Futility Closet - 283-The Hermit of Suwarrow

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 London's first coffee to Mark Twain's war prayer. This is episode 283. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1952, New Zealander Tom Neill set out to establish a solitary life for himself on a remote island in the South Pacific. In all, he would spend 17 years there, building a fulfilling life, fending entirely for himself. In today's show, we'll describe

Starting point is 00:00:43 Neill's adventures on the island and his impressions of an isolated existence. We'll also revisit Scunthorpe and puzzle over a boat's odd behavior. Tom Neil was born in New Zealand in 1902. He had a fairly ordinary childhood, but he said, it always seemed absolutely natural that I should go to sea. I cannot remember ever contemplating any other way of life. He spent four years in the New Zealand Navy and another six wandering the islands of the South Pacific, where he eventually settled. He wrote, I chose to live in the Pacific Islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when he made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the

Starting point is 00:01:29 taking. In the islands, Neil fulfilled a promise that he'd made to himself when he'd left the Navy. He learned to look after himself completely, doing his own washing, cooking, and mending, and remaining always equipped to fend for himself. His only luxury was reading, and eventually he came across the works of Robert Dean Frisbee, an American who'd settled in the Pacific in the 1920s and wrote travel books about the islands. In 1943, a friend introduced him to Frisbee, and over lunch one day, the writer told him about Suwarrow, a remote atoll in the South Pacific whose lagoon was dotted with tiny islets. The nearest inhabited island was 200 miles away. Neal wrote

Starting point is 00:02:05 later, that afternoon Frisbee entranced me, and I can see him now on the veranda, the rum bottle on the big table between us, leaning forward with that blazing characteristic earnestness, saying to me, Tom Neal, Saguaro is the most beautiful place on earth, and no man has really lived until he has lived there. Normally the atoll was uninhabited, but during the war, a few men had been stationed there as coast watchers, spotting enemy aircraft and ships, and Frisbee had spent a year with them. During his years of wandering, Neil had dreamed of subsisting on his own, where his life would belong to himself and he wouldn't have to work for other people. He wanted to see the atoll, but the opportunity didn't come until 1945,

Starting point is 00:02:43 when his friend Andy Thompson invited him to come along for a visit as he delivered some stores to the men stationed there. They approached it at dawn, and Neil saw for the first time the surf thundering on the reef, and beyond it, palm trees silhouetted against the blue sky, marking the islets within the lagoon. They landed on Anchorage, the largest islet, and Neil met the five men who lived there and saw the shack and garden they had built. On the second day, he and Andy took a, the largest islet, and Neil met the five men who lived there and saw the shack and garden they had built. On the second day, he and Andy took a boat to another islet and had a lunch of crabs and fish. Neil said, Andy, now I know this is the place I've been looking for all this time. But Suwara was far from the normal trade routes, and it would be seven years before he could find a vessel to take him back to it.

Starting point is 00:03:22 By that time, Neil was 50 years old, but he was still determined to go, and he spent two weeks gathering supplies. He sensed that his friends envied him, and as the departure date approached, several women offered to come with him. One said, You need someone to cook and look after you when you're sick. You won't even have to marry me.

Starting point is 00:03:39 He turned them down. He'd always been a bachelor, and he said, What could be worse than being trapped on an island with someone who got on your nerves, which is maybe a good point. I don't know how well these women knew him. They must have known him somewhat well, but even so, it seems a giant risk to cast yourself away. Yeah, especially if there wouldn't be an easy way to get out of this situation. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Finally, he was ready. They loaded his supplies onto the boat and reached Tsawaro on October 7, 1952. The Coast Watchers had left their water tanks, some chickens, and a boat. Their buildings were overgrown, and most of the topsoil had blown off the garden. In his journal, Neil wrote, haven't had time for a proper look around, but I can see miles of work sticking out. There will be no time for sitting under a tree and watching the reef, not for a long time anyway. In the middle of the first night, he was awakened by the squealing of wild pigs. That would be another problem. Pigs would tend to root up the young

Starting point is 00:04:30 plants that he hoped to grow. The following morning, he walked around the whole island, which was only half a mile long and 300 yards wide. In fact, he could see most of it from the beach. Its highest point was only 15 feet above sea level. He saw no insects or reptiles, nothing more dangerous than coconut crabs and an occasional rat, and at the island's southernmost point, near the lagoon's entrance, he found some topsoil. He set about getting things straight. His experience wandering the Pacific for 30 years had left him uncommonly well-qualified to live on an island. He had served in the engine rooms of a dozen different island vessels, which meant he could handle tools well, and on shore he'd learned a wide variety of skills.

Starting point is 00:05:07 He could spear fish, thatch a roof, and start a fire. He called himself the handyman incarnate. The first thing to do was to clean up the place. He scrubbed the floor of the shack, washed its walls, cut away the undergrowth, and sorted out his supplies. After work, he would catch some fish, cook them, and sit on the beach drinking tea and watching the sun go down. The weather was nearly perfect, and the first month flew by. He was so busy that he sometimes forgot his resolution to shave twice a week and to boil his bed linen.

Starting point is 00:05:35 In November, he braced the shack with guy ropes, but as it happened, there were no bad storms during the first year. That was just as well, because for the first few months, he began to work harder than he'd ever done in his life. It seems that what he enjoyed about living on the island was not idleness, but activity, the satisfaction of solving problems. He wrote that he never resented the work, quote, because everything that cropped up seemed to come as a challenge, and every time I managed to find the answer, it was a new step forward that seemed tremendously worthwhile. Altogether, he wrote, I was entirely content. Nothing could seem more perfect.

Starting point is 00:06:06 He subsisted on fish, breadfruit, coconut, and the fruit of the pawpaw tree, and in December, he was able to make his first omelet, thanks to some migrating terns that had begun to nest on the island. By early January, he'd spent three months in backbreaking work, but he could begin to see the results of his efforts.

Starting point is 00:06:22 He kept his shack clean, he was working toward taming the chickens, and he had gathered enough firewood to last six months. His one indulgence was to read an interesting book in bed last thing at night. His favorite authors included Joseph Conrad, C.S. Forrester, Somerset Maugham, Darwin, and Dickens. During the rainy season, he attended to indoor tasks, counting himself luckier than city dwellers who had to make their way through rain to reach their offices. After the rains, he determined to start his garden in earnest, and that meant confronting the wild pigs. He had counted five of them. He made a spear, built a platform in a tree, spread coconut beneath it, and waited. He called the

Starting point is 00:06:58 killing a brutal business, but it brought an astonishing change to the island as pawpaw and wild bananas began to flourish. He patched up the boat and used it to haul loads of soil from the southern end of the island to his compound. The garden grew with astonishing speed, but there was a new problem. The fruit wouldn't set. It would just form, turn yellow, and drop off. He realized that there were no bees on the island to pollinate the blossoms. That defeated him for a time, but at last he remembered his Darwin and realized he could pollinate the flowers himself. He broke off the male flowers and rubbed their pollen onto the female ones, and it worked. Within three months he was picking tomatoes, and in four months pumpkins,

Starting point is 00:07:35 cantaloupe, and melons. Now everything settled into place. With the garden producing and the chickens laying, he was almost self-sufficient. He had more fish than he needed, plenty of fruit and vegetables, and a rooster when he wanted one. He wrote later, they were very happy days. I was never lonely, though now and again I would walk along the reef wishing somebody could be with me, not because I wanted company, but just because all this beauty seemed too perfect to keep to myself. That wish came true on August 4, 1953, ten months after he himself had landed. He spotted a sail making for the entrance to the lagoon. It was a yacht carrying two couples who had heard about his project from the British consul in Tahiti. He showed them how he lived, and they were impressed

Starting point is 00:08:14 with his orderliness and efficiency. He was even able to offer showers to all of them as he'd rigged up a bucket in the bathhouse. That night he had supper with them aboard their yacht. Their meal seemed unthinkably lavish by his standards, but the following morning he was able to catch enough fish for all five of them, so he offered them lunch. At parting, they exchanged gifts of food, and he gave them half a dozen letters that they promised to post. As he watched them go, he reflected on the modern world they were returning to,

Starting point is 00:08:40 but also the pressure, conflict, and stress that went with it. He wrote, It was a price I had long ago decided I was not interested in paying. As his life grew easier, he seemed to invent new challenges for himself. The island had once had a pier, a structure of coral blocks that had extended 70 yards into the lagoon, but a hurricane in 1942 had destroyed it, and the blocks now lay tumbled about on the beach. Neil determined to rebuild it himself, single-handed. This, frankly, didn't need doing, and even if now lay tumbled about on the beach. Neil determined to rebuild it himself, single-handed. This, frankly, didn't need doing, and even if it had, it wasn't his responsibility.

Starting point is 00:09:14 In fact, the undertaking was actively dangerous. He'd already learned that getting even a scratch could bring on a fever, and he had no access to medical care. And, as he would learn, doing hard labor on his meager island diet was dangerously taxing. Nonetheless, he spent six months reassembling the coral blocks into a proper pier and even added a platform with a thatched roof from which he could fish in bad weather. His satisfaction was fleeting. Within 24 hours, a big storm roared up and destroyed it again. Destroyed the whole pier.

Starting point is 00:09:38 That's unbelievable. Six months and 24 hours. After working six months on it. Especially a project you didn't have to do. Well, it sounded like he made himself a little fishing pier and everything, you know? So that would have been useful at least. That's true.

Starting point is 00:09:51 If the pier was a disappointment, worse was to come. One morning he rode to another island to plant some coconuts and as he threw his anchor onto the beach, he felt an agonizing pain. He was sure he dislocated his back and his shack was more than three miles away.

Starting point is 00:10:05 At first, he could barely move, but at last he crawled to his boat and managed to sail home and get into bed. He wondered whether he might die there. It might be months before a yacht came by, but by a miracle, two visitors showed up just four days later. They were Americans traveling from Tahiti to Samoa. They'd seen Saguaro described as uninhabited and wanted to spend a couple of weeks on a desert island. They spent two weeks nursing him back to health. His back improved quickly, but he was still subject to sudden pain, and he knew it would be dangerous to stay on the island alone. He needed to see a doctor. They offered him passage to Pongo Pongo, but he declined. He wanted to spend his last weeks on the island alone, since he would be saying goodbye to

Starting point is 00:10:42 a whole way of life. They promised to arrange for a schooner to pick him up later. That arrived after two weeks, and he left Anchorage after living on the island for 21 months. He called it the saddest moment of his life. The back injury turned out to be arthritis. There was no evidence of a displaced or slipped disc, and he needed no further treatment, though the doctor urged him not to lift anything heavy. He thought immediately about returning to Saguaro, but the authorities refused to approve this, thinking it was now too dangerous. On his own, he couldn't arrange for a schooner to deliver him to the island, so he was stuck on Rarotonga. He took a job with his former employer, the Cook Islands Trading Company, and loathed every minute. In his tiny office, he was oppressed by the clock and choked by petrol fumes

Starting point is 00:11:23 from the cars outside his window, and his legs felt confined in his long trousers. A sympathetic friend helped him build a boat that he could use if he ever got back to Saguaro, and he kept it ready along with some stockpiled goods even as he approached age 60. Finally, after six years of pining, an American named Lauren Smith offered to take him back to the island. He couldn't believe it was happening. Again, he stocked up for the journey, and again he sensed wistful envy in the good wishes of his friends. He visited the resident commissioner a few days before he sailed and received his unofficial good wishes. As he said his goodbyes, his friend Andy Thompson said, I wish I knew what it is that drives you to love Saguaro so much. Neil said, I don't know myself,

Starting point is 00:12:02 Andy. Perhaps it's just as well that I don't. He was back on the island in March 1960. The shack was festooned with creepers and the garden was a mass of weeds, but the general prospect was no worse than it had been in 1952. And he was overjoyed to be back. He wrote, I had escaped. That was the overwhelming sensation. That was what made those early days so unbelievably wonderful and precious. I had cheated authority, fate, life itself, and all by a miracle. After restoring the compound to its former condition, he lived pretty much the same sort of life during his second stay as he had done during his first. Altogether, it lasted more than three and a half years, during which time only six yachts visited the island. He once passed a stretch of 14 months without seeing another human being.

Starting point is 00:12:43 Two of the visits were notable. In November 1960, he was astonished when two helicopters appeared almost directly over the shack. They landed by the water, and he learned they were from the U.S. Navy, accompanying an icebreaker to Antarctica. They offered to take him off the island, but he said he liked it there. They could stay only half an hour, lest their ship get away from them, but they gave him their cigarettes and promised to get word to his sister in New Zealand that he was well. And in August 1963, a family of three traveling from Pongo Pongo to Honolulu put in at the lagoon for a rest, and a storm drove their yacht into a coral head and sank it. They spent two months with Neil before a Navy vessel appeared off the coast and rescued them. After so much time with them, the leave-taking affected him deeply.

Starting point is 00:13:29 He said elsewhere, when I'm by myself, I'm never lonely. The only time I feel any loneliness is just after people leave. Otherwise, I'm just too busy. He himself left Saguaro barely two months after that in December 1963, driven away by some irritating pearl divers who had begun to frequent the island. But he was back again in 1967 and stayed this time for 10 years, just as happy and self-sufficient as ever. In July 1971, a journalist named Betty Thompson came ashore to meet him. He was 68 years old. She wrote, he is remarkably trim and free of wrinkles considering his age and his body is tanned to the color of mahogany. He was 5'10", but she said he looked taller because he weighed only 130 pounds. She described him as neither a screwball nor a crank, but thoughtful, well-read, and articulate.

Starting point is 00:14:11 Everything in his shack was spotless and in its place, and he kept his cooking fire smoldering all the time to spare matches. And sunset was still his favorite time of day. She wrote, He said that many times he had been saddened by the departure of yachtsmen who left his lagoon heading for a world of lights, cars, cinemas, and shops. She wrote, solitary life and a peaceful one. Elsewhere, Neil had said, I'm not a hermit. Hermits don't like people, but I do. I just live here because it suits me. I can do what I want to, when I want, without being beholden to anyone. I'm free. His freedom came to an end, finally, six years later, when some visiting yachtsman arrived to find him ill with stomach cancer. He was taken to Rarotonga and died in a hospital there eight months later. Altogether, he had spent 17 years on the island.

Starting point is 00:15:07 He had called it the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life. Today, Suwarro is a National Heritage Park. Two rangers spend half the year there, living in the same hut that Neil had used, and yachts traveling between Rarotonga and Pongo Pongo routinely call there. And a new tradition has arisen. Rarotonga and Pongopongo routinely call there. And a new tradition has arisen. Visitors spend an hour working on the compound, repairing the house, weeding the garden, and clearing underbrush from the paths in his memory. An engraved stone reads, Tom Neill lived his dream on this island, 1952 to 77. futility closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners we want to thank everyone

Starting point is 00:15:58 who helps us to be able to keep making this show and this week we're sending out a special thank you to terry sand, our newest super patron. If you want to join Terry and all our other wonderful patrons who enable our continuing celebration of the quirky and the curious, please go to patreon.com slash futility closet, or see the support us section of our website. I also want to thank everyone who sent in donations to the show, which are also really appreciated. So thank you so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. We really couldn't do this without you. The main story in episode 277 was about the mad trapper of Rat River, who led the Royal Canadian

Starting point is 00:16:43 Mounted Police on quite a dramatic chase in the Northwest Territories, starting in December 1931, and was finally caught with the help of Wilfred Wap May, who piloted a monoplane to aid in the hunt. One of our Canadian listeners, Daryl Murphy, wrote, Dear Futilitarians, Thanks for all that you do, whether it's telling me a story I've never heard before, or, in the case of Albert Johnson, one I'm well familiar with but brings up fine old memories. My grandfather was a trapper up north from 1929, when he was 18, until 1939, when he went back south to marry his sweetie. He was there with his father, who stayed until his death in the 1950s.

Starting point is 00:17:21 I've tweeted from their diaries and ephemera and more at at Trapper Bud. Grandpa's trap line at that time was near Artillery Lake, a long finger reaching north-northeast from Great Slave Lake, so a good distance from where Johnson was, but of course he was kept up to date via the Moccasin Telegraph. When I was young, I remember him telling me about what they knew at that time, although of course life was always about survival and trapping during that time of year, so unless it came close it would have been secondary. I don't know whether he or Gamp knew any of the RCMP officers involved, but they did know Wap May, who eventually would have an airport in Edmonton named after him, although that name eventually changed and then it was shut down. I've included a link to a shot Grandpa took of a ski plane at

Starting point is 00:18:05 Fort Reliance Northwest Territories. The notation on the photo, which he would have dictated to me, says the first planes came up that way in 1931, and I recall a diary entry expressing amazement the first time they saw one flying overhead. And I'll have Daryl's link in the show notes if you want to see the old photo. That's kind of cool that they actually knew Watt May. And it's interesting about the notation saying that the first planes were seen up there in 1931 as May was flying around trying to spot Johnson's tracks in very early 1932. So a plane in that area would still have been rather a novelty at that time. Yeah, I think I remember that from the story.

Starting point is 00:18:41 It was very rare up there if they had one at all. Which I guess would have added to the drama for everybody. Yeah, that whole story is one of the most dramatic ones I think we've ever done. And Lindsay Joy wrote, here's an ode to the Mad Trapper Pub in my hometown, now closed, and sent a link to an article from May 2015 in the Golden Star out of Golden, British Columbia, about the Mad Trapper Pub, which had opened in 1975 and had just recently closed when the article was written. Bars in the area at the time that the Mad Trapper opened tended to attract a bit of a rougher crowd, but the Mad Trapper was intended to be more like a neighborhood gathering place where people were expected to act with more

Starting point is 00:19:21 decorum, and swearing wasn't allowed there by the original owner. The pub was described as like a really warm, cozy, welcoming kind of place, and the golden star said, the trapper quickly evolved into Golden's living room. All of which does seem a little odd to me that they chose to name it the Mad Trapper. The article didn't say why they'd chosen that particular name. It has a ring to it. I can see that. Well, it does, but it depends on what feel you're going for. Danica Lil sent a follow-up to the story in episode 136 about how a storage tank failed and released 2 million gallons of molasses in Boston in 1919. I wanted to write in after hearing episode 136, the Boston Molasses Disaster.

Starting point is 00:20:06 I've been listening to your podcast back to back after a friend recommended it, and this particular podcast reminded me of an incident that occurred when I lived in the UK. I used to work in a coastal town called Great Yarmouth, which is in Norfolk, East Anglia, back in 2006. On one particular day, a silo that was filled with semolina became overfilled. Can you imagine what happened next? Yep, you guessed it, the grain got blasted into the air and the town was covered in semolina flour. Now you might think, meh, that's not so bad, right? Guess again. In a maybe not so smart move, the council workers attempted to remove the semolina flour using water. Now water plus semolina equals a very

Starting point is 00:20:45 sticky mess. Roads slashed, pavements were closed off, industrial cleaners had to come in to get rid of the mess. Now as it's a coastal town, there was a river near to where it happened, so the semolina got washed into that. Measures were taken to ensure it didn't clog up the water treatment works. I still recall to this day looking out of the office window and thinking, wow, it's snowing, to realize it didn't smell, feel, look like snow. So now we've had molasses and semolina. Anyone for dessert? Keep up the good work. And Danica sent some very helpful links to some news accounts of this event. In October 2006, two metric tons, or about 4,409 pounds, of semolina was blasted over the town of Great Yarmouth. After workers tried to wash the ground grain away with water, the resulting mess was described as first being like a sticky, gooey pudding, but then became rather slippery, with

Starting point is 00:21:37 the pavements described as being like an ice rink. It apparently was quite a mess, and rather a headache for first the town officials and then the local water company. But all in all, the article seemed to present it as more of like a bit of an amusing oddity, and it gave the residents of the time, like Danica, a good story to tell. As far as I could tell, the semolina fortunately did not claim any lives, unlike the 21 that were lost during the molasses accident in Boston. I didn't even see any reports of semolina-related injuries. I did see mentions to dessert, though, even besides Danica's. I'm not aware of semolina

Starting point is 00:22:10 being commonly used for dessert in the U.S., although a Google search shows that it does seem to be a fairly common dessert in a number of other countries. And apparently, at least some people at the BBC are not such big fans of it, though, as a quote from their article reads, as they tried to clean it away with water, the powder turned into the much-loathed dessert. people at the BBC are not such big fans of it, though, as a quote from their article reads, as they tried to clean it away with water, the powder turned into the much loathed dessert, which I found amusing and perhaps a bit editorializing for a news article. I wonder, too, if it attracted pests like insects. I mean, you think... Oh, wow. Yeah, I don't think it hung around for probably long enough. Yeah, or rats or something. There's just one more thing to worry about.

Starting point is 00:22:47 In episodes 217 and 223, we discussed the problems that some people run into with computer software if their names contain or are similar to what are considered to be rude words. This is often called the Scunthorpe problem, named after the town of Scunthorpe that has in its name a string of letters that make an offensive word. So the town name was blocked by some obscenity filters in the early days of such software filters. Chris G. passed along a tweet to us that reads, Lyft is having its Scunthorpe moment because we don't learn from history. And based on the screenshots in the tweet and some articles that I found on this, it turns out that the ride-hailing service Lyft was contacting some of its users back in December

Starting point is 00:23:30 to let them know that the name on their Lyft account didn't align with Lyft's community guidelines and they needed to change their name within two days. As you might imagine, some people were not very pleased to be told that their actual real names were considered unacceptable. And the responses that I saw ranged from bemused to annoyed to rather outraged. Some of the more outraged responses I couldn't possibly read here and keep our clean rating in Apple Podcasts, but some of the replies to Lyft were, my name, Nicole Cummings, has been flagged as inappropriate by Lyft. I'm not thrilled with my name either, but I had no idea it violated community guidelines.

Starting point is 00:24:07 And Mike Finger tweeted, Hey Lyft, I realize it might be hard to believe, but it's really my name and you need to get your mind out of the gutter. Other Lyft customers responded with tweets like, I can't change my birth name for you. If I can't use my legal name, what exactly would you like me to use?

Starting point is 00:24:24 And community guidelines are great and all, but exactly would you like me to use? And community guidelines are great and all, but it's ironic asking us for respect in the community when you flagged my real last name as a violation. And while I can see how an overzealous obscenity algorithm might have incorrectly flagged some of these users, apparently it wasn't just customers with these types of names that were being asked to change them, as at least some simply non-English names were also being flagged as inappropriate, though I didn't see an explanation for why this was the case. One person tweeted, you recently sent me an email to change the name on my account because it's not in line with your community guidelines. My name is Babunyo, and if you are expecting me to use an English name, it won't happen because I'm not English. You might just as well ban me.

Starting point is 00:25:06 Another posted, I need Lyft to explain what about the name Kwame doesn't fit your community guidelines, meaning boy born on Saturday. What about that doesn't fit? Who wrote the algorithm for this? To which Jen Dick replied, same thing happened to me,

Starting point is 00:25:22 but I knew exactly why they flagged my name. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We always appreciate your follow-ups, comments, and feedback. So if you have any that you'd like to send to us, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle greg is going to give me an odd sounding situation and i have to figure out what's going on asking yes or no questions this is from listener patrick steinkuhl a boat leaves a dock travels one mile then reverses its engine and returns to the same dock it had left nobody dies but a lot of people lose money, though they all

Starting point is 00:26:05 knew that would happen. What has happened? Oh my goodness. Okay. Wow. Weird. Okay. All right, let's start. A boat leaves a dock. All right. By a boat, do you mean a vessel on the water large enough for people to get into? Yes. Okay. And is that all you mean by boat? Or is there something else kind of that I need to know about this boat? There's more you should know about the boat. Okay. By dock, do you mean what I probably think of as a dock? Yes. Does a boat docks at? Does it matter where this happens other than that there's water for the boat to be on? It is important where it happens, but I think figuring that out wouldn't help you. Wouldn't help me.

Starting point is 00:26:53 Oh, and I guess I was making an assumption. The boat is on water? Yes. Okay. All right. Should not assume anything ever. No, that's wise. Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:03 So there's a boat in some water at a dock. Okay, and there's something else about the boat. So would you say it's important what the manner of propulsion of the boat is? Like it's a steamboat or a sailboat or a paddle wheel or I don't know? No, that's not the reason. That's not important. Does it matter roughly how large this boat is? Not really. Or how many people are on it? No. Are there people on it?

Starting point is 00:27:30 Yes. Okay. Is there anything besides people on it that's important? How to answer that? Yes. Sort of. You sort of need to know more about what the boat is. Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:44 All right. Does the boat have some specific purpose that I should try to figure out? Yes. Would that be what's important? Yes. Okay. Would you say that the boat has a purpose other than simply transportation? Yes.

Starting point is 00:27:57 Something to do with science or research? No. Something to do with testing out some kind of new technology or invention or something? No. Is this on Earth? Yes. It'd be lateral. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:16 So the boat has a specific purpose. Would you say that the purpose is, broadly speaking, recreational? Yes. Something along the lines of like sightseeing or something that tourists would be likely to do i don't want to lead you it i don't want to mislead you it is something that tourists would do yes it's a business with sort of a specific character oh oh oh it's for gambling like you can't gamble wherever the locality is but so if you go out into the water you're allowed it's legal to gamble and that's why people lost money

Starting point is 00:28:52 you're you're it is not it you're very close did you get that from what i said just now yeah i thought for sure i had it um because i was trying to think recreational and people lost money i was trying to put it all together. Yeah, that all fits. It's a gambling riverboat. I'll give you that much. It's a gambling riverboat. But it's not. But there's something I'm still missing.

Starting point is 00:29:12 Yeah, you're very close. All right. This is where the location, you're right, comes in. Okay. So it's people are getting on this boat expecting to gamble. Yes. Does it matter what kind of gambling they're planning to do? Is it some kind of specific gambling or betting or anything like that?

Starting point is 00:29:26 Okay. And the boat takes off and then they're allowed to gamble out in the water because the state's jurisdiction doesn't apply anymore. Correct so far or no? That's not right. Okay. They could gamble at the dock if they wanted to. Oh, they could gamble at the dock if they wanted to.

Starting point is 00:29:41 But they don't start gambling until the boat leaves the dock? I don't know, but they could. Let's say they started gambling at the dock and the boat just for recreation goes out into the river. Okay. Travels one mile, then reverses the engine. And it travels specifically one mile. Is it trying to get into some other jurisdiction?

Starting point is 00:30:01 No. No. Or just trying to get out of some jurisdiction? Yes. There's another jurisdiction. No. No. Or just trying to get out of some jurisdiction. Yes. There's another jurisdiction. There are two different jurisdictions here. Is it international? No, it's between two states. I'll just tell you this is Evansville, Indiana. Okay. It's on the Ohio River. Okay. Maybe this gives it away. And on the other side of the river is Kentucky. Okay. It's not giving it away to me yet, but is there something you're allowed to do in Kentucky that you cannot do in Evansville, Indiana? No. Is there something the other way around? Yes.

Starting point is 00:30:38 There's something you can do in Evansville that you can't do in Kentucky? That's right. And it's got to do with gambling? Yes. You're just... Isn't another activity that goes along with gambling like drinking? No. You can drink in one place and not in the other. So you wouldn't say it's another activity that people want to do while gambling? No, I wouldn't. You wouldn't. Okay. You've got the pieces. It's legal to gamble in Evansville, Indiana. And it's legal in Kentucky? No. It's not legal in Kentucky. So why do they travel from Evansville to Kentucky while gambling? Well, they don't quite.

Starting point is 00:31:12 They don't quite. You're so close, I'll just give it to you. No, I'm like, I really, like, what am I not seeing? They get, the state line is right down the river. Yeah? I'll just read it to you. The Casino Aztar Riverboat opened in 1995 in Evansville, Indiana. It was the first casino in the state of Indiana. Evansville shares some of the Ohio River with Kentucky, where gambling is illegal. So as a solution, in the early days of its life, the boat traveled up the river about a mile and then reversed the engines and came back to the dock. The river wasn't wide enough for the boat to turn around. They had to stay out of Kentucky waters because it's not legal to gamble there.

Starting point is 00:31:46 Oh, so people were just on the boat just because that was an interesting way to gamble? Yeah, it was just a riverboat. More fun way to gamble? Casino. Okay. But they had to be careful to stay on their side of the river. Oh, oh, oh.

Starting point is 00:31:57 So the cruise only went halfway across and they had to back up again. Oh, oh, oh. It very quickly stopped making this journey and has now been converted to a land-based hotel thanks patrick thank you patrick and if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com futility closet is a full-time commitment for us if you'd like to help support our celebration of

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Futility Closet - 283-The Hermit of Suwarrow

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