No mercy for yacht race Atlantic mariner Donald Crowhurst

HIS family describe lone sailor Donald Crowhurst as the modern Ancient Mariner, drifting aimlessy in solitary confusion on the high seas.

Amateur yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, who died while competing in the round-the-world yacht race in 1968, is the subject of new documentary Deep Water.

HIS family describe lone sailor Donald Crowhurst as the modern Ancient Mariner, drifting aimlessly in solitary confusion on the high seas.

Unlike Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s old storyteller with the “glittering eye”, Crowhurst did not return to share his tale with wife Clare and their four children, or his financial backer.

The mystery of Crowhurst’s fatal adventure in the inaugural Sunday Times Golden Globe Race 50 years ago is revisited on film in The Mercy, starring Colin Firth and Rachel Weisz, opening in Sydney on Thursday.

Inspired by Francis Chichester’s one-stop, nine-month solo world trip in 1967, the Sunday Times newspaper decided to sponsor a race. The Golden Globe Race would award a trophy to the first back to Falmouth after sailing alone, non-stop around the globe, with a prize of £5000 (about £60,000 in 2016), for the fastest time.

Sailing equipment manufacturer Donald Crowhurst, from documentary film "Deep Water".

Nine sailors entered the challenge to cover 43,500km in about 10 months. Entrants had to sail the old tea-clipper route from Britain to Australia, sailing south of the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, east across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, around Cape Horn and north back to Britain. All boats were to depart by October 31, 1968.

The other contestants were Robin Knox-Johnston, Nigel Tetley, Bernard Moitessier, Chay Blyth, John Ridgway, William King, Alex Carozzo and Loick Fougeron. “Tahiti” Bill Howell, a skilled multihull racing sailor, entered but did not race. Ridgway, Fougeron, King and Carozzo retired before they reached the Indian Ocean.

Blyth, who had no previous sailing experience, retired in East London, South Africa. Tetley, a Royal Navy veteran sailing the Victress trimaran, made good time ahead of Crowhurst. Believing Crowhurst was close behind, he pushed too hard. Just after midnight on May 21, 1969, at 2200km from the finish line, the Victress broke up and sank; he was rescued that afternoon.

Donald Crowhurst with his trimaran Teignmouth Electron shortly before he set off on the inaugural Sunday Times Golden Globe Race 50 years ago.

Crowhurst, born in Delhi, India, in 1932, was a Royal Air Force veteran who set up a struggling electronics business to sell his navigational invention, the Navicator, partly backed by retired Taunton caravan retailer Stanley Best. Wanting to publicise his business and possibly win the £5000 speed prize, he took out a big mortgage on the family’s large house in extensive grounds at Bridgwater, Somerset to build a trimaran, a three-hulled boat good for speed but dangerous in open water. Best put in £8000, to be repaid if Crowhurst withdrew, and former Fleet Street police reporter Rodney Hallworth was recruited as Crowhurst’s PR man. With sailing experience limited to taking his children, James, 10, Simon, 8, Roger, 7, and Rachel, 5, sailing on the Bristol Channel on his small yacht, Pot of Gold, Crowhurst commissioned a Norfolk boatyard to build his 14m trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron. On its first sea trial, the yacht performed so badly in the Channel that a three-day trip took two weeks. With no time to equip it properly for the race, Crowhurst opted to meet the sailing deadline rather than withdraw from and face bankruptcy. On the afternoon of October 31, Crowhurst told son Simon to “look after your mother”, and sailed from Teignmouth.

Lone yachtsman Donald Crowhurst on board the Teignmouth Electron at start of his ill-fated journey around in 1968, when his line became entangled and he was towed back to shore to begin again

With only a fuzzy radio link, and possibly a morse code transmitter, lone sailors relied on sextant calculations for navigation. Crowhurst believed his trimaran could sail 350km per day, but after two weeks he had not averaged more than 200km a day, and was still off the coast of Portugal. His boat had also sprung a leak: “This bloody boat is just falling to pieces!!!”, he wrote, as he battled 25m waves. Fearing he could not win the £5000 to help cover his debts, Crowhurst began a second, false log. He cabled Hallworth on December 10 to advise that he had just sailed, in one day, a record 390km. Hallworth embellished Crowhurst’s fabrications for Fleet Street newspapers, promoting Crowhurst as a genuine contender for the fastest circumnavigation.

Donald Crowhurst sets off on the Globe Globe Race on October 31, 1968.

As the difference between his real and stated positions expanded, the Electron’s frailty prevented Crowhurst from sailing the harsh Southern Ocean. He stayed in the Atlantic off Brazil, where he continued to fill out his fraudulent logbook. He cut off all radio contact with the world for three months, and once pulled into an Argentine fishing port to make repairs to his boat, which would have disqualified him from the race.

In spring 1969 he announced that he had completed his circumnavigation and was heading home. Crowhurst hoped Knox-Johnston and Tetley would claim the prizes. When Tetley sank, he was in line for the fastest-time prize. Knowing his logs could not withstand the scrutiny he would receive, he became depressed.

Contact was lost and on July 10, 1969, his empty boat was found drifting in the mid-Atlantic 1000km from Azores by a Royal Mail vessel. His logbooks, a rambling philosophical reflection on the human condition, provided insight into his deteriorating psychological condition.

In his final log entry, Crowhurst wrote, “It is finished. It is the mercy. It is the end of my game. The truth has been revealed .”

Originally published as No mercy for yacht race Atlantic mariner Donald Crowhurst