Book Review: "A Voyage for Madmen" by Peter Nichols

"They were neither sportsmen nor yachtsmen. Only one of the nine crossed the finishing line after ten months at sea. The rest encountered despair, sublimity, madness and death".

- "A Voyage for Madmen" by Peter Nichols

There was something about this book when I first heard about it. I needed it. It was definitely the sort of thing I would read. Naturally, I found it on a site dedicated to used books. This one was a little worse for wear and was definitely tearing at the edges. I didn't care though - the book was still readable and it was cheap as hell. A Voyage for Madmen is about a boat race that takes place in the 1960s in which nine men venture out to sail and yet, only one returns afterwards. In the introduction, the author talks us through his own somewhat safer journey across the Atlantic after his marriage fell apart - and yet, we still feel the automatic quiet unease about plunging into the book. This is a fantastic achievement of literature. What a wild ride I've had!

One of the first people to drop out of the race before even heading out of the Atlantic ocea was a man who had faked the entirety of his sailing log. He had pretended to be an experienced sailor and ended up committing suicide due to what is obviously a mental illness. Another one didn't get far before exiting the race and one named Nigel Tetley risked almost sinking before he had to quit. There were some stranger stories but the one I really focused on was the guy with the mental illness, his name was Crowhurst.

Ultimately, it was Bernard Moitessier who won the race, eventually donating the prize money to the family of the man who had killed himself. He is described as a man of high moral integrity and I have also learnt that he too, wrote a book about his expedition. But again, A Voyage for Madmen doesn't really come into too close contact with any one individual, instead we are made to see what the good old-fashioned Phinneas Fogg way of doing things was: to take it around the world and see what happens. It sounds like it came straight out of a storybook, but this is all very real.

I think part of me felt angry about Crowhurst's position and the other part of me felt really bad for him. I didn't end up blaming him for his position but rather the people who were around him that allowed it to get this far. He seemed half propelled by will and half terrified most of the time and the author writes his characterisation as a man who is far, far, far out of his depths and even he knows it. It is very apparent to the reader than not only is this man mentally ill, but even before everything happened that did happen - something horrible was going to take place involving this man. It was upsetting yes, but it didn't put me off from reading the rest of the book.

Part of the novel is definitely adventurous. There is something really wild about sailing across the world, making it through gales and storms, fighting the waves and coming out the other side that made our winner seem even more daring. Yes, I admit you would have to be insane to actually want to do it, but the whole point of the book was not to explore whether it could be done, it wasn't even to offer us a 'thrilling' and 'suspenseful' work, but it was to show us how much these traditions have kept up since. Even though there had been a few bad spells, some things that went terribly wrong - this sort of thing still continues today. There are always going to be races through Africa, bike rides in the Andes, or even people climbing Everest who use the dead bodies of former climbers as checkpoints to know where they are. Danger won't deter them and neither will tragedy.

This book was fantastic and is definitely a must-read for anyone who enjoys seafaring literature. The danger of nautical fiction always has that appeal as we never really know what is truly out there.