The true story of Donald Crowhurst set for a major film adaptation

by The Guardian on 3 Feb 2015 It’s a tale of ambition, adventure, madness and tragedy that seems tailor-made for the big screen: the true story of Donald Crowhurst, whose attempt to circumnavigate the world solo ended catastrophically. Now it’s set for a blue-chip film adaptation, from The Theory of Everything director James Marsh, with Colin Firth as Crowhurst.

The as-yet-untitled film is being written by Scott Z Burns, who has penned The Bourne Ultimatum as well as a trio of Steven Soderbergh films, The Informant!, Contagion and Side Effects.

In 1968, Crowhurst was trying to market a nautical navigation device he had developed, and saw the Sunday Times Golden Globe race, a challenge for anyone to take on a solo global circumnavigation, as the perfect opportunity to get some publicity and perhaps cash. He fitted his trimaran with a stability system that he also intended to become a business venture on his return.

But he wasn’t a skilled yachtsman, and made slow progress. He eventually decided to falsify his location to enable him to cut out a large chunk of dangerous sailing on the Southern ocean, and join the pack on their way back to the UK. His erroneous reports had those following the race thinking that he was winning, and people prepared to give him a hero’s welcome – but in the end, his boat was discovered unmanned and drifting, with Crowhurst assumed to have drowned himself. His log book betrayed a mind unravelled by the pressures of the race.

The poignancy of the story has long captured the imagination of artists. The American poet Donald Finkel wrote a collection of poems, The Wake of the Electron, that narrated Crowhurst’s journey, while novelist Robert Stone based his Outerbridge Reach on the story; there has also been a play (Daniel Pelican) and an opera (Ravenshead) based on it. Turner-nominated artist Tacita Dean has created a series of works responding to Crowhurst’s story, including a book named after his boat, Teignmouth Electron. She has said of Crowhurst: 'His story is about human failing, about pitching his sanity against the sea, where there is no human presence or support system on which to hang a tortured psychological state.'

There was also a film version developed by Nicolas Roeg in the 1970s, though it was never completed. An 'engrossing' documentary on his voyage, Deep Water, came out in 2006.

The new version will be James Marsh’s first project after The Theory of Everything, which has picked up four Oscar and ten Bafta nominations, including one for Marsh’s direction. Firth meanwhile can be seen in Kingsman: The Secret Service opening this week, and next in Genius, where he plays book editor Max Scribner who nurtured work by the likes of Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald – it co-stars Jude Law, Dominic West and Guy Pearce as the trio of writers.



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