Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Speaker 1: I'm to blame a chuck reboarding and I'm Scared. And
Speaker 1: today we are continuing our series mini series I guess
Speaker 1: little mini series of shipwrecks stories, and we focused a
Speaker 1: little bit on shipwrecks and our previous podcasts, the podcast
Speaker 1: that was called five Shipwrecks Stories, and we chose those
Speaker 1: mainly for their historical value, just because we liked them
Speaker 1: to yeah, tyrant ships, tutorships, that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just chose them completely at random, will not completely
Speaker 1: at random. They were suggested by fans on our Facebook page,
Speaker 1: but we sort of picked and chose ones from there
Speaker 1: according to whatever we found to be cool. And this
Speaker 1: time we wanted to focus a little bit more on
Speaker 1: military shipwrecks. Somatic with it. Yeah, absolutely. We noticed that
Speaker 1: a lot of the ones that were on the list
Speaker 1: that we're requested were warships, navy ships, and so we
Speaker 1: wanted to look into him a little bit. But we
Speaker 1: really didn't expect to be as fascinated by them as
Speaker 1: we were, right, Sarah, Yeah, it definitely turned out to
Speaker 1: be a lot more interesting than I thought, and partly
Speaker 1: I was thinking there wouldn't be quite as many personal
Speaker 1: stories behind it. That was definitely a misjudgment of of
Speaker 1: how it turned out. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: thought was most interesting was to look at the technical
Speaker 1: aspects of the design for these ships to learn a
Speaker 1: little bit about not just why they sank ultimately, because
Speaker 1: these are all shipwrecks, or why they went down, but
Speaker 1: why they were built in the first place, and why
Speaker 1: they were built in these unique ways that they were,
Speaker 1: Because we're going to talk about some really unique ship
Speaker 1: ships that were the biggest at the time, ships that
Speaker 1: were revolutionary in other ways, and I liked that part
Speaker 1: learning about just why these ships were created in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yeah, a lot of first on this list,
Speaker 1: I think, so that should be interesting for sure. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and get started with one the
Speaker 1: oldest one on the list, which is the Vassa. And
Speaker 1: the story of the Vasa all started when Sweden's king
Speaker 1: Gustavus Adolphus decided that it was time to beef up
Speaker 1: his navy a little bit. Sweden had been embroiled in
Speaker 1: war throughout the king's reign with Poland, Russia Denmark several
Speaker 1: wars here, and so he needed more warships so that
Speaker 1: Sweden would be considered a world power. So he signs
Speaker 1: a contract in sixty five to build several ships, including
Speaker 1: the Vassa, which was the first of those to be built. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it took two years to build a Vassa, and
Speaker 1: the goal, and the King's goal, was to make it
Speaker 1: the biggest, most heavily armed ship ever. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a goal for for a few of these ships.
Speaker 1: And it ends up being more than two hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty ft long, about a hundred and seventy feet high,
Speaker 1: and built to hold four hundred and fifty sailors and
Speaker 1: soldiers and sixty four cannon, so really heavily armed. The
Speaker 1: King supposedly had a lot of input in the designs
Speaker 1: with his pet project. He wanted it to be massive
Speaker 1: and to have two gun decks, and the story behind
Speaker 1: that is kind of interesting. He's just heard that there's
Speaker 1: a friendship out there that has two gun decks and
Speaker 1: he's hoping to to emulate that in his own construction project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so definitely going for some intimidation factor and he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be outdone. By any other countries here. He
Speaker 1: wants Sweden to be at the forefront, so he puts
Speaker 1: a master shipbuilder, Heinrich Hybridson, on the project. Unfortunately, though,
Speaker 1: Heinrich dies in seven in the middle of the process
Speaker 1: and his assistant Heinrich kind Jacobson has to finish up
Speaker 1: for him. Now, the really sort of key point in
Speaker 1: the story here, I think is that shipbuilders at the
Speaker 1: time they really didn't know how to calculate stability and
Speaker 1: Dutch ships they weren't really built from drawings, So the
Speaker 1: master ship builder was basically given some dimensions and then
Speaker 1: he figured out the proportions based on the measurements of
Speaker 1: other ships he'd worked on, so based on past experience
Speaker 1: kind of and since the Vassa was pretty much an experiment,
Speaker 1: there really wasn't a model for the master shipbuilder to
Speaker 1: follow here. That sounds terrifying to me right off the bat.
Speaker 1: But once they did construct the ship, they did some
Speaker 1: stability tests before setting sail, and the tests were ordered
Speaker 1: by Fleet Admiral cost Fleming. The test, though, was essentially
Speaker 1: thirty sailors lining up on one side of the ship
Speaker 1: and then running all at the same time to the
Speaker 1: other side. And then going back and forth a few
Speaker 1: times like that, raying back and forth. What is it
Speaker 1: running suicides? Yeah, definitely, and it's bobbing back and forth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so after they did that, the ship was bobbing
Speaker 1: a little bit too much, it seemed, and the test
Speaker 1: was even stopped. Fleming supposedly says had they run more time,
Speaker 1: she would have keeled over. So, yeah, it doesn't bode well.
Speaker 1: But since the seat is awfully rocky sometimes right, But
Speaker 1: nobody steps up at this point. Nobody puts the break
Speaker 1: on the project, especially since the king wants a ship.
Speaker 1: He's away at war already, and he tells them, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get this thing going. So the maiden voy age
Speaker 1: takes place August tenth, with the public proudly watching. There's people, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's there to see what happens. And within minutes of
Speaker 1: being launched, the ship's sales catch a gust of wind
Speaker 1: that cause it to heal, basically turn on its side.
Speaker 1: And then it heals a second time, even further this time,
Speaker 1: and the gun ports start filling up with water, which
Speaker 1: at that point it's done that. The water coming into
Speaker 1: the ship causes it to sink before it's even gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately there's not just crew on board, but some
Speaker 1: wise than kids too, and about thirty of the hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty or so people on board die and it's
Speaker 1: obviously a huge embarrassment for the king. He launched an
Speaker 1: investigation to try to figure out what happened and who
Speaker 1: he should blame. But ultimately that investigation found that the
Speaker 1: proportions were the problem. Those two big gun decks had
Speaker 1: made the ship too top heavy, and no one person
Speaker 1: was found guilty. And the reason behind that, I'd have
Speaker 1: been partly because the king himself had so much to
Speaker 1: do with the design. If you were going to find
Speaker 1: somebody guilty, he was partly to blame too. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like there were a lot of people to blame
Speaker 1: in this case, the King, the admiral, the captain, who
Speaker 1: would watched the stability test. I mean, you could have
Speaker 1: penned it just about on anyone. But suffice to say,
Speaker 1: the damage was done, and in the decades after the
Speaker 1: Vassa sank, people used diving bells to recover most of
Speaker 1: its cannons. Most of the ship's cannons, but then nobody
Speaker 1: really did anything about it until nineteen fifty six or so,
Speaker 1: and that's when amateur shipwreck hunter ANDREWS Fronsen came into
Speaker 1: the picture. He located the Vassa after several years search
Speaker 1: and basically did this by using a rowboat and a
Speaker 1: homemade sounding device. So the Swedish Navy helped to raise
Speaker 1: the structure. And the really cool thing about it is
Speaker 1: that the three thirty year old ship was really in
Speaker 1: really good shape. It was largely intact and um conservators
Speaker 1: spent about seventeen years preserving it and it was finally
Speaker 1: unveiled with great fanfare in nineteen nine. And today the
Speaker 1: Vassa Museum is one of Stockholm's biggest tourist tractions, and
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of artifacts there too, because, according
Speaker 1: to the Christian Science Monitor, in the first five months
Speaker 1: after the ship was raised, archaeologists found about fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: items on board, including some cool things. I mean there
Speaker 1: are coins and clothes, the sort of stuff you'd expect,
Speaker 1: but also a bat game and like board games. So
Speaker 1: they were planning on having a good time I guess
Speaker 1: before the ship. Yeah, well they needed a way to
Speaker 1: while away all those hours at sea, definitely. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the Vassa is kind of a museum in itself too,
Speaker 1: and it's amazing that they found all this stuff intact,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately now researchers are having to work to rescue
Speaker 1: the Vassa once again. In about the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: museum staff began noticing these little white deposits on the
Speaker 1: ship's surface, and so they launched this investigation to find out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is it? Yeah, what's happening? And they owned out
Speaker 1: that sulfuric acid was eating away at the cellulose at
Speaker 1: the wood, kind of from the inside out. So they
Speaker 1: thought this might have something to do with the preservation
Speaker 1: agent that was used when they were conserving the ship,
Speaker 1: and maybe the iron that was also used in that
Speaker 1: process is sort of used as a catalyst or is
Speaker 1: a catalyst to this. So they've been trying to kind
Speaker 1: of figure out ways to extract the iron from the
Speaker 1: wood and otherwise save the ship prevent the chemical reaction
Speaker 1: from happening. Yeah, I mean, you have to imagine that
Speaker 1: something so old is gonna degrade somehow or another over time.
Speaker 1: But it has become such an educational tool and and
Speaker 1: and neat attraction to come see. They want to save
Speaker 1: it as long as possible. As we have it up here,
Speaker 1: I mean, might as well let us stick around. So
Speaker 1: our next shipwreck has a little bit of a Swedish
Speaker 1: connection to which I think is pretty cool in planet
Speaker 1: that way. But that's um. It is the USS Monitor.
Speaker 1: Of course, it went down long after the Vasea did,
Speaker 1: and it was the invention of ace Whedish American named
Speaker 1: John Ericsson, and it was the first ironclad commissioned by
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy. It's dimensions don't seem that impressive
Speaker 1: if you just we look at that alone. It's a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy two feet long, not too big, but
Speaker 1: it's really unusual looking, and I definitely urge you to
Speaker 1: go google a picture of it or something, because it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to describe it without seeing the picture, but
Speaker 1: I'll do my best. Almost everything is below the water line,
Speaker 1: including the steam engine, which was a really useful development
Speaker 1: because obviously it could be armored down there. Uh. The
Speaker 1: only stuff that was above the water line was the
Speaker 1: pilot house, which had these little slits for the commander
Speaker 1: to see from and a revolving gun turret so that
Speaker 1: the guns could turn without having to maneuver. The whole ship.
Speaker 1: Apparently the guys inside the turret would get a little
Speaker 1: bit dizzy though, and it started wheeling around. I can
Speaker 1: imagine seems very submarine like to me in my limited
Speaker 1: its ships knowledge, it kind of looks like one with
Speaker 1: some strange boxes sticking up. Yeah, but fans saw this
Speaker 1: as the Navy's kind of great hope, right. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a new technology. It seemed like it could really
Speaker 1: blow the wooden ships out of the water. Skeptics though,
Speaker 1: called it an iron coffin because it does look kind
Speaker 1: of like a scary submarine. So regardless of what people thought,
Speaker 1: it got tested really quickly. It's maiden voyage was from
Speaker 1: New York to Virginia to meet the Confederate counterpart, the
Speaker 1: CSS Virginia, which was another ironclad that had been constructed
Speaker 1: from the former U. S. S. Merrimac, which was a frigate.
Speaker 1: And this battle they're rushing off to is the Battle
Speaker 1: of Hampton Roads. And after a rough journey, they approached
Speaker 1: the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on March eighth, eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: two to find Confederate destruction, complete destruction. The Virginia had
Speaker 1: sunk the USS Cumberland. The U. S. S. Congres Us
Speaker 1: was on fire, the USS Minnesota had run aground, so
Speaker 1: clearly the older wooden ships were no match for the
Speaker 1: Iron Cloud. That was the lesson here, But that's not
Speaker 1: really saying that the Iron Cloud Monitor looked that tough
Speaker 1: at all. No, it was kind of tiny and it
Speaker 1: was kind of ridiculous looking. Yeah, sightings from the Virginia
Speaker 1: report actually say, quote a shingle floating in the water,
Speaker 1: that's how they describe it, with a gigantic cheese box
Speaker 1: rising from its center. So it looks like nothing they
Speaker 1: had ever seen before. And I don't know if they
Speaker 1: were terribly impressed right away, but the two ships engaged
Speaker 1: the following day and they had four hours back and forth,
Speaker 1: and the Monitor was hit by both the Virginia and
Speaker 1: the friendly Minnesota. So managed to survive hits from both
Speaker 1: sides there and after noon a shot hit the monitor's
Speaker 1: pilot house, and this was sort of the key point
Speaker 1: in this battle because the shot temporarily blinded the commander
Speaker 1: and so he was the one who's trying to steer
Speaker 1: the ship. He's got to stop and take a break
Speaker 1: for a minute. So he had the ship veer over
Speaker 1: toward a shoal to recover a minute to get a
Speaker 1: replacement in, and the Virginia sees this and they think
Speaker 1: it's a retreat. They think the Monitors finally given up,
Speaker 1: and so the Virginia turned away just as the Monitor
Speaker 1: swings back around, and so the Monitor thinks it's a retreat.
Speaker 1: So it's this really weird battle where both sides think
Speaker 1: they've won. I guess it's a draw. There is one
Speaker 1: clear winner, though, and that is ironclad ships, because as
Speaker 1: we saw from the US of Cumberland the Congress to Minnesota,
Speaker 1: it wasn't they were no match, no competition. But the
Speaker 1: Monitor's celebrity really didn't last long. It did gain some
Speaker 1: recognition um the crew I think became quite famous. But
Speaker 1: by December of that same year, the ship was ordered
Speaker 1: from Hampton Roads to Beaufort and North Carolina, and the
Speaker 1: plan was to tow it along the steamer the Rhode Islands.
Speaker 1: Since its battle ready design made the Unitor very unseaworthy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was made for fighting other ships, not for heading
Speaker 1: out into the ocean. So bad weather delayed the trip
Speaker 1: until December twenty nine, and the crew was expecting pretty
Speaker 1: rough water around Cape Hatteras it's called the Graveyard of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. I think you would expect that to be
Speaker 1: a little rough, and they secured everything they could. They
Speaker 1: calked the pilot house slits, and they knew that the
Speaker 1: most dangerous thing was going to be possible waves breaking
Speaker 1: over the deck since it wasn't particularly watertight and there's
Speaker 1: a crew of sixty two men on board. So here's
Speaker 1: how it goes. The ship was towed out of Hampton
Speaker 1: Roads past Cape Henry out to the Atlantic. Sharks were
Speaker 1: following along, which was kind of an ominous sign. By
Speaker 1: December thirty there were really high winds and seas and
Speaker 1: by six thirty pm, a huge storm breaks. Waves were
Speaker 1: pounding that huge turret in the center of the monitor
Speaker 1: and crashing over the deck. And the ship works out
Speaker 1: a plan with the Rhode Island, and that's if the
Speaker 1: monitor is in trouble, they'll hoist their red signal lantern
Speaker 1: on the turret math and the Rhode Island will know
Speaker 1: they need to go help them or syst them in
Speaker 1: some way. So trouble does set in around seven pm
Speaker 1: when a tow line breaks. At that point, water starts
Speaker 1: to pour in and so a chain of men to
Speaker 1: kind of counteract that. They start passing buckets of water
Speaker 1: out of the turret that's the only escape hatch that
Speaker 1: they have. Water also starts coming in the coal shoots,
Speaker 1: which leads to a pressure drop. So the red lantern
Speaker 1: of course goes up at ten pm because they are
Speaker 1: in fact in serious trouble at this point. But then
Speaker 1: the remaining tow lines start to sag. Of the three
Speaker 1: men who volunteer to cut the lines, two are swept overboard,
Speaker 1: and then the last guy only cuts one line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so meanwhile the Rhode Island is is coming over to
Speaker 1: start rescue operations as the Monitor shuts down her engines
Speaker 1: and drops and her and everybody is evacuating through that turret.
Speaker 1: Some guys are being swept overboard because the seas are
Speaker 1: still so rough, but the rescue effort really seems like
Speaker 1: it couldn't have gone any worse than it did. The
Speaker 1: Rhode Island and Monitor almost collided, then the two ships
Speaker 1: almost crushed the little rescue launch that had been set
Speaker 1: off to to get a few guys, and then the
Speaker 1: loose toe lines even get caught up in Rhode Island's
Speaker 1: paddle wheels. So just everything going wrong, But somehow sixteen
Speaker 1: men managed to make it aboard the rescue cutter, and
Speaker 1: then it really does get worse, I guess, because they're
Speaker 1: almost hit by a freaking whale ship that's also come
Speaker 1: to help, and this sort of I guess I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of movies or cartoons when you're in a little rowboat
Speaker 1: or something and suddenly a giant Titanic size ship comes along.
Speaker 1: But the they know that if the ship hits them
Speaker 1: head on, the cutter will just break in two and
Speaker 1: they'll all drown. So the monitor surgeon who's on board
Speaker 1: this little rescue cutter, stands up and manually pushes the
Speaker 1: ship aside, or pushes the smaller ship aside so it's
Speaker 1: not just hit head on. He crushes some of his
Speaker 1: fingers in the process and loses them, But pretty wild story.
Speaker 1: I think it does start to get a little bit
Speaker 1: better after that, though. By about twelve fifteen, the Rhode
Speaker 1: Islands paddle wheel is finally freed and the men on
Speaker 1: the launch make it safely aboard. A second cutter goes
Speaker 1: out and gets everyone they can who is left behind.
Speaker 1: Some men actually refuse to leave the turret, though they're
Speaker 1: clinging to the turret, and by one thirty there's a
Speaker 1: third launch set out, but by that point nobody has left.
Speaker 1: The red lantern is gone, and the commander has survived,
Speaker 1: but four officers and twelve crewmen from the Monitor have died.
Speaker 1: Five guys from the USS Rhode Island are actually awarded
Speaker 1: Naval Congressional Medals of Honor to for helping with this
Speaker 1: rescue effort. But that red lantern sort of has an
Speaker 1: interesting role in the later his Street of the Monitor,
Speaker 1: because it's the first artifact that was recovered in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven. Speaking of interesting shipwreck finds, though, our next
Speaker 1: shipwreck involves also a signal, a light signal, a colored
Speaker 1: light signal in fact, that is found after the fact,
Speaker 1: many years later. It's the H. L. Hounley, and its
Speaker 1: claim to fame is that it was the first submarine
Speaker 1: in naval history to sink an enemy ship. This was
Speaker 1: a Civil War era Confederate submarine named for Horace L. Hunley,
Speaker 1: a New Orleans lawyer and businessman who financed its construction.
Speaker 1: So we made sure we had a Union civil warship
Speaker 1: and a Confederate Civil War submarine balanced coverage here, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So Hunley, along with James McClintock, and Baxter Watson designed
Speaker 1: the submarine. The thing was powered manually. There was a guy,
Speaker 1: actually several guys who would turn a crankshaft that set
Speaker 1: a propeller into motion, and that's how the submarine would
Speaker 1: actually move. And the whole thing was lit on the
Speaker 1: inside by this one small candle and so that provided
Speaker 1: a light source, but it also provided kind of an
Speaker 1: oxygen level indicator and the men would watch it for
Speaker 1: when it flickered out. Yes, so when the candle flickered out,
Speaker 1: and some sources say that that only took about twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes or so, that was when they knew it
Speaker 1: was time to come up for air. Some of the
Speaker 1: sources say that they may have had as long as
Speaker 1: two hours down there, but regardless, it wasn't a very
Speaker 1: long time, right, Well, I think, well, I think Hunley
Speaker 1: dot org, which is the Friends of Hunley organization, so
Speaker 1: that you have about two hours, or they would have
Speaker 1: about two hours down there. I kind of hate the
Speaker 1: idea of watching a candle to see when my ears
Speaker 1: kind of Yeah, it's pretty stressful. I think everything about
Speaker 1: the Honley sort of stresses me out, including the interior dimensions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very small, with hatchways measuring fourteen inches by
Speaker 1: fifteen and three quarter inches, so it was a tight
Speaker 1: squeeze just to get into it. I think one source
Speaker 1: I saw likened it to uh, crawling in the middle
Speaker 1: of a tire, so if you can imagine that as
Speaker 1: your entrance and exit, so not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: room to move around on the inside either. Sounds pretty primitive,
Speaker 1: but the Hunley was actually way ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: Present day submarines have some design similarities, including adjustable diving
Speaker 1: planes and a few other things that that the Hunley had,
Speaker 1: so it seems basic, but it was really advanced. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it was constructed in Mobile, Alabama, and it's there
Speaker 1: where a few successful test runs took place in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty three before it was put on to put on
Speaker 1: a train to Charleston in August eighteen sixty three, and
Speaker 1: the plan was to try to break the Union Army's
Speaker 1: blockade on all Southern ports, which Charleston was, of course
Speaker 1: the focal point there. So the Confederate hope was that
Speaker 1: the Hunley could sneak in. It would be their secret
Speaker 1: weapon and they'd helped break through that blockade. It didn't
Speaker 1: get off to a great start, though. Yeah, before the
Speaker 1: Hunley was ultimately wrecked, there were two failed initial runs too,
Speaker 1: in which the sub sunk, killing most are all of
Speaker 1: the crews. The first run or kind of attack attempt
Speaker 1: was on August sixty three, and Honley himself was part
Speaker 1: of the second crew, and he died October eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: three when the sub sanct during a routine diving exercise.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but the amazing thing is both times the
Speaker 1: Hunley thinks people are able to recover the Hunley from
Speaker 1: the ocean floor and bring it back up and put
Speaker 1: it into service again, although surprisingly not everyone is that
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about this, perhaps not too surprisingly since it does
Speaker 1: seem to be a bit of a death trap already.
Speaker 1: General p G. T. Beauregard, who was in charge of
Speaker 1: Charleston's defense, really wasn't eager for a third go round.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, I can have nothing more to do
Speaker 1: with that submarine boat. It's more dangerous to those who
Speaker 1: use it than the enemy. Yeah. So he wasn't for it,
Speaker 1: but others eventually talked him into it, so he finally
Speaker 1: agreed to a third try, with one condition that those
Speaker 1: who volunteered for the crew must be warned of the
Speaker 1: quote desperately hazardous nature of the service required case you
Speaker 1: hadn't already gotten work, in case you hadn't already gotten
Speaker 1: the picture. But he did get volunteers. He managed to
Speaker 1: recruit a crew. They assembled a crew of nine and
Speaker 1: got ready for the Hunley's third mission, which happened the
Speaker 1: night of February sev eighteen sixty four, and their target
Speaker 1: was the Union Navy's largest ship, the USS WHO Satanic,
Speaker 1: and that was located outside Charleston Harbor, approximately four miles
Speaker 1: off Breach Inlet and Sullivan's Island. So if you can
Speaker 1: imagine this, imagine you're the lookout aboard the U S
Speaker 1: S Who Satanic. He looks down and sees a moonlit
Speaker 1: object in the water approaching the ship at a speed
Speaker 1: of three knots, and he thinks it's a porpoise? What
Speaker 1: else is it going to be? What else is it
Speaker 1: going to be? As it gets closer, he realizes it
Speaker 1: must be the Confederate submarine that his admiral had told
Speaker 1: him about. There had been kind of rumors of this
Speaker 1: floating around, of this contraption that the Confederate Army was
Speaker 1: going to have, and so he sounded the alarm. There
Speaker 1: wasn't much they could do at that point though. The
Speaker 1: ships cannons weren't any use against something that was so
Speaker 1: low in the water like that. So Union soldiers just
Speaker 1: started shooting at the submarine with their revolvers and their rifles,
Speaker 1: and the Hunley continued to advance and managed to dislodge
Speaker 1: its weapon, which was a spar torpedo, a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five pound torpedo that was fastened to the end
Speaker 1: of the spar and then fitted with a barb on
Speaker 1: its end. And it's really weird the way it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So basically, the submarine had to ram the torpedo into
Speaker 1: the Housatanic and then back away. As the Hunley backed away,
Speaker 1: aligned from the torpedo to the submarine would spool out,
Speaker 1: and once the submarine was at a safe distance and
Speaker 1: the rope finished unspooling, the tightening of the rope triggered
Speaker 1: the torpedoes detonation. So it's basically like a rope detonate
Speaker 1: ever if you think about it. So the Union ship burned,
Speaker 1: the torpedo went off, and the Union ship burned for
Speaker 1: three minutes after the explosion before it sank to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the Atlantic still though all x for five
Speaker 1: of the five man crew survived, so it wasn't a
Speaker 1: huge loss of life, not for the Union side, definitely.
Speaker 1: It said that the rebels then open the hatch and
Speaker 1: wave their blue light that they had, which was to
Speaker 1: be their mission accomplished signal to their fellow confederates on
Speaker 1: the South Carolina shore. But at some point after that
Speaker 1: it vanished and theories of what could have happened very
Speaker 1: Some people think that maybe the submarine was too close
Speaker 1: to the Hausatanic when the torpedo exploded, or it may
Speaker 1: have taken in too much water when the hatch was
Speaker 1: lifted to wave the blue light. Some people think that
Speaker 1: the wakes of the Union ships rushing to assist the
Speaker 1: Hausatanic swamp the Honey or one of the ships may
Speaker 1: have actually struck the sub Yeah. And then another possibility
Speaker 1: is that the soldiers when they were shooting at the submarine,
Speaker 1: managed to somehow shoot out the glass on the sub's
Speaker 1: conning tower which was sticking slightly above the water, and
Speaker 1: that allowed the water to Russia. Yeah. So regardless, though,
Speaker 1: the Huntley went down and people looked for it for
Speaker 1: years and years and years. P T. Barnum, our old friend.
Speaker 1: He's appearing in all these podcasts lately. Once even offered
Speaker 1: a one hundred thousand dollar reward to whomever could find it,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until nine though, when a diving team
Speaker 1: that was led by the novelist Clive Cussler found the
Speaker 1: Hunley on the ocean floor under thirty feet of water
Speaker 1: and several feet of silt and sand, just outside of
Speaker 1: the Charleston Harbor. Other people claimed that they found at first,
Speaker 1: but Cussler gets the credit and the Hunley was finally
Speaker 1: raised in two thousand and Since then, researchers have been
Speaker 1: exploring it really carefully, trying to solve the mystery of
Speaker 1: why it never came back home, why it never got
Speaker 1: where it was supposed to go. A recent theories that
Speaker 1: the submarine wasn't actually flooded, but rather that the crew
Speaker 1: died of suffocation or some other cause instead. Um and
Speaker 1: they think this because the remains that they found in
Speaker 1: the submarine actually suggests that that people were still at
Speaker 1: their assigned battle stations when they died. So mystery we
Speaker 1: might hear more about in the years to come, I
Speaker 1: think definitely. So the next and final ship on this
Speaker 1: warship list is the Japanese battleship the Umato, And we
Speaker 1: got a lot of requests for the ships that were
Speaker 1: lost at Pearl Harbor. They were really popular suggestions for
Speaker 1: this list, but so was Themato in in in a
Speaker 1: sort of strange way, it's a bookend to Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 1: and you you'll see why in a minute, air power
Speaker 1: takes out battleships, except in this case the players are reversed.
Speaker 1: But when the Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Themato in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, battleships were really at their height. They were
Speaker 1: key to fighting a war, and it was the heaviest
Speaker 1: and most powerful battleship that was ever built, and a
Speaker 1: complete secret to they didn't want anybody to know. There
Speaker 1: were miles of fishing net that were stretched around the
Speaker 1: dry dock where it was being built, and no one
Speaker 1: ever even had a full set of plans, so people
Speaker 1: didn't know what exactly they were even working on. Now
Speaker 1: we know the base expects. Though it was eight hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three ft long and seventy thousand tons, no
Speaker 1: Japanese shipyard at the time could accommodate these planned dimensions
Speaker 1: that they had because they were just so massive. There
Speaker 1: were also three main turrets that held nine guns that
Speaker 1: fired eighteen inch shells at a range of twenty five miles,
Speaker 1: so pretty far, because these were meant for other battleships.
Speaker 1: Of course, the irony here though, is that the MTTO
Speaker 1: never fought another battleship. But we'll find out more about
Speaker 1: that in a minute. Yeah, the other guns on board
Speaker 1: could shoot more rounds per minute still at really great distances,
Speaker 1: and the turrets, the turrets for the main guns were
Speaker 1: protected by twenty five in thick armor plates, so they
Speaker 1: seemed pretty invincible, and the sides were also really well protected.
Speaker 1: But the bow and the stern were sort of the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable spots. That the ship is going to have
Speaker 1: a vulnerable spot, it's that, yeah. But the ship was
Speaker 1: quick for its size, twenty eight knots and four steam
Speaker 1: turbine engines. It also had one thousand, one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty watertight compartments and these could stop the flooding or
Speaker 1: flood on purpose to stop listing. And an added bonus
Speaker 1: to this was that it was really comfy too, had
Speaker 1: more room than average and better food on board as well,
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting detail. I saw noted a
Speaker 1: few times that the sailors were served white rice instead
Speaker 1: of barley, so big difference. There another really comfortable thing.
Speaker 1: It had a c not everywhere in the ship, but
Speaker 1: still you have to imagine that a lot of these
Speaker 1: boats would be really, really hot. I think apparently the
Speaker 1: monitor was supposed to just be almost intolerable the ironclad ship,
Speaker 1: but consequently the Japanese Imato was the pride of the fleet,
Speaker 1: and it featured this six ft wide golden chrysanthemum shield
Speaker 1: that decorated the bow of the ship. And even the
Speaker 1: name Yamato had poetic connotations. So it was a real
Speaker 1: pride for the Japanese Imperial Navy. But the ship wasn't
Speaker 1: so well prepared for fighting aircraft, which we'll see. It
Speaker 1: was refit in April nine with machine guns, but was
Speaker 1: still quite vulnerable. There were no fighter planes on board,
Speaker 1: that was one thing. They only had reconnaissance planes which
Speaker 1: would fly towards targets to help gunsight these long twenty
Speaker 1: five mile distances. That was kind of their purpose, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the they wouldn't be able to see the other
Speaker 1: ship that was twenty five miles away without this plane
Speaker 1: sort of helping them spot it. Again, these are all
Speaker 1: things that are designed for fighting other battleships, not fighting planes,
Speaker 1: which is what's going to happen. But despite these shortcomings,
Speaker 1: the Yamato was just almost too good to use. It
Speaker 1: was so expensive and so impressive, and sailors joked that
Speaker 1: being stationed there was like staying in a hotel. I
Speaker 1: guess you got your white rice rations and you're saki,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean it was kind of nice, and
Speaker 1: it seemed almost like the Navy didn't want to risk
Speaker 1: her in any way. But by nineteen forty five, with
Speaker 1: the Americans moving in despite Kamikaze's it was really time
Speaker 1: to commit the Yamato. She couldn't just sit around anymore.
Speaker 1: If you have Kamikazees out there or troops, you've got
Speaker 1: to commit your navy, Yeah, even if it meant a
Speaker 1: suicide mission to protect the Home islands. So most of
Speaker 1: the men don't know where they're going, but they assume
Speaker 1: it's Okinawa, where the American fleet was headed. The plan
Speaker 1: was to meet the American fleet fight ships, and failing that,
Speaker 1: ram ships, and failing that fight hand to hand with them.
Speaker 1: So the Japanese figured that the Yamato would ultimately fall
Speaker 1: against the American fleet, but it would probably be able
Speaker 1: to get in some pretty serious damage before that happened.
Speaker 1: So they get three days at home to sort things out,
Speaker 1: and then they sail with destroyers to protect them from submarines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so April seventh, ninety the Yamato sets out. She has
Speaker 1: three thousand men on board just alone, plus the convoy,
Speaker 1: their eight destroyers. There's one cruiser and the officers who
Speaker 1: have a better idea of what's really gonna what's about
Speaker 1: to happened. Then many of the men do break out
Speaker 1: the sake for the men just trying to create like
Speaker 1: a party atmosphere, so nobody gets too gloomy. That same day,
Speaker 1: the Yamato was spotted by US reconnaissance planes in the
Speaker 1: East China Sea and she was still pretty far away
Speaker 1: from her intended target, which is of course the American
Speaker 1: fleet when dive bombers started to strike from nearby aircraft
Speaker 1: carriers and cloud cover. This is the case where the
Speaker 1: weather proved to be really important, but cloud cover really
Speaker 1: helped to conceal them and this first round of um
Speaker 1: dive bombers really reeks havoc on the deck and it
Speaker 1: makes it easier for the next round of attacks from
Speaker 1: the Americans and the fighter planes and low altitude bombers
Speaker 1: start launching torpedoes, and these guys concentrate torpedoes on the
Speaker 1: Yamato's weaker bow and stern and all on one side too,
Speaker 1: and all under the waterline. Yeah, so really going for
Speaker 1: the weak spots. Yeah. At this point things are getting bad.
Speaker 1: Even the Yamato's watertight comp artments can't handle the repeated
Speaker 1: torpedo hits. It starts to flood. Some men are shut
Speaker 1: inside these watertight compartments, which sounds terrifying, and eventually there's
Speaker 1: a huge series of explosions and it breaks the ship
Speaker 1: in half. People have tried to figure out by looking
Speaker 1: at the wreckage since then what really happened. It's likely
Speaker 1: that a fire ignited in the magazine and blasted the
Speaker 1: ship in two, but it might have been the largest
Speaker 1: blast ever at sea. And if you look at some
Speaker 1: of the survivor accounts, it's really I mean, a lot
Speaker 1: of them don't even remember falling into the water just
Speaker 1: because this blast is so big. They're just launched into
Speaker 1: the water, but two thousand, seven hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: men go down with the ship. The surrounding ships lost
Speaker 1: one thousand, one hundred sixty seven men and only two
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine are rescued and picked up by
Speaker 1: a Japanese destroyer. And a strange thing about this, since
Speaker 1: the Navy didn't want word of the disaster to get out,
Speaker 1: the men were sort of taken on board the destroyer,
Speaker 1: cleaned off there, coated in oil and really cold and
Speaker 1: exhausted and taken to land and then just hidden away
Speaker 1: for about a month and their families I think they're
Speaker 1: dead and finally they are allowed to go home again
Speaker 1: once word is definitely out. Just so fairly a strange
Speaker 1: end to to such a huge disaster. Yeah, and one
Speaker 1: of the worst I think that we've covered. And our
Speaker 1: shipwreck lists are very shipwreck coverage. And as far as
Speaker 1: life loss of life goes, yeah, definitely. Well, we have
Speaker 1: one more battleship that we're going to cover in its
Speaker 1: own episode just because there are two ships involved. So
Speaker 1: I mean, how many ownus can you have on one life?
Speaker 1: I guess that'll bring us to eleven total for this
Speaker 1: little mini series. Yeah, and there's still so many more
Speaker 1: to go. It's not like this is the last time
Speaker 1: we're ever going to cover shipwrecks. But it's been fun
Speaker 1: to kind of do a bunch of them at once. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just seeing all the all the wrecks that you
Speaker 1: guys suggested to it's it's really interesting. I guess a
Speaker 1: lot of y'all have favorite ship wrecks. It's been fun
Speaker 1: to learn about them. Yeah, definitely, we're going to hang
Speaker 1: onto that list and um, maybe pursue some of them
Speaker 1: a little further in the future. Yeah. And so for
Speaker 1: those of you who didn't get your ship wreck recommendations
Speaker 1: into us yet, please write in with those. You can
Speaker 1: write us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can hit us up on Facebook or on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Myston History. And if you want to learn
Speaker 1: a little bit more about diving bells, which we mentioned
Speaker 1: in this episode, you can look it up on our
Speaker 1: home page by searching for diving bells at www dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
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