Golden Globe, the incredible story of the mother of all ocean races

While its controversial 50th anniversary regatta, marked by withdrawals, dismastings, and boat abandonments, is still ongoing, we tell you the story of the legendary Sunday Times Golden Globe Race of 1968, which, as you will see, in terms of “madness” was no less. (the frame above is from the movie “Deep Water, the mad race”: by the way, you can buy the dvd HERE, the story is from our volume “Adventures and Myths in the World Seas,” which you can find HERE on superoffer)

This is what happened in what was the mother of ocean racing, that Sunday Times Golden Globe Race that enshrined Robin Knox-Johnston and Moitessier and took Donald Crowhurst to the grave. Happy reading.

LOST SOULS

In 1968 nine “madmen” set off on the first solo round-the-world race in sailing history. Five dropped out, two committed suicide, and one (Moitessier) abandoned the race and set course for Polynesia. A desultorily ordinary sailor, Robin Knox-Johnston, wins. We retrace, through the words of those who lived it, the incredible turn of events of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race

“When you are lost in the Wilderness and frightened like a child, and Death looks you straight in the eye, and everywhere you ache, agree with Hoyle you should point the revolver … and die. But the code of Man says, Fight while you can, and self-destruction is outlawed. In hunger and misfortune, oh, it’s easy to give up-it’s hell served for breakfast that’s hard to bear.” The vivid picture that the poet Robert Service paints in this poem must have often passed before the lost gaze of the nine protagonists of the adventure we are about to tell you about.

The story of the Golden Globe has an illustrious prologue: on May 28, 1967, Englishman Francis Chichester, on the ketch Gipsy Moth IV, completed the first solo circumnavigation in history in only 226 days with one stop (Sydney). A great feat but not the greatest, Robin Knox-Johnston, 28-year-old captain of the British Merchant Navy reacted to the news of the record by thinking “the only thing left to do is circumnavigation without stopping,” adding that it had to be an Englishman who accomplished it, him. Many others, following the hype achieved by the Chichester record, are beginning to think about the human and sporting feat.

Adventurers seeking notoriety or themselves, but also “wingmen” like sponsors seeking easy profits. Among the many businessmen, the shrewdest turns out to be the Sunday Times who, mindful of the surge in sales achieved following the Gipsy Moth IV adventure, instead of betting on a single sailor decided to create and sponsor the “Sunday Times Golden Globe Race” in March 1968. A race that involves climbing “bare-handed” the three steepest and most dangerous peaks of the seas (Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Leeuwin in Australia and Horn in Chile). The route includes the 30,000 miles to Chichester, but this time without a stop or assistance.

The imprudently simple rules consider those who set out to circumnavigate the globe from any UK port between June 1 and October 31, 1968 (a date imposed to avoid the austral winter) to be in the race. The prize is rich and twofold, a golden globe for the first and 5,000 pounds (about 100,000 euros today) for the fastest.

FIRST RETURNS.

Nine took off and five dropped out before leaving the Atlantic. In order: John Ridgway, 29, Scottish, British Army captain (rowed across the Atlantic in 1966 with Chay Blyth), landed after six weeks in Recife, Brazil, due to the inadequacy of his boat when he noted in his logbook “I don’t think I have ever given up before in my life, now I feel humiliated and inept. The future appears empty to me.” Its sponsor, The People, alters the reasons for the abandonment to limit image damage by headlining “Ridgway beaten by giant waves and fierce winds.”

Chay Blyth, 27, a Scotsman and former British Army sergeant, states before departure, “I don’t know what to do to the boat to prepare it for the trip. The boat looked fine to me, so I clean the stove.” Without any sailing experience he learns in the field, in the hardest and riskiest way, the art of sailing. During storms he holed up in his bunk praying and reading a manual on ocean navigation, “It was like being in hell and reading the instructions!“.

Despite his sloppy preparation it is the boat that gives out before him off South Africa. He writes, “What leads me to inflict heavy sacrifices on the body that God has given me has always fascinated me. […] For me this was a journey of discovery of new things, and what I wanted to discover was myself.” And still much to discover, as in 1971 he accomplished his last remaining “real feat” by circumnavigating the globe solo against the prevailing winds (only three men in history have managed to match him);

Alex Carozzo, 36, an Italian(his story here), navigator known as the “Italian Chichester,” starts among the favorites (he has a solo Pacific crossing to his credit), but retires before he can prove his worth in Lisbon due to a stomach ulcer;

Bill King, 57, an Irishman, farmer and former British Navy submarine commander, sets out to “forget six bad years spent fighting at the bottom of the sea,” also stops in South Africa after capsizing and dismasting (he will successfully retry the feat in 1974);

Loic Fougeron, 42, a Frenchman and manager of a motorcycle company in Casablanca steps aside abandoned by the vehicle near the island of St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic.

DONALD & NIGEL

Among the four “lost souls” still fighting for the trophy are Nigel Tetley 45, born in South Africa, a British Navy captain, and Donald Crowhurst 36, from England, an electronics technician. Both on the water in twin trimarans, they compete for the prize for the fastest lap. Tetley sailed up the Atlantic ahead, but heard over the radio Crowhurst’s positions gradually approaching and decided to push his Victress, already damaged by the Southern Oceans, to the limit.

He sank on May 21 with only 1,000 miles to go, yet achieved the record of circumnavigating the globe on a trimaran. Never celebrated as he deserved by public opinion and haunted by the shadow of not finishing the race, he committed suicide in 1972 while building the boat to retry the feat.

Crowhurst, after the sinking of the Victress, holds the victory for the fastest lap, but inexplicably cuts off all communication with the mainland. Embarking on the venture to save his company from bankruptcy, he soon realized the impossibility of tackling the stormy southern seas with a boat that was launched late and already damaged shortly after departure.

Indebted to the hilt, he decides to wander in calm waters, providing false positions via radio while waiting to triumphantly resume his way home. But he falls victim to his lie and, for fear of being discovered, he lets himself fall overboard. His boat, the Teignmouth Electron, is found adrift on July 10, aboard, only his journals. In the writings of 25 thousand delusional words, poems, quotations and bogus coordinates, only one number recurs, 243: he plans to finish the circumnavigation in 243 days; he sets a false daily mileage record of 243 miles; and he writes the last page of his logbook on the 243rd day of sailing when guilt “suffocates” him.

BERNARD & ROBIN

Summing up, of 9 entries in the regatta 5 withdraw and 2 commit suicide. That leaves Bernard Moitessier, 45, a French sailor and writer, and the aforementioned Robin Knox-Johnston, the only ones to have truly captured, albeit in different ways, the soul of the roaring forty and ocean sailing. For Bernard, in perpetual self-seeking, “the journey is everything and the destination is nothing,” while for Robin the very achievement of the goal, the “destination,” is the reason for the sublime sacrifice.

Knox-Johnston’s competitive and patriotic motivations are obvious, but to understand Moitessier’s participation we need to take a step back, when he left on his honeymoon to Polynesia in 1963. On his return, to reach his children quickly, he passed through Cape Horn instead of the warm, calm waters of Panama and traveled 15 thousand miles nonstop in 126 days, including six stormy days at Horn. As the French cap-hornier writes about this feat, thinking of undertaking the never-before-attempted circumnavigation of the three capes, he learns the news of the Golden Globe Race.

Nauseated by the commercialization of an undertaking so intimate to him, he nevertheless decides to participate so as not to see himself cut off. He leaves one month after Robin. On Aug. 22, after rounding the three capes, suffering a collision with a ship, seeing portholes pulverized by huge breakers, watching his Joshua (boat name inspired by Joshua Slocum, history’s first great solo sailor) scuffed in the water three times, and, most importantly, after facing a tortured inner journey through waves, sharks, albatrosses, and constant hallucinations, he found himself less than two weeks from Knox-Johnston. With the knowledge of possible victory, he makes a simple yet mind-bending decision: to make another half-round-the-world trip before stopping!

He turns the bow and, as he heads south again, manages to throw a message with a sling at a passing merchant ship where he writes, “It is my intention to continue sailing, without stopping, to the islands of the Pacific, where there is abundant sunshine and greater peace than in Europe. Please do not think that this is an attempt to break a record. ‘Record’ is a very stupid word at sea. I continue because I am happy at sea, and maybe also to save my soul.”

Robin Knox-Johnston, after 313 days at sea, is the first and only one to arrive, winning the Golden Globe, the £5,000 (he will donate it to Crowhurst’s family when he learns two months later of Donald’s disappearance at sea), as well as the title of Knight (Sir). Falmouth customs officials board Robin’s boat for the formalities and ask almost embarrassedly, “where did you come from?”

The man, described before departure by a psychologist as desultorily normal, simply replies “Falmouth.” Here ends the myth and begins the story of hundreds of sailors who set out in the wake of the Golden Globe routes. What today is a specialized competitive endeavor, made up of Gps, Epirb, radar, satellite, freeze-dried food and technical clothing, then translated into a sextant that was not always usable, a radio that was often only a receiver causing lacerating loneliness (messages were thrown at passing ships with a sling), a monotony of food compensated by lots of whiskey, a tarp and always-wet wool sweaters capable of driving one to madness.

We can award the nine participants the title of heroes for being the first, but most importantly for facing the unknown “with their bare hands.” “The Joshua rows toward the Horn under the twinkling of the stars and the somewhat detached tenderness of the moon […]. I don’t quite know where I am anymore, I only know that long ago we left behind us the frontiers of too much.”

GOLDEN GLOBE STORY, THE INFOGRAPHIC (click to enlarge)

SEA STORIES, DO YOU WANT MORE?
The story we told you is from the volume “Adventures and Myths in the Seas of the World .” There are adventures worth telling and remembering. For this we drew on our historical archives and selected stories of people and sailings that have made sailing history. We tell you about them with extraordinary images and exclusive texts in our new special issue “Adventures and Myths in the Seas of the World.” From Jack London to Joshua Slocum, via Moitessier, Tabarly, Robin Knox-Johnston, Tino Straulino, and Peter Blake, all the greatest sea myths are collected for the first time in one super-cheap special volume.

COSTS ONLY TWO EUROS! YOU CAN PURCHASE IT HERE