First Man In

by Ant Middleton

  ‘I’m a man down, now that Ben has gone,’ I told him. ‘I need you more than ever. I’ve got your back.’

  As far as I was concerned, this was a line drawn under it. Chris had apologised. He had promised to sort himself out. He was in. But news of my decision was greeted by the others like a wet fart.

  ‘Chris will be staying with us, full stop,’ I told them. ‘I can’t go from nine men to seven men. I don’t want to hear anything else about it.’

  I understood their response, but it was essential – now more than ever – that we all united together as a team. The next leg of the journey was going to be a killer seventeen-day slog over 1,600 miles of open ocean.

  We pointed the boat west, in the direction of Restoration Island, off the coast of Australia. As the wind filled both sails, I noticed with delight that Chris had turned himself around. His attitude was better, he was helpful and positive and getting out of bed. Watching him from my place at the tiller, I was glad I hadn’t given up on him.

  It didn’t last. As the voyage grew arduous, and the twin vultures of hunger and boredom started eating us alive once more, he crumbled. He slept in and, when I ordered him to get up, he accused me once again of belittling him and treating him ‘like a ten-year-old’. I didn’t know where all this ‘kid’ stuff was coming from, and I had no interest in finding out. But what I knew for sure was that Chris seemed like a classic case of a man who had demons that he’d not made friends with. There seemed to be a deep and raging anger inside him that I guess was somehow connected to his paranoia about being viewed as a child. The tragedy was that, by embracing this darkness and making it an ally, he’d be able to access an almost limitless battery of energy. Forget Timor, where Bligh and his crew ended up, he could sail to the moon. But, as it was, these demons were taking his soul.

  And, sure enough, carried on the hot ocean wind, I began hearing the whispers again; men threatening to leave because they couldn’t deal with him. One afternoon, Luke asked to have a word with me in the stern, which was the only place on Bounty’s End where anyone could have anything like a private conversation.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ he said carefully. ‘Why are you concentrating all your energy on something that’s not working?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve given him so many chances and put your head on the chopping block for him so many times. Why are you neglecting us, the rest of the crew?’

  ‘Do you really feel like that?’ I said. ‘That I’m neglecting you lot?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘We’d love a bit of the time and energy you’re putting into him.’

  That was it. He had to go. And I knew exactly how to manipulate him into walking himself off that gangplank. The next time he overslept, I aimed at little speech right at the centre of that brittle little heart of his.

  ‘You’re nothing but a fucking burden,’ I told him. ‘Who put you on your high horse and told you you’re a good sailor? You’re not. You haven’t got a fucking clue. You’re a liability. It’s like looking after a child, a fucking baby. We’re all nursing you. From now on, do what you want. Just keep yourself out of our way. You can be a passenger aboard our vessel. We will get you to the end, but when you get there, know this: it hasn’t been you, it’s been us.’

  He reacted exactly as I expected him to.

  ‘I don’t deserve this,’ he said. ‘I want off the boat.’

  After giving a sheepish interview to the camera, he was picked up by a launch from the safety boat. We watched that dark element depart with pure joy in our souls. The next time I’d see his face would be staring out of a tabloid newspaper: he’d been handed a suspended sentence for harassing an ex-girlfriend and threatening to throw acid in her face. In a single day he called her fifty-seven times, from nine different numbers. He even went to her house and shouted through her letterbox. And guess what he shouted? ‘I don’t deserve this.’

  The next two weeks passed in a daze. By now the arduousness of the voyage and the lack of food and water were truly taking their toll. All of us, including me, were sitting on the bones of our arses. Back at Vanuatu we’d felt as if we were eating like kings but, in all truth, we weren’t. It was mostly bits of fish and crabs and fruit and veg. I could see people’s minds slipping as they struggled to stay in the game. By the time we reached Restoration Island I was struggling even to get up a tree and grab a few coconuts. But at least the island lived up to its name.

  We met its only occupant, long-bearded David Glasheen, an ex-stock market millionaire who’d been there for twenty years, having lost millions in a financial crash. Although he was forbidden from giving us food, he did let us have a nice drink of rainwater. We fished off the boat for sustenance and I managed to bury an axe in my foot, all the way to the bone, while chopping wood. Luke stitched me up, three in the foot and one in the shin. All I had to do was prevent it getting infected. That meant keeping it dry at all times, which was not going to be easy. But at least, with Ben and Chris now history, the last two weeks and 1,400 miles of the voyage should be free of negativity and politics.

  Well, that’s what I thought. As we were leaving Restoration Island, I asked Conrad to hoist the sails and get moving, and told a couple of the other lads to put all the pots and pans away. But to my surprise, Conrad refused.

  ‘Let’s put the pots and pans away first,’ he said, ‘then I’ll sail. I can’t sail like this.’

  ‘I’m just asking for a bit of concurrent activity, that’s all,’ I said. ‘It’s not a drama. Get the sails up.’

  ‘How am I meant to sail …?’

  ‘Conrad, listen to what I’m saying!’

  Something was up with him. After thousands of miles of team-playing and camaraderie, he was suddenly trying to assert his authority. This was the prickly, domineering Conrad I’d met all those months ago at the London club. While the other lads seemed to have recovered from their mental exhaustion at Restoration Island, he hadn’t. As we broke the back of this final push towards Timor, he started making rash and snappy decisions. Soon, I began to suspect there was more to it than simple ratty, dizzy tiredness. Now he’d had the chance to observe me leading the crew for a time, he thought he knew how it worked and that he could do it himself. I was suspicious, too, that now we were nearing the end, he thought he was running out of time to be shown on television as the big alpha male.

  A couple of days later we arrived for a brief layover at Sunday Island. There was nothing on there, and we’d only landed because Bligh had done so, and he’d only landed because he was an explorer and he wanted to put his flag on it. I had a walk to look for water, but there were only trees and rocks. It was a useless, barren lump. I decided we’d stay the night and rest up before embarking on the final stretch to reach home. That evening, as the sun set, I noticed Conrad was isolating himself, sitting far away on his own, not talking to anyone. You could feel an edge of hostility around him, burning like a rim of fizzing acid. He was making people uncomfortable.

  We were five hundred miles out of Timor when the wind stopped completely and the sun became so hot it started melting the batteries in the cameras. Much of the water we had on board had become undrinkable. It had taken on the smell of rotten eggs, and those who tried to swallow through the foul taste ended up firing liquid shit into the glassy millpond of the ocean. I had to reduce our daily ration to just six hundred millilitres.

  There wasn’t a ripple on the sea or a breath of wind in the sails now. The sky was empty but for the streaky traces of high, pale cloud. We were stuck, and we dried out like husks. There was nothing to see but the contour of the earth. It was as if we weren’t in the real world anymore, but were a speck of dust lost in an alien dimension of blue. It looked like heaven and it felt like hell. Slowly, people started to unravel. The temperature soared through the forties and hit the early fifties. Freddy’s resting heart rate fell from sixty to thirty. And Conrad started getting distinctly twitchy.

  ‘I think we
should row,’ he said out of nowhere one day. This was insanity. Shakingly, I pulled my sweating body out of my place in the shade of a sagging sail. There are few things more dangerous on earth, I’ve learned, than a man who’s lost his mind but believes he’s thinking straight.

  ‘Conrad,’ I said, ‘We’re five hundred miles out. We can’t row.’

  ‘We should row,’ he said. ‘Get out of this patch of weather.’

  ‘The men are going down as it is. We’re seriously dehydrated. We’re on three hundred and fifty calories a day. If we row for just an hour, that’s six hundred calories. We’re going to put people at serious risk. And for what? We’ll cover two or three miles.’

  I can understand the urge to do something when you’re in trouble. But you should never underestimate the power of intelligent waiting.

  The following morning I opened my eyes to see we were still marooned deep in the doldrums. It soon became apparent that, as I’d slept, Conrad had gone round the lads, persuading them that we should indulge his madness. I had to nip this attempt at undermining me in the bud. I called all hands on deck. The men before me were dazed and fading, nothing but ribs and dry, drooping eyes, their clothes hanging off hips and shoulders like rags.

  ‘Guys, we’ve got one row left in us,’ I said. ‘If we get fifty miles away from Timor, that will be our last row. So this is what we’re going to do. We’ll put it to a vote. If this vote goes against me, I will step down and let Conrad captain this boat. Who wants to row?’

  Nobody put their hands up.

  After five or six days of drifting we finally hit the Timor current. A few days after that, for the first time in ten days, the wind picked up. We were on our way. But our unplanned trip to the doldrums had left us dangerously low on water. Freddy was clearly losing his grip and had become so bad that we allowed a member of the medical team on board to check him over. After carrying out urine tests on all of us, he told us that had we been in England we’d all be on a drip. Our risk of chronic dehydration was such that we were in danger of giving ourselves permanent liver damage. He was putting enormous pressure on me to allow fresh water on board, but most of the lads refused.

  It was incredible to see. They were willing to suffer serious health issues for the rest of their lives – and go without proper water for the next four or five days – just to get this job done as authentically as possible. I was proud of them. It had been my intention to create a bubble of us against the world, with no outside influences creeping in. When that bubble is there, everyone comes together, the mission takes over and you all combine into one connected unit. It’s a kind of magic.

  After sleeping on it, I decided that we’d gone far enough. I had to remind myself that, outside the bubble, this was just a TV show. I couldn’t live with myself if Freddy or Luke or Rish, or anyone, ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives because of an act of stubbornness on my part. I permitted everyone to drink as much as they could for twelve hours. Then, when we were fully rehydrated, we were strong enough to row. Everyone did an hour on and an hour off. Within twenty miles we hit the current. It carried us twenty miles further in. We rowed and rowed, all through the night, then in the morning Conrad spotted land. The rest is a blur. I remember anchoring up, wading in and collapsing on a bed of still, white pebbles. I remember joy. I remember gratitude. I remember the burden of leadership lifting off my shoulders, and the sheer release bringing me to tears.

  As soon as I pulled myself back together, I grabbed an iPhone from a member of the production crew. Handling such a modern piece of technology, for the first time in sixty days, I felt amazed. You could just click this button and look what it did! I was like a monkey seeing fire for the first time, completely blown away by it. On the day I’d left for Tonga, Emilie had been seven months pregnant. I’d been present for the births of all of my children. I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t miss this one. I dialled shakily. She picked up after three rings.

  ‘It’s my due date today,’ she said. ‘It’s not happened yet. How soon can you get here?’

  I left on the first flight home. I was by her side, in Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, to witness the birth of my youngest son. We named him Bligh.

  A few days after my arrival back in London I got a text from Rob Coldstream at Channel 4, the executive who’d been so curious to see if I could talk the talk.

  ‘Congratulations!’ it said. ‘I hear it was amazing.’

  I texted straight back.

  ‘Told you I’d deliver,’ I said. ‘Next time, can you get me something a bit more challenging?’

  LEADERSHIP LESSONS

  Winning battles is often about timing. Yes, you should choose your battles, as the old adage goes, but you should also choose when to fight them. My battle against health and safety ruining the authenticity of the voyage was fought at the right moments, and that’s how I managed to win.

  Give people a chance. Then give them another. Then give them another still. But if they refuse to learn, as Chris did, the only place for them is the gangplank.

  Keep your doubts to yourself. Especially in times of pressure, the most important thing a team requires of its leader is certainty. Through a lot of the voyage I was a mess of doubts. I had to live with them and cope with them alone. If I’d shown any cracks, I’d have probably had a mutiny on my hands, just like my predecessor Bligh.

  Don’t lose sleep if people don’t respect you straight away. And don’t take it personally. It’s human nature. I guarantee that life will offer you the opportunity to prove why you’re the leader. And when it does, it’s all up to you.

  LESSON 10

  THE ULTIMATE LEADERSHIP LESSON

  By now, I hope you can believe me when I say that I’ve lived many lifetimes in my thirty-seven years. I’ve fought many battles and dodged many deaths. I’ve pushed myself up peaks and down troughs that have broken many of those around me. I consider that, by now, I’ve earned the right to call myself a leader.

  But from that straightforward statement follows a straightforward question: what makes a leader – nature or nurture? Are they born or are they made? The experiences of my life convince me that leaders are made. They’re moulded in the fire that naturally burns when impossible situations meet relentless individuals. If you tackle enough problems, and tackle them well, then you too will inevitably become a leader.

  Over the pages of this book I’ve described many of the lessons I’ve learned along the way: don’t let other people define you; don’t allow mistakes to win; use your enemy as an energy, and so on. But there’s one deeper principle that underpins every single one of them. It’s the ultimate leadership lesson, the holy truth that powers them all. Positivity.

  No matter how much trouble I’ve managed to get myself in, the only way I’ve ever got myself out of it is by keeping a positive mindset. In my darkest moments, when sheer panic and despair felt as if they were closing in, I’ve always made sure that I’ve taken a moment to stop and think, ‘This is actually happening. I’m in this moment, and it is a negative one. And if I think negatively in a negative situation, then this is only going to go one way.’

  If positivity is the secret principle of success, then negativity is its opposite. Negativity is a poison, and I’ve known my fair share of people who’ve drunk deeply of that particular toxin. They’re the ones who accept all the credit and deflect all the blame. If they manage to become leaders – and sometimes they do – they usually fail. They’re the leaders who, because they’re not honest about their own mistakes, breed contempt in their subordinates. Rather than admit their flaws and points of confusion, they deny them and blame everyone else when things go wrong. Nobody wants to help them. Nobody has their back. They become isolated and bitter.

  People can’t trust leaders like this because if they’re lying to themselves, they’re going to be lying to other people too. It’s clear that such leaders’ view of the world is distorted. Their number one priority is not leading the team towa
rds its objective but defending themselves. That’s the kind of mindset that breeds selfishness and self-obsession. In a military setting, it ends with the bodies of brave young men lying dead on the battlefield.

  I’ve come to believe that the only cure for this poison is a positive mindset. It recasts life’s most difficult problems as challenges. Prison was a prime example for me. The instant the judge sentenced me, I took it as if he’d personally challenged me. I decided I was going to be the best inmate in there. Even at my lowest points, I was always trying to be the best. By doing so, those negatives magically turned into positives.

  You might now be wondering, how do I foster a positive mindset? How do I become the kind of person who can experience something as bleak as a prison sentence, not as a disaster, but as a challenge? And, more than that, how do I become the kind of leader that people want to follow?

  There are three steps to achieving a positive mindset. I’m not calling them ‘three easy steps’ because they’re not easy – but they’re infinitely possible. You don’t have to be a special person to do them, but you do need courage.The first step is the hardest. In fact, it might even be the hardest thing you do in your life. You should stand in front of the mirror and be brutally honest with yourself. You won’t want to be. Every atom in your body may well resist. Criticism from other people is bad enough – the last thing you need is criticism from yourself.

  But I want you to rip yourself to bits. Look yourself in the eye and say, ‘What don’t I like about myself?’ It doesn’t matter if it’s something physical or something to do with your personality or character. You know what those things are. Perhaps you’re annoying. Or big-headed. Or talk too much. Or you’re patronising. Or you’re a nightmare when you’re drunk. Name the things you need to change about yourself. Look yourself in the eye and say them out loud, every single one. And don’t hold back. This is about brutal honesty.