Futility Closet - 207-The Bluebelle's Last Voyage

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a science fiction novel based on a chess game to Ben Franklin's tips for getting rich. This is episode 207. I'm Greg Ross.. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1961, Wisconsin optometrist Arthur Duperault chartered a yacht to take his family on a sailing holiday in the Bahamas.

Starting point is 00:00:35 After two days in the islands, the ship failed to return to the mainland, and the unfolding story of its final voyage made headlines around the world. In today's show, we'll recount the fate of the Bluebell and its seven passengers and crew. We'll also sympathize with some digital misfits and puzzle over some incendiary cigarettes. In 1961, Arthur Duperault began to plan a special vacation for his family. He'd worked for years to build up his optometry practice in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and now he could afford to treat his wife and kids to an extended holiday.

Starting point is 00:01:15 During the war, he'd served in the Pacific and had fallen in love with the tropics, so he proposed that they all take a year off and spend it together sailing in the islands. That folly took his kids out of school, and the five of them headed for Florida, himself, his wife Jean, and his kids, Brian, Terry, Joe, and Renee, ages 14, 11, and 7. The plan was that they'd spend the fall trying out life at sea, and if it went well, they'd extend the adventure to a full year. They'd all been to Florida twice already for winter vacations, but they'd never sailed together. They decided to begin with a one-week shakedown cruise through the Bahamas on the Bluebell, a two-masted sailboat moored in Fort Lauderdale. Their skipper would be Julian Harvey, a retired

Starting point is 00:01:49 pilot who had won both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal during 19 years in the Air Force, but had retired three years earlier to pursue his dream of becoming master of a sailing yacht. No one knew much about Harvey's earlier life, but he was 44 years old, sophisticated, and charming. He'd be bringing his wife, a TWA flight attendant named Mary, whom he'd just married that summer. On November 8, 1961, they all set sail for the Bahamas, and they spent the next two days there sailing among the islands. The Duperalts occasionally went ashore in the ship's dinghy and generally relaxed and enjoyed their time together as a family. It was a great success. After two days, Arthur told the commissioner at Sandy Point,

Starting point is 00:02:29 this has been a once-in-a-lifetime vacation and we have thoroughly enjoyed it. We are going to come back and use Sandy Point as a winter resort. Harvey laughed and joked with his wife. A fisherman who had dinner aboard the Blue Bell on Sunday evening remembered it as a happy ship. That night, they set out to return to Florida. The next afternoon, the oil tanker Gulf Lion was passing through the Northwest Providence Channel of the Bahamas, headed for Puerto Rico, when the lookout spotted a small wooden dinghy in the water. It was carrying a man and a young girl wearing a life vest. Its sails were furled, and it was towing a life raft. When an officer on the tanker's deck hailed the man, he said, My name is Julian Harvey. I am master of the catch Bluebell. I have a dead baby here. When they got him aboard,

Starting point is 00:03:06 he described a terrible tragedy. In the middle of the night, a sudden squall had uprooted the ship's mainmast and sent it plunging downward, punching a hole in the hull. The mainmast had pulled the mizzenmast down into the cockpit over the engine room, rupturing gas lines there, which caused the ship to erupt into flames as it sank. Many of the passengers had been injured by the collapsing masts. Harvey had managed to clamber forward and launch the dinghy in the raft. He got safely into the water, but everyone else on board had been trapped by the tangled rigging and the fire in the cockpit, or had jumped overboard into the darkness. As the bluebell sank, he could find only Renee, the youngest daughter. She was floating face down in her life jacket, dead.

Starting point is 00:03:42 The oil tanker's captain called the Coast Guard, which launched an extensive search for survivors in the remains of the ship. They took Harvey to Nassau, about 60 miles to the south, and he flew back to Miami the next day. He was asked to appear two days later, on November 16th, at an inquiry into the loss of the Bluebell and the deaths of presumably everyone on board. At the inquiry, he seemed in surprisingly good spirits, considering that his wife was dead and he bore at least some responsibility for the loss of the ship. Before the interrogation started, he asked whether the Coast Guard search had found anything. It hadn't. No survivors and, strangely, no debris. Under their questioning, he laid out the story of the Bluebell's final night.

Starting point is 00:04:18 He and Arthur Duperault had planned to cover the 200 miles back to Fort Lauderdale in two days of sailing. over the 200 miles back to Fort Lauderdale in two days of sailing. On the first night, everyone was together in the cockpit at about 1130 when the ship had been struck by a fresh breeze, that's a sailor's term for a sudden squall. That had snapped the main mast and, as he said, this collapse of the entire rig reduced us to a bare hull wallowing in the sea. The plunging mast had started a fire in the engine room and that quickly spread across the deck, which had recently been painted with flammable neoprene. Harvey said that while he was forward preparing the boats, the passengers astern must have decided to jump overboard, apparently to avoid the flames. He launched the dinghy in the raft, tied them together, and rode to the stern, but it was pitch dark and he couldn't

Starting point is 00:04:56 see anything. He shouted until he was hoarse but found only Renee's body. He pulled her into the raft and stayed in the area for two hours shouting. Then he drifted until about one o'clock the following afternoon when the Gulf Lion picked him up. Harvey was just completing this testimony when a Coast Guard officer rushed into the hearing room. A Greek freighter called the Captain Theo had just been passing through the Northwest Providence Channel bound from Antwerp to Houston when the second officer saw a small white life float in the water. Sitting on it was a blonde-haired girl looking up and waving feebly. She was severely dehydrated and nearly comatose.

Starting point is 00:05:31 When they got her aboard, the freighter's captain asked her name, saying he could tell her relatives that she was alive. She shook her head weakly and gestured downward with her thumb, meaning, my family is dead. He said, you can't be sure they are lost. Maybe some other ship saved them. She shook her head again and said, Bluebell. She managed to say that her name was Terry Jo Duperault and that she was from Green Bay, and then she lost consciousness. The freighter's captain said that the float she'd been riding was just an oblong ring of canvas-covered cork, five feet long and two and a half wide.

Starting point is 00:05:59 It was designed to be clutched for a few hours by survivors in the water, not ridden for days. Terry Jo had balanced on it for four days and nights without food or water. The captain said it was a miracle that we chanced to sight her. Even though we'd passed within a mile and a half of her, her float was still just a white speck among the whitecaps. The Coast Guard asked for the captain's location, gave him medical advice, and sent a helicopter. When the news of this reached the hearing room, Harvey said, oh my god. He pushed his chair back and looked down for a moment, then raised his head, looked around, and said, isn't that wonderful?

Starting point is 00:06:30 He got up, walked to a window, and looked out onto Flagler Street for some moments. Then, without a word, he turned and headed for the door. One of the Coast Guard investigators called, Captain Harvey, don't you want to remain for the rest of the testimony? He shook his head, smiled briefly, nodded to the room, and walked out. The next day, a maid knocked on the door of room 17 of the Sandman Motel on Biscayne Boulevard. There was no answer, so she went in. She found Harvey's body on the bathroom floor.

Starting point is 00:06:56 When he'd left the meeting room, he'd gone to his car, retrieved a suitcase, then flagged a cab and checked into the motel around 11 a.m. under the name John Monroe of Tampa. The staff had seen him head upstairs carrying the suitcase and a brown paper bag. Sometime in the early hours of the following morning, he put some empty whiskey bottles into the wastebasket and wrote a letter to a friend in Miami saying that he loved his 14-year-old son and asking that he be adopted by the Miami family that had been watching him. He wrote, I'm a nervous wreck and just can't continue. I'm going out now. I guess I either don't like life or don't know what to do with it. He sealed the envelope and wrote on it, cremate and bury at sea, then crossed out cremate and underlined bury at sea. Then he sat on the bathroom floor and slashed his ankles, his wrists, his

Starting point is 00:07:39 forearms, his thigh, and both sides of his neck with a razor blade. The act was very violent. He cut his thigh all the way to the bone. The friend to whom he'd written the letter, James Boozer, said that he'd spoken with Harvey after the tragedy and found he was devastated over the deaths of his wife and the Duperault family, and that he resolved to kill himself before Terry Joe had been found. But later, Boozer told the Coast Guard that he'd noticed discrepancies in Harvey's story and had finally asked him point-blank, Julian, why don't you tell me what really happened out there? Harvey had made him swear to keep his secret, and then told him that he'd been unnerved by the injuries on board when the mast had fallen,

Starting point is 00:08:11 and had simply abandoned the ship, taking Renee's body with him. He'd lied in his testimony because he felt guilty and ashamed of his cowardice. Harvey's friends explained that he'd probably been through one tragedy too many in his life. In 1949, he'd been driving a speeding car that had crashed through a bridge in northern Florida and plunged into a canal, killing his second wife and her mother. In peacetime, he'd been forced to parachute twice from airplanes, and during World War II, he'd crash-landed a B-24 that had been damaged in battle. His accumulated injuries had forced him to retire from the Air Force. In 1955, he and four companions were rescued by a helicopter

Starting point is 00:08:45 when his yacht, the Torbatross, had struck the submerged wreck of the U.S. battleship Texas in Chesapeake Bay, and three years later, his powerboat, the Valiant, had gone down in the Gulf of Mexico, and he barely escaped with his life. His friends said that with the loss of the Bluebell and his new wife, he'd had all he could stand. After his own wish, Julian Harvey was shrouded in red velvet and buried at sea 12 miles off Miami. On the day after Harvey's suicide, Terry Jo awoke from her coma on the second floor of Mercy Hospital. She was still very weak, so reporters were kept away and only relatives and hospital staff were allowed to see her. Finally, when her doctor judged that she was strong enough, he told the Coast Guard investigators that they could talk to her. She said that on the night of

Starting point is 00:09:24 the accident, she'd gone to bed in her cabin at around 9 p.m., while the others remained in the ship's cockpit. Sometime during the night, she was awakened by a scream. Her brother was screaming, help, daddy, help, and she heard noises of running and stamping. Then there was silence. She lay in her bunk for five to ten minutes, but heard nothing more. Then she crept out of her cabin and saw the bodies of her mother and brother lying in the main cabin with a pool of blood collecting to one side. She climbed the stairs of the companionway and put her head through the hatch that faced aft into the cockpit. There she saw more blood pooled on the starboard side and possibly a knife. She stood up and looked forward.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Out of the darkness, Julie and Harvey rushed at her. She started to say what's happening, but he hit her, shoved her down the stairs, and said, get back down there. She went back to her cabin, crawled into her bunk, and lay with her back against a bulkhead. She could hear water sloshing and wondered if Harvey was washing blood from the deck. After several more minutes, oily water began to seep into her cabin and cover the floor. The ship was filling with water. Harvey appeared in the doorway, holding an object that

Starting point is 00:10:25 she couldn't identify. He said nothing. Then he turned and went back to the companionway stairs in the upper deck. She heard erratic pounding noises from somewhere on the boat. She waited until the water reached the top of her mattress, then got down and waded to the stairs and climbed again to the cockpit. This time when she put her head up, she could see that the ship's dinghy and life raft had been launched and were floating on the ship's port side. She called, is the ship sinking? From behind her, he shouted, yes. He rushed at her again and handed her a line saying, here, hold this.

Starting point is 00:10:53 As he hurried forward, the line slipped through her fingers. He rushed back seconds later and said, the dinghy's gone. The dinghy was drifting away from the side. Without another word, he dove overboard, leaving her on the deck of the sinking yacht, which was now washed with waves. She could see him swimming after the dinghy, but both disappeared in the darkness before he reached it. She remembered the life float that was lashed to the top of the main cabin. It was still just barely above water. She scrambled across the sinking deck, untied the knots that held the float fast, and carried it across the fallen mainsail to the open sea. Then she climbed into it.

Starting point is 00:11:26 In response to investigators' questions, she said that she thought that the screams that had awakened her had been her brother's, and the running and stamping she'd heard had come from the main cabin, where she'd seen the bodies of her brother and mother, and that the object that Harvey had been holding in her cabin doorway was a rifle. But she wasn't sure. She said that during the cruise, she'd heard no arguments between Harvey and anyone else, and she'd never seen him angry until that final chaotic episode. He'd spoken mostly to her father. She hadn't interacted much with him. She didn't know how her mother or brother had become bloody,

Starting point is 00:11:52 and she hadn't seen a weapon near their bodies. As she floated into the darkness, a passing shower made phosphorescent flashes on the surface of the water. There was no sign of Harvey. After the Gulf Lion reported the bluebell sinking the following afternoon, the Coast Guard organized a search that covered 5,000 square miles. One plane flew right over Terry Jo, close enough for her to see the details of its underside, but at just the right angle to prevent its pilot from seeing her. Altogether, she spent four days on the float, burning in the sun and freezing at night, pecked from below by parrotfish and kept company, for a time, by a pod of pilot whales.

Starting point is 00:12:24 The Captain Theo picked her up on Thursday morning. There was no way to confirm her story, but the investigators said they had no reason to doubt it. They said, This child could not possibly be evading anything. We asked her the questions in the roughest sort of way. We planned the questions with the idea of trying to trip her up. She told a straightforward story and did not deviate from it. And as they looked more deeply into Harvey's background, it began to seem dark rather than tragic. When his second wife had died in the bridge accident,

Starting point is 00:12:49 the Florida police had been surprised at how he had managed to climb out of the 1946 Plymouth unscratched and yet been unable to rescue his wife or her mother. Diver Steve DaCosta said, at that speed and short distance, it seemed unlikely that a man could get out of the car before it struck the water unless he was ready to get out of it. Afterward, Harvey collected on his wife's life insurance policy. When Harvey's yacht, the Torbatross, had struck the submerged wreck in Chesapeake Bay, a local yacht club commodore said everybody who has sailed in those waters knows about the Texas and just stays away from her. The wreck is way off course. You have to work at it to find her. But when Harvey collided with the wrecked battleship, he claimed that the Coast Guard hadn't adequately marked it, and a federal court awarded him $14,000 in damages.

Starting point is 00:13:28 And Harvey had told friends in Miami that he'd scuttled his powerboat valiant for the insurance money. It turned out that he'd been married six times. His surviving ex-wives agreed that he was vain and difficult and that his love quickly faded into indifference. His first wife said, I don't think I satisfied him. I don't think any woman could. He was very egotistical. And it turned out that he was deeply in debt and being dunned by creditors. Two months before Bluebell sailed,

Starting point is 00:13:50 he bought a $20,000 double indemnity life insurance policy on his new wife. To this day, no one knows what really happened on the Bluebell that night because everyone who witnessed it is dead. In a 300-page report, the Coast Guard determined that Julian Harvey had killed his wife and all the Duperalts except Terry Joe. It said the manner and order of their deaths was not established, and the fact that he was the sole beneficiary of his wife's insurance policy, and that he was sorely in need of funds, must be considered. The probable cause was listed as the state of mind of Julian A. Harvey at about 11.30 p.m., 12 November, 1961. We sometimes mention that our podcast would not still be here if it weren't for the support that

Starting point is 00:14:43 we get from our listeners, and that really is the case. We often mention our Patreon campaign as that's the backbone of the support that allows us to keep making the show. But there are other ways that you can help support the show if you'd like to. For example, you can make a one-time donation on our website at futilitycloset.com. And we always appreciate help spreading the word about our show. So thank you to everyone who's been recommending the podcast to their friends or giving it a rating on Apple Podcasts and other podcast directories.

Starting point is 00:15:12 If you are interested in joining our Patreon campaign, for a dollar an episode, you'll get access to bonus content, such as outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks into what goes on behind the scenes of the show. You can find more information on that at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or on the Support Us page of our website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support the show in all the ways that you do. We really wouldn't still be here without you. Mike Kane wrote about the feral parakeets in the UK that we discussed in episode 202. Here on the Isle of Man, you might have to Google where it is,

Starting point is 00:15:59 we have a wild wallaby population. Some escaped from the wildlife park about 40 years ago, and they seem to have flourished in the wild. So I will admit that I did look up the Isle of Man, and I learned that it's a 572 square kilometer or 221 square mile island in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland, making it slightly more than three times the size of Washington, D.C., or one-third the size of Hertfordshire, with a population of about 83,000. I also educated myself a bit about wallabies and learned that a wallaby is a small or mid-sized marsupial belonging to the same family as the kangaroo and is usually found in Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand. So not the kind of animal you usually expect to find in the British Isles, though there are thought to be at least 120 of them currently living on the Isle of Man.

Starting point is 00:16:55 The Manx climate is pretty cool compared to parts of Australia, but this particular species of wallaby, the red-necked wallaby, is native to southeast Australia and Tasmania, where the climate is more similar to Britain's. And as is common when a non-native species is transported to a new area, there don't happen to be any wallaby predators on the Isle of Man, so it does appear that their numbers are gradually increasing. Mike very helpfully sent some links to articles about the Manx wallabies, and one was to a 2010 video of a BBC reporter very excitedly spotting one of them for herself. In the BBC video, the reporter asked several residents of the island if they had ever seen a local wallaby, and most of them seemed confused, with some not having any idea what a wallaby was.

Starting point is 00:17:36 And on such a small island, I would have thought that more people might have seen the critters, but the reporter did note that from a distance, the animal could easily be mistaken for a hare. And I guess that would be even more likely to happen if you're not expecting to see an Australian marsupial there. Yeah, I was going to say maybe quite a few of them have seen them and just didn't realize what they were seeing. Just didn't realize what they were seeing, yeah. According to Wikipedia, there are actually several small colonies of wild wallabies in other places too, including England, Scotland, France, and Germany. So maybe some of our other listeners can try to spot a wallaby for themselves.

Starting point is 00:18:12 I wonder if there are populations elsewhere that we don't even know about, you know? That's possible too. I mean, apparently they're pretty shy and they would try to hide from people. So sure, there could be wallabies in our backyard and we don't even know it. Stanislav Stankovic wrote, Dear Sharon, Greg, and Sasha, I just finished listening to episode 202 of your podcast. What caught my attention this time was the lateral thinking puzzle about payment systems rejecting transactions based on someone's name. This reminded me of an article, or rather a series of texts, that were circulating on news websites some time ago. These texts were describing the problems that people with the family name Null often face with web forms and databases of all sorts.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And Stanislav sent a link to a 2015 article in Wired by the technology journalist Christopher Null, and yes, that is his real name, though he says that more than one person has accused me of using a nom de plume to make me seem like a bigger nerd than I am. The problem with the name null is that in many programming languages, the word null is used to denote that the variable has no value. As Null the Journalist says, software programs frequently use Null specifically to ensure that a data field is not empty, so it's often rejected as input on a web form. In other words, if last name equals Null, then, well, try again with a last name that isn't Null. Null says that when he puts his last name into a website or app, one of several things might happen next.

Starting point is 00:19:44 Some of them will actually accept his name as being null. Some will tell him to try again that the last name field isn't allowed to be blank. Others will tell him that null isn't allowed to be used, and some will just crash on him. He says that in his experience, the larger the company that created the program, the more trouble it seems to have with his name. And he gives examples of American Express sending him paper mail addressed only to Mr. and Bank of America's system refusing to accept his email address, which is null at nullmedia.com. He created workarounds for the latter situation, but after a Bank of America system upgrade, his workaround stopped working, which caused him to not receive his email and thus miss a credit card payment.

Starting point is 00:20:30 That must have been mystifying when it first started happening, because how would you figure out what was wrong? I guess if you're in the technology field, you might figure it out right, but if you put your name in and it says, this field isn't allowed to be blank, or you're not allowed to use this word there, you'd be like, wait a minute. In the comments section on Null's article, another person with the same last name wrote, oh, how I know your pain. It's what drove me into software development. When I first signed up for Facebook, this was an issue. It wouldn't accept my last name. Instead, the message, you must enter a last name, would pop up. That would be really frustrating, wouldn't it? In the comments, other people pointed out that

Starting point is 00:21:11 a lot of websites offer no options for several situations, such as people from cultures where the family name goes before the given name, people who have a name that don't include a vowel, like CJ, or people who have multiple family names. Yeah, all of those. Right. There just isn't any room for any kind of variation there. And you don't want to just make up some alternative just to get something that works, because then you're on record with the wrong name.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Yeah, right. And that becomes a problem, as we're about to see, with Jean-Yves wrote also about this situation. He said about the puzzle, I immediately assumed another answer which would work for the puzzle as well. My name has a hyphen in it, and this has been a problem in the past with certain older websites that didn't recognize this character. Unfortunately, removing the hyphen or substituting it for a space doesn't necessarily work either, as the credit card company doesn't always recognize my name without it.

Starting point is 00:22:05 Frustratingly, this had led to my inability to buy from certain online stores despite having a valid credit card. Today, this is rarely a problem anymore, which I suspect is due to the widespread adoption of unified text field standards on the internet. I can't help but wonder if people with exotic names might still be having this problem. In Southern Africa, for example, there are people with clicks in their names, which are spelled in the Latin alphabet, with special characters such as exclamation marks or even stars. I'm led to understand that even more exotic symbols such as bullseyes, pipes, or double pipes are possible. I am curious as to whether these people have trouble purchasing pornography or whatever else, if anything, might be available on the internet.

Starting point is 00:22:48 Anyways, I continue to enjoy every single episode and to soar the word about your podcast whenever the occasion presents itself. Thanks for the countless hours of infotainment. From what I was able to find on this topic, it does seem like a few years ago, having anything other than the plainest of names would cause significant problems for people. Names with hyphens like Jean-Yves or apostrophes such as the name O'Connor, or even just spaces like Von Kemp could stop someone from being able to vote, to make a medical appointment, rent a car, or book a flight, or even take a college exam. And I wasn't able to find anything specifically about difficulties with names that contain some of the more unusual

Starting point is 00:23:30 punctuation marks, so heaven knows what range of problems these people are still facing. But although many computer systems have improved over the last few years, I was able to find a fair amount about more common punctuations such as apostrophes or hyphens still causing some problems for people, and particularly for travel. I found several recent articles, including one from April of this year, about people with apostrophes or hyphens in their names who ran into difficulties with airlines or cruises because the computer systems don't recognize the punctuation and tend to omit it. And this can cause travelers to not be able to get their boarding passes or to have

Starting point is 00:24:12 boarding passes that don't match their passports, which then creates significant hassles for them. And given that there are a fair number of people who have these types of names, I can understand the usually rather aggrieved tone that these frustrated travelers are tending to have. And if there are still several computer systems that can't handle apostrophes or hyphens, I can't imagine how long it might be before they'll be able to accept exclamation points or stars. Yeah, that must be awful. And apparently it's not just names that can cause problems. Stanislav also mentioned that he'd had a similar problem with his address when he lived in Serbia.

Starting point is 00:24:51 He said, If you live in a flat in an apartment block, you write the address in the format of building number slash apartment number. For example, 2 slash 31, meaning apartment number 31 in building number 2. Most software is very picky when it comes to the slash sign. Web forms routinely refuse to accept this as an input. Oh, man. And that would cause just havoc. If you can't even put your address in. Yeah, and because so many people live in flats, you know.

Starting point is 00:25:16 None of them can get mail. So thanks so much to everyone for the interesting emails you send us. You all help to make the show so much richer and more varied. So if you have anything you'd like to say, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to present me with a strange-sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Mike Wolin.

Starting point is 00:25:54 In order to protect the public from accidental fires caused by cigarettes, a government agency asked a cigarette manufacturer to make cigarettes that are more likely to accidentally start a fire. Why? Okay. Does it matter where this took place? Like which government agency this was? No.

Starting point is 00:26:13 No. It's the United States, I'll just say. Okay. Is this something to do with like you want them to burn faster rather than to burn slower? The cigarettes? Yeah. No. Okay. want them to burn faster rather than to burn slower the cigarettes yeah no okay because like cigarette fires i'm trying to think cigarette fires have this tendency to be these slow smolders that tend to be problematic like fire detectors don't pick them up because they're a slow smolder rather than a fast fire so is there anything to do with that i I'm totally on the wrong track here. It's like the first thing I thought of, but.

Starting point is 00:26:47 That's more detail actually than you need. All you need to know is that the new cigarettes were more likely to start a fire. They were more likely to start a fire, but it doesn't matter how quickly. Okay. The new cigarettes weren't, does it matter? Do you mean that the, hmm. cigarettes weren't does it matter do you mean that the hmm the cigarette was more likely to cause something else besides itself to burn yes and this was deliberate yes they wanted the cigarettes to be more likely to cause something other than itself to start to burn exactly does

Starting point is 00:27:22 it matter what it was that they thought they'd be causing to start to burn? No, they're just looking at, you know, accidental fires where you fall asleep in bed and... Right. That's what I was thinking, because the problem tended to be that it starts slowly, it smolders slowly, so people don't realize it and the smoke detectors don't pick it up. So maybe if it makes a fast blaze, I don't know, smoke detectors would pick it up more easily. But, um, so, okay. Does it matter when this happened? Not really, no. Task blaze. I don't know. Smoke detectors would pick it up more easily.

Starting point is 00:27:46 So, okay. Does it matter when this happened? Not really, no. Did this work the way they intended it to? Was it effective? I don't even know where to go with this. It's my understanding that they're still thrashing it out. But yeah, in principle, it does make sense what they're trying to do. Okay.

Starting point is 00:28:05 Does it matter what change they made that made the cigarettes different? Should I work on that? Like, what did they change about the cigarettes? No. Actually, you don't need to know that. I just have to figure out why they thought it was a good idea for cigarettes to be more likely to catch something else on fire. Is that the crux of it?

Starting point is 00:28:22 No. That's not quite saying it right. That's not quite saying it right. That's not quite saying it right. They wanted to have a cigarette that was more likely to start a fire. A fire. A cigarette that was more... So that people would be more careful? By putting them in greater peril?

Starting point is 00:28:38 Yes. This has a 100% chance of starting a fire, so you better be careful with it. No. That was not it. They wanted the cigarettes to have a greater chance of starting a fire. And that was the deliberate aim. I'm like not wrapping my head around this very well. That was the deliberate aim, that the cigarettes would be more likely not an incidental.

Starting point is 00:29:00 Right. Yeah, that was explicitly what they wanted, what they were asking for. And it didn't matter what they thought was going to be catching fire, like bedding or couches or whatever, or did it? No, it doesn't matter. I can give you a hint. Yeah, please give me a hint. Let me see if this gives too much away. Does this have anything to do with that people weren't putting these out, putting their cigarettes out?

Starting point is 00:29:23 Does it have anything to do with how or why or when people put their cigarettes out? They asked this manufacturer to make cigarettes that are more likely to accidentally start a fire, not with the idea that the public in general would be using them. Oh, these are specific cigarettes? Yes. These are specific cigarettes? Yes. These are specific cigarettes? Like cigarettes that were used for some specific purpose or a specific type of cigarette?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Yes. Maybe. Are these trick cigarettes or used in the entertainment industry or something? No, no, no. They would be used by the agency itself. Oh, in testing? As opposed to the public. In testing?

Starting point is 00:30:07 Yes. So that when, oh, so that when you're testing, I don't know, bedding for whether it's going to be flammable or not, you wanted cigarettes that would be even more flammable to better test the other products? Or is it to better test the cigarettes? I'm not sure quite what you're asking like if you if you would have to test a bedding or something to see how flammable it is or it isn't you maybe would want to test it with very flammable cigarettes yes that's right make it the most flammable yeah you're on the right track conditions possible so this was just to help what i'm trying to understand was is was just to help. What I'm trying to understand was this to help design other products to be less flammable.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Yes. Their goal was to minimize accidental fires. So if you have like super flammable cigarettes, then you could test it with like sofas or bedding or whatever. Right. To see if a cigarette would. Would potentially. Is there more? There is more.

Starting point is 00:31:03 There's more because that that would explain why they would want some cigarettes around just to use in testing to see which kinds would that's a cameo by sasha if you're running with that sound who's trying to scent mark the microphone she's rubbing her cheeks on everything on the desk um so you'd want if you if you were the consumer product safety commission yeah you'd want some cigarettes around to just try testing mattress pads and things to see which ones would ignite. So that makes sense. But why would they deliberately ask a manufacturer to make a cigarette that was more likely to do that? Well, so it would be better for the testing conditions, right? You want the most flammable

Starting point is 00:31:38 cigarette you could imagine to test your mattress pads or your sheets or whatever with. Yes. Yes. You're nearly there. Should I just give it to you? Yeah, why don't you just give it to me? I'm not getting anywhere with this one. Mike says, I overheard this one from some coworkers,

Starting point is 00:31:53 one of whom used to work in mattress testing. The Consumer Product Safety Commission uses actual cigarettes to test the flame resistance of mattresses and mattress pads. In particular, the CPSC uses unfiltered Paul Mauls, which were considered the most dangerous cigarettes for accidental fires. When Paul Maul stopped manufacturing the unfiltered cigarettes in 2008, CPSC needed a new cigarette which held a similar level of danger. Otherwise, if the CPSC used the next most dangerous cigarette, mattresses that would ordinarily fail when tested with the

Starting point is 00:32:19 Paul Maul unfiltered would start to pass testing, leading to less safe mattresses entering the market and no net change in the danger. To maintain the same testing rigor, the CPSC now has special cigarettes made, which are actually more dangerous than any cigarette available in the U.S. market. So they just wanted to maintain the testing standard, and the cigarette they had been using just stopped being manufactured. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:32:40 So they had to have some sort of fake ones made at the same level. And surprisingly, Sasha rubbing her face on everything in sight, like didn't manage to help me somehow. I think she's helping. Anyway, thank you, Mike. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported primarily by our amazing listeners. Thank you. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 concise curiosities. Check out the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered.

Starting point is 00:33:34 If you have any questions or comments for Greg or Sharon or Sasha the show mascot, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All the superb music that you hear in our shows was written and performed by Greg's talented brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 207-The Bluebelle's Last Voyage

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