Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

by Ron Hall, Nicholas Tomalin, Ron Tomalin, Nicholas ; Hall

Book Overview

In early 1968, desperate entrepreneur Donald Crowhurst was trying to sell a nautical navigation device he had developed when he saw that the Sunday Times would be sponsoring the Golden Globe Race, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070650845
• ISBN13: 9780070650848
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: International Marine Publishing
• Length: 317 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

BUY THIS BOOK!!!

This is an amazing book, carefully and wonderfully crafted by its authors. Crowhurst was an amazingly complicated man, driven by his intellect and confined by his shortcomings. The sea was the ultimate challenge for him to face his personal demons. Setting out on a voyage inspires a whole range of emotions and feelings for those who choose to embark on such a journey. It is a study in contrasts: hope & fear; order & chaos; skill & luck; triumph & defeat. Crowhurst experienced each of these at such a deep level. He was on the world stage, yet confined by his own machinations. He set out to conquer the last great solo feat and relied on his own abilities. This is the story of how that played out. Along with this text, I would also recommend reading Peter Nichol's "A Voyage For Madmen." It provides an excellent overview of the men involved in the first solo-around-the-world-race and each of their fates. I was unable to put either of these books down.

A Sea-Tinged Madness

A true "Sailor's Classic." Reading this book it is impossible not to feel compassion for Donald Crowhurst who set out to win the Golden Globe challenge as the first man to nonstop circumnavigate the world alone in a sailboat. Crowhurst's early years are well-documented and give us a picture of a driven and compulsive man with some serious character flaws and an aversion to failure. Yet failure was a condition which dogged him throughout his life. Crowhurst's decision to undertake the circumnavigation was both dramatic and ill-considered. With relatively little sailing experience and a lot of bluff he convinced his sponsors to fund the building of a revolutionary trimaran, the "Teignmouth Electron" equipped with all manner of electronic wizardry (Crowhurst had invented a sort of early GPS, the Navicator, in the mid-60's). Unfortunately, the "Teignmouth Electron" was never properly completed, the race deadline having intervened, and Crowhurst sailed in a boat that was unfinished, poorly provisioned, and untested, having done miserably in what passed for sea trials.Setting out on the latest possible day, Crowhurst found himself limping along at a ridiculously slow pace three weeks later. Plagued by equipment failures, the "Teignmouth Electron" was taking water due to design flaws, and had no real chance of completing the race. Having staked all on a successful outcome, the tension and isolation of his predicament attacked Crowhurst's mind. In a fit of brilliant madness, Donald Crowhurst spent hours working out and logging false positions, sun sights, weather reports, and sailing notations to make it seem he was circling the earth while in fact he meandered pointlessly through the South Atlantic for months. He even secretly put in to port for repairs, a fact which was not discovered until after the race, when his "real" logs were reviewed by investigators.Crowhurst's position reports and daily runs were diligently reported onshore; he was (falsely) credited with a record run of 243 miles in one day, a record he actually matched in reality once he decided to begin sailing in earnest again.In the meantime, for all the world knew, Crowhurst was going to be the winner of the Golden Globe. As he turned toward home, the media hoopla grew wilder, and so did his delusions. His log entries degenerated into irrational philosophic and religious ramblings in which he began to believe himself God. In the end, tortured by his demons and consumed by guilt, Donald Crowhurst jumped into the sea, leaving his boat to sail on without him. Brilliantly and sensitively written, without tendering excuses the authors Tomalin and Hall never lose sight of the essential humanity and frailty of their subject, as well as his consuming but undirected brilliance. Relying heavily on Crowhurst's logs, it is devastating to watch the man's mind unravel in the face of his aloneness. Crowhurst's singlemindedness got him far, but it ultimately proved his undoing as he was unable to see an

Aquatic madness

To echo an earlier reviewer, this is also my favourite book of all time. I tracked down a dog-eared and stained copy from the early 1970's, read it in just over a day then started back at the beginning.The fascination of the book lies with Crowhurst. Here is a man who made a couple of wrong turns in life and just kept on going. A man who may, like many of us, have lived a long life had he not taken to the sea in a white elephant on a goose chase.Tomalin and Hall had access to Crowhurst's logs and, through them, his thinking - however fuzzy that may be. From this, they constructed a well-written and gripping true-life novel.FYI, The Teignmouth Electron now lies on a beach near a liquor store on the island of Cayman Brac.

A Man and His Ship

Donald Crowhurst left England on October 31, 1968 to participate in a around-the-world, non-stop, solo sailing race. He was the next to last competitor to leave, just before the deadline. His boat, the Teignmouth Electron, was a trimaran. He sailed at a disappointingly slow speed for a while and then reported a few amazingly fast days. Radio communications halted as he approached the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, and nothing was heard from him for 111 days. Then radio communications resumed as he re-entered the South Atlantic, around Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America. He was leading the race, and seemed assured of the trophy and the cash prize of £5,000. Then, on July 10, 1969, his boat was found drifting in the Atlantic, with no sign of Crowhurst on board.This book is the sad detective story of this voyage. Crowhurst never left the Atlantic Ocean, let alone sail around the world. He left massive documentation which showed that he had cheated. Presumably, rather than complete his fraudulent voyage, he stepped into the ocean and left the evidence for people to examine.Although these facts are known prior to even picking up the book, the author still comes to a very surprising conclusion. This is a book about what was going on in the mind of this sad man who seems to have gone mad. It is a fascinating and worthwhile read.

GET IT WHILE YOU CAN

If you're interested in the complexities of the human heart and mind, this book is for you. It's superbly written, well paced and detailed without ever being tedious, and it gets extraordinarily close to Donald Crowhurst the man--an unusual and intelligent person who took a few wrong turns and kept going. There was so much at stake in his journey, and thinking it all through sensibly and accepting the consequences of poor preparation proved to be too difficult for him. In the end he became so distressed and confused that he lost sight of himself... He was never able to see that the truth about human life can't be computed or worked out like an equation--it is not susceptible to logical proofs, because the variables are manifold and not easily understood, and people are both more and less than logical... His need, clearly, was to go home and start again, but the penalty for doing so seemed too high to him. So, in refusing to accept a lesser defeat he suffered a far greater one. You can't help rooting for Donald, and you can't help feeling sorry for him.