First-14

I was irritated. But slightly amused. Rob Coldstream, a powerful commissioning editor at Channel 4, had invited me into his office to talk about a major TV project.

‘It’s an idea that’s been bouncing around for a while, really, but we’ve just not found the right team to do it,’ he said. ‘It’s for a show based on the Mutiny on the Bounty. It’s tough. The idea is to recreate it. An epic sea voyage in a small sailing boat. Four thousand miles across the open Pacific, something like that, with someone taking the part of Captain Bligh and a bunch of lads along for the ride. After your success on SAS, we thought about you potentially taking the helm on it. Being Bligh.’

‘We’ve seen that you can talk the talk. Now let’s see if you can walk the walk.’

I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Was he questioning my ability? Did he think I was just some Mouth Almighty? He wanted me to walk the fucking walk, did he? Had I not proved myself already? In that moment, in that airless corporate box in Central London, with its posters of daytime celebrities and cabinets filled with plastic awards, I felt the hatred poor out of me.

‘Ha!’ I laughed coldly, looking straight back at him. ‘Ha! OK. I see what you’re saying.’

‘I hope so.’ He studied my face doubtfully. ‘I will remember this conversation.’

Before I’d even made it to the revolving doors of Channel 4’s headquarters, I’d flipped the bad feeling that had flooded me. That anger became fuel – the negative became positive; my enemy became my energy. ‘I’ll show him,’ I thought. ‘I’ll smash it. I’ve got to get this right.’ The only problem was, I didn’t exactly know what I’d promised to deliver on. The Mutiny on the Bounty? Wasn’t that some old-school Hollywood pirate movie? And who was Captain Bligh anyway?

‘He was the captain of a ship, same age as you. Kicked off his boat in 1789 in the South Pacific,’ explained David Dugan, the founder of Windfall Films, the company that had been tasked by Channel 4 to actually make the show. We’d met for lunch and he was filling in the gaps for me. ‘Bligh and his men were left for dead in a tiny rescue boat.’

‘I’ve always loved the ocean. It’s the challenge of it. The unknown and the danger.’

‘I served on HMS Ocean before I was deployed to Afghanistan. I’m an able seaman.’

‘Well, that’s great. You’ll be leading a band of men, just like it was back in 1789. We want to keep it as authentic as possible.’

‘We plan on building an exact replica of the boat. It’s all open, so you’ll be exposed to all the elements.’

‘That’s exactly how I’d want to do it too,’ I said. ‘What did they eat back then?’

‘We need to be on 380 calories a day then. How do you make ship’s biscuits?’

‘Nothing can be waterproof. We need to feel the elements like they felt them.’

‘We’ll have to see. It might be a bit of a problem getting that past health and safety.’

‘David, if you’re going to have everything authentic all the way down, you can’t do the journey in fucking waterproof clothes. That defeats the object.’

‘Well, we’ll have to look into it,’ he said. ‘Check the legality. You have to understand, though, you will need some modern accoutrements. Like GPS.’

‘We can’t have GPS on board!’ I cried. ‘We need to use a sextant and old paper charts, just like they did. There’s no point otherwise.’

Over the next few weeks, as more details about their plans emerged, I became increasingly excited. They wanted to mirror the people that were on the original boat as closely as possible. Bligh was a young military leader, I was a young military leader. He had sailing masters on board and we would too – Conrad, an old boy who’d sailed around the world; young Freddy, who’d sailed the Cape; and Chris, who’d sailed around the UK. Bligh had a medic on board and we’d have a junior GP called Luke. Bligh had a carpenter and we’d have handyman Ben. There was also a City boy called Rish on our crew, who made a living selling expensive whisky to high-end pubs and clubs. I’m not really sure why he was there and, by his own slightly baffled admission, neither was he. Anyway, he’d be our quartermaster, dishing out food and water.

The combined forces of health and safety and insurance dictated that we’d only have half the number of men that Bligh had. It also meant that, despite my protestations, we’d have to keep a GPS on the boat, if only to be used in emergencies. But I fought back as much as I could, on every little detail. For me, if it wasn’t essentially true to Bligh’s actual experience, it wasn’t worth doing. I was determined that the crew and I had to exist within a bubble of authenticity, and that this bubble would not be broken. I understood that they wanted to track us in a safety boat, but I insisted that it had to stay over the horizon at all times, where we couldn’t see or hear it. We’d need to feel that we, as a team, had only one option: to get ourselves out of the shit. It’s impossible to get into that mindset if you can just glance over your shoulder and see the promise of warmth, safety and a supply of Rich Tea biscuits.

The first time I met the men who I’d be captaining was for a group briefing and medical examinations at the Union Jack Club in Waterloo. This was yet more insurance and health and safety business, including a full health MOT, and blood tests for liver function, hepatitis B and C, and HIV. Then, more painful than a million blood tests, was a health and safety briefing that we had to attend to satisfy the insurance company. Sitting politely around a long table in a boardroom, somewhere deep in the military club, we learned that there were sharks in the ocean, that sharks can be naughty, that it was possible to drown in water and that, when moving around the wooden boat, we should be careful of splinters.

I might have acted as if I was taking this entertainment show with heavy seriousness, but behind the scenes I’d spent the preceding weeks pushing for as little health and safety as possible. It was a whirlwind of argument, counter-argument and compromise. I eventually allowed life jackets, but they were only to be worn at my discretion. I also had to permit the use of clip-on harnesses for use in stormy seas. One big sticking point for me was the waterproofs. The production company were insistent, but I genuinely believed we didn’t need them. I wanted to prove that a good leader can take any body of men or women and mould them into people who can get the job done.

But even more than that, I wanted to prove that modern-day man is every bit as tough as men used to be. There’s an old saying that ‘when ships were made of wood, men were made of steel.’ When it’s said today, what it’s really implying is that, in the modern age, ships are made of steel and men of wood. I wanted to show the world that this isn’t true. I’d take an average City boy and mould him into something gritty and hard.

I believe there’s still a primal caveman instinct in all of us – a core of masculinity. Most men today are wrapped in cotton wool. Nobody is held responsible for their actions. Men aren’t allowed to be men anymore. I wanted to take a bunch of lads and turn them into a formidable team. We were going to suffer together, have a fucking good time together and show the world that we were every bit as tough as those lads were in 1789. I was going to take this mission to the line and push it over.

But when the others heard about my plans they fell silent. Having delivered my impassioned speech, following the health and safety man’s exit, I was met by awkward stares and shuffling. I excused myself to use the bathroom and, as soon as I was in the corridor, I heard the negativity start: ‘I don’t think he understands the open ocean’; ‘He’s being naïve’; ‘He’s being reckless’; ‘There’s doing it authentically and then there’s being stupid.’ When I returned I dug in, pressing the point even further.

‘Don’t get it into your heads that we’ll be doing this by the book,’ I said. ‘Once we’re on the sea, that book goes out of the window. We’ll need to break the rules to survive.’

At this, Conrad piped up. He was the most experienced sailor in the room by far, but he’d done it all using ultra-modern equipment, with the capability to shelter below decks for a nice cup of tea when the weather turned.

‘Listen, I respect what you’ve done,’ I replied. ‘You’ve sailed around the world and I tip my hat to you. But get all this health and safety shit out of your head. Forget the idea that this is a sailing trip. This is not a sailing trip. This is one of the hardest and biggest survival feats in the history of mankind. This is about staying alive. You – all of you – need to get yourselves into that mindset.’

Conrad said nothing, but I could tell what he was thinking: that he was the experienced sailor, I was just some shouty guy from the telly who was only there to be a public figurehead. There was no way I was going to let him, or the group, define me like this. I decided that, for the time being, starting a head-to-head ruction with this guy would be the wrong strategy. Instead, I’d allow him to feel like the big man, while observing him, working out his strong points and weak spots. I’d quietly lead from behind. I’d sit back and let him stride about with his chin up. But when the time came, I’d earn his respect. The time would come when I’d show him exactly why I was captain, of that I had no doubt.

The other crew member I was worried about that day was handyman Ben. He was overweight, gobby and kept trying to be funny, snapping, ‘Yes, Sergeant Major!’ at me. I let him have his little games, while thinking that if we were in the military, I’d have ripped his fucking head off. His sarcasm, I knew, was going to wear thin very quickly. It also didn’t speak well of his character. Here was a guy who wasn’t very proactive and hid behind his humour. That was all well and good when you were living a mediocre existence in suburban London, but what was he going to do when he was in a world of pain in the middle of the ocean? What would he have to offer then, apart from some dim joke?

The others seemed fine. Rish the City boy was cheery and positive. Freddy was keen, had done his maritime qualifications, worked on cargo ships and super yachts, and even spent half his year living on his dad’s boat. He was a sailing geek who could tell you the star formations and which way up to hold a sextant. He’d be a good member of the team, although he seemed fragile. Chris, meanwhile, was a birdlike Scouser who’d sailed solo around the UK. He was respectful, self-taught and seemed to know his stuff, but there was a rebellious edge to him. I could see myself a little bit in him. Out of everyone, I thought he’d be the greatest asset to the team. Then there were Sam and Dan, the embedded cameramen, who both had experience in the survival world. I was glad to have them onside, as they understood where I was coming from and why I’d been tapped to lead this mission. This would be a survival situation. It would be serious. I’d need to play every individual in this raggedy crew to their strengths. I wouldn’t have time to develop weaknesses.

After the health and safety meeting everyone agreed to head off for beers so they could all bond. But I didn’t want to hang around and mix with the crew. We weren’t going on a holiday together. I wanted to keep a separation between us. Leaders stand apart from crowds, and I didn’t want familiarity to get in the way of the respect I’d need to get the job done. I wasn’t there to be their pal, I was there to be their leader. If I was getting stuck into the beers and playing stupid games with them one day, then having to lay down the law the next, their immediate, instinctive response would be, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ That attitude could lead to festering and toxicity among the men. It might ultimately be the thing that would sink us.

Two weeks before they all arrived in Tonga, where we’d launch out into the mission, the production crew and I flew out to make final plans. The place was pure paradise – everything you’re imagining right now, as you read this, was there. We stayed in a nice hotel along the beach, away from where the others would be put up. After they landed I restricted my time with them to a pizza and a couple of beers, before going back to my hotel. They were noticeably cautious around me. The magnitude of the task was finally hitting them, and I’ve no doubt that the general feeling among them was, ‘Fucking hell, we have this guy off the telly who’s not even a sailor leading us. How the hell is this going to work?’

Shortly before the morning of our departure I had another difficult exchange with Conrad. We were having dinner at the hotel, charting the route, when discussion fell to the crew’s sleep and work patterns. He wanted to do it in three shifts, so three men were up at a time while six men slept.

‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not going to work. We need four on and four off and I, as captain, will sit back jump between shifts so I can have an overall view of things.’

‘This is not the kind of boat you’re used to, where everyone has their own bed,’ I said. ‘Because of the space, if we did 3–3–3, we’d have to hotbed around the boat.’

‘I’ll explain,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be sheer hell out there. And, with the greatest respect, Conrad, I’ve been to hell. I’ve survived hell. I know what hell is like. It’s critical for morale that the men are able to go back to what they think of as their own safe haven. I’m going to get people to pair up, so each pair has its regular spot. Then, when they change over, they return to their familiar bed space. I’ll sleep anywhere on the boat, I don’t mind. But I need those guys to know they have their cocoon to crawl back into. And I need them to slot into a routine. I want them sleeping where their stuff is, knowing where to find everything, so they can make every second count and get as much sleep as possible.’

He still looked ill at ease. ‘Well, let’s go with your plan to begin with,’ he said. ‘See how it goes.’

‘We’re going to need to maintain tight discipline,’ I said. ‘Tie everything down, make sure everything is put away. When a man gets into his bed space, if his partner’s shit is everywhere, it’s going to annoy him and grind on him and he’s going to lose sleep because it will be ticking through his head. That mindset can eat away at you. We’re not out there for two weeks. It’s two months. We’ve got two sets of clothes each. Everyone has to make sure their dry set is packed away properly so it doesn’t get wet. If waves come over, if shit hits the fan, at least you know you’ve got a nice dry set of kit to climb into when it’s all over. The war out there, it won’t be with the ocean. The war we’ll be fighting will be in our own heads.’

‘They’re going to find all this a bit strict,’ he said. ‘It’s all very military. They won’t be used to it.’

‘Yeah, but once people get into it they love that discipline. Trust me. They’ll be so glad to be getting back to their familiar cocoon, not having to sort their partner’s shit out, knowing exactly where their spoon and cup is. They’ll learn to value the discipline very quickly. And if they don’t, they won’t make it.’

‘OK,’ he said cautiously. ‘We can always juggle things about if your system doesn’t work out.’

In between these planning meetings we were having regular capsize drills. I’d decided that we’d each have a number, and once we bobbed back to the surface we’d call our number out. That’s how we’d know everyone was present and correct. During one of the first drills we were bobbing away and listening for the numbers: ‘One!’ ‘Two!’ ‘Three!’ … No four. Who was number four? It was Dan the cameraman. All we could hear was the wind and the lapping of the sea knocking against the wood of the upturned hull.

There was a faint knocking. I knew immediately what had happened. Dan was trapped under the boat. Without thinking, I kicked into work mode, dived under and dragged him out. It was a scary situation, but an important moment for the development of the team. It was the first time I was able to show the men why I’d been selected to lead this mission.

Before we knew it, the day had arrived. We woke at 4 a.m. on the safety boat, which was dragging Bounty’s End – our home for the next two months – behind it. We showered, were thoroughly searched for contraband, our bags emptied and checked, then we were all quarantined together until we reached the location where, more than two centuries ago, the mutineer Fletcher Christian had committed his treacherous act.

I looked out of the porthole at the weather. ‘Look at the swell out there,’ I said, to no one in particular. ‘It’s going to be rough.’

And then we were called forwards. We clambered down a ladder into Bounty’s End and our white canvas duffel bags were literally thrown in after us. The mood on the boat was wild. Everyone was raring to go. It was great to see such energy, but I had to get their minds on the game.

‘Listen, we’re on our own now,’ I told them from my place up at the tiller. ‘Get that safety ship out of your heads. That’s not fucking happening. It’s just us. The only people who can get us out of this situation are ourselves, as a team. You can always choose to get back on that safety boat if you like. But if you do, you’re not stepping foot back on Bounty’s End. We have a job to do. Let’s get those sails up.’

As the safety boat disappeared over the edge of our watery world, we began to feel as lost, tiny and vulnerable as a midge that had been fired into space. Our first task was to get into the nearest island, which was about a day away. I knew it was called Tofua and that this was obviously the location Bligh went to, but beyond that I didn’t know much about the original voyage we were meant to be tracking. I deliberately didn’t read up on Bligh himself or read his journal of the voyage, which was published as The Mutiny on the Bounty. I didn’t want to poison my mind by thinking how someone else did it. I wanted to do it my way. I was charting his journey, but doing it as me. Besides, it was also about authenticity. Captain Bligh didn’t have a book to guide him, and I didn’t want one either.

That night, a terrible storm blew in. The wind picked up in the early evening and, by 7 o’clock we were miserable, wet-through and being tossed about like a leaf in the wind. And we were starving. Our ration was three ship’s biscuits per day. Not only were they tasteless, they were so hard I broke a tooth on one of them. For our evening meal we’d be treated to thirty-three grams of biltong, which amounted to barely a mouthful. The dryness of the food wasn’t helped by the lack of water, which we were rationed to a litre and a half a day each. Enough to survive but, in that heat, nowhere near enough to provide anything like comfort. Making the situation worse was the fact that people weren’t sleeping when they should’ve been. As hard as they might try, they were finding it impossible. It was freezing, water was coming over the side of the boat and drenching them, and they were in a state of chronic shock.

The next day, the weather had stilled, and a beautiful morning dawned on the coast of Tofua. I’d decided that three of us would go onto land, while everyone else stayed on board, making sure the boat didn’t crack up against the rocks. I took Chris with me and instructed him to find coconuts, while I tried to locate a water source to bolster our supplies, with Dan in tow, filming. Before I headed inland I found a little camp where we’d sleep the night, with good visuals of the boat around two hundred metres away.

‘You can be the liaising point to the ship,’ I said to Chris. ‘Shout if you need me. But while you’re here, I want you to collect firewood and make this campsite a bit more liveable, so we can have a half-comfortable sleep tonight.’

What I didn’t realise, as I tracked into the bush, was that he’d taken this badly. For some reason he’d interpreted my perfectly standard request as treating him ‘like a ten-year-old’. When Dan and I were safely out of the way, he started moaning, mucking about and jumping off the high, jagged rocks into the sea.

The boys in the boat were shouting at him, ‘Get off the rocks! Stop jumping! You’re going to injure yourself.’

While all this was going on, Dan and I were enduring a tough and fruitless search for water, climbing the slopes of a volcanic island with the power of the midday South Pacific sun set to maximum. We had nothing to drink – all the liquids were still on the boat. We ended the day with nothing to show but serious dehydration and a bunch of coconuts.

The next morning we hauled the coconuts back onto Bounty’s End. As soon as I was back on board, Conrad pulled me to one side.

‘Well, mate, I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I was up a volcano looking for water. But you know, Chris is all right. He was busy getting firewood. It’s fine.’

I was a bit perturbed at what I was hearing, but my priority was to maintain team unity. Even though I’d stuck up for Chris, I knew I’d have to keep a close eye on his attitude. It was only day two, and already he’d knocked a crack into the precious relationship between me and the crew.

Our next leg – to Yadua Island – was going to be around five hundred miles, and a few days into it we found ourselves heading right into the centre of an epic storm. Conditions became so bad that if we’d run into life-threatening trouble, the safety boat wouldn’t have been able to get us. They couldn’t risk the lives of their crew by sending men out in a small boat, and if the main ship pulled up beside us, the waters were so fierce there’d be a serious risk of it smashing Bounty’s End to pieces.

On and on it went, hour after hour, water pouring over the sides of the boat as if it wasn’t us but the whole world that was being violently thrown about. It’s no exaggeration to say that we weren’t floating anymore – we were literally surfing the swells. The men were huddled in the hull, praying. During the night we lost communication with the safety ship.

‘Guys, this is fucking serious now,’ I said. ‘If we flip, we’re dead. I need everyone to be alert.’

As conditions grew worse still, I ordered Conrad to man the helm with me and instructed everyone to bed down where they could and keep as dry as possible, using material we kept to repair damage to the sails as cover. They didn’t have to do any work. Their only job was to stay alive. Conrad and I would take care of the rest.

As morning dawned on the second day of the storm, nothing looked any better. The swell was still huge, and the men were wet, cold and shaking, just as you would be if you’d been soaking in a bathtub of freezing water for thirty-six hours. We’d been so relentlessly wet, for so long, that our fingers started to rot. It had come to feel as if the rain was hitting through our skulls and impacting our brains directly. Sam the cameraman, who’d been struggling valiantly to capture what he could of our situation, had chunks of skin sloughing off his fingers. Fred was shitting and vomiting at the same time and involving himself in the mad gymnastics of simultaneously trying to get both ends of his dribbling body facing out towards the sea. Meanwhile, Chris the sailor was so catatonic that Conrad and I had to undress him, rinse out his clothes and put them back on again for him. Even in the midst of all that misery and discomfort, the irony brought a smile to my face: he’d complained of being treated like a ten-year-old and now, because of his own lack of sea legs, we were being forced to treat him like a ten-month-old.

Finally, on day three, we exited the eye of the storm. It was scant relief. We still had the rest of the system to push through. We would, I guessed, be dealing with another two days of this. At some point that morning Ben shuffled over to me, with a face on him like an abused dog.

‘Ant,’ he said. ‘I need to dry off. I really do. I need to get on the safety boat. Just to get dry. Then I’m back in.’

‘That’s not an option,’ I told him. ‘If you get on that boat, you’re not coming back. That’s it.’

He crawled back down to the other end of the boat and reported back what I’d said to the rest of them. Beneath the roar of the swell and the beating of the sails, my ears focused into their voices.

‘Oi!’ I shouted. ‘That’s enough of that fucking negativity. The only people who put you into this situation is yourselves. We’re all volunteers here. Nobody’s forced us on this boat. You have two options. You can get off this boat and know you’re not coming back on it. Or we can all gather together as a team and fucking smash through this together. Before you know it, we’ll be on the next island. You’ll be able to rest up, get your kit dry and maybe even have some decent food.’

I was met with nothing but sorry silence from the crew. In the end, the storm raged, and the rain came down, for ninety-six straight hours.

By the time we landed on Yadua I felt my position as captain had finally been earned. I’d not slept. I’d kept the boat upright and sailing in the right direction. I’d got them through it, just as I’d promised. What’s more, I’d come to respect Conrad, and he’d come to respect me. As my second-in-command, he’d truly stepped up.

With the relief of hitting dry, still land for a three-day stint, the stress lifted and the less attractive edges to some of the crew started to show. Ben, especially, was highlighting himself with his laziness, leaving his mess everywhere around the camp. When I pulled him up on it, he dismissed the rules I was trying to impose as ‘just campfire games’. I tried to impress upon him that, aside from morale, it was important keep everything squared away in case anything went wrong. We needed to be able to grab all our kit and escape in a hurry if necessary.

I know a few of them were looking around at our situation, camping out on a paradise beach, and thinking, ‘What exactly could go wrong in a place like this?’ But twelve hours after our arrival a tsunami warning came over the emergency radio. We were in the middle of cooking a big crab stew and, because I’d insisted on camp discipline, we were all safely on high ground, crab stew and all, within minutes. When the threat had passed I took Ben aside for a quiet word.

‘Look, I know you’ve got loads more in you. I need you to step up. I need more self-confidence. You need to stop hiding behind your humour because when that goes, you’re a burden.’

The next leg was a big one. Two weeks and seven hundred miles lay between us and Vanuatu. But by the time we launched off, everyone was raring to go. If we’d survived that four-day storm, we could survive anything. Even Ben was bucking his ideas up. We hadn’t been long back at sea, though, before Chris started to struggle getting out of bed in time for his shifts. First he was five minutes late, then ten minutes. His kit was everywhere. He was supposed to be helping with the navigation, using the sextant and charts, but he kept making mistakes. After a while I began to wonder whether he even knew how to use it but, when questioned, he’d insist that he did. Before long I found myself having to haul him up, and every time I did I’d be met with a variation on the same response, which was that either me – or everyone else – was treating him like a kid.

‘We’re not treating you like a kid,’ I’d say. ‘We’re asking you to be a member of this crew. Do you need some help? If you don’t understand something, that’s all right, but you have to tell me. I’ll help you.’

‘I don’t need any help. I’m not a ten-year-old. I’ve sailed round bloody Britain.’

If sleeping in and leaving his mess everywhere wasn’t frustrating enough in that small space, he’d stopped washing. When it was calm, the rest of us would jump into the water and have a good scrub, but he refused. He stunk like a rotting badger. And the layer of dirt he was living beneath soon started to have knock-on effects. He cut his leg, somehow, and the wound became heavily infected. He was getting ulcers in his skin, including one in his armpit that burst open. Freddy, the young lad that was unfortunate enough to be sharing boat space with him, was livid.

One night he was on shift, navigating with the sextant while I was taking the opportunity to get my head down. By the time I woke up, the light was just starting to break into morning. As Chris crawled in bed, I inspected the charts to see the navigational marks he’d made on them. I couldn’t see any there.

‘Chris, mate?’ I said. ‘Have you taken the sextant reading? Where’s the mark?’

‘I didn’t take a reading,’ he said. ‘Whoever left the sextant like that set it up wrong.’

‘What do you mean “set it up wrong”? When you pick up a sextant, you put all the settings back to normal.’

As Conrad and Freddy looked on, he demonstrated quickly that he had no idea at all. ‘How the fuck can you not know how to use it?’ I said.

‘You’re treating me like a kid and belittling me,’ he wailed. ‘I’m sick of this.’

Because of Chris’s fear of admitting any form of weakness, we’d sailed twenty miles off course. Nobody expected him to know how to sail an eighteenth-century boat. I’d have shown him in a heartbeat and that would’ve been that. But all that time he’d been dodging the truth and letting it grow in his head, and now it had come back at him. He’d allowed his mistake to win.

And because he had, the rest of the crew were deciding they’d finally had enough. The whispers went round the boat, as soft and seductive as the warm breeze that was lifting off the Pacific’s crystalline surface: ‘He’s sleeping in again’; ‘He stinks’; ‘He’s got a bad attitude’; ‘He’s isolating himself’; ‘I want him gone.’ One day he slept through three shifts straight. When he eventually did wake up he had the audacity to complain: ‘Fucking hell, I’ve had no sleep.’

Things came to a head on Vanuatu. I’d never seen a place so perfect, and everyone was sensationally happy, on a high better than any drug. We fell in with some wonderful locals, ate from their gardens – replanting everything we’d picked – and went pig hunting with them. The only blot on the landscape was Chris. For some unknown reason he made the decision to go wild pig hunting with all his thermal underwear on. He was sweating and struggling and moaning, playing the victim as usual and slowing the rest of us down. We were embarrassed by him. As a leader I felt I was representing all of these lads in front of the Vanuatuans, who I’d come to think extremely highly of. He was shaming all of us. I just wanted him to disappear.

That night, I was grabbing a bit of kip in my hut when I was suddenly woken up. It was Conrad.

‘The guys want to have a bit of a chat,’ he told me ‘It’s about Chris.’

I rubbed my eyes and staggered onto the moonlit beach. I’d had a feeling this was coming. It turned out that Chris was sleeping, too, and the lads had taken the opportunity to let me know what was on their minds.

‘Right, guys,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got an issue about Chris, you need to voice it.’

‘I know this sounds bad,’ he said, ‘but if I knew he was going to be on that boat for the rest of the trip and he was going to be the same, I don’t think I’d do it, to be honest. He’s driving everybody mad.’

‘In the last few days I realise how little he does for the group,’ said mild-mannered Luke. ‘Essentially, we’re carrying him. And it’s pissing me off.’

After they’d all voiced their opinions, I went round, one by one, asking for a simple yes or no answer to the question, ‘Do you want Chris on the boat with you?’ Only Ben said yes. I promised I’d make a decision and inform them of it the next day. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and ended up staring into the dying flames of the fire for hours. What was I going to do? I’d put my head on the chopping block many times for Chris, and each time he’d let me down. But it was by no means a straightforward decision. Losing a man like this would be a failure, in my eyes. Yet feelings were running very high. It was turning out to be a test of my leadership. I’d somehow found myself teetering on the brink of a genuine mutiny.

First thing the next morning, I pulled Chris aside. Perched on a piece of fallen tree, I asked him to sit down next to me. I gave it to him straight.

‘The lads don’t think you’re a team player, you’re dangerous on the boat and you’re a hindrance to the team.’

He shook his head in shock and confusion, as if I was telling him the moon was made out of cheese.

‘They’re saying to me, “Ant, why are you allowing him to get away with all this?”’

‘Fucking listen to me!’ I shouted. ‘Listen to what I’ve got to say. I’m trying to help you out, here, but you’re talking over me. You’re pissing me off.’

After we’d spoken, he promised to go away and think about it. But, predictably, he made his crewmates the issue and started having a pop at them for being ‘two-faced’ for coming to me. He had no conception whatsoever of how his own actions had contributed to the situation. As far as he was concerned, the only problem on Bounty’s End was everyone else.

And unfortunately for Chris, his only ally on the team was running into his own problems. It soon came to light that, through fear of being kicked off the boat, Ben had been hiding a serious infection in his hand from a cut he’d sustained at some point during the previous sail. His hand was swollen like a cadaver’s and the poison, hard and painful, was spreading up his arm.

The sadness of the situation was that Ben was just coming into his own. He was using his carpentry skills to help the locals build houses, and you could tell that this was an important, precious experience for him. He was inspired. Even the stupid jokes had almost stopped. When the decision was made that his hand was in a bad enough state to require urgent hospital treatment, he was devastated. We stood on the beach and watched him leave for the safety boat, and more than one of the lads were crying genuine tears. Perhaps they were sorry to see him go; perhaps they were upset that it wasn’t Chris we were watching vanish into the endless blue.

But it wasn’t. After his tantrum, Chris came to me, apologised and promised to drop the attitude.

‘I’m a man down, now that Ben has gone,’ I told him. ‘I need you more than ever. I’ve got your back.’

As far as I was concerned, this was a line drawn under it. Chris had apologised. He had promised to sort himself out. He was in. But news of my decision was greeted by the others like a wet fart.

‘Chris will be staying with us, full stop,’ I told them. ‘I can’t go from nine men to seven men. I don’t want to hear anything else about it.’

I understood their response, but it was essential – now more than ever – that we all united together as a team. The next leg of the journey was going to be a killer seventeen-day slog over 1,600 miles of open ocean.

We pointed the boat west, in the direction of Restoration Island, off the coast of Australia. As the wind filled both sails, I noticed with delight that Chris had turned himself around. His attitude was better, he was helpful and positive and getting out of bed. Watching him from my place at the tiller, I was glad I hadn’t given up on him.

It didn’t last. As the voyage grew arduous, and the twin vultures of hunger and boredom started eating us alive once more, he crumbled. He slept in and, when I ordered him to get up, he accused me once again of belittling him and treating him ‘like a ten-year-old’. I didn’t know where all this ‘kid’ stuff was coming from, and I had no interest in finding out. But what I knew for sure was that Chris seemed like a classic case of a man who had demons that he’d not made friends with. There seemed to be a deep and raging anger inside him that I guess was somehow connected to his paranoia about being viewed as a child. The tragedy was that, by embracing this darkness and making it an ally, he’d be able to access an almost limitless battery of energy. Forget Timor, where Bligh and his crew ended up, he could sail to the moon. But, as it was, these demons were taking his soul.

And, sure enough, carried on the hot ocean wind, I began hearing the whispers again; men threatening to leave because they couldn’t deal with him. One afternoon, Luke asked to have a word with me in the stern, which was the only place on Bounty’s End where anyone could have anything like a private conversation.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said carefully. ‘Why are you concentrating all your energy on something that’s not working?’

‘You’ve given him so many chances and put your head on the chopping block for him so many times. Why are you neglecting us, the rest of the crew?’

‘Do you really feel like that?’ I said. ‘That I’m neglecting you lot?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘We’d love a bit of the time and energy you’re putting into him.’

That was it. He had to go. And I knew exactly how to manipulate him into walking himself off that gangplank. The next time he overslept, I aimed at little speech right at the centre of that brittle little heart of his.

‘You’re nothing but a fucking burden,’ I told him. ‘Who put you on your high horse and told you you’re a good sailor? You’re not. You haven’t got a fucking clue. You’re a liability. It’s like looking after a child, a fucking baby. We’re all nursing you. From now on, do what you want. Just keep yourself out of our way. You can be a passenger aboard our vessel. We will get you to the end, but when you get there, know this: it hasn’t been you, it’s been us.’

After giving a sheepish interview to the camera, he was picked up by a launch from the safety boat. We watched that dark element depart with pure joy in our souls. The next time I’d see his face would be staring out of a tabloid newspaper: he’d been handed a suspended sentence for harassing an ex-girlfriend and threatening to throw acid in her face. In a single day he called her fifty-seven times, from nine different numbers. He even went to her house and shouted through her letterbox. And guess what he shouted? ‘I don’t deserve this.’

The next two weeks passed in a daze. By now the arduousness of the voyage and the lack of food and water were truly taking their toll. All of us, including me, were sitting on the bones of our arses. Back at Vanuatu we’d felt as if we were eating like kings but, in all truth, we weren’t. It was mostly bits of fish and crabs and fruit and veg. I could see people’s minds slipping as they struggled to stay in the game. By the time we reached Restoration Island I was struggling even to get up a tree and grab a few coconuts. But at least the island lived up to its name.

We met its only occupant, long-bearded David Glasheen, an ex-stock market millionaire who’d been there for twenty years, having lost millions in a financial crash. Although he was forbidden from giving us food, he did let us have a nice drink of rainwater. We fished off the boat for sustenance and I managed to bury an axe in my foot, all the way to the bone, while chopping wood. Luke stitched me up, three in the foot and one in the shin. All I had to do was prevent it getting infected. That meant keeping it dry at all times, which was not going to be easy. But at least, with Ben and Chris now history, the last two weeks and 1,400 miles of the voyage should be free of negativity and politics.

Well, that’s what I thought. As we were leaving Restoration Island, I asked Conrad to hoist the sails and get moving, and told a couple of the other lads to put all the pots and pans away. But to my surprise, Conrad refused.

‘Let’s put the pots and pans away first,’ he said, ‘then I’ll sail. I can’t sail like this.’

‘I’m just asking for a bit of concurrent activity, that’s all,’ I said. ‘It’s not a drama. Get the sails up.’

Something was up with him. After thousands of miles of team-playing and camaraderie, he was suddenly trying to assert his authority. This was the prickly, domineering Conrad I’d met all those months ago at the London club. While the other lads seemed to have recovered from their mental exhaustion at Restoration Island, he hadn’t. As we broke the back of this final push towards Timor, he started making rash and snappy decisions. Soon, I began to suspect there was more to it than simple ratty, dizzy tiredness. Now he’d had the chance to observe me leading the crew for a time, he thought he knew how it worked and that he could do it himself. I was suspicious, too, that now we were nearing the end, he thought he was running out of time to be shown on television as the big alpha male.

A couple of days later we arrived for a brief layover at Sunday Island. There was nothing on there, and we’d only landed because Bligh had done so, and he’d only landed because he was an explorer and he wanted to put his flag on it. I had a walk to look for water, but there were only trees and rocks. It was a useless, barren lump. I decided we’d stay the night and rest up before embarking on the final stretch to reach home. That evening, as the sun set, I noticed Conrad was isolating himself, sitting far away on his own, not talking to anyone. You could feel an edge of hostility around him, burning like a rim of fizzing acid. He was making people uncomfortable.

We were five hundred miles out of Timor when the wind stopped completely and the sun became so hot it started melting the batteries in the cameras. Much of the water we had on board had become undrinkable. It had taken on the smell of rotten eggs, and those who tried to swallow through the foul taste ended up firing liquid shit into the glassy millpond of the ocean. I had to reduce our daily ration to just six hundred millilitres.

There wasn’t a ripple on the sea or a breath of wind in the sails now. The sky was empty but for the streaky traces of high, pale cloud. We were stuck, and we dried out like husks. There was nothing to see but the contour of the earth. It was as if we weren’t in the real world anymore, but were a speck of dust lost in an alien dimension of blue. It looked like heaven and it felt like hell. Slowly, people started to unravel. The temperature soared through the forties and hit the early fifties. Freddy’s resting heart rate fell from sixty to thirty. And Conrad started getting distinctly twitchy.

‘I think we should row,’ he said out of nowhere one day. This was insanity. Shakingly, I pulled my sweating body out of my place in the shade of a sagging sail. There are few things more dangerous on earth, I’ve learned, than a man who’s lost his mind but believes he’s thinking straight.

‘The men are going down as it is. We’re seriously dehydrated. We’re on three hundred and fifty calories a day. If we row for just an hour, that’s six hundred calories. We’re going to put people at serious risk. And for what? We’ll cover two or three miles.’

I can understand the urge to do something when you’re in trouble. But you should never underestimate the power of intelligent waiting.

The following morning I opened my eyes to see we were still marooned deep in the doldrums. It soon became apparent that, as I’d slept, Conrad had gone round the lads, persuading them that we should indulge his madness. I had to nip this attempt at undermining me in the bud. I called all hands on deck. The men before me were dazed and fading, nothing but ribs and dry, drooping eyes, their clothes hanging off hips and shoulders like rags.

‘Guys, we’ve got one row left in us,’ I said. ‘If we get fifty miles away from Timor, that will be our last row. So this is what we’re going to do. We’ll put it to a vote. If this vote goes against me, I will step down and let Conrad captain this boat. Who wants to row?’

After five or six days of drifting we finally hit the Timor current. A few days after that, for the first time in ten days, the wind picked up. We were on our way. But our unplanned trip to the doldrums had left us dangerously low on water. Freddy was clearly losing his grip and had become so bad that we allowed a member of the medical team on board to check him over. After carrying out urine tests on all of us, he told us that had we been in England we’d all be on a drip. Our risk of chronic dehydration was such that we were in danger of giving ourselves permanent liver damage. He was putting enormous pressure on me to allow fresh water on board, but most of the lads refused.

It was incredible to see. They were willing to suffer serious health issues for the rest of their lives – and go without proper water for the next four or five days – just to get this job done as authentically as possible. I was proud of them. It had been my intention to create a bubble of us against the world, with no outside influences creeping in. When that bubble is there, everyone comes together, the mission takes over and you all combine into one connected unit. It’s a kind of magic.

After sleeping on it, I decided that we’d gone far enough. I had to remind myself that, outside the bubble, this was just a TV show. I couldn’t live with myself if Freddy or Luke or Rish, or anyone, ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives because of an act of stubbornness on my part. I permitted everyone to drink as much as they could for twelve hours. Then, when we were fully rehydrated, we were strong enough to row. Everyone did an hour on and an hour off. Within twenty miles we hit the current. It carried us twenty miles further in. We rowed and rowed, all through the night, then in the morning Conrad spotted land. The rest is a blur. I remember anchoring up, wading in and collapsing on a bed of still, white pebbles. I remember joy. I remember gratitude. I remember the burden of leadership lifting off my shoulders, and the sheer release bringing me to tears.

As soon as I pulled myself back together, I grabbed an iPhone from a member of the production crew. Handling such a modern piece of technology, for the first time in sixty days, I felt amazed. You could just click this button and look what it did! I was like a monkey seeing fire for the first time, completely blown away by it. On the day I’d left for Tonga, Emilie had been seven months pregnant. I’d been present for the births of all of my children. I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t miss this one. I dialled shakily. She picked up after three rings.

‘It’s my due date today,’ she said. ‘It’s not happened yet. How soon can you get here?’

I left on the first flight home. I was by her side, in Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, to witness the birth of my youngest son. We named him Bligh.

A few days after my arrival back in London I got a text from Rob Coldstream at Channel 4, the executive who’d been so curious to see if I could talk the talk.

‘Told you I’d deliver,’ I said. ‘Next time, can you get me something a bit more challenging?’

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

Winning battles is often about timing. Yes, you should choose your battles, as the old adage goes, but you should also choose when to fight them. My battle against health and safety ruining the authenticity of the voyage was fought at the right moments, and that’s how I managed to win.

Give people a chance. Then give them another. Then give them another still. But if they refuse to learn, as Chris did, the only place for them is the gangplank.

Keep your doubts to yourself. Especially in times of pressure, the most important thing a team requires of its leader is certainty. Through a lot of the voyage I was a mess of doubts. I had to live with them and cope with them alone. If I’d shown any cracks, I’d have probably had a mutiny on my hands, just like my predecessor Bligh.

Don’t lose sleep if people don’t respect you straight away. And don’t take it personally. It’s human nature. I guarantee that life will offer you the opportunity to prove why you’re the leader. And when it does, it’s all up to you.

HOW TO AVOID A MUTINY