The Carley float on which Poon Lim survived is, in the physical record, gone. Wooden life rafts from the wartime period have not survived as museum artifacts in the way that naval vessels or significant military equipment sometimes have. The US Navy’s reconstructed model — if it was indeed built, as the offgridweb source claims — would be a reproduction rather than the original, and its current location and condition are not established in the accessible record.
What survives is the description: eight feet by eight feet of wooden slatting, a partial canvas canopy, the improvised tools that were added to it during the ordeal. This description has been reproduced across multiple accounts with sufficient consistency to be treated as reliable, though the specific details of the raft’s construction — the type of wood, the specific rigging of the canopy, the manner in which the tools were attached — are not preserved in the granular detail that a full reconstruction would require.
The Carley float had been a standard piece of merchant navy survival equipment since its introduction in the late nineteenth century. Named for Horace Carley, the American inventor who developed the design in the 1890s, it had been widely adopted by both naval and merchant vessels because of its simplicity, its buoyancy, and its resistance to damage. Unlike an inflatable liferaft — a more recent technology — the Carley float could not be punctured by a single breach; its buoyancy came from the inherent flotation of sealed metal or wood tubes rather than from trapped air. It was not comfortable, not weatherproof, and not maneuverable, but it was reliable as a flotation platform.