In 1972, the Robertson family from Staffordshire endured a harrowing 37-day ordeal at sea after killer whales sank their schooner in the Pacific Ocean. The family, including retired merchant navy officer Dougal Robertson, his wife Lyn, and their four children, had set sail from Falmouth in 1971 on a world voyage aboard the Lucette, a 43-foot wooden schooner purchased with their life savings.
Seventeen months into the journey, near the Galapagos Islands, a pod of killer whales struck the boat. Douglas Robertson, then 18, recalled the keel cracking with a sound like a tree trunk snapping. The family and a hitchhiker, Robin Williams, scrambled into an inflatable life raft and a small dinghy, the Ednamair.
With limited supplies, they survived on rainwater, turtles, and fish. They drank turtle blood when water ran low and rendered fat to make oil for their skin. After 16 days, the raft became unusable, forcing all six into the 10-foot dinghy, where they took turns sitting in the dry part.
On 23 July 1972, a Japanese fishing trawler, the Toka Maru II, spotted their distress flare and rescued them. Dougal Robertson later wrote a book, Survive the Savage Sea, which was adapted into a film. He died in 1992.
