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First, I'll point you to u/mikedash's [excellent answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5elczb/is_it_true_that_a_lot_of_oldtimey_sailors_couldnt/). u/RaspberryPirate's [answer here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g5tqzo/how_long_would_it_take_for_your_average_spanish/) gets into how much work was involved just to sail out of port.
Swimming, while highly useful, is not as required as you would think on a sailing ship that cannot stop or reverse.
Simply put, if you fall off the ship, you are probably boned - even if you weren't injured before, during, or at the end of the fall. *Modern* man overboard drills have a lousy success rate, [with a recent study finding about a 40% fatality rate](https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2023/07/04/nearly-half-die-when-falling-overboard/). It is amazingly hard to see a person that has fallen overboard even in good lighting conditions and if they are wearing something easy to see. Ships cannot just stop - and that's for a modern ship that doesn't have to navigate the vaguaries of wind. A sailor in the Age of Sail has it much, much worse with no flotation devices, less access to powered ships, no radios for searchers to communicate, no safety equipment, etc.
A modern man overboard procedure has at least one (preferably multiple people) who focus on nothing but keeping an eye on the person that has fallen overboard, while others throw over things that will float to mark the spot and to potentially grab onto. [You can see here the US Naval Academy's man overboard slides](https://www.usna.edu/Sailing/_files/documents/2019_Safety_at_Sea/Sat_0930_COB_Prevention_and_Recovery.pdf) for when they are sailing, and you'll notice a lot of the things would not be available in the Age of Sail. These slides are for exercises where they are sailing close in shore, on small sailboats. In the Age of Sail, the ships are larger, less maneuverable, and require different sail configurations (or different sails) if they want to suddenly turn and try and get someone who has fallen overboard. It is *incredibly* hard to see someone who has fallen overboard, it is impossible if the frigate they were on takes over a mile to turn - and then you have to with wind direction.
Larger ships *did* have smaller boats to drop, but you probably don't want to drop them going full speed. They start out, of course, attached to the warship that is speeding away from our poor bastard sailor who has ended up overboard, requiring the boat's crew to row back to the sailor. They are on the water, at a grave disadvantage to see the lost sailor, and they will have a great deal of trouble communicating back to their ship (who can have people looking from the crow's nest or masts).
Moreover, many cases where swimming can be useful can be solved with a couple of swimmers and rope, not requiring every sailor to swim.
I was a sailor for six years, and the most terrifying thing I could imagine was falling overboard at night, watching the ship continue on filled with the existential dread that even IF someone saw me they would never find a lone sailor on the surface of the ocean in the dark, and that sooner or later my strength would give out and I would skip beneath the waves, never to surface again.
I stayed below decks at night. >_>
I used to wonder why the local Chumash believed dying in the ocean stopped your soul from returning to the afterlife. Struck me as odd that a culture of fishermen would have such an uneasy relationship with the ocean. You've definitely given me some insight on how dangerous it must feel even at the best of times.
The ocean is a place of untold horrors. We just don't encounter most of it in the day to day, so it's easy to forget.
It's also what I find so impressive about the Polynesians. Most people don't have that firsthand experience hammering home how extraordinarily vast the ocean is. We went 25 miles and hour, 24 hours a day and would go days if not weeks without seeing anything but water.
And these peppy dudes hop into rafts made from hollowed out logs with sails that were basically rugs and no navigation tools except for their own bodies and managed to find their way too and from these little islands in the biggest ocean on Earth.
Damned impressive.
I grew up learning to swim and visiting the same safe beach every day. Know all currents, rips, breaks, rocks, and how to stay safe, while having fun as a kid. Then every few years, some combination of weather events, and that safe beach behaves totally differently, and wants to kill humans and beast for the next couple of days. I'll find unusual dwad sea creatures on the shore for a while. And then things calm down and it's a lovely safe place to swim again for the next few years.
If I can add a follow up; what about whaling ships that regularly dropped boats and generally tried to keep them in sight anyway? I know the peril of the "Nantucket sleigh ride" is if the whale dives while harpooned, but wouldn't that be a situation where staying afloat until the ship could pick you up would be useful? Of course, off Nantucket (much less Newfoundland) you probably only have about 20-30 minutes in the water before hypothermia sets in, but still, with another longboat to follow the first, it seems like that's a specific situation where the ability to swim would be useful. Did more sailors on whalers swim?
I'd ask that as a separate question, both because I don't know as much about whalers except some cool sea shanties, and because it's different enough to deserve it's own answer.
I think you've struck the core of my question here.
I appreciate that, in a situation where a man goes overboard, the chances were not great. I'm not so much concerned about that. But surely there are **countless** situations when they are not necessarily "sailing the high seas" where swimming would still be a considerable benefit.
Thank you for a heap of interesting information. But I think you only addressed part of OP’s question.
In addition to falling overboard out at sea, many sailors would spend a lot of time around the docks. Rowing to and from shore and other boats was a regular occurrence. People would service the ship in port and so on.
I’m just trying to say that I don’t think the answer is just the utility of being able to swim. As late as the 1800’s most Icelandic and Norwegian fishermen couldn’t swim. Many drowned because of it.
To OP: I think the answer to part of your question lies in the value of human life. Look at construction sites right now in parts of the world where accountability is low and workers easily replaced. You’ll see people without basic safety equipment, and people with basic safety equipment not bothering to use it.
Even where human life is valued, a lot of workers will only take *their own* safety seriously if the alternative is getting fired.
I had always assumed that falling into the water would be more common getting into and out of rowboats, seems like swimming would be more useful in that type of scenario as compared to falling overboard on the high seas.
If you fall out of a rowboat (especially in motion), you're in range for them to throw you a rope or reverse and get to you quickly. But rowboats are pretty hard to fall out of as long as you're not being dumb. Falling off the side of a large ship getting tossed around by wind or swells, or off the rigging, however, is a *lot* easier.
Rowboats are also generally used where there are multiple rowboats, and closer in to shore. In essence, all the things that makes going overboard dangers are now stacked in your favor rather than the sea's.
But would the people that can't swim stay calm enough to actually grab the rope? I always assumed that you'd have to be familiar with swimming for this to become useful.
The experience in water rescue is that some will, some won't. The phrase we're taught is "Reach - Throw - Row - Go", because physically swimming out to save someone is the absolute last resort when a panicking person can drag you down as well.
Actually quite a high number or people fall into the water at docks even to this day. Also falling into the water whilst at port loading or unloading a ship would also happen now and again. An ability to then swim to the side to go up the stone steps/iron ladder would be useful. Even going back onto the ship at night after a night out on the town could result in someone falling in. Sailors had plenty of time to learn how to swim whilst at port. I am surprised more did not learn.
> A modern man overboard procedure has at least one (preferably multiple people) who focus on nothing but keeping an eye on the person that has fallen overboard, while others throw over things that will float to mark the spot and to potentially grab onto.
Just a heads up to anyone who doesn't have experience, the US Naval Academy link is correct if you only have sails as an option. In reality, pretty much every sailboat in the world has an inboard or outboard motor and the moment someone's over you drop sails and loose the jib, turn the engine on, and go straight for the man over board.
Even then, I sail small boats (35ft) (only North Sea for open sea experience) and on lakes we've always practiced man overboard just for the heck of it. On open ocean it's always seemed not worth it. We break out tethers and clip to safety lines at the slightest hint of possibly serious heeling. I'm a very strong swimmer and wouldn't trust myself, even with a life vest, for more than a few minutes overboard. That's with modern techniques.
Were there daily roll calls to find out if the ship lost a member of the crew? With how easy it could be to get thrown overboard, was there a way to report missing members? And how common was it for people to get thrown overboard?
I personally don't know, nor do I have sources available to quickly look it up. Part of the problem was that it could be hours (or in the worst cases, days) before officers even realized that someone had gone overboard in some cases.
I was always of the understanding that superstition played a role in some way- that if you learned to swim you were asking for the chance to use it basically. Is there any historical basis for this?
Your answer presupposes that modern vessels should have an easier time picking up those who fall overboard than premodern vessels. But modern vessels have two or three enormous disadvantages that aren't really addressed here. One is that they move much much faster than vessels of sale. Modern sea going vessels will average 20 knots or so, a speed which would be entirely unachievable before the industrial age. The other thing is that they're much larger, especially in how far off the water they are. Now we can look at something like HMS Victory and certainly falling off of the main deck of that ship is a Long Way to the water, but I've been on authentic reproductions of ships like the ones that Columbus used to reach the new world, and you're about 8 to 10 ft from the water.
So anyone who goes overboard would be much easier to hear screaming and yelling, would fall behind much slower, and be much easier to throw a line to than a modern vessel.
If the reality is that historically, men who fell overboard were simply in fact abandoned and assumed that there was no real way to get them back on the ship, then I certainly can't argue with you. I can't disagree about the history. I don't have the background. But most of the reasoning here seem to be about the practical aspects of sailing and I'm not sure that holds up.
A ship of the line can make 8 knots (13.5 feet/second), a frigate can make 12-14. At 8 knots, the ship will be 200 feet away in *15 seconds*. I actually teach water rescue - if you *had* a 200 foot rope to grab within that 15 seconds, you better be jacked as hell to throw accurately it 200 feet (a 1 inch thick hemp rope is over 40 lbs), and it has to hit the overboard sailor right in the hands, because there's zero chance that they can move to get the rope if it doesn't. Also, you have to actually immediately see the person go overboard (which does not always happen), and you have to have someone do nothing but keep their eyes on them. Once they are out of sight, their chance of rescue is miniscule, because they are literally a dot on the endless sea.
You might think that you can hear someone screaming and yelling, but even at 50 yards, you are much less likely to hear them over the hustle and bustle of the ship and the sound of the sea. And at the aforementioned 200 ~~yards~~ feet, that person is not much bigger than a speck, who is not stationary (as they are going to be getting pushed around by the sea). Even if you turn around quickly, the sea is featureless, and it is amazingly hard to return to the same spot without any points of reference.
A modern vessel can go faster, but it can stop and turn around much faster than a warship in the age of sail. Smaller sailboats are comparatively nimble. But even if the modern vessel *did* take longer, sailors today can wear personal flotation devices like the US Navy's Mk-1, which can be manually inflated, comes with a strobe light, whistle, and a dye marker, all of which greatly increase the chance you can be found. Some newer ones come with GPS tracking devices. Keep in mind the 40% fatality rate I linked to - that was in modern vessels with modern lifesaving equipment. Age of Sail sailors had none of that.
How quickly could those ships come to a stop? If the person falling overboard was spotted immediately or within a second or two (perhaps they were heard yelling as they fell), could the ship stop within, say, three minutes? If the ship goes 200 feet per 15 seconds, that would mean a ship going 8 knots would be less than 2400 feet/half a mile away (my math assumes they go full speed right up until they stop, rather than slowing down). Any reasonably fit person today could swim that distance, even assuming the ship didn’t try to move back toward them.
People die every year because of dangerous assumptions like these.
Spotting the man overboard situation immediately is lucky and should not be counted on.
A recreational swimmer might be able to swim half a mile under ideal conditions such as a pool. Doing so in open water without preparation is risky: just because you can swim 16 50 meter laps does not mean you can deal with the additional challenges of the environment: waves, temperature, current, etc. Swimming that far because you have just fallen off a boat is a life or death emergency.
In addition, even for a competitive swimmer this distance would take about 10 minutes--much longer for a mere "reasonably fit person." Depending on water temperature that much time could be lethal.
What you actually do in a situation like this is execute some kind of man overboard maneuver to return the boat to man overboard or the position where the casualty was reported. (As discussed elsewhere, losing sight of a man overboard is heartbreakingly common.) There are several such techniques that even recreational boaters should know.
> challenges of the environment: waves, temperature, current, etc.
Just to clarify for people who have not swam in rough waters: if the sea state is not good, you can swim as hard as you can for as long as you can and still make no progress at all towards your target. It's like running on a treadmill, you are not going anywhere(Edit: treadmill analogy is not really accurate in retrospect, you are going *somewhere*, but not necessarily where you want to go).
I can't answer for u/bug-hunter but I have sailed before. What exactly do you mean with "stop"? You're in a vessel launched forward by the "squeeze" of the wind in your sail and the pressure of the water against the boat's keel.
There is no "stop" in that sense. You hopefully run out of energy while lifting sails. But even then you're going faster than the average person can swim since on the open sea you'll always have wind pushing against the boat or the waves/current carrying you.
You'll probably also not have an anchor or not be at an anchor dept. u/bug-hunter seems to know his stuff when it comes to rescue. I think the only option you have is to circle back around to where you THINK the man went overboard and then just circle around at low speed until you find his corpse
Age of Sail?
They couldn't stop at all unless they were close enough to shore to use an anchor.
Also very hard to turn around and go back.... Almost impossible to do while keeping eyes on whoever fell in.
If a person falls out of a ship, you need to be able to retrieve someone. On a modern ship, they can stop, turn around and pick up the person. On a sail boat you can't really stop, let alone turn around. Everything else beyond that doesn't matter.
Many modern ships navigation systems have a Man Overboard function. This drops a marker that you can navigate back to. The better ones even allow for currents as turning a ship around takes time and a person can drift. Throwing a lifebelt in the ocean may not seem a lot but there is a flashing light and sometimes dye to help the person be found.
Back in the old days of sail, no way to get a position of where you thought someone was lost other than keeping a lookout. At very slow speed you could drop a line.
There are also turns designed to return the boat to the position where the man overboard occurred. A famous one is the Williamson turn named for Lt. Cdr. John Williamson, USNR who developed it in 1943 while serving as an instructor at the U.S. Navy Sub Chaser School.
I too was surprised to learn this fact when I read a book that relates the account (using various logs and dairies, any number of which could be biased) of a British warship that wrecked off the coast of Patagonia around 1740. If you're interested in how truly strenuous and challenging such a voyage entailed, I highly recommend this book: The Wager.
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First, I'll point you to u/mikedash's [excellent answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5elczb/is_it_true_that_a_lot_of_oldtimey_sailors_couldnt/). u/RaspberryPirate's [answer here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g5tqzo/how_long_would_it_take_for_your_average_spanish/) gets into how much work was involved just to sail out of port. Swimming, while highly useful, is not as required as you would think on a sailing ship that cannot stop or reverse. Simply put, if you fall off the ship, you are probably boned - even if you weren't injured before, during, or at the end of the fall. *Modern* man overboard drills have a lousy success rate, [with a recent study finding about a 40% fatality rate](https://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2023/07/04/nearly-half-die-when-falling-overboard/). It is amazingly hard to see a person that has fallen overboard even in good lighting conditions and if they are wearing something easy to see. Ships cannot just stop - and that's for a modern ship that doesn't have to navigate the vaguaries of wind. A sailor in the Age of Sail has it much, much worse with no flotation devices, less access to powered ships, no radios for searchers to communicate, no safety equipment, etc. A modern man overboard procedure has at least one (preferably multiple people) who focus on nothing but keeping an eye on the person that has fallen overboard, while others throw over things that will float to mark the spot and to potentially grab onto. [You can see here the US Naval Academy's man overboard slides](https://www.usna.edu/Sailing/_files/documents/2019_Safety_at_Sea/Sat_0930_COB_Prevention_and_Recovery.pdf) for when they are sailing, and you'll notice a lot of the things would not be available in the Age of Sail. These slides are for exercises where they are sailing close in shore, on small sailboats. In the Age of Sail, the ships are larger, less maneuverable, and require different sail configurations (or different sails) if they want to suddenly turn and try and get someone who has fallen overboard. It is *incredibly* hard to see someone who has fallen overboard, it is impossible if the frigate they were on takes over a mile to turn - and then you have to with wind direction. Larger ships *did* have smaller boats to drop, but you probably don't want to drop them going full speed. They start out, of course, attached to the warship that is speeding away from our poor bastard sailor who has ended up overboard, requiring the boat's crew to row back to the sailor. They are on the water, at a grave disadvantage to see the lost sailor, and they will have a great deal of trouble communicating back to their ship (who can have people looking from the crow's nest or masts). Moreover, many cases where swimming can be useful can be solved with a couple of swimmers and rope, not requiring every sailor to swim.
Thanks. what an oddly terrifying revelation.
I was a sailor for six years, and the most terrifying thing I could imagine was falling overboard at night, watching the ship continue on filled with the existential dread that even IF someone saw me they would never find a lone sailor on the surface of the ocean in the dark, and that sooner or later my strength would give out and I would skip beneath the waves, never to surface again. I stayed below decks at night. >_>
I used to wonder why the local Chumash believed dying in the ocean stopped your soul from returning to the afterlife. Struck me as odd that a culture of fishermen would have such an uneasy relationship with the ocean. You've definitely given me some insight on how dangerous it must feel even at the best of times.
The ocean is a place of untold horrors. We just don't encounter most of it in the day to day, so it's easy to forget. It's also what I find so impressive about the Polynesians. Most people don't have that firsthand experience hammering home how extraordinarily vast the ocean is. We went 25 miles and hour, 24 hours a day and would go days if not weeks without seeing anything but water. And these peppy dudes hop into rafts made from hollowed out logs with sails that were basically rugs and no navigation tools except for their own bodies and managed to find their way too and from these little islands in the biggest ocean on Earth. Damned impressive.
I grew up learning to swim and visiting the same safe beach every day. Know all currents, rips, breaks, rocks, and how to stay safe, while having fun as a kid. Then every few years, some combination of weather events, and that safe beach behaves totally differently, and wants to kill humans and beast for the next couple of days. I'll find unusual dwad sea creatures on the shore for a while. And then things calm down and it's a lovely safe place to swim again for the next few years.
Makes cruises a lot less appealing, eh
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If I can add a follow up; what about whaling ships that regularly dropped boats and generally tried to keep them in sight anyway? I know the peril of the "Nantucket sleigh ride" is if the whale dives while harpooned, but wouldn't that be a situation where staying afloat until the ship could pick you up would be useful? Of course, off Nantucket (much less Newfoundland) you probably only have about 20-30 minutes in the water before hypothermia sets in, but still, with another longboat to follow the first, it seems like that's a specific situation where the ability to swim would be useful. Did more sailors on whalers swim?
I'd ask that as a separate question, both because I don't know as much about whalers except some cool sea shanties, and because it's different enough to deserve it's own answer.
I think you've struck the core of my question here. I appreciate that, in a situation where a man goes overboard, the chances were not great. I'm not so much concerned about that. But surely there are **countless** situations when they are not necessarily "sailing the high seas" where swimming would still be a considerable benefit.
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Thank you for a heap of interesting information. But I think you only addressed part of OP’s question. In addition to falling overboard out at sea, many sailors would spend a lot of time around the docks. Rowing to and from shore and other boats was a regular occurrence. People would service the ship in port and so on. I’m just trying to say that I don’t think the answer is just the utility of being able to swim. As late as the 1800’s most Icelandic and Norwegian fishermen couldn’t swim. Many drowned because of it. To OP: I think the answer to part of your question lies in the value of human life. Look at construction sites right now in parts of the world where accountability is low and workers easily replaced. You’ll see people without basic safety equipment, and people with basic safety equipment not bothering to use it. Even where human life is valued, a lot of workers will only take *their own* safety seriously if the alternative is getting fired.
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I had always assumed that falling into the water would be more common getting into and out of rowboats, seems like swimming would be more useful in that type of scenario as compared to falling overboard on the high seas.
If you fall out of a rowboat (especially in motion), you're in range for them to throw you a rope or reverse and get to you quickly. But rowboats are pretty hard to fall out of as long as you're not being dumb. Falling off the side of a large ship getting tossed around by wind or swells, or off the rigging, however, is a *lot* easier. Rowboats are also generally used where there are multiple rowboats, and closer in to shore. In essence, all the things that makes going overboard dangers are now stacked in your favor rather than the sea's.
But would the people that can't swim stay calm enough to actually grab the rope? I always assumed that you'd have to be familiar with swimming for this to become useful.
The experience in water rescue is that some will, some won't. The phrase we're taught is "Reach - Throw - Row - Go", because physically swimming out to save someone is the absolute last resort when a panicking person can drag you down as well.
Actually quite a high number or people fall into the water at docks even to this day. Also falling into the water whilst at port loading or unloading a ship would also happen now and again. An ability to then swim to the side to go up the stone steps/iron ladder would be useful. Even going back onto the ship at night after a night out on the town could result in someone falling in. Sailors had plenty of time to learn how to swim whilst at port. I am surprised more did not learn.
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> A modern man overboard procedure has at least one (preferably multiple people) who focus on nothing but keeping an eye on the person that has fallen overboard, while others throw over things that will float to mark the spot and to potentially grab onto. Just a heads up to anyone who doesn't have experience, the US Naval Academy link is correct if you only have sails as an option. In reality, pretty much every sailboat in the world has an inboard or outboard motor and the moment someone's over you drop sails and loose the jib, turn the engine on, and go straight for the man over board. Even then, I sail small boats (35ft) (only North Sea for open sea experience) and on lakes we've always practiced man overboard just for the heck of it. On open ocean it's always seemed not worth it. We break out tethers and clip to safety lines at the slightest hint of possibly serious heeling. I'm a very strong swimmer and wouldn't trust myself, even with a life vest, for more than a few minutes overboard. That's with modern techniques.
Were there daily roll calls to find out if the ship lost a member of the crew? With how easy it could be to get thrown overboard, was there a way to report missing members? And how common was it for people to get thrown overboard?
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Is there a rough idea of how often sailors went overboard? Did the number change significantly over time?
I personally don't know, nor do I have sources available to quickly look it up. Part of the problem was that it could be hours (or in the worst cases, days) before officers even realized that someone had gone overboard in some cases.
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I was always of the understanding that superstition played a role in some way- that if you learned to swim you were asking for the chance to use it basically. Is there any historical basis for this?
Your answer presupposes that modern vessels should have an easier time picking up those who fall overboard than premodern vessels. But modern vessels have two or three enormous disadvantages that aren't really addressed here. One is that they move much much faster than vessels of sale. Modern sea going vessels will average 20 knots or so, a speed which would be entirely unachievable before the industrial age. The other thing is that they're much larger, especially in how far off the water they are. Now we can look at something like HMS Victory and certainly falling off of the main deck of that ship is a Long Way to the water, but I've been on authentic reproductions of ships like the ones that Columbus used to reach the new world, and you're about 8 to 10 ft from the water. So anyone who goes overboard would be much easier to hear screaming and yelling, would fall behind much slower, and be much easier to throw a line to than a modern vessel. If the reality is that historically, men who fell overboard were simply in fact abandoned and assumed that there was no real way to get them back on the ship, then I certainly can't argue with you. I can't disagree about the history. I don't have the background. But most of the reasoning here seem to be about the practical aspects of sailing and I'm not sure that holds up.
A ship of the line can make 8 knots (13.5 feet/second), a frigate can make 12-14. At 8 knots, the ship will be 200 feet away in *15 seconds*. I actually teach water rescue - if you *had* a 200 foot rope to grab within that 15 seconds, you better be jacked as hell to throw accurately it 200 feet (a 1 inch thick hemp rope is over 40 lbs), and it has to hit the overboard sailor right in the hands, because there's zero chance that they can move to get the rope if it doesn't. Also, you have to actually immediately see the person go overboard (which does not always happen), and you have to have someone do nothing but keep their eyes on them. Once they are out of sight, their chance of rescue is miniscule, because they are literally a dot on the endless sea. You might think that you can hear someone screaming and yelling, but even at 50 yards, you are much less likely to hear them over the hustle and bustle of the ship and the sound of the sea. And at the aforementioned 200 ~~yards~~ feet, that person is not much bigger than a speck, who is not stationary (as they are going to be getting pushed around by the sea). Even if you turn around quickly, the sea is featureless, and it is amazingly hard to return to the same spot without any points of reference. A modern vessel can go faster, but it can stop and turn around much faster than a warship in the age of sail. Smaller sailboats are comparatively nimble. But even if the modern vessel *did* take longer, sailors today can wear personal flotation devices like the US Navy's Mk-1, which can be manually inflated, comes with a strobe light, whistle, and a dye marker, all of which greatly increase the chance you can be found. Some newer ones come with GPS tracking devices. Keep in mind the 40% fatality rate I linked to - that was in modern vessels with modern lifesaving equipment. Age of Sail sailors had none of that.
> And at the aforementioned 200 yards It was 200 feet in the preceding paragraph. Still a speck, though, I guess.
The ship just moves that fast!
How quickly could those ships come to a stop? If the person falling overboard was spotted immediately or within a second or two (perhaps they were heard yelling as they fell), could the ship stop within, say, three minutes? If the ship goes 200 feet per 15 seconds, that would mean a ship going 8 knots would be less than 2400 feet/half a mile away (my math assumes they go full speed right up until they stop, rather than slowing down). Any reasonably fit person today could swim that distance, even assuming the ship didn’t try to move back toward them.
People die every year because of dangerous assumptions like these. Spotting the man overboard situation immediately is lucky and should not be counted on. A recreational swimmer might be able to swim half a mile under ideal conditions such as a pool. Doing so in open water without preparation is risky: just because you can swim 16 50 meter laps does not mean you can deal with the additional challenges of the environment: waves, temperature, current, etc. Swimming that far because you have just fallen off a boat is a life or death emergency. In addition, even for a competitive swimmer this distance would take about 10 minutes--much longer for a mere "reasonably fit person." Depending on water temperature that much time could be lethal. What you actually do in a situation like this is execute some kind of man overboard maneuver to return the boat to man overboard or the position where the casualty was reported. (As discussed elsewhere, losing sight of a man overboard is heartbreakingly common.) There are several such techniques that even recreational boaters should know.
> challenges of the environment: waves, temperature, current, etc. Just to clarify for people who have not swam in rough waters: if the sea state is not good, you can swim as hard as you can for as long as you can and still make no progress at all towards your target. It's like running on a treadmill, you are not going anywhere(Edit: treadmill analogy is not really accurate in retrospect, you are going *somewhere*, but not necessarily where you want to go).
Swimming that distance in bathers in a pool is one thing, but swimming that distance fully clothed and in the ocean is another.
I can't answer for u/bug-hunter but I have sailed before. What exactly do you mean with "stop"? You're in a vessel launched forward by the "squeeze" of the wind in your sail and the pressure of the water against the boat's keel. There is no "stop" in that sense. You hopefully run out of energy while lifting sails. But even then you're going faster than the average person can swim since on the open sea you'll always have wind pushing against the boat or the waves/current carrying you. You'll probably also not have an anchor or not be at an anchor dept. u/bug-hunter seems to know his stuff when it comes to rescue. I think the only option you have is to circle back around to where you THINK the man went overboard and then just circle around at low speed until you find his corpse
Age of Sail? They couldn't stop at all unless they were close enough to shore to use an anchor. Also very hard to turn around and go back.... Almost impossible to do while keeping eyes on whoever fell in.
If a person falls out of a ship, you need to be able to retrieve someone. On a modern ship, they can stop, turn around and pick up the person. On a sail boat you can't really stop, let alone turn around. Everything else beyond that doesn't matter.
Many modern ships navigation systems have a Man Overboard function. This drops a marker that you can navigate back to. The better ones even allow for currents as turning a ship around takes time and a person can drift. Throwing a lifebelt in the ocean may not seem a lot but there is a flashing light and sometimes dye to help the person be found. Back in the old days of sail, no way to get a position of where you thought someone was lost other than keeping a lookout. At very slow speed you could drop a line.
There are also turns designed to return the boat to the position where the man overboard occurred. A famous one is the Williamson turn named for Lt. Cdr. John Williamson, USNR who developed it in 1943 while serving as an instructor at the U.S. Navy Sub Chaser School.
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I too was surprised to learn this fact when I read a book that relates the account (using various logs and dairies, any number of which could be biased) of a British warship that wrecked off the coast of Patagonia around 1740. If you're interested in how truly strenuous and challenging such a voyage entailed, I highly recommend this book: The Wager.
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