Thinking Sideways: Donald Crowhurst

Donald Crowhurst, a 35-year-old British inventor and businessman, set out in October 1968 to sail around the world alone as part of a contest. In July 1969 his sailboat was discovered adrift and without its skipper. Then things got even stranger.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer too. Hi there,
Welcome to another hard hitting episode of Thinking Sideways, the

(00:25):
podcast that takes No prisoners. I'm Joe, joined as always
with my lovely co host and Steve. Yeah. I get
to be the lovely one this time, you do. They're
just being nice to me today. It's fine if you're
quite attractive. Yeah. So we're gonna like, we're gonna solve

(00:47):
another mystery today. So you guys ready, Yeah? Okay, Well,
let me start from the top. This is about a
guy named Donald Crowhurst, British guy. And before I go
any further, I want to give a shout out to
our listener Karen, who suggested this, So thanks Karen. Yeah,
this one's been in a hopper for a while. Yeah,
it's been on a hopper for a long time. Karen,

(01:07):
who knows she might not even be listening anymore, of
course she is. We've betterr addicted. Okay, let's talk about
Donald Crowhurst. October thirty one nine, Mr Crowhurst sets sail
from the town of Tyne with England to sail his
forty foot single massive Trymaran Trymaran the Tynemoth Electron around

(01:29):
the world as part of the contest. So let me
give you a back some backgrounds to when this began.
In the spring of nineteen, the Sunday Times of London
announced to challenge, which they called the Golden Globe NonStop
around the World yacht race. They challenged volunteers to come
forward and tackle this because it was no not just NonStop,
but by yourself single handed. Yeah, so go figure only

(01:53):
nine people actually step forward to take part of this offer. Yeah,
I know, the first band to make a home would
win the Golden Globe whatever that is. And I assume
it's different from the Golden Global Awards we have here,
so it's definitely different. Yeah. And then there was also
a five five thousand pound prize, which five thousand pounds

(02:14):
is about eighty thousand pounds today, which roughly about a
hundred and sixty right around there, So five thousand dollar
prize for whoever had the fastest time or in the world.
So yeah, their nine step forward, but five of the
nine dropped out early, so I'm not gonna bother telling
you their names. But oh and if you're wondering why

(02:35):
the Sunday Times decided to do this. They there was
a guy at Francis Chichester who had done this the
year before under the sponsorship of another British paper, and
it was a big, big sensation. Uh, it really bumped
into the paper sales and stuff like this, and so
they thought it then a little, a little, a little
bit of invitation would be good. So Chichester did it,
and he did it in a fairly decent amount of time.

(02:57):
And he did but he stopped on the way. Yeah,
you just stopped to make repairs exactly. What's just like
when you think about it, getting around the world NonStop
without going on shore to get supplies and make repairs.
I mean, it's like, well, and I think what people
need to keep in mind is that the route that
these guys are taking is there. They're sailing from England
south then going around the Horn of Africa and basically

(03:22):
staying in Do they call it the Roaring forties? Is
that the latitude where that's yeah, that's roughly the Roaring forties,
But if you when you go around Cape Horn, you're
you're in the Furious fifties, Yes, which are terrible sea.
I've actually been at Tierra del Fuegos, you know, and
I've experienced that win and that was in January, which

(03:43):
is their summertime, and it was incredibly ferocious, unbelievable, So
no wonder that, you know, as he's sailing through that area,
and then he rounded the tip of South Africa. I
think that's where he stopped to make repairs. Is that correct, Joe.
I don't remember where he stopped, or you might have
stopped in Australia, which but he had to stop because

(04:04):
or something. But this, this is the thing that really
kind of nestifies me about this particular race, is why
they had them go to the route that they did.
Because the Roaring forties and the Furious fifties basically circumnavigate
the South Pole. They go around there and theything the
they go around it from west to east. And so
when you're in a sailboat, you want to and you're

(04:24):
in really gusty, strong winds like that, you want to
be heading into the wind and not running off the wind,
because if you're running off the wind and a sudden
huge gust hits you and you've got a lot of
cloth out, then it can rip your rip your mast off,
whereas if you're heading into the wind, then your boat
just lays down and it comes back up again. So
so you're saying that they should have had them go

(04:45):
the opposite way around. They should have had them go
the opposite way around. Yeah, that's what I would do.
I'd sneak to Panama. Yeah, of course these guys are.
But of course you've got two guys in this race
who were doing raymer Rands and a tramar Ran going
into the wind around Cape Horn, for example. I don't
know how well that would do. They probably would just

(05:06):
flip right over and is a three whole boat essentially exactly. Yeah,
I was going to talk about the tremor Ran in
the second here. But so anyway, the times, we're kind
of going all over the place here, but the times
essentially that was a motivation for doing this was publicity.
And as I said, they got nine takers there then
five of them dropped out early. So the remaining four

(05:29):
were a French sailor named Bernard Monteschier, a former British
former merchant seaman named Robin Knox Johnston, and a former
naval officer named Nigel Tetley. I like that name. Is
so British. Yeah. And also the fourth guy, guy named
Donald Crowhurst, who was an amateur. I mean, he was

(05:49):
a guy. He's a guy that's like sailed in the
English Channel and stuff. He's not he'd never actually made
an ocean crossing the sailboat. He's a weekend yeah yeah, yeah,
a competent enough sailor. But now he was he was
he was taking out a big project here. Yeah, So
a little bit about Donald Crowhurst. He was an entrepreneur
and an amateur sailor, and he had started a small
computer business which was called Electron Utilization Limited. He and

(06:13):
he invented. He was an inventor and tinker, and he
invented device called the Navigator, which is a radio direction
to finding device that actually I don't know if it
was actually the Navigator or the lore m, but it
eventually became widely used. And so it basically triangulated on
radio signals from shore to tell you what your position

(06:33):
replace the compass. Yeah, and we're talking this is GPS
is night. We got to have something. Yeah, so in
those days, yeah, I mean it's a lot of people
in those days were still using Sexton's of course, but
to know he thought this would be a really cool,
spiffy way too, and he was he was not really
into navigation that much, so I think it appealed to

(06:54):
him to have something that would be easier to use
and the old traditional you know, mapping this. Yeah you know, yeah,
I mean so that like sextondance and charts in the list,
So you know, I think that's why he invented this thing. Um.
But the problem was is he thought it was gonna
make him a lot of money, but as so far,
he wasn't selling many of them at all, and so

(07:16):
when the Golden Globe race was announced, he was in
pretty dire financial straits and I think that he thought
the cash prize would keep him afloat until he finally
got his business off the ground. And so that was
his big motivation. And maybe he liked attention to maybe
feel maybe you don't like that would be a way
to call attention to his business. He would get all
this notoriety and he's going like, yeah, hey, you know that,

(07:38):
you know why just by the way, I've got this
device called the navigator. Well, especially if like maybe he
made use of it to like win this competition, right
if you say, oh, you know, I couldn't have done
it as quickly if I hadn't been using this invention
that I had, you know, because I would have been
so tied up trying to navigate by the stars, and
I wouldn't have done it nearly as fast. So you
know that's also as ability. Yeah, I don't really have

(08:01):
any information on that about whether he actually used his navigator. Yeah,
he didn't. I don't think he had had to actually
use it. I think he could have just said when
he won, and I used this thing. Yeah, I don't
remember ever seeing any but it's really hard to say,
but I don't remember seeing anything saying he was using it.
Hard to know what his plan was upon return, Yeah,

(08:24):
I don't know. Okay. He unfortunately didn't have the kind
of money that he needed to buy himself a big
old boat to the world, and so he persuaded a
local millionaire named Stanley Best to sponsor his entry and
buy him a boat, and they commissioned a boatyard to
build this trimar Ran, and the millionaire Best bank rolled
the trimar Ran, but he made Crowhurst sign an agreement

(08:46):
which stated that if he backed out of the race,
or if he dropped out early, he'd have to buy
the boat back, and he mortgaged. He Crowhurst mortgage his
house and his business against this boat, everything everything he
had against his boat. And so yeah, he was he
was committed. He was extremely committed. He also hired a
publicistem Rodney Halworth, who was a former crime reporter for

(09:09):
a couple of British newspapers, and Halworth was instrumental actually
and kicking up. He did a really good job back
at home and taking any any dribbles of news that
he got from Crowhurst and and get disseminated to the
media and whipping up a frenzy of excitement about this
whole thing. Yeah, race fever. But the deadline was leaving.

(09:31):
I didn't mention the deadline for leaving England, did I?
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, the deadlight for leaving
was Halloween. It was October thirty one, which was the
last I think that was because it was the last
day they figured anybody could safely get around the whole
around the Cape of Good Hope. Yeah, yeah, exactly, So

(09:53):
they figured that that is a safety measure, and then
they would have and also you got to kind of
have a cut off. You can't have somebody like leaving
a year later. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't work. That doesn't
really work, right. Crowhurst actually did not get his trim
ran until pretty shortly before the race deadline, and he
said he only had about four weeks to outfit the
boat and get all this gear together and get ready

(10:15):
for this voyage. So, needless to say, he was kind
of behind all the other ones who had already left
long before. And uh so he wind up leaving on
the day of the deadline, October thirty one. And was
it fastest in time or like the first person back
first person back at the Golden Globe? Okay, and whoever

(10:36):
whoever of the four would get the five thousand pounds
if that was fast, So they counted like how many
days it took them, not like who was back first exactly? Okay,
exactly okay? Yeah, So so Crowhurst if if, say too,
if all the guys ahead of him beat him in
and he still came in after them, he could still

(10:58):
have won that prize right with less days? Yeah okay,
But anyway, let's go back to October thirty one. That's
the day he set out from Tynemouth, England. And now
I'm going to depart again. I'm gonna get to do
a little travel like stuff. Time with is a quint
little sea coast town on the English Channel. I took
a tour of it on Google Street. I ran over

(11:18):
several pedestrians and that's what I love about that. I
think I started at least a hundred cars. Yeah, so sorry, Timemouth.
I apologized, But I do want to say, if any
of our listeners are from Time with You, people really
do have a picturesque little town, and would that be
a great I want to write to Google and say
I want something to want to run over to somebody
in Google Streets. I got a yell or screw for it. Yeah, Okay,

(11:45):
back back to our sea boydge. Enough of that. So
Crowherst estimated that the Tynemouth Electron could sell two twenty
miles a day. Why did Why did he name it?
The time? I can't say, Yeah, and his company was
when I've just been sitting here thinking about what a

(12:05):
dumb name that, But I get it now. Yeah, But
it turns out that his claim that it could do
two twenty miles a day was pretty optimistic. And here's
what I'm gonna talk about trying a runts a little bit. There.
They are fast boats. There's threethold boats. They're faster than
mono hole boats by long ways because they have less
wedded surface, but they have a tendency to capsize when

(12:29):
sailing close to the wind unfortunately, and they also can't
sail all that close to the wind, which really cuts
down in your progress. There was a guy named former
davy guy I think, or maybe even current nating guy
named Peter Eden. So he sailed with Crowhurst from a
town of cows to time from work from what you departed,
and he reported that the time with electron was very fast,

(12:52):
but it could get no closer to the wind than
sixty degrees. So that means when you're lucky enough to
have a tail wind, you can make good time. But
if you're sailing into the wind, you're gonna be tacking
so hard and so far out of your course that
you're gonna make very very slow progress. I feel like
I'm just sitting here smiling and nodding because none of
this makes any sense to me. Here's here's Here's what
it means is tacking out of the wind means you're

(13:15):
kind of doing a zigzag and correct me if I'm
wrong here, Joe. But you're you've got a direction, so
you're going to go forward, you kind of hang a
bit of a ninety degree and then you come back
into force. Attacking make sense to me. It's the rest
of this is just you know, it's all sailors apologize.
I'm so used to stuff. But yeah, attacking. For those

(13:36):
of you who don't are not aware of what that
is is a sailboat cannot obviously not sailed directly into
the wind, into the oncoming wind, and the oncoming wind, yeah,
it has, So that's what you have to do what's
called tacking. And depending on your boat, your boats design
and everything, and the kind of sails that you have,
you can get pretty close to the wind. And close
to the wind means if the wind is at zero degrees,
and say you can get as close as say thirty degrees,

(14:00):
and that means you're at thirty degrees one side or
the other. Your s is that way, your boat is,
your boat is in that in that direction. So and
what you do is and the way and the way
the sailboats work is when you're running off the wind,
you're getting pushed by the wind. When you're running into
the wind, then your cell is sort of you know
how flu set, it's kind of curved, and you stretch

(14:21):
it out real good and everything, and then that oncoming
wind is going right across that sail, and in the
Bernoulli effect, you know what that is, Okay, the Bernulli
effect create a low pressure thing, and a low pressure
zone is created on the outside of the sail, and
the sail is pulled forward so that when it's when
you're sailing into the wind and the sailboat, you're not
being pushed, You're being pulled by the wind. I feel

(14:43):
like we just did a tiny little episode of how
how stuff works. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, so that's sorry,
sorry for the board, but that's what a tacking is
very helpful. Yeah yeah, and so it's so what you
do is you go, you go a little, you go
aways in one direction and then the hells when you
I was out ready about and all the hands like
they loosened up the jib and and then you swing

(15:05):
the tiller over the side and you and you go
across your your line of direction that the line of
directions were literally Yeah, I think many of us just
need to like ye, fall into the calm, deep voice
of Joe and just like just just kind of jump
on board and say, all right, he knows what he's
talking about, and it doesn't really matter that much. Yeah, yeah,

(15:25):
I guess it doesn't really matter. But just just to
say that if you can't get any closer than sixty
degrees to the wind, and you're gonna have some pretty
slow going when you've got houtcoming wind. So this guy,
Peter Eden uh said that Crowhurst had a tendency to
fall overboard. And they were in the town of Cows
apparently fell overwards several times. Three times. Yeah, yeah, And

(15:46):
and when they were getting aboard the boat to go
to Tynmouth, he fell aboard as abard he fell overboard.
But otherwise Eden said that Crowhurst was a pretty good sailor.
He did say that he was a bit sloppy about navigation,
but he was definitely was actually a pretty good sailor.
But Crowhurst, we should not, as we've not it already,

(16:06):
didn't have any open ocean sailing experience, and it's totally different, right,
pretty much. I think that you when you see a
lot more stuff can happen, you know, Yeah, you don't get.
You don't get crazy big waves and stuff like that. Yeah,
when you're when you're in the channel or sailing close
to close to shore and the storm shows up, you know,
you just go home real fast. Yeah yeah. You can't

(16:28):
do that when you're in the open ocean. Yeah yeah.
So any way, he left and he was sending back
occasional radio messages. But according to his logs were read
later on and after a few weeks to see heat
average no more than a hundred thirty miles a day,
and he had barely passed the coast of court Portugal,
So that not far at all. Really, do you think

(16:49):
about two weeks and he's only made to Portugal and
at this point and he's all he's also radio going
back some some somewhat dishonest accounts of his speed. He's
actually exagger reading his position and the speeds that he's
attaining a bit back on the boat. According to his logs,
it's apparent that he was starting to realize that he
was way out of his depth, and he actually wrote

(17:11):
in his log that he he estimated his odds of
surviving around the world trip at so I feel like
that may even be optimistic though, like from everything that
we know about him, like if he had the tendency
to fall overboard, like you're alone in the middle of
the ocean, well, and think about this too, and he's

(17:35):
if he's off the coast of Portugal, that's in a
fairly temperate zone, the weather is not too harsh, and
he's got to be thinking. So if he's already having
second thoughts, he's he's thinking, oh my god, the weather
when I'm passing the capes is going to be brutal,
and my odds of survival are pretty slim. So yeah,
because running those caps is tough. And also another reason

(17:55):
for his low spirits is the boat is sprung a league,
So that's random boat. Yeah, well that was a problem
in the boat had never been tested. It was a
new design, and I'm sure Joe did and I don't know.
Did you see the pictures of his boat. It's actually
really cool looking because it's super flat on the top.
It's just got this eitty bitty window that's you know,

(18:19):
it looks like it sticks up maybe a foot off
of the top of the boat. Very streamlined, very cool
looking boat. It was a new design, they never tested
it and you know, the only way he could get
water out because he sprung a leak is that the
thing didn't have pumps, so he used a bucket to
go open it up and bucket the water out and

(18:41):
then seal it back up. It's gotta be it's gonna
be hard on morale. Well, and think about it again.
It's just like you said, he's in good seas when
he's doing that. Yeah, And when you're in bad seas
run in the cape. Are you gonna have time to
to go out and go down and you're gonna be
able to leave the till and go down and do
some bailing. Yeah. Yeah, So he's that he's got to
have that on his mind. Well, and did you I

(19:03):
don't know if either of you came across the reason
that he chose the design. Yeah, why he chose You
said they were they were faster. Well, they're faster, but
they also will tip in a situation like the see
talking about. He thought he had to work around for that. Yeah. Yeah,
So his workaround was and he wasn't an inventor kind
of guy, so his idea was to have a big,

(19:25):
big bladder that could fill with their at the top
of the mast because one of those things go over,
of course they're gonna completely capsize. The idea was that
this bladder when I think he had like leveling mechanism
like detectors, maybe mercury switches on on the deck, something
like that. And the idea was it when it started
to go over, that thing would activate and boosh, it
would fill it with air or CEO two or something

(19:47):
and inflate that thing and stopped the boat from capsizing.
And then he had he had come up with an
idea to put some pipes and tanks in the outer
in the outer holes, and that way he could pump
water into whatever hole is sticking up highest. Yeah, and
he put and make it heavier, and then just count

(20:08):
on wave action like an oncoming wave would once he's
got once he's got enough weight in that in that
upper hole, an oncoming wave would raise the top of
the mast high enough to cause the whole boat to
just raise out of the water and tip back down.
The problem is, of course, again he didn't have the
boat long enough. As far as I know, he never
got those things in. No, No, he didn't. So and

(20:28):
and by the way, when he gave himself the odds
fifty odds were if he got his safety gear all installed. Yeah, yeah,
he was. He had a big delomma here because he
realized that he needed to drop out of the race
or die. But if he dropped out of the race,
he'd lose everything he owned. That's tough, yeah, very tough choice.

(20:49):
So apparently he hatched a plan. He would just noodle
around to the South Atlantic for a while, occasionally radio
false positions telling say I'm in the Indian Ocean and
you know, hey, I'm in the Pacific, things like that,
and uh, and keep something and also keep false logs,
and then just hang out there and monitor everybody else's

(21:11):
positions on the radio. So when everybody else said and
had said that they were in the Atlantic and headed
home and we're safely well ahead of him, and he
knew he would come in last, said he would, he
would radio back to England and he would come in last,
and he'd have a good adventure story to tell. And
but since it came in last and didn't qualify for
the prize, we figured they wouldn't scrutinize his log books

(21:33):
too closely. It seems fair, I think, yeah, because if
he had one, they would have scrutinized his log books
when faking logs, because I mean, you've got to put
a lot of stuff in the log that to me
would just be so much work. Yeah. Of course, Luckily
for him, he had a lot of time on his hands.
He was just sailing calm season, kind of temperate areas,

(21:54):
you know, just chilling out. Yeah. On December ten, about
six weeks after about six weeks to see, he radioed
his press agent, remember him, Rodney Holworthy, uh, saying he
just sailed in one day a record two. Paul Worth
used that and other other things to keep up the
buzz at home, and he was doing his job. And

(22:16):
obviously he never sailed that thing ud for I mean,
actually it's maybe conceivable. Maybe he had a good day
and he had a tail wind and he didn't have
any water in the holes. Yeah, he spent all all
the deep bailing and everything. Maybe maybe he did, I
don't know, but I'm pretty sure he didn't. Around Christmas time,
Crowhurst Radio didn't saying that he was somewhere off Cape Town.

(22:37):
But at this point he was actually sailing past brazil Um.
He was weeks behind everybody else. And then not too
long after that he uh started claiming that he had
a faulty generator in his radio broadcast, and then he
just shut down transmissions entirely. He wanted show at one
point in South America for repairs, which broke the race rules.

(22:57):
Of course, you can't go ashore. But at this point
and now he didn't really care anymore. He just made
sure to keep a little profile so nobody identified him.
Bran Mutzier dropped out of the race after rounding Cape Horn.
He was he was actually in the lead, but he
just sort of like, you know, I just said, hell
with this. I think I'm just gonna sail on and
got it to heating, and so that's what he did. Yeah,
he eventually did. I think he was ce for three

(23:19):
or four hundred days by himself before he finally made landfall.
I know. I mean seriously, I mean, if you if
you had decided to round the cape and you decide, well,
I don't really feel like doing this anymore, why don't
you cruise over to Sway and put it put in
for a while and get to get a few beers
and have some human company. Yeah, I thought, I thought
he uh, I thought, Bernard. He dropped out of the

(23:42):
race after he was back in the Atlantic. Yeah, and
it's right after he round at Cape Horn. So Cape
Horn is a tip of South America. Oh okay, sorry,
I'm getting him. I'm getting good Africa Cape Okay, that's
where I'm because I always think of the Horde of Africa.
So that's that's where I'm screwing this. Yeah, you know,
Actually the Horn of Africa is in the Indian Sea.

(24:03):
It's like the Gulf of Aid and then all that
stuff that's in Horn of Africa. Okay, sorry, sorry to
be sorry to be lecturing here. No, no, no, I
know them both, but I'm I'm intermed mixing them. Yeah. Yeah,
it was geography and stupid Globe geography. Back to so
after him, want to say, dropped out of the race.

(24:24):
That left three sailors Robin Knox Johnston, Nigel Tetley, and
Donald Crowhurst. Robin Knox Johnston arrived home first. He got
home April nineteen six, and then he won the Golden Globe. Yeah.
Crowhurst was out of contact, but everybody was interpretating his
progress based on his past reported positions and the speeds
that they could estimate based on those distances between those points.

(24:49):
And so it looked, based on that interpretation like Crowhurst
might actually beat Nigel Tetley for the best time, and
so there was a lot of excitement back home. So
on April tenth, nineteen sixty and Crowhurst finally broke his
radio silence and he said he was headed back up
the Atlantic having cleared Cape Horn, and of course Hallward
sent out a press release, a press one nuts because

(25:10):
it looked like Crowhurst was a plucky amateur who was
in serious contention for the five thousand pound prize. Lots
of excitement all the way around. But of course Crowhurst
was relying on Tetley because he knew that Tetley was
had a two week lead on him, so he was
he was very depending on not winning. Well. I think
he should have waited a little longer before he broke
his radio silence because Tetley of course was aware that

(25:34):
Crowhurst was was back in the race and was in
the Atlantic hot on his heels as far as he knew.
Of course, of course Crowhurst was it really wasn't speeding
that fast. He didn't wasn't all that motivated to get
home from now he was. Yeah, but Tetley believe that
Crowhurst was hot on his heels and so he put

(25:55):
on as much sale as he could. Tetley, by the way,
it was also in another forty ft Trimarran, so he
put on loss of sale and he uh found himself
in a storm in the mid Atlantic. He didn't shorten
his sales nearly as much as he should have. And
shorten your sales means you take in sale, you have
less sale because you don't want to be demasted in
storms another sailing term. But so because of that, his

(26:19):
Tribemran was damaged in the storm and started taking on
water off the Azores and the boat sank. He took
to his life raft and he was rescued by rescue
type people. Yeah, rescued I as seen people in the helicopters.
Yeah yeah, probably Yeah. So he was pulled out of

(26:40):
the water. Made thirtieth, nineteen sixty nine. And of course
he's still a crow who still had a functioning radio.
So when he heard the news that Tetley had sunk, well,
that was really bad news for him. Needless to say, Uh,
his long his log entries about this point showed that
he was in a deteriorating mental state for the the
last several weeks of his log entries and he wrote poems,

(27:04):
random thoughts, philosophical ramblings. You put in fake and real
log entries. And then in the final page of the log,
which was ended on July one, nine, he wrote, and
I quote, it is finished. It is the mercy that
was all caps. I will resign the game. So that
was his last entry. So wait, okay, I'm confused. Robin

(27:28):
Knox Johnston arrived on April twenty twond so why why
was Crowhurst gonna win? Didn't Robin Knox Johnston already win?
Remember now he won the Golden Globe was getting there
first and getting their fastest. Knox Johnston got there first,
but he did he Crowhurst potentially could get there in

(27:51):
a shorter amount of time. It was two separate got it? Okay, okay,
I get it. I've been laboring under false assumptions. Max
Johnston was in a monohole boat, which tends to be
slower than trim Ran too. Yeah, so I'm sure he
had a good pokey time. On July tenth, nineteen nine,
the Royal Mail vessel party crossing the mid Atlantic towards

(28:12):
the Caribbean, spotted the time with electron drifting with only
a single sale up. They boarded it found the boat
was cluttered and dirty, with dirty dishes, filthy bedding, and
no crew, nobody to be seen. So the captain of
the Picardy hauled the trim ran on board his ship
and they sailed on and started to read the three

(28:34):
log books that they found on there, and the air
search was begun for Crowhurst, and of course the news
of his disappearance spread worldwide and made him very famous.
Of course, he was already kind of famous because a
lot of people were following this and there, of course
lots of people reported sighting him at all kinds of
places around the world, including the UK and Cape Verity
and everywhere else, and the British media for a time

(28:54):
even staked out the family home thinking he might he
might show up there or something. And two days later
the captain of the Picardy was mostly through the log books.
There were also other papers found on board the boat
which showed the actual navigation course that he had been following,
and not the fake log books. And so the captain
reported what he found. And I also mentioned the suicidal

(29:16):
sounding the last entry, which leads you to think a
certain thing don't believe it or not, and the AIRCA
rescue was called off, and the mystery of the ghost
ship Time with Electron lives on to this day. No
one knows what happened to the crew of the time
with the thing that really I had a really hard
time getting ahold of with this story and it's your

(29:37):
head around. Well, no, it's just what's not so apparent
when you just read it is the amount of time
that it takes place over fast. No. And I watched
there's a great documentary on this called deep Water, and
I watched it. It's really interesting and it really goes
through a lot of it, but it really gave me

(29:59):
the sense of how much time this whole thing took,
and how much time Crowhurst spent by himself on that boat.
I mean when his boat was found, it was two
hundred and forty some days by himself. That's a huge
amount of time. Now he went on land once. Yeah,

(30:25):
speaking about speaking of spending a huge amount of time
at sea, there, there's actually a book about a guy
who took over three years to sail around the world. Yeah.
And the book that I was going to recommend to
you what is called Sailing Alone around the World by
Joshua Slocum. Joshua Slocum was actually a quasi famous guy.
He was a New England sea captain and he set
out in April eighteen on his boat the Spray, which

(30:47):
was a thirty seven foot wouldn't sloop, and he sailed
in a little more than three years and about forty
six thousand miles all around the world. Was he by himself? Yeah,
he was by himself three Now he didn't he didn't
do it NonStop. Yeah, yeah, but over three years, I
would hope, yeah, hopefully put a games up a little

(31:08):
shortly from time to time. But even that, I mean,
that's quite the adventure. Yeah, and all of this, I'm
sure the accounts of it shortly were probably really cool too.
I'm sure he was really ready to cut loose and
kick up his heels many many months at sea. Go
check it out now, well, don't check it out now,
Wait until we end the show, then check it out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

(31:31):
we still have a lot of show ahead of us
because we got to talk about theories, what happened to
Donald Crowhurst and how did the time with the Electron
become a ghost ship or a ghost boat? Yeah, or
a ghost tram in yeah, or whatever. So theories in
no particular order. Theory one is pirates. Yeah, you guys

(31:52):
have any thoughts on that. I didn't find a whole
lot of record of I did look for this, I
actually thought about it. I didn't see a whole lot
of records of pirates operating in that part of the
sea in the late sixties. I couldn't find a whole
lot of accountings of that. And it also just seems

(32:12):
like super counterintuitive like that, it's not like there's a
lot of stuff missing from the boat. Well actually, not
like the boat was missing. It's just it was just
this one broke dude. Well, typically, you know, pirates, like
in the in the Caribbean, for example, pirates now in
that area tend to um you know, and it could
be a similar much pirates they tend to kill the
owner and throw his body overboard and take the boat.

(32:35):
So yeah, they would have taken the boat. So you
want to put the pirate theory arrest I kind of think, so, yeah, okay,
well that was short lived. Next theory and this this
has some plausibility. That next theory is that he fell overboard,
which is entirely possible. Yeah, apparently he had a propensity

(32:56):
to fall overboard. He had to constantly do I actually
I really unfortunately kind of lean towards this one heavily
because of all the repairs that he was constantly doing.
Um we didn't I know, we didn't talk about it initially,
but who was the guy that went on the the
early voyage with him? Yeah, when Eden was with him.

(33:19):
One of the issues that they were having is the
screws in the that we're holding the rudder to the
boat continually were vibrating loose and falling out. I don't
even understand how that happens though, like Brandon designed, haven't
figured it out. They're not locked in their screws. And
he what was the guy's name again, Eden, I'll remember

(33:41):
it now. He recommended welding him. He's like, this is great,
but if you want to take this voyage, you need
to weld those down, which never happened. And it was
even some superglue would have been helping something, but it
as long as he talked about, you know, lost the
fourth screw today and so I just I can just
imagine him constantly being out there when you're on your

(34:04):
own and you're a little loopy from just being on
your own nothing else, just ivan in the sun for
two days by myself, and you're just kind of spaced
out and you go to grab something as it's falling away,
and then yeah, and no way to get back in
the boat, and the boat just keeps going. Yeah, it
doesn't stop. Ye, intelligent sailors, I think tie themselves to

(34:28):
the boat usually. I usually people have lifelines that they
but h and but you know even that, I mean,
if you go overboard, it can be pretty tough to
get back into the boat. I mean, it's entirely possible.
But I don't think he was wearing a lifeline if
he did fell overboard, because it would have it would
have been there. I mean, his body still probably still
would have been there. Well. And and he did, um

(34:49):
A lot of the guys were on this in this race,
must say and he both we're given tape recorders and
video recorders to just log what they were do doing.
And Monta say, has And and Crowhurst have a bunch
of footage of themselves just tooling around on the boat
do in their everyday thing. And they're in shorts, they've

(35:11):
got no shirt on there in the sun, and I
never saw a lifeline tied to anybody. Yeah, I would
imagine that would be more cumbersome on a daily basis
because you're walking back and forth and it's snagging, and
you go one way and then the other and it's
just looped around. I can see that being a giant pain,
which would explain why you wouldn't wear it all the time. Yeah,

(35:34):
heavy c s would be the only time I think
you would do it, or if you had a hi
perpensity for falling over I'm just saying, if you've fallen
overboard on like a small voyage five or six times,
maybe like use your brain a little bit, connect yourself
to that thing that is the only thing that's keeping
you alive. But people get lazy when they get comfortable

(35:55):
and used to Yeah, so anyway, well let's little get
that some points that's a strong possibility for that theory.
Of course, the next theory, and this is the most
prevalent theory out there, is suicide. And certainly that's supported
by the last log book entry. Although you could interpret
that plausibly, he says, uh, he said, I will resign

(36:15):
the game. You could interpret that as him just saying
I'm going to drop out of the race, or he's
gonna admit to everything, or possibly he's going to get busted. Yeah,
it could be that, or it could be by resigning
the game, he means he's going to offer himself. It's
hard to say, all right, yeah, it's all It's especially
hard to say since, like I haven't read any of

(36:36):
his other log stuff, like what the kind of tone
of it? You know, you can get a sense of
stuff like that sometimes. But but here's why, here's why
I don't really believe the suicide thing entirely. I mean,
it's still possible. But if it were me and I
was going to commit suicide, and of course he probably
wasn't entirely in his right mind, but he left a

(36:58):
lot of evidence behind, uh that that he basically lied
the whole time. And you know, of course, you want
to think about what your reputation is going to be
beyond the grave. You want to think about that. And
if it had been me, I would have checked the
logs and all the other documentation overboards, so there'd be
there would have been no evidence. I swear I saw
somewhere that in this is in line with the suicide

(37:21):
theory is that somebody had said that he had taken
one of the log books with him overboard, which I
could never really substantiate, And also question how do you
know exactly. I've heard that too, that they thought it
took a log But how do you know that? I mean,
we're did the spine of the log books a log
book one to four, and so you know he is missing, yeah,

(37:45):
or in the logs. Maybe you've just got a big jump,
But then you still don't know, because I mean, it's
also it is possible that he just didn't keep logs
for a gap of time. It's also possible at some
point you accidentally dropped it overboard. He had it on
when he fell over, he got back in the boat
and it didn't go. But so as soon as that

(38:07):
goes On the other hand, he did have a pretty
strong motivation because not only was he going to be
financially ruined, he was going to be humiliated and exposed
as a liar. And also he's probably feeling a little
bit guilty about Nigel Tetley, because Nigel Tetley arguably wouldn't
have said wouldn't have have sunk not for him, So

(38:28):
maybe he was feeling a little a little remorseful about that,
and so maybe all those things combined to driving to suicide. Yeah,
he well, and I know he had a lot of hesitation.
I mean, if it wasn't for the contract that he
had to sign. From what I've seen, I get the
feeling that he would have never set sail, because I
think it was the thirty of October, the day before

(38:49):
he left, he went to his financier and his publicist
and said, this boat is not ready. I this boat
is an't ready. I can't take this boat it out
And they both looked at him and said, what do
you mean. You have to go? You you have to go.
It's too late to back out. And you know, it's

(39:12):
a rock and a hard place. He was in a
tough spot, it's a terrible spot. Well he did put
himself there, I mean, yeah, you did. But I still
feel bad for the guy, Yeah, of course, yeah. Well,
I mean it's it's heart wrenching because of course he
had he was married and a four kids, three or
four children. Well, and didn't I think I read somewhere
that the guy who ended up with the money, who

(39:33):
ended up with the money, Wally ended up with the
knock Knox Johnson. That's that's right. He's the only one
that made and didn't he give most of it to
the children of Yeah he did, Yeah, Yeah, and even
after it came out that you know, he was kind
of a liar and all that stuff, the money was

(39:54):
never I mean, you gotta feel bad for the family,
you know, because they've lost They've lost their husband and father,
and on top of that, he getting a lot of
really bad peoplicity. Yeah, well, I imagine. I mean, it's
just like anybody who becomes a public figure like that.
You're you know that there's two frames of mind. Either
I know, I'm going to make a bunch of money

(40:14):
from this in other avenues, so I'm going to give
this away knowing that I'm not going to be hurting
in the long run because I'll make money on other ventures.
Or there's, as you guys said, the magnanimous perspective of yeah,
my my winning doesn't matter because of this other tragedy
that happened. I mean, it's hard to say what motivated

(40:34):
I mean, I'm glad he did it because it was
something to do. Yeah, And I have no idea he
might have been independently wealthy anyway, so who knows. Okay,
do you guys have any more thoughts on the suicide theory? No? Okay,
last theory. This theory is that there is a seagoing troupicbra. Yeah,

(40:55):
there is called the krack and yeah, I've heard of that.
So there is there's a school of thinking that perhaps
the crack and got him. Yeah. I just reached up,
plucked him out the boat and took him away pretty much. Yeah. Actually,
probably what it did is it grabbed the boat and
it's in his harry paw, turned it upside down and

(41:16):
shook him out of the boat into his mouth, and
then gently set the boat back down. And he was
the only thing that fell out. Well, that would explain
why the one log book was gone too, because it
fell out to Yeah, but none of the dishes or anything. No,
that's true. Good point. They weren't broken and that yeah
the good point. Okay, so much for that there. Okay, Yeah,
you know what, I always like to bring things out

(41:38):
of left field. Here's the one theory that I've never
come across that I wonder about. His boat was found
in the Atlantic and it was what a hundred miles
from the as ors. Is that correct something like that. Yeah,
it was about a hundred miles when when that ship
founded on the tenth, it was about a hundred of
miles away from the ass which it's just a string

(42:01):
of islands that kind of I don't even know how
far they they're five miles off the coast of Spain,
but it's still a relatively temperate area. And he's already
broken the rules once and gone ashore, so I could
conceivably see him writing this post, uh, this log entry

(42:22):
saying the game is up, going to an island and
just pushing the boat off, And because the boat was
found with a sail up, so I could see where
he just said, I'm going to just start a new life.
I'm just gonna start a new life. I'm just gonna
walk away. I'm sorry for my wife and family, but
the hell with this. I'm out. I just can't take

(42:42):
this anymore. And maybe it's because those islands are so
small in their small communities that this this might just
be completely wrong. But I just wonder about that, because
he wasn't that far off and heat in his course
when he found out about Lee, he hung a right
hand turn and started heading in that direction rather than

(43:06):
continuing north to England. So yeah, I mean the ass
is a possibility, but you know, I mean I just
don't know that. The only problem that I have with
that theory is that, um, he could start over with
nothing in the ass or he could go home and
start off with nothing again and have be with his
family and so but if he if he went home,

(43:29):
he would be returning in disgrace. He would lose everything
he had. And if he chose to disappear and not
return home, his family would likely have some kind of
but you know, he probably had life insurance or something
like that something. You know, it's not it's it protected
his family financially a little bit, get them a little

(43:52):
more something. Yeah, And it protected him because you can
take on a new name and nobody knows what a
dipstick you were and what a foolish mistake you made.
You can actually actually everybody everybody knows that because they've
read the log books, that you foolish. But no, everybody

(44:12):
that he meets from then on forward, he's not going
to operate under this stigma of oh, you don't do
business with Crowhurst. He's a liar. He tries to pull
the wool over your eyes. He can just be you know,
some random dude shows up on the island and hires
on with a ship and just goes about his business

(44:32):
and just he's free of it. It's washes his hands. Yeah.
The only problem I have with that theory is I
still think he would have sanitized the boat. He would
have taken the incriminating stuff. Yeah, I definitely think that
he should have. He should have would think that because
you know, if he set the set the boat off,
he would want people to think that he just was

(44:54):
washed overboard or fell overboard. Yeah, and so that's fair.
I think that's a fair point. But but but sanitizing the boat,
I don't know that that wouldn't look more suspicious. That
would looks kind of funny too. You know, if he
had done the laundry and washed all the dishes and
all of that, would that have stood out to us
in history as stranger than the cabin was a wreck? No? No, no,

(45:16):
I don't. I don't mean I'm sanitized as in removing
criminating materials like the log books and charts and stuff
like that. That's stuff that stuff that you know that
showed the entire world that he had been lying this
entire time. But would it have looked But that's the
thing again, that would have looked bad to how many
log books he left with. Well what I mean, I

(45:37):
guess the thing you do in that situation is you
just throw almost everything that was on the ship overboard
and make it look like you got hit by a
huge wave. It washed, you know, washed everything out, watched
everything out. It's reasonable that there was you know, not
a whole lot that survived or whatever, and let go
about your marry Wayne. Yeah, I mean there's you knows,

(46:00):
there's plausible excuses for that, you know, like, well, you know,
I took on a bunch of water with a sneaker wave,
you know, filled half filled the cabin, and I had
had everything out on deck drying out, you know, and
then theother sneaker wave came along and washed it all overboard.
Of course he's not there to explain all this or
you you know, dunk them in the water and let
lay them out to dry, and they're so you know, crinkled,
and I think is all running and everything that nobody

(46:21):
can decipher what you were writing. But I don't know,
there's ways to do it. There's ways to cover your tracks. Yeah,
and that's that's the hardest part with this, is we
all it's so easy first armchair quarterback that and come
up with better ways to do it. But again, some
days on your own, and granted you've got a lot
of time to think through this, but I think you

(46:43):
have a lot of time to think through this and
then think through it again and again and just drive
yourself bad. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. It sounds like
that's what happened to him. Yeah, it's sad. I feel
so I feel bad for the guy. Well, okay, so
much for that theory, So maybe maybe who knows, um
any other any other theories? Now, that was the only

(47:03):
other thing I had was the ash. There's not too
many theories on this one, but I didn't want to
say one last thing, and that what's really sad is
that he had a way out. He didn't have to
kill himself if if you need, I'm kind of torn
between being falling overboard and killing him. So I wasna
you lean towards the suicide theory if well, if you committed,

(47:25):
if he committed suicide, then it didn't he didn't have
to do it. He could have. He could have. Actually,
there was a way that he could get back to
England fool everybody and not be disgraced, which is all
he had to do was scuttle his boat. Yeah, all
he had to do. That's I didn't even think about that. Yeah,
that's so true. Everybody else was doing it, I know.

(47:49):
I mean, it's all the cool kids are doing it.
If he doesn't get the money, but yeah, I mean
he he only problem was he didn't have a radio
transmitter that had cocked out. I don't know if I
mentioned that or not, but as radio he he seized
radio transmissions. But it turns out when they found about
the transmitter wasn't working. So at some point, this was
after after he needs to send a couple of transmissions

(48:09):
saying he was headed back up the Atlantic, but apparently
it stopped working. It actually did stop working. Yeah, so
he couldn't get a distress call out. But that's easily
solved because he was All he needed to do was
head towards say, you know the coast of North Africa
or maybe Portugal, Spain, and we get close, get to
within maybe just barely side the land. Stuff. A bunch

(48:32):
of provisions to make sure the wind and the current
are moving your direction and then open all the sea
cocks and watched that thing go down. And he did
have a lifeboat on. And so the thing is is
he could have done that, of course, you know, and
in the in the in the mayhem of the boats sinking,
you know, it's like I didn't have time to grab
the log books, you know, And so he just barely

(48:52):
escapes with his life, and nobody ever, people might be
a little suspicious, but nobody will ever be the wiser.
And he doesn't. He's not disgraced. He doesn't lose his
house and his business. That's all he had to do. Gosh,
I didn't even think of that. Yeah, foolish because I
put off the deep end with the ads. But that's
a much simpler answer that would have been, Yeah, that

(49:14):
would have been the way to do it. And frankly,
but you know, and this is another reason to lean
towards um, towards being falling overboarder being washed overboard, is
that I'm kind of surprised if he chose to kill himself,
that he didn't scuttle the boat, because you know, the
same same thing he winds up with the drinks, and
the drinking drowns, but he leaves all the damning evidence behind.

(49:35):
But if he sunk the boat and drowned himself, then
everybody would just assume that he had been lost at sea,
and he would be kind of a national hero instead
of a national instead of being disgraced as he was.
It's very true. Yeah, so yeah, it's kind of seems
like he was just washed overboard. Well, you know, I
don't know, it's hard to say, because I mean, it
didn't occur to you guys to scuttle the boat. Maybe

(49:57):
it didn't occur to him. Yeah, it occurs to Joe
because he scuttles boats all the time. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You know sometimes you gotta you know, you gotta just
you know, pour gasoline all over every time. Did I
say that's damn it? Yeah? So anyway, too bad? Um,
I hope this is like confused all of our listeners. Yeah,

(50:21):
So write us your thoughts and tell me what now
you've thought. Now you've thought this all carefully through with us,
What do you guys think? And if you want to
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(50:43):
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(51:04):
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(51:25):
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it for this week. I hope you folks enjoyed listening,

(51:47):
So for Thinking Sideways Podcast TATA by Everybody Owe