Book Review –Adrift: Seventy-six days lost at sea (1986)

Published 5 years agoon September 24, 2021

A lone sailor is battling an Atlantic storm in a twenty-one foot long sailboat. It is dark, approaching midnight, when a massive crash rips away part of the hull. Within seconds the boat is sinking and Steven Callahan is drowning. Miraculously he frees a life raft and frantically salvages what he can before the sailboat disappears beneath the waves. However, an initial ordeal becomes never ending torment inside the sanctuary of his life raft. “There are no good conditions in a life raft, and no comfortable positions in which to rest. There are only the bad and the worse.” (p. 66)

Steven Callahan is four-hundred and fifty miles north of the Cape Verde Islands and about as far from the west coast of Africa. He’s alone and lost at sea for the next seventy-six days as he drifts 1800 miles westward towards the Caribbean. Each day is a struggle to stay alive with “constant dreams of food and drink, the aching loneliness, the fear” (p. 74). He stays alive due to his seamanship, ingenuity and dogged determination.

The true story of Steven Callahan’s survival is remarkable; few have survived as long under such conditions. His graphic account describes his gradual physical and mental decline as dehydration and starvation take their toll and isolation impacts on his mental state. He describes how his life “… has become a composition of multilayered realities – day dreams, night dreams, and the seemingly endless physical struggle.” (p.95)

An account of seventy-six days, alone, inside a life raft and at the mercy of the elements is difficult to sustain without a degree of repetition. However, it is this drawn out, mind-numbing repetition – interspaced with brief, life threatening action and terror – that serves to convey the day to day struggle to survive. The story of Steven Callahan’s survival is now 35 years old but inspirational and still worth reading. If you are ever faced with a similar challenge his experience and example may help you.

Adrift: Seventy-six days lost at sea (1986)

By Steven Callahan
London: Guild Publishing
234pp

Find out more about Professor Fred Lockwood, who is also a published author, at www.fredlockwood.co.uk.

Fred Lockwood

Dr Fred Lockwood is Emeritus Professor of Learning and Teaching, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is also a PADI Master Scuba Diver and dived in the waters of Central America and Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia, Australasia and the Pacific Islands. Follow Fred at www.fredlockwood.co.uk.