Criminal - Stowaway

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

One day in 1969, Paulette Cooper decided to see what she could get away with. Learn more about Paulette Cooper on her website. Here’s her 1969 Cosmopolitan piece about stowing away onboard the SS Leonardo da Vinci. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving

homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. We have two teacup shih tzus.

Oh, wow. So they're little tiny dogs. Yes, they're little tiny dogs, and they're very, very, very, very cute. What are their names? Peekaboo and Polo, because my name is Paulette and my husband is Paul. So all of our dogs have had P names. Peekaboo, Polo, Poochie, Pom Pom. Pinky. Pinky.

My husband's here. He just helped me on that one. Have you ever had a dog named Phoebe? No, but that would sound too much like an F as opposed to a PH. Paulette Cooper Noble is 76 years old and lives in Palm Beach, Florida. She's been married to her husband, Paul, for 31 years. She's the author of 26 books, and she writes a weekly column for the Palm Beach Daily News. What is the column about? Pets. Dogs and cats. I take various local people who are well known and I do stories about them and they have to have had a dog or a

cat, have to have one, and I weave the dog or the cat into the story, and it's called Pet Set People. So that's the criteria. If you can't, no matter how interesting you are, if you do not have a pet, you will not be in your column. No, because it's the pet column. I could have asked her about Pet Set People all day long. I can never resist an animal story.

But that's not why we called Paulette. We called to talk about something she pulled off a long time ago, something that seems impossible to do today. In the 1960s, Paulette was living in New York. She'd heard about a kid who'd been caught stowing away on a cruise ship. She remembers telling her friends the story over drinks. The stowaway had been caught stowing away on a cruise ship. She remembers telling her friends the story over drinks.

The stowaway had been caught hiding. Paulette argued that the reason he'd gotten caught was because he was hiding. I had read Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter, and I was intrigued by the fact that if somebody was looking for something, it was better to have it out in the open. That's what they weren't going to look for.

Paulette told her friends that if you wanted to take yourself on a free cruise, you should walk around the boat like you were supposed to be there. She couldn't stop thinking about it and how she would go about it. And because maybe she was a little drunk, Paulette told her friends she would prove it. She was 28 years old. So I thought, well, if I wanted to stow away on an ocean liner, the thing to do would be to be very conspicuous, not to be hiding, to wear sexy clothes, to be very, very friendly, meet as many people as possible.

And that was my goal, and that is what I did. So you weren't going to be hiding behind a stack of ropes, eating little crackers for your voyage? No, no, no. The idea was definitely not to hide. She planned for months, going to the library to find out about how other people had gotten away with it. She read about a famous Hollywood restaurateur going to the library to find out about how other people had gotten away with it.

She read about a famous Hollywood restaurateur who claimed to have stowed away a number of times, once sleeping with his dog in the dog's kennel, and once dressing like a steward and carrying dirty laundry. One German man had nailed himself inside a box marked Household Goods. He spent the whole journey inside the box without a problem. But when the box was taken off the ship in New York, the cargo handlers dropped it and the man screamed. He was caught. Paulette was not planning to get caught. She decided on a cruise from New York City to the Caribbean and back. Seven days.

Her boat was called the Leonardo da Vinci. It was 1969. Neil Armstrong had just walked on the moon. The Brady Bunch premiered. Paulette says things were more, quote, casual then. And she wanted to see what she could get away with. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Her first idea was to pretend she was pregnant and to hide all of her clothes in a pillowcase under her dress. That idea didn't last long. So she came up with another idea.

A friend of mine who had been in the army showed me how you could put a lot of clothes in a tiny attache case by folding everything in half, rolling it up, and putting rubber bands on the ends. And you could squeeze a lot of things in. And I squeezed, I did a black and white mix and match wardrobe so that it would look like I was wearing different things. So I had that, different clothes. And I had a little bikini. And I had a chiffon evening gown I was able to get in there.

And also, I had my makeup. But everything had been tremendously reduced. They used to sell, maybe they still do, something called five-day deodorant pads. And I had broke off my toothbrush so that it was just the bristles. And I had a tiny hairbrush that probably didn't comb more than five strands at a time. And I did have long hair. So I was really set. She didn't want anyone to try and convince her not to go through with her plan. So she didn't tell anyone what she was about to do.

But she did have a dog that would need to be cared for while she was away. So she asked her next-door neighbor to watch the dog for her. When the neighbor asked where she was going, Paulette told her the truth. The neighbor wished her luck, but didn't seem convinced at all that this plan would work. Paulette's next step was to decide on a fake name. I used the name Paula Madison

because when you use a fake name, it should be as close as possible to your real name so that if somebody calls you, you will turn around. And I lived right off of Madison Avenue, so I thought that was a nice name. In those days, Paulette says most cruise ships had a going-away party before they left the dock. Friends and family of those going on the cruise could come and have a goodbye drink on the boat before the ship set sail. Her plan was to walk right on like she was coming to say goodbye. She says she got dressed up and went to the port of New York with her attaché case, went up the visitor's gangway, and boarded the ship. And then they started making announcements. They always make announcements, you know,

all ashore, who's going ashore. And I just stayed. She wandered around the ship, making note of all the ladies' bathrooms, and eventually found a lounge in the lower level that didn't seem to be in use any longer. And I took my attaché case, and I put it, I opened up the piano, and I put it in the piano,

figuring that nobody was going to play that piano down there. If they did, then they could have played the funeral march for me because it really did sound like there was an attaché case on the keys. She figured she would kill time at the bar. But when she went back upstairs, all the bars were closed. She didn't know where to go. She thought she would hide in one of the ladies' rooms. They were all locked too,

most likely to prevent stowaways, just like her, from hiding out in them. If you were a passenger, you could just go to the bathroom in your own cabin. Paulette says she wandered around the boat and tried to look as relaxed as possible. In those days, she says that if a stowaway was caught early enough, they would just put them on the tugboat that was still attached to the ship, helping it navigate out to open water. But if you made it out far enough, you got to stay. In 1929, a 20-year-old woman named Rose Host

stowed away on a Panama Pacific liner from New York City to California after getting into a fight with her father. She was found out, but too far away from any piece of land to be kicked off the ship. When she was caught, she explained that she, quote, simply had to get to Hollywood. Newspapers picked up her story, and when the ship reached San Diego, she promptly got a role in a new film. In the late 1920s, lots of women were stowing away on ships, hoping to see the world, and maybe make themselves famous.

In 1929, a reporter in Hawaii wrote, Who are the flapper thrill-seekers who now run away to sea, usurping a prerogative once held solely by the boys? But by the 60s, when Paulette boarded the Leonardo da Vinci, stowing away for fun had gone out of fashion. The advent of air travel changed things, and the ships themselves, with their bars and parties, had become a destination.

And part of my plan was to stay in the bar as the excuse for not going in the dining room. You know, people say, oh, come on, let's go, time for dinner or whatever, join me. And I say, no, I'll have another drink. So you're sitting there, people are saying, come to dinner, say, no, I'll have another drink. Yeah you're sitting there, people are saying come to dinner, say no, I'll have another drink. Yeah, I'll see you later kind of thing. But are you thinking, okay, the hours are passing by,

where am I going to sleep tonight? That was a big problem for the whole seven days, which was that I didn't have very much sleep. I would take a glass, fill it with water as if it was all alcohol, put it on the end table so that I looked like I had passed out. But then I couldn't do that until about three or four in the morning until everybody was gone. And then by seven in the morning, even six, people started wandering around on the ship. So I had to get up. The problem of finding a place to sleep has always been solved in interesting ways.

In 1928, an Italian designer was asked to decorate a new ocean liner. While he did it, he created a secret compartment so he could hide in it and go along for the first voyage. When the cabin was discovered, they found it had electricity, a chair, a bed, and bottles of wine. Last year, an Australian cockatoo flew onto a cruise ship leaving Brisbane on its way to New Zealand. When crew members found the bird,

they alerted New Zealand authorities, who told them the bird would have to be euthanized or contained before the ship could come near any ports. They didn't want to euthanize it. So the crew gave the cockatoo its own cabin, where the bird spent the next ten days. A crew member was assigned to cockatoo watch 24 hours a day. What happened that second day?

You'd made it through the first night. You're out at sea. I was very hungry. I had not eaten. I remember eating bar setups. And I like olives. But how many olives can you have? And also I remember trying a lemon wedge and discovering that that was horrible.

And then there were those little onions, and there were peanuts, you know. So you were just eating, like, garnishes. Exactly. That's all that there was. I certainly couldn't take any food in that attaché case. Paulette's plan was to survive on the all-you-could-eat buffets. She couldn't go into the dining room for the formal dinners because she would have had to have a table assignment. But that first night, there had been no buffet, just the formal welcome dinner. Do you remember that first lunch buffet? Yes, I was famished. I mean, it's another thing I had to kind of be careful

because you can't look as if you haven't eaten in two days because everybody else has been eating. So you had to be sort of graceful about, you know, not putting too much on your plate and eating slowly in order not to arouse suspicion. Slowly, she started to get to know people at the bars. She says she was getting more confident. She began participating in the ship's activities,

trying to keep a low profile, but still having fun. And then one day, she saw that there would be a ping-pong contest. Paulette is very good at ping-pong. But I knew that I would have to throw it. I mean, there was no way I could win the contest. And it was in the morning to sign up, and I signed up, Paula Madison, and nobody else signed up.

I went around the ship trying to find somebody else who would join me. Nobody wanted to, so I was declared the winner by default. And that was worrisome because then they said, okay, you win a bottle of champagne, and we will bring it to your table tonight. So I said, well, I don't drink champagne. They said, well, maybe your table mates will drink it. I said, no, I don't want to do anything for them.

They said, all right, well, we'll give you a picture of the ship inscribed with your name. What's your cabin number? So I didn't know what to do. So I said, I'll pick it up. And, you know, they thought this was sort of odd. And I hung around the social director's office almost all afternoon until finally they gave me a picture of the ship, which turned out to be a wooden plaque with a picture of the ship. So I threw it overboard, and somebody saw me do that and really thought, hmm, this lady is very, very odd. I think a lot of things I did led people to think I was odd,

but I'd rather they thought I was odd than stowing away, right? What are some other things that you had to do that must have looked odd? Well, the biggest problem I had is there were not a lot of women alone at all in those days. And the biggest problem I ran into actually was the ship's doctor decided that he liked me, and he went after me. And he insisted on walking me to my cabin. I had none. decided that he liked me and he went after me and he wanted to know to what he insisted on walking me to my cabin I had none and in those days the there was a big board and keys were metal and they hung you know people took their keys and opened up their doors so I saw that there was one, you know, key that had not been taken,

and I opened the door saying this was my cabin, bye-bye now, and he insisted on coming in. And I was very nervous because I looked down and there was man's shoes were there and there was, like, toiletries there, and I'd obviously chosen a cabin of some man that I was claiming was my cabin. That takes a lot of courage to just grab a key and just hope. But the person wasn't in there. The person wasn't in there.

Well, if they were, excuse me, wrong cabin. I had to do something. He was there. I bumped into him when I was, you know, like the last day or whatever. And he said, well, I hope to see you again. And I said, well, these ships are pretty expensive. You know, I'm not sure I can afford it. And he looked at me and he said, then why not stow away?

Well, you know, I think all the color drained from my face. I couldn't tell whether he had caught on or not. You know, I mean, maybe he did look up and find my name was not on the roster. Who knows? He didn't say anything. We just bye-bye kind of thing. Were you able to take a shower? That was very difficult to take a shower because I had my clothes. I couldn't

really take my clothes off. What I did is I washed in the ladies' room, in a ladies' room that wasn't being used very much. But they had, it was, the towels were one of these roll towels, you know what I mean? Not paper towels, but it rolled. And it was a little difficult for me because I'm only five feet tall, so I didn't quite reach it. These old-fashioned things which kind of just roll down from the wall as paper towels do now. Right. You can never take it away or take it off. That's right. That's right. And you also can't dry yourself very low because it doesn't reach very low. So I had to stand there and kind of dry off a lot by, you know, the air while worrying that somebody might come in. What about pool towels? Did you ever use one?

No, but I did. One of the things I had taken with me was one of these tiny little soaps, and I tried once to bathe in the pool itself, but it bubbled. It bubbled. The little soap bubbled, and it looked like I was, pardon the expression, peeing in the pool. Day three, day four, you're there in the bathroom. You're trying to take a shower in the bathroom. Did you think, I've had, what kind of an idea was this? I think I thought that every minute. But you were in it now. Too late. Right, because it's not like you can turn back.

The only option is to turn yourself in. Right, which I certainly was not going to do. I think by this point, people thought I was a very weird alcoholic. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these Series Essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a

seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family.

Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you?

And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Today, do you think that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to stow away?

Or would you commend anyone who did it? Yes, because nowadays everybody, the people are very uptight, they're very nervous. There's constant security. There's also constant cameras every place. It would be so easy to look things up. And no, it's completely different. And nobody would treat it as a lark, which is what it really was. It was like, hey, this is a crazy, zany thing to do, but you're a crazy, zany young girl, so go ahead and do it. It would not have been that kind of situation. Paulette's seven-day journey on the Leonardo da Vinci made two stops, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas.

She chose this cruise specifically because she wouldn't have to deal with a passport like she would have on a transatlantic voyage. When the ship docked in St. Thomas, she decided to get off for a few hours and enjoy herself. I wonder when you got off and had your feet on firm ground in St. Thomas, did you think, oh God, I've got to go back and risk it all again? Yes, because you're lying in the sun, and it feels so good, and you're on a beach chair, and you can finally sleep,

and you don't have to worry for a few hours that anybody's going to ask a question you can't answer, that anybody's going to catch you. It was just very, very relaxing. But I did have to go back. I had to get home. She managed the rest of the trip without too much incident. Seven days to the Caribbean and back. Paulette says by the end of the cruise, the other people on the ship were wary of her.

This woman who'd passed out on the couches every night and ate a lot of garnishes. But she was thrilled. She'd done it, without even coming close to getting caught. On the final day, she went down to the lower lounge, retrieved her bag from its hiding place in the piano, and watched the ship pull into New York Harbor. Everybody was getting off, and that was when there was immigration. And I didn't know what to do and I had thought I'll hide in a cabin but the cabins had been locked and they were cleaning and they were closed and that was the only time I went to a room steward who was cleaning and I said I'm not feeling well I need to lie down for a little while close the door so. So by the time I got off, it was three or four hours later,

and the customs people had cleared everybody. So my job was simply to walk off the ship, although that's the point at which I came the closest to getting caught. Tell me what happened. Well, what happened was that it was in New York. It was very cold. I had not been able to stow away any kind of a fur coat or any warm coat. And I stood there just shivering to death. There were no taxis.

I was trying to decide how to get home, thought I had made it. Everything was fabulous. And at that point, a sort of a police type car pulled up and there were three or four security guards. And they asked me if I had been on that ship. And I said, yes. And they said, where's your luggage? And I said, I had a fight with my boyfriend and he took it and went to his place. And he said, well, where do you live? And at that time, I lived at 16 East 80th Street.

And they said, oh, that's not too far. We'll give you a ride. And I was driven home by the security guards. And when we pulled up to my place, I said, well, you know, thank you very much. And they said, aren't you going to invite us in for a drink? Of course, it was about 11 in the morning, but I said, all right. And as I walked into my little brownstone, the woman who was taking care of the dog, my neighbor, friend,

she saw me with these three huge security men, and I knew what she was thinking. And I mouthed her, don't say one word, because I was so afraid she'd say something like, oh, I knew you'd be caught, or I knew you wouldn't get away with this, whatever. And she just looked at me quizzically, and I invited the men in, and I gave them.

Everything was hard liquor in those days, in the morning. And we chatted, not really, but, you know, for a little while they had their drinks and then they left. Did things seem more possible in 1969 than they do today? Did what seem more possible? Cruises? Things. You know, Castor stowing away on a ship, inviting security guards up for some, you know,

whiskey at 10 a.m. That's, that's, I think by then it was 11, but that's all right. Yes, no, I mean,

I think things were much, much more casual. They really were. Do you still go on cruises? Constantly. In fact, I just came back

from a transatlantic voyage. I'm going on a short one in September. When you get on a new ship each time you're about to set off, do you kind of case it for how you'd take this one on if you were stowing away? Well, you know, you kind of notice how many pianos there are. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Susanna Roberson. You know, the thing about a teacup shih tzu, now that would be a good dog to stow away.

Yes, yes, yes, that would be. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. That'd be an easy one to just slip in your bag. Well, they're good dogs for stowing away because they don't bark very much. Back in 1969, Paulette Cooper wrote about stowing away for Cosmopolitan magazine.

You can find a link to her piece and information about her 26 books and her pet column at paulettecooper.com. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. You know, that must have taken a lot of nerve for you to walk onto that cruise ship. Do you think the fact that you did it successfully has helped you carry that nerve through the rest of your life? No, I think that the older I've gotten, the more chicken I've gotten. If I look at a travel brochure and it has the word panorama on it, I immediately become ill.

I'm really not. I don't ski. In fact, I don't like height. I don't like speed. I don't like cold. The only way I would ski would be indoors, slowly uphill. But basically, no, I don't think it changed me in any way. That's not the answer you wanted, but that's the truth.

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