The Raft [antikvár]

PREFACE . . . Bomber Pilot Harold Dixon was a man that Bligh would fancy. —Time, March 23, 1942 CAPTAIN BLIGH would indeed have fancied Dixon. The famous Englishman, with his 17 men from t\ " mutinied" Bounty, accomplished a classic of the sea that men will never weary of telling. But for his 48-day voyage from Tofua, in the South Pacific, to Timor, Netherlands East Indies, a distance of 3,618 miles, he had a 23-foot boat. Dixon, Pastula, and Aldrich, to cover a thousand miles in 34 days, had an inflated rubber raft eight feet by four feet over-all. Captain Bligh had 32 pounds of pork, 150 pounds of bread, 28 gallons of water, six quarts of rum, six bottles of wine, a quadrant, a compass, and canvas. Dixon and his two companions had a pocket- knife, a pair of pliers, an automatic pistol that soon became useless from corrosion, and a length of line. They had no food, no water, no instruments, no means of controlling their tiny fabric boat. Dixon devised a series of ingenious makeshifts that enabled him to control his craft and chart his course. But the raft tipped over so easily in the V