BC Cook
OCEAN rafting was popular during two eras of human history: in ancient times before man learned how to build ships and again in the 1950s when various scientists, anthropologists, heroes and crackpots felt they had something to prove.
William Willis spent most of his young life wandering around looking for work and landed some pretty exciting jobs. He was hired as a sailor and we are glad he did. Otherwise, we would not have the following story.
The ship’s cook “had become so severely constipated that the mates feared for his survival. The man’s abdomen had hardened, and he was incapable of standing up, so he was dragged naked onto the deck for treatment, with Willis and his crewmates looking on. A chunk of soap was shoved into the cook’s rectum “to get things started,” Willis reported. While crewmen poured hot water on his belly, the second mate massaged it with his bare feet until the cook gave a groan, shouted out, “ja, ja, ja- ich muss!” and was dragged to the rail where he evacuated memorably.”
Incredibly, that is not what Willis is best known for. It was during that episode that Willis was given the advice to drink a little sea water every day, and he kept up the practice for the rest of his life. On some of his later rafting voyages it was all he drank, proving that the human body can handle sea water in small doses. If that was all Willis accomplished we should be thankful, but he did not stop there.
Willis helped a man escape from the famous French prison in South American known as Devil’s Island, a place not easy to break into or out of. He did not even know the man but felt sorry for his grieving mother and promised to do something about it.
Then, in his sixties, Willis crossed the Pacific Ocean on a raft all alone, starting in Ecuador and landing in Samoa the first time and floating all the way from Ecuador to Australia nine years later. Unlike Heyerdahl on the Kon-Tiki expedition, he was not out to prove anything, save perhaps that a man can endure an enormous amount of physical and psychological abuse. The story of how Willis made passage through the Great Barrier Reef is breathtaking.
After passing seventy years of age Willis attempted to cross the Atlantic three times and disappeared during the third try. A cargo ship spotted his empty raft a few hundred miles off the coast of Ireland, with a log dated a few days earlier but no sign of Willis. He died like he lived, alone on the open ocean.
If you have never heard of William Willis I am not surprised. Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki is much more famous, even though Willis accomplished a great deal more. Willis is considered the greatest rafter in history and I am inclined to agree. See what you think after reading T.R. Pearson’s book entitled, “Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting.”
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for over 30 years. He is a director and historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org).
