Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
Speaker 1: things we simply don't know the answer too. Hi there,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another hard hitting episode of Thinking Sideways, the
Speaker 1: podcast that takes No prisoners. I'm Joe, joined as always
Speaker 1: with my lovely co host and Steve. Yeah. I get
Speaker 1: to be the lovely one this time, you do. They're
Speaker 1: just being nice to me today. It's fine if you're
Speaker 1: quite attractive. Yeah. So we're gonna like, we're gonna solve
Speaker 1: another mystery today. So you guys ready, Yeah? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: let me start from the top. This is about a
Speaker 1: guy named Donald Crowhurst, British guy. And before I go
Speaker 1: any further, I want to give a shout out to
Speaker 1: our listener Karen, who suggested this, So thanks Karen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one's been in a hopper for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been on a hopper for a long time. Karen,
Speaker 1: who knows she might not even be listening anymore, of
Speaker 1: course she is. We've betterr addicted. Okay, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst. October thirty one nine, Mr Crowhurst sets sail
Speaker 1: from the town of Tyne with England to sail his
Speaker 1: forty foot single massive Trymaran Trymaran the Tynemoth Electron around
Speaker 1: the world as part of the contest. So let me
Speaker 1: give you a back some backgrounds to when this began.
Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen, the Sunday Times of London
Speaker 1: announced to challenge, which they called the Golden Globe NonStop
Speaker 1: around the World yacht race. They challenged volunteers to come
Speaker 1: forward and tackle this because it was no not just NonStop,
Speaker 1: but by yourself single handed. Yeah, so go figure only
Speaker 1: nine people actually step forward to take part of this offer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, the first band to make a home would
Speaker 1: win the Golden Globe whatever that is. And I assume
Speaker 1: it's different from the Golden Global Awards we have here,
Speaker 1: so it's definitely different. Yeah. And then there was also
Speaker 1: a five five thousand pound prize, which five thousand pounds
Speaker 1: is about eighty thousand pounds today, which roughly about a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty right around there, So five thousand dollar
Speaker 1: prize for whoever had the fastest time or in the world.
Speaker 1: So yeah, their nine step forward, but five of the
Speaker 1: nine dropped out early, so I'm not gonna bother telling
Speaker 1: you their names. But oh and if you're wondering why
Speaker 1: the Sunday Times decided to do this. They there was
Speaker 1: a guy at Francis Chichester who had done this the
Speaker 1: year before under the sponsorship of another British paper, and
Speaker 1: it was a big, big sensation. Uh, it really bumped
Speaker 1: into the paper sales and stuff like this, and so
Speaker 1: they thought it then a little, a little, a little
Speaker 1: bit of invitation would be good. So Chichester did it,
Speaker 1: and he did it in a fairly decent amount of time.
Speaker 1: And he did but he stopped on the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just stopped to make repairs exactly. What's just like
Speaker 1: when you think about it, getting around the world NonStop
Speaker 1: without going on shore to get supplies and make repairs.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, well, and I think what people
Speaker 1: need to keep in mind is that the route that
Speaker 1: these guys are taking is there. They're sailing from England
Speaker 1: south then going around the Horn of Africa and basically
Speaker 1: staying in Do they call it the Roaring forties? Is
Speaker 1: that the latitude where that's yeah, that's roughly the Roaring forties,
Speaker 1: But if you when you go around Cape Horn, you're
Speaker 1: you're in the Furious fifties, Yes, which are terrible sea.
Speaker 1: I've actually been at Tierra del Fuegos, you know, and
Speaker 1: I've experienced that win and that was in January, which
Speaker 1: is their summertime, and it was incredibly ferocious, unbelievable, So
Speaker 1: no wonder that, you know, as he's sailing through that area,
Speaker 1: and then he rounded the tip of South Africa. I
Speaker 1: think that's where he stopped to make repairs. Is that correct, Joe.
Speaker 1: I don't remember where he stopped, or you might have
Speaker 1: stopped in Australia, which but he had to stop because
Speaker 1: or something. But this, this is the thing that really
Speaker 1: kind of nestifies me about this particular race, is why
Speaker 1: they had them go to the route that they did.
Speaker 1: Because the Roaring forties and the Furious fifties basically circumnavigate
Speaker 1: the South Pole. They go around there and theything the
Speaker 1: they go around it from west to east. And so
Speaker 1: when you're in a sailboat, you want to and you're
Speaker 1: in really gusty, strong winds like that, you want to
Speaker 1: be heading into the wind and not running off the wind,
Speaker 1: because if you're running off the wind and a sudden
Speaker 1: huge gust hits you and you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: cloth out, then it can rip your rip your mast off,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're heading into the wind, then your boat
Speaker 1: just lays down and it comes back up again. So
Speaker 1: so you're saying that they should have had them go
Speaker 1: the opposite way around. They should have had them go
Speaker 1: the opposite way around. Yeah, that's what I would do.
Speaker 1: I'd sneak to Panama. Yeah, of course these guys are.
Speaker 1: But of course you've got two guys in this race
Speaker 1: who were doing raymer Rands and a tramar Ran going
Speaker 1: into the wind around Cape Horn, for example. I don't
Speaker 1: know how well that would do. They probably would just
Speaker 1: flip right over and is a three whole boat essentially exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going to talk about the tremor Ran in
Speaker 1: the second here. But so anyway, the times, we're kind
Speaker 1: of going all over the place here, but the times
Speaker 1: essentially that was a motivation for doing this was publicity.
Speaker 1: And as I said, they got nine takers there then
Speaker 1: five of them dropped out early. So the remaining four
Speaker 1: were a French sailor named Bernard Monteschier, a former British
Speaker 1: former merchant seaman named Robin Knox Johnston, and a former
Speaker 1: naval officer named Nigel Tetley. I like that name. Is
Speaker 1: so British. Yeah. And also the fourth guy, guy named
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst, who was an amateur. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a guy. He's a guy that's like sailed in the
Speaker 1: English Channel and stuff. He's not he'd never actually made
Speaker 1: an ocean crossing the sailboat. He's a weekend yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a competent enough sailor. But now he was he was
Speaker 1: he was taking out a big project here. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: a little bit about Donald Crowhurst. He was an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and an amateur sailor, and he had started a small
Speaker 1: computer business which was called Electron Utilization Limited. He and
Speaker 1: he invented. He was an inventor and tinker, and he
Speaker 1: invented device called the Navigator, which is a radio direction
Speaker 1: to finding device that actually I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was actually the Navigator or the lore m, but it
Speaker 1: eventually became widely used. And so it basically triangulated on
Speaker 1: radio signals from shore to tell you what your position
Speaker 1: replace the compass. Yeah, and we're talking this is GPS
Speaker 1: is night. We got to have something. Yeah, so in
Speaker 1: those days, yeah, I mean it's a lot of people
Speaker 1: in those days were still using Sexton's of course, but
Speaker 1: to know he thought this would be a really cool,
Speaker 1: spiffy way too, and he was he was not really
Speaker 1: into navigation that much, so I think it appealed to
Speaker 1: him to have something that would be easier to use
Speaker 1: and the old traditional you know, mapping this. Yeah you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so that like sextondance and charts in the list,
Speaker 1: So you know, I think that's why he invented this thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But the problem was is he thought it was gonna
Speaker 1: make him a lot of money, but as so far,
Speaker 1: he wasn't selling many of them at all, and so
Speaker 1: when the Golden Globe race was announced, he was in
Speaker 1: pretty dire financial straits and I think that he thought
Speaker 1: the cash prize would keep him afloat until he finally
Speaker 1: got his business off the ground. And so that was
Speaker 1: his big motivation. And maybe he liked attention to maybe
Speaker 1: feel maybe you don't like that would be a way
Speaker 1: to call attention to his business. He would get all
Speaker 1: this notoriety and he's going like, yeah, hey, you know that,
Speaker 1: you know why just by the way, I've got this
Speaker 1: device called the navigator. Well, especially if like maybe he
Speaker 1: made use of it to like win this competition, right
Speaker 1: if you say, oh, you know, I couldn't have done
Speaker 1: it as quickly if I hadn't been using this invention
Speaker 1: that I had, you know, because I would have been
Speaker 1: so tied up trying to navigate by the stars, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have done it nearly as fast. So you
Speaker 1: know that's also as ability. Yeah, I don't really have
Speaker 1: any information on that about whether he actually used his navigator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't. I don't think he had had to actually
Speaker 1: use it. I think he could have just said when
Speaker 1: he won, and I used this thing. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: remember ever seeing any but it's really hard to say,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember seeing anything saying he was using it.
Speaker 1: Hard to know what his plan was upon return, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay. He unfortunately didn't have the kind
Speaker 1: of money that he needed to buy himself a big
Speaker 1: old boat to the world, and so he persuaded a
Speaker 1: local millionaire named Stanley Best to sponsor his entry and
Speaker 1: buy him a boat, and they commissioned a boatyard to
Speaker 1: build this trimar Ran, and the millionaire Best bank rolled
Speaker 1: the trimar Ran, but he made Crowhurst sign an agreement
Speaker 1: which stated that if he backed out of the race,
Speaker 1: or if he dropped out early, he'd have to buy
Speaker 1: the boat back, and he mortgaged. He Crowhurst mortgage his
Speaker 1: house and his business against this boat, everything everything he
Speaker 1: had against his boat. And so yeah, he was he
Speaker 1: was committed. He was extremely committed. He also hired a
Speaker 1: publicistem Rodney Halworth, who was a former crime reporter for
Speaker 1: a couple of British newspapers, and Halworth was instrumental actually
Speaker 1: and kicking up. He did a really good job back
Speaker 1: at home and taking any any dribbles of news that
Speaker 1: he got from Crowhurst and and get disseminated to the
Speaker 1: media and whipping up a frenzy of excitement about this
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, race fever. But the deadline was leaving.
Speaker 1: I didn't mention the deadline for leaving England, did I?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, the deadlight for leaving
Speaker 1: was Halloween. It was October thirty one, which was the
Speaker 1: last I think that was because it was the last
Speaker 1: day they figured anybody could safely get around the whole
Speaker 1: around the Cape of Good Hope. Yeah, yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: they figured that that is a safety measure, and then
Speaker 1: they would have and also you got to kind of
Speaker 1: have a cut off. You can't have somebody like leaving
Speaker 1: a year later. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't work. That doesn't
Speaker 1: really work, right. Crowhurst actually did not get his trim
Speaker 1: ran until pretty shortly before the race deadline, and he
Speaker 1: said he only had about four weeks to outfit the
Speaker 1: boat and get all this gear together and get ready
Speaker 1: for this voyage. So, needless to say, he was kind
Speaker 1: of behind all the other ones who had already left
Speaker 1: long before. And uh so he wind up leaving on
Speaker 1: the day of the deadline, October thirty one. And was
Speaker 1: it fastest in time or like the first person back
Speaker 1: first person back at the Golden Globe? Okay, and whoever
Speaker 1: whoever of the four would get the five thousand pounds
Speaker 1: if that was fast, So they counted like how many
Speaker 1: days it took them, not like who was back first exactly? Okay,
Speaker 1: exactly okay? Yeah, So so Crowhurst if if, say too,
Speaker 1: if all the guys ahead of him beat him in
Speaker 1: and he still came in after them, he could still
Speaker 1: have won that prize right with less days? Yeah okay,
Speaker 1: But anyway, let's go back to October thirty one. That's
Speaker 1: the day he set out from Tynemouth, England. And now
Speaker 1: I'm going to depart again. I'm gonna get to do
Speaker 1: a little travel like stuff. Time with is a quint
Speaker 1: little sea coast town on the English Channel. I took
Speaker 1: a tour of it on Google Street. I ran over
Speaker 1: several pedestrians and that's what I love about that. I
Speaker 1: think I started at least a hundred cars. Yeah, so sorry, Timemouth.
Speaker 1: I apologized, But I do want to say, if any
Speaker 1: of our listeners are from Time with You, people really
Speaker 1: do have a picturesque little town, and would that be
Speaker 1: a great I want to write to Google and say
Speaker 1: I want something to want to run over to somebody
Speaker 1: in Google Streets. I got a yell or screw for it. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: back back to our sea boydge. Enough of that. So
Speaker 1: Crowherst estimated that the Tynemouth Electron could sell two twenty
Speaker 1: miles a day. Why did Why did he name it?
Speaker 1: The time? I can't say, Yeah, and his company was
Speaker 1: when I've just been sitting here thinking about what a
Speaker 1: dumb name that, But I get it now. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: it turns out that his claim that it could do
Speaker 1: two twenty miles a day was pretty optimistic. And here's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna talk about trying a runts a little bit. There.
Speaker 1: They are fast boats. There's threethold boats. They're faster than
Speaker 1: mono hole boats by long ways because they have less
Speaker 1: wedded surface, but they have a tendency to capsize when
Speaker 1: sailing close to the wind unfortunately, and they also can't
Speaker 1: sail all that close to the wind, which really cuts
Speaker 1: down in your progress. There was a guy named former
Speaker 1: davy guy I think, or maybe even current nating guy
Speaker 1: named Peter Eden. So he sailed with Crowhurst from a
Speaker 1: town of cows to time from work from what you departed,
Speaker 1: and he reported that the time with electron was very fast,
Speaker 1: but it could get no closer to the wind than
Speaker 1: sixty degrees. So that means when you're lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have a tail wind, you can make good time. But
Speaker 1: if you're sailing into the wind, you're gonna be tacking
Speaker 1: so hard and so far out of your course that
Speaker 1: you're gonna make very very slow progress. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting here smiling and nodding because none of
Speaker 1: this makes any sense to me. Here's here's Here's what
Speaker 1: it means is tacking out of the wind means you're
Speaker 1: kind of doing a zigzag and correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong here, Joe. But you're you've got a direction, so
Speaker 1: you're going to go forward, you kind of hang a
Speaker 1: bit of a ninety degree and then you come back
Speaker 1: into force. Attacking make sense to me. It's the rest
Speaker 1: of this is just you know, it's all sailors apologize.
Speaker 1: I'm so used to stuff. But yeah, attacking. For those
Speaker 1: of you who don't are not aware of what that
Speaker 1: is is a sailboat cannot obviously not sailed directly into
Speaker 1: the wind, into the oncoming wind, and the oncoming wind, yeah,
Speaker 1: it has, So that's what you have to do what's
Speaker 1: called tacking. And depending on your boat, your boats design
Speaker 1: and everything, and the kind of sails that you have,
Speaker 1: you can get pretty close to the wind. And close
Speaker 1: to the wind means if the wind is at zero degrees,
Speaker 1: and say you can get as close as say thirty degrees,
Speaker 1: and that means you're at thirty degrees one side or
Speaker 1: the other. Your s is that way, your boat is,
Speaker 1: your boat is in that in that direction. So and
Speaker 1: what you do is and the way and the way
Speaker 1: the sailboats work is when you're running off the wind,
Speaker 1: you're getting pushed by the wind. When you're running into
Speaker 1: the wind, then your cell is sort of you know
Speaker 1: how flu set, it's kind of curved, and you stretch
Speaker 1: it out real good and everything, and then that oncoming
Speaker 1: wind is going right across that sail, and in the
Speaker 1: Bernoulli effect, you know what that is, Okay, the Bernulli
Speaker 1: effect create a low pressure thing, and a low pressure
Speaker 1: zone is created on the outside of the sail, and
Speaker 1: the sail is pulled forward so that when it's when
Speaker 1: you're sailing into the wind and the sailboat, you're not
Speaker 1: being pushed, You're being pulled by the wind. I feel
Speaker 1: like we just did a tiny little episode of how
Speaker 1: how stuff works. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, so that's sorry,
Speaker 1: sorry for the board, but that's what a tacking is
Speaker 1: very helpful. Yeah yeah, and so it's so what you
Speaker 1: do is you go, you go a little, you go
Speaker 1: aways in one direction and then the hells when you
Speaker 1: I was out ready about and all the hands like
Speaker 1: they loosened up the jib and and then you swing
Speaker 1: the tiller over the side and you and you go
Speaker 1: across your your line of direction that the line of
Speaker 1: directions were literally Yeah, I think many of us just
Speaker 1: need to like ye, fall into the calm, deep voice
Speaker 1: of Joe and just like just just kind of jump
Speaker 1: on board and say, all right, he knows what he's
Speaker 1: talking about, and it doesn't really matter that much. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't really matter. But just just to
Speaker 1: say that if you can't get any closer than sixty
Speaker 1: degrees to the wind, and you're gonna have some pretty
Speaker 1: slow going when you've got houtcoming wind. So this guy,
Speaker 1: Peter Eden uh said that Crowhurst had a tendency to
Speaker 1: fall overboard. And they were in the town of Cows
Speaker 1: apparently fell overwards several times. Three times. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: and when they were getting aboard the boat to go
Speaker 1: to Tynmouth, he fell aboard as abard he fell overboard.
Speaker 1: But otherwise Eden said that Crowhurst was a pretty good sailor.
Speaker 1: He did say that he was a bit sloppy about navigation,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely was actually a pretty good sailor.
Speaker 1: But Crowhurst, we should not, as we've not it already,
Speaker 1: didn't have any open ocean sailing experience, and it's totally different, right,
Speaker 1: pretty much. I think that you when you see a
Speaker 1: lot more stuff can happen, you know, Yeah, you don't get.
Speaker 1: You don't get crazy big waves and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're when you're in the channel or sailing close
Speaker 1: to close to shore and the storm shows up, you know,
Speaker 1: you just go home real fast. Yeah yeah. You can't
Speaker 1: do that when you're in the open ocean. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So any way, he left and he was sending back
Speaker 1: occasional radio messages. But according to his logs were read
Speaker 1: later on and after a few weeks to see heat
Speaker 1: average no more than a hundred thirty miles a day,
Speaker 1: and he had barely passed the coast of court Portugal,
Speaker 1: So that not far at all. Really, do you think
Speaker 1: about two weeks and he's only made to Portugal and
Speaker 1: at this point and he's all he's also radio going
Speaker 1: back some some somewhat dishonest accounts of his speed. He's
Speaker 1: actually exagger reading his position and the speeds that he's
Speaker 1: attaining a bit back on the boat. According to his logs,
Speaker 1: it's apparent that he was starting to realize that he
Speaker 1: was way out of his depth, and he actually wrote
Speaker 1: in his log that he he estimated his odds of
Speaker 1: surviving around the world trip at so I feel like
Speaker 1: that may even be optimistic though, like from everything that
Speaker 1: we know about him, like if he had the tendency
Speaker 1: to fall overboard, like you're alone in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean, well, and think about this too, and he's
Speaker 1: if he's off the coast of Portugal, that's in a
Speaker 1: fairly temperate zone, the weather is not too harsh, and
Speaker 1: he's got to be thinking. So if he's already having
Speaker 1: second thoughts, he's he's thinking, oh my god, the weather
Speaker 1: when I'm passing the capes is going to be brutal,
Speaker 1: and my odds of survival are pretty slim. So yeah,
Speaker 1: because running those caps is tough. And also another reason
Speaker 1: for his low spirits is the boat is sprung a league,
Speaker 1: So that's random boat. Yeah, well that was a problem
Speaker 1: in the boat had never been tested. It was a
Speaker 1: new design, and I'm sure Joe did and I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did you see the pictures of his boat. It's actually
Speaker 1: really cool looking because it's super flat on the top.
Speaker 1: It's just got this eitty bitty window that's you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like it sticks up maybe a foot off
Speaker 1: of the top of the boat. Very streamlined, very cool
Speaker 1: looking boat. It was a new design, they never tested
Speaker 1: it and you know, the only way he could get
Speaker 1: water out because he sprung a leak is that the
Speaker 1: thing didn't have pumps, so he used a bucket to
Speaker 1: go open it up and bucket the water out and
Speaker 1: then seal it back up. It's gotta be it's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard on morale. Well, and think about it again.
Speaker 1: It's just like you said, he's in good seas when
Speaker 1: he's doing that. Yeah, And when you're in bad seas
Speaker 1: run in the cape. Are you gonna have time to
Speaker 1: to go out and go down and you're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to leave the till and go down and do
Speaker 1: some bailing. Yeah. Yeah, So he's that he's got to
Speaker 1: have that on his mind. Well, and did you I
Speaker 1: don't know if either of you came across the reason
Speaker 1: that he chose the design. Yeah, why he chose You
Speaker 1: said they were they were faster. Well, they're faster, but
Speaker 1: they also will tip in a situation like the see
Speaker 1: talking about. He thought he had to work around for that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So his workaround was and he wasn't an inventor kind
Speaker 1: of guy, so his idea was to have a big,
Speaker 1: big bladder that could fill with their at the top
Speaker 1: of the mast because one of those things go over,
Speaker 1: of course they're gonna completely capsize. The idea was that
Speaker 1: this bladder when I think he had like leveling mechanism
Speaker 1: like detectors, maybe mercury switches on on the deck, something
Speaker 1: like that. And the idea was it when it started
Speaker 1: to go over, that thing would activate and boosh, it
Speaker 1: would fill it with air or CEO two or something
Speaker 1: and inflate that thing and stopped the boat from capsizing.
Speaker 1: And then he had he had come up with an
Speaker 1: idea to put some pipes and tanks in the outer
Speaker 1: in the outer holes, and that way he could pump
Speaker 1: water into whatever hole is sticking up highest. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he put and make it heavier, and then just count
Speaker 1: on wave action like an oncoming wave would once he's
Speaker 1: got once he's got enough weight in that in that
Speaker 1: upper hole, an oncoming wave would raise the top of
Speaker 1: the mast high enough to cause the whole boat to
Speaker 1: just raise out of the water and tip back down.
Speaker 1: The problem is, of course, again he didn't have the
Speaker 1: boat long enough. As far as I know, he never
Speaker 1: got those things in. No, No, he didn't. So and
Speaker 1: and by the way, when he gave himself the odds
Speaker 1: fifty odds were if he got his safety gear all installed. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He had a big delomma here because he
Speaker 1: realized that he needed to drop out of the race
Speaker 1: or die. But if he dropped out of the race,
Speaker 1: he'd lose everything he owned. That's tough, yeah, very tough choice.
Speaker 1: So apparently he hatched a plan. He would just noodle
Speaker 1: around to the South Atlantic for a while, occasionally radio
Speaker 1: false positions telling say I'm in the Indian Ocean and
Speaker 1: you know, hey, I'm in the Pacific, things like that,
Speaker 1: and uh, and keep something and also keep false logs,
Speaker 1: and then just hang out there and monitor everybody else's
Speaker 1: positions on the radio. So when everybody else said and
Speaker 1: had said that they were in the Atlantic and headed
Speaker 1: home and we're safely well ahead of him, and he
Speaker 1: knew he would come in last, said he would, he
Speaker 1: would radio back to England and he would come in last,
Speaker 1: and he'd have a good adventure story to tell. And
Speaker 1: but since it came in last and didn't qualify for
Speaker 1: the prize, we figured they wouldn't scrutinize his log books
Speaker 1: too closely. It seems fair, I think, yeah, because if
Speaker 1: he had one, they would have scrutinized his log books
Speaker 1: when faking logs, because I mean, you've got to put
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the log that to me
Speaker 1: would just be so much work. Yeah. Of course, Luckily
Speaker 1: for him, he had a lot of time on his hands.
Speaker 1: He was just sailing calm season, kind of temperate areas,
Speaker 1: you know, just chilling out. Yeah. On December ten, about
Speaker 1: six weeks after about six weeks to see, he radioed
Speaker 1: his press agent, remember him, Rodney Holworthy, uh, saying he
Speaker 1: just sailed in one day a record two. Paul Worth
Speaker 1: used that and other other things to keep up the
Speaker 1: buzz at home, and he was doing his job. And
Speaker 1: obviously he never sailed that thing ud for I mean,
Speaker 1: actually it's maybe conceivable. Maybe he had a good day
Speaker 1: and he had a tail wind and he didn't have
Speaker 1: any water in the holes. Yeah, he spent all all
Speaker 1: the deep bailing and everything. Maybe maybe he did, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm pretty sure he didn't. Around Christmas time,
Speaker 1: Crowhurst Radio didn't saying that he was somewhere off Cape Town.
Speaker 1: But at this point he was actually sailing past brazil Um.
Speaker 1: He was weeks behind everybody else. And then not too
Speaker 1: long after that he uh started claiming that he had
Speaker 1: a faulty generator in his radio broadcast, and then he
Speaker 1: just shut down transmissions entirely. He wanted show at one
Speaker 1: point in South America for repairs, which broke the race rules.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can't go ashore. But at this point
Speaker 1: and now he didn't really care anymore. He just made
Speaker 1: sure to keep a little profile so nobody identified him.
Speaker 1: Bran Mutzier dropped out of the race after rounding Cape Horn.
Speaker 1: He was he was actually in the lead, but he
Speaker 1: just sort of like, you know, I just said, hell
Speaker 1: with this. I think I'm just gonna sail on and
Speaker 1: got it to heating, and so that's what he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he eventually did. I think he was ce for three
Speaker 1: or four hundred days by himself before he finally made landfall.
Speaker 1: I know. I mean seriously, I mean, if you if
Speaker 1: you had decided to round the cape and you decide, well,
Speaker 1: I don't really feel like doing this anymore, why don't
Speaker 1: you cruise over to Sway and put it put in
Speaker 1: for a while and get to get a few beers
Speaker 1: and have some human company. Yeah, I thought, I thought
Speaker 1: he uh, I thought, Bernard. He dropped out of the
Speaker 1: race after he was back in the Atlantic. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's right after he round at Cape Horn. So Cape
Speaker 1: Horn is a tip of South America. Oh okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm getting him. I'm getting good Africa Cape Okay, that's
Speaker 1: where I'm because I always think of the Horde of Africa.
Speaker 1: So that's that's where I'm screwing this. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Actually the Horn of Africa is in the Indian Sea.
Speaker 1: It's like the Gulf of Aid and then all that
Speaker 1: stuff that's in Horn of Africa. Okay, sorry, sorry to
Speaker 1: be sorry to be lecturing here. No, no, no, I
Speaker 1: know them both, but I'm I'm intermed mixing them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was geography and stupid Globe geography. Back to so
Speaker 1: after him, want to say, dropped out of the race.
Speaker 1: That left three sailors Robin Knox Johnston, Nigel Tetley, and
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst. Robin Knox Johnston arrived home first. He got
Speaker 1: home April nineteen six, and then he won the Golden Globe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Crowhurst was out of contact, but everybody was interpretating his
Speaker 1: progress based on his past reported positions and the speeds
Speaker 1: that they could estimate based on those distances between those points.
Speaker 1: And so it looked, based on that interpretation like Crowhurst
Speaker 1: might actually beat Nigel Tetley for the best time, and
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of excitement back home. So
Speaker 1: on April tenth, nineteen sixty and Crowhurst finally broke his
Speaker 1: radio silence and he said he was headed back up
Speaker 1: the Atlantic having cleared Cape Horn, and of course Hallward
Speaker 1: sent out a press release, a press one nuts because
Speaker 1: it looked like Crowhurst was a plucky amateur who was
Speaker 1: in serious contention for the five thousand pound prize. Lots
Speaker 1: of excitement all the way around. But of course Crowhurst
Speaker 1: was relying on Tetley because he knew that Tetley was
Speaker 1: had a two week lead on him, so he was
Speaker 1: he was very depending on not winning. Well. I think
Speaker 1: he should have waited a little longer before he broke
Speaker 1: his radio silence because Tetley of course was aware that
Speaker 1: Crowhurst was was back in the race and was in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic hot on his heels as far as he knew.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course Crowhurst was it really wasn't speeding
Speaker 1: that fast. He didn't wasn't all that motivated to get
Speaker 1: home from now he was. Yeah, but Tetley believe that
Speaker 1: Crowhurst was hot on his heels and so he put
Speaker 1: on as much sale as he could. Tetley, by the way,
Speaker 1: it was also in another forty ft Trimarran, so he
Speaker 1: put on loss of sale and he uh found himself
Speaker 1: in a storm in the mid Atlantic. He didn't shorten
Speaker 1: his sales nearly as much as he should have. And
Speaker 1: shorten your sales means you take in sale, you have
Speaker 1: less sale because you don't want to be demasted in
Speaker 1: storms another sailing term. But so because of that, his
Speaker 1: Tribemran was damaged in the storm and started taking on
Speaker 1: water off the Azores and the boat sank. He took
Speaker 1: to his life raft and he was rescued by rescue
Speaker 1: type people. Yeah, rescued I as seen people in the helicopters.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, probably Yeah. So he was pulled out of
Speaker 1: the water. Made thirtieth, nineteen sixty nine. And of course
Speaker 1: he's still a crow who still had a functioning radio.
Speaker 1: So when he heard the news that Tetley had sunk, well,
Speaker 1: that was really bad news for him. Needless to say, Uh,
Speaker 1: his long his log entries about this point showed that
Speaker 1: he was in a deteriorating mental state for the the
Speaker 1: last several weeks of his log entries and he wrote poems,
Speaker 1: random thoughts, philosophical ramblings. You put in fake and real
Speaker 1: log entries. And then in the final page of the log,
Speaker 1: which was ended on July one, nine, he wrote, and
Speaker 1: I quote, it is finished. It is the mercy that
Speaker 1: was all caps. I will resign the game. So that
Speaker 1: was his last entry. So wait, okay, I'm confused. Robin
Speaker 1: Knox Johnston arrived on April twenty twond so why why
Speaker 1: was Crowhurst gonna win? Didn't Robin Knox Johnston already win?
Speaker 1: Remember now he won the Golden Globe was getting there
Speaker 1: first and getting their fastest. Knox Johnston got there first,
Speaker 1: but he did he Crowhurst potentially could get there in
Speaker 1: a shorter amount of time. It was two separate got it? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. I've been laboring under false assumptions. Max
Speaker 1: Johnston was in a monohole boat, which tends to be
Speaker 1: slower than trim Ran too. Yeah, so I'm sure he
Speaker 1: had a good pokey time. On July tenth, nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: the Royal Mail vessel party crossing the mid Atlantic towards
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, spotted the time with electron drifting with only
Speaker 1: a single sale up. They boarded it found the boat
Speaker 1: was cluttered and dirty, with dirty dishes, filthy bedding, and
Speaker 1: no crew, nobody to be seen. So the captain of
Speaker 1: the Picardy hauled the trim ran on board his ship
Speaker 1: and they sailed on and started to read the three
Speaker 1: log books that they found on there, and the air
Speaker 1: search was begun for Crowhurst, and of course the news
Speaker 1: of his disappearance spread worldwide and made him very famous.
Speaker 1: Of course, he was already kind of famous because a
Speaker 1: lot of people were following this and there, of course
Speaker 1: lots of people reported sighting him at all kinds of
Speaker 1: places around the world, including the UK and Cape Verity
Speaker 1: and everywhere else, and the British media for a time
Speaker 1: even staked out the family home thinking he might he
Speaker 1: might show up there or something. And two days later
Speaker 1: the captain of the Picardy was mostly through the log books.
Speaker 1: There were also other papers found on board the boat
Speaker 1: which showed the actual navigation course that he had been following,
Speaker 1: and not the fake log books. And so the captain
Speaker 1: reported what he found. And I also mentioned the suicidal
Speaker 1: sounding the last entry, which leads you to think a
Speaker 1: certain thing don't believe it or not, and the AIRCA
Speaker 1: rescue was called off, and the mystery of the ghost
Speaker 1: ship Time with Electron lives on to this day. No
Speaker 1: one knows what happened to the crew of the time
Speaker 1: with the thing that really I had a really hard
Speaker 1: time getting ahold of with this story and it's your
Speaker 1: head around. Well, no, it's just what's not so apparent
Speaker 1: when you just read it is the amount of time
Speaker 1: that it takes place over fast. No. And I watched
Speaker 1: there's a great documentary on this called deep Water, and
Speaker 1: I watched it. It's really interesting and it really goes
Speaker 1: through a lot of it, but it really gave me
Speaker 1: the sense of how much time this whole thing took,
Speaker 1: and how much time Crowhurst spent by himself on that boat.
Speaker 1: I mean when his boat was found, it was two
Speaker 1: hundred and forty some days by himself. That's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of time. Now he went on land once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking about speaking of spending a huge amount of time
Speaker 1: at sea, there, there's actually a book about a guy
Speaker 1: who took over three years to sail around the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the book that I was going to recommend to
Speaker 1: you what is called Sailing Alone around the World by
Speaker 1: Joshua Slocum. Joshua Slocum was actually a quasi famous guy.
Speaker 1: He was a New England sea captain and he set
Speaker 1: out in April eighteen on his boat the Spray, which
Speaker 1: was a thirty seven foot wouldn't sloop, and he sailed
Speaker 1: in a little more than three years and about forty
Speaker 1: six thousand miles all around the world. Was he by himself? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was by himself three Now he didn't he didn't
Speaker 1: do it NonStop. Yeah, yeah, but over three years, I
Speaker 1: would hope, yeah, hopefully put a games up a little
Speaker 1: shortly from time to time. But even that, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's quite the adventure. Yeah, and all of this, I'm
Speaker 1: sure the accounts of it shortly were probably really cool too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was really ready to cut loose and
Speaker 1: kick up his heels many many months at sea. Go
Speaker 1: check it out now, well, don't check it out now,
Speaker 1: Wait until we end the show, then check it out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we still have a lot of show ahead of us
Speaker 1: because we got to talk about theories, what happened to
Speaker 1: Donald Crowhurst and how did the time with the Electron
Speaker 1: become a ghost ship or a ghost boat? Yeah, or
Speaker 1: a ghost tram in yeah, or whatever. So theories in
Speaker 1: no particular order. Theory one is pirates. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: have any thoughts on that. I didn't find a whole
Speaker 1: lot of record of I did look for this, I
Speaker 1: actually thought about it. I didn't see a whole lot
Speaker 1: of records of pirates operating in that part of the
Speaker 1: sea in the late sixties. I couldn't find a whole
Speaker 1: lot of accountings of that. And it also just seems
Speaker 1: like super counterintuitive like that, it's not like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff missing from the boat. Well actually, not
Speaker 1: like the boat was missing. It's just it was just
Speaker 1: this one broke dude. Well, typically, you know, pirates, like
Speaker 1: in the in the Caribbean, for example, pirates now in
Speaker 1: that area tend to um you know, and it could
Speaker 1: be a similar much pirates they tend to kill the
Speaker 1: owner and throw his body overboard and take the boat.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they would have taken the boat. So you
Speaker 1: want to put the pirate theory arrest I kind of think, so, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well that was short lived. Next theory and this this
Speaker 1: has some plausibility. That next theory is that he fell overboard,
Speaker 1: which is entirely possible. Yeah, apparently he had a propensity
Speaker 1: to fall overboard. He had to constantly do I actually
Speaker 1: I really unfortunately kind of lean towards this one heavily
Speaker 1: because of all the repairs that he was constantly doing.
Speaker 1: Um we didn't I know, we didn't talk about it initially,
Speaker 1: but who was the guy that went on the the
Speaker 1: early voyage with him? Yeah, when Eden was with him.
Speaker 1: One of the issues that they were having is the
Speaker 1: screws in the that we're holding the rudder to the
Speaker 1: boat continually were vibrating loose and falling out. I don't
Speaker 1: even understand how that happens though, like Brandon designed, haven't
Speaker 1: figured it out. They're not locked in their screws. And
Speaker 1: he what was the guy's name again, Eden, I'll remember
Speaker 1: it now. He recommended welding him. He's like, this is great,
Speaker 1: but if you want to take this voyage, you need
Speaker 1: to weld those down, which never happened. And it was
Speaker 1: even some superglue would have been helping something, but it
Speaker 1: as long as he talked about, you know, lost the
Speaker 1: fourth screw today and so I just I can just
Speaker 1: imagine him constantly being out there when you're on your
Speaker 1: own and you're a little loopy from just being on
Speaker 1: your own nothing else, just ivan in the sun for
Speaker 1: two days by myself, and you're just kind of spaced
Speaker 1: out and you go to grab something as it's falling away,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and no way to get back in
Speaker 1: the boat, and the boat just keeps going. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't stop. Ye, intelligent sailors, I think tie themselves to
Speaker 1: the boat usually. I usually people have lifelines that they
Speaker 1: but h and but you know even that, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you go overboard, it can be pretty tough to
Speaker 1: get back into the boat. I mean, it's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: But I don't think he was wearing a lifeline if
Speaker 1: he did fell overboard, because it would have it would
Speaker 1: have been there. I mean, his body still probably still
Speaker 1: would have been there. Well. And and he did, um
Speaker 1: A lot of the guys were on this in this race,
Speaker 1: must say and he both we're given tape recorders and
Speaker 1: video recorders to just log what they were do doing.
Speaker 1: And Monta say, has And and Crowhurst have a bunch
Speaker 1: of footage of themselves just tooling around on the boat
Speaker 1: do in their everyday thing. And they're in shorts, they've
Speaker 1: got no shirt on there in the sun, and I
Speaker 1: never saw a lifeline tied to anybody. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that would be more cumbersome on a daily basis
Speaker 1: because you're walking back and forth and it's snagging, and
Speaker 1: you go one way and then the other and it's
Speaker 1: just looped around. I can see that being a giant pain,
Speaker 1: which would explain why you wouldn't wear it all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: heavy c s would be the only time I think
Speaker 1: you would do it, or if you had a hi
Speaker 1: perpensity for falling over I'm just saying, if you've fallen
Speaker 1: overboard on like a small voyage five or six times,
Speaker 1: maybe like use your brain a little bit, connect yourself
Speaker 1: to that thing that is the only thing that's keeping
Speaker 1: you alive. But people get lazy when they get comfortable
Speaker 1: and used to Yeah, so anyway, well let's little get
Speaker 1: that some points that's a strong possibility for that theory.
Speaker 1: Of course, the next theory, and this is the most
Speaker 1: prevalent theory out there, is suicide. And certainly that's supported
Speaker 1: by the last log book entry. Although you could interpret
Speaker 1: that plausibly, he says, uh, he said, I will resign
Speaker 1: the game. You could interpret that as him just saying
Speaker 1: I'm going to drop out of the race, or he's
Speaker 1: gonna admit to everything, or possibly he's going to get busted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be that, or it could be by resigning
Speaker 1: the game, he means he's going to offer himself. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say, all right, yeah, it's all It's especially
Speaker 1: hard to say since, like I haven't read any of
Speaker 1: his other log stuff, like what the kind of tone
Speaker 1: of it? You know, you can get a sense of
Speaker 1: stuff like that sometimes. But but here's why, here's why
Speaker 1: I don't really believe the suicide thing entirely. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still possible. But if it were me and I
Speaker 1: was going to commit suicide, and of course he probably
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely in his right mind, but he left a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence behind, uh that that he basically lied
Speaker 1: the whole time. And you know, of course, you want
Speaker 1: to think about what your reputation is going to be
Speaker 1: beyond the grave. You want to think about that. And
Speaker 1: if it had been me, I would have checked the
Speaker 1: logs and all the other documentation overboards, so there'd be
Speaker 1: there would have been no evidence. I swear I saw
Speaker 1: somewhere that in this is in line with the suicide
Speaker 1: theory is that somebody had said that he had taken
Speaker 1: one of the log books with him overboard, which I
Speaker 1: could never really substantiate, And also question how do you
Speaker 1: know exactly. I've heard that too, that they thought it
Speaker 1: took a log But how do you know that? I mean,
Speaker 1: we're did the spine of the log books a log
Speaker 1: book one to four, and so you know he is missing, yeah,
Speaker 1: or in the logs. Maybe you've just got a big jump,
Speaker 1: But then you still don't know, because I mean, it's
Speaker 1: also it is possible that he just didn't keep logs
Speaker 1: for a gap of time. It's also possible at some
Speaker 1: point you accidentally dropped it overboard. He had it on
Speaker 1: when he fell over, he got back in the boat
Speaker 1: and it didn't go. But so as soon as that
Speaker 1: goes On the other hand, he did have a pretty
Speaker 1: strong motivation because not only was he going to be
Speaker 1: financially ruined, he was going to be humiliated and exposed
Speaker 1: as a liar. And also he's probably feeling a little
Speaker 1: bit guilty about Nigel Tetley, because Nigel Tetley arguably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have said wouldn't have have sunk not for him, So
Speaker 1: maybe he was feeling a little a little remorseful about that,
Speaker 1: and so maybe all those things combined to driving to suicide. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he well, and I know he had a lot of hesitation.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it wasn't for the contract that he
Speaker 1: had to sign. From what I've seen, I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that he would have never set sail, because I
Speaker 1: think it was the thirty of October, the day before
Speaker 1: he left, he went to his financier and his publicist
Speaker 1: and said, this boat is not ready. I this boat
Speaker 1: is an't ready. I can't take this boat it out
Speaker 1: And they both looked at him and said, what do
Speaker 1: you mean. You have to go? You you have to go.
Speaker 1: It's too late to back out. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: a rock and a hard place. He was in a
Speaker 1: tough spot, it's a terrible spot. Well he did put
Speaker 1: himself there, I mean, yeah, you did. But I still
Speaker 1: feel bad for the guy, Yeah, of course, yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's heart wrenching because of course he
Speaker 1: had he was married and a four kids, three or
Speaker 1: four children. Well, and didn't I think I read somewhere
Speaker 1: that the guy who ended up with the money, who
Speaker 1: ended up with the money, Wally ended up with the
Speaker 1: knock Knox Johnson. That's that's right. He's the only one
Speaker 1: that made and didn't he give most of it to
Speaker 1: the children of Yeah he did, Yeah, Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: after it came out that you know, he was kind
Speaker 1: of a liar and all that stuff, the money was
Speaker 1: never I mean, you gotta feel bad for the family,
Speaker 1: you know, because they've lost They've lost their husband and father,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, he getting a lot of
Speaker 1: really bad peoplicity. Yeah, well, I imagine. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like anybody who becomes a public figure like that.
Speaker 1: You're you know that there's two frames of mind. Either
Speaker 1: I know, I'm going to make a bunch of money
Speaker 1: from this in other avenues, so I'm going to give
Speaker 1: this away knowing that I'm not going to be hurting
Speaker 1: in the long run because I'll make money on other ventures.
Speaker 1: Or there's, as you guys said, the magnanimous perspective of yeah,
Speaker 1: my my winning doesn't matter because of this other tragedy
Speaker 1: that happened. I mean, it's hard to say what motivated
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad he did it because it was
Speaker 1: something to do. Yeah, And I have no idea he
Speaker 1: might have been independently wealthy anyway, so who knows. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you guys have any more thoughts on the suicide theory? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: last theory. This theory is that there is a seagoing troupicbra. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is called the krack and yeah, I've heard of that.
Speaker 1: So there is there's a school of thinking that perhaps
Speaker 1: the crack and got him. Yeah. I just reached up,
Speaker 1: plucked him out the boat and took him away pretty much. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: probably what it did is it grabbed the boat and
Speaker 1: it's in his harry paw, turned it upside down and
Speaker 1: shook him out of the boat into his mouth, and
Speaker 1: then gently set the boat back down. And he was
Speaker 1: the only thing that fell out. Well, that would explain
Speaker 1: why the one log book was gone too, because it
Speaker 1: fell out to Yeah, but none of the dishes or anything. No,
Speaker 1: that's true. Good point. They weren't broken and that yeah
Speaker 1: the good point. Okay, so much for that there. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I always like to bring things out
Speaker 1: of left field. Here's the one theory that I've never
Speaker 1: come across that I wonder about. His boat was found
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic and it was what a hundred miles
Speaker 1: from the as ors. Is that correct something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was about a hundred miles when when that ship
Speaker 1: founded on the tenth, it was about a hundred of
Speaker 1: miles away from the ass which it's just a string
Speaker 1: of islands that kind of I don't even know how
Speaker 1: far they they're five miles off the coast of Spain,
Speaker 1: but it's still a relatively temperate area. And he's already
Speaker 1: broken the rules once and gone ashore, so I could
Speaker 1: conceivably see him writing this post, uh, this log entry
Speaker 1: saying the game is up, going to an island and
Speaker 1: just pushing the boat off, And because the boat was
Speaker 1: found with a sail up, so I could see where
Speaker 1: he just said, I'm going to just start a new life.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start a new life. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: walk away. I'm sorry for my wife and family, but
Speaker 1: the hell with this. I'm out. I just can't take
Speaker 1: this anymore. And maybe it's because those islands are so
Speaker 1: small in their small communities that this this might just
Speaker 1: be completely wrong. But I just wonder about that, because
Speaker 1: he wasn't that far off and heat in his course
Speaker 1: when he found out about Lee, he hung a right
Speaker 1: hand turn and started heading in that direction rather than
Speaker 1: continuing north to England. So yeah, I mean the ass
Speaker 1: is a possibility, but you know, I mean I just
Speaker 1: don't know that. The only problem that I have with
Speaker 1: that theory is that, um, he could start over with
Speaker 1: nothing in the ass or he could go home and
Speaker 1: start off with nothing again and have be with his
Speaker 1: family and so but if he if he went home,
Speaker 1: he would be returning in disgrace. He would lose everything
Speaker 1: he had. And if he chose to disappear and not
Speaker 1: return home, his family would likely have some kind of
Speaker 1: but you know, he probably had life insurance or something
Speaker 1: like that something. You know, it's not it's it protected
Speaker 1: his family financially a little bit, get them a little
Speaker 1: more something. Yeah, And it protected him because you can
Speaker 1: take on a new name and nobody knows what a
Speaker 1: dipstick you were and what a foolish mistake you made.
Speaker 1: You can actually actually everybody everybody knows that because they've
Speaker 1: read the log books, that you foolish. But no, everybody
Speaker 1: that he meets from then on forward, he's not going
Speaker 1: to operate under this stigma of oh, you don't do
Speaker 1: business with Crowhurst. He's a liar. He tries to pull
Speaker 1: the wool over your eyes. He can just be you know,
Speaker 1: some random dude shows up on the island and hires
Speaker 1: on with a ship and just goes about his business
Speaker 1: and just he's free of it. It's washes his hands. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only problem I have with that theory is I
Speaker 1: still think he would have sanitized the boat. He would
Speaker 1: have taken the incriminating stuff. Yeah, I definitely think that
Speaker 1: he should have. He should have would think that because
Speaker 1: you know, if he set the set the boat off,
Speaker 1: he would want people to think that he just was
Speaker 1: washed overboard or fell overboard. Yeah, and so that's fair.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair point. But but but sanitizing the boat,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that wouldn't look more suspicious. That
Speaker 1: would looks kind of funny too. You know, if he
Speaker 1: had done the laundry and washed all the dishes and
Speaker 1: all of that, would that have stood out to us
Speaker 1: in history as stranger than the cabin was a wreck? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't mean I'm sanitized as in removing
Speaker 1: criminating materials like the log books and charts and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. That's stuff that stuff that you know that
Speaker 1: showed the entire world that he had been lying this
Speaker 1: entire time. But would it have looked But that's the
Speaker 1: thing again, that would have looked bad to how many
Speaker 1: log books he left with. Well what I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess the thing you do in that situation is you
Speaker 1: just throw almost everything that was on the ship overboard
Speaker 1: and make it look like you got hit by a
Speaker 1: huge wave. It washed, you know, washed everything out, watched
Speaker 1: everything out. It's reasonable that there was you know, not
Speaker 1: a whole lot that survived or whatever, and let go
Speaker 1: about your marry Wayne. Yeah, I mean there's you knows,
Speaker 1: there's plausible excuses for that, you know, like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I took on a bunch of water with a sneaker wave,
Speaker 1: you know, filled half filled the cabin, and I had
Speaker 1: had everything out on deck drying out, you know, and
Speaker 1: then theother sneaker wave came along and washed it all overboard.
Speaker 1: Of course he's not there to explain all this or
Speaker 1: you you know, dunk them in the water and let
Speaker 1: lay them out to dry, and they're so you know, crinkled,
Speaker 1: and I think is all running and everything that nobody
Speaker 1: can decipher what you were writing. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's ways to do it. There's ways to cover your tracks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the hardest part with this, is we
Speaker 1: all it's so easy first armchair quarterback that and come
Speaker 1: up with better ways to do it. But again, some
Speaker 1: days on your own, and granted you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of time to think through this, but I think you
Speaker 1: have a lot of time to think through this and
Speaker 1: then think through it again and again and just drive
Speaker 1: yourself bad. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. It sounds like
Speaker 1: that's what happened to him. Yeah, it's sad. I feel
Speaker 1: so I feel bad for the guy. Well, okay, so
Speaker 1: much for that theory, So maybe maybe who knows, um
Speaker 1: any other any other theories? Now, that was the only
Speaker 1: other thing I had was the ash. There's not too
Speaker 1: many theories on this one, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: say one last thing, and that what's really sad is
Speaker 1: that he had a way out. He didn't have to
Speaker 1: kill himself if if you need, I'm kind of torn
Speaker 1: between being falling overboard and killing him. So I wasna
Speaker 1: you lean towards the suicide theory if well, if you committed,
Speaker 1: if he committed suicide, then it didn't he didn't have
Speaker 1: to do it. He could have. He could have. Actually,
Speaker 1: there was a way that he could get back to
Speaker 1: England fool everybody and not be disgraced, which is all
Speaker 1: he had to do was scuttle his boat. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: he had to do. That's I didn't even think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so true. Everybody else was doing it, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all the cool kids are doing it.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't get the money, but yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: he he only problem was he didn't have a radio
Speaker 1: transmitter that had cocked out. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: mentioned that or not, but as radio he he seized
Speaker 1: radio transmissions. But it turns out when they found about
Speaker 1: the transmitter wasn't working. So at some point, this was
Speaker 1: after after he needs to send a couple of transmissions
Speaker 1: saying he was headed back up the Atlantic, but apparently
Speaker 1: it stopped working. It actually did stop working. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he couldn't get a distress call out. But that's easily
Speaker 1: solved because he was All he needed to do was
Speaker 1: head towards say, you know the coast of North Africa
Speaker 1: or maybe Portugal, Spain, and we get close, get to
Speaker 1: within maybe just barely side the land. Stuff. A bunch
Speaker 1: of provisions to make sure the wind and the current
Speaker 1: are moving your direction and then open all the sea
Speaker 1: cocks and watched that thing go down. And he did
Speaker 1: have a lifeboat on. And so the thing is is
Speaker 1: he could have done that, of course, you know, and
Speaker 1: in the in the in the mayhem of the boats sinking,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I didn't have time to grab
Speaker 1: the log books, you know, And so he just barely
Speaker 1: escapes with his life, and nobody ever, people might be
Speaker 1: a little suspicious, but nobody will ever be the wiser.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't. He's not disgraced. He doesn't lose his
Speaker 1: house and his business. That's all he had to do. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of that. Yeah, foolish because I
Speaker 1: put off the deep end with the ads. But that's
Speaker 1: a much simpler answer that would have been, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would have been the way to do it. And frankly,
Speaker 1: but you know, and this is another reason to lean
Speaker 1: towards um, towards being falling overboarder being washed overboard, is
Speaker 1: that I'm kind of surprised if he chose to kill himself,
Speaker 1: that he didn't scuttle the boat, because you know, the
Speaker 1: same same thing he winds up with the drinks, and
Speaker 1: the drinking drowns, but he leaves all the damning evidence behind.
Speaker 1: But if he sunk the boat and drowned himself, then
Speaker 1: everybody would just assume that he had been lost at sea,
Speaker 1: and he would be kind of a national hero instead
Speaker 1: of a national instead of being disgraced as he was.
Speaker 1: It's very true. Yeah, so yeah, it's kind of seems
Speaker 1: like he was just washed overboard. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's hard to say, because I mean, it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to you guys to scuttle the boat. Maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to him. Yeah, it occurs to Joe
Speaker 1: because he scuttles boats all the time. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know sometimes you gotta you know, you gotta just
Speaker 1: you know, pour gasoline all over every time. Did I
Speaker 1: say that's damn it? Yeah? So anyway, too bad? Um,
Speaker 1: I hope this is like confused all of our listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So write us your thoughts and tell me what now
Speaker 1: you've thought. Now you've thought this all carefully through with us,
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? And if you want to
Speaker 1: write us an email, of course you do contact us
Speaker 1: at Taking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You can
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Speaker 1: Find us on Stitcher and hopefully Stitcher isn't truncating our
Speaker 1: episodes still like they were. Uh yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but as if next, I hope so. Yeah, But find
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Speaker 1: find us on Twitter and follow us on Twitter. And
Speaker 1: we we tweet all kinds of amazing stuff. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: absolutely doubt we did, but we did regularly cool stuff
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page. But yeah, we're not doing a
Speaker 1: lot of tweeting last last year. Yeah. And last of all,
Speaker 1: if you're boycotting iTunes and Stitcher, and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of you are, and then you can also find
Speaker 1: our episodes on our website, which is thinking Sideways podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. And of course you will find links to
Speaker 1: all the research that we did, or at least some
Speaker 1: of the research. Sometimes we like to keep some of
Speaker 1: a covert. Yeah, but you'll find some links to some
Speaker 1: of these stories out there, so okay, well, anyway, that's
Speaker 1: it for this week. I hope you folks enjoyed listening,
Speaker 1: So for Thinking Sideways Podcast TATA by Everybody Owe