Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you for tuning in today's
Speaker 1: Today's episode has one of my favorite descriptions of someone's profession. Spoiler, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm no. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst being British? I am talking about Donald Crowhurst
Speaker 1: being being British. He is an iconic person similar of
Speaker 1: course in some ways, at least just through their iconicism.
Speaker 1: To our super producer, Casey Pegram, You're right, Noal, Donald
Speaker 1: Crowhurst the protagonist of one of the weirdest stories of
Speaker 1: his day back in the late sixties. Here's the description
Speaker 1: I like about him. So he is, as he said, British. Right.
Speaker 1: He was in uh in The Guardian, which is itself
Speaker 1: a British publication, and uh, like many British publications, it's
Speaker 1: famous for it's it's kind of subdued snarkiness. They some
Speaker 1: Donald Crewehurst up this way. They say he is occasionally
Speaker 1: described as a businessman. Okay, I was talking about the
Speaker 1: second part of that quote, but that is the more stark.
Speaker 1: But you're right, it's so subdued that it almost takes
Speaker 1: you a double take. To kind of figure out which
Speaker 1: part is a diss The second part, UH struck me
Speaker 1: as a bit of a of a low key dis
Speaker 1: as well. Um Donald Crowhurst was British but really an
Speaker 1: orphan of the Empire. Uh. And this notion came from
Speaker 1: the fact that he was actually born in India when
Speaker 1: it was under the rule of the British raj in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, and his father was a superintendent of
Speaker 1: the railways. UM. So he kind of grew up in
Speaker 1: that very interesting and very problematic time in British history
Speaker 1: in terms of the way people who were born in
Speaker 1: India were treated, um natives, you know, Indian people, um.
Speaker 1: And also the bureaucracy and the kind of rapaciousness of
Speaker 1: the way the British Empire treated India as a surrogate
Speaker 1: and as basically just another place to you know, strip
Speaker 1: riches from um come hell or high water. It was
Speaker 1: considered the crown of the British Empire, and terrible, terrible
Speaker 1: things occurred there that are are the UK's fault. Before
Speaker 1: we go on, I gotta mention, I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: casey Nola, I don't know whether this ever happens to
Speaker 1: you or you listening along with this ridiculous historians. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you get songs stuck in your head sometimes, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think you have one stuck in your head
Speaker 1: right now. Huh, I'll give We'll pass it on to
Speaker 1: the crowd getting jiggy with it by Will Smith. Let
Speaker 1: us know what that sample is. We think it's probably
Speaker 1: a Stevie Wonder song. And uh. Sometimes in addition to songs,
Speaker 1: I get words or phrases stuck in my head. And
Speaker 1: bungalow has been in my head for for a lot
Speaker 1: of this week. Interesting, you know, I've had a very
Speaker 1: similar sort of you could say, sister words stuck in
Speaker 1: my head for the last few weeks. Chalet, okay, I
Speaker 1: like it. So Bungalow, oddly enough comes from Hindi and
Speaker 1: it comes it's a type of cottage that was built
Speaker 1: for early European settlers slash invaders and Bengal India. So
Speaker 1: did Crowhurst live in a bungalow? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: just looking for excuses to say bungalow on air. Anyway, Bungalow, Bungalow, bungalow.
Speaker 1: Back to Crowhurst, So India declared a dependence and the
Speaker 1: family was able to take some of what they had
Speaker 1: saved and scrimped together because they weren't wealthy. They weren't, No,
Speaker 1: they weren't. Again he was. He was a bureaucrat, but
Speaker 1: not like a high level one, right, Um. He was
Speaker 1: a superintendent, which would essentially be like a supervisor, like
Speaker 1: a mid management kind of position, wouldn't you say them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a little higher than that, but still in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of British bureaucracy, but a cog in the machine.
Speaker 1: They weren't nobility, and usually to have a very high
Speaker 1: level position in the way that that society functioned, you
Speaker 1: would have been nobility one thousand percent. So they took
Speaker 1: those meager savings and they hooked it back to England. Um.
Speaker 1: But they were not greeted with with the particularly warm
Speaker 1: welcome when they got to Reading, in particular in the
Speaker 1: suburbs of Reading. We have to remember that London is
Speaker 1: a sprawling metropolis um with all kinds of suburban areas
Speaker 1: and different townships and and villages and entire cities within
Speaker 1: cities essentially, so they had kind of a route awakening. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were they were expecting to home to some kind
Speaker 1: of more peaceful, idyllic existence in in there what would
Speaker 1: essentially be considered their home country. But the climate was terrible.
Speaker 1: Um money was was very hard to come by, and
Speaker 1: uh Crowhurst, the father, UH senior pretty quickly just dropped
Speaker 1: dead of a heart attack. Really almost like a Torments
Speaker 1: of the Damned kind of situation for young Crowhurst. And
Speaker 1: it's a it's a huge change for his father, you know,
Speaker 1: to move from India to this completely different place, which
Speaker 1: may have seemed unfamiliar or strange because he had spent
Speaker 1: so much time in India. So it turns out that
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, while he wrote fiction, was based in it
Speaker 1: on some fairly common situations in the United Kingdom. In Britain,
Speaker 1: uh Donald had to leave school early, just like a
Speaker 1: Dickens character and get a job, so he became an
Speaker 1: apprentice at the r a E. The Royal Aircraft Establishment.
Speaker 1: He was broke, he was ambitious. He was like eminem
Speaker 1: in the beginning of eight Mile or like Alexander Hamilton's
Speaker 1: in the beginning to Hamilton's he said, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: something to myself. I'm gonna do better. I will not
Speaker 1: accept this life that has been thrust upon me and
Speaker 1: so he uh he gets a commission for Royal Air Force,
Speaker 1: goes to the army. But then he goes out and
Speaker 1: the parties, I imagine, some drinks were had and uh
Speaker 1: he steals a car and he asked to resign. I
Speaker 1: mean he had to get home somehow. Yeah, that's true. Um.
Speaker 1: He he got he got pinched for it and had
Speaker 1: to appear before the magistrates there in reading. Um. And
Speaker 1: he you know, it didn't totally derail his life, but
Speaker 1: it certainly was was a black mark on his record. Um,
Speaker 1: and his carefree days were were to be put behind him. Um.
Speaker 1: He did grow up a bit. Uh. He married um
Speaker 1: shortly after, a lovely lay by the name of Claire Leary,
Speaker 1: who was a Protestant Um from kill Arnie, uh in Ireland.
Speaker 1: She was an Anglo Irish Protestant Um. And uh that
Speaker 1: is where he actually started his own business, a small
Speaker 1: computer business. What's that the computers? Electron utilization limited utilization.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, but it's spelled were wouldn't there be a Z?
Speaker 1: It spelled the British way. Ah, there you go, Ben,
Speaker 1: there you go, Electron Utilization Ltd. And Uh. He basically
Speaker 1: invented a computer. He invented a lot of stuff right,
Speaker 1: but because he was he was one of those guys
Speaker 1: who's always messing around with something in his workshop. He
Speaker 1: created a radio direction finding device called the Navigator with
Speaker 1: a C and now it's according to the Guardian, it's
Speaker 1: pretty common for a lot of weekend sailors. And he
Speaker 1: thought this would make his fortune and that he and
Speaker 1: Claire would you know, be living the high life, never
Speaker 1: have to work again. But that money didn't come as
Speaker 1: as quickly as he had hoped, and so it came
Speaker 1: to pass that when the Sunday Times announced their Golden
Speaker 1: Globe race with five thousand pounds as the as the prize,
Speaker 1: that's about sixty five thousand pounds today. Uh. He thought Crowhurst,
Speaker 1: that is, thought this would be the perfect way to
Speaker 1: stave off bankruptcy, at least until the sales of his
Speaker 1: Navigator took off. I think his first problems with the name,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna hear me every time I hear you
Speaker 1: say navigator, I want to correct you and say it's
Speaker 1: pronounced navigator, Ben or whomever. I feel like people pronouncing
Speaker 1: it this way would be would be you know, immediately
Speaker 1: not taken seriously. Uh, but it was a clever invention
Speaker 1: and very ahead of its time. But perhaps the need
Speaker 1: wasn't there, or the demand wasn't quite there, or the
Speaker 1: marketing was lacking. Right. So the Golden Globe Race, which
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the Golden Globe Awards so
Speaker 1: far as we know, does have does have some backgrounds.
Speaker 1: So it's around the world yacht race. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, the year before this, this race began, a
Speaker 1: guy named Francis Chichester. What do you think, No, Chichester,
Speaker 1: chi Chi Chichester, Chichester, Chichester, che Chester. Uh, this guy, Francis,
Speaker 1: will call on Francis. He had sailed his boat problematically
Speaker 1: named the Gypsy Moth with an eye and DEPLOYA gypsy
Speaker 1: moth is a real is a real moth? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it is. It spelled g I P S Y.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we're not supposed to say gypsy anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: but it's I think it's a species of moth. Though, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe you. I just don't think you know, there's
Speaker 1: probably a better name for it at this point. Oh
Speaker 1: and it's it. Hold on. Now, the main thing that
Speaker 1: comes up is the name of that ship and spell
Speaker 1: with the g I uh, the the you're right, then
Speaker 1: you're right. The actual moth, which is a species of
Speaker 1: Lymntrea dis bar is pronounced or spelled g y p
Speaker 1: s y. So when you spell it with that I,
Speaker 1: that makes it not nice. Well it's not nice either way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, if at least at least one of
Speaker 1: them is a science Oh yeah, yeah, I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. But so when this guy Francis, when he
Speaker 1: has sailed into ployment, there's a media frenzy. Everybody welcomes him,
Speaker 1: the Queen knights him. Uh. And the idea is that,
Speaker 1: you know, think about you know, late nineteen sixties. The
Speaker 1: idea is that sure, people cross the pond in the
Speaker 1: US might be exploring space, but here on Earth, the
Speaker 1: British are still ruling the waves, empire or no. And
Speaker 1: so of course the media says like, okay, we have this,
Speaker 1: we can understand when there's a trend here, there's an opportunity.
Speaker 1: And Francis's book about his journey the Lonely Sea and
Speaker 1: the Sky becomes a best seller. And so it comes
Speaker 1: to pass that during spring of n the Sunday Times
Speaker 1: launches their own challenge in direct competition with the observers
Speaker 1: existing Transatlantic race and the Sunday Times challenge is called
Speaker 1: the Golden Globe around the World Yacht Race. So this
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a place with a race with
Speaker 1: even higher stakes. Right, because Francis had kind of broken
Speaker 1: his journey down in Australia and around the world, most
Speaker 1: people believed that a solo voter, a solo yachtsman, could
Speaker 1: not deal with all the problems you would face sailing
Speaker 1: by yourself for months and months on anti. That's right,
Speaker 1: you need a team. There's a lot of mechanics that
Speaker 1: go into sailing, right. You gotta tie the jib and
Speaker 1: hoist the the main and and and all. Then the rudder.
Speaker 1: Someone has to man the rudder. You know who who's
Speaker 1: demand the rudder if you're if you're tying the jib
Speaker 1: or the boom or what have you. I'm making up
Speaker 1: all these terms, but uh, it really does. I can
Speaker 1: say for a fact that it is very helpful to
Speaker 1: have two individuals at the very least because there are
Speaker 1: separate locations for different very key parts of the sailing situation,
Speaker 1: especially if it's a yacht, which I think by the
Speaker 1: very nature, would be larger than just a small sailboat, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's sort of the the idea here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a tough proposition, you know. However, again, the
Speaker 1: national mood was so bullish on this that nine sailors
Speaker 1: actually did step forward to compete for these prizes. The
Speaker 1: deal was this, they could set off any time before
Speaker 1: October thirty one and the first person home would take
Speaker 1: the honors a golden globe, while the fastest one would
Speaker 1: also get five thousand pounds. So the competitors are are
Speaker 1: all pretty much except for Donald, they're all pretty much
Speaker 1: well known in the in the yachting world. There are
Speaker 1: people like Transatlantic Oarsbon Chay Blythe and John Ridgeway, and
Speaker 1: there's some veteran French sailors. There's next Merchant Seaman. It's
Speaker 1: a well known Italian sailor to former naval officers. And then,
Speaker 1: of course one of the latest entries was this uh
Speaker 1: little known electronics engineer from the West Country, Donald Crowhurst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he wasn't really seen as a contender as
Speaker 1: whomever originally said that line in a film at some
Speaker 1: point in history about boxing might have said, Um, he was,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of young, upstart, very driven, something
Speaker 1: seen as something of a romantic in search of making
Speaker 1: his name. Uh and perhaps his nut because he, as
Speaker 1: as you know, was really out out for for cash.
Speaker 1: He needed to save himself from bankruptcy because of his
Speaker 1: ill fated attempts at the Navigator, right the na remember
Speaker 1: that movie Flight of the Navigator. No, I remember Fly
Speaker 1: of the Navigator. That's how it's pronounced. I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: getting confused. Uh. Crowhurst had to kind of con his
Speaker 1: way into into the into the competition. He was able
Speaker 1: to persuade a local dealer, a caravan dealer, which I
Speaker 1: believe is sort of like like it's like an RV,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. He was able to convince him to
Speaker 1: sponsor his entry, a guy by the name of Stanley Best,
Speaker 1: who also happened to be quite wealthy. Um, and he
Speaker 1: commissioned a boat for him. A Norfolk boatyard built him
Speaker 1: a Trymran, not to be confused with a catamaran, which
Speaker 1: is more than try What his cat like? Four? What's
Speaker 1: the catamaran? Is that the one with the two two
Speaker 1: pieces like it's like two boats side by side connected
Speaker 1: in the middle with like a platform. I think that's
Speaker 1: what I think. So like, uh, like the is that what? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like what Kevin Costner had. No, No,
Speaker 1: catamaran is too. Oh, trimer And is three and a
Speaker 1: trimaran is three. And I'm trying to think of, you know,
Speaker 1: my favorite part of water World, the Kevin costume vehicle,
Speaker 1: which I know casey Adores is uh is the trimar
Speaker 1: Ran boat that the the unnamed mutant drives. It just
Speaker 1: looks so awesome. I want to live on the sea
Speaker 1: in a trimaran. So once again, though, this really does
Speaker 1: show I mean this, this does elevate it beyond just
Speaker 1: a sailing boat. Right. This is uh, you know you
Speaker 1: you can see these trimar Rans now associated with very
Speaker 1: luxurious yachts. They would be up high off the water,
Speaker 1: floating on these three um kind of pillars, these three
Speaker 1: sort of canoe things with struts, and then the the
Speaker 1: deck of the yacht where you would you know, son
Speaker 1: and you know, do whatever the wealthy do on yachts.
Speaker 1: Um would be up high, but this would have been
Speaker 1: low to the water, right with three and then the
Speaker 1: center one would have been where the deck was and
Speaker 1: where you have like a hole and stuff. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: things can pick up a lot of speed. Totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The As a matter of fact, as recently as December
Speaker 1: of nineteen there was a trimer and out attempting to
Speaker 1: break the world record for circumnavigation of the Earth. Here's
Speaker 1: where crowhurst story begins to take a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a tragic turn. So he can hear the clock
Speaker 1: ticking TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, and he needs to seriously put
Speaker 1: this plan in action. He needs the rubber to hit
Speaker 1: the road, or should I say, the trimer and to
Speaker 1: hit the water. He hires a publicist, a guy named
Speaker 1: Rodney Hollworth. Ulworth was what you would call in the
Speaker 1: world of writing a hack. It was a former crime
Speaker 1: reporter and he fed Crowhurst in his fantasy life, and
Speaker 1: he said, Donald, you know you're you're gonna win your
Speaker 1: dark horse. The public loves you. You've got to take
Speaker 1: this seriously, and he gets uh. He kind of persuade,
Speaker 1: or not not so much, persuades him to take certain actions,
Speaker 1: but makes his dream of winning the race increasingly feverish.
Speaker 1: The guy gets race fever. He mortgages his house and
Speaker 1: his business and This is a huge gamble because again
Speaker 1: remember if you're a competitor, you have to be on
Speaker 1: the water sailing around the planet before the thirty one
Speaker 1: of October. Some people have already left. This guy is
Speaker 1: a boat that he's never tried out. He's not super prepared.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have the equipment, he doesn't have the capital,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have the background. And you know what if
Speaker 1: he loses, he also probably doesn't have a house. At
Speaker 1: least he has his boat. You know, you can always
Speaker 1: just live live on that and on the on the deck. Um,
Speaker 1: but he probably get pretty bad sunburn. I heard he
Speaker 1: was kind of pasty. Uh so yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: did test sit out a little bit what's called a
Speaker 1: sea trial. Um. He took it from East Anglia to
Speaker 1: uh the West County um of Ireland, where his wife
Speaker 1: was from. And um he called it the the Teignmouth
Speaker 1: Electron and it really um pooped the bed as as
Speaker 1: as as were wont to say on the show, because
Speaker 1: as Ben says, we're a family show. Um, but everybody
Speaker 1: poops and and and his boat absolutely did that thing.
Speaker 1: It underperformed. It did not deliver what should have been
Speaker 1: a three day trip, took two weeks. It was a
Speaker 1: real embarrassment and a real setback for for our boy Crowhurst,
Speaker 1: kind of like Gilligan's Island, right three Uh, a three
Speaker 1: hour tour turned into a whole lovely you know, legacy
Speaker 1: of television, which I'm fine with. Yeah, yeah, Now because
Speaker 1: of this, because of this delay, he's got no time
Speaker 1: to get all the provisions he needs for his vessel,
Speaker 1: and he also has no time to give it all
Speaker 1: the proper equipment he needs. But he's up against the
Speaker 1: deadline again. TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. So he says, Look, I've
Speaker 1: got to set sail with what I have now, or
Speaker 1: I have to withdraw myself from the race, which means
Speaker 1: I'll embarrass myself publicly, and there's no question about it.
Speaker 1: I will be bank erupt. I will be as broken
Speaker 1: as a joke without a punchline. So, in the afternoon
Speaker 1: of October thirty one, the very last day, the last
Speaker 1: possible moment he can leave, uh, he sets out and
Speaker 1: he has a false start at the beginning. Uh. He
Speaker 1: whispers famously to his son, look after your mother, And
Speaker 1: no one could anticipate how strange his voyage would become
Speaker 1: Now now we have to we have to set the
Speaker 1: scene here too, right before we go on the race.
Speaker 1: It's very important to note that although Donald Crewehurst may
Speaker 1: have been under prepared, this was still a very difficult race.
Speaker 1: There were very few things you could do to prepare
Speaker 1: for this in such a way that it was going
Speaker 1: to be safe. It is the nineteen sixties. There's no GPS,
Speaker 1: there's no satellites. You could maybe have a worse code
Speaker 1: transmitter or something. You have to use a sextant when
Speaker 1: you're out in the open water. This is tough, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, even if you're those very well
Speaker 1: prepared veteran sailors the other eight guys. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was super old school because that's just
Speaker 1: what the school was, um. And and really your best
Speaker 1: bet was going to be to navigate using the stars
Speaker 1: and using those Sexton calculations. Here's the thing, Um, Donald
Speaker 1: never was really a contender in this race at all.
Speaker 1: Like he just he wasn't competing. He never reached the
Speaker 1: Southern Ocean. Um. He had problems from the get go,
Speaker 1: and he just kept falling further and further behind UM
Speaker 1: and he had to you make a real decision. It
Speaker 1: was a real kind of come to Jesus moment where
Speaker 1: he had to decide to continue on and likely perish
Speaker 1: or go on back home, um and face financial ruin,
Speaker 1: societal humiliation, absolute outcast type status. UM. Because like we said,
Speaker 1: he had he banked everything on this race. We had
Speaker 1: we had locked all of his wealth of any kind
Speaker 1: into this race. Or right, there's a third way that
Speaker 1: he comes up with, right, Yeah, I mean he was
Speaker 1: sort of, by his very nature, kind of a fabulous Uh.
Speaker 1: He was one who was not unused to big upping
Speaker 1: himself and being something of a carnival barking self promoter.
Speaker 1: And he took some of those skills to the nth
Speaker 1: degree um by fabricating reports uh and in an entire
Speaker 1: narrative behind this grand venture that he was going to
Speaker 1: set out. Uh. He pretended to circumnavigate the globe, which
Speaker 1: was a big deal to be able to claim that
Speaker 1: um in those days, still still not as difficult as
Speaker 1: actually circumnavigating the globe, but it takes it does take
Speaker 1: some effort. This is where you know, when we're doing
Speaker 1: research for this, this is when uh, he started to
Speaker 1: remind me of the main character and uncut gems. It's
Speaker 1: just a escalating stakes, increasingly desperate, very very few winds,
Speaker 1: but just a way to delay the losses exactly, delaying
Speaker 1: the inevitability. Lies, we get lies, and it all kind
Speaker 1: of spider webs out of control eventually. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a guy like this who's got I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's call it a positive attitude for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, Um, you just kind of keep pushing forward
Speaker 1: and in the hopes that if you don't pay attention
Speaker 1: to what's coming your way, maybe it'll never happen in
Speaker 1: terms of the negative stuff, right, And so his his
Speaker 1: plan is to his plan is incredibly unethical. He's going
Speaker 1: to fake the race and he's going to lap these people.
Speaker 1: He's fallen far enough behind from what he can tell
Speaker 1: that it's not like these folks can see each other
Speaker 1: every day, Right, So he says he's going to rejoin
Speaker 1: the race when they're on the way back, and he thinks,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be the first to arrive my
Speaker 1: not record the fastest time, but I am going to
Speaker 1: save face and ultimately I'll be able to save my house.
Speaker 1: Ben really quickly was the purpose of this race to
Speaker 1: circumnavigate the globe? Was that the idea? Yes, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I missed that part and I acted like he
Speaker 1: was kind of going rogue and deciding to do his
Speaker 1: own thing. But I see now that that was a
Speaker 1: big part of the race. So we've got Robin Knox Johnson,
Speaker 1: who was a favorite. Uh he came in first, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, was the first to circumnavigate the world all
Speaker 1: by himself. Then we had Nigel Tentley who came in
Speaker 1: a close second. Uh, or looked like he was that's right,
Speaker 1: but but then he uh he would have potentially claimed
Speaker 1: the prize for the fastest time. But is she sank
Speaker 1: yep suddenly out of the clear blue sky, and then
Speaker 1: and then and then was was was pulled from the
Speaker 1: watery jaws of death. And the rate of attrition in
Speaker 1: this race was pretty high. Crowhurst is the only other
Speaker 1: competitor left in the race, and it looks like because
Speaker 1: of that he was going to get the prize for
Speaker 1: being the fastest. So we claimed the Golden Globe and
Speaker 1: become a national hero. I love this next line in
Speaker 1: this Guardian article that were following year um the notion
Speaker 1: that so much of this was on the honor system, right,
Speaker 1: because the lack of technology. Because of the lack of
Speaker 1: they weren't like follow vehicles or helicopters to prove that
Speaker 1: these uh, these men had had actually completed what they
Speaker 1: said they were going to. It was all paper log
Speaker 1: books and journal entries and uh, you know, recording those
Speaker 1: sex stant measurements in the right right and and and
Speaker 1: and his would would really start to be uh given
Speaker 1: a pretty close eye after after this happened, because he
Speaker 1: was such an underdog and such a kind of upstart entry.
Speaker 1: But here's here's the twist. You see, they did find
Speaker 1: the log books, they did find the vessel, but they
Speaker 1: never found Donald Crowhurst. He never made at home. The
Speaker 1: Tagnmouth electron was found drifting abandoned Mary Celeste style. People
Speaker 1: found the books that charted his actual voyage, along with
Speaker 1: the records uh that he was cooking up the books
Speaker 1: that he had cooked showing he made false claims about
Speaker 1: the speed of his vessel and that he had worked
Speaker 1: up a fake navigational account. There are also heroine writings
Speaker 1: that show us his psychological state. The last page as
Speaker 1: the most ominous, comes from July one and It had
Speaker 1: the following words, I have no knee to prolong the game.
Speaker 1: It is finished. It is finished, all caps. It is
Speaker 1: the mercy that is kind of spooky had been that
Speaker 1: last page had been torn out, although his son Simon
Speaker 1: Crowhurst has this page. He thinks that the captain of
Speaker 1: the ship that found the electron ripped it because he
Speaker 1: thought it would be unbearable for the family to see,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. So he never came. He never got
Speaker 1: his accolades that he was seeking. He uh, technically would
Speaker 1: have because of all of the bad things that befell
Speaker 1: the other you know, entries in the race. But he
Speaker 1: did not cross the finish line. He just he was
Speaker 1: lost to see essentially, right, Yeah, he disappeared. And that's
Speaker 1: the thing that you know, they've never found a body,
Speaker 1: never found any proof of what happened to him. Uh
Speaker 1: when he they were found right, so we said his
Speaker 1: last his last written account was July one. On July
Speaker 1: t just nine days later, the Royal mail vessel the
Speaker 1: Picardy finds the boat. It's um It's in the mid Atlantic,
Speaker 1: near the Caribbean. It's like a ghost ship, exactly like
Speaker 1: a ghost ship. It was cluttered, there were dirty dishes,
Speaker 1: the bedlining was filthy, but there was no sign of Crowhurst.
Speaker 1: And because he disappeared, because there was no closure, because
Speaker 1: this was a mystery, he became famous worldwide. And what
Speaker 1: happens when people become famous across the world for disappearing,
Speaker 1: They're seeing everywhere. Elvis is still getting sighted for Pete's sake.
Speaker 1: Totally yeah. And so the captain of the Picardy, which
Speaker 1: was a royal mail ship, um hoisted uh Crowhurst's electron
Speaker 1: trimaran onto his ship and took it along with them.
Speaker 1: And that's when he started to read the entries in
Speaker 1: those those three different log books himself. And this is
Speaker 1: you know, everyone loves a good mystery, Everyone loves a
Speaker 1: good disappearance. In the same way we talked about the
Speaker 1: Mary Celeste, that famous ghost ship that was found adrift,
Speaker 1: and all of the different theories as to what happened
Speaker 1: to the the crew of the Mary Celeste. Uh, this
Speaker 1: similarly got the public's imagination going running wild. This gets
Speaker 1: us to a painful, tragic point because of course there
Speaker 1: is a search mission called right and people are attempting
Speaker 1: to find some sign of Donald Crowhurst. His children are
Speaker 1: puzzled because pretty soon a few days after they find
Speaker 1: the stuff about the log books, the searches called off
Speaker 1: and they think, why is no one? Why is no
Speaker 1: one looking for our father? And the reason they stopped
Speaker 1: the searchers because they solved the mystery. It was all
Speaker 1: there in those log books. It was clear as day
Speaker 1: he had tried to perpetrate this hoax and failed, and
Speaker 1: and and therefore probably just you know, it wasn't so
Speaker 1: much an issue as to what did he fall overboard?
Speaker 1: What happened? You know, they know that he was up
Speaker 1: to no good, and therefore I guess it became less
Speaker 1: of a priority. Or what do you think them? I
Speaker 1: think they they figure the most likely cause was suicide,
Speaker 1: but they didn't they didn't find the body. And this
Speaker 1: is where this is where the Sunday Times does something
Speaker 1: that's um Honestly, I've used the word before in this episode.
Speaker 1: But the Sunday Times themselves become a little unethical because
Speaker 1: they want to extract maximum publicity from this story. So
Speaker 1: they send a reporter named Nicholas Tomlin to interview the
Speaker 1: captain of that Royal mail vessel to Picardy and to
Speaker 1: inspect the electron and to collect whatever he can find
Speaker 1: on board, and instead of getting some thrilling front page
Speaker 1: story of adventure on the high seas, they get this
Speaker 1: immensely tragic, heartbreaking tale of an amateur yachts and who
Speaker 1: had fooled Fleet Street completely. But then Tomlin, being an
Speaker 1: expert reporter, turns this into a sensational tell all scoop
Speaker 1: and they started unraveling the mystery of the log books
Speaker 1: and published a book called The Strange Last Voyage of
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst, which today is considered the most comprehensive account
Speaker 1: of this tale. But it's by far not the only
Speaker 1: work of literature or film uh that has been mentioned.
Speaker 1: It's in popular culture now. Yeah, and I think a
Speaker 1: Studio Canal is as a favorite production house of I
Speaker 1: think Casey's as as well as as mine and Ben's
Speaker 1: um responsible for a lot of David Lynch's best work
Speaker 1: and a lot of French films. Um. They have put
Speaker 1: out two in two thousand eighteen. I haven't seen either
Speaker 1: of these and didn't see a lot of publicity about them.
Speaker 1: But one of them starts Colin Firth and it's called
Speaker 1: The Mercy, and the other one is called Crowhurst and
Speaker 1: stars Justin Salinger, who I'm not familiar with, but very
Speaker 1: interested in seeing either of these because it really is
Speaker 1: a pretty harrowing story. It combines a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: things that we we talked about on the show, from
Speaker 1: kind of just blind opportunism to just sort of lack
Speaker 1: of self awareness to you know, adventure and fraud. It's
Speaker 1: that says a recipe for a good story. So I'm
Speaker 1: definitely interested in checking out those two films from Studio Canal.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, personally, I don't know whether I
Speaker 1: will check those out. I'm conflicted because the family doesn't
Speaker 1: want the story told and at this in in this
Speaker 1: specific instance, I don't know if I would. I don't
Speaker 1: know how on board it would be, because they change
Speaker 1: details about the studio has changed details about something very
Speaker 1: personal for this family. They even cut one of the
Speaker 1: kids out of the story. In the film, there are
Speaker 1: three Crowhurst children instead of four. They cut one of
Speaker 1: the brothers. Um. I know, you have to make changes
Speaker 1: when you adapt stuff into action, but that's that's a
Speaker 1: problem that does seem a little agreed to s been.
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that. I'm just I do like
Speaker 1: Colin Firth and the still that I see from this
Speaker 1: first one the mercy seems pretty interesting. Hopefully one of
Speaker 1: them or the other did a better job at sticking
Speaker 1: to the facts. But I guess it's true too that
Speaker 1: we don't know all of the facts because what we
Speaker 1: have is sort of a forged log book, um, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of tough to know exactly what happened. And
Speaker 1: this brings us to the end of today's tail, but
Speaker 1: not the end of our show. Donald Crowhurst is one
Speaker 1: of many, many, many adventurers who have sailed across the
Speaker 1: world off the edges of the proverbial or figurative map.
Speaker 1: We want to hear your stories of other other adventurers
Speaker 1: or other mysterious disappearances. One that's a little more conspiratorial
Speaker 1: is that of Lord lucan uh the the aristocrat who
Speaker 1: likely committed homicide and then escape to live in obscurity.
Speaker 1: He got away. I don't know about this one, man.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it with you and finding out some
Speaker 1: stuff myself in the meantime. If you want to find
Speaker 1: out a little bit more about us, you can check
Speaker 1: our show out on all the social media as we
Speaker 1: are ridiculous history on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can
Speaker 1: check out our Facebook group the ridiculous historian, just by
Speaker 1: going and answering a very simple questions naming any of
Speaker 1: the members of the show team here, including the folks
Speaker 1: that we think in the credits h including any reference
Speaker 1: to anything related to the show, or just give us
Speaker 1: a good old chuckle with some kind of history related
Speaker 1: pun or otherwise. You can also find us as individual
Speaker 1: human people on social media. I am on Instagram exclusively
Speaker 1: at how Now Noel Brown. You can contact me a
Speaker 1: variety of ways. My name is Ben Bullen. Always loved
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can say my name three
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Speaker 1: find me on Instagram where I'm at ben Bowland. Where
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter where I'm at ben Bowland.
Speaker 1: Hs W, thanks as always the super producer Casey Pagram,
Speaker 1: Thanks to our great composer Alex Williams, and of course
Speaker 1: our top notch research associate Gabe. Thanks to Christopher aciotis
Speaker 1: here as always in spirit Jonathan Strickland, who now exists
Speaker 1: in two forms. He's the quister first and foremost in
Speaker 1: my mind, but I still have to listen to these episodes.
Speaker 1: But he's also been a lovely stand in guest host
Speaker 1: for the show, um as his non evil, non bizarro
Speaker 1: world self, which I can also appreciate. Oh yeah, good note.
Speaker 1: On night Soil asked people to name the best slash
Speaker 1: worst songs to play when you're in the restroom in
Speaker 1: a delicate position you don't want people to hear you.
Speaker 1: So thanks to everybody a ridiculous historians he's written in
Speaker 1: with their uh, sometimes wonderful and sometimes just frankly disturbing
Speaker 1: suggestions and has always been thanks to you for being
Speaker 1: a pal and a confidant back at you. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time Fox. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.