Eccentrics

In the summer of 1973, five men and six women embarked on a 101-day scientific sea-adventure, drifting on a small raft named ‘Acali’ across the Atlantic. In an experiment initiated by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés, the project’s aim was to explore the origins of violence and the dynamics of sexual attraction. The eleven members of the crew were handpicked from around the world with the objective of mixing religion, gender and nationality to maximize friction on board. Genovés called the expedition a ‘Peace Project’ but it did not take long for the international press to rename it ‘The Sex Raft’, a nickname which still upsets some members of the crew. As leader of the experiment, Genovés had hoped that violent conflicts and sex orgies would result from the close quarters in which his human guinea pigs were forced to live, but what ultimately happened on that drifting raft was entirely unexpected. Instead of fighting or having sex, the group slowly turned against him. Mutiny was discussed and at one point there was even a plan to kill him.

Jim Tully was an American vagabond, pugilist, and writer. He enjoyed critical and commercial success as a writer in the 1920s and 1930s. Born near St. Marys, Ohio, to James Dennis and Bridget Marie Lawler Tully, an Irish immigrant ditch-digger and his wife, Tully enjoyed a relatively happy but impoverished childhood until the death of his mother in 1892. Unable to care for him, his father sent him to an orphanage in Cincinnati. He remained there for six years. What further education he acquired came in the hobo camps, boxcars, railroad yards, and public libraries scattered across the country.

Baron Rokeby was an English landowner, politician and nobleman. He became an enthusiastic supporter of baths during a holiday in the spa town of Aix-la-Chapelle. When he returned to Kent, he began to make daily trips to the seashore to swim in salt water regardless of the weather. He preferred this environment to such an extent that his servant had to persuade him to come home. Sometimes he fainted and had to be rescued. He had a hut built for him on the sands at Hythe and drinking fountains along his route to the beach. He walked all the way and let his servant follow him in the carriage with full livery. If he found people drinking from a fountain, he gave them a half-crown coin. He also let his beard grow, which was against the contemporary fashion. Eventually, it was so thick that it stuck out under his arms and could be seen from behind. In a couple of years, he decided to build a swimming pool in his mansion - it was built under glass and was heated by the sun. There he spent hours at the time, preferably alone. He refused to have a fire in his house even in the coldest weather. His increased isolation bred rumours, including one that he was a cannibal or ate only raw meat - when he ate mainly beef tea and nibbled at venison. He also refused to see any doctors. As for church service, he claimed that God was best worshipped at natural altars of the earth, the sea and the sky - not to mention that the sermons were boring.