The family's retirement savings were invested in an Indian sporting goods factory, which later burned down during rioting after the Partition of India. After India gained its independence, his family moved back to England. During her pregnancy, his mother had longed for a daughter, and Crowhurst was dressed as a girl until the age of seven. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father worked in the Indian railways. 2.3 Mental condition and final philosophical writingsĬrowhurst was born in 1932 in Ghaziabad, British India.His innovative but ill-prepared boat, the 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. It has inspired a number of books, stage plays and films, including a documentary, Deep Water (2006), and two feature films, Crowhurst (2017) and The Mercy (also 2017), in which Crowhurst is played by the actors Justin Salinger and Colin Firth, respectively. His ship's logbooks, found after his disappearance, suggest that the stress he was under and associated psychological deterioration may have led to his suicide.Ĭrowhurst's participation in the race has exerted a fascination over many commentators and artists. He secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually doing so.

Soon after he started the race his ship began taking on water and he wrote that it would probably sink in heavy seas. Donald Charles Alfred Crowhurst (1932 – July 1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who disappeared while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race.

Slapdash sailing