The Mercy
Dir: James Marsh
2018
****
I have come across the story of Donald Crowhurst several times over the years but never actually realised it. British rock band ‘I Like Trains’ released the single ‘The Deception’ in 2007 that I quite liked and the brilliant The Third Eye Foundation had a song titled Donald Crowhurst on their excellent 1997 album Ghost. I believe Stiltskin also had a song about Crowhurst but I forget. I loved Robert Stone’s 1993 novel Outerbridge Reach when I read it all those years ago but again, I had no idea it was based on the Donald Crowhurst story. People are still fascinated with Crowhurst’s story as he was an everyman, an amateur who took on an amazing challenge and inspired a generation, only to fail in a cloud of mystery. He had an interesting life. Born in India 1932, Crowhurst’s mother had hoped a girl and when he was born a boy his mother dressed him as a girl until he was seven years old anyway. After his father died in 1948 the family suffered financial problems as the family's retirement savings were invested in an Indian sporting goods factory, which burned down during rioting after the Partition of India. Crowhurst  was forced to leave school early and started a five-year apprenticeship at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough Airfield. In 1953 he received a Royal Air Force commission as a pilot, but was asked to leave in 1954 for reasons that remain unclear and was subsequently commissioned into the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1956. He was kicked out the same year owing to a disciplinary incident. Crowhurst eventually moved to Bridgwater, where he started a business called Electron Utilisation. He was active in his local community as a member of the Liberal Party and was elected to Bridgwater Borough Council. Crowhurst, was a weekend sailor, and he designed and built a radio direction finder called the Navicator. It was a handheld device that allowed the user to take bearings on marine and aviation radio beacons. While he did have some success selling his navigational equipment, his business began to fail. In an effort to gain publicity, he started trying to gain sponsors to enter the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. His main sponsor was English entrepreneur Stanley Best, who had invested heavily in Crowhurst's failing business. Once committed to the race, Crowhurst mortgaged both his business and home against Best's continued financial support, placing himself in a grave financial situation. The Golden Globe Race was inspired by Francis Chichester's successful single-handed round-the-world voyage, stopping in Sydney. The considerable publicity his achievement garnered led a number of sailors to plan the next logical step – a non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world sail. The Sunday Times had sponsored Chichester, with highly profitable results, and was interested in being involved with the first non-stop circumnavigation, but it had the problem of not knowing which sailor to sponsor. The solution was to promote the Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world race, open to all comers, with automatic entry. That was in contrast to other races of the time, for which entrants were required to demonstrate their single-handed sailing ability prior to entry. Entrants were required to start between 1 June and 31 October 1968, in order to pass through the Southern Ocean in summer. The prizes offered were the Golden Globe trophy for the first single-handed circumnavigation and a £5,000 cash prize for the fastest. This was a considerable sum then, equivalent to £70,000 in 2018. Crowhurst hired Rodney Hallworth, a crime reporter for the Daily Mail and then the Daily Express, as his public relations officer. Nine sailors entered the competition in total, including Crowhurst. The boat Crowhurst built for the trip, Teignmouth Electron, was a 40-foot trimaran designed by Californian Arthur Piver. At the time, this was an unproven type of boat for a voyage of such length. Trimarans have the potential to sail much more quickly than monohulled sailboats, but early designs in particular could be very slow if overloaded, and had considerable difficulty sailing close to the wind. Trimarans are popular with many sailors for their stability, but if capsized (for example by a rogue wave), they are virtually impossible to right. To improve the safety of the boat, Crowhurst had planned to add an inflatable buoyancy bag on the top of the mast to prevent capsizing; the bag would be activated by water sensors on the hull designed to detect an impending capsize. This innovation would hold the mast horizontal on the surface of the water, and a clever arrangement of pumps would allow him to flood the uppermost outer hull, which would (in conjunction with wave action) pull the boat upright. His scheme was to prove these devices by sailing round the world with them, then go into business manufacturing the system. However, Crowhurst had a very short time in which to build and equip his boat while securing financing and sponsors for the race. In the end, all of his safety devices were left uncompleted; he planned to complete them while under way. Also, many of his spares and supplies were left behind in the confusion of the final preparations. On top of it all, Crowhurst had never sailed on a trimaran before taking delivery of his boat several weeks before the beginning of the race. Crowhurst eventually left from Teignmouth, Devon, on the last day permitted by the rules: 31 October 1968. He encountered immediate problems with his boat, his equipment, and his lack of open-ocean sailing skills and experience. In the first few weeks he was making less than half of his planned speed. After passing the Cape of Good Hope, he found that he did not have the skills to sail his complex tri-hulled boat at anything near its optimum speed while navigating a good course. According to his logs, he gave himself only 50/50 odds of surviving the ocean assuming that he was able to complete some of the boat's safety features before reaching the dangerous Southern Ocean. Crowhurst was thus faced with the choice of either quitting the race and facing financial ruin and humiliation or continuing to an almost certain death in his unseaworthy boat. Over the course of November and December 1968, the hopelessness of his situation pushed him into an elaborate deception. He shut down his radio with a plan to loiter in the South Atlantic for several months while the other boats sailed the Southern Ocean, falsify his navigation logs, then slip back in for the return leg to England. As last-place finisher, he assumed his false logs would not receive the same scrutiny as those of the winner. Since leaving, Crowhurst had been deliberately ambiguous in his radio reports of his location. Starting on 6 December 1968, he continued reporting vague but false positions and possibly fabricating a log book; rather than continuing to the Southern Ocean, he sailed erratically in the southern Atlantic Ocean and stopped once in South America to make repairs to his boat, in violation of the rules. A great deal of the voyage was spent in radio silence, while his supposed position was inferred by extrapolation based on his earlier reports. By early December, based on his false reports, he was being cheered worldwide as the likely winner of the race, though Francis Chichester publicly expressed doubts about the plausibility of Crowhurst's progress. After rounding the tip of South America in early February, fellow competitor Moitessier had made a dramatic decision in March to drop out of the race and to sail on towards Tahiti. On 22 April 1969, Robin Knox-Johnston was the first to complete the race, leaving Crowhurst supposedly in the running against Tetley for second to finish, and possibly still able to beat Knox-Johnston's time, due to his later starting date. In reality, Tetley was far in the lead, having long ago passed within 150 nautical miles (278 km) of Crowhurst's hiding place; but believing himself to be running neck-and neck with Crowhurst, Tetley pushed his failing boat, also a 40-foot Piver trimaran, to the breaking point, and had to abandon ship on 30 May. The pressure on Crowhurst had therefore increased, since he now looked certain to win the "elapsed time" race. If he appeared to have completed the fastest circumnavigation, his log books would be closely examined by experienced sailors, including the experienced and skeptical Chichester, and the deception would probably be exposed. It is also likely that he felt guilty about undermining Tetley's genuine circumnavigation so near its completion. He had by this time begun to make his way back as if he had rounded Cape Horn. Crowhurst ended radio transmissions on 29 June. The last logbook entry is dated 1 July. Teignmouth Electron was found adrift, unoccupied, on 10 July. What happened to him remains a mystery and has been the focus of scrutiny ever since. Crowhurst's behaviour as recorded in his logs indicates a complex and conflicted psychological state. His commitment to fabricating the voyage reports seems incomplete and self-defeating, as he reported unrealistically fast progress that was sure to arouse suspicion. By contrast, he spent many hours meticulously constructing false log entries, often more difficult to complete than real entries due to the celestial navigation research required. The last several weeks of his log entries, once he was facing the real possibility of winning the prize, showed increasing irrationality. In the end, his writings during the voyage – poems, quotations, real and false log entries, and random thoughts – amounted to more than 25,000 words. The log books include an attempt to construct a philosophical reinterpretation of the human condition that would provide an escape from his impossible situation. It appeared the final straw was the impossibility of a noble way out after Tetley sank, meaning he would win the prize and hence his logs would be subject to scrutiny. His last log entry was on 1 July 1969; it is assumed that he then either fell or jumped overboard and drowned. The state of the boat gave no indication that it had been overrun by a rogue wave, or that any accident had occurred which might have caused Crowhurst to fall overboard. He may have taken with him a single deceptive log book and the ship's clock. Three log books (two navigational logs and a radio log) and a large mass of other papers were left on his boat in order to communicate his philosophical ideas and to reveal his actual navigational course during the voyage. The boat was found with the mizzen sail up. A mental breakdown was obvious and suicide was presumed. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for him; the loneliness, his desolate surroundings and an impossible situation that he alone was responsible for. It’s not the first time anyone has attempted to make a film about what happened to Crowhurst, and beside from the technical problems that arise from filming at sea, the tone and content are tricky obstacles to steer through. On the whole I think James Marsh did a fantastic job, although I will still always want to see the Nicolas Roeg version. Marsh handled the story extremely well, taking the feelings of Crowhurst’s family in to account. I would have liked to have seen the film as more of an exploration of the downward spiral into madness but that wouldn’t have been right. Roeg, David Lynch, Werner Herzog…I can think of many versions of the story that I’d like to see but this one is perhaps most suitable. The problem is that it is a little too safe. Marsh is a safe director and Colin Firth is a safe actor. It all feels a bit Saturday afternoon-like, when I think it should have been just a little bit darker. Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz and David Thewlis are great and the story follows the facts. It makes suggestions in the only way one can regarding life on Crowhurst’s boat but I can’t think it was too inaccurate really. There are a few fantastical scenes, nothing too ‘out there’ but effective all the same. To be honest I found the scene with his children waiting for his return on the end of Teignmouth pier to be the most effective. It is strange to have a film that is so much about isolation featuring many characters but the story was about life at home and the media frenzy just as much as it was about what actually happened to Crowhurst. His family were, in many respects, just as isolated as he was. I feel that everything The Mercy gets wrong is made up for everything The Mercy gets right. It’s not the version I wanted to see but it is the version that was just and suitable.