Deep Water is a documentary chronicling the story of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. This was an intriguing event, that tested the limits of mankind. It was 1968, and with so much attention on the race to the moon, there was a great nautical event as well- to be the first to circumnavigate the globe in a boat, nonstop, with a crew of one. Here's the route they were supposed to take (more on that a little later):
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia
While nine contestants started the race, only one finished it successfully, and it took around nine months. One contestant got so into it, he turned his boat around and decided to go around again (but he got bored and set in at Tahiti after 45,000 miles)!The subject of the film Deep Water focuses on one contestant, Donald Crowhurst. Using archival footage, including the 16 mm movie camera on board the boat, and the tape recorder (this was the equivalent of videoblogging in the late 1960's boys and girls), and interviews with family and friends, this film seeks to answer the question who this guy was, and how he ended up in over his head in this type of race.
Now that you understand the story, I will focus on the film. Unfortunately, in the end, while the race itself is compelling, Crowhurst is not. This guy gets into the Southern Atlantic, and realizes that his novel boat, a racing trimaran, full of new and untested technology, is taking on quite a bit of water. He knows he will never survive the big waves and bad weather of the Southern Oceans. So rather than abandon the race, he claims false locations, and then a radio malfunction. The plan is to then circle the area, and when the other contestants come around South America, he can sail home with them, falsifying that he did the race, even though he never left the Atlantic.The death of Crowhurst remains a bit of a nautical mystery. His ship was found, but he wasn't. From his log, it appears that he went insane from the isolation, and he probably jumped overboard.
In my view, this race was a significant test of a person's resolve to stay on task in the most arduous of circumstances. It makes present day events, such as the Iditarod or a Triathalon look like easy tasks. However, I'm not sure why we focused the film on the guy that tried to cheat his way to a respectable finish. Maybe it's just me, but I would have rather seen a film about the only guy who didn't go insane, and completed the event. Also, there was probably only enough archival footage for a 45 minute documentary, and the interviews drag it out to twice that length, which interrupt the momentum of the story. Fans of the sea and grand events may enjoy this, but the rest can safely skip Deep Water.
Overall Grade: C
Reviewed by Jonas
2 comments:
The Iditarod has never been easy for the dogs. For the facts, visit the Sled Dog Action Coalition website, http://www.helpsleddogs.org.
Here's a short list of what happens to the dogs during the Iditarod: death, paralysis, penile frostbite, bleeding ulcers, bloody diarrhea, lung damage, pneumonia, ruptured discs, viral diseases, broken bones, torn muscles and tendons, vomiting, hypothermia, sprains, fur loss, broken teeth, torn footpads and anemia.
At least 133 dogs have died in the Iditarod. There is no official count of dog deaths available for the race's early years. In "WinterDance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod," a nonfiction book, Gary Paulsen describes witnessing an Iditarod musher brutally kicking a dog to death during the race. He wrote, "All the time he was kicking the dog. Not with the imprecision of anger, the kicks, not kicks to match his rage but aimed, clinical vicious kicks. Kicks meant to hurt deeply, to cause serious injury. Kicks meant to kill."
Causes of death have also included strangulation in towlines, internal hemorrhaging after being gouged by a sled, liver injury, heart failure, and pneumonia. "Sudden death" and "external myopathy," a fatal condition in which a dog's muscles and organs deteriorate during extreme or prolonged exercise, have also occurred. The 1976 Iditarod winner, Jerry Riley, was accused of striking his dog with a snow hook (a large, sharp and heavy metal claw). In 1996, one of Rick Swenson's dogs died while he mushed his team through waist-deep water and ice. The Iditarod Trail Committee banned both mushers from the race but later reinstated them. In many states these incidents would be considered animal cruelty. Swenson is now on the Iditarod Board of Directors.
In the 2001 Iditarod, a sick dog was sent to a prison to be cared for by inmates and received no veterinary care. He was chained up in the cold and died. Another dog died by suffocating on his own vomit.
No one knows how many dogs die in training or after the race each year.
On average, 53 percent of the dogs who start the race do not make it across the finish line. According to a report published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, of those who do cross, 81 percent have lung damage. A report published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine said that 61 percent of the dogs who finish the Iditarod have ulcers versus zero percent pre-race.
Tom Classen, retired Air Force colonel and Alaskan resident for over 40 years, tells us that the dogs are beaten into submission:
"They've had the hell beaten out of them." "You don't just whisper into their ears, ‘OK, stand there until I tell you to run like the devil.' They understand one thing: a beating. These dogs are beaten into submission the same way elephants are trained for a circus. The mushers will deny it. And you know what? They are all lying." -USA Today, March 3, 2000 in Jon Saraceno's column
Beatings and whippings are common. Jim Welch says in his book Speed Mushing Manual, "I heard one highly respected [sled dog] driver once state that "‘Alaskans like the kind of dog they can beat on.'" "Nagging a dog team is cruel and ineffective...A training device such as a whip is not cruel at all but is effective." "It is a common training device in use among dog mushers...A whip is a very humane training tool."
During the 2007 Iditarod, eyewitnesses reported that musher Ramy Brooks kicked, punched and beat his dogs with a ski pole and a chain. Brooks admitted to hitting his dogs with a wooden trail marker when they refused to run. The Iditarod Trail Committee suspended Brooks for two years, but only for the actions he admitted. By ignoring eyewitness accounts, the Iditarod encouraged animal abuse. When mushers know that eyewitness accounts will be disregarded, they are more likely to hurt their dogs and lie about it later.
Mushers believe in "culling" or killing unwanted dogs, including puppies. Many dogs who are permanently disabled in the Iditarod, or who are unwanted for any reason, are killed with a shot to the head, dragged or clubbed to death. "On-going cruelty is the law of many dog lots. Dogs are clubbed with baseball bats and if they don't pull are dragged to death in harnesses....." wrote Alaskan Mike Cranford in an article for Alaska's Bush Blade Newspaper (March, 2000).
Jon Saraceno wrote in his March 3, 2000 column in USA Today, "He [Colonel Tom Classen] confirmed dog beatings and far worse. Like starving dogs to maintain their most advantageous racing weight. Skinning them to make mittens. Or dragging them to their death."
The Iditarod, with its history of abuse, could not be legally held in many states, because doing so would violate animal cruelty laws.
Iditarod administrators promote the race as a commemoration of sled dogs saving the children of Nome by bringing diphtheria serum from Anchorage in 1925. However, the co-founder of the Iditarod, Dorothy Page, said the race was not established to honor the sled drivers and dogs who carried the serum. In fact, 600 miles of this serum delivery was done by train and the other half was done by dogs running in relays, with no dog running over 100 miles. This isn't anything like the Iditarod.
The race has led to the proliferation of horrific dog kennels in which the dogs are treated very cruelly. Many kennels have over 100 dogs and some have as many as 200. It is standard for the dogs to spend their entire lives outside tethered to metal chains that can be as short as four feet long. In 1997 the United States Department of Agriculture determined that the tethering of dogs was inhumane and not in the animals' best interests. The chaining of dogs as a primary means of enclosure is prohibited in all cases where federal law applies. A dog who is permanently tethered is forced to urinate and defecate where he sleeps, which conflicts with his natural instinct to eliminate away from his living area.
Iditarod dogs are prisoners of abuse.
this is from my friend Wendy:
Wiki has some interesting info on the race and its participants. If
anyone is into sailing: "It is impossible to say whether Moitessier would have won if he had completed the race, as he would have been sailing in different weather conditions than Knox-Johnston did, but based on his time from the start to Cape Horn being about 77% of that of Knox-Johnston, it would have been extremely close. His book, The Long Way,[11] tells the story of his voyage as a spiritual journey as much as a sailing adventure and is still regarded as a classic of sailing literature."
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