Word: bombardment
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After six months of studying and experimenting at Monte Carlo's world-famed Oceanographic Institute, Bombard concluded that limited quantities of sea water (not more than a quart a day) plus fluids pressed from raw fish can supply the body's need for water without harm to the system. He also concluded that fish contain all the nutrients necessary to health except vitamin C, which can be obtained from plankton. Bombard saw no reason why a man equipped with fishing tackle and fine-mesh nets for gathering plankton could not obtain from the sea enough food and water...
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea. After eight days at sea, Bombard turned up at Casablanca, 200 miles south of Tangier on the African coast. From Casablanca he sailed to the Canaries. Leaving L'Heretique at Las Palmas, he flew to Paris to see his wife and their newborn daughter. At last, in October, he hoisted his small, triangular sail, set out again from Las Palmas on the long voyage across the Atlantic...
...ever-empty horizon. Fortunately, there were daily chores to be done: fishing, keeping the log, plotting his position, measuring and recording his blood pressure and corpuscle counts. Fish were plentiful, especially flying fish, which obligingly got caught in the sail and flopped on to the deck during the night. Bombard tried to pass the time by listening to the radio, gazing at photographs of his wife and chil dren, studying plankton under a microscope, taking notes on marine life, composing music (two concertos and half a symphony, he later reported). After the radio battery petered out in mid-Atlantic, loneliness...
...Beach in Barbados. By the time Bombard met the Guiana-bound Arakaka, the unending calm had almost shattered his morale. But once aboard the ship, he perked up quickly, chattering away happily in French-accented English, delighted to learn that his calculated position was only 20 miles off. He took a fresh-water bath, broke his marine diet by eating an egg and drinking coffee. After an hour and a half, he went back to his raft with some apples and a fresh battery for his radio. Passengers watched and waved until the raft dwindled to a speck...
...wind blew up soon after Bombard left the Arakaka, and the rest of the voyage was, comparatively speaking, a breeze. For two weeks more he sailed alone. Then he met a small Dutch steamer, spent half an hour aboard. Early one morning last week, 63 days out of the Canaries, he spotted a light flashing ahead. Daylight revealed a brown fishing beach between two weathered, grey cliffs. Bombard had reached Stroud's Bay in the British West Indian island of Barbados. Within a few hours, he sat down to a hearty landsman's meal of grapefruit, bacon & eggs...