Donald Crowhurst

Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst (1932 – July 1969) was a British electronics engineer, businessman, and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–1969. Crowhurst, a developer of (chiefly marine) electronic products with a poorly performing small business "Electron Utilisation", believed that pursuing the £5,000 prize money offered by the race organisers would offer a financial lifeline for his business, and that successful completion of the race would also showcase a number of new products that he had in mind as safety devices for yachts. However his customised / modified boat for the race, Teignmouth Electron, was constructed very hurriedly (to meet race entry deadlines) and suffered from a number of defects, resulting in the vessel making poor progress as well as constantly leaking. These factors, together with others arising from his incomplete preparation for the race, led to Crowhurst deciding that the boat would most likely not stand up to the harsh rigours of the Southern Ocean. He therefore secretly abandoned the race some weeks or months after departing, remaining in the Atlantic Ocean for seven months while reporting false positions in an attempt to appear to have completed a circumnavigation without actually doing so. His ship's logbooks, found after his disappearance, suggest that stress and associated psychological deterioration may have led to his apparent suicide. Contemporary reporting focused on his fraudulent reports and emphasised his actions as a hoaxer or "con man", however with the passage of time his story has tended to be reappraised as more of a maritime tragedy that, according to one recent author, "raises essential questions about the ethics of competition, solitude at sea and the psychological limits of sailors" (refer full quotation below). While the circumstances that permitted his participation in the race can of necessity only be viewed in the context of the time, safety lessons have been learned by race organisers in particular that would never allow such a combination of an inexperienced sailor, with an untried boat, to take part in an equivalent race today.

Crowhurst's participation in the race, together with its ultimately tragic end, has exerted a fascination over many commentators and artists. It has inspired a number of books, stage plays and films, including a documentary, Deep Water (2006), and two feature films, Crowhurst and The Mercy (both 2017), in which Crowhurst is played by the actors Justin Salinger and Colin Firth, respectively. Teignmouth Electron ended its days as a dive boat in the Caribbean and its decaying remains can still be found in the dunes above a beach in the Cayman Islands.