Futility Closet - 070-Sunk by a Whale

Episode Date: August 24, 2015

In 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex was attacked and sunk by an 85-foot sperm whale in the South Pacific, a thousand miles from land. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the attack, which left 20 men to undertake an impossible journey to South America in three small whaleboats. We'll also learn about an Australian athlete who shipped himself across the world in a box in 1964 and puzzle over an international traveler's impressive feat of navigation. Sources for our feature on the whaleship Essex: Owen Chase, Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex, 1821. Thomas Farel Heffernan, Stove by a Whale: Owen Chase and the Essex, 1981. Thomas Nickerson et al., The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale, 2000. Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea, 2000. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851. Adam Summers, "Fat Heads Sink Ships," Natural History 111:7 (September 2002): 40-41. David R. Carrier, Stephen M. Deban, and Jason Otterstrom, "The Face That Sank the Essex: Potential Function of the Spermaceti Organ in Aggression," Journal of Experimental Biology 205:12 (June 15, 2002), 1755-1763. Henry F. Pommer, "Herman Melville and the Wake of The Essex," American Literature 20:3 (November 1948): 290-304. Fourteen-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson was at the helm at the time of the attack; he made this sketch later in life. "I heard a loud cry from several voices at once, that the whale was coming foul of the ship. Scarcely had the sound of their voices reached my ears when it was followed by a tremendous crash. The whale had struck the ship with his head directly under the larboard fore chains at the waters edge with such force as to shock every man upon his feet." Thanks to listener David Balmain (and David McRaney's "You Are Not So Smart" podcast) for the tip about penurious javelinist Reg Spiers' 1964 postal odyssey to Australia. Further sources for that segment: Jason Caffrey, "The Man Who Posted Himself to Australia," BBC World Service, March 6, 2015. Reg Spiers, "I Posted Myself in a Box From England to Australia," Financial Times, June 19, 2015. "Going East in a Coffin," Chicago Herald, Oct. 25, 1887. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Jason Wood, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Use this link to get video and audio lectures at up to 80 percent off the original price from The Great Courses. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 70. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1820, the Nantucket whale ship Essex was attacked and sunk by an 85-foot sperm whale in the South Pacific, a thousand miles from land. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the attack,

which left 20 men to undertake an impossible journey to South America in three small whale boats. We'll also learn about an Australian athlete who shipped himself across the world in a box in 1964 and puzzle over a world traveler's impressive feat of navigation. This podcast is brought to you primarily by our wonderful patrons, who are the main reason we are able to keep making the show. If you enjoy Futility Closet and want to help support our podcast, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. Thanks so much to everyone who helps support Futility Closet.

On February 23rd, 1821, a New England whaling ship called the Dauphin was just arriving to begin hunting during the whaling season off the west coast of South America, off the coast of Chile, when they came across what looked like a whale boat. A whale boat is the little boat that you get into to hunt whales off of your whaling ship, which is not unusual to see at that time off the coast of Chile, but what is odd is to see one just floating there without any ship nearby, and the closer they got to it, they saw that it had been sort of modified, and that someone had actually built a sort of makeshift mast in it to make it into a primitive sailboat. As they got closer, they saw that there were two men in it, that the interior of the boat

was littered with human bones, and that the men had long beards and seemed utterly shattered by something that had happened to them, in particular hunger and thirst. So they took them aboard the ship and talked to them and eventually rehabilitated them enough to get the story out of them. And what had happened was that they had been starving to death slowly for three months in that boat after their own whaling ship had been sunk far out 2,000 miles to the west in the Pacific. They asked what led their ship to be sunk so far out at sea, and the answer was that it had been stove-in by a whale. This is the first recorded instance of this ever happening. It's possible it's happened before and there were no survivors, but this is the first case.

It happened in 1820 when a whale sank a whaling ship. The story goes like this. The ship was called the Essex. It had left Nantucket on August 12, 1819, and what they expected to do was spend two and a half years going on this whaling voyage. What you would do is sail all the way down through the Atlantic, round Cape Horn at the bottom end of South America, and come up and hunt for the whales which tended to appear off Chile, off the western coast of South America. They got all the way out there and found that that area was actually nearly fished out, so the other whalers they encountered told them there was a new hunting ground that was promising, but it was way out to sea, 2,500 nautical miles, about 4,600 kilometers to the south and the west.

That's a huge distance today, and it's an even huger distance seemingly back then, but they really had no choice, and so they went all the way out into the sea to see what they could find. At first there were no whales there, but on November 20th, they spotted some spouting whales and put three boats down to go out and start pursuing them. Two of them had some success with that, but one of them, which was manned by the first mate, a man named Owen Chase, he'd harpooned a whale which then hit the boat with its tail and damaged it, so he had to bring the boat back to the ship.

And while he was aboard there, that's when the whale's attack happened, basically. He was aboard the ship with his boat, working on it, when an unusually large whale, they said it was around 85 feet long, which is huge. Normally those whales, even the big males, get up only to about 50 feet, surfaced and acted somewhat strangely. This is from the book he wrote after he finally got home to Nantucket three years later. He broke water about 20 rods off our weather bow and was lying quietly with his head in a direction for the ship. He spouted two or three

times and then disappeared. In less than three minutes he came up again, about the length of the ship off, and made directly for us at the rate of about three knots. The ship was then going with about the same velocity. His appearance and attitude gave us at first no alarm, but while we stood watching his movements and observing him, but a ship's length off, coming down for us with celerity, I voluntarily ordered the boy at the helm to pull it hard up, intending to shear off and avoid him. The words were scarcely out of my mouth before he came down upon us at full speed

and struck the ship with his head just forward of the forechains. He gave us such an appalling and tremendous jar as nearly threw us all on our faces. Wails just don't do this. Yeah, I was just going to, you know, wonder, like, and if they were to do this, would they use their heads? I mean, I don't know. I'll get into that later. That's a very interesting question. Anyway, so the whale struck the ship on the port, on basically the left side, and passed under it and came up on the other side and lay there motionless for a while. And Chase, the first mate, realized that from that position he could harpoon it from the deck if he wanted to,

and was about to do that when he realized that the whale's tail was near the rudder of the ship and if the whale fought at all there was a danger that he would damage the rudder and you don't want that to happen when you're a thousand miles from land so he didn't and the whale eventually uh moved forward several hundred yards turned around and faced the bow of the ship head on apparently he's not done yet this is again from chase's account by this time the ship had settled down a considerable distance in the water. It was already leaking badly from the first blow. And I gave her up as lost. I, however, ordered the pumps to be kept constantly going and endeavored to collect my thoughts for the occasion.

I turned to the boats, two of which we then had with the ship, with an intention of clearing them away and getting all the things ready to embark in them if there should be no other resource left. While my attention was thus engaged for a moment, I was roused by the cry of the man at the hatchway, here he is, he's making for us again. I turned around and saw him about 100 rods directly ahead of us, coming down with apparently twice his ordinary speed, and to me it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect. The surf flew in all directions, and his

course towards us was marked by a white foam of a rod in width, which he made with a continual violent threshing of his tail. His head was about half out of water, and in that way he came upon and again struck the ship. I was in hopes when I described him making for us that by putting the ship away immediately, I should be able to cross the line of his approach before he could get up to us and thus avoid

what I knew, if he should strike us again, would be our inevitable destruction. I called out to the helmsman hard up, but she had not fallen off more than a point before we took the second shock. I should judge the speed of the ship at this time to have been about three knots and that of the whale about six.

He struck her to windward directly under the cat head and completely stove in her bows. In other words, the whale put its head through the bow of the ship. Oh, wow. Completely crushing and driving the ship backward. The whale withdrew its head from what's now just a mass of broken timbers

and swam off. It wasn't seen again. Huh. So we don't know what happened to the whale withdrew its head from what's now just a mass of broken timbers and swam off it wasn't seen again huh so we don't know what happened to the whale but the concussion alone didn't really hurt it too badly um so now the essence is just sinking it's just going down by the bow um so the crew tried in the few moments they had to do anything about this to uh add rigging to the only whale boat they had and to gather navigational aids and some casks of bread and water that they'll need when the ship goes down. How many crew were there? Do you know? There were 20 who got off the ship. Okay.

Oh, and they had one little boat? Well, they had three because there were two other whale boats out pursuing whales at that time. In fact, there's a really kind of poignant, half-funny passage. When the captain, who was out whaling during this, came back to the ship, he expected to find his ship in Guder Perrin. In fact, it was stove-in and sunk and half-capped. Oh, and they wouldn't have known what had happened. No. So the way Owen writes this up is,

The captain's boat was the first that reached us. He stopped about a boat's length off, but had no power to utter a single syllable. He was so completely overpowered with the spectacle before him he was in a short time however enabled to address the inquiry to me my god mr chase what is the matter i answered we have been stoved by a whale because this had never happened before uh being stowed by whale is a terrible misfortune no matter where it happens to you but it's just much much worse if you're way out in the middle of the pacific ocean and all you've now are these three whale boats, which are about 25 feet long, and they have whatever navigation lathes they managed to get off the ship before it went down.

There were 1,000 miles from the nearest land and 2,000 nautical miles west of South America. So there are 20 men now in these three boats. And what's basically going to happen is they'll spend the next three months slowly starving to death. If they had gone west towards Tahiti and the closest land were these islands known as the Marquesas, to the west, everyone today pretty much agrees they probably all 20 would have made it. But Owen Chase, the first mate, and the second mate, Matthew Joy, both worried that there were cannibals on those islands and wanted instead to try to go east to go all the way back to South America, which would

be, given the route, they'd have to take about 3,000 miles. So was that just like a myth that there were cannibals on these islands? Turns out, yes. And if cannibalism is what you wanted to avoid, then going east was the worst thing you could have done because they'll be so starving. What wound up happening is they ran into cannibalism in its own way uh trying to get back east most of the food they'd rescued had been uh soaked in seawater so uh and they had very little water so they were in trouble almost from the first uh they were just beginning to die of thirst when they

landed on an uninhabited island called henderson island where there was a small somewhat dirty freshwater spring and birds eggs crabs and pepper grass mean, just enough food for them to sort of avoid dying outright there, but not nearly enough to support that many men for any length of time. So after a week, they'd exhausted the island's resources. Three of the men decided they were going to stay on the islands and, you know, make the best of it. And the others got back into the boats and tried to head east again, hoping to reach Easter Island. They brought some of the provisions they could scrounge from the island, but that didn't amount to very much, and realized they were in such a desperate strait that they'd actually passed south of Easter Island anyway on the way trying to get back. So

they're just, things are getting worse and worse. One of the boats became separated from the others during a squall, and what's happening aboard all three of the boats became separated from the others during a squall. And what's happening aboard all three of the boats now is that at first when men would die of thirst or starvation, they would just put them over the side sort of bearing in the sea. But as they got more and more desperate, they began to resort to cannibalism just because they had to. And I won't go through all the details here, but you can imagine how bad it got. One of the boats exhausted its food supplies on January 14th. This would have been 1821, and the captain's Pollard's a week later. There's one particularly poignant bit

towards the end. The captain, George Pollard, had with him his 17-year-old cousin whom he had pledged to protect, and they drew lots to see who they would have to kill in order to eat, in order for the rest of them to stay alive, And unfortunately, his cousin drew the lot. Pollard tried to protect him, but he said, no, I like my lot as well as any others. So they killed him and ate him as well. Finally, they were picked up, as I said at the beginning, off the Chilean coast 95 days after the Essex had sunk. And it's said that both of the men who remained in the boat, there were only two left in Pollard's boat, were so shattered that they didn't even recognize that

there was a ship there and seemed somewhat afraid of their rescuers trying to just clutch these bones to themselves because they were just so ruined by the experience. The three men back on the island were near death, but were eventually rescued. So in all of the 20 men who had escaped from the whale attack, eight of them survived and seven had been consumed and the rest had been put overboard. Interestingly, all eight of them returned to sea within months, which astounds me.

I had the same thought about Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated bid for the South Pole in the early 20th century. It's just the most harrowing, awful experience you can even imagine, and yet all of them went right back to sea after it was over. Pollard suffered some more reverses, so the captain eventually became a night watchman on Nantucket, but the rest of them just went back to sea. Three things I want to say about this, beyond just the story itself.

One is that this is all going to be a movie. I didn't realize that until I started researching this, but actually this year they're making a movie about this whole thing. This isn't really a plug because I don't know anything about it, but it sounds promising. It's based on Nathaniel Philbrick's nonfiction book called In the Heart of the Sea. That's the name of the movie too. And that's a good book. I'll vouch for that. It won the National Book Award in 2000. Ron Howard's directing it and Chris Hemsworth is playing Owen Chase, so it must have a big budget. I hope they don't go overboard with the spectacle of the whale attack,

but I'd really like to see it. If they shoot it so it's somewhat realistic, I'd really like to see what that looks like. Okay, you had asked about why a whale would do this. Yeah, or like,

knock it with its head. I mean, unless whales have very hard heads. No, that's a perfect question. No one quite knows is the answer. When you read accounts of this, popular accounts,

they always write it as though the whale had some reflective intelligence and was just furiously angry at being hunted all the time and so turned around and went is the answer. When you read accounts of this, popular accounts, they always write it as though the whale had some reflective intelligence, was just furiously angry at being hunted all the time, and so turned around and went after the ship. It seems more likely like what's happened is that male sperm whales apparently, it's up here, may engage in combat with each other where they butt heads with each other. They do butt heads. Okay.

So, I mean, I was just wondering, was the whale going to give them some concussion? That's a perfect question. Mature male sperm whales weigh more than 40 tons and can be 50 feet from nose to fluke. But a whale ship is much bigger even than that. They weigh 250 tons and can be 90 feet long. So why would a whale pick a fight with such a big thing, and how did they survive? There's an interesting article in Natural History by a writer named Adam Summers. He says, to bring the question down to a more comprehensible scale,

imagine your 40-pound child dashing headlong into the side of a 250-pound beached rowboat, staving a large hole in its side and calmly picking yourself up and wandering off. I mean, what would put her in mind to do that at all, and how could she live through it if she decided to do it? But that's what these whales do. This isn't the first time a whale has done it. I mean, it's the first. It's not the last. Basically, the reason whalers went after these whales in the first place is they have this

big sort of reservoir of rich oil in their heads. Okay. There are two researchers at the University of Utah who are looking into this, and it's that big fund of oil is called the spermaceti organ, and nobody quite knows what it's for, but it does absorb energy very well. So it looks like whales, probably male whales, engage in these sort of head-butting contests, they think, where they use what they call these, basically it's a head-mounted boxing glove. And the whales can, it absorbs energy. It's ten times better absorbing energy than the fatty tissue that surrounds the rest of the whale.

So there's some irony there if that's what's going on, because if these whalers had sailed all these thousands of miles to collect some oil, the whale basically said, you want some oil? Here's some oil. And that's what enabled the whale, ironically, to actually stave in the side of the boat without it getting killed itself in the process. At least that's what they think may be happening. The last thing I want to say is that if you've read Moby Dick, spoiler alert, this all

sounds very familiar because this is how the book ends. The whale actually sinks the Pequod in exactly this way by staving it in with its head. And for decades, there was some speculation that perhaps Melville had known about this episode because it's so similar, and it turns

out the answer is almost certainly yes. The Essex was sunk in 1820. And two decades later, Melville, as a seaman, was out on his first whaling voyage. And his ship encountered another Nantucket whaling ship that was carrying, of all people, Owen Chase's 16-year-old son old son which seems very unlikely but that's what happened so they were talking about this and the son went and to his sea chest and got a copy of his father's book his father finally wrote up a book explaining the whole story because he's one of the few people who survived and gave it to melville and melville wrote this is this was

the first printed account of it i had ever seen The reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea and close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect on me. That was in 1841. Moby Dick came out 10 years later in 1851. And actually in that year, Melville's father-in-law gave him a copy of the narrative as well. And there are 18 blank pages in that book where you can see today in his own handwriting, Melville wrote notes and ideas about his thoughts about the Essex event. Apparently, this was a huge deal at the time. It's largely forgotten now, but it was as well known in the 19th century as, say, the Titanic is to us now. It's just a horrific maritime disaster. But if you read Moby Dick in chapter 45, for example, he actually mentions Owen Chase by name and quotes from his book.

So Melville definitely knew about this, and it seems safe to say that the adventure of the Essex was an inspiration for at least the conclusion of the story of Moby Dick. I mentioned that this wasn't the last case of this. this wasn't the last case of this. In fact, after Moby Dick came out in 1851, in that very year, another, this is the second case of this happening, an enraged whale smashed the bow of a whaling ship called the Ann Alexander and that

boosted sales, happily for Melville. I mean, it was a tragedy for the people involved, but it was so such a close match to Melville's book that it actually boosted sales of Moby Dick right after it came out. I wonder, were you saying that this was so well-known, you know, 100 years ago, like the Titanic is today? I wonder if, you know, 200 years from now,

people will be doing whatever the equivalent of a podcast is 200 years from now, and they'll be telling the story of the Titanic, which everybody has forgotten, and they'll think it's such an interesting historical curiosity that nobody remembers anymore. Yeah, nothing's remembered forever. That's a good point.

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This is a limited-time offer, so order today. Go to thegreatcourses.com slash closet to check out the special offer for our listeners. That's thegreatcourses.com slash closet, or see the link in our show notes. Listener David Balmain wrote in with a follow-up to our stories on mailing people that we had covered in episode five. David wrote, I've just started listening to your podcast, which was recommended on David McCraney's You Are Not So Smart podcast. He mentioned you had a podcast on people mailing themselves and fully expected to hear about Reg Spears, who sent himself home from London to Australia. Perhaps you've covered it on a later podcast, but I couldn't find it anywhere on your site, so I thought I'd let you guys know. This was a new story for us and is very similar in some ways to the story on Henry Box Brown, the slave who mailed himself to freedom

in 1849 that we covered in episode 5. I really don't think anyone could manage it today with all the increased security in place, but I guess things were a little different in the 1960s when Spears did it. Reg Spears was a javelin thrower who was in the UK trying to recover from an injury and make the 1964 Olympic team. But he realized that his injury was not going to heal in time, and so he took a job in the cargo section of the Heathrow Airport to try to earn enough money to get himself back home to Adelaide, Australia. Unfortunately, his wallet containing all of his savings was stolen, and he realized he needed a plan B to get back home. So he was desperate to get back home and really wanted

to make it in time for his daughter's upcoming birthday. And he had seen animals being shipped through the cargo section of the airport and decided if they could do it, well, so could he. So he had been staying with a friend who had experience as a carpenter and he persuaded his friend to build him a box five feet by three feet by two and a half feet. To go to Australia. Yeah. And that would be 1.5 meters by 0.9 meters by 0.75 meters, for those who think in metric. The crate was designed so that Spears could sit up or lie on his back with his legs bent, and it contained straps that he could use to keep himself in place as the crate was moved. It was also designed so that he would be able to let himself out of either end of it, no matter how it got placed. And inside his box, he had some canned food,

a suit that he could put on on the other end so that he could look cool, as he put it. That's important. Because you want to look good when you come out of your box. A flashlight whose batteries quickly ran out, and two plastic bottles, one for water and one for urine. In a later interview on the subject, Spears said, I wasn't worried that I was going to die. My big fear was that I would need to use the bathroom. And that actually did become a real problem for him, as he had to endure a 24-hour fog delay in the London airport, and he couldn't get out of the box for 24 hours. So he hadn't even gotten started yet. Right. When the plane was finally in the air between London and Paris,

he hastily let himself out of his box and peed in an empty food can, but then he had to very quickly place the can on top of the box and get back in because the plane suddenly began descending into Paris, because it's not a very far hop from London to Paris. The French baggage handlers thought the can of pee had been intended as a mean joke by the London airport workers, but never seemed to suspect that there was someone actually in the crate. Is that something airport workers do?

I don't know. Maybe they do. Someone can write in and let us know. Then in Bombay, Spears spent several hours sweltering in the sun on the tarmac upside down. He stripped off all his clothes and was, you know, hanging there upside down thinking how funny that would be if they should catch on to what was going on and discover a naked Australian upside down inside the box. Well, it's, I mean, it's funny because it worked out good, but the very worst case is very bad indeed. Very bad indeed. He could have found a dead naked instrument. But he did make it undiscovered

all the way to Australia after spending 63 hours traveling in his crate. The only time he left it was that brief excursion out of the box between London and Paris. When his plane finally touched down in Perth and Spears heard the Australian baggage handler

swearing about the size of his box, he knew immediately he was home. He said, the accents, how could you miss? I'm on the soil. Amazing. Wonderful. I made it. I was grinning from ear to ear. He then still needed to cut his way out of the holding shed that his crate was in, which he did using some tools

he found in the shed, and then he had to hitchhike 2,000 plus miles back to Adelaide in his nice suit, which took him about a week. But he did make it back in time for his daughter's birthday. Yay! Unfortunately, Spears neglected to tell his friend back in London, the one who'd made the crate for him, that he had successfully completed his journey.

So desperately worried, the friend contacted the media to try to learn what had happened to him and overnight spears became a media sensation he said i'd never seen anything like it it scared the hell out of my mother with the whole street blocked with the media and it would go on for weeks it was pretty wild unfortunately spears's escapade of smuggling himself apparently inspired him to turn to smuggling drugs. After he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import drugs in Australia in 1980, he disappeared from the country but was arrested as a drug courier in India in 1982. After escaping from India, he was arrested and sentenced to death in Sri Lanka in 1984 for drug offenses. Spears apparently successfully appealed that and then ended

up spending five years in jail in Australia. So obviously smuggling yourself can lead to a life of crime and thus we don't recommend it here on the Futility Closet podcast. It makes you wonder, you know, if he'd made it, if his friend hadn't alerted the media, this just would have happened and no one would have been in line. Nobody maybe ever would have known. I mean, he maybe eventually would have told somebody, but... But that would have been his choice. That would have been his choice, yeah. Personally, this happens once in a while, and just nobody

knows about it. Well, probably not anymore with the increased security these days. And actually, the articles written on this were careful to say that, that with the increased security these days, you can't do this, so don't try. And probably a bad idea to be in with. Probably a bad idea to be in with. I have a related story while we're talking about guys in boxes.

This is just from a random story from my notes titled Going East in a Coffin. This is from the Chicago Herald October 25th, 1887.

There's a man who lived in Chicago in the 1880s who apparently was a lunatic. He's described as at all times eccentric. His name was John McCauley

and the story says he had a great antipathy to railroad companies and disliked to put money in their coffers by paying fare. In the fall of 1872, he had occasion to visit Philadelphia. The fare at the time was $29. I won't pay that much, said Mr. McCauley in conversation with a friend. I'd rather walk. The conversation ended in a wager, Mr. McCauley betting that he could go from Chicago to Philadelphia on an express train for less than $10. The amount of the wager was small, but Mr. McCauley's dander was up, and he determined to win it. For three days, he showed himself up in a carpenter's shop,

and the result of his labors was a double-cased box seven feet in length by two and one-half in width. Poles were bored in every side to allow him a sufficiency of air. A number of racks were placed inside the box. This is the same story. Yeah. In which were placed a quantity of food and an ample supply of water. When all the arrangements had been completed, McCauley crawled into the box and the lid was nailed down. His friend, who entered heartily into the scheme, hired an express wagon and had the

box conveyed to the express office. Upon the upper lid, written in huge letters, was the following inscription. John McCauley. Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This box must be kept in a horizontal position as its contents will otherwise be ruined, which is certainly true. The box and its contents altogether weighed 178 pounds and the express charges were $8.38. And remember, he's got to keep this under 10 bucks. Oh, I see. In an hour from the time when he crowded into the box,

Mr. McCauley was in an express car traveling eastward at the rate of 40 miles an hour. Mr. McDermott, the other party to the wager, became frightened as he thought of the train speeding along the rails with his friend confined in a coffin. He's nailed in. That's between your story and mine. Yeah, he can't get out. Knowing McCauley's eccentricities,

he thought the death might come before he would acknowledge himself to be defeated. Accordingly, a telegram was sent to a point where it would intercept the train, and an order was given by the express company to its agent on the train to refuse to carry the box containing Mr. Macaulay. Altoona, Pennsylvania, however, was reached before the order was executed.

It was about midnight when the express messenger opened the box, and Mr. Macaulay was sleeping as peacefully as if he were in his own bed at home. When the lids were removed, he arose, stepped into the center of the car, stretched himself out at full length upon a pile of packages and tried to continue his nap. You can't ride in this car, said the messenger. It's against the rules. My charges have all been paid, rejoined Mr. McCauley, and you have no right to put me off. off. The messenger was in a quandary. The human package refused to leave the car,

showed the receipt to the express charges which McDermott has slipped into the box, and threatened a damage suit if he was forcibly ejected. By dint of arguments, threats, and persuasion, McCauley managed to remain in the car until Philadelphia was reached, and he sent McDermott the following telegram. Arrived as express. Total cost, including

drinks and cigars, $9.75. So he managed to do it. So, again, don't try this yourself, but apparently at least, if you count Henry Brown, at least three people have actually pulled this off. Yeah. I did get a chance to say there is a whole book on Reg Spears and his exploits, if anybody's interested. It's called Out of the Box, The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler, if anyone wants to hear more about his whole story. And thanks to David McCraney for pointing out this story and to David Bellman for sending it in to us with some great lengths. If you have any additional stories about people mailing themselves or anything else, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Okay, I'm going to be solving a lateral thinking puzzle greg's going to give me an odd sounding

situation and i have to figure out what's going on asking only yes or no questions this was sent in by listener jason wood okay frank has lived his entire life in one city one day he sets out to travel a substantial distance to visit the place where his great-grandparents first met he has no money no driver's no map, and no internet access. He has not been given directions, and he doesn't even know the name of the place he is trying to find. He has never ventured outside his hometown before, and yet he is able to successfully get to the destination entirely by himself without communicating with anyone else.

How does he do this? Is Frank a salmon? Or some other animal? Yes. And frank is an animal okay um um uh you've ever said that sentence before is frank a salmon um oh shoot i'm trying to remember what animals do this besides salmon okay i can't remember so we'll have to narrow it down is he a mammal no is he a fish no is he a bird no i you've always your first question i'm laughing because your first question is often is x human and i always think what an odd question but it pays off sometimes um is a flying insect. Okay, is Frank a bee?

No. A fly? A butterfly! A butterfly! Frank is a butterfly! Yes. Is there more to it? That's basically it.

Jason writes, Frank is a monarch butterfly making his migration from the U.S. to Mexico. During the summer, three to four generations will be born and die before a new generation is born that will fly south to a very small area in Mexicoxico for overwintering the summer monarchs live two to five weeks while the winter ones live seven to nine months and make the journey both

ways before mating this is kind of an amazing story i knew it vaguely i guess before i wrote in what happens is that uh most generations of monarch butterflies live just a few weeks but then uh there's a special generation that's born that lives like about half a year, which enables them to fly south, some of them into central Mexico, which is amazing because each little butterfly weighs one-fifth the weight of a penny, flies alone, and has never done this before. I mean, there are birds that fly south for the winter, but often they're sort of trained by past generations. Right, they're following others, yeah. But these butterflies just make their way, flapping along. It's like just programmed into them. 2,000 miles, a butterfly. I did not know this. Into Mexico, and then over winter, and then the succeeding generation, they make it back as far as Texas, and then eventually in succeeding short generations make it all the way back up to their summer grounds

east of the Rockies and then it just happens over again. Who knew how interesting butterflies were? Well, terrific. That was actually a very interesting puzzle but I for some reason thought of salmon doing that sort of, you know, going back to where they were born or whatever.

So that's what made me think of it right away. That would make a good puzzle too. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Jason. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com, where you can sample over 8,000 captivating

diversions. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by clicking the donate button on the sidebar of the website. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.