A Voyage For Madmen
Page 27
Tacita Dean also had four words from the very end of Donald Crowhurst’s logbook carved, in his handwriting, into a wooden guardrail at Neptune Court. The location provides the clearest view of the distance between human aspiration and fallibility: one can now stand at that rail, looking down at Suhaili – not a boat’s length away – and read between one’s hands:
‘IT IS THE MERCY.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EACH BOOK IS ITS OWN PECULIAR VOYAGE. This one has been marked by the people who have helped me.
My closest shipmate has been my editor Dan Conaway. Dan sees forest and trees, and allows no arrangement of twigs to lie unexamined. His obtuse squiggles, withering use of the word ‘quaint’, nearly illegible scrawlings all over the pages of every draft, and his ability to put his finger on what is wrong and show me what would be right, have raised the quality of the book well above what I might have been happy with. I’m profoundly grateful to him not only for all this, but also for his consistent grace in dealing with me when I have been less gracious with him.
Behind every great editor is an assistant, largely unsung, whose job is long, brutal, and unglamorous. This is the seventenths of the iceberg that is the foundation of seeing the finished manuscript into print. Dan’s assistant Nikola Scott did this with unrelenting enthusiasm. She also made valuable points that materially improved the book.
Martha Cameron copy-edited the book. I’m thankful for her eye, ear, and erudition.
Andrew Franklin of Profile Books, London, provided me with page by page comments that helped the book. Nicky White and Kate Griffin at Profile have felt like partners through two books. Nicky located, bought, and sent me research books that I could not have done without.
This business is not easy. My agent and friend Sloan Harris is courtly, honest, and a passionate advocate. He makes it seem possible and gives me courage. Thanks to Teri Steinberg.
Jonathan Raban urged me to dig deeper in certain areas, advice that had an incalculable effect of improving the whole book, and I’m very grateful to him.
Sam Manning’s enthusiasm and ability to produce the maps I see in my head, but better, have been a boon to two of my books.
Tacita Dean shares my obsession with parts of this story. She has been generous with her work and thoughts and insights, and has allowed me to use her electrifying photograph of Teignmouth Electron. Counting her a friend has been one of the unanticipated joys of this book. Thanks also to Dale McFarland and all at the Frith Street Gallery, London.
Charlotte Brown at News International, London, helped me find my way through the Sunday Times photo archives. This was in a subterranean cavern in London’s East End that had the homey feel of wartime Britain; the sort of place that needed a real, old-fashioned archivist with a sixth sense for the crucially misplaced, and that was Charlotte.
Thanks also to:
Derek Kelsall for his comments on multihulls and Nigel Tetley; Don Love at Production International helped me with a video, as did Rory Healy of the BBC;
Matt Murphy at WoodenBoat magazine gave me access to his magazine’s incredible library, a gem from which lies in my book; Jon Wilson, Matt Murphy, and all at WoodenBoat have changed the world in an important way, and made life richer for me, and tens of thousands of others; Steve and Laurie White of Brooklin, Maine, made my stay there a happier one; Joel White was a deep influence, and will always be;
Cynthia Hartshorn on Cape Cod; Chris and Petey Noyes in Maine; Penny and Robert Germaux, Frank Field, Harriet Guggenheim in Spain; Irina Zamorina in New York; Greg and Sara Johnson, and Doug Grant and Kathryn Van Dyke in Mill Valley; Howard Sharp in wildest Canterbury; and always Annie Nichols;
Betsy Beers for humour and wisdom; Carole Fungaroli for putting me in the canon, and being my friend and most valuable resource at Georgetown University;
Marion and Jeric Strathallan for giving me a home in London, twice, greatly facilitating my research there; Mary Elliot for her room; my mother, Barbara Nichols, for that peculiarly right place in damp, rainy Spain where I’ve now written big chunks of three books; Liz and Tony Sharp for two productive stays in Mallorca; Joan deGarmo for a haven between incarnations; David Nichols for belief and encouragement; Matt and Sheila deGarmo for being uncomplaining and generous hosts during too much coming and going.
Matt has made so much possible for me over the years since I staggered ashore shipwrecked that he deserves more than just a mention at the back of the book.
Sara Nelson has been a good friend during the writing of this book. Thanks for the cards.
SOURCES
Sunday Times
Daily Mirror
Sunday Mirror
The Kent Messenger
J. R. L. Anderson, The Ulysses Factor
Chay and Maureen Blyth, Innocent Aboard
Charles A. Borden, Sea Quest
Francis Chichester, Gypsy Moth IV Circles the World
Adlard Coles, Peter Bruce, Heavy Weather Sailing, 4th Edition
Tacita Dean, Teignmouth Electron
Richard Henderson, Singlehanded Sailing, 2nd Edition
Eric Hiscock, Voyaging Under Sail, etc.
Hydrographic Office of the British Navy, Ocean Passages for the World
Bill King, Capsize
Robin Knox-Johnston, A World of My Own
Bernard Moitessier, The Long Way; Tamata and the Alliance; Cape Horn, the Logical Route
Jonathan Raban, The Oxford Book of the Sea
John Ridgway, The Road to Ardmore
Nigel Tetley, Trimaran Solo
Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:
From A World of My Own by Robin Knox-Johnston, copyright © 1969 by Robin Knox-Johnston. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., and reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London, on behalf of Robin Knox-Johnston.
Bernard Moitessier, translated by William Rodarmor, Tamata and the Alliance, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Sheridan House Inc., 1995.
Bernard Moitessier, translated by William Rodarmor, The Long Way, Dobb’s Ferry, NY: Sheridan House Inc., 1995.
Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, copyright © 1995 by the authors. Reproduced by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited and The McGraw Hill Companies.
All photographs copyrighted by the News International and the Sunday Times, except for the photograph Teignmouth Electron, Cayman Brac, 1999, copyright © 1999 by Tacita Dean, for which the author thanks Tacita Dean, the Frith Street Gallery, London, and the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; and photograph of Suhaili, taken by Peter Nichols.
All maps by Samuel F. Manning, copyright © 2001.
Moitessier’s Joshua. Made of boilerplate, like her skipper.
John Ridgway. He had no love of the sea. The voyage was simply an ordeal to endure.
On departure day, Chay Blyth did not yet know how to sail.
Ridgway aboard English Rose IV moments before collision.
The forging of a strong bond. From left to right: Tetley, King, Moitessier, Fougeron aboard King’s Galway Blazer II at Plymouth. Rivalry was put aside and the sailors became close friends.
Robin Knox-Johnston. A psychiatrist who saw him before he sailed found him ‘distressingly normal’.
Knox-Johnston’s Suhaili leaving London, low in the water with a year’s supply of corned beef.
Knox-Johnston on Suhaili’s bowsprit. He didn’t like to wear a saftey harness.
Bernard Moitessier. He went to sea to save his soul, but found himself in a race.
Moitessier demonstrates his chosen form of communication at sea.
Bill King’s Galway Blazer II was conceived for such a voyage, but not a race.
Naval officer Nigel Tetley. He read about the race in the Sunday papers.
Tetley’s Victress. ‘I can think of nothi
ng that was right about that boat for that race.’
Loïck Fougeron under way. After his first storm at sea, the decision to drop out was an easy one.
Donald Crowhurst. ‘I feel like somebody who’s been given a tremendous opportunity to impart a message.’
Donald Crowhurst’s logbook.
Moitessier. Not since Captain Nemo had a man felt so comfortable and self-sufficient at sea.
Nigel Tetley’s lonely Christmas dinner.
Crowhurst at the start of his voyage – his lines were tangled and he was towed back ashore.
Teignmouth Electron being unloaded from the Picardy at Santo Domingo.
The interior of Teignmouth Electron at the end of its voyage.
Final resting place of Teignmouth Electron. Cayman Brac, 1999.
Suhaili enshrined at the National Maritime Museum. Greenwich, England, 2000.
* Still, they can disappear and perish at sea, as did Canadian Gerry Roufs in the 1996 Vendée Globe race.
*This was not the first time two men had rowed across the Atlantic: George Harbo and Frank Samuelson, Norwegian immigrant fishermen from New Jersey, did it first in an 18-foot lapstrake dory, departing from New York City on 6 June, 1896, reaching St Mary’s in the Scilly Islands fifty-five days later.
*This describes the trim-tab vane gears used at the time. Modern wind vanes often use slightly different principles.
*Whitbread’s mild interest in Crowhurst’s circumnavigation would later grow into something much larger when the brewery became the sponsor of a major international sailing marathon, the Whitbread Round-the-World Race, the sailing world’s grand prix event, featuring a fleet of fully crewed maxi sailing yachts, which took place every four years through the late 1970s, the 1980s, and the early 1990s.
*This doesn’t only apply to large ships; when my 27-foot yacht was sinking in the North Atlantic in 1983, a 900-foot-long American container ship, the Almeria Lykes, responded promptly to my Mayday call, left its course, and steamed up over the horizon to rescue me. No thought was given to the size of my boat or to the singular number of its crew. The Almeria Lykes was on its way from Rotterdam to Galveston, Texas. On its passage east across the Atlantic several weeks before, it had rescued a yachtsman who had suffered a heart attack and taken him to Bermuda.
*A year and a half after this voyage, Knox-Johnson was hospitalised for appendicitis. There was scar tissue on the removed appendix – he had, indeed, suffered from appendicitis at sea, and had been very lucky that it had healed by itself.
*I’m happy to report that Suhaili was only on loan to the museum. She is now – March 2002 – back in Falmouth, where Knox-Johnson is having her re-caulked and made ready for sea again.