THE PRESS
The cruel sea
BILL GRUNDY
If I ever hear anybody, ever again, say that July is the silly season, the time of year when nothing happens, I will strike them dead, so help me. Any fairly assiduous readers of the recent press will by now be feeling very much in need of a holiday. First the moon men, now safely locked away in quarantine, so we can forget them a bit. Then Gerald Brooke, whose know- ledge of what he was doing in Russia at the time of his arrest seems just about as lim- ited as the Foreign Office's. Then the affaire Kennedy, about which more, no doubt, in other parts of this journal. Then the 'secrets' girl, whose body was found in a ditch. Then Trooper Tom McClean, the single- handed Atlantic rower. But to come down on Sunday morning, to sit down to a leisurely breakfast, to open the Sunday Times and find on the front page a story that destroyed my appetite for food but created a much bigger one for news—well, that was it.
I refer, of course, to the incredible story of Donald Crowhurst. After gulping down the front page announcement, and then reading through Nicholas Tomalin's meti- culous account of the whole affair, one could only sit stunned and fairly horrified.
I feel sorry for the Sunday Times. The tone of that opening front-page sentence showed what they had been through: 'It is with great sadness that the Sunday Times announces that examination of the log kept by Donald Crowhurst, a competitor in the Sunday Times Round the World Race, has revealed that the voyage he had made would not have qualified for any prize even if he had returned safely to England.' If ever I saw a carefully-worded statement by a spokesman, that is one. For of course the Sunday Times was obviously trying desperately hard to cause the Crowhurst family no more pain. The statement was also a very commendable one, as was what the Sunday Times did on Saturday evening. They circulated the, statement to editors of the Sunday papers, for use, with a request that it be treated with sympathy for the sake of the family. The Observer, the Sun- day Telegraph and Mirror did so. Other papers showed a touch of the old-world delicacy for which they have long been famous; in other words vultures descended on the Crowhurst doorstep. The Express, I'm told, even had the nerve to complain to the Sunday Times that the story hadn't been released earlier. All of which begins to leave a taste in the mouth, and it isn't the salty tang of the sea.
I feel sorry for Mrs Crowhurst and her family, of course. What agonies she and her children will now endure, what agonies they have gone through, come out clearly in two quotations. The first is from the Sunday
Tines statement: . . Mrs Clare Crow- hurst ... has come to the conclusion that the story must be told'. The second comes from the Sunday Express: 'I cannot be- lieve anything at the moment.'
But the person one feels sorriest for at the moment, although he seems to be be- yond further worry, is Crowhurst himself. The latter stages of the logs and diaries of the voyage, quoted in Nicholas Tomalin's very long article, are frightening. Some of
the phrases Crowhurst uses are straight out of the diary of a madman; indeed the art- icle tells us that a psychiatrist shown these passages said they showed distinct signs of mental breakdown of a paranoid nature.
The Sun's Mavis Davidson started her piece with the words: 'Donald Crowhurst was probably in the early stages of a men- tal breakdown before he set off on his round-the-world trip'. She quotes a Royal Navy Psychiatrist as saying, 'I would have thought that even in the planning stages this man was motivated by delusional ideas of an early-stage mental illness ...I believe he was suffering from early schizophrenia and manic state'.
The Guardian ran a page nine piece by Dr Catherine Storr headed 'Playing a lone game with God'. After agreeing that the passages in Crowhurst's logs suggest schizo- phrenia, she says: 'To me the astonishing thing is not that nearly 300 days of total solitude should have this effect on a man; I am surprised by the men who can endure it and survive'. Dr Storr sounds to be very near to the opinion of the Navy psychiatrist quoted in the Sun when she says, 'We don't know enough about what type of person elects for this sort of adventure'. For the RN chap comes right out and says that other men might go the same way unless psycho- logical tests are carried out beforehand: 'If organisers would ... insist on psychology tests before accepting entrants, men could be saved from this fate'. All of which could begin to put the Sunday Times in a bit of a spot, surely?
For there seems to be evidence that Crowhurst was disturbed even before he left. The boat was declared not to be really seaworthy—the builder said he wouldn't have sailed in it. The sea trials were derisorily short—less than a coastal water cruiser would get. Right up to the time of departure the whole equipment position was one of chaos, so that an 'unknown person' was able to remove from the clutter on the deck most of the technical odds and ends Crowhurst had lashed up for the trip. And yet he still went without them.
If this was known at the time, one can surely ask the sponsors why nothing was done about it. One can also surely ask them, as some papers have already done by implication, why all competitors are not subjected to mental tests before their entries are accepted. Is it because such newspaper stunts, which is what they are, thrive on publicity and the more the merrier, so the more entrants the better, regardless of qual- ity? And is it enough for the sponsors to say, `It was made clear that to enter you needed only to have your departure offici- ally recorded'? These are clearly all ques- tions that must be asked before any more newspaper-sponsored stunts get off the ground or on to the water.
When I put these questions to the Editor of the Sunday Times, Mr Harold Evans, he pointed to the warnings the judges had given before the race, and added: 'It is hard to see what more could have been done. The boat has been examined by the Sunday Thnes and despite its succession of relatively minor defects it is still sound after 14,500 miles at sea. The particular psychological handicaps Donald Crowhurst is now known to have faced were not known to the people of. Teignmouth and the BBC who sponsored him. Nor were they known to his wife and family:" It is hardly practical to suggest that every adventurer should be forced to the analyst's couch and restrained from adventure on a negative report, I wonder, in any event, how many of our great heroes would have been found psychologically normal.'
I wish I could be as sure as Mr Evans.
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