#teignmouth electron

[gianttankeh]

Chocolate Monk presents: Ali Robertson / Teignmouth Electron / Duncan Harrison at The Bee’s Mouth, Brighton: 7/6/25.

You can find out more about this Chocolate Monk show here.

[cherrylng]

Muse The 2nd Law - Dom Howard interview [ROCKIN'ON (September 2012)]

DOMINIC HOWARD INTERVIEW

"When we started recording this album, I invited everyone to go and see Skrillex and Nero live. Since then, Matt and Chris have both woken up to the joy of dubstep."

A few days ago we listened to your latest album "The 2nd Law" and we were blown away and excited by the huge ambition and radical creative attitude, how is it for you now? 「It's an incredibly exciting time for us. This album is definitely a departure from our previous albums, and I think it's the most diverse album in the history of Muse as a band.」

So how was it in terms of the atmosphere in the studio this time around? I heard that with the last album, "The Resistance", Chris ‘only showed up at the studio on the days he had parts to record, and the rest of the days he spent alone drinking every day’, and the production process itself was very difficult…… 「Yeah, in that respect, the atmosphere this time was so harmonious that it was like we were a completely different band. We all live in London now, so we're closer to each other psychologically and distance-wise, and Chris has stopped drinking once and for all, so the relationship within the band has become much friendlier and more relaxed. On the last record, Chris hardly ever came to the studio, so it was always just Matt and I working, and we used to argue a lot, actually. It was really hard, recording the last album. No matter how good friends you are, when you see each other every day in a closed room like a studio, it's easy to get into a fight over the slightest thing. But this time, Chris was there, so the tension between us was neutralised and we were always able to talk about everything in a friendly, calm environment. I think this is definitely the biggest difference between the last album and this one.」

The dubstep influence is evident in tracks such as "The 2nd Law (Unsustainable)", which is a new direction for this album. Have you recently started to be interested in this kind of electronic sound? 「No, I've always liked this kind of sound, I used to listen to Skrillex and Nero a lot. I listened to Nero's albums in particular every day when I worked out at the gym. Dubstep is the perfect music to listen to at times like that. It's the high-energy music I need when I want to get pumped up.」

For you, dubstep is the ultimate workout music. 「(laughs) Yeah. And around September or October last year, when we started recording this album, I invited everyone to go and see Skrillex and Nero live a couple of times, and since then, Matt and Chris have both woken up to the joy of dubstep, or rather, we've started to reevaluate the heavy, loud, violent aggression that is unique to that kind of sound.」

I see. Furthermore, when I was talking with Matt earlier about "Panic Station", the new song in the album, he also told me that when you and Matt first formed a band in your hometown, you ‘used to play funk’. 「What! He even revealed such a dark history? Ugh…… (After covering his face with his hands) Well, we were originally from a town called Teignmouth, in the south-west of England, with no real music scene, and the only things teenagers enjoyed were surfing and funk. There weren't any bands that played any other kind of music. So when Matt and I started the band, we naturally went in that direction. Because of that past, I hated it at some point, and when Chris joined, I made a request that he "never play funk-like slap bass at all." Since then, funk sound has been taboo within Muse.」

And it seems that this has been lifted for the first time in a long time for the new album. What was it like for you when you played "Panic Station" on this album? 「Hmmm…… To be honest, I had mixed feelings. It brought back a lot of memories, good and bad, of living in Teignmouth. But it's the only song on this album with this kind of sound, and we've now completely overcome our trauma about funk (laughs).」

Translator's Note: This is the second time that I've encountered Dom's interview only covering a single page. But it's a really funny one to discover that he has PTSD flashbacks towards funk and regarded his teenage years of playing funk music as a dark history LMAO

Please do support me via my ko-fi! ☕

[redarmyscreaming]

Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst (1932 – July 1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Soon after he started the race his ship began taking on water and he wrote that it would probably sink in heavy seas. He secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's logbooks, found after his disappearance, suggest that the stress he was under and associated psychological deterioration may have led to his suicide.

[laurajoansmith]

'Teignmouth Electron' (1999) by Tacita Dean

"Teignmouth Electron deals with the tragic and extraordinary story of the amateur yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst; a story which has preoccupied Tacita Dean for several years. Crowhurst filed false reports of his progress and position in the 1968 single-handed non-stop around the world yacht race. He became obsessed with time and two weeks before he was due home to a hero’s welcome, his yacht, Teignmouth Electron was found adrift and empty.

Today his boat lies beached and abandoned at its final resting place, Cayman Brac, an island in the Caribbean. Tacita Dean has visited the island in an attempt to piece together the story of Crowhurst; she also studied books, articles, films and recorded testimonies from people who knew him. The result is a loosely woven narrative of striking texts and images that trace the Donald Crowhurst story and Tacita Dean’s quest to understand more."

[myhauntedsalem]

The Teighmouth Electron

Donald Crowhurst was a talented inventor with severe money troubles, looking for ways to promote his navicator marine radio-navigation device. Like many people in dire financial straits, Crowhurst decided the answer lay in entering a one-man yacht race around the world, earning himself both prize money and free advertising.

Setting out in his trimaran the Teignmouth Electron, Crowhurst almost immediately ran into trouble, he had little experience sailing the open ocean, and the Electron’s semi-experimental design was difficult for even veteran yacht racers to handle.

A desperate Crowhurst decided to cheat by loitering in the south Atlantic falsifying logs and navigational records until everyone else had finished, then limp in at last place hoping nobody bothered to check a loser’s records that closely.

Unfortunately for Crowhurst, he hadn’t counted on everyone else in the race having just as much trouble. Out of nine contestants, six had retired and one wrecked as they approached the final leg of the journey, leaving Crowhurst in the position of finishing second or even first overall and subject to a detailed analysis of his logs.

Crowhurst ended radio communications on June the 29th and stopped writing his increasingly bizarre journal entries on July 1. The Teignmouth Electron was discovered adrift and abandoned nine days later.

[researchlaboratories]

Teignmouth Electron - Field Recordings.

Teignmouth Electron - Field Recordings - Cassette Tape.

Recorded In Egypt,June,2004. 

Edition of 20. 

[i-am-thedragon]

A 3D scene put together as a tribute to Derive Phantom, featuring references to their releases, 'Abécédaire', 'Teignmouth Electron', '243', and 'Au Champs Des Souchets'. Looking forward to more great music from them!

Sources for texture images and the car model: Rock texture Grass texture Car model Background sky image

Many thanks to the people who created these materials and assets and posted them for public use! The plane I modelled myself, and textured by combining the track cover images of ‘243′ together into a single image (making up a side view of a plane).

[eliocanaleparola]

i am an archivist and multimedia artist from cambridge, massachusetts currently based in chicago, illinois. i work as the ray johnson project cataloger at the art institute of chicago, where i facilitated the cataloging of the william s. wilson collection of ray johnson.

i graduated from smith college in january of 2022 with a degree in art history and a concentration in museum studies. my academic work was primarily rooted in the contemporary, with a focus on correspondence art and alternative archival and museological practice informed by neoism. i am currently pursuing a master's in library science at san jose state university.

when it comes to my own work i am enamored by all things textual, and am often drawn to recycled materials. my primary medium is mail.

my favorite wikipedia page is a tie between the entry for the teignmouth electron and the list of breads.

i can be contacted at canaleparolaelio@gmail.com, or via snail mail.

[adamspuryear]

In 1996 Tacita Dean began a series of art works collectively entitled Disappearance at Sea, all inspired by remarkable stories of personal encounters with the sea. A key figure in these works is Donald Crowhurst, a competitor in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Single-Handed Round-the-World Yacht Race. Within a few weeks of departing, Crowhurst realised that his boat, the Teignmouth Electron, was not up to sailing around the world. Rather than returning home, he began to issue false reports of his progress and position until he could bear the deceit no longer and retreated into an internal world, developing an obsession with time and his faulty chronometer. Two weeks before Crowhurst was due home to a hero’s welcome, Teignmouth Electron was found adrift and empty. 

[hullabaloomd]

Research: Muse

Muse are an English rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994.

The band consists of Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard.

Since forming, Muse have released eight studio albums.

Their sound varies from indie to heavy rock to electronic.

In my final piece, I want to incorporate an element from one of their album covers. I want to capture an abstract element such as the tall objects in the ‘Origin Of Symmetry’ album.

[bluecollarfilm]

The Mercy (2018)

Following his Academy Award-nominated film "The Theory of Everything", James Marsh directs the incredible true story of Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth), an amateur sailor who competed in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in the hope of becoming the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe without stopping. With an unfinished boat and his business and house on the line, Donald leaves his wife, Clare (Rachel Weisz) and their children behind, hesitantly embarking on an adventure on his boat the Teignmouth Electron.

Directed by:   James Marsh

Starring:   Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz, David Thewlis, Ken Stott

Release date:   February 9, 2018

[thepeoplesmovies]

Even with today’s technology and equipment travelling around the world singlehandedly you would still say is dangerous, even silly.The Mercy tells the story of one man Donald Crowhurst who in 1968 who attempted to be that first person. A journey to circumnavigate the world turns into a nightmare, one that will inspire.

Colin Firth stars as Crowhurst, could he be sailing into a potential Oscar contention? With James Marsh directing this one, there is every chance with his last been The Theory Of Everything winning an Oscar (best actor for Eddie Redmayne). Marsh has made a career of directing stories of complexed true life people this one shows a lot of promise.

Studiocanal is releasing this movie and today they have shipped us the UK Trailer, poster and a set of stills, check them out below…

Following his Academy Award® nominated film The Theory of Everything, James Marsh directs the incredible true story of Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth), an amateur sailor who competed in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in the hope of becoming the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe without stopping. With an unfinished boat and his business and house on the line, Donald leaves his wife, Clare (Rachel Weisz) and their children behind, hesitantly embarking on an adventure on his boat the Teignmouth Electron.

Co-starring David Thewlis and Ken Stott, and produced by Blueprint Pictures, the story of Crowhurst’s dangerous solo voyage and the struggles he confronted on the epic journey while his wife Clare and their family awaited his return is one of the most enduring mysteries of recent times.

The Mercy will sail into UK and Irish cinemas from 9th February 2018.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Colin Firth Sails In Disaster In The Mercy First Trailer Even with today's technology and equipment travelling around the world singlehandedly you would still say is dangerous, even silly.

[redarmyscreaming]

Donald Crowhurst built the Teignmouth Electron for a round-the-world yacht race. Yet when the ship was found drifting in the Atlantic in 1969, Crowhurst was nowhere to be found. Based on the increasingly bizarre log entries found on the ship, it’s believed that due to sailing troubles he left the race and started reporting false positions, and eventually jumped overboard to drown.

The ship then had several different owners, until it was left to decay in the Cayman Islands.

[tomorrowedblog]

The Mercy premieres today

The Mercy, the new movie from James Marsh, is out today.

Following his Academy Award nominated film The Theory of Everything, James Marsh directs the incredible true story of Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth), an amateur sailor who competed in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race in the hope of becoming the first person in history to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe without stopping. With an unfinished boat and his business and house on the line, Donald leaves his wife, Clare (Rachel Weisz) and their children behind, hesitantly embarking on an adventure on his boat the Teignmouth Electron.

[albinohare]

Donald Crowhurst: The fake round-the-world sailing story behind The Mercy

The mysterious and tragic disappearance of the single-handed sailor Donald Crowhurst more than 50 years ago continues to fascinate. Nic Compton explains why…

Hailed as a round the world single-handed hero, Donald Crowhurst in fact never left the Atlantic during his 243 days at sea. Photo: Alamy

It was while I was researching my book about madness at sea in 2015 that I first heard a movie about Donald Crowhurst was in the works. Several websites published reports of a high-profile British feature starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, and a few surreptitious photos of the cast filming off Teignmouth had been posted online. It seemed a lucky coincidence, given that my book would inevitably feature the Crowhurst story, but I assumed the movie would come out long before my book was ready.

Over the next couple of years, however, the release date for the film was repeatedly postponed – so much so that it became a running topic among Hollywood gossipmongers, who speculated that Crowhurst’s widow Clare had delayed progress, or that it was being held back to tie with the 50th anniversary of the events, or indeed that it might never be released in cinemas and go straight to DVD instead.

Meanwhile, I carried on writing my book, Off the Deep End, which was published in 2017, and the movie, The Mercy, was released in February 2018. There was never any doubt the tragic story of Donald Crowhurst would have to be included in any book about madness at sea.

Colin Firth stars as Donald Crowhurst in the 2018 film The Mercy. Photo: Studio Canal

Of all the stories I researched, it’s the one that has caught the public imagination most. Long before the latest Hollywood offering it inspired movies, books, plays, art installations, an epic poem and even an opera. Whereas many stories of adventures at sea seem to leave the general public cold, the Crowhurst tale continues to fascinate more than 50 years after Teignmouth’s most famous sailor vanished without trace. And yet, despite the thousands of words written about him, we really know very little more about him than we did 50 years ago.

It all started when Francis Chichester made his historic single-handed circumnavigation in 1966-67 – not the first to do so, by any means, but certainly the fastest up to that point, completing the loop in 226 days with just one stop, in Sydney, to repair his self-steering. Even before he’d docked at Plymouth there was a general realisation, which spread like osmosis throughout the sailing world, that the next step would be to sail around solo without stopping.

The challenge was turned into a contest by the Sunday Times which, in March 1968, announced two prizes: a Golden Globe trophy for the first person to sail round the world via the Three Capes single-handed and non-stop, and a £5,000 cash prize for the person to do it in the fastest time. The only stipulation was that competitors had to leave from a British port between 1 June and 31 October 1968, and had to return to the same place.

Article continues below…

A voyage for 21st Century madmen? What drives the Golden Globe skippers

A voyage for madmen, so was the original Sunday Times Golden Globe Race deemed. When the first non-stop race around…

How extreme barnacle growth hobbled the 2018-19 Golden Globe Race fleet

Eighty-knot gales, 10m-high waves, pitchpoling, loneliness and ever-depleting food reserves… of all the challenges facing a single-handed non-stop circumnavigator you…

Nine skippers eventually signed up for the race: the famous transatlantic rowing duo Chay Blyth and John Ridgway, who had by then fallen out but were sailing near-identical 30ft glassfibre production boats; Bernard Moitessier, already something of a legend in France for breaking the long-distance sailing record on his steel ketch Joshua; Moitessier’s friend Loïc Fougeron; Robin Knox-Johnston, an unknown British merchant navy officer sailing a heavy wooden boat called Suhaili; two former British naval officers, Bill King and Nigel Tetley; the experienced Italian single-handed sailor Alex Carozzo; and Donald Crowhurst.

Out of the group, Crowhurst was by far the least experienced, the odd one out. Born in India in 1932, he went to Loughborough College after the war, until family nances and the death of his father forced him to cut his education short. He joined the RAF in 1948 but was chucked out after six years because of some high jinks with a vehicle; the same thing happened when he joined the army and he was forced to resign after he was caught trying to hotwire a car during a drunken escapade.

Persuasive character

Crowhurst with his wife Clare and their children Rachel, Simon, Roger and James, circa October 1968. Photo: Getty Images

Next he got as job as a travelling salesman for an electrics company, but was again dismissed after crashing the company car.

Ever-persuasive, he talked himself into a job as chief design engineer for an electronics company in Somerset, and in 1962 set up his own company, Electron Utilisation, to manufacture electronic devices for yachts.

The company got off to a good start, selling a simple but well-designed radio direction finder which Crowhurst dubbed the Navicator. Pye Radio invested £8,500 in the project, before getting cold feet and pulling out.

It quickly became clear that while Crowhurst was a charismatic personality and brilliant innovator he didn’t have the business acumen to run a successful company, and Electron Utilisation was soon in financial trouble.

Crowhurst managed to persuade local businessman Stanley Best to invest £1,000 to carry the company over what he assured him was a temporary lean period.

It must have been obvious to Crowhurst that he was heading for another failure. By now 35 years old, he could see the same pattern repeating itself, of high ambition thwarted by petty practicalities. Only, by now married to Clare with four children and living in a comfortable house outside Bridgwater in Somerset, the stakes were higher than ever.

His response to failure was to reinvent himself yet again. This time he would become a record-breaking sailor, a seafaring hero in the vein of Chichester: he would sail around the world single-handed – even though he had until then only dabbled in sailing, mainly on board a 20ft sloop called Pot of Gold. First, however, he needed a boat.

After failing to persuade the Cutty Sark Committee to lend him Gipsy Moth IV for the voyage, he decided a trimaran would be the ideal craft – despite having never sailed on one. To get the funding to build his dream boat he achieved perhaps the greatest coup of his life.

With Electron Utilisation going down the pan, his backer Stanley Best wanted his loan repaid, but Crowhurst managed to persuade him the best way to get his money back would be to fund the construction of the new boat.

A replica of the 41ft Teignmouth Electron used in the filming of The Mercy. Photo: WENN Ltd/Alamy

The crux of his argument was that he would use the trimaran as a test bed for his new inventions, and the publicity gained from entering the race would catapult the company to success. The sting in the tail was that the loan was guaranteed by Electron Utilisation, which meant that, if the venture failed, the company would go bankrupt.

To understand how he managed this turnaround you have to go back in time. Photos of Crowhurst make him look geekish and uncool to the modern eye. With his sticky-out ears, high forehead, curly hair, tie and V-neck jumper, he appears the epitome of the eccentric inventor.

But all the contemporary accounts describe him as a charismatic, vibrant personality, the sort of person who lights up a room when they walk in – as well as being extremely clever. In fact, his cleverness was his problem. He had the gift of the gab and, once persuaded of something, could talk anyone into believing him.

“This is important,” said his wife Clare. “Donald had this definite talent. He would say the most amazing things, but then no matter how crazy they seemed, he’d be clever and ingenious enough to make them come true. Always. This is a most important point about his character.”

Crowhurst’s widow, Clare, holds the last photograph taken of Donald with his family. Photo: Guy Newman / Alamy

Slow off the mark

So Crowhurst got the money for Teignmouth Electron, which was built by Cox Marine in Essex and fitted out by JL Eastwood in Norfolk. It’s a measure of how far behind he was that by the time the Cox yard started building the hulls towards the end of June, Ridgway, Blyth and Knox-Johnston had already set off on their round-the-world attempts. In the event, complications meant the launch date was delayed and even when Crowhurst finally set off on 31 October – just a few hours before the Sunday Times deadline expired – his boat was barely complete.

None of the clever inventions he had devised for the boat were connected, including the all-important buoyancy bag at the top of the mast, which was supposed to inflate if the trimaran capsized. His revolutionary ‘computer’, which was supposed to monitor the performance of the boat and set off various safety devices, was no more than a bunch of unconnected wires.

Worse still, he had had to borrow yet more money from Best to finish the boat, and had mortgaged his home to guarantee the loan. Crowhurst made a desultory figure scrambling about the deck of his trimaran as he set off on his great adventure – only to turn around within a few minutes to untangle his jib and staysail halyards, which were snagged at the top of the mast.

It was just the start of his troubles. After two days at sea, while still within sight of Cornwall, the screws started falling off his self-steering and, not having any spares on board, he had to cannibalise other parts of the machine to replace them.

A leaky boat

A few days later, halfway across the Bay of Biscay, he discovered the forward compartment of one of the hulls had filled up with water from a leaking hatch.

Soon, other compartments began to leak and, as he’d been unable to get the correct piping for the bilge pumps, his only option was to bail them out with a bucket. Then, two weeks after leaving Teignmouth, his generator broke down after being soaked with water from another leaking hatch.

“This bloody boat is just falling to pieces due to lack of attention to engineering detail!!!” he wrote in his log. A few days later he made a long list of jobs that needed doing and concluded his chances of survival if he carried on were at best 50/50. He began to think about abandoning the race.

But Crowhurst was in a triple bind. If he dropped out at this stage, not only would his reputation be destroyed but his business would go bankrupt and, perhaps worse of all, he and his family would lose their home. For all these reasons, giving up was not an option.

It soon became clear his estimates for the boat’s speed had been wildly optimistic: he had estimated an average of 220 miles per day, whereas the reality was about half that, on a good day. There was no way he was going to catch up with the other competitors or win either of the prizes, unless something extraordinary happened.

And so, just five weeks after setting off from Teignmouth, Crowhurst started one of the most audacious frauds in sailing history: he began falsifying his position. From 5 December, he created a fake log book, with accurately plotted sun sights, working back from imaginary positions.

To make it look convincing, he listened to forecasts for the relevant areas and wrote a fictional commentary as if he was experiencing those conditions. It was quite a feat of seamanship, and only someone of Crowhurst’s brilliance could have carried it off convincingly.

The great deception

After a few days’ practice he felt sufficiently confident to send his first ‘fake’ press release, claiming he’d sailed 243 miles in 24 hours, a new world record for a single-handed sailor. In fact, he’d actually sailed 160 miles, a personal best perhaps, but certainly no world record.

And so the great deception began. As Crowhurst slowly worked his way down the Atlantic, his imaginary avatar was already rounding the Cape of Good Hope and heading into the Indian Ocean. Gradually, partly through misunderstandings and partly due to the spin added by his agent back in the UK, Crowhurst’s positions became ever more exaggerated, until it looked like he might win the race after all.

Meanwhile, the real Crowhurst was pottering around the Atlantic – ‘hiding’ in exactly the same area he had, only a few weeks earlier, jokingly suggested a sailor might hide to falsify a round-the-world voyage. To make sure his radio signals weren’t picked up by the wrong land stations, he maintained radio silence for nearly three months, from the middle of January until the beginning of April, which he blamed on his generator breaking down again.

Teignmouth Electron was found drifting in mid-Atlantic, 700 miles west of the Azores, on 10 July 1969

Unbelievably, he even put ashore in a remote bay near Buenos Aires in Argentina to buy materials to repair one of the hulls, which had started to fall apart. Despite being greeted and logged by local officials, this rule-breaking stop remained undetected.

On 29 March he reached his most southerly point, hovering a few miles off the Falklands, 8,000 miles from home, before starting his ascent up the Atlantic.

Finally, on 9 April, he broke radio silence and exploded back into the race with a telegram containing the infamous line: “HEADING DIGGER RAMREZ” – suggesting he was approaching Diego Ramirez, a small island southwest of Cape Horn (in reality, he was just off Buenos Aires).

By this time Moitessier had had his ‘moment of madness’ and had dropped out of the race and was sailing to Tahiti ‘to save his soul’. The only other competitors left were Knox-Johnston, who was plodding slowly up the Atlantic and on track to be the first one home, and Tetley, racing in his wake to pick up the prize for the fastest voyage.

Rachel Weisz plays Clare Crowhurst in The Mercy

It seems likely that Crowhurst was planning to finish a close second to Tetley, which would save him from financial ruin without drawing too much attention to his fraudulent log books.

But his reappearance in the race had a dramatic effect on the course of events. Already nursing a broken boat up the homeward leg of the Atlantic, Tetley worried he might lose the speed record to the resurgent Crowhurst, and started pushing his trimaran faster towards the finish line. Some 1,100 miles from home, the inevitable happened: Tetley’s boat broke up and sank, and he had to be rescued by a passing ship.

Suddenly, the spotlight shifted to Crowhurst, the unlikely amateur who’d apparently come out of nowhere to beat the professionals. The BBC had a crew on standby to record his homecoming and hundreds of thousands of people were expected to throng the seafront at Teignmouth to welcome him home.

It was everything Crowhurst dreaded. As one of the winners, his books would come under much closer scrutiny – and indeed there were already some, including race chairman Francis Chichester, who suspected something wasn’t quite right.

In the middle of June, Crowhurst reached the Sargasso Sea and, as the tradewinds died and his boat slowed down, he descended into a mental quagmire of his own. It was as if all his previous failures had caught up with him in this one grand, final failure.

Teignmouth Electron on Cayman Brac in 1991. The wreck has deteriorated considerably since. Photo: Geophotos / Alamy

And this time there was no way out, no way of reinventing himself. Instead, he gave up ‘sailorising’ and resorted to philosophising instead. Over the course of a week, he wrote a 25,000-word manifesto that described how mankind had achieved such an advanced evolutionary state that it could now merge with the cosmos. All that was needed was ‘an effort of free will’.

He ended his journal on 1 July with this desperate appeal: ‘I will only resign this game / if you agree that / 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 revealed the truth of / the way of the ending of the / next game that / It is finished / It is finished / IT IS THE MERCY’

There then followed a countdown, ending at 11:20:40 precisely. It’s not known what happened next, but it’s generally assumed Crowhurst jumped over the side of the boat to his death. His empty yacht was found by a passing ship on 10 July with two sets of log books on board: the real and the fake.

It was left to Sunday Times journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall to piece together what had happened and to reveal to the world Crowhurst’s elaborate hoax. With Crowhurst and Tetley both out of the race, Knox-Johnston, on his slow wooden tortoise of a boat, was the only person to finish the race and was duly award both prizes – though he subsequently donated the £5,000 cash prize to Crowhurst’s widow.

Huge public interest

The Golden Globe race generated enormous public interest at the time, and the discovery of Crowhurst’s boat was front page news. It’s a fascination that has continued almost unabated to this day. The French film Les Quarantièmes Rugissants, based on the Crowhurst story, was released in 1982, while at least five plays have picked up the theme, as well as the 1998 opera Ravenshead.

There have been several books published about Crowhurst and the race more generally, although none of them add anything substantial to the story told by Tomalin and Hall in their 1970 book The Strange Story of Donald Crowhurst.

In 2006, the acclaimed documentary Deep Water incorporated contemporary footage of the race, including some shot by Crowhurst during his voyage, and in 2017 director Simon Rumley released his own stylised take on the story, called simply Crowhurst.

The Mercy, then, is only the latest take on the Crowhurst saga – although with Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz on board, it is the most high-profile. So how does it compare to previous efforts?

As you’d expect of such a mainstream movie, the focus is firmly on the psychological drama rather than on the sailing – which is probably just as well considering how often films get the details of sailing wrong. There are some minor errors – Chichester wasn’t the first person to sail around the world single-handed, and the prize for the first competitor to finish the race was a trophy, not £5,000 – but the sailing scenes are generally quite convincing.

More importantly though, The Mercy is a captivating psychological drama, which shows how, through a series of small steps, a person can box themselves into a corner from which there is no escape. It’s this humbling of a deluded but essentially well-meaning man that gives the story such resonance and has inspired artists and writers for more than five decades. For, as anyone who has sailed out of sight of land knows, the sea has a knack of bringing out our inner demons. There is a Crowhurst in us all.

First published in the March 2018 edition of Yachting World.

The post Donald Crowhurst: The fake round-the-world sailing story behind The Mercy appeared first on Yachting World.

Source Crocodile Bag Authentic Crocodile Skin Bag

from WordPress http://www.amansions.com/donald-crowhurst-the-fake-round-the-world-sailing-story-behind-the-mercy/