A Voyage For Madmen (40 page)

Bill King repaired
Galway Blazer II
and set out again in 1969 for a nonstop circumnavigation. Problems forced him to give up at Gibraltar, but he remained gripped by the adventure. He
tried once more, in 1971. Off Australia,
Galway Blazer
was struck with great force and holed by what King later believed was a great white shark. Stuffing the hole with sails, King made it to Fremantle, Australia, where
Galway Blazer
was repaired. He set off sometime later, completing his circumnavigation, by way of Cape Horn, in 1973.

Loïck Fougeron and Alex Carozzo retreated from the public eye.

At the end of the Golden Globe race, the
Sunday Mirror
sent Robin Knox-Johnston to visit the psychiatrist who had pronounced him ‘distressingly normal' before his voyage. The misdiagnosis was once again confirmed.

Robin Knox-Johnston has made a life of being England's preeminent yachtsman. He has become rich and famous, and has been showered with honorary degrees and every imaginable maritime award. In 1994, with New Zealand's pre-eminent yachtsman, Peter Blake, he sailed nonstop around the world again, this time in a giant catamaran. Their seventy-four-day, twenty-two-hour circumnavigation was the fastest record – until Olivier de Kersauson, a Frenchman, shortened it by three days.

Knox-Johnston continued to sail
Suhaili
, voyaging among other places to the icy seas of eastern Greenland with England's pre-eminent mountaineer Chris Bonington. In 1995, he was knighted by the queen for services to sailing. By then, with his beard grey, the sea years showing in his face, favoured by his sovereign, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston had come to resemble exactly the Elizabethan sea heroes of his youth who had watched over him on his epochal voyage.

After her thirty-five years of hard service, Knox-Johnston donated
Suhaili
to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, where she now lives, enshrined in glory, on permanent
exhibition in a glass-roofed museum gallery called Neptune Court. She is heeled slightly on a 40-foot block of blue plastic waves, sails raised but slack, no one at her helm. Noble as such a berth may be, it is living death for a wooden boat. Out of her natural element,
Suhaili
's planks are drying out and shrinking, her seams are opening up, the long cracks along her hull indicating the onset of decay. She is passing into history.
*

The Royal Mail Line retreated from its initial good intentions to transport
Teignmouth Electron
back to England. The trimaran was sold cheaply at auction in Jamaica to a man named Bunnie Francis, who used it to take tourists out day-sailing in Montego Bay. Sometimes he sailed with a calypso band aboard. But an increase in crime hit the tourist business, and Bunnie Francis sold the boat to a Canadian diver, Winston McDermott, for $12,000. McDermott had read about the Golden Globe race and knew what the boat had been through. It was a curiosity for him, but he also planned to use the trimaran for his scuba-diving business on Grand Cayman Island. McDermott and a young Jamaican he employed to sleep aboard the boat and look after it believed it was haunted. They said they heard footsteps walking around on deck.

One night, the trimaran was damaged in a hurricane on the island of Cayman Brac. McDermott hired a crane to haul it out of the water to make repairs, but he never got around to doing the work. He moved to Florida and the trimaran remained high and dry on Cayman Brac.

It's still there, lying in the weeds near the shore, heeled over on two hulls, like a strange carcass, sun-bleached and forgotten.
The name
Teignmouth Electron
is still just visible, in faded paint, on the bow and stern of the main hull. Over the years, people have unbolted bits of it and stripped it of any useful piece of gear. All that remains now, other than its empty plywood hulls and deck, are its galley sink and pieces of its toilet, which lie on the ground between the hulls.

Inside the main hull are tangles of old wire, going nowhere.

In 1999, British artist Tacita Dean, who had become interested in Donald Crowhurst's story, was invited by the National Maritime Museum to exhibit photographs she had taken at Cayman Brac of the abandoned
Teignmouth Electron
. They were shown in Neptune Court, the section of the museum that houses the triumphant
Suhaili
.

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.'

E
ACH 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.