Off the Deep End: A History of Madness at Sea - download pdf or read online

limited in a small house for months on finish, topic to ship's self-discipline and dwelling on restricted nutrients offers, many sailors of outdated misplaced their minds – and no ask yourself. Many nonetheless do.

The bring about a few circumstances was once bloodthirsty mutinies, akin to the whaleboat Sharon whose captain used to be butchered and fed to the ship's pigs in a crazed assault within the Pacific. Or mob violence, akin to the 147 survivors at the raft of the Medusa, who slaughtered one another in a two-week orgy of violence. So severe was once the matter that the Royal Navy's personal health practitioner claimed sailors have been seven instances prone to pass mad than the remainder of the population.

Historic figures comparable to Christopher Columbus, George Vancouver, Fletcher Christian (leader of the munity of the Bounty) and Robert FitzRoy (founder of the Met workplace) have all had their sanity questioned.

More lately, sailors in ultra-modern round-the-world races usually adventure nerve-racking hallucinations, together with seeing elephants floating within the sea and strangers taking the helm, or undergo whole mental breakdown, like Donald Crowhurst. Others develop into hypnotised by way of the ocean and leap to their deaths.

Off the Deep End seems on the sea's actual personality, the way it confuses our senses and makes rational notion tricky. It explores the lengthy historical past of insanity at sea and the way that's echoed in lots of of trendy yacht races. It seems on the often-marginal behaviour of sailors dwelling either figuratively and actually outdoor society's traditional principles. And it additionally appears to be like on the sea's strength to heal, in addition to reason, madness.