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 Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck Reboarding, and today
Speaker 1: you're in for a treat because we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about five pretty amazing shipwrecks. And the really cool
Speaker 1: thing about it is you guys picked all of these. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, we asked for some recommendations and you guys
Speaker 1: gave us awesome ones. And I mean a lot too.
Speaker 1: I think there were seventies something comments just on Facebook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we could do a shipwreck only podcast series
Speaker 1: for the next six months from how Stuff No kidding, Um,
Speaker 1: so we're only gonna do five for this episode, but
Speaker 1: we might be tempted to revisit this again because you
Speaker 1: all know that I like shipwrecks. I think Deblina, you're
Speaker 1: certainly growing to like them. Yeah, I love I love
Speaker 1: shipwreck stories, that's for sure. Some of them are kind
Speaker 1: of sad for me to stomach. Yeah, they are sad,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to sound to light about it,
Speaker 1: but you know they're interesting too, That's that's what I
Speaker 1: enjoy about them. Yeah, absolutely, it's not just about the
Speaker 1: event the wreck itself. It's all the things that you
Speaker 1: learn about a particular culture, particular time period from the
Speaker 1: things that are found if they're found, you know, if
Speaker 1: there's an excavation that takes place, and all the things
Speaker 1: that you get from there and the consequences. And I
Speaker 1: think the recovery efforts alone are really interesting stories. We
Speaker 1: talked about that a little bit when we were discussing
Speaker 1: those Roman shipwrecks last fall. You know, just the recovery
Speaker 1: effort is it's pretty interesting, all of the people who
Speaker 1: work on it, the archaeological work, all the fish sauce
Speaker 1: involved sauce. Yeah, that was right. I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for thanks for reminding me. But anyways, we're gonna
Speaker 1: kick this off with the shipwreck. That sort of made
Speaker 1: us think that maybe a series or a list like
Speaker 1: this would be cool. It was something that a listener
Speaker 1: wrote in to suggest the realm Arie a shipwreck, and
Speaker 1: I just thought it was so neat. It tied in
Speaker 1: different interests and different things that you wouldn't expect all
Speaker 1: into one shipwreck, which I think that's what they do, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it tied in art too. We'll see. But before
Speaker 1: we can get into the art, we need to give
Speaker 1: you a little bit of backstory about the fram Maria.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen seventies of Dr Christian Allstrom found
Speaker 1: documents in the Finnish National Archives relating to a sunken
Speaker 1: Dutch merchant ship. And that's the ship we're talking about
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, I have been traveling from Amsterdam to St.
Speaker 1: Petersburg and it sank in a storm in the Baltic
Speaker 1: off the southern coast of Finland way back in the
Speaker 1: autumn of seventeen seventy one. So it was quite an
Speaker 1: old wreck by the time Allstrom learned about it, and
Speaker 1: a further search of documents in the archives and other
Speaker 1: sources uncovered the ship's protests, which included the log book,
Speaker 1: but also a really tantalizing list of items that had
Speaker 1: been salvaged from the wreck. Because it didn't go down
Speaker 1: immediately like some of the wrecks were going to discuss,
Speaker 1: there was time to get a few of the precious
Speaker 1: items off off board. Yeah, that list made the hunt
Speaker 1: for the firm area a really popular enterprise with among
Speaker 1: amateur divers throughout the nineteen seventies, but it wasn't until
Speaker 1: nine that the society dedicated to the search found the wreck,
Speaker 1: the actual wreck using side scan sonar. Yeah, our old friend,
Speaker 1: side skin sonar. How do you find ships these days?
Speaker 1: So the remains that they found were remarkably well preserved.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of the whole is intact, and this makes
Speaker 1: it a really great way to learn about Dutch ship
Speaker 1: building at the time and what a Dutch like, what
Speaker 1: a typical Dutch merchant ship would have been like, because
Speaker 1: it is so remarkably well preserved. But that's that's not
Speaker 1: why we're talking about it. It's not just a nice
Speaker 1: typical Dutch merchant ship. It's what might still be inside.
Speaker 1: That's the real kicker. Because we have the custom toll
Speaker 1: records in Denmark and the log of the salvage items
Speaker 1: and that let's just know some of the luxury items
Speaker 1: or goods that you would expect to be on board,
Speaker 1: their sugar and cloth and zinc and mercury. Fortunately they've
Speaker 1: determined the mercury has not leaked into the Baltic die.
Speaker 1: Just just the typical things you'd think would be on
Speaker 1: the ship. No fish oil though, no fish oil. But
Speaker 1: there was also some cargo listed as assorted merchandise, and
Speaker 1: this was likely valuable luxury items, some of which were
Speaker 1: also salvaged, and that included things like books, mirrors with
Speaker 1: gilt frames, and even ivory eggs, which sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining like crates full of ivory eggs. Probably it
Speaker 1: was just a couple of boxes, but still. But the
Speaker 1: treasure ship reputation that this wreck has comes from the
Speaker 1: fact that the Frown Maria was on an art run
Speaker 1: at the time of its thinking for none other than
Speaker 1: Catherine the Great. Yeah, that's right. So if y'all know
Speaker 1: a little bit about Catherine the Great, maybe you've listened
Speaker 1: to the Caffine the Great series, you know that in
Speaker 1: the late seventeen sixties early seventeen seventies, Catherine was really
Speaker 1: looking to beef up her Courts reputation as a cultural capital,
Speaker 1: cultural enter that was equal to the Courts and the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe. And to do that, she knew that
Speaker 1: she didn't just need to spend a lot of money.
Speaker 1: She needed to buy some really pretty stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: art and things like the works of Dutch masters. So
Speaker 1: that's exactly what she did. She used connections through europe
Speaker 1: guys like Voltaire to set up these art deals for
Speaker 1: her and build the collection. And in July seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: one she had one deal like this go down, and
Speaker 1: it was a timber merchant who was having his estate
Speaker 1: auctioned off. He was also an art collector and Catherine's
Speaker 1: ambassador to the Hague was sent off to take care
Speaker 1: of Catherine's interests and bid on some of these nice paintings.
Speaker 1: So what was lost in this wreck of those paintings,
Speaker 1: because we know that she ordered them, but she bought them,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them none of them showed up, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, none of hers, none of hers.
Speaker 1: So judging from the auction catalogs as well as the
Speaker 1: doctoral thesis of Dr Clara from nineteen sixty one, we
Speaker 1: can guess that the works were mostly of Dutch Golden
Speaker 1: Age painters um including Jan van Goyen, who made an
Speaker 1: appearance in The Tulip. And there are eleven paintings that
Speaker 1: we know of, but it's very likely that there were more,
Speaker 1: since correspondence at the time shows that there was an
Speaker 1: extremely high value put on the bundle that Catherine bought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but our big question is if the paintings went down
Speaker 1: with the ship. Are they still down there and what
Speaker 1: kind of condition would they be in? And it's pretty
Speaker 1: hard to say, because as of now, a diver can't
Speaker 1: safely enter the hold of the ship. It's too rickety,
Speaker 1: even though it's in really good condition. Um And the
Speaker 1: condition of the paintings themselves might really depend on how
Speaker 1: they were packaged, because if they were stored in crates
Speaker 1: in their frames, they probably would have been destroyed a
Speaker 1: long time ago. They would be sitting in water since
Speaker 1: seventeen seventies. But here's the interesting part. If they were
Speaker 1: cut from their frames and roll up like the canvas.
Speaker 1: Some of them were panel paintings, so that wouldn't have
Speaker 1: worked for them. But the canvas paintings were cut and
Speaker 1: rolled up and then stored in a lead sealed box.
Speaker 1: There's a slim chance that they would still be down
Speaker 1: there in in reasonable condition. That would be pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But even if they don't come up someday as miraculously
Speaker 1: preserved master paintings, they'll still be treasures if anything survives.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's Catherine's lost collection. Pretty cool. So our
Speaker 1: next ship, we're gonna switch gears a little bit and
Speaker 1: go from a merchant ship with art to a pirate
Speaker 1: ship with gold. Yeah. I feel like we've talked about
Speaker 1: pirates a lot lately. But hopefully you're like us and
Speaker 1: you can never get enough of those pirate stories, because
Speaker 1: next we're going to talk about a ship called the Widow,
Speaker 1: and the story of the Widow shipwreck actually begins with
Speaker 1: a bit of a love story involving a pirate named
Speaker 1: Samuel Black sam Bellamy. People really tried to pitch us
Speaker 1: on that aspect of it, Yeah, they did. That was
Speaker 1: requested several times I think on Facebook. Now. Bellamy was
Speaker 1: originally from England and it said that he started as
Speaker 1: a legit merchant sailor, not a pirate at all, but
Speaker 1: then he moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts in seventeen fifteen,
Speaker 1: around age twenty seven, to pursue a career as a
Speaker 1: New England merchant captain. And when he got there, he
Speaker 1: fell in love with a fifteen year old girl named
Speaker 1: Maria Hallett. Yeah, but the trouble was, Maria's parents didn't
Speaker 1: really think that much of Samuel Bellamy, especially his fortune.
Speaker 1: They thought he was too poor to take care of Maria,
Speaker 1: so they refused to allow them to marry. So he
Speaker 1: decides he's going to set off and make enough money
Speaker 1: so that he can marry his girl. And he hears
Speaker 1: that there's some Spanish rex off the coast of Florida,
Speaker 1: and he went down to visit the ships and see
Speaker 1: if he could hopefully get rich quick that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was kind of a bust um. When he
Speaker 1: got down there, he realized that the ship really didn't
Speaker 1: have anything of worth that he could use to build
Speaker 1: his fortune. So at that point he decided to turn
Speaker 1: to piracy, and it turned out that he was pretty
Speaker 1: good at it. He learned the trade by joining the
Speaker 1: crew of successful pirate Ben Hornegold, whose crew at one
Speaker 1: point included Edward Teach, also known as black Beard. We
Speaker 1: all know that name. I think Hornigal is kind of
Speaker 1: a pirate mentor it seems. Yeah, he actually mentored a
Speaker 1: bunch of famous pirates. But by seventeen sixteen, Bellamy had
Speaker 1: actually overthrown him, so the student had become the master,
Speaker 1: so to speak. He led a mutiny against Tornigold and
Speaker 1: took over as captain of the Mary Anne, which was
Speaker 1: the name of the ship that they were on, and
Speaker 1: in Bellamy's first year of captain, the crew robbed more
Speaker 1: than fifties ships, so just to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how successfully was. They were really good at this.
Speaker 1: And they also made some acquisitions, including a ship called
Speaker 1: the Sultana, which I think was also a popularly suggested ship. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: But capturing the Widow in February seventeen seventeen is said
Speaker 1: to be kind of the pinnacle of Bellamy's career, and
Speaker 1: that's because it was an enormous ship. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be the pinnacle of anyone's career. Was a three
Speaker 1: hundred ton ship, hundred foot long galley, and it was
Speaker 1: practically brand new too. It had been built in beneath
Speaker 1: Africa only two years before Bellamy ran into it and
Speaker 1: the Bahamas not literally stumbled upon it um and it
Speaker 1: had been launched originally as a slave ship that was
Speaker 1: intended to work the triangle trade, you know, connecting Africa,
Speaker 1: West Indies England. And so it had a lot of
Speaker 1: valuable stuff on board, had spices and gems and ivory,
Speaker 1: and a lot a whole lot of gold and silver,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty to thirty thousand pounds sterling. So there we go.
Speaker 1: That's a pirate ship. Definitely happened yeah, definitely worth going after.
Speaker 1: And Bellamy did. His ships chased the Widow for three
Speaker 1: days before they finally captured it. And when he finally
Speaker 1: got it, he moved all his stuff over there. He
Speaker 1: moved like his cannon, all his things, his crew, and
Speaker 1: made it his flagship. He gave the Widow's former captain,
Speaker 1: Lawrence Prince, the loser in the situation, he gave him
Speaker 1: the Sultana, so it's consolation there. And after this win,
Speaker 1: the Widow and the Mary Anne started sailing north again
Speaker 1: towards New England. Yeah, and so most people think he
Speaker 1: was probably returning to Maria, or at least if you're
Speaker 1: going to be a romantic about it, But we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure because a huge storm hit the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: coast on April sev seventeen, just as the Widow was
Speaker 1: sailing into Cape Cod. Yeah, and it was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Wind gusts top seventy miles an hour, and the seas
Speaker 1: rose to something like thirty feet. The ship was in
Speaker 1: sight of the beach, but it was trapped in the
Speaker 1: surf zone, so it got slammed into a sandbar and
Speaker 1: it began to break apart. The ship was entirely split
Speaker 1: in half at one point finally due to the wind
Speaker 1: and really large waves, and so of a crew of
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty six, only two men survived in
Speaker 1: the end, and Bellamy was not one of them. Well,
Speaker 1: and the two guys who survived didn't have a gray
Speaker 1: deal either when they came out of it. One of them,
Speaker 1: Thomas Davis, who is a Welshman, was tried as a
Speaker 1: pirate in Boston, although it is through him that we
Speaker 1: have this story. The other John Julian, managed to escape,
Speaker 1: but it is there Davis this testimony that we learned
Speaker 1: how much booty was aboard the Widow. The bulk of
Speaker 1: it's never recovered too, so for a long time it
Speaker 1: was kind of a treasure site for a lot of folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And luckily a cartographer at the time noted the exact
Speaker 1: location of the shipwreck, so in two a Cape cod
Speaker 1: diver named Barry Clifford was able to use that crtographer's map,
Speaker 1: his journal, and his letters to search for the Widow,
Speaker 1: and Clifford managed to find the shipwreck site in ninety four,
Speaker 1: and since then he's led several expeditions and recovered a
Speaker 1: lot of the ship's crib a lot of it up,
Speaker 1: haven't they, Yeah, including cannons, coins, and probably most significantly,
Speaker 1: at least in the beginning, a ship's bell inscribed with
Speaker 1: the words the wind a Galley seventeen sixteen. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: our next shipwreck also features a pretty major relic that's
Speaker 1: also a bell. It's the Edmund Fitzgerald. And I have
Speaker 1: to say this was probably the most requested ship of
Speaker 1: those seventies something comments we mentioned on Facebook without a doubt.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's just because of the
Speaker 1: Gordon Lightfoot song or because it's fairly recent, but this
Speaker 1: shipwreck is definitely on a lot of our listeners minds,
Speaker 1: and it's really a tragedy. And I mean maybe because
Speaker 1: it's a more recent shipwreck, so we have the radio
Speaker 1: chatter and you know, you have a closer connection to
Speaker 1: it all. But it's pretty sad. So before we talk
Speaker 1: about the wreck, though, we're going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about Lake Superior, which is where the ship went down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world
Speaker 1: in surface area. It's hundred feet deep and three fifty
Speaker 1: miles wide. It averages forty degree is fahrenheit year round
Speaker 1: and it's bigger than all the other Great Lakes combined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the most dangerous part of Lake Superior is something
Speaker 1: called the shipwreck Coast. Not too surprising there, and the
Speaker 1: only way to really escape the storms that brew up
Speaker 1: on the lake is to enter Whitefish Bay. And so
Speaker 1: consequently Whitefish Point, which is at the approach of the bay,
Speaker 1: is littered with shipwrecks. Over two hundred years, three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty ships have sunk there, and the last of
Speaker 1: these was the seven D twenty nine ft or freighter
Speaker 1: Edmund Fitzgerald, which for thirteen years was the biggest ship
Speaker 1: on the Great Lakes. Yeah. It's normal work was toting
Speaker 1: or from Silver Bay in Minnesota to steel mills on
Speaker 1: the Lower Lakes near Detroit. So on November nine, the
Speaker 1: ship left Superior, Wisconsin with twenty six thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixteen long tons of tacon nite pellets, which is
Speaker 1: basically processed iron ore. Yeah, but the weather got bad
Speaker 1: really quickly, and so the often ernest McSorley stayed close
Speaker 1: to another freighter called the Arthur m Anderston, which was
Speaker 1: captain by Bernie Cooper, and it was just the two ships.
Speaker 1: We're gonna look out for each other, stay nearby for safety.
Speaker 1: And so they headed towards the shelter of Whitefish Bay because,
Speaker 1: as I said, the weather was getting worse and worse.
Speaker 1: And as they passed by Cariboo Island, Cooper remembered seeing
Speaker 1: the Edmund Fitzgerald get way way too close to the shoals,
Speaker 1: risking scraping the bottom of the ship. But after that
Speaker 1: he can't see the Edmund Fitzgerald anymore. The visibility conditions
Speaker 1: are just completely gone. There's snow, there's spray. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can imagine what a great lake storm is probably like. Right.
Speaker 1: So that afternoon, McSorley radios to Cooper that his ship
Speaker 1: was damaged and slowed down, asking to Anderson to stay
Speaker 1: with him for safety. Yeah, but there aren't too many
Speaker 1: scary reports after that. It's it's not a report, like
Speaker 1: the ship is thinking it's just some damage. The weather
Speaker 1: keeps on getting worse though. Yeah, at about six five,
Speaker 1: a monster wave comes down on the Anderson and the
Speaker 1: ship kind of pops up and there's another hit, and
Speaker 1: I think Captain Bernie Cooper describes it as sort of
Speaker 1: like shaking off water like a wet dog. Yeah, his ship.
Speaker 1: But then he also says, quote, I watched those two
Speaker 1: waves head down the lake towards the Fitzgerald, and I
Speaker 1: think those were the two that sent him under, because
Speaker 1: the last radio contact that he has with mc sorley
Speaker 1: is at seven ten and mc sorley's last words, where
Speaker 1: we are holding our own still. It seems like they
Speaker 1: were doing okay. The radar signal is lost at seven fifteen,
Speaker 1: and at that point they start to get worried. And
Speaker 1: by the time the Anderson could venture back, you know,
Speaker 1: um Bernie Cooper was in contact with the coast guard.
Speaker 1: By the time he could venture back, they could only
Speaker 1: find two lifeboats. And it's unknown how exactly the ship
Speaker 1: went down, whether it broke or capsized or nose dive,
Speaker 1: but regardless all twenty nine on board died and nobodies
Speaker 1: were ever recovered. In the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society
Speaker 1: started dives and they did recover the bell, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: leaving a memorial replica in its place, and as Sarah
Speaker 1: mentioned also as we started the section, the Gordon Lightfoot's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: made the wreck famous. It's pretty well known, So for
Speaker 1: our next ship, we're gonna go back a little bit.
Speaker 1: This was another popular suggestion, probably because it has some
Speaker 1: connections to Henry the Eighth. The Mary Rose. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this one was actually discovered a couple of different times
Speaker 1: over the years. For example, in eighteen thirty six, of
Speaker 1: fisherman fishing in the silted Sea off of Portsmouth caught
Speaker 1: his gear on something, and lucky for him, an early
Speaker 1: diver named John Deane was also working nearby, diving at
Speaker 1: the site of the wrecked Royal George. So the fisherman
Speaker 1: offers Dean half of whatever his gear was snagged on
Speaker 1: if he could help him free it. So Dean finds
Speaker 1: a piece of timber sticking out from the sea floor.
Speaker 1: Then he finds a bronze gun and it's the Mary Rose,
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth's one time flagship. Yeah. So Dean excavates
Speaker 1: the site for a few years and pulls up bronze
Speaker 1: and iron cannons and small artifacts, and then the whole
Speaker 1: thing is largely forgotten. You wouldn't think that Henry the
Speaker 1: eighth flagship would would go that way. It seems like
Speaker 1: an odd thing to just have slip your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what basically happens though, until the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when a man named Alexander McKee takes an interest in
Speaker 1: the wreck and starts recruiting people with access to side
Speaker 1: skins sonar of course, to check out the site, and
Speaker 1: over the next few years, nineteen thousand artifacts are recovered
Speaker 1: and by night two the ship was actually raised, which
Speaker 1: was a huge international news story. It's installed in a
Speaker 1: museum today. But the really interesting thing about the mary
Speaker 1: Rose is because it did sink so quickly, unfortunately the
Speaker 1: crew four hundred to five hundred people on board were killed.
Speaker 1: It's a really slice of life for for tutor time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can see the cuts of meat that sailors ate,
Speaker 1: the plates that they ate off of, and how they
Speaker 1: distinguished their belongings with personal markings, even if they were illiterate.
Speaker 1: So really fascinating. Yeah, So it's interesting in that way,
Speaker 1: but it's also just a really important ship. It's not
Speaker 1: just because it's preserved and we have all of these
Speaker 1: artifacts from it. It is of a lot of importance
Speaker 1: historically too. So in fifteen o nine, a teenage Henry
Speaker 1: the Eighth inherits the throne from his father and his
Speaker 1: father's left him of a modest navy for the time.
Speaker 1: There are five ships. I know that sounds ridiculously small,
Speaker 1: but they would have been supplemented with rented vessels. And
Speaker 1: of course you have all your aristocracy aristocratic buddies who
Speaker 1: can loan you your ships when you need it too.
Speaker 1: But still Henry the eighth is thinking that he's got
Speaker 1: a beef up his navy, because the French navy is
Speaker 1: quite formidable. Yeah, so Henry commissions a couple of modern
Speaker 1: carvel whole ships built for really heavy waterline guns. One
Speaker 1: is the Peter Promegranate and the other is the mary Rose,
Speaker 1: named for his favorite sister. Yeah. So, during the First
Speaker 1: French War the mary Rose is Henry's flagship, which means
Speaker 1: that it would have carried the Lord High Admiral. And
Speaker 1: during the Second French War the mary Rose is the
Speaker 1: vice flagship. Though very important, it's really at the top
Speaker 1: of its game. And in seven and in fifteen thirty
Speaker 1: six again it goes through major refits, the second of
Speaker 1: which probably added considerably to its weight, probably added some
Speaker 1: some guns and made it a lot heavier, but by
Speaker 1: it was definitely ready to fight. In the third French War,
Speaker 1: and that was good because the French fleet already vastly
Speaker 1: outnumbered the English. I think it was something like two
Speaker 1: hundred ships to eighty, and they were heading across the
Speaker 1: chain and all to engage the Brits somewhere between the
Speaker 1: Isle of Wight and mainland England. So early during the
Speaker 1: battle on July nineteenth, something goes wrong for the Mary Rose.
Speaker 1: It keels over and water starts to pour in through
Speaker 1: her gun ports, and before anyone can do a thing,
Speaker 1: the ship just thinks, just like that, and only a
Speaker 1: few survivors make it out, mostly the people who were
Speaker 1: up in the sails and and well above the top
Speaker 1: of the ship. So what happened. For a long time
Speaker 1: historians have chalked up the sinking to some combination of
Speaker 1: wind and tied and handling air, but the French have
Speaker 1: long assumed that they were responsible for thinking the ship,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand nine some new research came out
Speaker 1: that suggesting might have been right. Yeah. University of Ports
Speaker 1: Smith geographer Dominic Fontana used geographical information systems technology data
Speaker 1: from the recovery, tidal current patterns and skeletal remains to
Speaker 1: hypothesize that a French cannonball hit the ship, filling the
Speaker 1: hole with water, and that that is what happened. So
Speaker 1: the ship after that point likely maneuvered so that it's
Speaker 1: broadside face to the friend. They could fight back, shifting
Speaker 1: the water and ultimately causing the ship to capsize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the really interesting thing about this is Fontana thinks
Speaker 1: that people watching on shore would not have known that
Speaker 1: a cannon hit the ship, and the whole thing could
Speaker 1: have been covered up with a tutor government conspiracy, because
Speaker 1: it would be better to to blame it on your
Speaker 1: own guys or some kind of handling air weather or
Speaker 1: tides than to admit yeah, Francis E. Sunchor ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that still fascinates me, the fact that you'd rather make
Speaker 1: a mistake, And conveniently enough, that ties us into our
Speaker 1: final entry for this list, where there's also a little
Speaker 1: bit of a scandal, a government scandal involving the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this case, what happened after the shipwreck was so
Speaker 1: politically charged and just kind of tragic and rifying it
Speaker 1: was almost more famous than the shipwreck itself. So the
Speaker 1: story starts during the Bourbon restoration. You may remember that
Speaker 1: from our recently fan series, Yeah, definitely. Um Napoleon was
Speaker 1: in exile, Louis the eighteenth was the new king of
Speaker 1: France and the French Forget Medusa was on its way
Speaker 1: to Africa, transporting soldiers and also official passengers to re
Speaker 1: establish the French colony at Senegal. Even the newly appointed governor,
Speaker 1: Colonel Julian Schmaltz, was on board. So in July second,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen, the ship ran aground off the west coast
Speaker 1: of Africa, and it's generally accepted that incompetent seamanship was
Speaker 1: what got the Medusa into trouble in the first place.
Speaker 1: The ship's captain hadn't served on a friendship for twenty
Speaker 1: years prior to this this journey. He was an aristocrat,
Speaker 1: he was recently returned from exile, and it said that
Speaker 1: he got the gig because he was pro Bourbon, and
Speaker 1: the king's ministers were obviously looking to put those kind
Speaker 1: of guys in power or and get rid of anyone
Speaker 1: who'd served under Napoleon. Maybe a bad move in the
Speaker 1: case of military stuff, I'm not sure. But after the
Speaker 1: ship ran aground, they tried to refloat the Medusa over
Speaker 1: the next couple of days, but they didn't have any luck,
Speaker 1: so they moved on to Plan B because they really
Speaker 1: wanted to keep going to Senegal. It was still a
Speaker 1: couple hundred miles to the south of them, so they
Speaker 1: were looking for anything they could do here. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this decidedly shady Plan B they came up with involved
Speaker 1: emptying out about two d and fifty passengers into six
Speaker 1: lifeboats and putting the rest on this raft that they
Speaker 1: made out of spars and timber lashed together. It was
Speaker 1: about a hundred and forty nine men and one woman
Speaker 1: who ended up on the raft, mostly ordinary soldiers and
Speaker 1: a few low ranking officers and civilians. And this raft,
Speaker 1: it was it was fairly large. It was. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was about twenty long by seven wide, which doesn't sound
Speaker 1: large enough to hold a hundred and fifty people, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty big substantial at least. It had a massed
Speaker 1: in a sail and a small deck raised in the center.
Speaker 1: And the intention here was that the other boats would
Speaker 1: tow the raft to safety this two d miles that
Speaker 1: they were going, But it became apparent pretty soon that
Speaker 1: that was not going to work out. The raff was
Speaker 1: slowing the other boats down. It kind of looked rickety
Speaker 1: like it might fall apart, So the tow ropes were
Speaker 1: deliberately cut and the people on the raft were just
Speaker 1: left there stranded with only a few provisions, no navigational equipment.
Speaker 1: This sad little sale. They were out of luck, and
Speaker 1: the situation from there deteriorated really quickly. By the second
Speaker 1: day or so, there was a mutiny in hand to
Speaker 1: hand fighting that resulted in about sixty deaths. By the
Speaker 1: next morning, we were discussing this. We thought the mutiny
Speaker 1: happened really fast, Like things got bad really really fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm thinking just day. Yeah, maybe just desperation
Speaker 1: being out there in the hot sun. I think from
Speaker 1: things I've read, they just went kind of batty. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it happened very fast. Bodies were dumped overboard, and more
Speaker 1: fighting took others out soon after that, so from there
Speaker 1: things only got worse. Supplies ran out, people had to
Speaker 1: start drinking their own urine. Some people were badly injured
Speaker 1: when their limbs got caught between shifting spars and they
Speaker 1: threw themselves overboard. Didn't want to be eaten because by
Speaker 1: the fourth day, all the survivors were practicing cannibalism, and
Speaker 1: meat was cut from corpses and dried on the mast
Speaker 1: before it was eaten, and by the eighth day, the
Speaker 1: fittest had taken to killing the weakest by throwing them
Speaker 1: overboard to extend the remaining provisions that they had. I
Speaker 1: believe that's how the one woman died. I think she
Speaker 1: was thrown overboard in Gosh. So after about thirteen days total,
Speaker 1: the survivors were found and rescued by another ship in
Speaker 1: the Medusa Convoy, but by that point there were only
Speaker 1: fifteen men left. Five of them died pretty soon after,
Speaker 1: and two of the remaining ten, on Race Avigny and
Speaker 1: Alexandra Courriard, wrote an account of what happened and was
Speaker 1: published in eighteen seventeen. That was very bad press for
Speaker 1: the Bourbon Restoration, definitely. It became this huge scandal and
Speaker 1: increased tensions between the liberal and the Royalist factions and
Speaker 1: um I believe that the Royalist factions had to do
Speaker 1: some basically cover up damage control, I think is more
Speaker 1: accurate than cover up. They couldn't cover up the situation
Speaker 1: that had happened, but I think they did try to,
Speaker 1: you know, pin the blame on certain parties and try
Speaker 1: to manage it from that that standpoint. But most famously
Speaker 1: this inspired ted Or Jericho's masterpiece, The Raft of the
Speaker 1: Medusa in eighteen nineteen, and we were talking a little
Speaker 1: bit about that before. I mean, it's such a recognizable painting.
Speaker 1: I'm sure probably all of you have seen it and
Speaker 1: maybe just not known that it was based on a
Speaker 1: real I never knew the story behind it until today.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting piece of art history knowledge and it
Speaker 1: wraps up this podcast nicely too, I'd say, it really does.
Speaker 1: I mean a full circle, yeah, come full circle was
Speaker 1: something that you can look at now and compare to
Speaker 1: the story, and um, that's true of a couple of cases,
Speaker 1: like the Widow. There's a traveling exhibition going on of
Speaker 1: some of the finds from that shipwrecks, and Mary Rose
Speaker 1: I mentioned there is a whole museum devoted to that,
Speaker 1: and actually the Edmund Fitzgerald too. There's a Great Lakes
Speaker 1: Maritime Museum with exhibits on the Edmund Fitzgerald. So probably
Speaker 1: wherever you are in the world, you can go visit
Speaker 1: some of the shipwreck museums and check out artifacts and
Speaker 1: we'll get pictures and maps and send us postcards. Yes,
Speaker 1: and us postcards because we like them and that brings
Speaker 1: us a listener mail. Yeah, we have one postcard here
Speaker 1: actually from Michael in Malaysia and he says, Dear Sarah Deblena,
Speaker 1: I'm a Fulbright scholar in Malaysia and I really enjoy
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast. One fascinating bit of history that
Speaker 1: I came across during my time here is the story
Speaker 1: of the so called White Rajas of Sarah Walk, a
Speaker 1: family of Englishmen, the Brooks, who founded a dynasty that
Speaker 1: ruled Malaysian Borneo for more than a hundred years, often
Speaker 1: called the Kings of the head Hunters. It's an incredible
Speaker 1: tale that would make for a terrific podcast. Thanks for
Speaker 1: making history so much fun. All right, thank you Michael
Speaker 1: for the suggestion. I think this has actually been suggested
Speaker 1: before this topic, so maybe it's one that we'll have
Speaker 1: to look into well. And I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to put that postcard up, like right in front
Speaker 1: of my computer if i'm things, since it's very picture izue,
Speaker 1: it's so trying. The beach scene there's like a palm
Speaker 1: tree and the sunset. Sure to calm you down in
Speaker 1: my deadline. Pretty nice when I'm researching about shipwrecks um our.
Speaker 1: Next email is from Angela in Mozambique, and she wrote,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to write to tell you how much
Speaker 1: I love and appreciate your podcast. I'm currently serving as
Speaker 1: a Community Health Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, and every
Speaker 1: time I'm able to get internet access, downloading your podcast
Speaker 1: is the first thing that I do. In fact, I'm
Speaker 1: such a fan that I've been spreading the stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class love to other volunteers all over
Speaker 1: the country, and you've become quite popular among our numbers
Speaker 1: on behalf of all of us. Thanks for filling our
Speaker 1: red houses with entertainment and great info. I just thought
Speaker 1: this was so so sweet, and I'm really glad that
Speaker 1: all these Peace Corps volunteers in Mosabeque are listening to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Yeah that's pretty rad. Yeah. She also suggests
Speaker 1: great Zimbabwe Queen of Sheba rumors all kinds of eque stuff.
Speaker 1: So thank you, Angela, and uh, thank you Michael. So
Speaker 1: keep sending us your ideas. You can email us at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can look us up on Twitter at myston history or
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and if you want to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how to survive a shipwreck? Should you?
Speaker 1: We hope you don't. Let's just put us out there.
Speaker 1: We really hope you don't get in a situation. But
Speaker 1: we do have an article on our website called how
Speaker 1: to Survive a ship wreck. Good to be prepared. It's
Speaker 1: good to be prepared for any situation, so you can
Speaker 1: look that up read a little bit about it on
Speaker 1: our homepage at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has a ride.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes.