68 CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018
The Crowhurst story is one of sailing’s
most harrowing. How has it been
depicted on the big screen?
WORDS NIC COMPTON
THE MERCY
FILM REVIEW
A
few years ago a friend asked me out to see
Master and Commander, the Patrick
O’Brian/Jack Aubrey movie. I refused for the
same reason I refuse to see all films about
sailing: because they are so full of technical mistakes I
find them too painful to watch. My friend insisted, so
eventually I agreed to go on the condition that if I found
more than six mistakes he would refund me the price of
my ticket. In the end, I found five sailing mistakes and
added Russell Crowe’s accent, which lurches from
supposed 19th century English to blatant 21st century
Australian, as a sixth. But I loved the movie.
The Mercy avoids this problem through a simple
expedient: it’s not really about sailing. There are some
sailing sequences, but the vast majority of the movie is
focused on human relationships – between Donald
Crowhurst and his family, his sponsor and his agent. It’s
a movie about the disintegration of a man, from
bumbling electronics geek to deceiving race cheat, and
his eventual mental breakdown. Even the sequences that
take place at sea are mostly within the increasingly
claustrophobic confines of Crowhurst’s boat, the ill-fated
Teignmouth Electron.
For those who don’t already know the story, the basic
facts are that inventor and ‘weekend sailor’ Crowhurst
was one of nine competitors in the 1968 Golden GlobeRace. The race had two prizes: one for the first person to
sail around the world singlehanded and non-stop,
another for the person to do so in the fastest time.
Crowhurst entered the race as a way of promoting his
failing nautical electronics business and had a new
trimaran built and fitted with several of his inventions.
He soon ran out of money and had to borrow from a
local businessman, first mortgaging the boat against the
project and then his house. Beset by problems and
delays, he set off at the last possible moment, with most
of his ‘brilliant’ devices not even connected.
It soon became clear the boat was unfit to survive the
rigours of a round-the-world voyage and Crowhurst’s
speed estimates were wildly optimistic. Not only did he
not stand a chance of being first around the world, but
he wouldn’t be the fastest either. He was in a double bind
because if he gave up and went home he would lose his
boat and his home. He decided to cheat, sending false
positions to the press and writing a fake log of his
imaginary voyage around the world, while in reality he
sailed around in circles – slowly losing his mind.
There are further twists to the story, but the final
outcome was that, several weeks after the winner
Robin Knox-Johnston arrived back in Falmouth,
Crowhurst’s empty boat was found drifting out at
sea, its skipper having apparently jumped overboard.