Notes & Comments

The Zaandam was torpedoed without warning several hundred miles from Recife, Brazil, November 2, 1942, while bound from Cape Town to the United States. She sank in less than ten minutes. On board the liner had been a total of 299, of which 169 were passengers. Ultimately only 169 were to survive the ordeal. The most outstanding experience to occur among them was the account about five men who climbed onto a raft just after the doomed Zaandam went to the bottom of the ocean. For 83 days three of the five occupants of the raft survived the terrible strain of drifting in the open sea in all kinds of weather, for a distance of over 2,000 miles. Their meager supply of food and water was exhausted on the 16th day. During the remaining days on the raft they obtained only rain water and a few small fish and birds on which to subsist. It was the longest period of time that any human beings were known to survive the open sea. On the raft at the outset were, George Beasley, an American sailor who had been a passenger on the ill-fated vessel and he died 66 days later; also, Ensign James Maddox of the United States Navy who remained alive for 77 days. The remaining three were Basil Izzi of South Barre, Massachusetts, member of the American gun crew, on the Zaandam, an oiler named Cornelis van der Slot, of Rotterdam, and Nicko Hoogendam, a young lad from Vlaardingen. The three living skeletons were picked up by a United States Navy patrol ship on January 24, 1943. It is needless to say that rescue came none too soon for the nearly gone survivors.

Info collected by Bruce Maliphant [##48059]