Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. We hope everybody is happy and in good
Speaker 1: health as you hear this. Uh we have. We have
Speaker 1: a pretty cool episode for you today. But first things first,
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Ben, It's still me. Noah, what day is it?
Speaker 1: I've I've started my own calendar, which is good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna it's probably for a different episode, but um,
Speaker 1: I think in pre pandemic times this was what was
Speaker 1: called a Monday in the days of your Is it
Speaker 1: like the ben Gorian calendar? Is that what we're gonna
Speaker 1: call it? I just spitballing here. Well, without revealing too much.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to name it after myself. That felt
Speaker 1: a little self aggrandizing. Uh So I named it after
Speaker 1: our super producer, Casey Pegram the Pegrarian calendar. That's the one, Ben,
Speaker 1: I'm honored. I love it and uh for for listeners
Speaker 1: at home, for you audiophiles, Um, my voice sounds a
Speaker 1: lot smoother this episode because I have an actual mic. Now, well, Casey,
Speaker 1: no technology on the earth could make your voice sound
Speaker 1: any smoother or my friend, but the audio quality is
Speaker 1: more pristine today, So kudos for that. And it's so fascinating, Like,
Speaker 1: that's such a great way to get in today's episode
Speaker 1: because we are talking about technology, and we know, we
Speaker 1: know that the pace of human evolution has been defined
Speaker 1: many different ways, but one thing that human he is
Speaker 1: always excelled at is the creation of technology. Where the
Speaker 1: species that's eternally at the drawing board. Uh. We we
Speaker 1: get a lot of stuff wrong, but we make a
Speaker 1: lot of brave decisions, pioneering decisions. And you see, one
Speaker 1: of the things that always fascinates me about technology I
Speaker 1: don't know about you guys, is how much it empowers
Speaker 1: us to go to places where humans physically wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to go on their own, you know, like the
Speaker 1: wild reaches of the Arctic or the depths of the ocean. Uh.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about submarines. Today, we're diving into a mystery. Today,
Speaker 1: we're diving into a very strange story from the Civil War.
Speaker 1: But we're not doing it alone, are we know? We
Speaker 1: sure aren't. Today we are joined by Dr Rachel Lance,
Speaker 1: the author of In the Waves, the Story of the S. S.
Speaker 1: Hunley Um, a Civil war who knew submarine. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being with us today. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: be your underwater tour guide. So no, I'm We're thrilled
Speaker 1: to have you. And I'm not kidding. Maybe maybe this
Speaker 1: is me showing my my ignorance, but I had no
Speaker 1: idea that submarines were a thing during the Civil War,
Speaker 1: and in doing a little research and reading your materials,
Speaker 1: I realized it wasn't fully a thing. It was sort
Speaker 1: of an experimental thing, very rudimentary version of what we
Speaker 1: would now consider a submarine. Yeah, you're not the first
Speaker 1: one to say that, so you are not alone. Um,
Speaker 1: don't feel bad, but you are also correct in that
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the garage band version of submarines. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Hunley itself, which, by the way, I don't want
Speaker 1: to start out well actually you or anything, But it
Speaker 1: was not an ss uscl UM. It was just the
Speaker 1: plane H L Hunley. It was not officially officially designated UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the HL Hunley was built out of repurposed materials.
Speaker 1: So this was a recycled submarine and they hammered it
Speaker 1: out of the recycle old boiler of esteemship. Fascinating. So
Speaker 1: now for for a quick level set for a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of our fellow listeners today. Uh, Let's
Speaker 1: say most people who think of a submarine, they will
Speaker 1: tend to think of these gargange in underwater predators, right,
Speaker 1: often nuclear powered or diesel powered or something like that.
Speaker 1: Could you could you tell us a little bit, Rachel
Speaker 1: about how the Hunley came about? Uh? And what makes
Speaker 1: it so markedly different? Dare I say a little bit
Speaker 1: more low tech than some of the nuclear subs we
Speaker 1: see in things like hunt for Red October? It was
Speaker 1: I think lower tech is a very kind way to
Speaker 1: put it, the Hunty. The Huntley was manpowered, so it
Speaker 1: was about forty ft long, and inside there were eight
Speaker 1: people and there was the pilot who was an officer,
Speaker 1: so he didn't really have to do you that much.
Speaker 1: But then the other seven members of the crew were
Speaker 1: all stationed at a hand crank, so this thing looked
Speaker 1: kind of like the crank shaft of a car. Each
Speaker 1: of these handles were a little offset and together they
Speaker 1: would just keep turning it continuously and that was connected
Speaker 1: via some gears to the outside propeller, and that was
Speaker 1: how this submarine moved. It was human powered submarine. So
Speaker 1: it was essentially like a flint stone car submarine. Like
Speaker 1: it's these guys are actually turning cranks to make the
Speaker 1: thing go. Yeah, I think that that's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: good description. That's I've never heard that one before, but
Speaker 1: I might use it from now on. And just for
Speaker 1: the record, just in my own defense, I kind of
Speaker 1: transposed the h L, which is a person's name, um,
Speaker 1: the person that was named after, with the SS in
Speaker 1: my mind, So please forgive my my mistake there. But UM,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the man the Huntley
Speaker 1: was named after, and and um maybe some of the
Speaker 1: history of some of the tests and trials that led
Speaker 1: to the story that we're exploring today, one of which
Speaker 1: involved the man himself. Well, Horace Hunley was actually a lawyer,
Speaker 1: which is not really the type of profession that you
Speaker 1: would think naturally leads to building homemade submarines. But he
Speaker 1: was down in Louisiana and he had his law degree,
Speaker 1: and at one point he was working as a customs agent.
Speaker 1: But this guy basically always had your next big idea
Speaker 1: to get rich, and he was lucky to have an
Speaker 1: extremely wealthy brother in law that funded a lot of
Speaker 1: these ideas. So when when the war broke out, when
Speaker 1: the South declared that they were going to succeed, they
Speaker 1: didn't really have much of a navy to speak of.
Speaker 1: And historians will disagree on the number of ships that
Speaker 1: they had, but it's between zero and ten. So with
Speaker 1: zero is your lower limit. That shows you that you
Speaker 1: kind of need more ships. So Horace Hunley saw this
Speaker 1: as another money making opportunity and he wanted to become
Speaker 1: what's called a private here, so he started building submarine
Speaker 1: with two other men, Baxtor Watson and James McClintock. And
Speaker 1: those two were real engineers. Like these guys worked out
Speaker 1: of a machine shop and they worked frequently at a foundry,
Speaker 1: and they knew how to put together an actual product.
Speaker 1: And together the three of them raised all these funds
Speaker 1: and started building prototypes. The first one they need was
Speaker 1: the CSS Pioneer, and that one actually was like officially
Speaker 1: made a Confederate ship and everything, so now you can
Speaker 1: call it whatever you please. But that one, as the
Speaker 1: Union kind of closed in and New Orleans, they ended
Speaker 1: up having to sink it intentionally. They didn't want it
Speaker 1: to fall into Union hands, and so they sunk it
Speaker 1: in Lake Pontra train Um, which is right next to
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Louisiana. After that, everyone kind of packed up
Speaker 1: and fled. They went to Mobile, Alabama, which was still
Speaker 1: sitting under Confederate control, and they started building again. So
Speaker 1: they built a second submarine, the American Diver, and they
Speaker 1: kind of learned from their mistakes there, but that one
Speaker 1: sank in an unfortunate accident, and according to the records,
Speaker 1: everyone got out safely. It's a little bit unclear, there's
Speaker 1: not a huge amount of detail, but either way, that
Speaker 1: submarine was now in the bottom of Mobile Bay under
Speaker 1: some mud. It was no longer going to help with
Speaker 1: the war effort. After that, they started building on what
Speaker 1: is thought to be their third submarine. That one would
Speaker 1: eventually become the hil Henley. At the time, they called
Speaker 1: it just simply fish boat now, which I love that name.
Speaker 1: I think that's are also. I think maybe the porpoise
Speaker 1: was a thing as well, or the fish torpedo boat.
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, a quick glance of Wikipedia has
Speaker 1: those as a list on the list as well. But
Speaker 1: I think I prefer a good old fashioned fish boat,
Speaker 1: you know, I agree. I think keep it simple, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a couple other submarines at the time that
Speaker 1: people were building at home and people were coming up
Speaker 1: with their own prototypes. One of my personal favorite names
Speaker 1: is the intelligent Whale. I think that was a great one.
Speaker 1: That's really insulting to Wales though, honestly, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: come on, my sister in law began referring to herself
Speaker 1: that way when she was pregnant with twins. Um not me,
Speaker 1: but I was laughing when she used it on herself.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, after that, they started building this fishboat
Speaker 1: submarine and there's still in Alabama at this point. But
Speaker 1: the Union just keeps closing in. It keeps knocking down
Speaker 1: the city after city, and one of their major plans
Speaker 1: is to take advantage of the fact that the Confederacy
Speaker 1: really doesn't have much of a navy. So what they're
Speaker 1: doing is they're black hating all of these major cities
Speaker 1: where they can get supplies in and out. The Confederacy
Speaker 1: has allies in Europe. That's who's sending them black powder
Speaker 1: while they're getting therese kind of startup of that production ready.
Speaker 1: It's who's sending them food to replace the food of
Speaker 1: the farmers who are now fighting um and so block
Speaker 1: hating these cities was a really effective strategy to just
Speaker 1: starve them out, And eventually Charleston, South Carolina ended up
Speaker 1: kind of being the last major Southern cities still to fall.
Speaker 1: And there are these Union ships just line outside the harbor,
Speaker 1: and dyve got this submarine in Alabama. They've got this
Speaker 1: problem in Charleston. So they end up putting the submarine
Speaker 1: on a train and shipping it over to South Carolina
Speaker 1: and they start using it over there, and the eventual
Speaker 1: goal is to just break the blockade. And at the time,
Speaker 1: just related to this, I believe the Confederate government was
Speaker 1: offering what fifty thousand dollars in eighteen sixties money to
Speaker 1: anyone who could sink a Union worship. So this is
Speaker 1: maybe a risky investment and probably seen as a patriotic one, uh,
Speaker 1: but it could have enormous returns. It also was, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, it was pretty lethal even in the
Speaker 1: testing phase. Right, didn't more than half of the initial
Speaker 1: crew die in testing for the Hunley. Yes, So you've
Speaker 1: hit on two kind of key points about the history
Speaker 1: of the submarine. Is First, that's how privateers worked. Is
Speaker 1: these were private citizens and they were using these vessels
Speaker 1: to try to collect basically a bounty, and it was
Speaker 1: a bit of a sliding scale, but basically the Confederacy
Speaker 1: was offering them the price value of the Union ship
Speaker 1: itself plus something like I'd have to fact check the
Speaker 1: exact number, but it was a something like twenty dollars
Speaker 1: per sailor on board. So if you had one of
Speaker 1: their larger vessels where they had like two hundred two
Speaker 1: fifty sailors on board, that could really contribute to the
Speaker 1: take home prize. And that was what Hunley and his
Speaker 1: compatriots were eventually going to do. Really quick, question, um,
Speaker 1: he he himself actually went along for one of these
Speaker 1: test rides. Why why would he do that? Is it
Speaker 1: to like, you know, earn the kind of trust of
Speaker 1: his crew, Like if he's just it's like a kind
Speaker 1: of bloodthirsty, you know, privateer, just trying to make his catch.
Speaker 1: Why would he put himself in harm's way? Because he
Speaker 1: did ultimately perish in one of these, uh these you
Speaker 1: know fatal tests that that went awry. Oh spoilers, No,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I was about to get to that. That
Speaker 1: was my next dance there anyway, So inside my mind yes,
Speaker 1: So this boat had a pretty horrific trek record, and
Speaker 1: that was known even at a time, like they're these
Speaker 1: historical documents with these terrible quotes like um, one of
Speaker 1: my favorites was to call it an abortion of invented
Speaker 1: genius um. And so people were saying really disparaging things
Speaker 1: at the time because she kept killing her crew. So
Speaker 1: it sank once in what the modern day military would
Speaker 1: call dog and pony show. They were basically just trying
Speaker 1: to show off for a bunch of spectators. Um. Not
Speaker 1: that great at controlling information flow. But several of the
Speaker 1: crew died then. And then Horse Hunley one day, even
Speaker 1: though he hadn't been in the boat himself for months
Speaker 1: and he was not necessarily super well trained in it,
Speaker 1: while the normal pilot of the boat was out of town,
Speaker 1: he decided that he wanted to go for a drive himself,
Speaker 1: and so he wasn't Yeah, he wasn't trying to go
Speaker 1: on a specific mission. He was just kind of joy riding,
Speaker 1: taking it around the maritime block, right. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it might have even been in the harbor if you
Speaker 1: look at the map. He didn't look like he was
Speaker 1: aiming to even get out. Um. He just looked like
Speaker 1: he was kind of joy riding in the submarine. But
Speaker 1: he ended up driving this thing face first into the
Speaker 1: bottom of Charleston Harbor where it got stuck and they
Speaker 1: couldn't get it out, and he and the other seven
Speaker 1: members of this crew is fixated inside. So Horace Henley
Speaker 1: was found in the forward conning tower, which was the
Speaker 1: main exit, with his right hand pushing against that door
Speaker 1: as he's trying to bash his way out of the submarine.
Speaker 1: And this is all before the mystery that we set
Speaker 1: up at the top of the show. We should say
Speaker 1: this is yeah, this is all the the checkered past
Speaker 1: of the Huntley. So as as you may infer listeners,
Speaker 1: when this when this sub sank, uh, this is not
Speaker 1: where the story ends, because later now the substincts in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, right later, in eighteen sixty four, it
Speaker 1: is resurrected. Right, it's pulled from the muck. They pulled
Speaker 1: it out pretty quickly, actually, so each time they still
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to use it, so they pulled
Speaker 1: it out within at most a couple of weeks. Oh great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the descriptions of that are still pretty horrifying. If you
Speaker 1: really want some nightmares because the people were trapped inside,
Speaker 1: and so they started to decompose, but they had um
Speaker 1: salvage divers pulled the submarine up and they forced slaves
Speaker 1: to clean it out because this was the Confederate solf.
Speaker 1: But then they would find a new crew each time,
Speaker 1: and after Henley died, that's when they renamed it in
Speaker 1: his honor. But yes, that is the start of really
Speaker 1: the mystery part. Their final mission was February eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four and a whole fresh new crew um takes it
Speaker 1: out and they are successful. So they managed to sink
Speaker 1: one of the Union ships in the blockade, and after
Speaker 1: that victory they disappear. What that meant was that the
Speaker 1: people in Charleston who knew about these previous sinkings had
Speaker 1: a very easy explanation. At the time. They assumed that
Speaker 1: it sank the way that it had before, that everyone
Speaker 1: inside had drowned and asphixiated exactly like they had before.
Speaker 1: But where it got really interesting was when this boat
Speaker 1: was raised and in two thousand they started conserving it.
Speaker 1: As they're starting to scoop out the silt and the
Speaker 1: crub and the you know, dead crabs and crustaceans that
Speaker 1: have filled this thing over a hundred few years in
Speaker 1: the ocean. They find all of the skeletons of the
Speaker 1: crew inside, and everyone is completely free of any sign
Speaker 1: of skeletal trauma. But they're also seated at their stations,
Speaker 1: which means they weren't like Horse Huntley, trying to bash
Speaker 1: their way out the conning tower. They didn't see what
Speaker 1: killed them. They didn't see it coming, and so that
Speaker 1: became a much more interesting problem because all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have a new cause of death that's definitely
Speaker 1: going to be dissimilar from the previous thinkings. Really quickly,
Speaker 1: I want to get into a little bit about your
Speaker 1: background and your specialization, because obviously, up to this point
Speaker 1: you we've been interviewing you like a historian. We're talking
Speaker 1: about all of these facts and all of the stories
Speaker 1: that led up to this, but you're actually hardcore scientists.
Speaker 1: For lack of a better term, I mean you your
Speaker 1: research is um in hyperbaric medicine and environmental physiology, to
Speaker 1: name one. I believe that is that we got your
Speaker 1: PhD in or is that what you kind of the
Speaker 1: research that led to you getting your PhD? Well, basically
Speaker 1: I'm just an ocean nerd. That's kind of the how
Speaker 1: I described myself at parties. But I really love examining
Speaker 1: what happens to the human body underwater, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: do like high altitude stuff as well. These extreme environments
Speaker 1: are remarkably similar in the stress as they place on
Speaker 1: our bodies. But yeah, anytime people are underwater, we're, like
Speaker 1: you said at the top of the show, we're existing
Speaker 1: in environment where we're not supposed to be, and so
Speaker 1: interesting things start happening physiologically. You see new types of injuries,
Speaker 1: you see new types of functions of your lungs and
Speaker 1: of your basculature. But yeah, that is the majority of
Speaker 1: my background is as a pretty hardcore scientist, but also
Speaker 1: as an engineer. UM I got started working as a
Speaker 1: mechanical engineer for the Navy building underwater breathing systems, and
Speaker 1: from that I kind of sprang into Duke University. I
Speaker 1: was working in a lab that specializes in blast from
Speaker 1: and explosives. So for me, coming from the underwater world
Speaker 1: into this lab that specializes in blast trauma and explosives,
Speaker 1: it was a really natural fit for me to start
Speaker 1: sending underwater explosives and and on that note, just to interject,
Speaker 1: I believe you are not to put too fine a
Speaker 1: point on it. Uh, the lead the leading underwater blast
Speaker 1: trauma specialist on this continent. I I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it too awkward bragging about you in front of you,
Speaker 1: but that's that's what we founded our research. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Then if you make yourself specific enough, eventually you are
Speaker 1: the leading one of it. Man Bull is the leading
Speaker 1: podcaster recording from home while wearing a gray hat. Right
Speaker 1: now about is There's no question about that. I do
Speaker 1: think it is important for us to emphasize that there
Speaker 1: is a ton of science that goes into this. That's
Speaker 1: that's one of the driving tools that this is the
Speaker 1: only tool we can successfully use to solve mysteries like these.
Speaker 1: But one question I have would be personal motivation. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand, right, the sub is, as you said,
Speaker 1: Rachel finally recovered what inspires you? Like, what was your
Speaker 1: journey toward diving into this mystery? Did you maybe diving
Speaker 1: in as a poor choice of words, my apologies, but
Speaker 1: what what like did you immediately hear about it and say,
Speaker 1: you know, like I've got to get on this, like
Speaker 1: a law in order Doom Doom sort of theme starts
Speaker 1: and the investigation begins or did your colleagues contact you?
Speaker 1: What what was your journey towards this mystery. Well, in
Speaker 1: two thousand, I had just turned sixteen, so like most
Speaker 1: sixteen year old girls, I was fully immersed in the
Speaker 1: world of Civil war submarines. That's definitely sarcasm. No, I
Speaker 1: wasn't really aware of it at the time. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit more my opically focused, like a
Speaker 1: lot of teenagers tend to be. And so I really
Speaker 1: didn't find out about this mystery and till I was
Speaker 1: already in graduate school working on my PhD. And it
Speaker 1: was my advisor's idea. One of the things that he
Speaker 1: and I share in common is we both really love history.
Speaker 1: We both are always looking for the next kind of
Speaker 1: historical project. Because when you work in blast and ballistic trauma,
Speaker 1: a lot of your injuries come from more and so
Speaker 1: that means that you are also researching history quite often,
Speaker 1: because it's also an injury that you don't want to
Speaker 1: inflict on people on purpose. Um So I scavenge old
Speaker 1: case files a lot, and a lot of that involves
Speaker 1: like tracking soldiers and tracking what happens in battles and
Speaker 1: things like that. So this particular project came up as
Speaker 1: I was working on a World War two project looking
Speaker 1: at soldiers who were in the water when torpedoes went off,
Speaker 1: and he sort of just suggested it one day and
Speaker 1: we both thought it would be a really fun side project.
Speaker 1: But it got quickly really out of hand. So um,
Speaker 1: as it's pretty obvious from the books or from the
Speaker 1: book beings spiraled wildly out of control with these experiments.
Speaker 1: But I'm really proud of the way it turned out
Speaker 1: me and the Huntley is pretty famous around the part
Speaker 1: of the country where you live because it was discovered
Speaker 1: by Clive Cussler, who is a pretty well known author,
Speaker 1: and he wrote about it pretty extensively. But is he
Speaker 1: was more of a fiction author, wasn't he like like
Speaker 1: almost like a like a clancy or something like that. Right, Yes,
Speaker 1: he definitely is a history fan himself, but his books
Speaker 1: particularly are fiction. A lot of times they're kind of
Speaker 1: inspired by these weird stories in true history though, so
Speaker 1: um He's also used a lot of the proceeds from
Speaker 1: his books to kind of go and explore the oceans. Uh.
Speaker 1: So best was one of his projects for that. And
Speaker 1: I should note too that there have been other people
Speaker 1: throughout the past hundred fifty years who have claimed that
Speaker 1: they found the Huntley, and some of them are very credible.
Speaker 1: But once you have a name like Clive Cussler saying
Speaker 1: it all of a sudden, the news agencies pay a
Speaker 1: lot more attention. So that was kind of like the
Speaker 1: really big news story was when Cleff Custler found it
Speaker 1: and he connected it to his books and things like that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's get back to our investigation here. So
Speaker 1: you're you're looking into this and you're noticing it's a
Speaker 1: little grim, but but it is science. You're noting that
Speaker 1: the position of the bodies shows that there weren't people
Speaker 1: rushing to the hatches, and this is this is a
Speaker 1: huge clue of sorts that that that plays a role
Speaker 1: in your hypothesis, your drive to solve the mystery of
Speaker 1: what actually happened to the Huntley, because I believe at first,
Speaker 1: you know, after what was it the first submarine to
Speaker 1: successfully sink an enemy vessel? Uh, after it sank the Houstatonic,
Speaker 1: it disappeared, as you said, people on people of the time,
Speaker 1: contemporary experts said, well, that thing's cursed. Basically, I think
Speaker 1: it's sank or whatever. What was your hypothesis, How did
Speaker 1: you start putting these pieces together, what did you think
Speaker 1: ultimately happened to the Huntley? And then how did you
Speaker 1: test it? Well, I don't want to give away too much. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing that really sold me on this as a
Speaker 1: project was looking at the images of where the skeletal
Speaker 1: remains were found. So you can find this with a
Speaker 1: quick Google. If you look at the color coded images
Speaker 1: of where each crewman was positioned and seeing that they
Speaker 1: were each at their crank station and seeing that they
Speaker 1: had no skeleton trauma. That's a really big alarm for
Speaker 1: a blast trauma specialist because that's actually kind of the
Speaker 1: hallmark of a blast trauma. Everyone thinks that you're gonna
Speaker 1: get Jesson Stetha thrown across the room. Well, he said,
Speaker 1: how stands up. He's got smoot on his face now,
Speaker 1: but he's still running off to finish his mission, and
Speaker 1: that's really unrealistic. Um. I apologize for her just having
Speaker 1: ruined every movie you'll ever watch, but that's not really
Speaker 1: how it happens. Like to get a blast that throws someone,
Speaker 1: it has to be quite far above the lethal range,
Speaker 1: So if someone's being thrown by the blast, they are dead.
Speaker 1: And that's part of why I wanted to examine the submarine.
Speaker 1: But as a scientist, you can't just declare this is
Speaker 1: my theory, this is all I'm going to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: That's really bad science because you need to pay proper
Speaker 1: attention to all of the other ideas as well, and
Speaker 1: approach them from kind of a databased standpoint and things
Speaker 1: like that. So that was how I started out with
Speaker 1: the project, was actually looking at the other explanations, especially
Speaker 1: looking at this theory that they all asphyxiated inside the
Speaker 1: submarine hall. And I was able to eliminate that one
Speaker 1: because they were a positioned the way they were if
Speaker 1: you get really honest about it, it gets pretty graphic.
Speaker 1: But if you look at every submarine sinking throughout history,
Speaker 1: the people inside knew they were about to die, and
Speaker 1: the way that they were found is consistent between every
Speaker 1: single other submarine accident in history. So you look at
Speaker 1: like that the square list to ask for the hmstidas.
Speaker 1: All of them, people are clustered near the exits, and
Speaker 1: they're impostures and positions that indicate that they're really suffering
Speaker 1: and that's very unfortunate. But the reason for that is
Speaker 1: because they're experiencing carbon dioxide. I've experienced carbon dioxide before.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. I don't want to do it again. It
Speaker 1: hurts you get this like splitting migraine. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was curled up, um, curled up on the deck of
Speaker 1: a dive boat, like please just sleep me here for
Speaker 1: a few minutes, and it's really unpleasant. Um. And so
Speaker 1: to suggest that people experience that and then chose to
Speaker 1: stay where they are anyway is really consistent with human nature,
Speaker 1: especially when you find that carbon dioxide is used by
Speaker 1: psychiatrists to intentionally cause panic attacks. So these aren't even
Speaker 1: people who are thinking logically anymore. This is a biologically
Speaker 1: induced panic attack. Isn't part of the phenomenon of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide poisoning or for lack of a better term, like
Speaker 1: your blood actually becomes increasingly acidic because of you know,
Speaker 1: kind of trying to compensate for this, and that is
Speaker 1: painful as well, Like you can experience that as a
Speaker 1: actual sensation. Yeah, so kind of in a way. I
Speaker 1: don't know that any person, at least me, has enough
Speaker 1: experience to be like, oh, my blood feels acidic today,
Speaker 1: But that's what's happening on a biological level, and your
Speaker 1: body has coping mechanisms to try to deal with that,
Speaker 1: and that's what you end up feeling a symptoms. So,
Speaker 1: for example, that headache is your body expanding the blood
Speaker 1: vessels in your brain. It's trying to offload some of
Speaker 1: this acidity, so it's no longer reaching your brain, and
Speaker 1: that's what we perceive as a headache. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the clues. Again, I don't want to give
Speaker 1: away too much either, and really quickly, I just want
Speaker 1: to say, reading your book, um it it reads like
Speaker 1: an adventure novel. It's really well written. It's very visceral,
Speaker 1: and you really feel like there's a scene where you
Speaker 1: pick up this black powder, um you know, to run
Speaker 1: your tests and you almost get into this crazy traffic
Speaker 1: accident and you really feel the stakes of everything that
Speaker 1: you're doing. And the way it's written is it's lots
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, there's a lot of science, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of history, but it is an absolutely page
Speaker 1: turning kind of adventure read. So I just want to
Speaker 1: put that out there for everyone absolutely read this book.
Speaker 1: We're certainly not going to spoil anything, but um, it's
Speaker 1: it's a really fun read. Um, can we talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the clues when you started actually doing
Speaker 1: your tests that kind of leads you to discount some
Speaker 1: of those things, other than the fact that people weren't
Speaker 1: piled up clawing their way out of the submarine, some
Speaker 1: of the kind of scientific cues that you took after
Speaker 1: you started doing these tests. So one of the scientific
Speaker 1: clues to me that wasn't extremely conclusive, but that was
Speaker 1: sort of a hint and a wink and a point
Speaker 1: in the right direction, was that when these crew members
Speaker 1: were recovered, a lot of them still had intact brains
Speaker 1: inside their skulls. And that's interesting for several reasons. First
Speaker 1: of all, the discovery that the human brain can survive
Speaker 1: for a hundred fIF years in salt water, But from
Speaker 1: a biological perspective, a lot of their brains had these
Speaker 1: kind of diffuse patterns and stains that were just on
Speaker 1: the surface. And really, because again we don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of examples of people staying underwater for that long,
Speaker 1: there are multiple possible things that could explain that. But
Speaker 1: what's also important to know from my perspective is that's
Speaker 1: what blast trauma looks like. So once again, that's how
Speaker 1: a brain injury from blast appears, especially one that's in
Speaker 1: the fatal ranges. You end up having what's called a hematoma,
Speaker 1: which is that big breading of bloods somewhere on the brain,
Speaker 1: and it can appear in any location on the brain,
Speaker 1: but it only appears really on the surface, and the
Speaker 1: brain itself isn't disrupted. The brain looks completely intact. It
Speaker 1: kind of just looks like this paint splotch has appeared.
Speaker 1: So for me when I read about that finding, again,
Speaker 1: you can't really eliminate all the other possibilities just because
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of examples of brains in
Speaker 1: that state. But it's another kind of hint and wink
Speaker 1: and suggestion that we might be dealing with the blast
Speaker 1: trauma here. So picking back up on the idea of
Speaker 1: black powder, which which I believe we mentioned just briefly there,
Speaker 1: one thing that I found fascinating about in the waves
Speaker 1: was that there was a lot of science going into
Speaker 1: black powder that I wasn't I wasn't familiar with. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never built a civil war sub I've
Speaker 1: never even built a regular torpedo or underwater explosive much
Speaker 1: less you know, like loaded a gun with powder. So
Speaker 1: how do you even test that? Like? How what? It's
Speaker 1: just such a strange concept to me because it seems
Speaker 1: like such a uh an archaic means of propellant or blasting.
Speaker 1: What was it like when you were thinking, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do we figure out the role of black powder? And
Speaker 1: what is is black powder just gunpowder? Um? It depends.
Speaker 1: The word gunpowder can mean a couple different things. Black
Speaker 1: powder is the more specific. Sometimes when people say gunpowder
Speaker 1: they mean smokeless powder also, which has different blast characteristics.
Speaker 1: I won't go into that because I like you guys, um,
Speaker 1: but black powder is like a very specific mixture. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot more involved in the finer points
Speaker 1: of black powder that I had anticipated when I started
Speaker 1: the project as well. But one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really important and looking at blast fraumas is looking at
Speaker 1: your explosive making sure that you know that, um, people
Speaker 1: are getting blessed in the correct way for that problem.
Speaker 1: And just a little we kind of dived right into
Speaker 1: black powder. But just to really really be clear, this
Speaker 1: quote unquote torpedo is propelled by this very archaic, very finicky,
Speaker 1: dangerous material that you actually transported in the trunk of
Speaker 1: your Subaru or something or pontiac. I think it was right.
Speaker 1: It was a Pontiac. I'm a Detroit girl. I do
Speaker 1: have American power. Um. Yes, so I was transporting black
Speaker 1: powder and what I was doing was completely legal. I
Speaker 1: feel like that's important for me to throw out there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the thing with black powder is if you
Speaker 1: hit it and the heat generated from impact can cause
Speaker 1: it to go off. And so me being in a
Speaker 1: Pontiac on the highway where two cars in front of
Speaker 1: me just crashed into each other randomly, and there was
Speaker 1: a massive truck really aggressively tailgating me was a kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying moment in the experiment. But thankfully as an
Speaker 1: injury and trauma specialist, I am an O c D
Speaker 1: safety minded driver, and so I had a little bit
Speaker 1: extra following distance knowing what was in my trunk. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy behind me, who was clearly texting, should have
Speaker 1: been a lot more aware because he had no idea
Speaker 1: what he was when he was so close too with
Speaker 1: his grill. Yeah, but um, dealing with black powder is
Speaker 1: a difficult adventure and I hope to never ever do
Speaker 1: it again. It's extremely finicky. So first off, as a
Speaker 1: fellow defensive driver, I very much appreciate the point you're
Speaker 1: making about vehicular safety. So but we should have phsized
Speaker 1: too that you weren't trying to intentionally explode something on
Speaker 1: another vehicle. Uh h. L Huntley was one of the
Speaker 1: things that fascinated me in in the waves was figure
Speaker 1: out how this torpedo technology would work. I was I
Speaker 1: was surprised to find out that it was. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say the word they kept coming to mind when
Speaker 1: I was reading about the setup was precarious. It was
Speaker 1: like dicey. Honestly, it was like why would you why
Speaker 1: would you get in that sub? But how did they
Speaker 1: make a torpedo and attach it? Well, they had these
Speaker 1: two brothers called the Rains Brothers, and there's some of
Speaker 1: my favorite characters in history because together I think they're
Speaker 1: really responsible for all the black powder and entire Confederacy. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one of them started a black powder mill for the
Speaker 1: Confederacy using a pamphlet and no other previous knowledge, and
Speaker 1: the other one invented land mines and built all of
Speaker 1: the mines and torpedoes for the South. So it's important
Speaker 1: to note here also that the word torpedo at this
Speaker 1: time in history means something different. It means more of
Speaker 1: a mine or stationary bomb, so it's not being propelled
Speaker 1: on its own. But I think that the case of
Speaker 1: the Hunley really emphasized why that technology would be useful.
Speaker 1: Because you have the Ugel Hunley in eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: it sets office torpedo nobody comes home alive. Eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: people are already working on torpedo designs that can propel
Speaker 1: themselves through the water. So it's pretty immediately apparent that
Speaker 1: not only is this useful technology, but we don't want
Speaker 1: to be near it when it goes off. Um. So
Speaker 1: that was a really major impact on warfare within ten years,
Speaker 1: which is unusual. So to that point, like you know,
Speaker 1: the difference of the concept of a torpedo, how were
Speaker 1: they able to actually successfully destroy this Union ship? Like
Speaker 1: I mean, is it a slow thing where they deploy
Speaker 1: it and then kind of try to get away and
Speaker 1: there's a fuse on it, or can we just talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the mechanics of how this thing
Speaker 1: would actually you know, be at any level precise. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it wasn't precise. That's a total misnumber. But there
Speaker 1: had be some level of control to it, otherwise it
Speaker 1: would just blow up, you know, inside the submarine and
Speaker 1: kill everybody every time. I think they had a surprising
Speaker 1: amount of control over it and also no control at
Speaker 1: the same time. The way that this thing worked, it
Speaker 1: was attached to a spar on the bow of the submarine,
Speaker 1: so it is outside the submarine, but it's still only
Speaker 1: sixteen ft away because that's the length of their spar.
Speaker 1: And then their torpedo had a pressure trigger, so what
Speaker 1: they had to do was hand cranked their submarine all
Speaker 1: the way up to the enemy ship, which is more
Speaker 1: courageous than it sounds, because they are being shot at
Speaker 1: while this happens, and jabbed the Union ship in the
Speaker 1: side of the hole with the pressure trigger on the torpedo.
Speaker 1: And we know that that successfully occurred because when the
Speaker 1: submarine and the spar were recovered, the little shards of
Speaker 1: that torpedo were still attached, so it was peeled backwards
Speaker 1: over the end of the spar like a daffy duck cigar.
Speaker 1: And then it was just cartoonish and clearly evident that
Speaker 1: it was still a hatched and only sixteen feet away,
Speaker 1: which was really key to setting up an accurate science
Speaker 1: experiment to figure out what happened. And again, I, you know,
Speaker 1: and I really don't want to spoil anything, um, but
Speaker 1: we have to talk a little bit about some of
Speaker 1: these simulations you ran. At the very least, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about Tiny. Yeah, tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about a little bit about Tiny, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna let our listeners find out the rest of
Speaker 1: the story by getting your book. But we have to
Speaker 1: dig into Tiny a little bit because it's just it's
Speaker 1: too delightful not to discuss. People really like that I
Speaker 1: named the boat the Tiny. Sometimes when you're a lab
Speaker 1: at three o'clock in the morning and you have some
Speaker 1: spray paint, you make choices, so that that's how it
Speaker 1: got its moniker. But um, that was actually one of
Speaker 1: the things that I wanted to make sure I included
Speaker 1: in this book is because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: times when you read about the results of science, you
Speaker 1: get like a paragraph or at best in news article
Speaker 1: that condenses down years and years of research. For me,
Speaker 1: this was three years of working average sixty to eighty
Speaker 1: hours a week, and so life happens along the way too.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think is kind of interesting. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're dealing obviously, with this virus outbreak, and we've got
Speaker 1: people working really hard on different solutions and different vaccines.
Speaker 1: And I've never read another book where they take you
Speaker 1: through a scientific project and explain what that's actually like
Speaker 1: to be a scientist, to be a human being, you know,
Speaker 1: to almost get into car accident, to have your grandma die,
Speaker 1: like to get proposed to all while you're trying to
Speaker 1: plow through this experiment that is either important to you,
Speaker 1: like in my case, or is important to the world,
Speaker 1: like what these vaccine researchers are doing right now. Um.
Speaker 1: So I'm just hopeful that as people read this, they
Speaker 1: kind of understand a little bit better what goes into
Speaker 1: all of those news clips and how much real humanity
Speaker 1: is behind those stories, how this science sausage gets made.
Speaker 1: In other words, I think that's instructive too, and it's
Speaker 1: inspiring for a lot of the listeners in our audience.
Speaker 1: We have a you know, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: younger kids who listen to the show who are actively
Speaker 1: interested in pursuing stem and you know, humanizing that and
Speaker 1: making making sure that we all realize that the scientists
Speaker 1: you read about in a newsclip are themselves human beings
Speaker 1: and people. I think is a powerful thing and it's
Speaker 1: something that um, it's something that I personally am very
Speaker 1: appreciative of. And you know, it's funny like the we
Speaker 1: I set this up with asking you about tiny, which
Speaker 1: was the sort of the um miniaturized version of the
Speaker 1: huntly that you created, and in a blast of creativity
Speaker 1: and inspiration and maybe sleeplessness, UM three am, you named
Speaker 1: it tiny. But that's just the kind of little nugget
Speaker 1: that publishers love and they'll put in like a press
Speaker 1: kit for a book or that you can see in
Speaker 1: a headline or like really grab onto. But that was
Speaker 1: just one little detail that is kind of fun to
Speaker 1: talk about, but it represents so much effort and work
Speaker 1: that you put into not only the research, but then
Speaker 1: designing the experiment, um, creating a scale version of this
Speaker 1: scenario and running tests over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: and then that data became like gold to you, or
Speaker 1: you talk about in the book how you immediately backed
Speaker 1: it up in like triplicate UM. So it really is
Speaker 1: so much that goes into creating this, this math and
Speaker 1: this data that then can help you tell a story much,
Speaker 1: you know, much larger than just a headline or like
Speaker 1: a sound bite. Yeah, thank you. I think people often
Speaker 1: repeat the Thomas Edison quote and I forget the exact
Speaker 1: number he used, so you have to forgive my fudging it.
Speaker 1: But he said something like he didn't fail nine d
Speaker 1: or whatever number heat of times he used to make
Speaker 1: a light bulb. He learned nine hundred ways not to
Speaker 1: make a light bulb. But people don't think about the
Speaker 1: fact that that took years, so he failed for years.
Speaker 1: So even our most brilliant scientists and inventors are human
Speaker 1: beings with flaws, and anyone can do this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: just all about perseverance. And with that we want to
Speaker 1: be cautious about spoilers. You, like us, will have to
Speaker 1: check out the book to learn the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: and take my word for it. You won't regret it.
Speaker 1: The book is in the Waves by Quest to solve
Speaker 1: the mystery of a Civil War submarine. By the time
Speaker 1: you're hearing this, the book will be available wherever you
Speaker 1: find your favorite uh, your favorite nonfiction, your favorite solving
Speaker 1: of historical mysteries. Rachel, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us on the air today. This has been an absolute pleasure,
Speaker 1: and I've got to say this is one of the
Speaker 1: episodes that sent me off to read more and more
Speaker 1: on my own about submarines just for my own personal edification.
Speaker 1: So uh so I owe you a personal thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you're welcome many time I can hook someone
Speaker 1: else on submarines, I'm happy to do so. And can
Speaker 1: you tell listeners where to find you many social media
Speaker 1: stuff for any other places where you uh maybe post um,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that you're working on currently. I
Speaker 1: am on Twitter, I'm at Underwater Lance and they can
Speaker 1: also find me through my website which is Rachel and
Speaker 1: Lance Rights dot com. So they all have updates and
Speaker 1: announcements and things like that. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much
Speaker 1: again for joining us. Huge thanks as always to super
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme, our
Speaker 1: dear friend Christopher Haciotas, who is of course here in spirit.
Speaker 1: Thanks of course as always to Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 1: The Quister, who's been saying some really nice things to
Speaker 1: me post quarantine. Rachel, that's a guy who makes a
Speaker 1: cameo on It's it's tough to explain, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: He's a nice guy. Ben Well, he's sort of our
Speaker 1: nemesis is the thing, but it's sort of a soft
Speaker 1: Cold War kind of nemeses. But I will say this,
Speaker 1: he has been rocking the steampunk um outbreak gear and
Speaker 1: I am here for it. He's got this like kind
Speaker 1: of bandana and these goggles and like a cowboy hat.
Speaker 1: Situation is sort of a West World meets um, you know,
Speaker 1: a Kira kind of steam Boy kind of situation. I'm
Speaker 1: all about it. But thanks Jonathan for being a pal
Speaker 1: and also for ruining our lives sometimes. And thanks again
Speaker 1: to you Rachel, Thanks to everyone who is tuning in.
Speaker 1: As I said at the top, we hope this message
Speaker 1: finds you happy, healthy and safe. I just followed at
Speaker 1: underwater Lance on Twitter. Uh, so I can dig it
Speaker 1: to morse up news. Uh and well, we hope that
Speaker 1: we hope that you will share some of your favorite
Speaker 1: strange stories or historical mysteries of your that have yet
Speaker 1: to be solved or recently solved. Let us know you
Speaker 1: can find us all over the internet where on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Speaker 1: Do check out our community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to do any of that,
Speaker 1: you can just send us an email to ridiculous us
Speaker 1: at i heart radio dot com. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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