In the pantheon of epic survival stories, a handful of names stand out. There's Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. There's Louis Zamperini, the protagonist of the book and movie "Unbroken." There's Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.
To that list, you might want to add the name José Salvador Alvarenga.
In his excellent 2015 book "438 Days," author Jonathan Franklin tells the incredible story of how Alvarenga got caught in a raging storm while fishing off Mexico's West Coast, was pushed far out to sea, and managed to survive for more than 14 months in the Pacific Ocean on a small boat with a dead motor and few supplies.
Alvarenga "completed one of the most incredible voyages in the storied history of seafaring," writes Franklin. "He didn't navigate, sail, row or paddle — he drifted."
Franklin shows how the 37-year-old Alvarenga, who was poor and had little formal education, used his wits and experience to survive. He created a fish hook from an engine part. He drank turtle blood. He sewed mocassins from shark skin. He used floating trash, making fish traps from old bleach bottles and using old beverage containers to collect rainwater. He used his urine, as his mother had taught him, to treat an ear infection (don't laugh — the ear got better).
For the first part of the ordeal, Alvarenga was accompanied by 24-year-old Ezequiel Córdoba, who Alvarenga had hired at the last minute to help him on his fishing trip. Córdoba survived on little food and water for four months — pretty impressive in itself — before dying.
With no one to talk to from then on, Alvarenga's survival involved mental games. He befriended a whale shark that swam by his boat for several days, talking out loud to it. He played "soccer" with the birds he had trapped live on his boat, using a puffer fish as the ball. He drifted in and out of fantasy worlds, imagining himself brewing coffee or cooking special meals. At night, he would pretend to reach up and turn off the light.
In writing the book, Franklin faced a notable limitation: He really only had one source, Alvarenga himself.
Franklin notes in the afterword that he interviewed Alvarenga many times over a year, fleshing out his story and, importantly, checking for inconsistencies. Franklin also talked to Alvarenga's friends and fellow fishermen to understand his back story..
Franklin smartly supplements the story with interviews with experts on survival, oceanography, marine weather patterns, climates, and fishing, bringing valuable perspective to the story (did you know that fish eyeballs can be an important source of vitamin C, helping prevent scurvy?).
In the end, Alvarenga's story holds together, partly because he's so open about how traumatic it was. He recalls spending evenings talking to the ocean:
"When, oh when, are you going to get me out of here?" he would ask. "I must be a bother. Toss me ashore."
Alvarenga is eventually tossed ashore in the Marshall Islands after a voyage of about 6,000 miles. Franklin recounts how the severely weakened Alvarenga ate voraciously after reaching land. Alvarenga despised the press that pestered him for his story and the doctors who wanted to poke and prod him.
Wrote Franklin: "Alvarenga believed he didn't need a doctor to diagnose what was wrong. He was suffering from a yearlong tortilla drought. Nearly every day of his journey to sea he had imagined toasted tortillas. During his two weeks in the Marshall Islands he begged for corn tortillas but was told to wait, that no one ate tortillas in the middle of the Pacific."
When Franklin asked Alvarenga why he was cooperating with him on writing the book, he said he wanted to help others.
"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it, they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success."
