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Authors: Peter Nichols
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turned its small stable into his workshop. Donald Crowhurst had arrived.
Crowhurst was well aware of the larger world, the bigger ideas, the brighter people beyond his immediate provincial horizons deep in the English countryside. He was more intelligent than most of his acquaintances, and they knew it. âI did not worship Donald Crowhurst,â said a friend. âI
recognised
him â as the most vivid and real person I have ever met.â
He carried people away with his brilliance. With no one to match him intellectually or egotistically, no one to shoot him down, deflate him, or burst the bubbles he blew, he carried himself away too. He joined the local amateur dramatic society and became one of its stars, but the wider world stage on which he wished to strut seemed out of reach.
His Navicator, his endless tinkering with wires and transistors in search of other inventions, his interest in amateur theatricals, his dominating, supercharged personality, were all symptoms of his great urge to leave his mark. Crowhurst believed he had something important to give the world, and he was constantly trying to find it.
On Sunday 28 May 1967, as Francis Chichester approached Plymouth â which was only 70 miles from Bridgwater â Donald Crowhurst spent the day sailing with a friend. But they headed out into the Bristol Channel, the other side of Englandâs southwestern peninsula, far from the waters that filled throughout the day with boats waiting for the first sight of
Gypsy Moth IV
. Crowhurst admired Chichester. He had read his earlier books about his lone transatlantic crossings and had closely followed his voyage around the world. Yet that day he turned his back, becoming aloof and scornful. As the two men listened to the BBCâs coverage over their boatâs radio, Crowhurst derided Chichesterâs accomplishment. Plenty of people had sailed alone around the world, he said, and Chichester had stopped for a long rest in Australia.
Crowhurst then told his friend that for years he had thought about sailing around the world alone and nonstop.
That
would be something worth making a fuss about.
Later that day, after they returned to port, they went home and, like everybody else, watched Chichesterâs arrival on television.
Crowhurstâs role as a successful businessman was short-lived. Pye Radio backed out of the Navicator deal. Their initial payment gave Crowhurst and Electron Utilisation the appearance of prosperity for a while, but he was eventually forced to abandon his small factory and cut his workforce from six to one part-time assembler in his stable-workshop. The Navicator was not, as he had hoped, to be widely distributed to every ship chandlery in Britain. He was reduced to hawking it from a booth at boat shows.
But his self-belief, his intelligence, his ideas, and his charm were persuasive. Looking for new backers, he was introduced to Stanley Best, a buinessman from nearby Taunton, who had become wealthy selling caravans. In 1967 Best made a first tentative investment in Electron Utilisation. It was in the form of a loan of £1,000. Crowhurstâs undaunted and enlarging vision held Stanley Best in thrall long past the point where his pragmatic business sense should have stopped him.
âI always considered Donald Crowhurst an absolutely brilliant innovator,â Best said later, âbut as a businessman ⦠he was hopeless. He seemed to have this capacity to convince himself that everything was going to be wonderful, and hopeless situations were only temporary setbacks. This enthusiasm, I admit, was infectious. But as I now realise, it was the product of that kind of overimaginative mind that was always dreaming reality into the state it wanted it to be.â
5
J OHN R IDGWAY SAILED from remote Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, 40 miles off the Galway coast of northwest Ireland, at 11.38 a.m., Saturday 1 June 1968, the first Golden Globe sailor to depart.
It
Crowhurst was well aware of the larger world, the bigger ideas, the brighter people beyond his immediate provincial horizons deep in the English countryside. He was more intelligent than most of his acquaintances, and they knew it. âI did not worship Donald Crowhurst,â said a friend. âI
recognised
him â as the most vivid and real person I have ever met.â
He carried people away with his brilliance. With no one to match him intellectually or egotistically, no one to shoot him down, deflate him, or burst the bubbles he blew, he carried himself away too. He joined the local amateur dramatic society and became one of its stars, but the wider world stage on which he wished to strut seemed out of reach.
His Navicator, his endless tinkering with wires and transistors in search of other inventions, his interest in amateur theatricals, his dominating, supercharged personality, were all symptoms of his great urge to leave his mark. Crowhurst believed he had something important to give the world, and he was constantly trying to find it.
On Sunday 28 May 1967, as Francis Chichester approached Plymouth â which was only 70 miles from Bridgwater â Donald Crowhurst spent the day sailing with a friend. But they headed out into the Bristol Channel, the other side of Englandâs southwestern peninsula, far from the waters that filled throughout the day with boats waiting for the first sight of
Gypsy Moth IV
. Crowhurst admired Chichester. He had read his earlier books about his lone transatlantic crossings and had closely followed his voyage around the world. Yet that day he turned his back, becoming aloof and scornful. As the two men listened to the BBCâs coverage over their boatâs radio, Crowhurst derided Chichesterâs accomplishment. Plenty of people had sailed alone around the world, he said, and Chichester had stopped for a long rest in Australia.
Crowhurst then told his friend that for years he had thought about sailing around the world alone and nonstop.
That
would be something worth making a fuss about.
Later that day, after they returned to port, they went home and, like everybody else, watched Chichesterâs arrival on television.
Crowhurstâs role as a successful businessman was short-lived. Pye Radio backed out of the Navicator deal. Their initial payment gave Crowhurst and Electron Utilisation the appearance of prosperity for a while, but he was eventually forced to abandon his small factory and cut his workforce from six to one part-time assembler in his stable-workshop. The Navicator was not, as he had hoped, to be widely distributed to every ship chandlery in Britain. He was reduced to hawking it from a booth at boat shows.
But his self-belief, his intelligence, his ideas, and his charm were persuasive. Looking for new backers, he was introduced to Stanley Best, a buinessman from nearby Taunton, who had become wealthy selling caravans. In 1967 Best made a first tentative investment in Electron Utilisation. It was in the form of a loan of £1,000. Crowhurstâs undaunted and enlarging vision held Stanley Best in thrall long past the point where his pragmatic business sense should have stopped him.
âI always considered Donald Crowhurst an absolutely brilliant innovator,â Best said later, âbut as a businessman ⦠he was hopeless. He seemed to have this capacity to convince himself that everything was going to be wonderful, and hopeless situations were only temporary setbacks. This enthusiasm, I admit, was infectious. But as I now realise, it was the product of that kind of overimaginative mind that was always dreaming reality into the state it wanted it to be.â
5
J OHN R IDGWAY SAILED from remote Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, 40 miles off the Galway coast of northwest Ireland, at 11.38 a.m., Saturday 1 June 1968, the first Golden Globe sailor to depart.
It
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