NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John Brown
Date: 2015 Jun 17, 01:28 -0700
Geoffrey
There were many instances of long lifeboat voyages during WW2. Some interesting accounts in the book Survivors, by GH and R Bennet - ISBN 1 85285b 547 9.
Chapter 8, Lifeboat and Raft Voyages describes some of these.
"During the second year of the war, the number of very long lifeboat voyages increased, and particularly tragic examples received press attention even at a time of strict censorship".
Two examples:
A lifeboat from the Anglo Saxon, seventy days to the Bahamas.
A voyage of 1500 miles to Brazil in a lifeboat from the Britannia.
And many more.
These boats were equipped with a magnetic compass and a rudimentary navigation kit, probably including special oceanic routing charts on water resistant paper.
In addition, and if time permitted, they would obviously have taken sextant, chronometer, tables and whatever else they needed to navigate.
There were also well reported instances of navigational and other assistance being provided to lifeboats by the U-Boats which had sunk their ships.
Regards
John
