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Fakes, Frauds and Flimflammery (M&S $19.99)
• Known as 'The Emp', Joshua Abraham Norton of San Francisco was beloved for decades as the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States in the 1800s.
• Until his suicide in 1976, Elmyr de Hory made millions from selling his modern art forgeries. Now his fakes are collectors' items and art dealers have to be careful not to purchase forgeries of de Hory's forgeries.
• A brilliant Berlin extortionist codenamed 'Dagobert' (the German name for Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge) turned out to be an unemployed automobile painter hoping to make enough loot to start a hotdog stand.
But perhaps Donald Crowhurst is the most original scam artist in Andreas Schroeder's Fakes, Frauds and Flimflammery (M&S $19.99), the third collection in a series of books about rascals, charlatans and cheats. Here is our synopsis of Crowhurst's caper.
Donald Crowhurst, a novice sailor who didn't own a boat, decided to compete in the world's first solo, non-stop, around-the-world yacht race in 1968.
To obtain a ship, Crowhurst waged a media campaign to liberate the drydocked vessel of British yachtsman Francis Chichester who had completed a solo circumnavigation of the world. This audacity caught the attention of a financial backer who enabled Crowhurst to hastily construct a 41-ft. trimaran.
In just five months Crowhurst somehow managed to build, launch and test his (100% over-budget) trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron. Because a trimaran is excellent for speed but nearly impossible to right after capsizing, Crowhurst designed his own anti-capsizing mechanism.
The race was a staggered start; others had left weeks before him. On October 31, with only seven hours to spare, he set sail as the tenth and final entry.
His problems began almost immediately. Rodney Hallworth, his press agent in England, received a series of messages. The self-steering gear was shredding, the port-bow float was filling with water and the generator was failing. The battery ran down. Crowhurst lost radio contact. Then he regained contact and headed for Madeira, off the coast of Portugal.
Crowhurst was managing less than 50 miles per day but he was unfazed by his poor performance. He was doing well simply by staying afloat. Three of his competitors had to withdraw due to mechanical problems, two capsized, one was de-masted and another developed a stomach ulcer.
The world's press eagerly reported the progress of the few remaining, far-flung yachtsmen. Crowhurst amazingly began to report remarkable speeds, fueling enthusiastic newspaper stories as he approached the Cape of Good Hope. After eleven weeks of silence, a station in Buenos Aires received a weak signal from the Teignmouth Electron, much to the delight of the betting shops who were charting the race.
Crowhurst appeared to be only two weeks behind the leader. After more than 200 days of sailing, he and frontrunner Nigel Tetley had about 5,000 miles to go in their duel to achieve the fastest time. (Robin Knox-Johnston had arrived back at Falmouth in April, after 313 days at sea, but he had departed long before Crowhurst and Tetley.)
By the middle of May, Tetley was approaching the Canary Islands; Crowhurst was off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Tetley had set sail almost a month before Crowhurst. The fastest-time prize could easily go to Crowhurst.
Hallworth was negotiating tv and radio documentary rights, book contracts, a lecture tour and commercial endorsements. He printed up 10,000 postcards with Crowhurst's photograph on behalf of the Teignmouth Chamber of Commerce and sent them all over the world. Crowhurst radioed back: METHS PETROL LOW. FLOUR RICE MILDEWED. WATER FOUL. CHEESE INTERESTING.
It was going perfectly until Nigel Tetley's trimaran sank off the Azores in a storm. "The world's media went absolutely wild,"; says Schroeder. "After seven months and 26,000 miles in a hastily built boat that had never been properly finished or provisioned, Donald Crowhurst, a weekend sailor from a nondescript little town in southwest England, had beaten a group of the world's most eminent and experienced yachtsmen.";
All Crowhurst had to do was loaf his way back to his home part of Teignmouth.
While his press agent anticipated a hero's welcome in England from 100,000 people, Crowhurst was doddling his way through the Sargasso Sea. He slowed to less than five miles per day. Still beset by mechanical problems, Crowhurst stopped answering his radio messages on June 1, 1969.
On July 10, a Royal Mail vessel, en route to the Caribbean, found the trimaran adrift about 1,800 miles southwest of England-with no sign of Crowhurst on board.
A search of the area found no traces. Weeks passed. The storybook ending was not to be. The Sunday Times established an appeal fund for Crowhurst's family. Robin Knox-Johnston, the only sailor to complete the race, donated all the prize money. Hallworth, the press agent, offered to sell Crowhurst's three logbooks to ease the burden on Crowhurst's family.
Only the captain of the mail ship had glanced at the logbooks. He took Hallworth aside and asked him to tear out the final three pages containing evidence that Crowhurst had gone completely mad and had obviously committed suicide. Hallworth agreed. But on closer examination of the logbooks, an even more startling discovery was made.
Donald Crowhurst had pretended to circumnavigate the globe. Careful to avoid major shipping lanes, he had cleverly concocted false positions in his radio reports.
Donald Crowhurst never left the Atlantic Ocean.
Encountering severe mechanical problems in December, Crowhurst had decided to sail in circles off the coast of Brazil. He kept a detailed logbook to chart his phoney progress. In the late 1960s, radio signals were still relatively untraceable so it was possible for his scam to go undetected.
Experts deduced that Crowhurst had planned to finish second. This way he could gain some fame but race officials wouldn't give his logbook more than superficial scrutiny. Tetley's sinking off the Azores was the worst news imaginable for Crowhurst. As the winner by default, he knew his victory would be scrutinized and the scam would be uncovered.
Crowhurst stopped bothering to sail. He became obsessed with his copy of Einstein's Relativity, the Special and the General Theory. According to Crowhurst's personal journal that was recovered, he believed a man could learn to manipulate the 'space-time continuum' and possess the attributes of God.
"He lay naked on deck (as was reported by tanker sightings), filling page after page with urgent poems, partially completed essays, heavily underlined exclamations and long, complex mathematical formulae.";
Based on his own concise calculations, at 11:20:40 on July 1, 1969, Donald Crowhurst had stepped off the deck of the Teignmouth Electron into the Sargasso Sea-to become a god.
He has yet to radio back his progress. 0-7710-7954-0
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
• Until his suicide in 1976, Elmyr de Hory made millions from selling his modern art forgeries. Now his fakes are collectors' items and art dealers have to be careful not to purchase forgeries of de Hory's forgeries.
• A brilliant Berlin extortionist codenamed 'Dagobert' (the German name for Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge) turned out to be an unemployed automobile painter hoping to make enough loot to start a hotdog stand.
But perhaps Donald Crowhurst is the most original scam artist in Andreas Schroeder's Fakes, Frauds and Flimflammery (M&S $19.99), the third collection in a series of books about rascals, charlatans and cheats. Here is our synopsis of Crowhurst's caper.
Donald Crowhurst, a novice sailor who didn't own a boat, decided to compete in the world's first solo, non-stop, around-the-world yacht race in 1968.
To obtain a ship, Crowhurst waged a media campaign to liberate the drydocked vessel of British yachtsman Francis Chichester who had completed a solo circumnavigation of the world. This audacity caught the attention of a financial backer who enabled Crowhurst to hastily construct a 41-ft. trimaran.
In just five months Crowhurst somehow managed to build, launch and test his (100% over-budget) trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron. Because a trimaran is excellent for speed but nearly impossible to right after capsizing, Crowhurst designed his own anti-capsizing mechanism.
The race was a staggered start; others had left weeks before him. On October 31, with only seven hours to spare, he set sail as the tenth and final entry.
His problems began almost immediately. Rodney Hallworth, his press agent in England, received a series of messages. The self-steering gear was shredding, the port-bow float was filling with water and the generator was failing. The battery ran down. Crowhurst lost radio contact. Then he regained contact and headed for Madeira, off the coast of Portugal.
Crowhurst was managing less than 50 miles per day but he was unfazed by his poor performance. He was doing well simply by staying afloat. Three of his competitors had to withdraw due to mechanical problems, two capsized, one was de-masted and another developed a stomach ulcer.
The world's press eagerly reported the progress of the few remaining, far-flung yachtsmen. Crowhurst amazingly began to report remarkable speeds, fueling enthusiastic newspaper stories as he approached the Cape of Good Hope. After eleven weeks of silence, a station in Buenos Aires received a weak signal from the Teignmouth Electron, much to the delight of the betting shops who were charting the race.
Crowhurst appeared to be only two weeks behind the leader. After more than 200 days of sailing, he and frontrunner Nigel Tetley had about 5,000 miles to go in their duel to achieve the fastest time. (Robin Knox-Johnston had arrived back at Falmouth in April, after 313 days at sea, but he had departed long before Crowhurst and Tetley.)
By the middle of May, Tetley was approaching the Canary Islands; Crowhurst was off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Tetley had set sail almost a month before Crowhurst. The fastest-time prize could easily go to Crowhurst.
Hallworth was negotiating tv and radio documentary rights, book contracts, a lecture tour and commercial endorsements. He printed up 10,000 postcards with Crowhurst's photograph on behalf of the Teignmouth Chamber of Commerce and sent them all over the world. Crowhurst radioed back: METHS PETROL LOW. FLOUR RICE MILDEWED. WATER FOUL. CHEESE INTERESTING.
It was going perfectly until Nigel Tetley's trimaran sank off the Azores in a storm. "The world's media went absolutely wild,"; says Schroeder. "After seven months and 26,000 miles in a hastily built boat that had never been properly finished or provisioned, Donald Crowhurst, a weekend sailor from a nondescript little town in southwest England, had beaten a group of the world's most eminent and experienced yachtsmen.";
All Crowhurst had to do was loaf his way back to his home part of Teignmouth.
While his press agent anticipated a hero's welcome in England from 100,000 people, Crowhurst was doddling his way through the Sargasso Sea. He slowed to less than five miles per day. Still beset by mechanical problems, Crowhurst stopped answering his radio messages on June 1, 1969.
On July 10, a Royal Mail vessel, en route to the Caribbean, found the trimaran adrift about 1,800 miles southwest of England-with no sign of Crowhurst on board.
A search of the area found no traces. Weeks passed. The storybook ending was not to be. The Sunday Times established an appeal fund for Crowhurst's family. Robin Knox-Johnston, the only sailor to complete the race, donated all the prize money. Hallworth, the press agent, offered to sell Crowhurst's three logbooks to ease the burden on Crowhurst's family.
Only the captain of the mail ship had glanced at the logbooks. He took Hallworth aside and asked him to tear out the final three pages containing evidence that Crowhurst had gone completely mad and had obviously committed suicide. Hallworth agreed. But on closer examination of the logbooks, an even more startling discovery was made.
Donald Crowhurst had pretended to circumnavigate the globe. Careful to avoid major shipping lanes, he had cleverly concocted false positions in his radio reports.
Donald Crowhurst never left the Atlantic Ocean.
Encountering severe mechanical problems in December, Crowhurst had decided to sail in circles off the coast of Brazil. He kept a detailed logbook to chart his phoney progress. In the late 1960s, radio signals were still relatively untraceable so it was possible for his scam to go undetected.
Experts deduced that Crowhurst had planned to finish second. This way he could gain some fame but race officials wouldn't give his logbook more than superficial scrutiny. Tetley's sinking off the Azores was the worst news imaginable for Crowhurst. As the winner by default, he knew his victory would be scrutinized and the scam would be uncovered.
Crowhurst stopped bothering to sail. He became obsessed with his copy of Einstein's Relativity, the Special and the General Theory. According to Crowhurst's personal journal that was recovered, he believed a man could learn to manipulate the 'space-time continuum' and possess the attributes of God.
"He lay naked on deck (as was reported by tanker sightings), filling page after page with urgent poems, partially completed essays, heavily underlined exclamations and long, complex mathematical formulae.";
Based on his own concise calculations, at 11:20:40 on July 1, 1969, Donald Crowhurst had stepped off the deck of the Teignmouth Electron into the Sargasso Sea-to become a god.
He has yet to radio back his progress. 0-7710-7954-0
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
