Word: tomalin
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...STRANGE LAST VOYAGE OF DONALD CROWHURST by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. 317 pages. Stein...
...race, which was eventually won by a cheerful merchant navy officer named Robin Knox-Johnston, had been sponsored by the London Sunday Times. Two Times reporters. Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, took on the task of deciphering the record of the only contestant-out of nine-who did not return. Before they were through, they went far beyond Donald Crowhurst's logs. The resulting book is a portrait of the ill-fated adventurer as well as an examination of his tragic voyage and dishonest messages. It is about a man who attempted an elaborate fraud, went slowly insane...
...Tomalin and Hall trace Crowhurst's disjointed early life in India and in English boarding schools. He possessed a genuinely inventive mind and considerable gifts and training in electronics. He often showed wit and daring, especially as a dashing young officer. He had an uncanny ability to get himself canned and rehired in ever more promising posts, as well as great skill in finding backers for disastrous business ventures. When Tomalin and Hall come to Crowhurst's last voyage, they do not belittle the skill and courage of a man who did, in fact, sail an ill-prepared...
Gradual Fraud. But the fraud, like the voyage itself, proved too much for Crowhurst to sustain. As he turned homeward, Tomalin and Hall believe, Crowhurst decided his faked log could not stand up to a full investigation. Unable to face exposure, he was driven to insanity and at length to suicide...
...Tomalin and Hall's investigation runs to 285 pages (not counting a pair of appendices). Yet the book leaves a number of questions unanswered, and that testifies to the honesty with which the authors faced the difficulty of assessing Crowhurst's character and predicament. He was a liar and a fraud at times, as well as a man sometimes given to self-dramatization. But he was also at times ruthlessly, brilliantly objective. No one will ever know for sure whether poor Crowhurst was right or wrong when he decided that he could neither weather the Horn nor carry...