In the 1960’s there was this British guy—Donald Crowhurst—who dreamed big dreams with the ability to suck his family and friends into them. He’d been raised among the British ruling elite in India until that country’s independence (1947) sent the family back to England, where they tumbled from the privileged upper crust of society to the menial labor class. He was a brilliant electrical engineer, inventive (natch), and a businessman who almost, but not quite, made it big; though he never gave up, convinced as he was of his own superiority, as in, “Crowhurst believed he had something important to give the world, and he was constantly striving to find it”; a great line from Peter Nichols’ book, A Voyage for Madmen. Crowhurst was also a weekend sailor (like me, eh?) who, in 1968 decided to enter the first ever Golden Globe Nonstop Solo Around the World sailing race.

 

The race was the newspaper publicists’ outgrowth of all the hullabaloo over Chichester’s recent return from a solo circumnavigation with only one stop (Australia) at the age of 65 in something like nine months. He was knighted—dubbed Sir Francis Chichester by the Queen herself—and became famous and rich for his efforts. Remember, this is England, which was once a sea-faring empire and is still a sea-faring nation. This was big stuff, with hundreds of thousands of people turning out for his arrival; tv cameras filmed his approach for hours at the blinding speed of four knots. It was grand; and the only thing grander would be to do it nonstop, around the three great southern capes (Good Hope in Africa; Leeuwin in Australia; and Horn in South America) as the rules put it. There would be two prizes; the Golden Globe trophy for the first guy back, and a big cash prize for the guy with the fastest time, since each could depart at any time in the next six months. This was in the days before big corporate sponsorships, so these guys had to do their own financing and begging. Several mortgaged their homes to do it; Crowhurst mortgaged his home (of wife, four children) and his business; if he pulled out of the race before finishing he’d be bankrupt and humiliated.

 

Nine guys took part in the race; only one guy finished it. When our story picks up, five of them have dropped out–four because of boat problems, one because of health. Robin Knox-Johnston is in the lead, having rounded Cape Horn and entered the South Atlantic, beginning the final leg home. Bernard Moitessier is rounding Cape Horn and will likely gain on Knox-Johnston, making for, the newspapers ballyhooed, a photo finish at, say, five knots over thousands of miles. Nigel Tetley, sailing the plywood 40′ trimaran (three hulls) he and his wife lived on before the race, is still suffering the Southern Ocean, though approaching Cape Horn.

 

And Donald Crowhurst is sailing around in circles in the middle of the South Atlantic, which he never left. He’s there because within six weeks of leaving England, his boat—coincidentally the same model Tetley was sailing—began falling apart, and he realized that it could not survive the ferocity of the Southern Ocean. He’s sailing in circles trying to figure a way out of the conundrum between bankruptcy with humiliation or sailing on and probably dying, breaking a promise to his wife (and four little ones) to withdraw if he saw that it couldn’t work. He starts sending out misleading and false positions (via Morse Code, which is all they had then). He sails around in circles and, being something of a mathematical wizard, works out the sextant-based celestial navigation calculations (before gps and such: you measure the angle of the sun and figure it from there with standard formulas all navigators know) in his log of a trip around the world that he would claim to have sailed (as well as keeping a log of where he really is, ’cause you gotta know that under any circumstances). The months pass while he floats around in solitary isolation—his only human contact a secret trip to an isolated South American hamlet for plywood and nails to keep his boat afloat (he’d forgotten to pack any). He lives alone on the sea and carries out this deception of all of England over the months and eventually the real sailors start showing up.

 

Crowhurst realizes then that he can’t allow himself to win, because his false logbooks will not stand up to the close scrutiny of Chichester and others; it’s safer simply to have the notoriety of having finished the race, when the examination won’t be as close. He’ll pull in behind Tetley, finishing a safe from scrutiny fourth. Moitessier is gaining on Knox-Johnston coming up the Atlantic and will probably overtake him, when Moitessier, being mystical, decides to withdraw from the race and continue on around the world again, because he does not want to spoil the purity of his union with Joshua (his boat) and the sea by the crowds and publicity. He ends up in Tahiti about six months later. Knox-Johnston plods on into England and fame and fortune as the first–and eventually only–guy back. Suddenly, though, Crowhurst has a worry, because with Moitessier out, either he or Tetley are destined to have the fastest time, based on what Tetley actually sailed and Crowhurst is claiming to have sailed. He needs Tetley to win so his logbooks won’t be questioned.

 

Tetley sinks.

 

Tetley sinks because he pushes his boat—which had taken a severe battering in the southern seas—too hard, because he thinks Crowhurst is catching up to him. The boat disintegrates less than a thousand miles from England, and he’s plucked out of the Atlantic. And with that the cosmos exposes Donald Crowhurst’s deception. There is no way he will not be revealed publicly as a fraud; there is no way he will not be publicly humiliated and broken. His press team is already making arrangements for his victorious arrival. His wife and children are being interviewed all over the airwaves and print press.

 

So he loses his mind at this bizarre karma; this divine revelation of his deceit. He loses his mind to his own revelation which will save humanity. It comes brilliantly and in a flash as he floats in the breathless heat of the Sargasso Sea, and he spends 25,000 words in his journal laying it out in engineering mathematics and Einsteinian mythology and insane ramblings of the self-creation of divinity, ending it all with a haunting countdown:

 

EXACT POS    July 1

 

11    15    00        It is the end of my

                            my game the truth

                            has been revealed and it will

                            be done as my family require me

                            to do it

 

11    17    00        It is the time for your

                            move to begin

 

                            I have no need to prolong

                            the game

 

                            It has been a good game that

                            must be ended at the

 

                            I will play this game when

                            I choose I will resign the

                            game  11  20  40  There is

                            no reason for harmful

 

Then he takes his chronometer and steps into the empty sea off the back of the boat, which is found drifting some weeks later. His body is never recovered.

 

His full story is in a book called The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (and more recently made into an excellent documentary called “Deep Water”). I’ve read it any number of times, first, because I’m fascinated by the destruction wreaked not only by his public deception, but borne more deeply in his self-deception; in his narcissistic sense of heroism. It destroyed him and his family of course (though the valiant Knox-Johnston gave his widow the prize money), and as well, Tetley, who grew despondent after the truth was known, believing that he could have won the race by sailing slower, thus preserving his boat; frustrated by the lack of finances to try it again, he hung himself a couple of years later.  One race for fame and fortune; two suicides from one deception. The book does a nice job of tracing Crowhurst’s mental descent from the pressure of the deception in his log books and journal; as if the mind cannot hold together without a basic truthfulness.

 

But I’m also fascinated by the divine tragicomedy it is, as if the whole cosmos conspired to stick him with the dream for which he so desperately prayed, thus hanging him out publicly in the deception, mocking him. Come on, what’re the chances of the obvious winner withdrawing at the last minute on a sudden spiritual urge to chase butterflies? And then what are the chances that the guy you are trying to stay behind sinks because he thinks you’re catching up? What kind of laughing karma is that? The divine irony is way too funny to miss.

 

Kurt Vonnegut said, “You are what you pretend to be. So be careful what you pretend to be.”

 

Jesus said, “Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed.”

 

And, of course, be careful what you dream about and pray for; you must just get stuck with it.