Futility Closet - 269-The Sack of Baltimore

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 divisible pants to a rolling airliner. This is episode 269. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. One night in 1631, pirates from the Barbary Coast stole ashore at the little Irish village of Baltimore and abducted 107 people to a life of slavery in Algiers, a rare instance of African raiders seizing white

Starting point is 00:00:40 slaves from the British Isles. In today's show, we'll describe the sack of Baltimore and the new life that awaited the captives in North Africa. We'll also save the Tower of London and puzzle over a controversial number. Just after sunset on June 19, 1631, two ships were spotted sailing past the port of Castlehaven in West Cork, Ireland. They did nothing to arouse suspicion, and their construction was Dutch, so no one thought much about them. At about 10 p.m., they anchored outside the little port of Baltimore, and presently a

Starting point is 00:01:16 boat set out for the shore, its oars muffled with oakum to prevent splashes. The boat was carrying an odd company. The leader was a Dutchman who had originally been known as Jan Janszoon. In 1618, he'd been captured by Algerines in the Canary Islands and taken to Algiers, where he had converted to Islam and, as Murat Rais, rose to become one of the most experienced pirate chieftains on the Barbary coast. With him were 10 of his own crewmen and Edward Follett, the master of a 60-ton merchantman that the raiders had seized on their way to Britain. The boat landed on a shingle beach near the lower part of the town, 26 thatched cottages about two kilometers from the main village of Baltimore.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Possibly under threat of torture, Edward Follett led them to shore, described the layout of the area, and explained where they might encounter resistance in the coming attack. After two hours, they all returned just as quietly to the ship. At about 2 a.m., Murat gave a short speech to his men, and 230 musketeers climbed into the ship's boats and set out for shore, guided by John Hackett, another captured British fishing captain. Once there, Murat's men made their way into the outlying village, and with a sudden roar stormed the sleeping cottages, setting fire to the thatch. The people emerged to see a stunning sight. Barbary pirates carrying muskets and iron bars accompanied by Turkish janissaries wearing flowing robes and cowls

Starting point is 00:02:35 and wielding curved scimitars. As the residents poured out of their burning houses, the marauders threatened them but didn't attack. Each villager had a few seconds to decide whether to fight, flee, or surrender. Only two of them, Tim Curlew and John Davis, opted to fight, and they were cut down immediately in front of their families. A few people set out to run to the main village of Baltimore to summon help, but there were nine musketeers for each house, and the rest of the villagers quickly decided to surrender. That was the right choice. Murat Rai's goal was not to kill his victims, but to convey them back to Algiers, where they'd be sold as slaves. The attackers herded them from the burning village to the quayside and into the boats, where they were held under guard. Then he turned to sights on the main town of Baltimore, which had been strangely silent

Starting point is 00:03:18 through this early attack. To be safe, he assigned 60 marksmen to a hillside overlooking the road, so that if he had to retreat, he would have some protection. Then he set out with an attack squad of 140 janissaries to the main town, led again by John Hackett. The janissaries fanned out to surround the houses and were just beginning to attack when a shot rang out. A villager named William Harris had fired a musket to defend himself, waking the village, and a drum began to sound in the upper part of the town. In the end, that was enough to save Baltimore proper. Murat Reis had been unnerved by the silence, and at the sound of gunshots and martial drums, he decided to retreat. In fact, the nearest garrison was more than 80 kilometers away. Murat took 10 captives

Starting point is 00:04:00 with him, withdrew down the road, collected his forces, and made his way back to the boats. Ten captives with him withdrew down the road, collected his forces, and made his way back to the boats. This was still a great victory. He had taken 23 men, 34 women, 12 boys, and 38 girls. Together, they'd fetched 2,500 pounds on the slave market, more than 230,000 pounds in today's terms. As the ships fled with their captives, the mayor of Baltimore, Joseph Carter, sent out a plea explaining what had happened and hoping that the pirates could be intercepted before they got away. Unfortunately, the two naval officers responsible for protecting Baltimore were at war with each other, and the local naval patrol ship couldn't pursue the pirates because it had no supplies. A corrupt admiral had pocketed

Starting point is 00:04:38 the funds. Murat had set off on a Monday, and the pursuit wasn't organized until Friday. It never got sight of them. The sack of Baltimore is unique in Irish history. Europeans and North Africans commonly raided one another's ships at sea, pressing each other's crews into servitude. And certainly Europeans landed regularly in Africa to abduct Africans into slavery. But this is the only recorded instance in which North African slavers came ashore in Ireland, pressing surprised Europeans into their own nightmare of fear and servitude far from home. Aboard the ships, the captives were held in filthy, wet conditions for 38 days as Marat made his way southward through the Bay of Biscay and down the coasts of Spain and Portugal. As the days lengthened into weeks, relations warmed a bit

Starting point is 00:05:21 between the captives and their captors, but the conditions were still miserable. At Gibraltar, the two ships turned east and followed the North African coast, and as they approached Algiers, the male captives were taken below and clapped in irons. They arrived on July 28, 1631, and auditors immediately came aboard to evaluate the slaves. In the 1630s, Algiers was a polyglot city with a population of about 100,000, and its main income came from the slave trade. Murat's expedition had been funded by the state, by Murat himself, by wealthy merchants, and by syndicates of ordinary citizens. If the slaves he brought back included rich people, they could be ransomed, and those with skills could be sold, and fair women were prized as

Starting point is 00:06:00 concubines. The English consul here was James Frizzell, a deeply unhappy man. Algiers was constantly waylaying British ships, but England refused to negotiate ransoms, reasoning that this would only encourage more abductions. So Frizzell could do nothing for these new captives, but he would have made his way to the ship, made himself known to them, tallied their numbers, and promised to notify London. After that, he could only follow Murat to the palace of the Pasha while the slaves were marched on a triumphal tour of the city. Pasha Hussein examined the captives while the consul tried to argue that they'd been captured unlawfully. Technically, that was true. The raid on Baltimore had violated a peace agreement with the emperor of Turkey, but the Pasha simply overruled him.

Starting point is 00:06:39 Algiers was the western arm of the Ottoman Empire, but far enough from Constantinople that it could set its own rules, and it refused to give up the slave trade, which was making it rich. The captives were declared slaves, and the pasha set about choosing the most desirable women. We don't know precisely how it fell out on this occasion, but normally he would have taken one in eight of the women for his own harem, sent several as tribute to the sultan in Constantinople, and possibly sent two or three to the harem of a counterpart in Tunis or Tripoli in order to return a favor. The remaining slaves were sent for auction. A French priest who witnessed this wrote, quote, it was a pitiful sight to see them put up for sale, for then wives were taken from husbands and children from their fathers. Then, I declare, they sold on the one

Starting point is 00:07:19 hand the husbands, on the other the wives, ripping their daughters from their arms, leaving them no hope of ever seeing each other again. There was not a single Christian who was not weeping and who was not full of sadness at the sight of so many honest maidens and so many good women abandoned to the brutality of these barbarians. The women who fetched the highest prices were young virgins, skilled workers, and the exceptionally beautiful. A male slave might simply be worked to death, but an enlightened owner might instead set him up in a trade and take a share of his income. In that case, a slave might even advance in society, and there are cases of Irish slaves who rose to surprising heights. In his book The Stolen Village, Des Eakin looks at the possible fates that might befall each slave.

Starting point is 00:07:58 The worst was to become a galley slave. These men were shaven and chained to a bench, fed lumps of bread soaked in wine, and lashed continually with whips, working for 10 to 20 hours at a stretch. If a galley slave fell on his oar, he was flogged, and if the flogging didn't rouse him, then he was thrown into the sea. There was almost no escape from this. Traditionally, the owner of each slave received a share of any prize that the ship took. He might return a portion of it to the slave for religious reasons, and on rare occasions a slave might save enough money to pay for another slave to take his place. But otherwise, they had only misery to look forward to. The sailing season was relatively short, and for six or eight months a year the galley slaves were put to general work,

Starting point is 00:08:38 but many of them were so wracked with pain by that point that they couldn't work at all and were thrown in prison to starve. A luckier slave might be taken to the bagno, which was essentially a giant purpose-built prison. The largest state jail was the Grand Bagno, which held 2,000 slaves. An incoming slave was shorn of his hair and beard and given a blanket and clothes, and his right leg was fitted with a metal ring and a heavy chain, which might be lightened in return for good behavior. The prisoners slept in hammocks and were fed starvation diets. At 3 a.m., they were put to work at sea, on farms, and in quarries. But here again, a merciful master might teach a slave a trade and take part of his income. The women who'd been seized in Baltimore were destined for the harems. The younger and more attractive of them would become concubines, and the older became

Starting point is 00:09:23 domestic servants. Regional pashas were expected to replenish the harem of the sultan in Constantinople, so about half a dozen of the women would have gone there. A newcomer would probably start as an odalisk, or chamberwoman, then advance to maidservant, then to the royal bedchamber. Those who won the sultan's favor would be given their own rooms, maidservants, and beauticians. Most of the female captives who remained in Algiers probably started their new existence as servant companions to wealthy women, spinning and weaving and not burdened with heavy work. After a few months or years, a slave might be picked out as a potential

Starting point is 00:09:53 bride if she were willing to change religions. Slaves were allowed to marry one another, but any children they had would be slaves. The 50 children who'd been abducted would have come to different fates. The boys would have been auctioned to new owners with the promise that they'd bring a ransom, then taken to their new homes. Some would have become page boys or spear carriers. If they converted to Islam, they would have been prized as servants and accepted almost as members of the family. The girls might be put to work as maidservants or bought by investors to be sold later.

Starting point is 00:10:21 Here again, their future was uncertain, but by no means necessarily bad. One girl whose Islamic name was Naqsh-e-Dil had been born in France to be sold later. Here again, their future was uncertain, but by no means necessarily bad. One girl whose Islamic name was Naqshidil had been born in France and captured at sea by Barbary corsairs, but the city governor was struck by her beauty and sent her as his regular tribute to the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid I, who took her as his wife. During her son's reign, she held the station of Empress Queen Mother, the most powerful woman in the empire, for 21 years. At the end of her life, she was laid to rest in an opulent mausoleum. As the captives were discovering their fates, little was being accomplished back in Britain. An investigation condemned Francis Hook, the naval commander whose lack of provisions had prevented him from pursuing the attackers,

Starting point is 00:10:57 but he seems to have escaped with an admonition. The deeply corrupt Sir Thomas Button, Admiral of the King's ships in Ireland, was formally charged with negligence in failing to prevent the attack, but he died in 1634 while still preparing his defense. Ultimately, the authorities needed a scapegoat, and they found one in John Hackett, the fishing boat skipper who had been forced to guide Murat Rais to Baltimore. He was hanged on a cliff overlooking the channel through which he'd guided the attacking ships. And the Algerian slave trade continued to grow. In December 1631, James Frizzell reported that the city now held 384 English captives in what he called miserable thralldom. By the following year,

Starting point is 00:11:35 another hundred slaves had arrived. In that year, the slaves sent a petition home saying, we are lying in most miserable slavery that by our barbarous usage we are ready to famish for want of bread. But no help was forthcoming, and as the 1630s passed away, the prospect of civil war began to arise in England, so there was little hope for a change. As the years went on, the Algerian captives began to reconcile themselves to slavery. One slave wrote, we were so habituated to bondage that we almost forgot liberty and grew stupid and senseless of our slavery. So it was a great surprise when, in 1646, an English ship, the Charles, finally appeared in the bay to redeem the English slaves. The resolution had been passed in 1640, but the war had delayed its effect. The orders of the English envoy, Edmund Casson, were to organize the captives' release and

Starting point is 00:12:20 to negotiate a permanent peace. Slave John Foss wrote, At first our hearts were joy. We imagined ourselves already free men. Our chains were falling off and our taskmasters no longer at liberty to torture us. In imagination we were already traversing the ocean, hailing our native shore, embracing our children and our wives. But their joy was short-lived. The Pasha said he couldn't release the slaves because they didn't belong to him. They'd been purchased and their present owners would have to be compensated for giving them up. Kassan eventually agreed to pay for them, but he couldn't afford to redeem all the slaves. He went home with 264 people, only two of whom, Joan Broadbrook and Ellen Hawkins, had come from Baltimore. Of the

Starting point is 00:12:58 other Baltimore captives, we know of only one who escaped, an unnamed woman whose family had ransomed her a few years after the raid. The rest of them vanished from history. They probably hadn't all died in the 15 years before Edmund Casson arrived. 50 of them had been children when they were captured, and most of the adults had been married couples. And, though its economy was built on human trafficking, Algiers was a highly civilized city and an exceptionally healthy place to live, with a post-infancy life expectancy of about 60. So the consensus among historians is that many of the Baltimore captives simply chose to continue in their new lives and renounce any hope of returning to Europe. That may have been just as well. The raid of the Corsairs had been a crushing blow for the village of Baltimore. Most of the residents who hadn't been abducted moved inland to start a new colony

Starting point is 00:13:43 at Skibbereen, fearing another attack. In 1745, historian Charles Smith wrote, Baltimore never recovered itself. It is now a poor, decayed fishing town with not one tolerable house in it. The sack of Baltimore was the only recorded instance of a slaving raid by corsairs in Ireland, so in that sense it's a historical curiosity. But arguably it had one enormously far-reaching effect. Charles I feared that the attack might be repeated, so he levied a tax to equip his warships. This so-called ship money was levied in the absence of Parliament, and opponents decried it as taxation without representation. That became an important test of the extent of the king's power,

Starting point is 00:14:20 and the dispute helped to set the nation on the path toward civil war. Arguably then, the sack of Baltimore was an important event in the establishment of democracy in Europe. Des Eakin writes, It would be wrong to overemphasize the role of the Baltimore incident in the great march towards freedom. No doubt this process would have happened anyway. And yet, I like to think that there is a sense in which the flames that leapt high over the thatched roofs of Baltimore on the night of 20 June 1631 sent out a bright spark that helped to light the flaming torch of democracy.

Starting point is 00:15:00 Futility Closet wouldn't still be here without the support of our wonderful listeners. We appreciate all the different ways that many of our listeners help the show, but the backbone of our support really is our Patreon campaign, because that gives us an ongoing source of support so that we can commit to the amount of time that the podcast takes to make. Patreon also gives us a way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like outtakes, extra puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and extra discussions on some of the topics we cover. So, for example, last week we posted a discussion of a lot of extra information that Greg couldn't fit into the story of Ferdinand de Mara, the great imposter. You can learn more about our Patreon

Starting point is 00:15:39 campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the Support Us section of our website for the link. And thanks so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. Jean-Yves wrote about the puzzle in episode 263, and it will include spoilers. Hello! In this week's Lateral Thinking Puzzle, you asked about a lady who celebrated 160 birthdays. Strictly speaking, however, she's celebrated many more than that. In fact, back in 2016, researchers for the British trivia show QI

Starting point is 00:16:15 calculated that she had, in fact, celebrated 669 birthdays. I'm not sure what the count is up to now. They presented this fact at the beginning of episode 111 of their podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish. Now for the explanation, spoiler alert, the Queen does indeed have a state birthday in the UK, but she also does in most, if not all, other Commonwealth countries. Now, since these dates don't always coincide, there are, on average, many more than two days per year where her birthday is celebrated.

Starting point is 00:16:45 In Canada, for example, we have a holiday called Victoria Day. This was originally celebrating Queen Victoria, her birthday or her ascension to the throne, I'm not sure which, but it now officially marks Lizzie II's birthday. I suppose that many people here don't know that since the holiday is still called Victoria Day. Thanks for your excellent podcast. It's one of the finest things the internet has to offer. So, Victoria Day is a Canadian public holiday that originally celebrated Queen Victoria's birthday, on her actual birthday, May 24th, beginning in 1845. Before Victoria's reign, the monarch's birthday was more of a military occasion in Canada,

Starting point is 00:17:23 a day on which local militias would engage in their compulsory annual training, basically by marching around with their weapons, and then go toast the monarch at the local taverns. But celebrations of Victoria Day as a public holiday grew over the years of the 19th century, partly it seems as an excuse to enjoy the return of warmer weather, and the celebrations began to include picnics, parades, sporting events, and fireworks. After Victoria's death in 1901, the Canadian Parliament established Victoria Day as a legal holiday that would be celebrated on May 24th or the 25th if the 24th fell on a Sunday. The birthday of her successor, Edward VII, was then also celebrated on Victoria Day, even though he was born in November, though subsequently

Starting point is 00:18:05 George V and then Edward VIII had the days of their actual birthdays celebrated, probably because they had been happily born in June, and George VI's birthday was still celebrated in June despite his having been born in December. It's apparently much nicer to celebrate holidays in the summer in Canada. Following this pattern, the first birthday of Queen Elizabeth II as sovereign was also celebrated in June 1952, even though she was born in April. Canada also continued to observe Victoria Day, officially moving it that year to May 24th, or the preceding Monday, if the 24th wasn't a Monday already. And after that, Elizabeth's birthday began to be celebrated on Victoria Day. And this seems to follow a pattern that we have in this country too,

Starting point is 00:18:47 of trying to make as many holidays as possible land on a Monday. I find it a bit amusing that we decide that we'll just celebrate people's birthdays on Mondays because we like Monday holidays. I think in the U.S. we tend to keep at least the right month though. That's true, but that's not much of an excuse, you know? It's not much better. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, while some other countries celebrated May 24th as Empire Day after Victoria's death,

Starting point is 00:19:12 Canada continued to honor Queen Victoria, who was seen in Canada as the Mother of Confederation, who had encouraged Canadian unity in self-government. While Victoria Day is still celebrated to some extent in parts of Scotland, it's not a national bank holiday there, making Canada the only country to continue to have a national holiday in honor of Queen Victoria. Though it sounds like to most Canadians the holiday is now seen as more of a nice three-day weekend that marks the start of the summer social season. As for Queen Elizabeth's birthdays, when James Harkin of No Such Thing as a Fish calculated the number to have been 669 in 2016, he actually wasn't even counting places that used to be part

Starting point is 00:19:52 of the Commonwealth and thus used to have celebrations, but didn't still in 2016. So, for example, from what I was able to find, Fiji celebrated the Queen's birthday until 2012, despite abolishing the monarchy in 1987. So even in 2016, the number was likely larger than 669. Also, some countries seem to have more than one Queen's birthday celebration, and I don't know whether that was also accounted for. So for example, in Australia, all the states and territories observe the holiday on the second Monday in June, except Western Australia and Queensland, which both set their own dates. And in Western Australia, that date is set by the governor for each year.

Starting point is 00:20:29 So all in all, I guess we can say that Queen Elizabeth has had quite a large number of birthday celebrations, but it would be rather challenging to calculate exactly what that number is. So it changes from year to year in Western Australia? It possibly can. It's set individually each year. So it could be the same as the previous year or not. Wow. Malcolm Heggie wrote, Dear Sasha and your lesser minions Greg and Sharon,

Starting point is 00:20:52 I am among the horde catching up with your podcast in proper numerical order. Came to episode 195 and your apparent consternation at the existence of foxes in the city of London. While I did not see one while I was there some years ago, I knew about them because of the book Ravenmaster by Christopher Scaife, yeoman, warder, and current, to the best of my knowledge, raven master, at Her Majesty's Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London. He describes in detail his nightly routine of putting the ravens to bed, sometimes not so routine, if he has to climb up to the top of the tower to secure one of them. One of the reasons he takes this to such lengths is because of the foxes in the tower grounds, who are not averse

Starting point is 00:21:29 to eating ravens should the opportunity present itself. Wildlife in general lives closer to the city than one would think. I recently saw a mink trying to cross a busy six-lane highway in the middle of the day in a suburb of Rochester, New York, and the first wild turkey I ever saw was in Battery Park at the southern tip of NYC. Love your podcast, and please give Sasha a treat and chin scritchies. Since episode 195, we've covered several different kinds of animals that can be oddly found in various urban areas, so I'm somewhat less surprised at that idea now, but I was rather surprised to learn that not only are there ravens at the Tower of London, but there is a raven master to care for them. And it does appear that

Starting point is 00:22:10 that raven master is still Christopher Scaife. Scaife, who was appointed to the position in 2011, thinks that he is the only official raven master in the world. And his job is more important than it might sound at first, as legend has it that there must always be at least six ravens living at the Tower of London, or else the tower itself will crumble to dust and a great harm will befall the kingdom. It's very commonly said that Charles II issued that raven decree in the 17th century, but Scaife says that he's poured through all the archives and couldn't find any mention of ravens until the Victorian era, when Gothic revival was the rage and notables such as Charles Dickens started keeping ravens as pets. So he's pretty sure the legend is much more recent than is popularly believed. It makes you wonder who, someone came up with that. Someone came up with that idea. There has to be six ravens at the

Starting point is 00:22:58 Tower of London. And it's still alive. In case anyone is thinking that they might like to become a raven master, Skate's duties include giving tours to visitors, releasing the ravens in the mornings, and I should note that this begins at 5 30 a.m., so take that into consideration for your career planning, watering and feeding the birds, which includes yummy treats such as dog biscuits soaked in blood, and rounding the ravens back up at night, which may involve rather hazardous climbs up onto construction scaffolding or a turret weather vane. But as Malcolm noted, it is important to get the birds back into their enclosures for the night to protect them from foxes, which actually ate two ravens back in 2013. Ravens are rather large, intelligent birds that can live

Starting point is 00:23:41 for 40 or more years. They can be two feet tall with a wingspan of four feet, and Scaife says in his book that Dickens compared their odd waddling hopping motion to a very particular gentleman with exceedingly tight boots on trying to walk fast over loose pebbles. Scaife seems to feel rather fatherly towards all his Corvid charges, but is especially fond of Merlina, who was originally named Merlin, but apparently it's rather tricky to determine the sex of a raven. But despite Scaife's tender care for them, the birds are not docile pets. They have powerful talons and beaks that Scaife says are as good as any axe or razor, and he bears the scars of various nasty bites. The ravens like

Starting point is 00:24:22 to scavenge for food, and apparently like most Brits, they have quite a fondness for potato chips, or crisps, which they'll wash in a puddle if there's a flavoring on them that isn't to their liking. But they might also grab a sandwich from a child, or exhibit a more predatory nature. Scaife was once summoned by the sound of people screaming as one of his ravens had caught a pigeon and was eating it alive right next to a line of people waiting to get into the jewel house at the tower. There were seven ravens for several years at the tower, one more than the legend required for a little extra insurance, until recently when a breeding pair was brought in to see if the birds could be successfully bred there. For many years, the tower's ravens were

Starting point is 00:25:01 bred elsewhere and then brought to London, but I'm happy to report that in May, the Tower welcomed its first raven chicks since 1989. The BBC reported that Scaife said he felt like a proud father. And the Tower of London Twitter account posted, Say hello to our new baby ravens at the Tower of London. These four little chicks are the first to be born here in 30 years. Legend tells us that should the ravens ever leave, the Tower will fall. Now our future is secured. That sounds like a high-pressure job, you know? It sounds like fascinating and colorful, but also it sounds like there's an awful lot of responsibilities he has that he really doesn't control very much. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. And a special thank you to both of our

Starting point is 00:25:46 correspondents for this week as they provided much appreciated pronunciation help. If you have something that you'd like to add to our conversation, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation, and I have to try to work out what is actually going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Mendel Smith. A man dictated a message to a clerk, but on proofreading it, he changed the number 1,000,000, written as a 1 followed by six zeros, to the two words 1,000,000, and accused the clerk of trying to cheat him. Why?

Starting point is 00:26:27 Uh-huh. A one followed by six zeros. Did he put a decimal point in somewhere? No. So it wouldn't really be a million. So would it be like a one followed by six zeros and commas in the places that i would expect to see commas or no commas any punctuation any punctuation no punctuation so just a one followed by six zeros yes was the man mistaken and thought that that number didn't represent a million Yes. That's a clever answer. Yeah, I'm face-based too, you know. Okay, so was the man trying to cheat him? No.

Starting point is 00:27:18 So the clerk was not trying to cheat him. So the clerk was not trying to cheat the man? That's correct. So the man was mistaken. Did cheat the man? That's correct. So the man was mistaken. Did he come from a different culture in which a million is written differently? No. So we could presume that the men are from the same culture. We could presume they're American?

Starting point is 00:27:39 Yes. Is the time period important? Maybe, broadly. Time period might be important. Was this a time period where people didn't know how one million was represented yet? No, but they were using a medium, a communication medium that we don't really use so much anymore. Oh, hmm. Oh, was this Was this telegraph? Yes. Okay. So it was in Morse code? Or does that matter?

Starting point is 00:28:10 That doesn't matter? That bit doesn't matter. So it was a telegraphic message. And it made a difference whether you... Whether you put one followed by six zeros. Because would the six zeros maybe not get transmitted by telegraph? No, that's not it. Okay, so was he looking at the message

Starting point is 00:28:31 before it was actually transmitted by telegraph? So he was proofreading it before it got transmitted? Yes. And he somehow thought the one followed by six zeros, oh, somehow that was going to represent in dots and dashes and it would mean something different. No. He accused the clerk of trying to cheat him. So I guess, do I need to understand what the rest of the message was about? No.

Starting point is 00:29:02 Oh, it would just, no, I was going to say it would cost more to send, it would just no i was gonna say it would cost more to send it would it would cost more to to to do one a one and six zeros than to actually type out one million yes that would cost more apparently that's how it works when sending a telegram each digit was charged as one word by writing two words instead of seven digits he saved paying for five words the telegraph clerk should have known this as many numbers were cheaper when written as words. Mendelad's actually had it been sent with two commas separating the zeros. It would have been nine words.

Starting point is 00:29:33 Oh, my goodness. Oh, I didn't realize that. Thanks, Mendel. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us and is supported entirely by our listeners. If you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or

Starting point is 00:30:02 see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 compendious amusements. 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. If you have any questions or comments for Sasha or us, her lesser minions, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All of the music in our show was written and performed by my phenomenal brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 269-The Sack of Baltimore

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