An English family who lost their father to suicide are preparing to row 3 000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to encourage people to talk more openly about taking one’s own life.

The Ash family – mother Charlotte (63), daughter Camilla (37) and her brothers Henry (32) and James – had never rowed before this summer but are now training for what organisers call the “World’s Toughest Row”.

The 50 to 60 gruelling days ahead of them when they set off in their 8.5-metre boat from the Canary Islands to Antigua in December next year will test their limits, but nothing will compare to 19 September 2023.

That was the day Charlotte’s husband Robert, the children’s father, took his life.

The family are taking on the challenge to support British charity Suicide & Co.

“It’s not about flying flares (in Antigua), it’s never been about a personal endeavour,” Henry told AFP.

“It’s about the charity, raising awareness and trying to bring suicide more into a conversation where people feel that they are able to talk about it.”

That was something they had to face when Robert ended his life.

“We all reacted in different ways,” said Camilla, a lawyer.

“That is across a myriad of things like why, how, was it something we did? What was going on? What did Dad feel on that day?

“We’ve all come away with slightly different interpretations of the event.”

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Charity provides lifeline

Henry was put in touch with Suicide & Co after his father’s death, and the family received 12 sessions of individual counselling six months later.

Henry had always wanted to row an ocean. After the tragedy, he decided last year it was an opportunity to repay Suicide & Co for their help.

Though the charity was receptive, Henry says co-founder Amelia Wrighton “was asking questions that perhaps hadn’t really entered my mind”.

“Like, how dangerous is it? Are you supported? Where do you stop along the way? Because there is no land mass between La Gomera and Antigua,” he said.

When Wrighton asked if he had thought about doing the row with anyone else, he had no hesitation.

“I said to her, because of the reason why I’m doing it, I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone other than my family.”

James was first on board. Henry had thought Camilla and Charlotte would handle fundraising – “I just thought they would not want to row the Atlantic” – but they joined too.

Charlotte suggested “rowing the same distance up and down the River Ouse” near the family home in Yorkshire, northern England, but in the end Henry says his mother thought “it would be worse having my three children at sea and not being with them than it would be to go with them”.

Training takes shape

Having completed their first summer of training on the water in the North Sea, including their first 36-hour non-stop row, and already raising over £360 000, they have laid the foundations for the final push in 2027.

Charlotte admits it is a “pretty scary thing to be doing” but said now, with more knowledge and experience, she was “marginally less terrified than at the beginning of the year”.

Guinness World Records has confirmed they would be the fastest family to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

“James did say that because we are the only family to have done it, we will therefore be double world record holders because we’ll also be the slowest,” Henry joked.

They hope their efforts will persuade more people to open up about suicide.

The family’s experiences suggest talking about it is “generational”.

James said his friends had been “pretty unanimously… very supportive”, but Charlotte said her age group often found it harder to talk about.

James added: “(My friends) ask how I am, which is often a very difficult question to answer.”

Family bond tested

As a family though, they appear prepared to cope with being cooped up in what James compares to a “pressure cooker”.

Henry admits there are “things you can’t prepare for. People talk about hallucinations, perhaps tempers flare” and Charlotte says they have become more tolerant of each other.

Camilla believes being a family rather than just friends helps in tricky moments.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’ve already fallen out on the boat,” she said.

“But I think as a family, you can move on quite quickly from arguments. And we know each other so well that we know what presses people’s buttons.”

Above all, Robert’s presence will still be felt – the fifth member of the team.

“The children used to call him ‘Dards’,” said Charlotte, which will be reflected in their mission statement written on the boat: Determination, Appreciation, Resilience, Dedication and Spirit.