In 1955 eight crew members of Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were swept overboard. Velasco alone survived, drifting on a raft for ten days without food or water. Marquez retells the survivor`s amazing tale of endurance, from hisloneliness and thirst to his determination to survive.
"The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" was Marquez`s first major work, published in a Colombian newspaper, "El Espectador", in 1955 and then in book form in 1970.