The Teignmouth Electron & The Vanishing of Donald Crowhurst

The 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe race has gone down in yachting history as an infamous disaster. Of the nine men who started the race, only one, Robin Knox-Johnston, finished. It is notable not only for the seemingly slapdash way in which it was officiated but also for the mysterious demise of one of its contestants, Donald Crowhurst, who arguably became more famous than the race itself.

While initial assessments of Crowhurst’s participation, eventual cheating, and subsequent death were harsh, a reexamination of the events paints a tragic picture of a man facing complete financial ruin if he lost. With no recourse but to fabricate his circumnavigation, Crowhurst’s downfall resulted from his ambitious nature exceeding his experience level. Unfortunately, he tested his ambition out in a race he could not win and in the unforgiving laboratory of the sea.

The Golden Globe Race

Sir Francis Chichester made headlines in May 1967 when he returned from a successful single-stop solo circumnavigation aboard his yacht, Gypsy Moth IV. At the time, circumnavigations were nothing new, as others (e.g. Joshua Slocum) had done it before, but the fact that Chichester accomplished it with only a single stop in Australia merited the question of whether or not a solo circumnavigation could be accomplished without stopping. Such an idea captured the attention of many yachtsmen at the time, including Donald Crowhurst. After several people (including Crowhurst) put forth the idea of a non-stop single-handed circumnavigation, the Sunday Times formally announced the Golden Globe race on 17 March 1968. With a panel of judges chaired by Chichester, the basic rules of the race were as follows:

• It would be a single-handed non-stop race going east around the three capes (Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and Cape Horn).
• Contestants could start and end at any port in the Atlantic Ocean north of 40 degrees North, but they must start and end in the same port.
• To avoid the winter in the Southern Ocean, starting dates were to be between 1 June and 31 October 1968.
• Once they departed, contestants were forbidden from putting into a port or receiving outside assistance.
• There would be a prize for the first to complete the race and a £5,000 prize for the fastest circumnavigation.

Within four days of the race’s announcement Crowhurst had declared himself an entrant, but he had a couple of problems; he still needed a boat and funds.¹

The Teignmouth Electron

At first, Crowhurst attempted to acquire the Gypsy Moth IV that Chichester had used on his circumnavigation, but he was repeatedly rebuffed. Finally, he simply decided on designing and sailing his own trimaran, despite his only previous experience with multi-hulled boats being with twin-hulled catamarans.² In a May 20th letter to caravan salesman Stanley Best, Crowhurst convinced him to put up £6,000 for the building of the boat (although the actual cost would be nearly double that amount due to rush and modifications to the final design.) Best signed with the agreement that other sponsors would be found to share the financial burden, and with the expectation that should the voyage fail, Best could sell the boat to Crowhurst’s company, Electron Utilisation Ltd., effectively bankrupting Crowhurst.³

Crowhurst commissioned two companies to construct the boat. Cox Marine Ltd. would build the hulls and L.J. Eastwood Ltd. would assemble them and fit out the boat.⁴

Design

Designed during a time when multi-hulled racing yachts were considered a novelty (or even outright ridiculed), Donald Crowhurst originally envisioned a revolutionary boat with the speed and stability to allow it to complete a faster circumnavigation than any of his competitors. Pressed for time, Crowhurst based his boat on the stock Victress-class trimaran originally designed by Arthur Piver. The three hulls themselves are the standard Victress-class hulls connected by two box-section crossarms made of 1/2″ and 5/8″ plywood. The hulls are constructed out of 3/8″ marine plywood (1/2″ on the bottom of the main hull) glued to a fir framework and sheathed in fiberglass. At various points along the keels, chines, steams, joints, and transoms, the sheathing is trebled in thickness for greater strength. The boat has an overall length of 41 feet (the center hull is 38 feet at the waterline) and a beam of 22 feet.⁵

Basic modifications to the Victress design included the following:

• Elimination of the boxy cabin and enclosed wheelhouse in favor of an open cockpit and a sleeker and more rounded superstructure dubbed the “doghouse,” at the expense of interior space and comfort. (Crowhurst feared large waves could damage the larger superstructure.)⁷
• Reduction in main mast height to 38 feet, four feet less than the standard Victress-class. Mast cross sections were also increased, and the shrouds and stays were one size larger than the standard. The mizzen mast height was also reduced.⁸
• Watertight bulkheads in each float requiring three deck hatches for the divided compartments. These hatches were just round pieces of wood bolted down with twelve wingnuts onto a rubber seal.⁹
• Two additional box-section crossarms were situated four feet forward of the standard crossarm positions. This necessitated two additional watertight collision bulkheads in each hull to connect these beams. The number of bolts connecting the crossarms to the bulkheads was trebled and strips of stainless steel, glued to the wood, were used in place of washers. Additionally, to withstand the stresses of the rigging, the deck to which the crossarms were glued was doubled in thickness to two layers of 3/8″ plywood. This additional layer also meant that the joints could be staggered.¹⁰
• Specific corners on the deck, such as where the wings and hulls were joined, were radiused to avoid creating high-stress points.¹¹
• The shrouds were attached to stainless steel strips that encircled the hull.¹²
• A Hasler self-steering gear was used, and manual steering was by tiller from an open cockpit. With the rudder aft of the mizzen and the cockpit forward of the mizzen, linkage between the two was made via two shafts. Steering could also be accomplished with a wheel mounted on the aft cabin bulkhead. The wheel could be operated with the cabin closed up or from a seat clipped to the companion ladder which allowed the helmsman to stick their head out of the main hatch.¹³

The Teignmouth Electron carried the following wardrobe of sails:

Of note is that Crowhurst had doubled up on some of his headsails to use them as twin running sails. The idea was that identical sails could be set on either beam and connected to the tiller to provide self-steering. Another self-steering method would’ve been for Crowhurst to trail a warp with a bucket attached to it and connect this through a variable-ratio linkage to the rudder shaft. The idea would be to keep the boat and warp in a straight line through the operation of the rudder.¹⁴

Planned Safety Features

To survive the dangerous seas of the Southern Ocean, Crowhurst planned on incorporating a variety of novel safety features; one of which was an electronic system to prevent capsizing. For this system to work, banks of electrodes would be situated around the hull of the boat and connected to a central switching mechanism that Crowhurst dubbed the “computer” (to be located in a compartment inside the main cabin). In the event that the boat heeled over and submerged one of the banks of electrodes, a signal would be sent to the computer that would briefly pause to determine if the electrodes were permanently submerged. If the computer determined the submerged electrodes constituted a danger of a rollover, then an electrical circuit would be completed that would fire off a carbon dioxide cylinder. This released gas would travel via hose up through the hollow mainmast to a large rubber “buoyancy bag” fitted to the top of the mainmast. The pressure from the inflating bag would then break the lashings around the bag and allow it to fully inflate. This moment of buoyancy at the top of the mast would thus prevent the boat from fully capsizing. At this point, it was likely that the boat would be tipped on its side with one float submerged and the mast, with the inflated bag, partially buoyant. Crowhurst hoped a wave might be enough to knock the boat upright, but if that wasn’t the case, then a water pump could be activated that would fill the upper float with water and fully right the vessel. In addition to detecting the danger of a rollover, Crowhurst envisioned that the computer would be able to continuously check for changes in wind speed, as well as for stresses on the rigging, which would trigger warning lights and alarms, and allow the computer to automatically slacken the sails.¹⁵ Given the electronic needs of this system, the boat required a substantial generator. Crowhurst chose an Onan gasoline generator but wanted it placed as low in the hull as possible due to its weight. The only space to accommodate the generator was beneath the open cockpit which would necessitate a watertight hatch.¹⁶

Unfortunately, neither the buoyancy bag system nor the “computer” would be completed, either prior to, or during Crowhurst’s voyage. John Eastwood opines that there is nothing inherently wrong with the buoyancy bag system, but more testing and development (of an obviously complete system) would be needed to ensure it could be used.¹⁷ In contrast, Richard Newick believes that the buoyancy bag added unnecessary top weight and actually decreased the boat’s stability.¹⁸ The banks of electrodes along the hulls of the vessel were completed, but the firing mechanism for inflating the bag was not. Additionally, Eastwood writes that the use of sensors to detect excessive water in the bilges may have been useful, but the use of stress gauges on the rigging would’ve been of dubious utility. In the end, it’s unknown how these systems would’ve worked in practice since they were never completed. Still, Eastwood believes that with further development, the Teignmouth Electron would’ve done very well in a long-distance, single-handed race given the distance that she covered and the fact that the trimarans in the Golden Globe Race generally performed just as well as the monohulls.¹⁹

Fitting Out

Arguably, the biggest problems with Crowhurst’s boat stemmed not from her design or features, but from her rushed fitting out and the incomplete preparations made by Crowhurst. While Cox Marine successfully completed the hulls by their deadline of 28 July 1968, there was still substantial work to be done in terms of fitting out, and Crowhurst had a large number of innovative ideas floating around in his head.²⁰

At this point, the construction of the boat began to encounter numerous delays. For example, the appropriate soft rubber for the deck hatch seals couldn’t be obtained due to extensive use by the automobile industry, so they went with a different rubber supplier and a different type of rubber. The standard Victress-class rigging plan couldn’t be used, so Crowhurst and Eastwood had to rapidly improvise one.²¹

With Crowhust’s additional commitments to Stanley Best, and his press agent, Rodney Hallworth, as well as trying to get a friend to look after his business selling direction finders during his absence, the construction of the boat fell further and further behind. John Eastwood and his partner, John Elliott, complained that they saw little of Crowhurst during this time when they needed him the most. Two days before the launching, on 21 September, Crowhurst and Eastwood got into an argument over the fact that the decks couldn’t be sheathed in fiberglass due to delays in developing the rigging plan, which in turn created delays in laying the deck. Unable to contact Crowhurst for his approval, Eastwood decided to use polyurethane paint instead, arguing that the double thickness of the deck planking made the fiberglass unnecessary and that the paint would do just as well. At this time, as late as 25 September, Crowhurst was driving daily to Bristol to complete a course to get a certificate in radio-telegraphy as required by the Post Office if he was to carry a transmitter on his boat.²²

Crowhurst originally wanted to name the boat Electron Five to promote his business. However, Hallworth suggested that Crowhurst start his voyage from the town of Teignmouth in Devon and that he add that name to the boat to garner local fundraising support. Crowhurst wanted Electron of Teignmouth, but Hallworth, being the town’s local reporter, insisted that the town’s name come first. Hence, the boat was named Teignmouth Electron.²³

Launching & Shakedown Cruise

Teignmouth Electron was launched into the Yare River at Brundall on 23 September 1968. After a short speech, Clare Crowhurst swung the champagne bottle against the hull but failed to break it. John Eastwood assured her that such ill omens were not unheard of and took the job over from her. What followed was a week of furious activity by the yard workers in stepping the mast, rigging it, and completing the deck fixtures. Only after a series of monetary squabbles, during which Crowhurst paid a £1,000 “releasing fee” on 2 October, was the Teignmouth Electron finally declared fit for sea.²⁴

With John Elliot and Peter Beard aboard, as well as some yard workers, the shakedown cruise of the Teignmouth Electron got started down the Yare River using the boat’s outboard motor. While attempting to avoid the chain of a ferry, Crowhurst ordered the anchor to be dropped, but the resulting tide pushed the boat into some shore pilings that holed the starboard hull. After patching up the hole and suffering several more delays, Crowhurst, Elliot, and Beard set sail and began the journey from Yarmouth to Teignmouth. For a trip that was expected to take three days, it ended up taking two weeks.²⁶

The Teignmouth Electron managed the North Sea well and passed the Thames Estuary with a favorable wind in her sails. However, the poor windward performance of the trimaran made itself apparent when the winds shifted once they passed the South Goodwin Lightship. It took nearly five hours to make the ten miles along the coast to Dover. At one point, the tide pushed them back to the Goodwin light, but Crowhurst stubbornly decided to press on, making a series of long tacks back and forth across the Channel with the boat still making very little headway.²⁷ Finally fed up, Crowhurst attached the outboard motor and they made their way to Boulogne, France. For the next three days, they tacked back and forth along the Channel, and at one point, Crowhurst drew a fictional course in Beard’s logbook and joked that he could fake his circumnavigation without ever leaving the South Atlantic.²⁸ It’s rather ironic that that comment would become very prescient in a few months.

After four days, Beard and Elliot couldn’t stay aboard any longer and were put ashore at Newhaven where they called the relief crew.²⁹ At this point in October, most of the other contestants were already at sea, but John Ridgway had earlier retired on 21 July at Recife, Brazil.³⁰ Chay Blyth technically disqualified himself on 15 August when he pulled into Tristan da Cunha and received help from the captain of a freighter. Later, he suffered a broken wind vane steering gear and “officially” retired on 13 September when he was towed into East London, South Africa. Although he attempted to continue on two days later, a strong gale forced him to turn around and sail into Port Elizabeth where he finally quit the race for real.³¹ Robin Knox-Johnston was in the Indian Ocean nearing Australia. Bernard Moitessier, Nigel Tetley, and Bill King were in pursuit, still in the Atlantic.³²

As for Crowhurst, when the relief crew arrived, they had to wait two more days for a gale to subside, and after getting underway again, another two days making slow progress to Wootton Creek on the Isle of Wight. At this point, the relief crew departed and Crowhurst continued on alone to Cowes where he met the final entrant, Alex Carozzo. On Sunday, 13 October, Crowhurst was accompanied by Lieutenant Commander Peter Eden, an experienced local sailor for the final two-day leg of the journey to Teignmouth. Eden noted that the boat sailed swiftly, with them frequently making 12 knots, but it couldn’t sail closer than 60 degrees to the wind. Vibrations in the bunk in the bow were also unbearable at high speeds, and the screws on the Hasler self-steering gear frequently worked loose, forcing the men to constantly re-tighten them. Eden further noted that Crowhurst’s sailing technique was fine, but his navigational record-keeping left something to be desired. Crowhurst finally arrived in the town of Teignmouth on 15 October with only 16 days left until the departure deadline for the race.³³ Unfortunately, this only meant an even bigger rush to get all the supplies and spare parts needed for the voyage stowed away on the boat. At the time, various people noted that Crowhurst’s attention would jump from one thing to the next in a very disorganized manner, and he would become needlessly preoccupied with trivial things. When it was all said and done, a pile of essential spare parts (sheets of plywood, nuts, screws, rigging, etc.) was left on the pier when Crowhurst sailed, despite John Elliot remembering having personally put them on board earlier. Crowhurst would spend the entire race bemoaning the lack of spares for the equipment on his boat. If only he (or someone) had not taken the spare parts off before he departed.³⁴

The 1968 Golden Globe Race

The First Half of Crowhurst’s Voyage (October 1968 – March 1969)

Crowhurst Begins the Race

Crowhurst’s voyage got off to a rather inauspicious start as the Teignmouth Electron was towed over the bar of Teignmouth Harbour at 3pm on 31 October 1968 with only nine hours to go before the departure deadline. Unfortunately, the hastily lashed buoyancy bag had fouled two halyards, and the jib and staysail were attached to the wrong stays in reverse order. Crowhurst requested a tow back into the harbor as a rigger climbed the mast to correct the mistakes. Finally, Crowhurst hoisted sails, and at 4:52pm, crossed the starting line. He would spend the rest of the day, plus the whole of the next day, fixing the rigging of the boat, fighting seasickness, and organizing the supplies which had been thrown hastily into the cabin in a rush to get the boat ready for the race.³⁵

Coincidentally, Alex Carozzo also had a hasty start to the race on the same day. However, Carozzo crossed the starting line on 31 October and then anchored offshore near Cowes, Isle of Wight for a whole week to get his boat organized before setting off into the Atlantic. Although Carozzo had stopped, this didn’t disqualify him since he didn’t pull into a port or receive direct assistance from another party. As for the remaining five contestants at this time, Tetley was some 5,000 miles south nearing the island of Trindade. Loick Fougeron had just passed the island of Tristan da Cunha the previous day and was fighting his way through a gale. About 100 miles southeast of Fougeron, King was riding out the same gale. 1,100 miles east of Cape Town, in the Indian Ocean, Moitessier was just emerging from a brief gale. Further east, about 4,000 miles ahead of Moitessier, Knox-Johnston was off the southern coast of Australia, about halfway between Cape Leeuwin and Melbourne.³⁶

Even as early as 2 November, only three days into his voyage, the Hasler self-steering gear had lost two screws which Crowhurst had to replace with ones salvaged from non-essential gear. Unfortunately, the Hasler type 1AQH vane gear was designed for monohulls and only worked well on those types of vessels; they weren’t meant for multihulls.³⁷ On 5 November, Crowhurst realized that his port hull was shipping water somewhere around the bow. The next day, Crowhurst calculated that he had covered some 538 miles the past four days for an average of 134 miles per day. Despite this seemingly Chichester-like progress, the reality is that Crowhurst failed to account for the fact that much of that time was spent tacking back and forth into a southerly wind. In actuality, he had only covered about 290 miles along his intended course, and it’s likely that the poor performance of his trimaran to windward was becoming all the more apparent.³⁸ In addition to his leaking hull and difficulties with his Hasler steering gear, Crowhurst found on 13 November that the hatch covering his generator was leaking and flooding the compartment.³⁹

After about 14 days at sea, Crowhurst made a tape recording for the BBC and an entry into his logbook. Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall argue that these recordings and log entries display two distinct sides of Crowhurst’s personality. The tape recordings display his “heroic persona” which is a false show of optimism. The other, his logbook entries, show the true Crowhurst, which is far more insecure. It’s noted that parts of his BBC recording below tend to wax poetic about the realities of life as a sailor when he says:

I think the thing that most people associate with small boats is glorious afternoons in the Solent and pretty girls in bikinis lounging about on the deck of some vast schooner while men in natty yachting clothes stand with rugged determined looks on their faces, grasping the wheel with a pipe clenched firmly between their teeth, as some beautiful bird of a boat skims across blue waters. Well, there may be circumstances when that’s a reasonable picture, unhappily I have never encountered them…Everything in this boat is wet, I mean wet not damp. Wet. Condensation is on the roof, it drips in your ear when you’re trying to sleep, every hole is a potential leak, and the noise, as you’ve heard, is continuous and often deafening.

Of course single-handing has its compensations. No matter how schizophrenic you are, it’s difficult to fall out with the crew, they’re excellent people from the captain to the cabin boy. However, it does mean that the cabin boy has to do the navigation while the captain has to wash out the socks…The thing about single-handing is it puts a great deal of pressure on the man, it explores his weaknesses with a penetration that very few other occupations can manage. If he’s lazy he’ll be twice as lazy when he’s on his own, if he’s easily dispirited it’ll knock the stuffing out of him in no time at all, if he’s easily frightened he’s best staying at home – I wouldn’t mind a dose of it myself right now.

I’ve never put to sea in such a completely unprepared state in my life. …One thing, though, that has surpised me is the way this trimaran stands up to her canvas, she really is phenomenally stable and she seems to be able to keep sailing when I’m sure a conventional boat of the same water-like length wouldn’t be able to.⁴¹

While Tomalin and Hall note that his recording speaks of his boat in fairly “extravagant terms”, his logbook on Friday the 15th of November has a much more realistic appraisal of the problems he (and his boat) were facing. Some of the problems were:

• No more than a 50/50 chance of surviving the Southern Ocean with the boat, given its present state.
• Incomplete masthead buoyancy bag and poor stowage arrangement.
• Leaking port forward float hatch that was shipped some 120 gallons in 5 days.
• Leaking cockpit hatch that shipped 75 gallons overnight.
• Incorrectly cut sails. (The main and mizzen sails would chafe on the shrouds unless sailing close-hauled.)
• No method of pumping out the forward and aft compartments of each float without opening the hatches and manually bailing out the water.
• Leaking after collision bulkhead.
• Poor food stowage arrangements.
• Screws in the Hasler steering gear continually need tightening.⁴²

In light of these issues with his voyage and his boat, Crowhurst spent some time working through the possibilities available to him should he be unable to complete the race. Crowhurst wrote down in his logbooks the options of retiring at Cape Town, continuing as far as Australia, sailing to the U.S. and retiring, or returning to the U.K. However, he ultimately decided to continue.⁴³

In terms of progress, Crowhurst had only made it as far south as Portugal; his position being some 120 miles WNW of Lisbon. While his log read that he had traveled about 1,300 miles in total, he was only about 800 miles along his intended course (out of a total of approximately 30,000 miles) and was doing worse than any other competitor at the same stage in the race. It took Francis Chichester six days to reach this point during his circumnavigation, Crowhurst anticipated to do it in five and a half. Instead, it had taken him two weeks.⁴⁴

This is the point where Tomalin and Hall argue that Crowhurt’s logbooks ceased to become reliable given that the narrative in them flip-flopped between his heroic persona and that of a man struggling with his incomplete boat and his own insecurities.⁴⁵ Thus, they believe that it’s important to take any of Crowhurst’s claims regarding his position after mid-November with a grain of salt. Crowhurst’s log shows that he did some calculations on 17 and 18 November, and concluded that given his current speed, he wouldn’t make it to Australia or around Cape Horn before winter arrived in April or May in the Southern Hemisphere. In a phone call to Stanley Best on the 18th, he “optimistically” gave his position as 100 miles north of Madeira and described the technical issues he was having with the boat. He also suggested that the problems with his generator would result in radio silence in the future. While Crowhurst had written down possibilities of retiring from the race in his logbook, it was never brought up in the call.⁴⁶

The following weekend (23 November), the Sunday Times reported that Carozzo had dropped out of the race due to the stress causing a bad stomach ulcer; having only made it as far as Portugal. Tetley had just broken the distance record for a multihulled vessel and had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Meanwhile, Knox-Johnston had broken Chichester’s non-stop distance and had reached New Zealand with Moitessier closing on him in the Roaring Forties.⁴⁷ Bill King, whose boat got knocked over and dismasted in the gale in late October, jury-rigged up a sail and retired in Cape Town on 22 November. Following the same storm in late October that damaged King’s boat, Loick Fougeron also decided he had enough and retired in St. Helena on 27 November.⁴⁸

Tomalin and Hall point to further clues of a possible unreliable narrative and note that on 26 November, Crowhurst began writing two lines per space in his logbooks and was concerned about running out of space despite having plenty left in Logbook One, plus two more empty logbooks in reserve. As such, they speculate that he was going to use his two reserves for something else. Additionally, Crowhurst’s writing format changed because he began interspersing comments on his navigation throughout his calculations rather than separating them as he had done previously. Finally, the writing in his comments became more stilted and forced in tone, with excessive focus on insignificant topics. Therefore, Tomalin and Hall believe that between his changing writing styles, his entry about retiring, and his phone call with Best, Crowhurst began to contemplate the notion of faking his voyage around this time.⁴⁹

Crowhurst’s Fraudulent Voyage Begins

It’s believed that Crowhurst’s navigational data in Logbook One remains accurate up to approximately 5 December for the following reasons:

• Crowhurst had no reason to fake the record before that date.
• A review of his calculations by navigational experts reveals no major internal inconsistencies prior to that date.
• Crowhurst stopped dropping messages in bottles with his position after 1 December.
• Crowhurst only gave vague information about his position and route following that date.⁵⁰

Crowhurst’s logs show him passing the Cape Verde Islands around 7 and 8 December. His initial fraudulent claims indicate relatively small deviations from his true course, but with substantially different claims of the distances traveled. The table below is from Crowhurst’s log for the dates from 5 to 10 December. It shows two columns, one with the actual distance (based on his noon-to-noon sightings) and another with the claimed distance traveled.

It’s thought that Crowhurst didn’t want to risk his false course getting too far away from his real course given his proximity to the Cape Verde Islands and the possibility of him being spotted. Therefore, his false course veered to the west of the Cape Verde Islands before turning back east. Crowhurst’s comments in the logbook show a detailed narrative around this time which Tomalin and Hall believe is indicative of Crowhurst’s lying. In other words, when his writing provides a dearth of details, then it’s likely that Crowhurst was putting on his “heroic persona” and fabricating his voyage. This stands in contrast to the usual lack of details in his writing indicating his more honest self.⁵² It’s also believed that had Crowhurst actually completed the race then his logs, with all of their falsities, may have actually passed scrutiny. The race’s navigation advisor, Craig Rich, examined the recovered logbooks and noted that the data appeared to be accurate, but Crowhurst’s comments and the consistent pencil sharpness looked strange. In other words, all of the data and comments indicated that they had been recorded over several days, but the writing and pencil sharpness was too consistent and had to have been written down on the same day.⁵³

On Tuesday, 10 December, Crowhurst sent a telegram (followed by a radio call the next day) to Hallworth claiming to have gone a record-breaking 243 miles on Sunday, 8 December. The Sunday Times was ecstatic about his remarkable progress, although some, like Francis Chichester and Craig Rich, expressed skepticism; noting that all other contestants had been consistent in their progress and that such miraculous gains all of a sudden were strange. In reality, at this time, Crowhurst was only able to make 177 miles in 24 hours at best.⁵⁴

On 12 December Crowhurst took out a fresh logbook (known as Logbook 2) and began recording his actual positions. Logbook 2, from that point, is believed to be an accurate account of his real voyage since the navigation checks out and he would have no reason to falsify it, assuming he intended to destroy it before completing the race. According to Logbook 2, his position at this time was some 7 degrees north of the equator and about 3,300 miles from the Lizard peninsula in England. He was becalmed; having just passed the NE trade winds and roughly at the Clapham Junction where the New York to Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro to Europe trade routes intersected. Meanwhile, in his first logbook (known as Logbook 1), he continued with his fictitious circumnavigation. While it’s not known if Crowhurst decided to go all in with his fraudulent voyage at this time, it’s speculated that he was running out of options and gradually digging himself further into a falsehood from which there was no return.⁵⁵

Crowhurst Reaches the South Atlantic

On 17 December Crowhurst telegrammed Hallworth saying that he was past the doldrums, over the equator, and moving fast again. In reality, none of these were true. He was still 180 miles north of the equator and had only covered about 150 miles in a southerly direction in the past four days. Around this time, Crowhurst had also begun plotting further ahead in his fake voyage with increasingly exaggerated distances covered, as seen below:

On 18 December, while Crowhurst was still just north of the equator, Moitessier had been spotted passing the island of Tasmania, averaging about 100 miles per day through the Indian Ocean. Two days later, on 20 December, Tetley was in the middle of the Indian Ocean near Amsterdam Island and St. Paul Island.⁵⁷ Knox-Johnston was estimated to be approximately halfway across the South Pacific after leaving Otago Harbour, New Zealand back on 20 November. Meanwhile, on 21 December, Apollo 8 launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders aboard for an orbit around the Moon.⁵⁸

On 24 December Hallworth received a telegram from Crowhurst saying that he was heading towards “Trinidad” with the last of the SE trade winds and the Brazil Current. Hallworth correctly assumed that Crowhurst meant the island of Trindade in the South Atlantic and didn’t actually mean he was in the West Indies. Unfortunately, the story became further warped when the newspapers reported Crowhurst to be en route to Tristan da Cunha; more than 1,500 miles southeast of Trindade. In actuality, Crowhurst was approaching Brazil, roughly off the coast of Recife.⁵⁹

In January and February, Crowhurst’s logs show that he was taking copious notes on broadcasts from Cape Town radio on cable traffic and weather reports in the Southeast Atlantic and Southern Indian Oceans. A pattern emerges where it’s clear that he was gathering evidence of the meteorological conditions in the area to make his fake voyage more realistic. His notes on weather declined drastically in March, probably because he couldn’t pick up transmissions from Sydney, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand; where he expected to be at that time.⁶⁰ In the meantime, on 13 January 1969, Tetley was 450 miles south of Cape Leeuwin, Australia, and getting tossed around in a gale. He would reach Otago Harbour, New Zealand on 2 February.⁶¹ On 17 January, Robin Knox-Johnston rounded Cape Horn and celebrated with a drink and his aunt’s fruit cake.⁶² Despite Hallworth’s pleas to send more detailed position reports, on 19 January 1969 (Day 80 of his voyage), Crowhurst sent a message stating that he was 100 miles southeast of Gough Island in the Roaring Forties. He noted that he was having problems with the hatch covering his generator and that he would attempt to send messages whenever possible when between longitudes 80 degrees East and 140 degrees West. In other words, he wanted Hallworth to expect him to be in radio silence from positions in the central Indian Ocean until he was roughly halfway between New Zealand and Cape Horn.⁶³ Crowhurst’s true course was still headed south down the coast of South America.

With no further precise positions being given, the Sunday Times continued to extrapolate Crowhurst’s voyage, eventually putting him in the Indian Ocean.⁶⁴ In classic yellow journalism fashion, their 26 January 1969 headline read, “Crowhurst Limps On After Battering by Giant Wave,” and by 2 February, they were reporting him to be approximately 1,300 miles east of the Cape of Good Hope.⁶⁵ By 5 February, Bernard Moitessier had rounded Cape Horn.⁶⁶ Crowhurst continued down the coast of South America, however, his damaged starboard float continued to leak, and it was gradually getting worse. Consulting his Pilot books in late February, he began searching for a small, out-of-the-way settlement at which to anchor and get supplies to repair his boat since he neglected to take any spare parts with him upon his departure.⁶⁷ Meandering back and forth not far from the Rio de la Plata estuary, Crowhurst likely chose this area to put ashore since he last reported his position around Gough Island. Therefore, in the event he was discovered and reported, a landing in South America would make it seem plausible that he had reversed course and sailed back west to forfeit the race.⁶⁸

The Second Half of Crowhurst’s Voyage (March 1969 – July 1969)

Crowhurst’s Secret Landing at Rio Salado

At 8:30 am on 6 March, Crowhurst dropped anchor and landed in Samborombon Bay at the mouth of the Rio Salado River. The area is only about 100 miles from Buenos Aires but is sparsely settled. Still, there is a small building that housed a detachment of men belonging to the Argentine Naval Prefecture (Argentine coast guard) which monitored traffic coming in and out of the Rio de la Plata.⁶⁹

Having been spotted by the locals, Crowhurst found his vessel approached by Senior Petty Officer Santiago Franchessi around 10:45 am to question him. Using a combination of sign language, French, and English, Crowhurst got the point across that he was in a race and wanted to repair his boat. Fifteen minutes later, they were towing the Teignmouth Electron into Rio Salado and to the jetty at the coast guard station. It should also be noted that the minute these men assisted Crowhurst, he had effectively broken the rules and forfeited the race. In a bit of further linguistic confusion, Junior Petty Officer Cristobal Dupuy incorrectly logged the Englishman’s name, Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst, as Charles Alfred. It’s likely he assumed “Donald” was some sort of English honorific title, like the Spanish “Don.” For whatever reason, possibly because it was on the next line of his passport, he also neglected to record his surname, Crowhurst. Although he did write the passport number down correctly.⁷¹

After trying to communicate that he wanted a sheet of plywood, screws, and timbers to repair the damaged starboard hull as well as an armature for some electrical equipment, the men eventually drove Crowhurst seventeen miles north to Rancho Barreto to find Hector Salvati who could interpret via French. Explaining his predicament with a series of drawings, one of which showed his (fictitious) route around Cape Horn, Salvati and his wife remained a bit suspicious of Crowhurst, fearing he might be some kind of smuggler. Senior Petty Officer Franchessi briefly left to make a phone call to the junior midshipman on duty at La Plata Prefectura to request further instructions. Knowing nothing of the race, the midshipman authorized Franchessi to assist Crowhurst with his repairs and then let him resume his journey. Apparently, word of Crowhurst went no further than this midshipman. The following day (7 March) Crowhurst repaired his boat, spent another night in Rio Salado, and then was towed back out to Samborombon Bay where he set sail again at 2 pm on 8 March. Before leaving, Franchessi wrote his address down in Crowhurst’s Logbook 2 and recorded the departure of the Teignmouth Electron in his log at the coast guard station.⁷²

Heading Toward the Falklands

Once out of sight of land, Crowhurst turned south again on 10 March (Day 130). Doing calculations in his logbook, Crowhurst determined that the distance from Gough Island, which he claimed to have passed on 15 January, through the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Cape Horn was approximately 13,000 miles. Allowing three months to make that transit in his fake voyage, Crowhurst set a notional date of 15 April for rounding Cape Horn. This meant six weeks of waiting in the South Atlantic.⁷³

It’s known that Crowhurst had four logbooks with him, but the boat was found with only three aboard. Logbook 1 was his fake voyage, Logbook 2 was his real voyage, and the third was a radio log. This raises questions about what happened to the fourth logbook. Tomalin and Hall speculate that Crowhurst must have destroyed it at some point and have put forth a number of theories as to why. The least likely is that he was using the fourth logbook to write down poems, stories, and essays. However, they dismiss this because he had already dedicated the back pages of Logbooks 1 and 2 to that purpose, and plenty of space was left. Furthermore, much of Crowhurst’s writing indicates that he intended to publish a heroic and fanciful account of his voyage when he returned, and they believe he wouldn’t have thrown that work away. Another theory is that he used the fourth logbook for taking notes and doing calculations, but this is also unlikely because the boat was found littered with scraps of paper and plotting sheets with scribbled notes on them, including notes written in the margins of technical manuals. Crowhurst seemed to have no coherent system for that task. The most probable theory is that the missing fourth logbook contained a more coherent account of his fake voyage. Given the odd switches in tone and the writing style of Logbook 1, Crowhurst may have been drafting a new account of his “complete” voyage. Tomalin and Hall ultimately posit that Crowhurst may have destroyed the fourth logbook after not being happy with the childish verse and deceit.⁷⁴ This last theory about the destruction of the fourth logbook seems plausible. After all, it’s fairly difficult to write eloquently about the ocean after you’ve been staring at the water for months on end. For example, what makes Joshua Slocum’s account of his circumnavigation from 1895 – 1898 so interesting isn’t the sailing and seas themselves, but rather the descriptions of the places and people he saw on his journey. Since these men were sailing non-stop, their encounters with land would’ve been fleeting, but that didn’t stop Knox-Johnston and Moitessier from writing their own accounts of the race. Crowhurst had the added challenge of writing a narrative of a fictitious voyage of places he wasn’t even visiting.

Crowhurst spent the rest of March sailing a thousand miles south to the Falkland Islands. Staying close to shore and using his Navicator direction finder to get fixes on radio beacons, he got within 17 miles of Mar del Plata on 12 March. Constantly listening in on radio traffic from Cape Town and Buenos Aires, Crowhurst apparently also picked up Wellington Radio, New Zealand on 21 March. While his log shows that he drafted a message to send, he never went through with it. Interestingly, on 25 March, he did receive a weak signal from Portishead Radio in England inquiring about his position, but he didn’t reply and his transmitter wasn’t powerful enough to reach Portishead anyway.⁷⁵ Crowhurst reached the Falklands on 29 March. Spending the afternoon and evening just north of Stanley Harbour, he shot some footage for BBC with the islands in the background. As this was the southernmost point of his voyage, Crowhurst turned northwest and spent the next two days running before the westerlies, perhaps to get some idea of what sailing was like in the Roaring Forties. After that, he turned north and began making his way back home.⁷⁶

As for the other contestants, Moitessier had briefly headed northeast back up the Atlantic, but he became fed up with the very idea of the race and the modern world; feeling more at home on the sea, he decided to drop out and continue sailing east. He briefly stopped at Cape Town on 18 March to pass on his messages, logs, and films to the passing tanker British Argosy before continuing past the Cape of Good Hope a second time.⁷⁷ Knox-Johnston was headed back up the Atlantic and was finally spotted by the passing tanker, Mobil Acme, on 6 April, approximately 1,400 miles (1,200 nm) from home. Tetley had passed Cape Horn on 18 March and proceeded back up the Atlantic. In fact, he may have passed within 150 miles of Crowhurst who was idling north of the Falkland Islands at the time.⁷⁸

On 7 April, Crowhurst finally transmitted a TR message to Wellington, New Zealand; then Portishead, England; and finally to Cape Town, South Africa saying that he would be in Area 5a west of South America (serviced by Wellington) up to 15 April, and then in Area 2a east of South America (serviced by Cape Town). This obviously implied that he planned to round Cape Horn on 15 April, but a later draft changed this date to 18 April. TR messages are meant to be sent regularly by ships giving their position and destination; however, Crowhurst sent all the required information except his latitude and longitude. Later on 9 April, Crowhurst went through a series of exchanges with the General Pacheco Radio transmitter in Buenos Aires who repeatedly inquired about his position. While Crowhurst continued to give evasive answers, he did transmit a telegram through Buenos Aires saying that his log line broke on 28 March after 17,697 miles and that he was “heading Digger Ramrez.” By the time the news reached Hallworth on the 10th, he correctly deduced that Crowhurst meant he was approaching the islands of Diego Ramirez just south of Cape Horn. Unfortunately, with no further information to go off of, Hallworth believed Crowhurst to be 300 miles from Cape Horn with his rounding the Horn on 11 April. Given the data, Crowhurst’s speed was starting to seem a bit fast. Devon News erroneously reported that the Teignmouth Electron had been averaging 188.6 miles per day for 13,000 miles. Ironically, newspapers later reported Crowhurst to be rounding Cape Horn on the 18th; having derived their information from Hallworth, the race organizers, and Crowhurst’s contact with radio-telegraph operators. Nobody seemed to notice that the telegram information had originated from Buenos Aires, rather than from Wellington, as Crowhurst had planned. Tomalin and Hall believe that the excitement around Knox-Johnston’s imminent return drowned out the scrutiny around Crowhurst’s fraud. Only Chichester, now convinced that something strange was really going on, voiced any skepticism to the race organizers.⁷⁹

As the southern winter approached, Crowhurst’s whimsical writing in the back of Logbook 2 seemed to be a mixture of cheerful, if rather cliched, limericks, and some inward-looking and melancholic musings on the nature of science and the divine. Tomalin and Hall again note that it represents the two opposing aspects of Crowhurst’s character. On one hand, he’s the braggart, and on the other, he’s the careful expert. He’s both the life of the party and the small-town intellectual, but at this point, the gulf between those two was widening.⁸⁰ As his close friends and associates have noted, Crowhurst was a very intelligent man, but his intellect was undisciplined due to his lack of higher education (he failed to get into Cambridge). Consequently, he was perhaps too smart for the locals in his rural area and had nobody around him to challenge his intellect. Unfortunately, Crowhurst also had a tendency to delude himself into thinking that everything would just fall into place and turn out alright in the end. Furthermore, he concealed his failures with other challenges. As Stanley Best observed, he was brilliant in the workshop but made terrible business decisions. Case in point, his company, Electron Utilisation Ltd. was failing miserably back home.⁸¹ In many ways, Crowhurst was seemingly caught in a sort of intellectual limbo. While he had a very keen intellect and was highly driven to the point of having infectious enthusiasm which rubbed off on those around him, he couldn’t temper that with any sort of discipline and care. Arguably, had he gone on to Cambridge he would’ve developed that intellectual control by no longer being the big fish in the little pond and he would’ve been challenged by other intellectual heavyweights. It’s hard to tell if his writings in the latter half of his voyage are genuine reflections of his intelligence or the result of severe isolation affecting his mental state. They seem to skew towards the latter. Crowhurst’s meditations (if you could call them that) on the nature of God and science reek of pretentiousness. In a way, it’s similar to a teenager’s angsty journal entries or poetry. They may be heartfelt, but they ramble on with non-sequitur and only appear to be thought-provoking on the surface.

Three days after transmitting that he was nearing the Diego Ramirez Islands, Crowhurst received a reply from Hallworth on 12 April that he was only about two weeks behind Tetley, with Knox-Johnston’s return expected in one to two weeks. This was followed up on the 18th by a call from Portishead Radio in England asking if he’d received Hallworth’s cable. Yet, nobody seemed to question that Crowhurst was somehow able to communicate directly with Portishead when he was supposed to be nearing Cape Horn, still in the shadow of South America at that time.⁸² For some unexplained reason, perhaps out of loneliness, Crowhurst spent the next two weeks contacting Buenos Aires Radio and trying to get them to establish a direct radio-telephone connection via New York with Clare at his home in Bridgewater. Unfortunately, while Buenos Aires could get a clear radio signal from Crowhurst, they were never able to simultaneously establish a landline connection with England. Tomalin and Hall theorize that Crowhurst may have been trying to contact his wife so she could give him encouragement in light of his situation, or perhaps an excuse to extricate himself from it.⁸³ On 22 April, Robin Knox-Johnston became the winner of the Golden Globe Race when he sailed back into Falmouth, England to a hero’s welcome.⁸⁴

Crowhurst “Rejoins” the Race

On 30 April, Crowhurst officially broke his three weeks of radio silence and “rejoined” the race. The position where he “reentered the race” was about a thousand miles northeast of the Falklands and 700 miles due east of Buenos Aires. However, for some reason, he continued sailing in a southerly direction until 4 May when he rendezvoused with his false track and began seriously heading north again. His reasons for continuing to sail south between 30 April and 4 May can only be speculated; however, Tomalin and Hall conjecture that he may have been trying to intentionally lose to Tetley. While Knox-Johnston had been the first one back, Tetley would take the £5,000 prize for the fastest circumnavigation. This would leave Crowhurst dead last, but he would avoid having his logbooks scrutinized since nobody would look closely at the books of the last man back. Still, if he finished close behind Tetley, then he would still receive a hero’s welcome and his failing business would boom. Ironically, after rechecking the navigation in his books, his sun sights between 4 and 5 May show that he very nearly reached his previously (and fraudulently) claimed record distance of 243 miles in 24 hours.⁸⁵

Crowhurst spent some time monologuing into his BBC tape recorder, apparently trying to explain away some of the inconsistencies in his voyage and his accounts. There’s no doubt that Crowhurst truly had to keep up the lie if he was to finish. The problem is that he would spend the rest of his life carefully treading the minefield that his lies had sown every time he would be asked to retell his story. This anxiety also wasn’t helped by the fact that Hallworth sent a cable explaining that the whole town of Teignmouth was preparing a massive welcome upon his return. On 16 May, Crowhurst sent a message to his fans that he was unlikely to overtake Tetley, but that he expected it to be a close finish. The cruel irony is that Tetley was also having serious problems with his boat leaking at this time.⁸⁶

Fearing that Crowhurst was hot on his tail, Tetley pushed his boat to the breaking point through gales off Brazil. Whereas Crowhurst was worried about cracks in the fiberglass skin and his leaking port hull, Tetley’s Victress had it much worse. The entire skin on the port float had peeled off, the deck had sprung up from the hulls in multiple places, and numerous frames were broken. Finally, with only 1,200 miles to go in his 30,000-mile voyage, Tetley ran into a storm near the Azores. After midnight on 21 May, the bow section of the port hull completely broke away. The broken section then smashed into the center hull, punching a hole in it, and the entire boat began to fill with water. This was the end for Tetley’s Victress. He sent out a Mayday call, jumped into a life raft, and awaited rescue.⁸⁷ When day broke, Tetley was spotted by a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules from the 57th Rescue Squadron out of the Azores, and picked up by the Italian tanker, Pampero, by 5:40 pm that very same day. By 29 May, he was ashore at Trinidad in the West Indies.⁸⁸

It’s perhaps ironic the predicament that Crowhurst now found himself in. Had he never faked his voyage, then Tetley would likely have never pushed his boat to the point of sinking. Tetley would’ve arrived home to accept the £5,000 prize, and Crowhurst would’ve finished shortly thereafter and possibly have escaped scrutiny with nobody the wiser that he had cheated. Now that Crowhurst was the sole remaining contestant, all attention was focused on him, and he would likely win the prize for fastest circumnavigation, as adding on an additional two months to his voyage to make him slower than Knox-Johnston would appear suspicious given his position. Crowhurst’s lies had effectively sunk Tetley and his own charade.⁸⁹

On 23 May, Crowhurst received a cable from his wife that Tetley had been rescued. Despite this reassuring news, Crowhurst sent a cable to Hallworth noting that he had averaged 23 miles a day for the last six days, was running low on methylated spirits (fuel for his stove), his flour had turned mildewy, the water foul, and the cheese was becoming “interesting.”⁹⁰ For the first five days of June, Crowhurst continued north past the northeastern coast of Brazil. By this point, his self-steering gear was pretty much broken and non-functional. To compensate, he fell back on the classic technique of carefully trimming his sails. Earlier, on 29 May, his Marconi Kestrel transmitter developed a fault which resulted in him being able to receive just fine, but only having limited transmission capabilities. Crowhurst eventually dismantled the entire device attempting to fix it himself but was unable to. He later attempted to modify his Shannon radio-telephone, designed for short-range operation on a medium waveband, to transmit Morse Code at long-range on a short waveband. Although having a large assortment of electronic components aboard, he lacked any manuals or textbooks, not to mention testing equipment. The result was that the cabin was strewn with parts for his transmitters as he fiddled with the devices for the majority of the month of June.⁹¹ On 17 June, Crowhurst made a brief recording of the state of his cabin and the tinkering he was doing with the transmitters:

Nearing the Tropic of Cancer around 21 June, temperatures inside the cabin reached the triple digits. Crowhurst rigged up a wind sail to funnel air down into the cabin which lowered the temperatures to a more tolerable 80 degrees.⁹³ It’s also around this time that Crowhurst filmed some footage of himself carrying out various tasks around the boat, such as taking sun sights. He also made more tape recordings for the BBC; prattling on more about his thoughts on sailing and other random ideas that were going through his head.⁹⁴

Finally getting his rebuilt transmitter working on the morning of 22 June, Crowhurst sent Morse Code messages to the BBC, Hallworth, and his wife. Mostly he attempted to set up a rendezvous with the BBC, inquiring about syndication contracts with Hallworth, and yearning to actually speak with Clare. Having passed the Northeast Trade Winds, Crowhurst was now entering the variables of the Horse Latitudes and the Sargasso Sea the following day. The 23rd of June was also Crowhurst’s last “rational day” according to Tomalin and Hall. Crowhurst made a tape recording describing a sea creature he had caught and his final thoughts on the nature of life at sea. It’s also the date of the final sun sight in his logbook, and he ceased making any sort of systematic navigation or serious attempts at sailing after that.⁹⁵

Cosmic Beings and Final Contact with Crowhurst

On 24 June, Crowhurst began a series of philosophical writings in the back of Logbook 2 covering topics such as mathematics, science, and the nature of the divine. (Logbook 1 had remained blank after 11 December.) While his writing starts off fairly rational, it quickly descends into non-sensical rambling. Over the next week, he would write some 25,000 words into his logbook. His 12,000-word “theory of progress” takes up the latter half of his philosophical writings and also functions as his personal revelation that mankind is progressing to a higher form of intelligence and that he would eventually free himself of his body. Crowhurst wrote that he was the one who would reveal this to the world, and in doing so, he would transcend and become some sort of God.⁹⁶

On 25 June (mistakenly written as July), Crowhurst cut his hair and then wrote a fictional conversation with his wife. In it, he noted that his position was 31 degrees 25 minutes North, 39 degrees 15 minutes West. (This would seem to check out as it’s about 150 miles north of his last fix on 23 June.) That same day at around 5 pm, the Norwegian cargo ship Cuyahoga spotted the Teignmouth Electron and investigated. The captain reported that Crowhurst was on deck and waving at them, apparently in good spirits. He had a beard and was wearing khaki shorts. The Cuyahoga reported that the Teignmouth Electron was sailing northeast and that its position was 30 degrees 42 minutes North, 39 degrees 55 minutes West. The discrepancy between the Cuyahoga‘s reported position and the one in Crowhurst’s logbook most likely indicated that he wasn’t making accurate calculations; however, Crowhurst did note meeting the ship in the margin of his log. Hallworth later sent a message to Crowhurst asking about rendezvousing with him off the Isles of Scilly to discuss his story for future publication, meet with Clare, and talk about the highly anticipated big welcome he was to receive in the town of Teignmouth when he returned. Upon reading Crowhurst’s recovered logbooks, Hallworth said, “My God! I think I may have killed Donald Crowhurst with that telegram.”⁹⁷

On 28 June, Crowhurst sent a telegram to Portishead for the BBC and Hallworth writing that he had been becalmed for the last three days and that it was difficult to know when he would arrive given that “puff boats have destinations not ETAs.” However, he did give the Portishead operator his position as 32 degrees North, 40 degrees West, which is about 35 miles north of his 25 June fix. Additionally, when the operator asked if he had any messages to pass on to his family, Crowhurst replied that they shouldn’t out come to meet him at Scilly Isles with Hallworth and the BBC, as was planned. The confused operator asked for confirmation, and Crowhurst confirmed his previous statement. When she received the message, Clare initially thought that Donald was worried that they would become seasick during the trip out, but of course, his reasons became clear after the fact. The Portishead operator finally told Crowhurst to contact him again on the 30th at 11 am; however, this would be the last record in Crowhurst’s radio log and the last contact he would have with anyone.⁹⁸

“It is finished…IT IS THE MERCY” – Donald Crowhurst’s End

Crowhurst’s ruminations spilled over into Logbook 1 and included essays on topics such as the evolution of man and natural systems, and the idea that life was a kind of game in which man was caught up in; played by cosmic beings. The final phrases in his meditations were:

Man is forced to certain conclusions by virtue of his mistakes.
No machine can work without error!
The only trouble with man is that he takes life too seriously!99 

The rambling and pseudo-philosophical/religious nature of his writing makes it almost impossible to make out any logic to it. Perhaps it all made sense in Crowhurst’s mind. Tomalin and Hall opine that Crowhurst apparently came to the conclusion that suicide was the only answer. They point to the final three lines of Crowhurst’s meditations and compare Crowhurst to the machine that cannot work.¹⁰⁰

It’s unknown what Crowhurst did in his final moments, but his logbook indicates he began writing a confession of sorts on 1 July with smaller entries denoted by a series of timestamps beginning at 10:00 am, according to his chronometer, which was most likely inaccurate at this point. Much of this writing echoes his previous meditations and is non-sensical, but some of his final words indicate that he was still thinking in terms of being part of a game played by cosmic beings when he wrote:

I will only resign this game
if you will agree that [on]
the next occasion that this
game is played it will be played
according to the
rules that are devised by
my great god who has
revealed at last to his son
not only the exact nature
of the reason for games but
has also reveald the truth of
the way of the ending of the
next game that

         It is finished----
         It is finished

IT IS THE MERCY101 

After writing these words, Tomalin and Hall speculate that Crowhurst arranged certain objects in his cabin, perhaps Logbooks 1 and 2, along with several charts, which were found neatly set out on the table. It’s also at this point, that he may have unhooked the safety line that he streamed from the stern in the event that he accidentally fell overboard. (No line was attached when the boat was found.)¹⁰² Based on the timestamps, it seems that he waited about half an hour before committing the final phrases to his logbook.

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

It is the time for your
move to begin

I have not 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 harmful104 

Based on Crowhurst’s last written words, it’s believed that he committed suicide at 11:20:40 on 1 July. Since Logbook 4 and his Hamilton chronometer were not found aboard, it’s possible that Crowhurst took them with him as he stepped overboard.¹⁰⁵ Thus, Donald Crowhurst tragically ended his life, likely wracked with guilt and trapped in a mental delusion.

The Discovery of the Teignmouth Electron

Nine days later on 10 July, the Royal Mail Vessel Picardy, en route to the Caribbean from London, spotted the Teignmouth Electron at 7:50 am at 33 degrees 11 minutes North, 40 degrees 28 minutes West (about 1,800 miles southwest of England). Despite sounding her fog horn three times to wake up anyone who might be on board, nobody appeared on deck. The Picardy‘s captain, Richard Box, sent over a small boat to investigate. The Chief Officer, Joseph Clark, and three crewmembers boarded the trimaran and reported it to be empty. Everything was where Crowhurst had left it. There was no evidence that the boat had been hit by a rogue wave or a storm, and the life raft was still lashed on deck. As far as they knew, the men had stumbled upon a ghost ship with no explanation as to what had happened to the crew. However, one crewmember aboard the Picardy recalled reading about the Sunday Times race and located a newspaper clipping showing drawings of the race entrants’ boats. This confirmed that this was Crowhurst’s boat. The Teignmouth Electron was hoisted aboard the Picardy and the captain reported back to Furness Withy, the ship’s owners in London, who then informed Lloyd’s and the Royal Navy. A request was sent to the U.S. Air Force to begin an air search of the area for Crowhurst, and the Picardy also began searching, but given the dates of Crowhurst’s final log entries, Captain Box wasn’t optimistic about finding anyone. He ordered the search abandoned the following day. The U.S. Air Force also suspended their search on 11 July. The Picardy put in at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and offloaded the Teignmouth Electron. Captain Box had read through the three logbooks but found himself perplexed as to what had ultimately happened to Crowhurst.¹⁰⁷

The Fallout and Legacy of Donald Crowhurst

With news of Donald Crowhurst’s disappearance, rumors quickly began to spread. Clare Crowhurst initially thought her husband had gone swimming and was still alive, but later inspection of the boat revealed his wetsuit and the life raft to still be aboard. Contaminated food was further ruled out as Captain Box noted that most of the food on board was still in good condition.¹⁰⁸

On 12 July, an appeal fund was started by the Sunday Times for the Crowhurst family with a £5,000 donation. Robin Knox-Johnston, now the automatic winner of the £5,000 prize for the fastest circumnavigation, insisted that his prize money go into the fund, as well. Previously, on 2 July, Francis Chichester postmarked a letter while on vacation in Portugal to Robert Riddell, the Sunday Times race secretary, asking him to begin making inquiries regarding the authenticity of Crowhurst’s vaguely reported positions, but that letter got lost in the wave of sympathy following Crowhurst’s disappearance, only to be discovered months later. By then, it didn’t matter.¹⁰⁹

While the Picardy headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Rodney Hallworth auctioned the rights to what was then still believed to be Crowhurst’s heroic story. The copyright to the logbooks was eventually sold to the Sunday Times for £4,000. On Wednesday, 16 July, Hallworth, Nicholas Tomalin, and photographer Frank Herrmann met with Captain Box in Santo Domingo to accept the logbooks. The men quickly determined that Crowhurst never left the Atlantic. Although Hallworth initially tore out the pages with Crowhurst’s “confession” to spare his family the truth, it was eventually decided to publish the full story. Thus, the sensational story of Crowhurst’s hoax and his demise made national headlines on the weekend of 27 July 1969.¹¹⁰

As for the rest of the contestants, true to his word, Robin Knox-Johnston donated his £5,000 prize to the Crowhurst family appeal fund, further saying that “none of us should judge him too harshly.”¹¹¹ Nigel Tetley received a £1,000 consolation prize and began building a new trimaran, Miss Vicky. Despite his intention to attempt another circumnavigation, Tetley was unable to secure sponsors for his voyage and committed suicide by hanging on 5 February 1972.¹¹² Bernard Moitessier, after circling the world one and a half times, ended his voyage in Papeete, Tahiti on 21 June 1969, where he stayed for several months to “cleanse himself of civilization.” He ultimately died on 16 June 1994. Bill King repaired his boat and started a new non-stop circumnavigation attempt later in 1969, but ended up quitting at Gibraltar. He tried again in 1971, making a stop in Fremantle, Australia after his hull was holed, but continued on and completed his circumnavigation in 1973. Chay Blyth got a sponsorship from British Steel Corporation for another circumnavigation, this time in the opposite direction, in a steel-hulled boat, appropriately named, British Steel. He successfully sailed against the westerly Roaring Forties and completed his voyage from 1970 – 1971. John Ridgway opened up an adventure school in Scotland. He successfully sailed his yacht, English Rose VI with a crew in the Whitbread Round-the-World Race. He later circumnavigated a second time with his family. Alex Carozzo and Loick Fougeron retreated back into their private lives, content with staying out of the limelight.¹¹³

Other parties similarly went on with their lives. Regarding the boat builders, John Elliot decided that boat-building wasn’t for him and went on to become a schoolteacher. On the other hand, John Eastwood continued his business of constructing boats. Although Rodney Hallworth was ridiculed by his colleagues for his successful campaign of the cheating Crowhurst, he was better received by the town council of Teignmouth who thanked him for bringing the town an estimated £1,500,000 of publicity. Gradually, Clare Crowhurst read through her husband’s logbooks and came to accept his fate. She bravely continued raising her children.¹¹⁴

The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race has gone down in yachting history as a disastrous event, given the fact that only Knox-Johnston completed the race and Crowhurst cheated and committed suicide. Despite the black mark it left on the yacht racing world, the Golden Globe Race would go on to inspire future circumnavigation races of a similar variety, such as the Vendée Globe which began in 1989. Even then, this was not the end for the Golden Globe Race, as it would be resurrected 50 years later in 2018, and again in 2022, with Robin Knox-Johnston serving as the official starter for both. Unlike the Vendée Globe, the modern Golden Globe Races function as a callback to the original and restrict the entrants to the use of similar boats and technology available to the contestants in the 1968 race (i.e. No boat designs newer than 1988 and no satellite navigation aids. Although the safety equipment is modern, it can only be used in an emergency.) In light of calls for more stringent vetting of competitors in modern circumnavigation races, entrants must meet certain experience requirements, as well as undergo physical and psychological evaluations to verify that they are fit enough to compete. To ensure fair competition, the entrants’ boats are tracked in real-time and must pass certain checkpoints to demonstrate progress. Thankfully, the modern Golden Globe races have been much more successful with no deaths or fraudulent behavior in either race. In the 2018 race, there were 18 contestants with 5 finishers, and in the 2022 race, there were 16 contestants with 5 finishers (3 non-stop, 2 one-stop).¹¹⁵

The Nature of Crowhurst’s Madness

The exact reasons for Crowhurst’s mental deterioration can only be speculated, but Tomalin and Hall have ruled out any kind of food poisoning, alcohol, or drug-related cause. Among the drugs Crowhurst carried on board, he did have a small bottle of the stimulant Dexedrine (generally used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy) which could produce psychotic symptoms, but it’s not believed he abused it. Instead, Tomalin and Hall theorize that Crowhurst’s mental decline was likely a combination of various stressors; arguably several of which were precipitated by Nigel Tetley’s sinking. The main factors were most likely the extreme isolation and hostile environment of the sea, the predicament of having faked his circumnavigation, and the probability of facing intense scrutiny when he was expected to return. Had Riddell’s investigation into Crowhurst’s claimed positions, as requested by Chichester, gotten underway, such a review of his performance would have undoubtedly exposed his fraudulent voyage and his reputation would’ve been ruined. Not to mention the fact that his business back home had failed and he faced complete financial ruin. These various factors had backed Crowhurst into a corner from which there was no escape except into his mind.¹¹⁶ It’s difficult to explain just how isolating the sea is, especially for single-handed sailors. In modern times, most of us have some experience with isolation during the COVID Pandemic, but that kind of isolation is nothing compared to being at sea by yourself for months on end with only a radio for contact with others. If the isolation was damaging enough for kids’ and teens’ social development during the Pandemic, remember that Crowhurst was a fully mature adult with at least some sailing experience; and he went completely mad.

Tomalin and Hall further note that whatever conclusions and interpretations they gleaned from Crowhurst’s “philosophical meditations” in his logbooks are purely impressionistic, rather than specific. They write that his earlier writings display classic paranoia. Crowhurst seems to have built up a complex set of delusions, in this case, one of grandeur. At these early stages, Crowhurst likely was still capable of behaving rationally as evidenced by his radio messages. However, as time went on, Crowhurst fell deeper and deeper into his delusions to the point where they stabilized, and his ideas coalesced together and became illogical. They note that these delusions are also symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. The latter parts of his writings tend towards this disorder with the final parts being a mishmash of puns and a strange shorthand he seemed to have developed himself and only he could decipher.¹¹⁷

Some have suggested that Crowhurst was engaging in some kind of elaborate hoax and that he was faking his insanity. However, psychologists who have reviewed his logbooks note that the writing in his meditations is too long and disjointed to have been written by a sane person. One consultant said, “It would be very difficult to write 25,000 words of this stuff. Try it.”¹¹⁸ If Crowhurst’s dates are accurate, then he managed to manically write all of his meditations down by hand in approximately one week from 24 June to 1 July, with about half of it being written down within the first three days.¹¹⁹ For comparison, this post is over 15,000 words long, it took more than six months to write, and the vast majority of it is derived from published sources (i.e. it’s not original in terms of research and content). Furthermore, I can’t comment on the nature of Crowhurst’s mental state at the time of his demise given that I’m not a psychologist or a medical professional, and whatever post-mortem diagnoses professionals have ascribed to Crowhurst seem reasonable but are likely based on the psychological theories and practices of the times.

Still, a variety of theories (some more fantastical than others) regarding Crowhurst’s fate were put forth by numerous sources, both reputable and otherwise. Some of the theories include the following:

• Crowhurst escaped to South America and was living at large.
• One story claimed that a message in a bottle was found on a beach in France, reportedly written by Crowhurst, saying that he was stranded on an island in the Aegean Sea; however, this story was quickly confirmed to be false.
• Crowhurst somehow swam 700 miles to the Azores.
• Crowhurst secretly rendezvoused with a helicopter or a midget submarine that took him to some undisclosed location.
• One plausible theory is that Crowhurst didn’t commit suicide, but instead accidentally slipped and fell overboard. Crowhurst was known to have occasional missteps and to act clumsily when preoccupied, but the evidence in his logbooks, the missing safety line, chronometer, and other objects suggests his death was intentional.¹²⁰

One final theory, put forth by Jonathan Raban in the introduction of Tomalin and Hall’s book, speculates that Crowhurst was suffering from some form of mania which resulted in him walking overboard. Raban opines that Crowhurst’s manic and disjointed philosophical writings point to a man falling not into despair, but into a manic delusion. Upon stepping overboard, Crowhurst may not have been committing suicide but may have been so far gone into his delusions that he actually believed he was able to walk on water. It could be that he was trying to become one with the universe as a cosmic being.¹²¹

The Remains of the Teignmouth Electron

Although the Royal Mail Line, which operated the Picardy, initially said they would transport the Teignmouth Electron back to England, they apparently reneged on their promise and sold the boat off cheaply at an auction in Jamaica. Bunnie Francis purchased the boat and used it to entertain tourists on day trips around Montego Bay; however, an increase in crime hit his tourism business, and the boat was sold to Canadian diver Winston McDermott for $12,000. McDermott was familiar with the story of the race and wanted to use the trimaran for his scuba diving business on Grand Cayman Island. Oddly, one of the Jamaicans he employed to look after the boat believed it to be haunted and claimed to hear footsteps walking around the boat at night. Ultimately, the Teignmouth Electron was damaged in a hurricane, and McDermott had a crane hoist it ashore where he intended to repair it. Unfortunately, he never got around to it and abandoned the boat when he moved to Florida. Scavengers and vandals have stripped the boat over the years to the point where it barely resembles what it once was.¹²² Only sections of the three hulls remain. Thus, the once-revolutionary boat of Donald Crowhurst was left to the mercy of the elements on Cayman Brac.

Evaluation of the Teignmouth Electron and Donald Crowhurst

One of the reasons for the Teignmouth Electron‘s steering problems is that when beating to windward, the drag on the leeward ama (outer hull) causes a lee helm. To counter this, the center of lateral resistance of the amas needs to be well forward of the main hull’s center. All of Arthur Piver’s early designs had this problem, but even then, multi-hulled vessels can’t be steered well by wind-actuated self-steering gear because the constantly changing speed causes the apparent wind to change constantly and dramatically. This creates a very erratic course. Only modern electronic autohelms which hold a compass course, rather than a course relative to the wind, can accurately steer a multihull.¹²³

When it was all said and done, Richard Newick opines that these types of long-distance races are really a combination of two races. The race of preparation with all the logistics for the actual race, and the race itself. The winner is usually the one who wins the former first. Newick believes that Crowhurst could very well have completed a solo voyage around the world (possibly even winning the Golden Globe Race) in the Teignmouth Electron had he (and the vessel) been well-prepared and fitted out.¹²⁴ Unfortunately, in his rush to depart for the race, Crowhurst, for whatever reason, left much of the spare parts and tools behind on the pier at Teignmouth. Had he started preparing his supplies earlier and had he remembered to take the spare parts for his boat rather than being more concerned about the electronic parts for his “computer,” it’s arguable that his voyage would’ve gone far more smoothly. As sailors like Chichester and Eric Hiscock have repeatedly said: (1) Keep it simple, and (2) Sailing and electronics don’t mix well (at least as far as 1960s technology). Crowhurst should have known this as he was familiar with both their work.¹²⁵ It seems that Crowhurst envisioned this race as a fast-paced sprint when in reality, any non-stop circumnavigation is a test of endurance; regardless of whatever kind of “revolutionary” boat you’re sailing. Crowhurst needed to be the tortoise when he viewed himself as the hare.

Richard Newick further notes that Crowhurst would be astonished by modern multi-hull racing boats which are often 100 percent wider and 50 percent longer than the Teignmouth Electron. Built of modern materials, they weigh less, have three times the sail area, and are significantly faster. If Crowhurst were alive today, he’d no doubt love all of the fancy electronics they carry, but also be astounded by the staggering cost of the vessel!¹²⁶ For example, the Groupama 3 is the current record-holder for the fastest circumnavigation (albeit crewed) of 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds. It covered 26,412 miles with an average speed of 26.85 knots. It displaces 18 tons, has a length of 103.3 feet overall, a beam of 73.8 feet, a draft of 18.7 feet, a mast height of 135 feet, and a sail area of 8,910 square feet.¹²⁷

While Donald Crowhurst was initially harshly criticized when his fraudulent voyage was exposed, public opinion of him has softened over time with much attention being focused on the tragedy and pathos of his predicament. Cheating certainly isn’t anything new to the sporting world and has come up in multiple forms of racing, and in other sports, as well. From my own perspective, having grown up during the big doping scandals that plagued professional sports like baseball and cycling in the 2000s, I was very critical of Crowhurst when I first read about his fraudulent voyage. My initial impression of Crowhurst was that he was a very arrogant man who failed to heed the advice of more experienced and sound-minded people, and he paid for his stupidity with his life in the indiscriminate environment of the ocean. Yet, if that’s all there was to his story, then Crowhurst would’ve likely ended up as just another footnote in maritime history; another moron who thought he could beat others and mother nature. However, Crowhurst wasn’t using performance-enhancing drugs to give himself an unfair edge, and the cutting-edge features his boat was supposed to have were never even installed. Ironically, he ended up being just another competitor in a hurriedly-designed boat. Given his financial circumstances, I now view Donald Crowhurt’s voyage and fate as tragic.

Tomalin and Hall characterize Crowhurst as neither a hero nor a villain. Rather, he was an intelligent and courageous man who acted out of desperation for his situation.¹²⁹ While the additional context for his cheating certainly doesn’t excuse his behavior, it does make it more understandable. I don’t condone attempts to cheat in any fashion, but I can certainly sympathize with Crowhurst. We should remember that Crowhurst wasn’t a professional sailor, and unlike other cheaters in professional sports who tried to cover up and deny their duplicitous behavior, Crowhurst at least left behind the evidence to confirm what he tried to do. Hence, there were more factors to his behavior than mere arrogance or short-sightedness. Like many of us, Crowhurst dreamed of achieving fame, fortune, and glory. What he did accomplish was still pretty impressive for an amateur sailor. Even before he went ashore at Rio Salado, he had sailed some 8,155 miles and, along with Tetley, had gone farther in a multihull than anyone before him. In the end, he managed to sail over 16,000 miles in about 243 days single-handedly; all in an untested trimaran.¹³⁰

Crowhurst would’ve lost everything, had he actually finished the race, and in the end, he did lose everything, including his mind. I view Crowhurst as a very intelligent and determined man who let his ambitions take him beyond his skill level. He had many great ideas about sailing, but the ideas themselves couldn’t stand up to the reality of being alone on a small boat on the vast ocean. Had he been better prepared and more disciplined, then I think he truly could’ve accomplished something great beyond the infamy that he acquired in death. While Crowurst’s cheating isn’t excusable, what can be said is that he was a deeply flawed man with a dream. Comparatively, most of us just keep dreaming and never even get up from the couch or behind the screen. Donald Crowhurst at least made a solid attempt to make his dreams into a reality.

Notes

1. Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995), 21 – 31.

2. Tomalin and Hall, 26 – 33.

3. Tomalin and Hall, 35.

4. Tomalin and Hall, 36.

5. John Eastwood, Appendix 2 to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995), 266 – 267.

6. The Mercy, directed by James Marsh (2017; UK: StudioCanal, 2018), DVD.; Deep Water, directed by Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell (2006; UK: IFC Films, 2007), DVD.

7. Tomalin and Hall, 37.

8. Eastwood, 268

9. Tomalin and Hall, 41.

10. Eastwood, 267.

11. Eastwood, 267.

12. Eastwood, 267.

13. Eastwood, 268 – 69.

14. Eastwood, 268.

15. Tomalin and Hall, 39 – 40.

16. Tomalin and Hall, 41.

17. Eastwood, 269.

18. Richard Newick, Appendix 3 to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995), 271

19. Eastwood, 269.

20. Tomalin and Hall, 39.

21. Tomalin and Hall 41 – 42.

22. Tomalin and Hall, 42 – 49.

23. Tomalin and Hall, 48.

24. Tomalin and Hall, 50.

25. Tomalin and Hall, 264 – 265.

26. Tomalin and Hall, 51.

27. Tomalin and Hall, 52.

28. Tomalin and Hall, 52 – 54.

29. Tomalin and Hall, 54.

30. Peter Nichols, A Voyage for Madmen (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 85.

31. Nichols, 94 – 99.

32. Tomalin and Hall, 54.

33. Tomalin and Hall, 54 – 56.

34. Tomalin and Hall, 67.

35. Tomalin and Hall, 75 – 77.

36. Nichols, 139 – 145.

37. Tomalin and Hall, 79.

38. Tomalin and Hall, 81 – 83.

39. Tomalin and Hall, 88.

40. Deep Water, directed by Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell (2006; UK: IFC Films, 2007), DVD.

41. Tomalin and Hall, 89 – 91.

42. Tomalin and Hall, 91 – 93.

43. Tomalin and Hall, 94 – 97.

44. Tomalin and Hall, 99.

45. Tomalin and Hall, 98.

46. Tomalin and Hall, 102 – 106.

47. Tomalin and Hall, 104 – 105.

48. Nichols, 153 – 154.

49. Tomalin and Hall, 105 – 107.

50. Tomalin and Hall, 108 – 109.

51. Tomalin and Hall, 112.

52. Tomalin and Hall, 112 – 114.

53. Tomalin and Hall, 115 – 116.

54. Tomalin and Hall, 109 – 112.

55. Tomalin and Hall, 117 – 119.

56. Tomalin and Hall, 123.

57. Nichols, 194.

58. Nichols, 193.

59. Tomalin and Hall, 126.

60. Tomalin and Hall, 141.

61. Nichols, 220 – 223.

62. Nichols, 211.

63. Tomalin and Hall, 143.

64. Tomalin and Hall, 147.

65. Nichols, 226.

66. Nichols, 212.

67. Tomalin and Hall, 151.

68. Tomalin and Hall, 152.

69. Tomalin and Hall, 154.

70. The Mercy, directed by James Marsh (2017; UK: StudioCanal, 2018), DVD.

71. Tomalin and Hall, 154 – 156.

72. Tomalin and Hall, 156 – 159.

73. Tomalin and Hall, 162.

74. Tomalin and Hall, 165 – 166.

75. Tomalin and Hall, 166 – 168.

76. Tomalin and Hall, 169.

77. Nichols, 237.

78. Tomalin and Hall, 163 – 165.

79. Tomalin and Hall, 169 – 172.

80. Tomalin and Hall, 173.

81. Tomalin and Hall, 16 – 20.

82. Tomalin and Hall, 183.

83. Tomalin and Hall, 184.

84. Nichols, 259.

85. Tomalin and Hall, 184 – 186.

86. Tomalin and Hall, 188 – 190.

87. Tomalin and Hall, 190.

88. Nichols, 263 – 264.

89. Tomalin and Hall, 191.

90. Tomalin and Hall, 192.

91. Tomalin and Hall, 198 – 200.

92. Deep Water, directed by Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell (2006; UK: IFC Films, 2007), DVD.

93. Tomalin and Hall, 192 – 198.

94. Tomalin and Hall, 199 – 200.

95. Tomalin and Hall, 201 – 204.

96. Tomalin and Hall, 206 – 212.

97. Tomalin and Hall, 214 – 222.

98. Tomalin and Hall, 227 – 228.

99. Tomalin and Hall, 223 – 233.

100. Tomalin and Hall, 234.

101. Tomalin and Hall, 237 – 243.

102. Tomalin and Hall, 243.

103. The Mercy, directed by James Marsh (2017; UK: StudioCanal, 2018), DVD.

104. Tomalin and Hall, 243 – 244.

105. Tomalin and Hall, 244 – 245.

106. The Mercy, directed by James Marsh (2017; UK: StudioCanal, 2018), DVD.

107. Tomalin and Hall, xxv – xxvii.

108. Tomalin and Hall, 249 – 250.

109. Tomalin and Hall, 250.

110. Tomalin and Hall, 251 – 253.

111. Tomalin and Hall, 253.

112. Nichols, 281 – 283.

113. Nichols, 285 – 287.

114. Tomalin and Hall, 253 – 254.

115. Wikipedia, s.v. “2018 Golden Globe Race,” last modified May 5, 2023, 12:45, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Golden_Globe_Race.; Wikipedia, s.v. “2022 Golden Globe Race,” last modified June 16, 2023, 12:36, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Golden_Globe_Race.

116. Tomalin and Hall, 204 – 205.

117. Tomalin and Hall, 236 – 237.

118. Tomalin and Hall, 251.

119. Tomalin and Hall, 226.

120. Tomalin and Hall, 250 – 251.

121. Jonathan Raban, Introduction to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995), xviii – xix.

122. Nichols, 288 – 289.

123. Newick, 271.

124. Newick, 271.

125. Nichols, 230.

126. Newick, 271.

127. Wikipedia, s.v. “IDEC Sport,” last modified April 4, 2023, 17:37, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEC_Sport.

128. Photo credit: Stefan Ivanovich, CC BY-SA 3.0.

129. Tomalin and Hall, xxi – xxii.

130. C.A. Rich, Appendix 1 to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall (United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995), 263.

Bibliography

Eastwood, John. Appendix 2 to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, xi-xix. United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995.

Marsh, James dir. The Mercy. 2017; UK: StudioCanal, 2018. DVD.

Nichols, Peter. A Voyage for Madmen. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Osmond, Louise, and Jerry Rothwell dir. Deep Water. 2006; UK: IFC Films, 2007. DVD.

Raban, Jonathan. Introduction to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, xi-xix. United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995.

Rich, C.A. Appendix 1 to The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, xi-xix. United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995.

Tomalin, Nicholas, and Ron Hall. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. United States: International Marine/McGraw-Hill, 1995.