The torpedoes hit the Benlomond. The ship sank within approximately two minutes.
Two minutes is not long. It is long enough to understand that something catastrophic is happening, not long enough to execute an orderly evacuation of a crew of fifty-four. The rapid sinking prevented the lifeboats from being properly deployed — at least one was stuck in its davits and could not be launched in time. Men were blown into the water by the force of the explosions. The ship, heavy with seawater and empty of the cargo that might have provided some buoyancy, went down fast.
Poon Lim had been working toward a lifeboat when the explosions hit. The precise sequence of what happened to him in those initial seconds and minutes is reconstructed from his own testimony, given in the weeks and months after his rescue — testimony that should be understood as a survivor’s account, necessarily shaped by the limits of what any person can reliably remember from a scene of sudden catastrophic violence.
He grabbed a life jacket. He went into the water.
The water of the equatorial South Atlantic in late November is warm by the standards of the North Atlantic — this was not the freezing water of the Norwegian Sea or the approaches to Britain, water that could kill an unprotected person in minutes through hypothermia. The equatorial Atlantic is survivable in terms of temperature, at least initially. But it is still open ocean, and Poon Lim was not a strong swimmer. He had the life jacket. He had the will to stay alive. He swam away from the sinking ship to avoid being pulled under by its suction as it went down.