LIst # 5: Adrift

I've collected a lot of books of seas stories but survival at sea became a very specialized niche of sea stories.  The stories themselves make me uneasy just hearing about the thirst, privation and relentless sun and storms.  I know there are more out there but after three books in this mini-genre, I had to stop.  I started to make the crass comparison of who went the longest--as if it were some sort of macabre contest.  In my mini-list, Steven Callahan holds the unenviable record of 76 days.  
 
1.  Forty-Eight Days Adrift, Job Barbour (1951).  Ten men and one woman adrift in the North Atlantic.  Inscription by the Author "To H M Mc St. Johns Nwfld Feb 13/51. $1.50 net.  Used book store purchase but can't recall where. 

2.  Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea.  Steven Callahan (1986).  Single handed sailor in an inflatable raft in the mid-Atlantic.  Used bookstore find.

3.  Survive the Savage Sea [37 days lost at sea], Douglas Robertson (1973).  Father, mother and four children have their 43-foot sail boat attacked by killer whales in the Pacific sinking it in less than a minute.  Originally published in the UK