkwardly, spelling out his thoughts and hopes.
Last chance.
On
March 20, disaster struck. While he was hauling in a dorado, the spear gun’s
shaft broke, ripping a hole in the raft’s side. Then a storm hit. Callahan
tried closing the hole with line after plugging it with foam from the boat
cushion. It continued to leak, and he had to pump air and bail throughout the
day and night. Exhausted, he began pacing himself, allowing brief moments of
sleep before resuming his life-and-death struggle.
On the third night following the accident, as Callahan
worked with a flashlight tied to his forehead, a large shark zipped by. At dawn
the shark was still there, circling. “ He knows that I’m getting weak,”
Callahan said to himself.
Four days later, his 52nd adrift, the storm
grew in intensity. He noted in his log: “My body is rotting away before my
eyes.” He broke down, screaming in frustration, then crying. “O Lord, did I
come this far to die?” He lay beneath the canopy sobbing as the bottom tube of
the raft deflated. Several moments later he struggled to his raw knees and
began anew to pump air into the damaged tube. Again the foam plug was blown
out. He knew this was his last chance; he’d better find a solution or he would
die.
Then the answer came to him: remove the handle from the
Boy Scout utensil fork and put it through the top edge, the foam plug and the
handle will hold the lashing in place. It worked; the foam plug held.
Several hours later, the storm ended and the dorados
clustered near the bow. Callahan held the spear gun ready, too weak to strike a
killing blow, yet desperately in need of food. His body was deteriorating. His
sores were not healing; his fingernails had loosened. A dorado approached, then
rolled over on its back, revealing its soft underbelly. Callahan killed it
easily, thankfully.
Edgar Callahan, Jr,
worked night and day studying drift pattern and weather data in order to
project probable conditions and the path of Steve’s raft. He finally worked out
that Steve had to be within a 320-kilometre quadrant north-east of the group of
island that rims the Caribbean Sea. Several days later it was reported that Solo’s
wreckage had been found on a Puerto Rican shore. The Callahan family cried and
prayed together, but decided not to give up. “I’m certain,” insisted Edgar, Sr,
“Steve is alive.” He even thought about selling the house to finance a private
search operation.
On April 21, day 76, three black frigate birds appeared
above the raft. The water turned a deeper blue; the dorados were joined by
other fish. Soon Callahan saw the outline of steep cliffs. As he drifted
nearer, he spotted a barrier of coral reef pounded by violent surf. It could
cut him to shreds. He stripped plastic and foam from the boat cushion, hoping
that it, along with the piece of mainsail, might offer some protection against
the coral. Now, a few hundred metres ahead, lay the final test of his
4,200-kilometre ordeal.
Suddenly a fishing boat raced into view. Callahan waved
frantically, and the boat headed for the raft. Three fishermen from Marie
Galante, a tiny islet 130 kilometres south of Antigua, were astounded by what
they saw: leaping dorados surrounded the raft. It seemed as if the long-haired,
bearded man inside the circle was their master!
What had brought the fishermen to the area at that
moment? They had seen the birds, which signaled fish, hovering out to sea. And
what brought the birds? The dorados again, always the dorados.
Although suffering from serious malnutrition,
dehydration, exposure, multiple sores and wounds, Callahan was lucid, giving
his name in a parched whisper. He weighed 18 kilos less than normal. Yet
several hours after being carried ashore he could stand without assistance.
Fishermen and villagers sought him out during his
recuperation. They gathered outside his hotel room, waiting for the chance to
see him, “ the great fisherman that God brought back.”
The plentiful dorado meat had kept him alive for his
76-day ordeal. But to Steve Callahan they were more than food. “ The whole
experience with them was mystical, even spiritual,” he says today. “ What they
did for me borders on the miraculous.”
“Reading
without reflecting is like eating without digesting” -Edmund
Burke
