Futility Closet - 280-Leaving St. Kilda

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 11,000 quirky curiosities from a delusional teapot to Henry Hudson's mermaid. This is episode 280. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. 1930 saw the quiet conclusion of a remarkable era. The tiny population of St. Kilda, an isolated Scottish archipelago, decided to end their thousand-year tenure as the most remote community

Starting point is 00:00:37 in Britain and move to the mainland. In today's show, we'll describe the remarkable life they'd shared on the island and the reasons they chose to leave. We'll also track a stork to Sudan and puzzle over the uses of tea trees. This story has an end, but no beginning. A hundred miles west of the Scottish mainland lie four small islands, the westernmost islands of the Outer Hebrides. Beyond them, to the west, the North Atlantic stretches unbroken to Newfoundland. Together they're known as St. Kilda. They occupy an area only about the size of Heathrow Airport, but their thousand-foot cliffs are the highest in Britain and attract nearly a million seabirds

Starting point is 00:01:20 each year. The largest of them, Hirta, was also once home to the most remote community in Britain, one whose history lasted a thousand years and ended on an otherwise unremarkable August day in 1930. Since the 16th century, the islands had been the domain of Clan Macleod, whose chief sent a steward each summer to collect the rent, which the islanders paid in kind. So, after keeping themselves alive, the St. Kildon's main occupation each year was to produce enough goods to pay the rent. To accomplish this, they had to put every resource on the little island to good use, and that united them into a strong community. They traded with some other islands in the Outer Hebrides, but sea travel was dangerous, so most of their trade was conducted for them by MacLeod or his steward, who gathered

Starting point is 00:02:03 the produce, sold it on the mainland, and then bought for them the goods they needed. As a result, for most of its history, St. Kilda was a self-supporting commonwealth, a republic in which everyone was equal, important property was owned in common, and produce was divided among the families according to their size. Because their common survival was the main concern, important decisions were made communally. In the 17th century, the people owned one boat jointly, and each family was responsible for maintaining one section of it. In the 19th century, almost symbolically, the boat's sail was made of 21 pieces of cloth, each contributed by a family and sewn together. This was not simple communism. The

Starting point is 00:02:40 rules were fairly complex, but the guiding principles were that no islander stood above another and that everyone shared in wealth or want. The system was well adapted to running a small and isolated society. There was almost no crime on the island, so most of its laws concerned dividing property and administering justice in the sharing, and they discussed all these rules closely. The 17th century traveler Martin Martin wrote, there is not a parcel of men in the world more scrupulously nice and punctilious in maintaining their liberties and properties 18th century traveler Martin Martin wrote, Practically, many of the decisions fell to a parliament made up of all the adult men on the island. They met every morning except Sunday outside one of the houses on the island's only street. The parliament's most important function was to decide what work should be done that day and how to go about it.

Starting point is 00:03:27 If there was something urgent to be done, they'd get to it immediately. If not, they might discuss payment of the rent, allocating property, testing fouling ropes, distributing puffin eggs, or whether it was safe for the boat to go out. The discussions themselves could sometimes last all day. It would not be hard for a visitor to guess that seabirds were the center of the islanders' lives. Hirta has the largest colony of fulmers in Britain, and the neighboring island Borere has the largest colony of gannets in the world. John McCulloch, who visited St. Kilda in 1819, wrote, the air is full of feathered animals. The sea is covered with them.

Starting point is 00:04:00 The houses are ornamented by them. The ground is speckled with them like a flowery meadow in May. The town is paved with feathers. The inhabitants look as if they had all been tarred and feathered, for their hair is full of feathers and their clothes are covered with feathers. Everything smells of feathers. From earliest times to the middle of the 18th century, gannets were the islanders' main quarry, food, and export, but gathering them was a difficult and dramatic undertaking. To reach the colony on the adjoining island, the St. Kildans had to take a boat across four miles of open sea, which had to be done in calm weather, and the job had to be done on a moonless night. Two men had to climb the rock faces to the ledges where the gannets roosted, find and kill the sentinel bird that kept watch while the others slept, then knock the rest on the head and throw

Starting point is 00:04:42 them down to the sea below, where the boat picked them up. Precarious as this sounds, in the 17th century, the St. Kildens collected 22,000 gannets this way each year. With time, they switched to hunting fulmers, which was safer. They nested in the cliffs of Hirta, staying there year-round and were easier to catch. And puffins were the major source of fresh food through the summer months. Still, this meant that for nearly nine months of the year, the islanders were preoccupied with killing seabirds, and negotiating the cliffs became such a vital skill that a boy who proposed to marry a girl had to show that he could support a wife by demonstrating his ability as a cragsman. He did this by standing on a precipice known as the Mistress Stone, which projected over a drop of 250 feet. Standing at the lip as on a gangplank, he had to balance on the heel of one foot,

Starting point is 00:05:27 bend forward, grasp the other foot with both hands, and hold that position, looking down at the rocks and surf below him, until his friends decided he'd proven himself. That tradition was eventually discontinued as women began to outnumber men on the island. That sounds really dangerous. And I'm thinking that means you can't get married if you're the least bit clumsy or don't have the amazing sense of balance or something. And who comes up with this? Maybe that's not the most mysterious part. That's the sort of thing that young men do. But once that kind of tradition gets started, I imagine it just goes on forever.

Starting point is 00:06:01 Beyond the birds, the islanders also tended crops and raised livestock, which could be a difficult business on an island of cliffs. In 1937, some visitors to the island discovered the old exercise book of a 12-year-old boy, which describes trying to capture sheep for shearing. It reads, They are very difficult to catch. They run in places that we cannot catch them. We take with us dogs. We cannot put some of them to a place that we can catch them.

Starting point is 00:06:24 If they know that the men are after them, they go into a rocky place and the men tie a rope around their waist and go after them. They catch some of them, some will fall down the cliff. When they were after the sheep, the dogs start fighting and one of them fell down the cliffs and it was a good dog. Last year, five fell down the cliff in the same place and we left two on a rock. We could not get them. The people lived in 25 to 30 dwellings, facing each other across a half mile of street. For hundreds of years, these had been built of stone in a beehive design, with the walls packed with turf to keep out the wind, so that they looked like green hillocks. By the end of the 17th century, they'd switched to black houses of the type found

Starting point is 00:06:58 throughout the Hebrides at that time, and they filled the walls with gravel and peat for insulation. Each house had two rooms, one of which was given to the cow in winter to preserve it from the cold. The village was rebuilt in 1836 and then again in 1860 when visitors put up 16 new houses for the islanders. In addition to houses, the island is covered with more than a thousand ingenious stone storehouses with green turf on top to keep the rain out, but cavities in the walls to let wind through. One observer called them stone-age drying machines. They were immensely useful on such a wet island.

Starting point is 00:07:30 The islanders used them to dry peat, nets, and corn, and to preserve birds, meat, fish, and eggs. Because the islanders paid their rent in kind, and because their laird conducted much of their business for them, St. Kilda could maintain a feudal way of life long after it had died out on the mainland. This often gets exaggerated. For them, St. Kilda could maintain a feudal way of life long after it had died out on the mainland. This often gets exaggerated. The island's early history was written by travelers who tended to romanticize it as an idyllic society cut off from the world. In fact, St. Kilda was always known to the mainlanders, and trade was well established with other parts of Scotland. Still, the island's remoteness had its effects, and modern writers have collected some striking anecdotes.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Charles Maclean writes that the islanders measured time by the seasons and history by the lives of the Macleods and their stewards. Those who visited Macleod came back with tales of having seen windows, looking glasses, and tapestries. They never cast a vote in a local or a general election. They never paid income tax because the inland revenue never bothered to send them forms. Many of the islanders had never seen a pig, a bee, a rabbit, a rat, or even a tree. They saw their first apple in 1875, and Maclean says it caused a great deal of astonishment. They knew little of historical events that didn't concern them directly. When

Starting point is 00:08:36 General John Campbell landed on Hirta with a detachment of troops in 1746 looking for Bonnie Prince Charlie, they told him that they'd never heard of him. In 1815, they knew nothing of Napoleon or recent events in Europe, and they worried that the American War of Independence, which they assumed was still going on, might raise the price of tobacco. Traditionally, the first question they asked of any visitor was, is there any war? On April 3rd, 1901, a ship arrived in Village Bay, and the captain came ashore in a longboat with a company of marines and blue jackets. As the St. Kildens looked on, they raised the standard, lowered it at once to half-mast, and the captain announced that Queen Victoria had died and Edward VII had succeeded her. The company presented arms, the band played God Save the King, and the company

Starting point is 00:09:18 marched the flag down the beach and left the way they had come. Early visitors found the islanders almost excessively hospitable. It was the custom among the residents to shake hands with everyone on the island at least once a day. Theft, drunkenness, and swearing were almost unknown. Disputes were settled easily, and adultery was rare. Only three illegitimate births were ever recorded, the first of them in 1862. Once, on seeing a ship in danger of foundering on the rocks off the coast of Hirta during a storm, the entire community took to the church and prayed together for seven hours. Apparently this worked. The wind changed and the ship anchored in the bay.

Starting point is 00:09:52 One disadvantage of St. Kilda's isolation was that the islanders had little immunity to disease. Until the middle of the 19th century, the arrival of strangers on the island would bring an outbreak of illness, which was called the stranger's cough, or the boat cold. Between 1830 and 1846, this killed six people, and even when there were no fatalities, it could stop work on the island for a week or more. That problem waned as the 19th century advanced and the islanders came increasingly into contact with the outside world. Steamers brought boatloads of tourists every summer who visited points of interest on the island, bought souvenirs, and watched the residents demonstrate their fouling. This brought some income, but with it came condescension as the visitors gawked at the islanders' customs,

Starting point is 00:10:32 ridiculed their traditions, and pitied their way of life. One observer wrote in 1900, So many tourists treat them as if they were wild animals at the zoo. They throw sweets at them, openly mock them, and I have seen them standing at the church door during service, laughing and talking, and staring in as if at an entertainment got up for their amusement. The islanders' life had never been the idyll that visitors sometimes imagined, but the struggle for survival had united them as a community, and for the most part they had been peaceful and contented. As their contact increased with the outside world, though, they could perceive that an easier existence was available, and their way of life seemed less tenable by comparison. At the same time, as their traditional barter and payment in kind were replaced by a money economy, their tastes grew more sophisticated and their needs multiplied. They preferred to buy food and goods rather than produce them themselves, and as modern conveniences found their way onto the island, it became harder to divide them up

Starting point is 00:11:22 communally. What had been a moneyless, classless society was undermined by the materialist values of the mainland, and even as their customs and rituals were being devalued, their dependence on the outside world was increasing. By the end of the 19th century, demand had dropped for the islanders' traditional exports. They reverted to tweed and tourism, but fell back increasingly on charity. The community, which had once been united, was now increasingly fractious and began to shrink. In the 1850s, 42 islanders had departed for Australia, and Hirta's remaining population had hovered thereafter around 70. Young men now regularly left the island as soon as they were old enough. During World War I, the Royal Navy put a detachment on the island, which brought food and regular deliveries of mail, but after the war these were withdrawn again, reinforcing the islanders' sense of isolation,

Starting point is 00:12:08 and young people continued to leave. The winter of 1929 was so hard that several inhabitants died, and the population was reduced to 13 men, 10 women, 8 girls, and 5 boys, and bad weather was keeping food and mail from reaching the island. So on May 10, 1930, those five families sent a petition to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Sir, we the undersigned, the natives of St. Kilda, hereby respectfully pray and petition His Majesty's Government to assist us all to leave the island this year and to find homes and occupation for us on the mainland. For some years the manpower has been decreasing. Now the total population of the island is reduced to 36. Several men out of this number have definitely made up our minds to go away this year to seek employment on the mainland. This will really cause a crisis,

Starting point is 00:12:53 as the present number are hardly sufficient to carry on the necessary work of the place. These men are the mainstay of the island at present, as they tend the sheep, do the weaving, and look after the general welfare of the widows. Should they leave, the conditions of the rest of the community would be such that it would be impossible for us to remain on the island another winter. The reason why assistance is necessary is that for many years St. Kilda has not been self-supporting, and with no facilities to better our position, we are therefore without the means to pay for the costs of removing ourselves and furniture elsewhere. We do not ask to be settled together as a separate community, but in the meantime we would collectively be very grateful of assistance and transference elsewhere, where there would be a better opportunity of securing our livelihood.

Starting point is 00:13:33 The message ended with 20 signatures. Sir Reginald MacLeod of MacLeod, who owned the islands, said, I am sorry to lose a population that has down its generations been tenants of my family for a thousand years, but they themselves have elected to go and I cannot blame them. The life is one of hardship and inconvenience. Even while the government was preparing to move the islanders, another woman died. 21-year-old Mary Gillies came down with appendicitis, but bad weather delayed her removal for two weeks and she died on May 26th. Her son, Norman John Gillies, later said, My mother's death showed the St. Kildens the hopelessness of being on the island if someone took really ill. Everyone knew now it was only a matter of time before they all left,

Starting point is 00:14:12 and as if to make certain, they planted no crops in St. Kilda that year. On August 29th, 1930, the remaining islanders boarded the HMS Harbell to make their way to the mainland. The Scottish office had decided that no cameras or reporters should be present, but one journalist sent by the Times was there almost to the end. He wrote, the loneliest of Britain's island dwellers have resigned their heritage to the ghosts and the seabirds, and the curtain is rung down on haunted homes and the sagas of the centuries. One resident described looking back from the ship and seeing their abandoned home resemble an open grave. Gillies said, the saddest moment was watching several of the women at the rear of the Haribol waving goodbye to the island until it went

Starting point is 00:14:48 out of sight. It was hard for them to leave, but that was the agreement. Everyone had to go. The islanders had left a Bible open in each house, along with a small heap of oats, as was the custom among Gaelic people. There were only 11 inhabited houses remaining on the island, and when their fires went out, St. Kilda was without a fire for the first time in a thousand years. Today, the National Trust for Scotland owns the entire archipelago, which in 1986 became one of the few World Heritage Sites in the world recognized for both its natural and its cultural qualities. Norman John Gillies told The Guardian in 2010, looking back, the evacuation was a blessing in disguise. It gave the younger ones greater opportunities to do something with their lives that would not have been possible on St.

Starting point is 00:15:28 Kilda. But many of them found it difficult. Gilley said, the government had arranged for the men to be given jobs in the forestry commission in Morvern, though there were no trees on St. Kilda and none had worked before for a company or a boss. They were not used to an economy based on money. On the islands, the harvest had been partitioned equally. Old and young and sick were looked after by the able-bodied. Now they had no pensions, no savings, and their pay was not enough. Their resistance to disease was lower than that of the mainlanders. Several of the children died of tuberculosis in the years after the evacuation. Gillies died in 2013, and the last evacuee, Rachel Johnson, died three years later at age 93.

Starting point is 00:16:04 She had been eight years old when she left the island. With her passed away the last immediate memory of what was once the most remote community in Britain. Her fellow resident, Malcolm MacDonald, had told the author Tom Steele, you had peace of mind, quietness, and a way of life I don't find on the mainland. To me, it was peace living in St. Kilda. When the island's population had been at its height in 1698, Martin Martin had written, The inhabitants of St. Kilda are much happier than the generality of mankind, as being almost the only people in the world who feel the sweetness of true liberty, what the condition of the people in the Golden Age is feigned by the poets to be,

Starting point is 00:16:40 that there really is, I mean in innocency and simplicity, purity, mutual love, and cordial friendship, free from solic innocency and simplicity, purity, mutual love and cordial friendship, free from solicitous cares and anxious covetousness, from envy, deceit and dissimulation, from ambition and pride and the consequences that attend them. Our show really relies on the support of our listeners because we just wouldn't be able to commit to the amount of time that the show takes to make if it weren't for the donations and pledges we get. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious,

Starting point is 00:17:24 you can find a donate button in the supporters section of the website at futilitycloset.com. Or if you'd like to support us in a more ongoing way, you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get access to outtakes, extra information on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show. You can check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link at our website. And thanks again to everyone who helps support Futility Closet. We wouldn't still be here without you.

Starting point is 00:18:00 Stephan Goodrow, who sent very helpful pronunciation tips for his name, had a follow-up to the puzzle from episode 272, and it will include a spoiler for the answer. Stefan wrote, The solution to the lateral thinking puzzle in your latest episode, with the eagle that unexpectedly flew into Iran and racked up exorbitant text messaging charges, reminded me of a story from last year. A Polish charity put a tracker on a stork and lost contact with it in Sudan. At some point, stork and tracker became separated

Starting point is 00:18:29 I'm hoping it wasn't a fatal outcome for the bird and some resourceful person found a SIM card inside the tracker and used it in their own phone. They apparently used it like there was no tomorrow racking up charges that equated to thousands of dollars for the charity. Thanks as always for your work. Similarly, Tom Race, who thought that I could probably handle the pronunciation of the stork. And both Stefan and Tom helpfully included a link to a 2018 BBC story on this. A Polish environmental group had placed a

Starting point is 00:19:19 GPS tracker on a white stork in April 2017 in order to track the bird's migratory habits between Europe and Africa. The stork traveled about 3,700 miles or 6,000 kilometers before the bird stopped moving in Sudan on February 10, 2018. But the register reported that things then got a bit weird as the GPS signal suddenly started moving again on April 26th and showed a circuitous 25-kilometer or 16-mile route before going dead for good. And then in June, the charity received a bill for 20 hours worth of phone calls made from the Stork SIM card, costing over 10,000 Polish zloty or about $2,700. The register supposed that someone found the tracking device, brought it to someone else who had either more knowledge or tools to work on it, and then made use of the SIM card. The BBC article didn't mention the fate of the stork, but AP quoted the head of the environmental organization as saying the stork probably isn't alive.

Starting point is 00:20:19 That's kind of an interesting mystery, though, because it sounds like about two months went by. Yeah. My first thought when you were telling the story is that someone had just hunted the stork and preparing it discovered the SIM card. That's a nice, simple explanation. Right, but it seems like they found the tracker sometime after the stork probably died. That seems hugely unlikely. I guess we'll never know. I guess we'll never know.

Starting point is 00:20:42 Or maybe they found the tracker. I mean, if something ate the stork and the tracker got left behind. Yeah, who knows? Or maybe they found the decomposing stork. But it just seems like it's a random decomposing stork. Like, why would you think to, I don't know. I probably don't want to know the answer. A few of our listeners sent us a rather unusual Chief Mouser update from the UK from last month, and not on Larry, the Downing Street Chief Mouser that we often report on, but on Palmerston, the Chief Mouser of the Foreign Office, who we've mentioned a few times before, such as in episode 216, as a possible rival to Larry. It seems that Palmerston had been mysteriously absent from

Starting point is 00:21:21 the Foreign Office for about six months, causing a certain amount of speculation as to what was going on with him, but he was back on the job as of early December. And apparently, being a chief mouser is a much more stressful occupation than you might think, and Palmerston had needed an extended break to recuperate. It seems that the civil servants had been continually picking him up and also overfeeding him and giving him lots of treats. As a result, Palmerston had become overweight and had licked all the hair off his front legs, a sign of feline stress. Simon MacDonald is a senior civil servant who is responsible for overseeing Palmerston's well-being, and the mouser spent his time off recuperating at the home of MacDonald's private secretary.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Before the moggy returned to his official mousing duties, McDonald issued new Palmerston protocols, and the staff were all strictly warned about the new rules, including that only the cat's official carers were to feed him and that the staff aren't to wake the mouser if he's sleeping or touch him unless he approaches them first. He has full choice and control of who he deigns to greet or imperiously ignores. A Palmerston HQ has been established in which he is not to be disturbed at all. McDonald said, Palmerston is a friendly outgoing cat, but we all need our privacy. Like Greta Garbo, sometimes he wants to be alone. And there is a new Palmerston zone comprising a smaller territory than he once had, in which they all intend to try to keep him, as it was thought that he was trying to manage too large of a territory for his advancing age of six. There are even stickers on the doors demarcating the new limits of the zone, which say, you are entering slash leaving the Palmerston zone, and Larry might be relieved to learn that

Starting point is 00:23:00 Palmerston's new territory no longer includes Downing Street. But while Larry might be getting a reprieve, the rodents are not, as according to an article by the Press Association, Palmerston's official Twitter account tweeted, mice watch out, I'm coming back. He has his own Twitter account. He has his own Twitter account. He has his own zone now and his own HQ. So thank you to the listeners who sent in that story and the helpful links and articles on it. And on the topic of cats, Samy Khoivu, who has done his best to help me with his name and any deficiencies in pronunciation are definitely on my end, sent an alternative solution to the lateral

Starting point is 00:23:39 thinking puzzle from episode 268. And this won't actually include a spoiler for the original answer. The puzzle was, a person is watching a thriller on TV. Every time there's a dimly lit scene, the person looks at their cat. Why? And Samy's perfectly good answer was, the cat sleeps behind the person on the back of a sofa or chair, as felines often do, and the darkened screen reflects the image of the cat. That's a perfectly good answer. And Michael Barnum has been working his way through our archives, and he sent an update to an older episode. In episode 185, Victoria wrote in describing how mudlarking along the Thames for her archaeology program resulted in her having to transport boxes of animal bones on the London Underground. She noted that this experience was awkward.

Starting point is 00:24:31 I sympathize as I had a similar situation as a medical student in Philadelphia. At Temple University School of Medicine, all of the first-year students were issued a box containing an almost complete human skeleton, including a skull, for our anatomy class. These were real bones prepared from cadavers donated to the medical school for study and research. This was the late 90s, and we didn't have the 3D printed and computer-based models that are available now. The fine details that could only be studied on real bones included things like tendon attachments and nerve pathways. The box itself was about 10 inches by 10 inches by 30 inches with a handle. There were cotton straps with friction buckles to hold the lid to the bottom part for transport.

Starting point is 00:25:14 I carried this box to and from home on the subway throughout my first semester. The surreal nature of walking around in public with something like this didn't escape me, nor did the realization of what could happen should the contents fall out. But this was crowded out by the many other surreal situations encountered in gross anatomy, embryology, and medicine in general. It gradually seemed more normal and less likely to cause any problems. Right up until the day, I had to run up and down several flights of stairs to transfer from the Broad Street line to the Market Street line and missed my train. The straps had shaken loose as I ran. They had metal ends, which fortunately caught at the buckles, keeping everything from spilling onto the platform. and missed my train. The straps had shaken loose as I ran. They had metal ends, which fortunately caught at the buckles, keeping everything from spilling onto the platform, but this did let the

Starting point is 00:25:49 box hang open so that the contents were clearly visible. I didn't notice immediately as I was catching my breath from the run, but then I felt the swinging lower part of the box bumping my leg. I quickly bent down, secured the lid, and looked around to see if anyone noticed. This being Philadelphia at rush hour, there were lots of people on the platform, but almost all were occupied with newspapers or conversation. I was greatly relieved to see that almost no one was paying any attention to me, except for one elderly lady whose stare was locked on me and the box. We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time, and I was just about to try to blurt out an explanation when she rolled her eyes and walked to the other end of the platform,

Starting point is 00:26:26 presumably to get away from the guy carrying a skeleton in a box. Like I said, Philadelphia. I suppose I'll never know what she thought was going on, but I definitely echo Victoria's statement that carrying bones on the subway is awkward. Maybe she'd seen that before. Maybe that happens every day. In his email, Michael also said,

Starting point is 00:26:47 I'd like to make an observation. I love the lateral thinking puzzles, but it seems like a strange segment for a podcast based on research. Your features are meticulously sourced, and you frequently point it out when events are just unknown or information is contradictory or possibly unreliable. Conversely, lateral thinking results in a fill-in-the-blank approach. For example, a famous aviator in the 1930s

Starting point is 00:27:10 was flying over the largest expanse of open ocean on Earth and disappeared. Must be aliens. I don't know why the puzzles work so well in the show, but they do. Thanks for a great show. I never thought about that. Maybe it works just because they're so different from the rest of it. They complement each other. Yeah. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your comments, feedback, and updates. So if you have anything that you'd like to add,

Starting point is 00:27:35 please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an interesting sounding situation, and he has to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Miriam Futrell with a bit of a rewording by me. Why did pilots in World War I find tea trays to be useful? To serve tea? No.

Starting point is 00:28:10 I bet they did that. Well, I should take it back. Probably some of them did, yes. Were they used in combat somehow? Yes. Sure. But I mean, that's the use you're thinking of, is somehow in the fighting itself, they used tea trays somehow. Yeah, that's a yes.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Okay. thinking of is somehow in the fighting itself they use tea trays somehow yeah that's a yes um okay were they used defensively would you say in this yeah you seem very deliberate about that um as shields i would teach ray would make a good shield i'll say sort of yeah really like to fend off some enemy attack? To ward off? Let's say yes. Bullets? Yes. They used T-trays to ward off bullets in World War I.

Starting point is 00:28:54 Yes. Is that accurate? Yes. Like the infantry, like in the trenches? No, pilots. Oh, pilots, sorry. Pilots, specifically pilots. I don't know why that makes a difference.

Starting point is 00:29:02 Pilots used T-trays. That's even worse. Pilots were using the T Specifically pilots. I don't know why that makes a difference. Pilots use tea trays. That's even worse. Pilots were using the tea trays. Okay. Well, back then they were flying like biplanes. I mean, that was relatively early days for aviation. That's correct. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:16 So how were they using the tea trays? So you've got a dogfight or something between two pilots, let's say. One of them has a tea tray. For some reason. I'm already having trouble. And the other just surrenders because he's just outclassed. No, but I would say your premise is wrong. Okay, that helps right there. So this wouldn't happen in that situation where there were two pilots, two planes. Correct. Okay. Would they happen in a case where one plane alone was attacking, say, people on the ground? No.

Starting point is 00:29:50 Well, that's just the wrong premise, too. Multiple planes. No, no. No, pilots use these without planes at all. Right. No, no, no, no, no, sorry. Yes, no. They were in their planes.

Starting point is 00:30:02 Pilots are in the planes, but more than two of them? No, no. I've lost. They were in their planes. Pilots are in the planes. But more than two of them? No. No. I've lost the thread here. Me too. Suppose you had two pilots, one from each side. Right? Both of them in the air. You're just off on your premise to begin with.

Starting point is 00:30:17 All right. Suppose I'm one pilot and have a tea tray and want to use it for whatever purpose you have in mind here. This is a better line. Do I take the tray up in the plane with me? Yes, you do. So let's say I do that and the opportunity comes for me to use it. Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:33 What would you do with the tea tray? That means I'd be warding off bullets from some source. Yes. With my tray. With your tea tray. Yes. Do I affix the tray to the plane somehow? No, not exactly.

Starting point is 00:30:44 No. Do I sit on it? Yes, you do. Really? Yes, you do. And why do you do that? To keep people, like anti-aircraft fire, from coming up from below?

Starting point is 00:30:52 That's exactly right. On a tea tray? Yes. Miriam says, in the very early days before synchronization of machine guns with propellers, the only threat to pilots came from the ground. So early injuries to pilots

Starting point is 00:31:04 were in uncomfortable regions of their anatomy. The short-term workaround included with propellers, the only threat to pilots came from the ground. So early injuries to pilots were in uncomfortable regions of their anatomy. The short-term workaround included taking metal trays as protection before the seats were reinforced with steel. And Miriam learned this fact while reading The Reich Marshal, a biography of Hermann Goering by Leonard Mosley. And Mosley mentions that in the early days of the war, most pilots were engaged in reconnaissance work. And he says, So someone thought of sitting on a tea tray. So he sat on tea trays.

Starting point is 00:31:46 I can't believe that worked. So thanks to Miriam for that rather interesting puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our awesome listeners. If you'd like to contribute to our celebration of the quirky and the curious, please check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:16 While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 11,000 compendious amusements. Check out the Futility Closet store where we now have bibs, tote bags, and socks, but unfortunately no tea trays. Thank you. closet.com. Our music was all written and performed by the truly inspiring Doug Ross. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 280-Leaving St. Kilda

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.