Historically High - Historical Castaways, Shipwrecks, and Survival

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

The story of Margarita Robaval sees a French noblewoman marooned on the notoriously brutal Isle of Demons off the coast of Quebec after she infuriates her uncle by having an illicit affair with a young officer on board. Scottish privateer Alexander Selkirk tell his captain he won't get back on the leaky, worm-eaten state of their ship. Demanding to be left ashore on an uninhabited South Pacific island, Selkirk thinks his crewmates will back him up. They don't and he's left alone. What follows are the events that will inspire the story of Robinson Crusoe. When a Dutch East India Company flagship Batavia wrecks off the coast of Western Australia, the captain leaves in a skiff to get help. In his absence, a psychopathic mutineer named Jeronimus Cornelisz takes control of the survivors stranded on a tiny coral island. A New England whaling ship is intentionally rammed and sunk by an enraged, massive sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific. Thousands of miles from land the crew must resort to desperate measures to survive. The events inspired the story of Moby Dick.  Six Tongan schoolboys, bored and looking for adventure, steal a fishing boat only to get caught in a storm that shreds their sails. They drift for days before wrecking on 'Ata, a desolate, rocky volcanic island. How did they all survive months alone. Hope you all enjoy this weeks episode of Historically High. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited. We're in a different direction. We're not just doing a person. We're not just doing a solid... Well, I guess we were doing a topic. The topic of being marooned? A castaway?

I was thinking about this on the way over here. So, of course, we should be doing this stuff. And I think we've done it in other instances where it's the history of something. We have the rescued at sea from the Patreon episode that kind of goes into different examples during World War II. but historically there have been countless situations of shipwrecks, of people being marooned or stranded in places in the world that were never discovered and are uninhabited.

But these are going to be some of the greatest hits of that throughout history. Events that have, whether you know it now or not, have inspired things that were staples in your life, probably growing up if you were in school when you had to read Lord of, the flies, if you know about Robinson Crusoe or, you know, Moby Dick and everything, there are stories that inspired those works of fiction. And although those themselves are a little bit sensationalized, the stories themselves are also insane. None of these stories really needed punching up.

The reason why the books become different is just because it's almost like they had to make them different? I have a theory about the Essex, which is the Moby Dick, Dick situation, where you have the villain of Captain Ahab, who represents, you know, the greed and the folly and everything like that, but then you also have the physical manifestation of his, like, hatred, which is the white whale. I think you have to have a situation there if you're writing stuff that's going to be like, especially at a time when everything is seafaring and whaling is a huge industry, writing

a book and being like, there's just whales out there that'll fuck you up and sink your ship. That'd be like, no, no, no, no. It took this captain going out and actively seeking violence with this whale for the whale, so like totally keep whaling and doing all that kind of stuff. The story

comes across in Moby Dick a little bit different if they're just out there minding their business trying to hunt whales and there's just an angry rogue whale that continues to That's technically kind of what they're I mean, from what I remember of Moby Dick, you just remember the white whale aspect

in Ahab's like, you know, quest for vengeance. But also things that were just, we're going to talk when we get into the S-6, we're going to go in chronological order for like four different events or five. Five. Five different events. So could be a long episode.

We don't know. But Moby Dick was also about details on what whaling was actually like. And like things on that ship. I don't remember those aspects. and it's crazy like what those guys had to be doing. For years at a time, too. This wasn't like a, hey, we're just going to cruise 300 miles offshore and get us a whale and come back. No, it was a two and a half yearish journey that they were doing.

And it was just like, oh, yeah, we're supposed to come back with like 1,500 bales or barrels of whale oil. And even the aspect of trying to like, how did they even do that? Processing it on a ship. Oh, rendering the... fat for the oil. I got the details on how that all worked. So, sorry, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Professor Chris, that's Professor Adam over there. Remember if you already already subscribed, go to the patreon.com slash historically high. Get ready or get yourself signed up for the bonus content. It's phenomenal if we do say so ourselves. We had triple digit ratings on Spotify last month.

Awesome. Thank you. Keep those five stars. rolling in for us. The review numbers still strong as ever. You guys are still kicking ass. Keep talking to us. Keep letting us know what you think, what you want to hear. Again, love new subscribers. Always a great thing. Let's shove off.

You want to call this episode. Castaways, marooned, left for dead. I killed a polar bear? I don't know. That's something we're going to have to just kind of, because that's what it is. I was trying to actually figure this out. So being marooned on an island, is that when you are purposely put on that island for something? Like in the situation of

Alexander Selkirk, again, Robinson Crusoe inspiration, but in his situation, he was left on that island. So is that being marooned? Because if you're shipwrecked, I guess you could be shipwrecked just anywhere. It doesn't have to be on an island. It's where the shipwreck occurs. If you land on an island after a shipwreck, I think you're just a survivor. If it's an intentional move for something that you did or said where they just drop you off and leave you, I think that's marooned. Maybe marooned also means you're stuck. Shipwreck just means you arrived there by shipwreck. You could still find your way someplace.

You had intentions of going home. We're going to cover all of them. That's the whole point during this. Yeah. So I don't know. We might just call them all three of them. there was a very long time in history that I don't think we respect enough where long distance travel was just pretty much by water and so to talk about only five of these stories of castaways and being marooned I want to say there was probably about two centuries where people just got marooned on islands there were just boat wrecks and people had to go to islands to survive and just hope that they were in a shipping lane that they could be picked up from.

It's a really depressing figure to look up. But how many people throughout human history do you think have died at sea? Oh, incalculable, probably. Yeah, right? Because if you're going all the way back to like the Greeks that were sailing and everything like that. Yeah, I mean, you go down. I mean, they're in the Eugen and I'm sure a lot of them probably could swim, but you're also wearing stuff that's heavy.

You're going down to these triremes and everything. Man, I mean, it's not half of all death. But you got to imagine it would probably be 30%. There was a tipping point. It's like the industrial revolution was probably the tipping point of amount of deaths that happened at sea. I don't know, because you had to be close enough to the ocean or a water source to survive. Yeah. But far enough away that it wasn't a constant thing that would be killing you and you weren't like basing your...

We're getting off top anyway. Starting off in the weeds doesn't mean we're already in the weeds. You can steer yourself out. No, but that's what we're saying is going around by sea. the fact that there are only these five stories that really pop up, there are so many untold stories that could be where people actually survived. Like if you got maroon somewhere and you were just able to survive and then assimilate into the other culture,

but the story was never told about you because you just lived out your life. Happy there. Yeah, if you found civilization and they accepted you, you probably weren't going back. It was, oh, who do we do that? We didn't do captain. Oh, we did cook. Yeah.

Okay. It's the cook situation when they were in Tahiti. Yes. And the two guys were like, we've already got wives here, man. We want to stay and they had to send in the dudes to pull out the soldiers. You guys remember how cold it was at home? This weather's year round. We're going to stay here.

My marriage wasn't working out. Back in England. Okay, so who we talking about first? We're going all the way back to the 16th century. and we're going to be talking about a lot of sea captains or seafarers, guys that are working on deck. A lot of semen gets left on these islands. The first one we're going to start out with is just a French noble woman. This woman named Marguerite de la Roque de Robeval.

And we're not doing that shit. Marguerite, Marge, how that's going. She was something called a co-singress, a co-lord of this place called Palm Point that was in. northern France. She was a co-lord because there was this other relative, it's kind of, I think, lost to history maybe. It was an uncle or a cousin.

It feels like an uncle's situation. But a creepy uncle situation. Jean-François La Roche de Robévaven. Crazy name. He's going to be Gene. Gene sucks. Gene does suck. Gene was a favored privateer

of Francis I of France while being kind of an all-around debag. He ran up a lot of debts and being a lord, I imagine he probably have a lot of money to start out with, but he was always kind of on to the next thing trying to make his money. Turned out that he was a fairly good sailor though and had earned enough favor with Francis. We're talking about a time when they were going to be traveling by boat

over to Canada or New France at that time. And that could also be a situation. where we talked about in a few different episodes, being a lord was kind of easy in certain circumstances. So this could have been like a guy that was just like kind of in bad standing because like you said, he was one of those guys that was kind of in dead due to like bad business decisions and that will continue to follow him. But he's also going over to a place that in the 16th century, you're just trying to get people over there. To try to like get some land to establish. You're just trying to establish a presence because they're going to Canada.

Clear out some natives. Get us some breathing room. Find the new thing. You're going to be over there, you know. We'll figure it out. Yeah, populate, spread, and then I'll have a new territory. Well, it doesn't seem like Gene was a big fan of populating. In 1541, Gene, like we said, are chosen to be vice roy of new France.

He's going over there to basically be the president. He was tasked with his voyage that. he was going to lead over to Canada, and his co-lord, Marguerite, ends up going with him. She brings over this handmaiden that had been with her for her entire life.

Her name was Dummien. And Dummian was basically... Marge... Marge falls under the purview of bad bitch of history, but she did have an assistant. And this assistant, I mean, a handmaiden at that point in time

kind of did everything for you. They laid your clothes out. They made your food. Same thing. with Your Highness and Aubrey was it Are you talking about the Danny McBride?

Yes Courtney Courtney, that's right He was... I will drown Courtney in the shallow fucking river It means fair as fair You know I hate triangle face

Damien was kind of just Her right-hand woman But at the same time They were still pretty close friends Like lady and waiting type stuff I guess yeah While on this ship, Marguerite ends up falling for this young commoner. And there's a question if he was a commoner or not,

and maybe it was a little artistic license taken to try to cover up for another family that was like an aristocrat type family. Regardless, they fall in love on the ship. They consummate their love on the ship. This fucking Titanic. A little bit, huh? I'm just now realizing this is basically Titanic. James Cameron just saw this and he was like,

do you guys know about this Marguerite woman? Because like she's supposed to be like from like, you know, up across a society like Rose was. He's just a commoner. He's Jack. He's just some poor artist trying to get home. And yeah, they become lovers.

She's not married. No, an unmarried woman, possibly single. We don't know her status at the time. But regardless, I heard that she wasn't married. So I think Gene is a creepy uncle that was like once I get her to Canada, I can co-lord it up with her. Yeah, potentially. And he's the Billy, Gene, Gene is the Billy Zane.

I almost said Billy Gene. The Billy Zane character, Cal or whatever the fuck his name is. A creep. Once Gene becomes aware of this relationship, he's got some decisions to make because he is a very deeply religious man. maybe he was motivated by these Calvinist kind of pre-puritanical beliefs I've probably more likely that he would be motivated

to get rid of Marguerite because if he did he could acquire the totality of their lordship I you cannot okay this results basically in Marge Damien I can't remember who else because we're going to get to it

and then the dude that's like her lover who like jumps off the ship to go with her being marooned on an island as they are like entering into like the area of like new france or whatever it is there it's an island off of the coast right they said that it was either they believe in the st lawrence estuary which is leading in or it was um near the straight of bell is okay which is i believe over by what was it called it was called the island you're going to say newfoundland new phil god I always messed up.

Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Newfoundland. Newfoundland. That sounds right. Newfoundland. That sounds good.

God, I hope that's right. We said it every way, so one of them had to have been correct. Somehow we might still get it wrong. How are both of us so bad at that? Like, these usually things that people can't pronounce correctly. We didn't write it down or look it up. Newfoundland. But yeah, it was called the Isle of Demons, which sounds like a pretty bad island

to be left on, right? It does until you remember, like, I think we were doing the, I keep calling back different episodes, Van Demonsland from like the Australia episode. Yeah. That's just the guy's name. I don't think this is a guy named Demon.

No, these, there's a lot of noises that were very scary on the island. There might have been some spirits there from all of the legends that we're told. They hate premarital sex. Regardless, Gene's like, oh, is that the Isle of the Demons? Yeah, it's just, let's drop them off there. Let's drop them off right in the middle of this aisle.

There's some questions. There's kind of like two major tellings of this story. One is by this lady named Marguerite of Navarre, who was the queen of Navarre. And then there was this other guy named Andre Thorev, who claimed that he had actually interviewed Marge on this whole topic to tell his story. One of the accounts, I think it's Margarita Navarre's story, where it's just Marge. and Damien on the island and they're taking the other man away to drop him on another island

and swept up by the love that he had for Marguerite he jumps down into the water and begins swimming over and stays on the island with him. Now, up that far north, if you hit that water, you're not surviving very long, I don't think. I think it's very, very cold where they were. It depends on the time of year.

I don't know. But if I'm that guy, and I'm like, hey, you're going to, and this has nothing to do with even the romantic status of it, but if the idea is you're going to drop me on another island alone, or I can try to get away and take my chances of swim to this island where there's other people that can help me survive. Yeah.

I'm taking the chance. Plus, I'm, you know, being this broader sleep together, so. I'm putting on an island to live out the remaining days with two women. Oh, no. Put me on an island by my own. myself or see me try to make it seem super cool and like love was drawn me to the island. I believe the French word

for it is the creation of the word monagetois. Maybe that's what he was going for in this situation. Barreinage eto. And it wasn't like Jean was just this asshole that didn't leave them with anything. Supposedly they had a number of rifles. I believe it was like four or six. I heard varying numbers. Black powder, ammo and some provisions.

I think they give her like one. There's a minimum threshold of, I think, stuff you have to be provided to basically be able to say, hey, him a chance. That's exactly it, to not be responsible because here's the thing. He leaves Gene on the island because it wouldn't tentatively be murdering her. He wouldn't be liable for, he couldn't be tried for that because he left them with a gun and some powder and a Bible or something like. that or like a pan to cook something in. So you could be like, what more does a person need to survive? I gave them every chance.

I just had to get them off the boat. God and a gun. That's kind of what it is. We'll see how... Buy a truck, get a gun. Over the first winter on the island, a now, da-da-da-da, pregnant Marguerite. Her lover ends up taking ill.

He's, I'm sure, freeze. I mean, they're on an island. island in the middle of possibly the St. Lawrence Estuary with a gun. I'm sure she was probably a fairly decent shooter because she was a queen or a lordess, a countess, whatever. She was of the upper crest. I would think the, are you assuming that that's something that they do for fun too is like fancy bird hunting and shit? Hunting, yes. I don't think the women, 16th century women ain't doing that shit. I don't think so. No, which makes her even cooler when she ends up doing this stuff. No, I don't think you're doing the thing where you're Disney, you're Pixar or

Disneyfying them and you're making them out to be, and I'm not saying she's not a badass. What I'm saying is I don't believe a noble woman is going to be the type of like rough and tumble that she ends up becoming. You think she was the one that waited for the men to return from the fox hunts and didn't go on the fox hunts? Correct. But I think she adapted. Yeah. Which makes it even cooler. Yeah. She could have, I don't know.

We're talking about a time when this is a, it's a black powder rifle where you actually like have to. That's what I'm saying. It's not recreation. They're not hand. There's not wreck shooting or anything. Like we're not hunting foxes. We're hunting deer to try to eat and survive. Yeah.

Her lover didn't survive very long. He made it through the first winter dying kind of shortly thereafter. The reason why they know that it happened in the cold. beyond Marguerite telling this. She's telling the story. She said that she was digging in the ground to try to dig a very deep hole because she didn't want the animals coming and taking the body.

They just finally got to a point where they just hit frosty ground that they couldn't move any further. So they end up bearing him. And then she just sits Shiva, I guess, stays on watch with the gun and is firing at any wild animals that are trying to come get his body. Now, I don't know how long these people knew each other. I'm pretty sure that a bonding experience would be getting marooned on an island with somebody.

But that's a lot of love to sit there and try to shoot the animals that could potentially. It's a lot of bullets that you don't have an infinite supply of. Your survival is kind of based upon the provisions that you have. Yeah, at the same time, we're all looking at this through the lens of how many hundreds of years. and also being like, we're fucking sitting here in front of goddamn microphones. Yeah. Marj ends up giving birth on the island,

which is pretty crazy that this was a successful birth. Dumbien aided her during labor. It wasn't really that long after birth that Dumbian ends up passing away of exposure herself. And then she has to do the whole, we're digging a grave thing again. We're going to try to protect it. but a newborn and a mother that just gave birth

weak in an area like that isn't really conducive to keeping a child alive either. No. The child ends up passing away pretty shortly, I think, after Dummian does. So this group of four that showed up on this island, potentially six months prior to this, is now just dwindled down to one.

I guess it was three, then it was four, then it was... The numbers go, go up and down, but she's a sole survivor on this Isle of Demons in the St. Lawrence River from France, a noble woman. And she basically dives into her Bible. She begins studying the Bible daily. She kind of finds her religion again there. I imagine that that's so much to do with just not going crazy. Yeah, I think it's something.

to occupy your mind still feel like civilized because you're you know your reading words sometimes will read aloud to make sure that you can still because that's going to be common theme here sometimes they find these people

and they're like they couldn't really even articulate because they'd been away from like civilization for a while but I think it also has to at this point give you something to you don't have anything left

you're either going to just sink into depression or you're going to try to maintain hope or something and I think that's all you're going to grasp on to. But March pretty much just steps up and starts and is able to go ahead and keep herself alive. For rumor was, maybe she, you know, not toe to toe, but she had some run-ins with some polar bears. This, it blows me away because this is something that what I heard is like, there's no way that there were polar bears that down close to kind of civilization. But the fact that both of the writings that survived. Well, they're not in civilization.

That close, though. As far as like coming down, because I always think Arctic Circle is where all the polar bears are, right? Yeah, but what's how much of that is because look at all the area that people live in. Yeah. I mean, they would migrate in Rome a lot further if they had the area to do so. Maybe. Yeah, I guess I could see that. It just feels like it's very, very far south for a polar bear to be.

I'm not questioning shit that Marge does. Well, I don't know if it's exactly true, but I think polar bears are probably the most aggressive of the bears, right? They're the biggest, I believe, and I do think that they're probably the most dangerous. She went to tell her to tell with a couple of these. She even said that she killed a couple of them. So this lady was, she just,

she fought her way through the aisle of the demons, and she was on that island for more than two years, surviving, living, thriving, and it's just this endless cycle of going through... Thriving is stretching it. If you live through two winters up there, I would probably consider that thriving. Because that's...

You have to prepare for those winters in a way that you don't in a lot of other places. You're not on like a tropical island where... No, I get that. She's maintaining. Yeah. Yeah, maybe maintaining is the right word. But this Basque fisherman,

just spots the smoke from her fire as he was passing by in his boat. He was like, that's weird. I'll pull in and see what's going on here. And it was this French noble woman he just comes upon. I don't even know if she was like how vers she was in communication, even at that point. Yeah. And also at that point in time, I guess hearing a French accent wouldn't be that much of a shock over there. Yeah.

So it, but just to find a woman out there feels. one at a million shot. Yes. She's returned. I just saw smoke. There's a fucking French bitch comes out of the woods. We're in a polar bear. She had a polar bear cape.

You know how you get a polar bear cape? You got to kill it. Sheen's up returning to France, and she's not the first de la roque de robeval that has returned to France. Yeah. Old Jean struck out as the vice roy and was already back in France.

So this would have to be pretty awkward to be Gene in getting rumors that your niece, cousin, whatever, that you marooned on an island over in Canada is alive and now back in France. This is a, this is full on a Black Panther situation. Yeah. He thinks he drops her off. That's Tachala on the island. You got Michael B. Jordan, who's Gene takes over. takes over, comes back, and all of a sudden,

Tachal is back. And she's like, guess what, Gene? I'm not dead. In fact, I've killed some shit. That's the one issue that I have with this story is, and granted, I think we talked about this a little bit before the episode, 1500s is probably not a time when they're going to be questioning the treatment of a woman. He couldn't kill her because that's murder.

but he marooned her and he gave her a chance to live. Come on, man. There's, there's supposed, if he's like a lord or someone that's in any high standing, to do that to a woman, to two women, that would be,

that's got to be something that would be a knock. I don't see, like this was supposed to be a very chivalrous, honorable thing. Yeah. Time frame. I feel like Gene should have gotten a little bit more than a, just a talking to about leaving his niece on the island. Maybe a little bit of a punishment somewhere.

I feel like she should have been able to challenge him to like a duel. Yeah. But like knives or some shit like that and be like, I'm going to carve you the fuck up. Either that or just fucking five minutes together. I fought a polar bear. You're not going to present. A duel. An actual pistol duel.

She's like, I am accurate. Yeah. Fate catches up with Gene. Gene doesn't get to live this glorious life for much longer. He ends up dying porn alone, getting mobbed and killed. pretty good deal there. Marguerite becomes friends with the queen of Navarre Marguerite. She is put in this role toward she's kind of like a young women's teacher,

like a mentor almost to where these royal women are sending their daughters to her. I mean, like this woman. We are sending you through tough bitch training. Yeah, exactly. Things are getting a little too fancy. So if a man ever strands you in the Canadian wilderness, you can survive. Yeah, just a wild story.

Who's going to talk back to their teacher? Been like, oh, I'm sorry, have you ever fought a polar bear and lived in? No, no, no. Oh, no, no. Have you ever buried the love of your life and then buried the lady that did everything for you? And then fended off the wolves or the animals trying to tear his corpse out from the shallow hole that you dug? No, yeah, no, that's, I'd probably listen to me then, because guess who did? Yeah.

following that story we get into maybe the low light I would say of this episode I think this might be rock bottom this is rock bottom in terms of there's different levels I think and that's why I like so much I'm excited about this episode so much

is all of these stories are they're so different they involve the same thing but they're so different You have, the last one was almost a situation of, Gene was, you know, the variable, but you had her surviving against nature. Yeah. It's her versus nature.

This is a situation where it's, nature's against you, but this is like the devolving of what happens when there's no societal rules and you get evil people. Yeah, I think that this is a, this is a man on, this is a man versus man. type scenario. It's a very good example to know that psychopathy has been around forever.

Yes. Like, it ain't a new thing. So in 1628, the flagship of a VOC fleet, yet that is the Dutch East India Company, go listen to that episode. The Batavia is constructed. The same year the Batavia is constructed, it gets set out with this fleet

on October 29th of 1628. It's supposed to sell from textile, which was up in the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies. To Batavia. Yeah. At this point in time, we have the Dutch East India Company that's already seized this area. They're already working in the area. So modern day Jakarta. Yeah.

Indonesia, right? So Indonesia in those islands. The spice aisles. Yeah. They have defined trade routes to get over there to trade the gold, the silver, the jewels. They kind of have the defined. roots. They're a, we're going to drop too much into the VOC thing,

but basically the first super corporation that had its own military could negotiate actual like treaties and that kind of stuff with different countries and like take over areas and like go kind of on a conquest thing. So the spice aisles are pretty much run by the Dutch East India Company

in Jakarta. And Batavia, I think, was the capital, right? That was like their capital there. Um, the flagship always carried this. Basically, it's like a senior VOC merchant. It was the commander. She was commanded by this senior VOC merchant. His name was Francis Pelsart.

Or Pell Celsart? Pelsart. Pelsart, I think you have, right. Pelsart, okay. So you basically have like, um, World War II comparison. You have the captains of the ship, but then you also have the admiral who's in charge of that battle group or that fleet. Yeah.

So Pelsart would be the admiral, and then you had the captain of the ship that he happened to be on, which would make it his flagship, as is it Arienne Jacobs? Yeah, Arienne Jacobs is a skipper. And Yaacob's. Yacob's, that's right. Yeah, because it's the soft J. Yeah. Arienne Jacobs is the skipper. Bad combination.

These pair really did not like each other. There was a previous incident where Pelsart basically, caught Yaacob's just drunkenly talking shit about him to these other merchants. And this was like he was just drunkenly talking shit about somebody who would be on the level of a boss. Yeah, 100%. And so this rivalry is something that kind of continuously shows up. And Jacobs kind of has his own MO, and it's certainly not as VOC friendly, I think, is Palsert,

or Pellert would have liked. This boat carried these 12 cargo ships down in its hull that were filled with gold and silver and jewels that were going to be traded for these spices when they got over to Batavia. I mean, it was the new flagship. It was basically going over there to, it was huge. It was 650 tons.

It was like 149 feet long, 33 feet wide and had 30 cannons. So it could defend itself, but it was first and foremost a merchant ship, but being a VOC ship, it also had armaments on it. And it had to be big because it's, you're bringing spices back. And it was part of an eight ship fleet.

So part of that whole fleet, that's also what Pelsart was in charge of. There was also a lieutenant kind of commander. So like, think of it in the terms of like admiral commander. There was like a lieutenant or what was called an under merchant. And this, ooh, this motherfucker. Geronimus Cornelius was a basically this dude was a under merchant, but he was a former like bankrupt pharmacist. He was just an all-around bad man and he ends up jumping on the Batavia while kind of being pursued by the Dutch police forces because he had these heretical

beliefs and the guy who he was kind of a part of his religion ended up being arrested for heresy and Cornelius saw the writing on the wall and tried to get out of there. There's also this crazy weird story that I don't know how true it is, But him and his wife had a child, and his wife became ill. They had a wet nurse who they hired to come in and take care of the child. Well, the wet nurse was also some sort of a sex slave, I'm assuming. Passed on syphilis to the child through the breast milk, and the child ended up dying, and he basically tried to have her burned at the stake for killing his son or his child,

even though, I mean, you handed her off. There's also no way for her to know what, yeah. Uh-huh. She's alive like it. This is a long time ago. He had some really weird things going on, but he kind of finds his position as this under merchant on this Batavia, and he's going to play the biggest role in this whole entire thing.

So along with the size of this ship, all the riches that they're bringing over, they're also taking 341 passengers, with them. On, not in the eight ships, on the Batavia. Yep. That's how big this thing is. I mean, it's like a three-masted. This ship is huge. Lends up leaving Amsterdam in October of 1628 with, yeah, 341 people, wealthy passengers, families that are going over to like work or oversee places over in Jakarta, and also soldiers that are going over there to relieve or replace other soldiers that are supposed to be coming back. So there is

an eight-ship fleet here that it's going on. And the commander, again, is supposed to be Pelsart captaining the Batavia, the ship he's currently on, is Jakobs. As they take off, it's

a situation where Jacobs is, again, not really a fan of Pell-Sart. There's arguments that are going on. They pull into the Cape of Good Hope. And at this point in time, this eight ship fleet is now down to like a three ship pod. Yeah, like right after departure.

So there was a massive storm that happened in the North Sea. So I mean, right, they're just like, seriously. Above England. I don't even know. Above Scotland. Why would they be about, like, that's what I'm thinking, though, too. What point in time is this where they're not just going through the English Channel and out? Um.

So what I'm saying is North Sea, because the North Sea even starts, I think, right there. I wonder if the English Channel has. had something to do with the East India Company that England had too. Like maybe we're not going to let you pass through. Maybe it was faster to just go out and around. Regardless,

going into a storm there, it reduces the fleet down to just three ships traveling together, which were with the Batavia, the Buren and the Azenedelfth or something like that. So, three ships. They get down to the Cape of good hope. Yacob's jumps

in his rowboat in rose out to the other two ships as they're reloading the Batavia with supplies and basically just starts talking shit about Palsart again and of course Pelsart ends up getting wind of this. He's like, we've done this shit before, man. I've heard

you do it before. Just relax. Montiol boy. You can't talk to me like that. I'm your boss. There was none of that. Like at this point it was, here's the thing too. This is also a time when you're traveling with three other ships now. You were traveling with eight. Two other ships.

Yeah. You don't know how to sail. This is a, trying to think who the episode was on. The guy that was, God, why can I not remember these guys? Shit, it was Cook again.

Cook essentially wasn't always the captain of his ship. Remember? He would have people come in and actually, like, he would be in charge, or there was another guy that was technically in charge.

Or am I thinking of a different episode? Are you thinking of the naturalist that was kind of the, the guy that funded or tried to fund it. Yes. Yeah. That was like supposed to be in charge of the whole thing. But because all of it took place basically like the sailing aspect was the largest portion. Cook was basically in charge the entire time.

And they came back for the second voyage and he wanted to build like an extra cabin. Yes, that's what it was. That's kind of what I see here is you have this guy who, you know, Pelsart, who's actually the good guy in the situation. And the captain of the ship is kind of like, this guy needs me to be able to go ahead and, and captain's this. thing, he's not going to do shit. Also, we have 339 other people on this boat. We kind of need to get there. Yeah. So we need to form some

semblance of a professional relationship. And that never ends up happening. Cornelius hears that Yaacob's isn't that big of a fan of Palsart. Cornelius doesn't have a real grand plan on going back to

the Netherlands. He's looking around for a potential situation where if they can form a mutiny on this ship, what they're going to do is recruit other merchants, and they can end up overthrowing Pelsart and kick off basically all of the other civilians that are traveling, and then take this boat and these riches

and go on shore in Madagascar and basically start their own little pirate community. So 314 people on this ship. Now, because they drop some off at the Cape Good Hope, right? No, no, no, sorry. 341. Sorry, I didn't mean 34. What I'm saying here is this isn't just like, hey, we're going to take over the ship, go drop these people off on an island.

This is, we're going to kill Pelsart. We're going to throw everybody else overboard, and we're going to keep enough of these people sailing the ones that will help us with this mutiny and overthrowing him. Then we're going to go play pirate. Basically, enough guys to run the ship and be able to go ahead. We have the cannons. that we can go start taking out other ships. So it also didn't help because Pelsar reprimanded Yaacob's for drunkenness. Also during this state, the Cape of Good Hope.

And that's kind of what makes Cornelius look at him and be like, okay, now I can get the captain against him too. And it's such a weird plan just when you factor in the soldiers that are on the ship. Like you're trying to run a mutiny with VOC soldiers. The guys that get paid to protect these ships, you're going to try to form a mutiny on that. Because you have sailors and then you had soldiers. The soldiers were just going from one place to the other, but they would be providing security. And they got paid by the VOC. They get paid to stop you from doing what you're going to do.

The guys that are on, and these are normally guys that aren't on ships all the time. These are soldiers that are part of an army. These aren't sailors where you have to go and recruit from people that may not be the most high character people, but they know how to sail. So we have to use them in the VOC. Now, they also need something to be able to kind of incite this mutiny to basically, anyone that's not really keen on it because they know what the punishment's going to be for a mutiny that's put down, they need to have an indication that the mutiny can actually go off

or they need to have some type of gripe with the captain to begin with. Or not the captain, but whoever is in charge. So they come up with this idea that to incite the mutiny, they basically organize the sexual assault of this passenger named Lucretia Jans. Yon's. Yons. Sorry, it's the soft chase. The Yacombs and the Yonns. So they're hoping that when they do this and they're getting a group of them that all have their faces covered and everything like that, that the, because she can't technically identify any of them,

The Pelsart is going to have to punish the crew as like a hole, which is going to seem unfair to a bunch of people. So when they go to those people with the idea of mutiny, they're like, yeah, let's get rid of this guy that's punishing us. And then we can all be pirates and we'll kick off the passengers. Well, even though she's not able to positively identify all the guys in this group that did sexually assault her, she knows that she hears the voice of the first mate. So she tells Pelsart that,

Yaacob's has a pretty lengthy history of being too handsy with the passengers on the ships. I think one of them was the Bosen as well. Maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn't the first mate. Maybe it was a bosun. Like I said, he also knows that Jacobs is a pretty dirty fellow himself, but he knows that he can't punish, A, those two big positions. He can't punish everybody like you were talking about until they can get to an area maybe where things are a little less dicey. Like, yeah, we roll into Batavia.

I can punish them for the sexual assault then. Things aren't going to go well if I do it out here. Well, and that's the thing, too, is she was specifically targeted because she's a highborn, wealthy woman. She was traveling to join her husband in Batavia. Basically, her status, she had her own cabin on the ship, would have to guarantee that he would take action there and then. And at the same time, he also ends up getting, like, sick. so he's unable to like he's kind of combined to his cabin for a little bit so he can't really enforce anything but he also does see that if he's not able to identify these people and can't get

himself in a situation where a mutiny is possible if he can get them back to batavia he can be like no one's getting off the ship until we do an investigation to this and i have all the guards here he can't do that much when he's reliant on the sailors in order to go ahead and get them there. They probably won't take over the ship, but there's a chance that they'll throw him overboard or kill him before the soldiers can get to them. Yeah, and I think the assault on Lucretia takes place

May 14th, 1629. We don't have long to wait for the pivot to happen. I don't know. I'm curious, we didn't talk about this, so I'm very curious to hear what you think happens here. So June 4th, 1629, while Pell starts sleeping in his cabin, the Batavia ends up striking this large reef near Beacon Island

that's off the western coast of Australia. There's debate where Yaacob says he saw the spray from the reef, but the guy that was in the crow's nest said that it wasn't that big of a deal, so they continued on. Do you think this was Yaacob's thing? thinking if we can maroon this. No, you think it was a legitimate accident? Oh, 100.

Okay. The whole, okay, so a little bit before this, like immediately after you departing the Cape of Good Hope, because Yaacob's is the skipper, he uses, I believe, a storm that they run into, because they're going kind of across the Indian Ocean. That's right. To basically lose the other two ships that are with them. So now the ship is completely isolated. There's this thing when you're sailing across the Indian Ocean, apparently the VOC was

doing is you had to be very, very cognizant of when to turn north. Because you weren't just going along the coast of India. You were kind of going straight across catching certain wind routes. And then you would head north before you got too close to Australia because there would be a bunch of reefs and things like that. Longitude was still a little tricky back in this day, I think. So they end up screwing this up. And instead of being able to get into a position where basically forcing Pellisart's hand

to try to kind of push or like kind of shit or get off the pot on the mutiny before that could even happen they end up running into this like reef and as they do I mean the the they thought the ship itself may they may hit it like low tide

because sometimes you could float off of it and everything and even if you then had to go make repairs but if you hit it at low tide you're or at high tide you're stuck and even when the water goes down it's putting even more weight on that so it's causing even more damage.

More crush. And I guess they didn't hit it at low tide because as the water recedes, it starts the crush. There were 322 people that were left on board after the Cape Stop. They end up throwing most of them into this long boat and this yawl and they row them over to these nearby islands. I want to say there were like 40 people that drowned. Yeah. So I think it's, so what they know it as is it's called Morning Reef now. So that's where they end up crashing into.

It's near the, what are called the Houtman-Albrahos Islands that are like 60 kilometers off of what then was the uncharted Western Australian coast. Sounds pretty Australian, right? Yeah. So like you said, 40 people drowned trying to get off, you know, the hole. It's breaking all this kind of stuff. 180 to 250 survivors, that's a huge also discrepancy, which is going to come into play why they don't know how many people survive you on the island, end up getting to this like

coral outcrop that's known as Beacon Island today. What was it known then? Nothing. Batavia's graveyard. Oh, that's right. Until they got there, it didn't have a name. Yeah. For as much shit as we talk about discoverers discovering places,

they might have been the first people that discovered this reef. Not in a fun way. Well, I mean, it's got no water or anything. It literally could have just been something that was covered with water a couple hundred years before that or was no one never had a reason to come out to it. New land. Yeah. No one's coming out there to live.

Is they end up shuttling all these people off, they unload them under. Beacon Island as Chris was talking about. Pelsert, Yaacob's, and some of the officers and crew begin searching for freshwater sources on the island. They're unsuccessful. They then move to some of the surrounding islands and they're not going on and searching the entirety of these places.

It's just kind of a, we'll hit it. If there's something obvious, we'll take it. But we have to keep moving because we have to get these people survive. And not only do we have to make sure that they survive, we still have a journey that we're going to have to take for rescue. Well, you're trying to find enough quick resources that you can immediately because they had time to get stuff off

the ship. There were... Two days. Yeah, there were people still on the ship that were helping to unload stuff as they were also shuttling people back and forth, things that they would need to survive. I think they ended up taking like a bunch of the money off of the ship, right? And taking it over to one of the islands.

But then at the same time, you're trying to, and you have a limited amount of boats, you're trying to explore other islands that you can maybe see off in the distance, but then aren't so far, you're risking yourself trying to get to them. And if you can find some resources, then you're like, okay, what do we need to do we need to get the people over to this other island for the resources, or do we need to immediately try to set out the 3,000 kilometers it's going to take to get to, like the Java Islands and Batavia and everything like that, which we're going to have to do

in a longboat? We just need these people in a longboat. We just need these people in a a livable situation for as long as it's going to take us. Well, and as they're exploring these, they're not finding anything on, you know, a lot of these islands. They pretty much kind of left it up to Cornelius to basically try to kind of handle the situation, find a livable situation for these passengers, because there has to be a point when the captain's like, or Pelsart in this situation is we can be doing both these things at the same time. We're going to take this long bow with, what, like 48 crew members, which is insane.

That shows you how big the Batavia was. If it has a long boat, which is it was overcrowded, I think, by like a few guys. They said that there should not have been that many people. And they had to build the boat up to be able to handle the ocean. But isn't that nuts? 48 crew members and they're like, we're heading on this 3,000 kilometer journey to basically try to get to Batavia. get a rescue ship to come back here.

You want to be on that boat, though, right? You don't want to be back on the islands. If I'm going to die. Wait, wait. Am I aware of what's going to happen? Uh, no. I want to be on the islands. Really?

I want dry, I want solid stuff under my feet. But what if they never come to rescue you? What if that boat sinks on the way back and you're just there? I don't want to be on the, I just got off one sinking boat. I'm not going to know. Put me on the island.

I think I would rather take my chances. I think you're letting what's happening or going to happen. influence your decision. No, I know me. And I know that if I get stuck on an island for two weeks and nobody's come, I'm just assuming that I'm going to be there for the rest of my life. And it's probably not going to be a fun existence. At least the boat can get me to a place to where if I survive that trip, I'm at least

in civilization. That's true. So I think when they took people, they took, so Pelsart went, Jacobs went also on this, because he's the captain. They're going to take a good chunk of sailors. with them because they're going to need them to get the actual ship there, and then probably took a few of the soldiers. They left the majority of the soldiers behind to protect the people.

They took the brass all the way down to the ship's doctor who becomes the de facto leader. They create this kind of a council that's the council for basically like the safety of the people on the island. And the highest ranking member that they have left is the boat doctor, who at least everybody did like. Yeah. And meanwhile, while they're doing this, and while Jacobs and Pelsart are going to be out searching for water, Cornelius is still back on the Batavia just filling his pockets with anything that

he can steal. And not even so much in the sense of like stuff that's going to make him rich, it's stuff that's going to put him in a position of power. Yeah. So it's controlling access to any weapons, knives, swords, they had some muskets. He's basically making sure that he has access to as much. of this stuff as he can. Any type of food, water, any resources, he's trying to exhibit as much control because when it comes time for the head guy, Pelsart, and the captain, in his mind, he's

kind of the natural leader, first of all of the mutiny. So all those people that were planning this mutiny that were waiting to do this, they see what's going on too. And he's telling them, hey, you know, when these guys leave and everything, we're kind of going to be able to rule this place. Not a bad situation. Yeah. I found it very funny, and I'm sure that this was some sort of legal coverage. Before Pelsart and Jacobs and the rest of the top brass, head over to the mainland of Australia to check for natural water resources. They have to leave a note that's basically saying we're going to explore for natural or for any resources that we can get.

but we're also going to go back to Batavia if we don't find anything, we will come back for you. It's basically like a promissory note. Like, we didn't abandon you. We're not taking off. Understand that we'll be back if we can be back. Eventually, Cornelius ends up making it to Batavia's graveyard to Beacon Island. As he shows up, this council looks at him and they go,

oh, well, you're actually a higher ranking official with the VOC than the ship docked. would you like to be in charge? And he's like, yes, this sounds like the best plan ever. Sure, I'll take this. I'll take over this position. All right. If you're going to twist my arm, if you need a leader, I'll step up. And the first thing that he does is leader is he goes through and says, okay, we're going to disarm everybody.

Any resources that you guys have, any provisions that you have, you're going to bring them to us. We're going to divvy them out upon need because these rations that we, have if we don't find anything else all these casks of water we need to be able to ration these to keep everybody alive at that point in time i think because he was the ranking official everybody was just kind of like okay there's nobody there's nobody else here on this island that we can see nobody can know any better be like he obviously is in this position like you know for a reason yeah um with him kind of being left in control i also think that leading up to this before the Batavia hit the reef.

There was one of the guys that got kind of pissed off and started kind of talking about the mutiny a little bit. And so there was a feeling around the ship that something might have been getting ready to go down. The, you know, Pelsart may have picked up on that. He takes the captain with him. Once he gets the captain to Java or to Batavia, he ends up having him arrested.

And I think also that Cornelius kind of sensing that this was the case because he also took some of the soldiers or some of the sailors that were going to be part of the mutiny. If that captain gets arrested and he's like, I can give you information about this too if you guys lighten my sentence or whatever. He's going to be like the actual person

that was doing this was that VOC ass clown Cornelius and when they went back down, they were going to arrest him as well. So he pretty much knows that he faces execution if the pre-REC mutiny plot ends up coming out and decides to basically just kind of form his own little pirate kingdom here and set it up to where any rescue ship that shows up, he has a large enough force to then take over that ship

and then resume the plans for piracy. He wasn't a dumb guy. If I'm going to give Cornelius any credit here, not dumb. After he disarms everybody, he realizes that the numbers really are. in his favor for this mutiny. And what he's telling all his guys on shore now is this actually is going to work. When they send a rescue boat for us, we will take boats out to the rescue boat, and then we'll just go ahead and take the rescue boat, and we'll fuck off in the rescue boat.

So we have to bide our time. We have to take over this island. We also need to make sure that there's enough provisions for everybody. No, for us. In the mutiny. Yes. So he starts sending out the... search parties to these different islands

that are in the area. There's one of them that's called the Highlands because it's got a highland or because it has a raised like a mountain on it. Listen, we're hungry. We don't have time to name this something. There's another one that becomes named Wallaby Island because it's got a ton of wallabies on it.

Delicious wallabies. I want to say there was a third island that I, maybe it was Seal Island Island, potentially was the other island that I'm thinking of that they had. But he says, 30 of you go this way, go to that island, take the boat. If you find any natural resources or any water or anything like that, start a fire, we'll see

your fire, we'll come over and we'll investigate. They end up sending, I believe it was like a ship of 30 soldiers over to the Highlands Island. Yeah, it was, okay, so I think it was, hold on, let me look at my notes, sends a group of like 20 loyal to the VOC soldiers led by this guy named Webby Hayes to a larger distant island. That was Wallaby Island under the pretense of finding water. Now, he confiscates their weapons before they go over there. So he's consolidating all of this. His plan is to either be like, you guys are going to go over there.

You'll find nothing. You try to return. We kill you when you're all exhausted and tired and depleted and you return. Or you just don't return. or you light the fire showing us that there's resources over there. And when we come over there, we just kill you guys anyway. So the plan is always to either strand them and let them die or go over the kill them or wait until they come back and kill them. But you need to strand them in small enough numbers.

So when you go to attack them, they're not going to be able to defend them. Correct. But you're also trying to send the people that have the biggest likelihood of challenging this little, you know, kingdom that you're trying to create. You're sending them as far away as possible. biggest threats to you. So with the soldiers gone, basically Cornelius' little henchmen just go on like a murder spree.

They're killing men, women, and children. Over the course of like two months, they're doing this. And like victims are like strangled, drowned, hacked into pieces. They keep, uh, women, including Lucretia that we talked about earlier, alive to basically use as, you know, sex slaves and everything. And a hundred, like, they said,

like 110 to 125 of these people are killed. There's situations where, like, families that have multiple kids, they're coming in in the middle of the night and, like, slitting the, like, the family's throats. There was a situation with a, it was the medical tent, right? Yeah. When they had sent someone in to just basically slit the throats of all, like, the sick and elderly while they were like sleeping. They would trick people and be like, hey, they actually found resources because they're supposed to be in control of this stuff. Over on this other island, we're going to kind of shift you guys around to make sure

it's not straining resources on another island, and they would get them out in the middle and the guys, the mutineers would just kill them or throw them over to drown. Well, that's the part of it where it's kind of like the veil is lifted, because when the murders happen inside the sick and infirm tent, And the next day, everybody finds out that the people in the sick tent were all murdered. The justification of Cornelius is saying, those people are taking up resources that healthy people need to stay healthy and stay alive. I know it's awful, but somebody has to do something about this.

The situations you're talking about where they are going out and meeting these people in the water in the boats and then killing them or throwing them off the boats, this is happening in an area where people on the islands can see what's going on. So we can't do anything about it. They're to swim out and drown, which they want them dead anyway. There are people that disappear and just run into the, isn't there like a group of like cabin boys that end up like running into like the jungle or running into the trees and trying to like evade these guys? Multiple different times there are like one or two people that are being chased to be killed that will either escape onto a boat or they will swim. to one of these other islands.

Or a loggers try to float, yeah. And they'll get to these other islands, so you guys won't believe what's going on over here. Cornelius, the bitch that he was, ended up attempting to only kill one person by his own hand. Poisoning them, right? And this was a baby who was crying because they were sick. Him being a former apothecaryman,

a former pharmacist, brings over this ointment, whatever, and says, give this to your baby, they will stop crying. He tried to poison the kid. The kid survives the poison, so the next night he sends over one of his henchmen to strangle the baby. So the one attempt that he made to get blood on his own hands by just poisoning a child doesn't work,

and he has to send in another heavy to kill the kid. That's just not a very tough. strong man at all. For a guy that's the ringleader of this to never kill anybody feels very Manson-esque. He's in a position of power. He's in a position to basically hold these people's survival in his hands because the henchmen that he has working for him aren't getting the rations of the water. They're not getting the stale biscuits. They're eating the best provisions. They're drinking the wine that was on the ship. They're living fairly high on the hog for as much as you can say. But he's controlling the resources, which is why he's, you know, how he's controlling them.

But they said, yeah, and again, this is a shitty situation of a charismatic leader being able to force or not even force or just convince people to do this, you know, heinous shit for him. He kept Lucretia as his like his personal concubine. We talked about the hospital thing. In one instance, he sent a large group of around 40 survivors, including women and children to this other place called Long Island, actually. And that was under the pretense of like separating the population, like we said, for better resource management. once they were isolated, he would send boatloads of armed guys to Long Island over several consecutive nights, and they would just systematically hunt down those survivors, slit their throats, bury them in mass shallow graves, which they have discovered, and which is how they know

which of these islands that this stuff happened on, they have discovered actually like these mass graves where they found skeletons and were able to like date them back to this time frame. But there was this guy that was named Paschere Geisbert, who was like, a prominent kind of like upper class like merchant passenger who was traveling with his wife and children fearing this guy's status and with his plan of being like well it's not going to matter or anything because i'm just going to kidnap or like take over this next ship and use it as piracy or use it for piracy he basically sends his enforces into the family's tent at night they bludgeon the guy to death slid his wife's throat and murder their children one of their

daughters was spared strictly to be kept again as one of the the women for slaves I believe that was She was going to be married to one of the guys And they had the wedding on the island And then the night of the wedding Is when they go in and murder the rest of her families And he was like a I want to say he was like a chaplain or something like that

He was pretty high up to be doing that And it's a situation where it was a divide and conquer If you can send different pockets of these people To these different islands You can go over and do what you want with them. There's justifications of saying there was a, it was like a 17 year old cabin boy that they accused of stealing wine and then sharing it with a friend and they just took them out on the boats and they tell the friend, hey, we don't have proof that you did this. This was just

him implicating you. If you push him off this boat and you kill him, we'll spare your life as long as you stay on our side. So there's situations where they're basically trying to bribe people into coming over to the piracy side. Trying to Shanghai him into the service, yeah. And credit to a lot of these people that tried to escape and get over, they end up getting over to, did you say it was Wallaby Island that Weeb was on? Yeah, where the resistance is being formed. Yeah.

And he speaks to Weeb and kind of explains to him what's going on. They say, we kind of had a suspicion that that was going to happen. Well, and in a twist of, you know, irony, unbeknownst to Cornelius or Cornelius, I can't pronounce it, Cornelius, the soldiers he sent over there to find, you know, find water and stuff or to die over there,

they found water and some pretty abundant sources of food, wallabies, birds, and were able to kind of like build themselves back up, revive themselves, have some of the strength, and then any of those survivors who managed to escape, like the massacres on Beacon Island, swam across the channel, and we're just kind of adding to his forces.

So not only did he have actual soldiers. Again, sailors were meant to sail the ship. If they were going to mutiny or anything, maybe some of them had military service, but they're not going to be as well, you know, trained in fighting as actual like soldiers are. So after getting all this information, I think it's Hayes as we were.

Weeb Hayes. Hayes organizes as guys, arms them with all of these makeshift weapons that were made from like, the like barrel hoops they would go around them. He would have them heated up and then cut and then formed into like blades and stuff like that.

They also made morning stars. Yeah, I mean, you had nails because they would just take nails, put them into like, not coconut, like maybe a coconut or like a thing of wood. I thought they said that they were like bent chunks of lead that they had and they drove the spikes through them and then attached him via rope to a handle. And I was going to say,

they said some of the mutineers had those too, that's where they got the idea of it. Yeah. Well, the Pikes that you were talking about is just them with sticks that are driving nails through the front of them

because it's a stab weapon. Yeah. That's all you need. If this is hand-to-hand combat, you don't need something that's going to kill him. You just need something that's going to maim. You need something just incapacity.

Uh-huh. And get them down to where you kill a few of them and then the other one, surrender, you drive them off. What's also really going to help you is if you have some type of, like, fortification

or some area for defense. And so they actually build out of like, like, stone and like dry coral and all that kind of stuff. They build this like small stone fort, which actually like the ruins of it still stand is the oldest European structure in Australia. So it came out of this. They also said maybe the funniest defense was they had people walking out along the beach and looking for coral that was chunk sized like a baseball or something that they could throw. is like this is the long game instead of trying to fire bows and arrows at range. We're just going to wait until they get close enough. We're going to start hucking this coral.

We might not hit everybody. Yeah. This thing breaks apart or stabs through. It's razor sharp shit. It was like they were making like coral grenades. It's like that the new predator movie where he uses all the natural resources and all the like plants that can like kill you. He uses them as his weapons.

That's anything that you could have. And they, I mean, they hold out what for, I believe it was like three or four incursions. First off, I believe it was after the first incursion that they end up repelling. Cornelius sends over basically like a messenger to Weeb and says, we don't want any fighting. We want to come together. No thank you for what you guys are doing. Just please come back or let us through. We've like, yeah, we've heard this story from other people enough.

we're just going to go ahead and imprison this guy. Oh, yeah. I mean, as soon as he realizes that there's a threat happening over on this other island and knowing that it can't, you know, this is the biggest threat to him. He can't, like, go try to take the ship while there's someone there fighting against him. So he ends up using the boats that they have, like you said, and launching, you know, multiple what they would consider amphibious assaults. Yeah.

Yeah, against the fort. But because Hayes soldiers were well-fed, highly-de-de-resed. disciplined. They were able to pretty brutally repulse the attacks. During a pretty tense fight, they ambushed the mutiners and captured Cornelius alive. And they tied him up while his remaining henchmen ended up regrouping, like, and getting off the island, going back to Batavia's graveyard or Beacon Island to regroup. So they had Cornelius and put him, I think, in like a limestone pit or something like that. And he's still trying to talk his way out of this. promise him like oh you know we can still take the ship you know we got this at that point he's

trying to bribe him because he knows where the money's at right yeah i i don't know what he's doing on that island i don't know he's got to still be trying to talk his way into making this happen right you imagine he's trying to bribe them because up to this point the rescue ship hasn't shown up it took them 33 days so going kind of back over to pelsart they make it up there in 33 days days, he gets the captain arrested. Yacob's arrested. And then he is given a ship, like, immediately by the VOC.

And they're like, yeah, go get this. In reality, they're not like, hey, go get the people. They're like, we left how many chests of money down there? Yeah. Yeah. Go get those right now. And then get the people if they're still there. So he's hauling down there. And coincidentally enough, during like the peak of this last effort of the mutineers

to try to like go back against Hayes. men to try to defeat them, all of a sudden the ship shows up. And what was the name of the one where, oh, where was it? Sardom? Sardom. Yeah. So Pelsert's rescue ship with him on it appears on the horizon. And now all of a sudden, it's a race out to this ship.

Because if the mutineers get there first, they're going to try to take the ship. But if Hays guys get out there first, they're going to tell them, arm your guys. guys, we need to go kill the mutineers. Well, the reason that this whole thing is still going on is when Cornelis's forces go back over to Beacon Island, there's this guy named Volterloose that ends up stepping up to take command and they say, well, we didn't bring the muskets. We're bringing the muskets this time. At that point, they had two muskets left.

These muskets fired at about... One a minute? Yeah. Isn't it about one minute? So you were bringing back two rifles, and now I believe they said they had like 20 men. So they were outmanned. They had two muskets. They didn't know that, though.

Yeah. So imagine like two guys all of a sudden get picked off or every minute a guy's getting picked off. You don't think that they went back and just counted the numbers. And like, we only have 20 guys left to do this. What do you mean? No, no. What I'm saying is if you're not part of the side that has the muskets. Yeah.

And even if you're in your fort and your guys are getting picked off, that's pretty demoralizing. And if you're getting picked off every now and then, they could just sit there and whittle away at you. I just, I figure that you'd start huck and coral at the two guys with rifles. Oh, I'm sure they did. First and foremost. But yeah, like you're saying, this, this fight's going on and Luce's forces are up there. Luce's forces end up spotting the boat. Weeb ends up spotting the boat.

Weeb knows that there's not a, a great chance that these mutineers are going to be able to take this boat, but it would probably be good if Pelsart knew what was going on. Or they don't have a chance to take Pelsart hostage or something. They end up arresting all the mutineers. They basically round everybody up. I think they took them back to Beacon Island. I don't know why they just didn't stay on Wallaby Island with all the resources.

No, I think, yeah. So Haze boat, Weeb Haysboe gets there first, start shouting a warning about the mutiners and the massacres and everything tells them what's going on the mutineers are immediately captured and disarmed and then like you said rather than risk transporting them to back to java he's like nope we're going to go ahead and do an immediate tribunal on the island and the mutineers were all interrogated many of them tortured i don't usually condone torture but this is one of the few situations where i'm like yeah go for it um and confess to their crimes uh cornelius uh not so much the only guy that denied all of the accusations.

Is everybody's pointing at Cornelius and saying, this was the figurehead, Cornelius is saying, I never killed anyone. Yeah, not me. No blood on my hands. Did I stab anybody? Did I shoot anybody or anything? I never told you to do that.

You guys were doing that. The true beauty of how this all goes is, as they are hanging the gallows to go ahead and kill all of these people, they chop off, is it the right hand? Both. Well, his was both. Yes. I think everybody else, they chopped off one hand.

Well, those right or left, it didn't really matter. They're chopping off a hand. And as they're taking them to the gallows, they ask them if they have any last requests, and they say, we want Cornelius to go first. Yeah. We would like Cornelius to be hung first so we can see that he does. Someone raises their nub, their nubs. Cornelius gets both of his hands chopped off. He goes up and gets hung on the gallows first.

and then they systematically hang, I think it was like 11 more. After that, they load everybody up onto the sardom, and instead of heading just directly back up to Java, they sprint over to mainland Australia, and they drop off two of these mutineers on the Australian islands. Yep. Or on the island of Terror Australis. Yeah.

They're believed to be the two first European inhabitants to live on the Australian continent. The first reluctant European residents. Yeah. Then they head back up. They end up having these trials and these tribunals back up in Batavia. I believe the last one to die, they put to the wheel, which is a pretty insane torture method of just...

They just break the fuck out of every bone in your body, and then they kind of strap you to like a curved type thing. And they just keep tightening it up and tighten it up. But it's all kind of one of these... They, of course, send another ship back to go ahead and pick up all the gold and silver and everything else. Oh, no, I'm pretty sure that it was that one that had to be. Yeah, there's no way. The only ones they didn't get out were, I think, two chests went down with the ship.

One was, like, trapped under a cannon. And when they got there, the Sardarm got all the ones that they had unloaded. The Sardarm was able to go down, and divers were able to get one of the chest, and they couldn't get the one under the cannon that had to be done at a different point. but of the original 341 people that were on board, only 116 survived the entire ordeal to reach Java. And I mean, basically, like, the exact site, they didn't even know where it was for over three centuries,

you know, after they had left that because it had time to settle, until like 1963 when there was like a lobster fisherman and some divers that actually discovered the wreck. So... Some dude named Dave Johnson. Yeah. And I mean, they, and basically they've had like archaeological excavations on those islands that were very close. And that's where they've uncovered like the communal graves, the skeletal remains showing like the violent blade wounds and just a shit ton of all these like VOC like artifacts.

Sad artifacts. Yeah. But that's that's the instance of where you see like, yeah, somebody just trying to play. Yeah. king or god or or something like that over this little empire but it it goes to show that not everybody can keep their brains going like marguerite not everybody can can just focus on surviving you have somebody like cornelius who's willing to take advantage of the situation to basically escape his previous life but like his survive it was about his survival but his survival only yeah not only

his survival, but his survival and, like, benefit how he was going to, like, enrich himself or better himself out of this. His ticket out of the VOC. With no regard for how many people he killed to get it. All right. Before we jump into South Kirk, we want to take a bathroom break? Yep. Let's do it.

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Who's up next? Robinson Caruso. Alexander Selkirk. The 17th century, Alexander Selkirk was born the seventh son of a shoemaker and a tanner. Now, apparently being born... The seven son of a shoemaker.

The seventh son Obviously it's because it's the number seven But it's like the son that's lucky It's the luck son He's born in Lower Lago Across the 5th of 4th In Scotland from Edinburgh And his father wants him to join the business

Selkirk has absolutely zero desire To become a shoemaker and a tanner He grows up in the business But decides that he wants to kind of strike out on his own No dad I don't want to make shoes. I want to sail. So him wanting...

No son of mine is going to sail. Is this the one where he comes back with his license and his dad's like, fuck you? I don't care if you have your sailor's license. No, it's not a supportive father. No, we have five of these and I think that this was the one, but

I can't say for sure. People can't walk with your license. He ends up running a foul of the law, which back in that time it was just the church. He ends up avoiding a bout of public shaming inside of the town church for indecent conduct

in church. He ends up taking off on this boat. He goes up in a fishing vessel. He accidentally shook his penis three times using the church restroom. And the priest watched him. He didn't shake it enough. He only shook it

three times for the priest. ends up coming back, kind of a new man, reinvigorated in 1701. And upon returning, he ends up assaulting his brother and is wanted by the church again for another public shaming and probably a lengthy stay in prison. This was a guy who was a rabble rouser, a troublemaker, kind of a wild child. Would you call him a rhapscalion? Yeah, he fit, yes, he's in the rhapscalion for sure. He's in that division.

He goes into the privateer business. And in 1703, he joins the expedition of this English privateer named William Dampere. Dampere was already pretty famous. And I don't know if he had done this prior to or happened during. Dampere becomes the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. Yeah. Pretty insane. Not to take away from Dampere, but have you looked any more into the black flag?

have you looked at any game footage other than the stuff I sent you? Oh, the private tearing thing this reminded me of all that and how sick that's going to be just, just, oh, the fact that you haven't played this game yet This is my first one. This is my first time.

It is. But the fact that you're going to be able to get in there and just sail and listen to the sea shanties that are going to get stuck in your head, it's going to be phenomenal. I'm going to come over here a couple weeks into June and you're just going to be humming sea shanties. Is that when it comes out?

Like June 9th, I think, or June 6th. Oh, that's very close. All right. Getting back to real pirate shit. So, yeah, 1703 joins as a British privateer, led by William Dampere. And the two ships that Dampere is being sent off with, can't remember the name of the first one, but Selkirk is actually serving as a master on the Sink ports. I, sorry, C-I-N-Q-U-E-E.

so it's not S-I-N-K. But still, any variation of a boat that you're putting the name sync, regardless of the language or anything like that, probably not a good omen. And this boat is a small galley basically accompanying Dampere's main ship. It feels like a situation he was on the... And I think at this point... The St. George was a 26-gunned...

ship that Dan Peer had with a crew of 120 men. They were joined by the 16-gun sink ports with 63 men on it. So you have these large forces. And as a privateer, we've talked about privateering, I think during the piracy episode, we've talked about pirating because that's what the badass Brit from the Spanish Armada episode. Yeah. The one that goes out and does the rest of the exploring. It's basically a letter of mark that's given to you by the crown.

that you are not allowed to raid any other English ships or any of your home country ships, but during the War of Spanish Succession, when you have a Spanish king who is given the position of being Spanish king, who is also the prince of France, you have everybody else in that area being like, okay, Spain's the top dog in Europe. France is no slouch. If we combine these two kingdoms together,

we're never going to be able to knock these guys off the top. So this war of Spanish succession, I believe it was called like the glorious alliance was basically everybody else in Europe being like we can't have Spain and France combined. We can't fight France. And the privateiers are basically what you would just think of as private military contractors. It's like it's privately owned armed vessels or you could convert if you had like a fleet of merchant vessels and all of a sudden you're like, you know, you could put a bunch of cannons on those and go out and loot a bunch of these Spanish ships or. French ships or whatever they were. Will it you keep? Wasn't it like 70, 60 to 70% of it? It was like really high.

Anything that you loot off of there from the ships, the cannons, all of that stuff, you turn over like 30% of it to the crown and you can keep the rest. Yeah, I would definitely be taking some of my boats that are hauling just regular like timber and shit. I'd be throwing some cannons on them and I'd be sending them out. And that's, I mean, that's 30% of what you show them. That's not even 30% of the shit that you'd drive. drop off and then go pick up after you come back.

It's a situation where it's a very, very profitable business if you get into it. The problem is finding these ships to be able to raid. It takes them quite a while to end up making it to any place where they can really fight. Yeah, because I mean, these ships are the place they're picking up and the place they're going to be their most vulnerable is right after they pick up their cargo. And all of this stuff is at a time when it's coming over from cell. America. Did we mention the sinkports captain Thomas Stradling? No, but she just did. Okay. Okay, so stradling's an asshole. Yeah, a young, brash asshole. So they're going over to South America to basically try to take out these like treasure galleons and things like that. And

Selkirk being the sailing master is basically the navigator of this ship. Yes, he's telling him, he's telling him where to go. Which tells me that if you get to be the navigation master on ship you probably had a pretty decent career fishing before like you know your way we're at a boat you know your navigation pretty well big responsibility yeah yeah and probably somebody who's voice you're going to listen to you would think um 1704 there is a failure against a french vessel they end up messing out on that they strike out multiple times until they finally get this victory against this Spanish ship named the Assoncion. It's a merchant ship. Dan Pier basically says, all right, Zellkirk, you're going to captain this ship.

This is our prize ship. We're going to ride this bitch out. And then Dan Pier comes back after basically raiding the Ascension and taking everything off of it that he wants. He has a change of heart and he goes, we can probably just release this one back to the Spanish. Better luck next time. Get back on the sink ports. I think we'll be okay. You know what? After a thorough inspection, this ship is not, it's not what we want.

There's, you know, there's damage everywhere. You don't even want to see it down there. Shipworms terrible. Yeah, it's bad. Dampier enriches himself and lets this prized ship go. Well, that doesn't really sit well with Selkirk. It also doesn't sit well with stradling. And Selkirk is serving on the sink ports under Straddling.

There becomes some dissension because straddling isn't really the best leader. He ends up having a falling out with Dan Peer and they kind of go their separate ways. Did you get what the quarrel was about between them? Was it about the fact that they let that Spanish ship go? I think it was just the fact that I don't think, well, I know that that that is why um Jesus I'm drawing a blink right now that's why selkirk had the issue but I think that there was just some constant friction because sell Kirk didn't really respect the other guy straddling straddling yeah 1704 in september stradling ends up beaching the sink ports in the juan fernandez

archipelago for a restock and repair they need to go through and clean up some of the shipworm they also just need some resources on this boat very bad. And during this time when they're beached up, Selkirk basically starts questioning Straddling's judgment on taking this boat out on the sea. And Straddling tells him that it's seaworthy. And Selkirk pipes up and says that he would rather stay on the island than get back on that god forsaken boat. And straddling says, all right, we'll see you.

So, yeah, so I was, so the ship had stopped and restocked at this place called Moss Atiera, which was an uninhabited volcanic island, like 400 miles off the coast of Chile. This is where I think they were doing the inspection and realized that damage from the previous battles, because these things aren't able to just pop into someplace and get repaired. They're kind of having to do stuff on the fly. If they're going on to the mainland, they're going to where the Spanish are. And they will be taken captive immediately. Yes.

And then woodboring shipworms, like you'd mentioned, are just kind of eaten away at this thing. You realize it's compromised. he doesn't think it's seaworthy. And so he's arguing with straddling. And basically he's like, we need to spend more time here. Like we need to get this thing pretty heavily repaired before we leave.

Stradling refuses. And then like you said, Selkirk is just like, honestly, I'd rather stay here on this island than in that sinking ship. And he's like, fine. And Rosamishore.

And I think at that point, because maybe people just trusted Selkirk more. maybe Strathling saw him as a rival. Yeah. He was basically like, nope, you already said it. He said you wanted to be sent, nope, you're going to go ahead and live up to your word and leaves him with, I want to say a musket, gunpowder, some bullets, navigational instruments,

which, fuck you, why you giving me these. And it was probably his own set. Yeah. He's like, here's your shit. And books, a few clothing items, some bedding, a hatchet, knife, and a Bible. Everything you need to survive. The betting seems, again, kind of like a little slap in the face, too. He can say he gave him a chance.

Yeah. And Selkirk, thinking that this is a joke, I guess, is the rowboats pulling away, he's walking out into the water following them. And they end up sailing off out of sight. And Selkirk, I think, kind of has that Kevin McAllister moment when he realizes that the house is empty. I think he's sitting there. So after it goes there, he just stands in wastey water or treading, water and then kind of finally gets back to shore and just turns and looks and as it's selling away he's just you just hear the laughter getting slower it's like ha ha ha ha ha because the first

few months there not saying they wouldn't be were like cripplingly lonely he was scared shitless severe depression basically staying on the beach the entire time because he's terrified about any of the noises that are coming from the island's interior. He doesn't know what's going on in there. He's from fucking Scotland. He also might have made the smartest decision of his life, though. Because very shortly after the sink ports ends up leaving, it runs aground and its crew has taken prisoner in Peru

and they're never seen or heard from again. So while he was marooned on this desert, Island. We're telling Selkirk's story because he survives. Had he gotten on the boat that he was giving straddling shit for, he would have died. We never would have gotten this story. Yeah. Crazy. So he's chilling on the beach, surviving on like scraps of shellfish, fish, stuff like that. Um, can't stay on the beach forever though, right? Well, it depends on who your adversaries on the beach are. Well, I mean, at certain seasons, the beaches are going to be used, much like Daytona Beach

during spring break things like that at certain points during the year beaches get taken over and much like during spring break sometimes they get taken over by orgies basically an invasion of aggressive sea lions

drive him off of the shore and into the interior of the islands because they're so aggressive and loud just humpin each other and fighting over hump and each other. and just RORO

Did you actually watch any mating videos to try to put yourself in the mind of Alexander Seltkirk? I just imagine not another movie reference but did he have

a revenant type situation with one of the sea lions? Where he's sleeping and you just one of them you hear him coming through the brush a little bit or like coming through the sand? He's like no, no, no. He feels a flipper

come over his shoulder making him the little spoon of me. He was like, I'm going into the island. Fuck this. I'm not getting sexed up by a sea lion. This is not going to happen. But the fact that he's being chased around this secluded, lifeless island by horny sea lions is got to be like a cool.

Now this is what's going on. As he's hunting for these feral goats and he's gathering these natural resources, not only is he being terrorized by the horny sea lions, but you have the rats that are on this island. Yes. That are keeping him up all night long. Any sort of supply or anything that he's able to get. Oh, there's fucking music, too.

I was going to try to get two sea lions fighting just to kind of put ourselves in the mindset. It would have to be a bunch of sea lions, though, because we're talking about an orgy. I mean, these are some big fights. This is mating. But some are fighting. Some are fucking.

Okay, yeah. But when there's rats on the islands, the rats that get taken care of on the ships are taken care of when they throw cats on the ship. When they beach, these cats and rats both get on the ship. So now you have to get off the ship down to the island. Get on the island. So he's finding these feral cats and he begins kind of training them and feeding them and bringing them into this little world to where it says at one point he's trained these cats to do tricks

and he's dancing with the cats. He's reading the Bible to the cats. He's doing sermons to the cats. He's... You have to go a little bit crazy, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, and he's... This is a situation you mentioned earlier

during the one about Marge. He gets to a point where he's actually thriving. Yeah. Because, I mean, he builds two huts from the pimento wood that was there. Thatches him with long grass. Has a hut for sleeping. Another one's for, like, cooking and reading. I got an issue with pimento.

Okay. the berries on a pimento tree are allspice what are the pimento peppers and pimento cheese I thought that's what he was getting I thought he was getting a little red flex and pimento cheese those pimento peppers but they were just allspice berries

and apparently he was seasoning all of his meat with allspice and everything like that all spites it's a terrible spice it's not a good spice it's the only spice though Yeah, I guess. He doesn't even, and you're thinking to yourself, the ocean is all around,

how do you not develop a system for getting some of the salt out of there? Listen, he didn't figure that out, but he's seasoning stuff with all spice. I think there's some, like, pink peppercorns that he's able to identify. But, you know, he, the island is populated by these feral goats that were left behind by, like, previous Spanish voyages and everything, that, you know, when they dropped off these animals on these islands,

it was for this purpose. Yeah. In case people got shipwrecked, they had to try to replenish or resupply, and basically starts out by using his musket to hunt them. Gunpowder runs out. He learns how to outrun. This is literally, like, this is where you get the Tom Hanks castaway thing,

where you go from him being like the schlubby, normal Tom Hanks are used to sing, to just like the island living guy that looks like he goes to a ton of Jimmy Buffett concerts. He learns to outrun and catch the goats on foot. Eventually slaughters hundreds of these things for, like, meat, and leather, is able to make candles out of the fat, is able to re-sow and recreate his clothes because the other ones just fall apart off of them out of these like goat skins, starts breeding the goats as well to have a readily available food source. Breeding the goats, not breeding with the goats.

Okay, I'm not going to do this. We had this conversation. Listen, it's a question. No, I understand that. But at the same time, the guy's pretty religious. He built the chapel. He built a chapel. I'm saying you don't build a chapel and then fuck goats.

All right. He's there a while. Apparently on an island, sometimes you build a chapel and you fuck kids on that island. That's a different religion probably. But that's a different, that's a completely different thing. Eat in wild turnips, apparently cabbage or some type of cabbage. And then like I said, like, yeah, pink peppercorn. So, but he has a spice.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's, I mean, to say best case scenario for somebody that's marooned on an island, I'd have a hard time pointing to anybody but Selkirk just because he has his own thing. He's built a pen for these goats. He's milking the goats. He's getting all the natural resources that didn't get out of the goats between kill his milking the goats. The goats are milking him.

Is that what you're trying to? I'm proud of you for getting past that. Yeah. I avoided it. He's developed these callous feet to where he's run out of the shoes. They're thicker than leather. Yeah. He's walking around on all of this volcanic soil just barefoot.

And he's doing so well. that, I mean, I couldn't believe doing this research just how excited I was that this guy was doing awesome. And then all of a sudden, as he's on a chase with one of these goats, is the goat kind of, I think he's like 10 to 15 feet in front of him, all of a sudden the goat just disappears through this brush and he continues running. Well, the goat disappeared because the brush was obscuring a cliff. And as the goat ran off the cliff, Selkirk ran off the cliff. and some sort of a wily coyote style. I don't know if he stopped in midair and looked down. But he ends up landing on his back.

And when he comes to, he realizes that he's extremely injured. Yeah. But he didn't break his back in this fall. And the reason that he didn't break his back or do anything worse is because he landed on the go. He like to reach back and felt and he came away and there was like blood on his hand. He's like,

oh my God. Yeah, he landed on the goat. I think the goat stopped. And then he like full on cartoon style hit the goat. And they both fell. Ass over tea kettle. Yeah. And thankfully he was the one.

There's a, you know, there's a universe where that goat lands on him. Yeah. He's like, am I dead? He reaches back for the blood and he's just, meher.

Grabbs a rock and just finishes it off. Your dinner. Dinner, bitch. No, he was out of it for like days. Yeah. And everything.

But, um, and at one point as well, I think he's either out by the beach or he had a system set up where his actual area where his huts were overlooked like a good chunk of the island that gave him a pretty decent view elevated for him to be able to watch for sails and everything. And sales he saw. Yes.

At least on two occasions, he sees these sails and these ships coming close. And the logical thought is you're going to want to put up a signal fire or something like that to draw you in, right? Or to draw them in. the problem is if they're Spanish ships they're going to kill him so

you think of like a movie or a situation nowadays regardless of what ship is out there chances are there's no pirates there's no other countries that are going to try to like get you and be like ah so when you're out there you just signal anything you can

for him it's got to get close enough that he can see the flag on it And if it's not currently running its flag, it has to get close enough for him to be able to identify from the way the ship is made if it's an English or Spanish or whatever it is. Pretty close. And has to get close and then create the fire. So there are times when the ships just roll up. And at one point, he's like, oh, shit, those are Spanish ships, but can't identify it until he literally sees like the ship is anchored.

The people are rowing out. I still can't tell if those are white people or slightly darker white people. And then they finally get to the beach and he's, you know, peeping out from the trees trying to stay hidden. At one during one of these times, I think they see him and fire at him.

He runs off into the trees, probably wearing his goat skin, you know, huge beard and everything. He might look like a goat. That's true. Man. It just takes off into the tree. Bullet hits over.

inside there. And he ends up climbing up a tree in one of these instances and the guys catch up up and they're standing there and he thinks they're, you know, about to find him. And they just end up taking a piss and then turning around. He just hears running water. It opens his eyes and looks down. It's just a spaniard pissing on the tree that he's climbed. They end up finding his like a hut or whatever. They kill a bunch of his goats and everything, which is fine. He knows how to go out and get more goats. But there were times when it wasn't just survival against. nature. Yeah.

Like he was invaded. How terrifying, too, is that when you see the ship coming, and the only way that you really have a decision to make is you're like, dark hair, dark hair, dark hair, dark hair, they all got dark hair, they're spaniards, shit. I got to run into the woods. Facial hair, official hair, facial hair, facial hair. Not a one, clean as a baby's butt, into the woods. That's the thing, too.

You see it from a distance, and it has to be all excitement. and as it gets closer, all you're sitting there is your excitement is building and then the disappointment when it's not. Because the initial, it can't be fear. That can't be the initial thing.

It has to be about the possibility, right? You're not thinking, oh God, here come the Spanish. It's please God, let this not be the Spanish. You're not, but what's the feeling when that boat leaves? There's going to be relief, obviously, because the Spanish didn't kill you. But what are the,

odds that another boat comes. Like the one boat that you do sees a Spanish boat, what are the chances in English boats going to roll by? I try to be optimistic about this. Yeah. I say it, but in your head, you're thinking, shit, how long has it been since I saw a boat, the last two

has been Spanish, whatever? But you're also thinking to yourself, that means that the winds are still pushing boats here. That means boats are still coming here. And if there's Spanish ships here, that means there's people looking for Spanish ships coming this way. I'm dude. That's it, yeah, exactly.

I gotta be due. And eventually he is. Due he was, yeah. February 1709, the English ship, the Duke. The Duke. Came to the island. And of course, in perfect Alexander Selkirk fashion, he ends up meeting the landing party with just this beautiful goat feast. So he's identified that it's an English flag.

The captain, shit. I just had it. Rogers? Woods Rogers. Captain Wood Rogers is a part of the landing party. That's so crazy, because that's a name in privateering and piracy and stuff. Woods Rogers? Yes.

Yeah, it does sound like a, for certain, a pirate. Wood shows up, and Selkirk has these goats on spits, and he comes out and he meets him, and he's taken aback at how well Selkirk's able to speak. and the reason that he's still been able to keep his English is because he was reciting the Bible out loud. It was a way to keep himself sane, but if you just don't talk for extended periods of time, you lose that.

Yeah. You're not sure how words you're supposed to hear because you're not hearing yourselves. And then even when you do say them, if you said it wrong and it sounded right and you're like, fuck, is that how I pronounced that? And at the same time, he's reading out loud, but he's not communicating with people.

so he's probably communicating in more of a biblical way, like language-wise. This guy's like, Jesus, did I come upon? Is this Moses? What the fuck? How did he get out here? Nice goats, man. Yeah. Woods is also highly impressed by Selkirk because he's basically reviving the sick crew.

All this crew that is filled with scurvy and all these different sicknesses, they're coming on shore and Selkirk has all of these herbs that he's giving them to bring them back to health. At the same time. So like as he's feeding these guys and these guys have been on a boat eating salt pork, all this kind of stuff, he's just, they're just eating this goat. And he's like, do we need more goats? They're like, we're, yeah, I could have more goat. Are there more goats? He's like, one minute and just runs off into the trees and you hear, man. And all of a sudden he comes out with like two more goats and like, is this dude?

He's like jacked. Yeah. They're like, this guy is in. better physical condition than like any of the sailors we brought around. There's by no means like dying. There's one point they sent two sailors with him and a bulldog that they had to go out and hunt goats. They said that Selkirk ran ahead of them, had two goats and was back at camp before the

two sailors and the bulldog even made it back to camp. Yeah. And they're sitting there eating at this table feasting. And Selkirk's like, so tell me about your ship. I got marooned here because this guy left me on the ship He came out with this dumb shit named Dampeer That ended up robbing the Spanish ship that I was supposed to get And then they just left

So we ditched Dan Peer because he was a piece of shit Nobody wanted to be around him And then Straddling left me here I don't know what happened to straddling Damn Pier's a dumbass And Woods Rogers looks at him He's just quiet for a second Rogers is just sitting there halfway through a bite of

goat He's just like looks at him he's like, ugh. I got bad news, man. I'm not, I'm like the first mate, dude.

Captain's still back on the boat. Oh, no. Woods was the captain. Um, Dampere's the pilot. He's just the guy that's piloting the ship.

You mean, okay, so like the helmsman. Yeah. Okay. So, Dampere isn't leading the ship because Dampere had gone back down

after this had happened. Dan Pier had enough time that he had gone back to England. He had gone down to Australia. He had committed. some horrific crimes to the sailors on the boat. Oh, and it got like demoted or something? Okay. Then he goes back and the only way that he can get on a ship is not by

captaining it, but by pairing up with somebody who Dan Peer obviously had skills. Yeah. But Woods Rogers is like, you can't captain. Nobody's going to work for you. You're going to work for me. But at the same time, I'm going to lean on you. So Woods Rogers ends up telling Selkirk, let's go back to the boat. Let's have dinner on my boat just kind of as a thank you for reviving my guys.

Dampier is back there And so Kurt goes, I'm not getting on a pole with Dampere. I'd like to imagine that he didn't tell him that he waited until he got on the boat. And then as he's getting up onto the deck and he sees Dampere and he goes, oh, fuck this.

No way. I haven't seen you. I haven't seen you in about four years. So I guess Dampere is just nothing but celebratory talking about what a good hand he was on the boat before and just basically saying

that this guy's a great guy not knowing that Straddling had put him out there. I mean, that had to have been a shock for Dampier too. I told me, no idea of Strattling. No, he had no idea Strathling did that. So it was just a shock to him to be able to see Selk again be like, oh shit. Well, and here's the thing too. Guess what happened to him?

Well, yeah. He might have had the intention of he's like, listen, don't worry about it. The next ship that we take over that they don't bribe me, totally yours. Yeah. And as they're leaving the island and Selkirk is self-admittedly crying. as he's leaving his home for the last four years, So Kirk ends up being made the second maid on the Duke. So he immediately goes into a job.

And you would think that the last thing that you would want to do is go do some more privateering. You'd want to go home, right? Just like you talked about before with the Batavia, you're out there to make money. There's no just turning around and going back because you find a castaway. Or maybe it was at the beginning of the episode.

You still have a job to do. 100%. You don't change. This is a nice little surprise, a little feather in your cap that you get to bring back this guy that's, and he gets to entertain or tell you guys stories. And in fact, this guy just happens to be super talented. So now he just adds to, you know, your crew. Maybe I can turn him into a permanent guy.

But at the same time, if whatever is supposed to be full in the bottom of your ship, whether it be gold or like anything that you could sell, you don't go back until that's full. So they're not just going to be like, this guy technically in the terms of like monetary value, this guy is worthless. He might get you a few bucks for telling a story, but you have to do the job that you initially came out to do. So, and at this point, I think, you know, Selkirk is just like, okay, I mean, yeah, we're

getting home eventually. Yeah. Might as well go home with a little money in my pocket. Yeah. I'm not stranded on an island with nobody to talk to. Like, holy shit, I'm the second mate. All right. Let's go.

Deal. And they end up going and. rating, I believe it was on the, it's on the west coast of South America. I think it was in Peru where he actually led a group up river chasing these Spanish women who had sewn like jewels into their clothing as they were trying to escape. And end up just raiding these women of their clothes and stealing all their jewels and everything. Yeah, we totally took all their clothes off of them because they like had jewels in them. He's given temporary command of another Spanish prize ship that they pick up.

I mean, he's out there doing the thing. Okay. This dude who is a good navigator, last interaction he's had with anyone from privateers or the British fleet or whatever, is he basically got booted off for making a joke. Yeah. And mouthing off to the guy that was technically his captain.

Within the course of being rescued and brought on here, he's like, hey, you're the new second mate. Hey, we just actually got this other ship. You're going to be the temporary captain of it. Is he just like, so like I died when I fell on that goat, right? Like at that point, like I had died, the rest of this has just been a dream. It's been one day and I've just slowly imagined all this as I was dying. Yeah, I'm slipping literally.

All this is happening as part of a fever dream as I'm dying because my back is broken in the bottom of this little canyon. So I got gored by a goat horn that I landed on. Yeah. I, the, maybe, I mean, this whole thing is absolutely insane and cool, but maybe the big feather in his cap, besides surviving all this, is they continue moving west, and Selkirk gets a complete circumnavigation of the world on this trip before he gets brought back.

Takes him a while. He finally gets it. He completes this world voyage by pulling back into England on October 1st, 1711. Four years, right? Well, eight years total from when they had taken off the first time. Okay. Four years on the island. Yeah.

The voyage and then getting trapped and then coming back is how long it takes. Eight years after he leaves, he ends up walking into a church. I believe they said that he had received either 600 or 900 pounds for this voyage. It was equivalent of like 160,000 now. They did pretty, he did pretty fucking well. Pretty great. Yeah. He ends up walking into this church and these fine linens and these beautiful clothes as he has this massive beard that he still has and this long hair.

And he sits down in the back of the church. And everybody in the church is looking back like, who is that guy? Including his family. And as the sermon is continuing and going on, his mom keeps looking back and seeing him until eventually she finally decides that it's him and stands up in the middle of church and says, my son has come back. and they have this beautiful reunion in this church. You're damn right he has. But he can't shake the island. He can't shake the fears that he has

and that solitude changed him from kind of this rapscallion, as we talked about before, and kind of this quiet, solemn guy who ends up digging or finding a cave? Yeah, so it's on his father's property and he ends up finding or digging or creating some type of like cave that he would go and like sleep in just to get that feeling it wasn't like he's using a blanket yeah everything like that still sleeping in his fine pajamas but it's just like a comfort thing and he's changed that he doesn't like being around a lot of people or anything like that and so he eventually makes the decision not intentioning you know to get marooned again or anything he's like i got to try to find a middle ground here i got to get back out safe I get to get back out on the ocean.

And he goes out, he's an anti, what is he an anti-piracy agent for the British Navy working off of West Africa. So basically he's protecting the slave ships from being raided. Yeah. Being down there, he ends up contracting yellow fever from the mosquitoes and ends up dying on his boat and is buried at sea. which again, buried at sea sounds like a very dignified thing. It's the most unceremonious thing. It's some guy has a hold of your arm, some guy has a hold of your legs,

and they heave hoe you up and over. And you're hooked up to a rock, so you make sure you say it. So you don't float, exactly. The fact that he dies at sea is somehow pretty poetic. He becomes like a footnote too, which kind of sucks, because the captain in his log is like, saw this, saw this, saw this,

Alexander Selkirk died. and it's just like this little notation. And when he comes back to Scotland and to England and everything like that, he is a bit of a celebrity. This story comes out. And the story of Robinson Caruso basically comes out of this. And I can't remember the guy's name that wrote Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe. That's right.

He changes some things about the story. But this is what inspires him to write that story. Robinson Crusoe, I think, takes place with a guy being stranded for like, 28 years. It's an island in the Caribbean, but it's like an island at the mouth of this giant river or something, which makes it sound less impressive. But this guy has people there with him on the island. And it's, there's just a lot more filler because you can't fill a whole book with just like, and today I ran down another goat or today I did this, which I'm not saying his life was boring on that island, but you got to bump it up a little bit because Robinson

Crusoe ends up going on to become one of the most, like, widely printed pieces of literature in the world, right? Yeah, except for there was a time, and this is the most insane shit that I've ever heard of. The original title for Robinson Crusoe... Oh, yeah, it was a paragraph. On the front of this book, The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, who lived eight and 20 years all alone in an... uninhabited island on the coast of America near the mouth of the Great River Orunuk, having been cast onshore by shipwreck wherein all the men perish but himself,

with an account of how he was at last is strangely delivered by pirates, written by himself. That was the title of the book. That's usually what's on the inside of the jacket now. I've read articles shorter than that. How do you get all of that on the... That's why he couldn't make any money because he's going to his printer and the printer's like,

we're losing all our money on tight face on the front. You wanted this in gold leaf on the front. Every part of the front is covered in gold. They're asleep by the time they're done with the title. So yeah, the life and adventures of Robinson Crusoe sounds a lot better, a lot cleaner. Caruso's the whole, the fact that we get books out of these,

and like you say, for Selkirk every single day is an adventure. For somebody reading about Selkirk, there's a lot of days where things get a little monotonous. The guy had enough time to build a chapel to praise God. That means that that's a guy with a lot of time on his hands. And there's only so many times to be like, oh, almost miss this goat, but then I caught him.

Oh my God, is he masturbating again? I feel like he's masturbating every chapter. He's jerking off so much the pages in this booker stuck together. You got to get some more characters in this story. And that one kind of like four years on the island, and then you just kind of made an unceremonious end with yellow fever to get your body. But that's the thing too.

Because I guess I'm not saying surviving was such a normal thing, but the risk of sea travel and the normal sea of dying at sea where if you survived it, it was just like, huh, good for you, man. Yeah. Yeah, nobody ever leaves Port with the promise of coming back And this dude did it in such a crazy way But at the end of the day The guy that left Port to go out on this void

Was just a regular dude He didn't come back to any fanfare beyond a crazy story Yeah Somebody else who has a couple run-ins Of kind of some He has enough problems on a boat To where he ends up not being able to go back on a boat Because nobody will trust him

is a man named George Pollard. And George Pollard was the captain of the Essex whaling ship. We're headed straight into Moby Dick, baby. Yeah. This is, we're going a full dick on this one. Unbelievable that this was a real story. When you texted me and you're like, did you know that Moby Dick was based on a true story?

That was when we had to lock in on this episode. We played around with the idea of, is there going to be enough? And then you said it, as soon as you said, it was like, well, yeah, If they did Moby Dick off of this, I think we're good. Yeah. You have a situation where...

Where are we on the boards? I am real high. October or August 12th, 1819. This Essex whaling ship departs from Nantucket. Now, out of all the stories that I've heard from Nantucket, this one might be more believable than the parable of the man from Nantucket. I know what you're referring to. I don't believe that one.

This one sounds just as crazy. who's it was so long he could self-pleasure yes his mouth yeah yeah I'm aware of that one um the Essex was 87 feet long 26.7 meters it displaced 238 tons it had five whaling boats that's a big boat it's still considered small yeah by by whaling standards and that came as a result of there used to be a guess certain whales

that you hunted and they used to be smaller This would have been great for those, but we're coming in at a time where the prime target are sperm whales. And I'm going to drop some whale facts here in just a second. But the Essex, you know, we're talking about 1819. This is 40 years, almost 50 years from America not being independent. So like we have a full on industry, Nantucket is huge into whaling. And we've established these routes where they're not whaling just off the coast and the end. Atlantic. These voyages, as we kind of alluded to at the beginning of the episode, was like a two and a half year whaling trip. And that's not to go around the world. That's to go down the coast of South America, try to fill up as many barrels as you can, and then turn around and get back to Nantucket as quickly as possible. So first time captain of the Essex during this, the Essex itself was an established ship. But first time captain's a guy named George Pollard, Jr., who's 29 years old at the time.

Too young. Yes. And his first mate was, again, serving in the first mate role, I think for the first time, maybe the second time, was a guy named Owen Chase, and he was 23. So two guys in charge, 28 or 29, and then 23. It had a crew of 21, which doesn't sound like a lot when we had just talked about the Batavia, having 341 passengers and everything. A crew 21 is basically there. You're doing every single job. You're sailing and you're whaling. You're running. dual rules. You're playing Iron Man football. I am still surprised, though, that you're sending 21 men out to try to harpoon whales. That doesn't seem like enough, right? Okay, so this is how they would do it, because I got a bunch of whaling facts that I'm going to do. I also figured out why they're called sperm whales, and it's almost as gross as I thought. Yeah, so let's just, we can go ahead and do that.

So the reason they're called sperm whales is there is a, it becomes super highly sought after, but inside a cavity within its head is this stuff called spermaceti. Spirmaceti. And basically, spermaceti is a oil or grease that is like so pure that they didn't even need to, like, it required no boiling and harden into this like valuable odorless wax that was used for high-end candles that apparently didn't leave like a ton of residue and stuff like that, then put off a, the smell of beef tallow or whatever animal fat that you had rendered those lesser quality candles out of. So, well, that and we're so nuts deep

into the industrial revolution. And we aren't drilling for oil. There's no crude oil that's coming out of the world that we're using. So the oil that's being used in all of this machinery to grease. Petroleum products are not a thing. You are going out, you're getting a whale, you're harpooning it, you're bringing it back onto the ship, you are cutting all of the fat off, you're rendering the fat down to get this oil that's then put into barrels that's then taken back and given to factories, like I say, to oil cogs in a machine. Yeah. Like that's how important the whaling industry is to the industrial revolution, that you have to have a lubricant. And the only way that you can get a quality lubricant is to go out and kill a giant mammal and then boil him down.

and these sperm whales are massive. So they're a great haul. They're said that sperm whale oil is like the purest of the oil or something like that. And it was also due to the amount as well. So the capacity of the S6 itself was between 1,400 and 1,400 barrels of whale oil. Now, you could get an average of 35 to 45 barrels per whale. That was just based on the average size of the whales. So much.

Some of the large bull whales, you can. get somewhere upwards of a hundred gallons or sorry hundred barrels now barrels held 31.5 gallons so the average whale provided 1100 to 1400 gallons of oil that's the average whale that's how much they were able to get out here now once the whale was killed by the smaller whale boats so you would have the ship would basically just anchor or you'd have two or three guys stay on the ship and they would take out the whaleboats that had rowers, a steering guy, and then also the guy that was going to be the harpooner, and you would basically just... Harpooner's an awesome guy.

That's what it was. So you'd have the pooner. I was thinking harpoonist, but a pooner's better. So you basically have these guys on the front of these ships that were going to poon these whales when they were, like, running. And as they did, they had, like, a recess in the front of the boat where it would hold the rope steady, and the whale would literally just drag these boats. and they would be tire them out

and they would continue to try to hit them with more of these harpoons to open up cuts to bleed them out and everything or the whale dives and when the whale dives it drags the boat down into the depths if they can't get the rope cut fast enough yeah so that's the deal is what did they call it a nantucket sleigh ride

when they were being dragged behind the whales you're literally being dragged however fast because you're not going to slow it down. It's the blood loss. Yeah. And then just they drag you out onto the horizon and then eventually how it would happen is if you were taking off in a certain direction, the three guys on the boat would be like, we got to start ourselves out in that direction to catch up to them. You would drag the boat or you would drag the whale or the boat would come to you. It was towed back or the boat would meet it. It was lashed alongside the main ship. It couldn't get it up out of the water. So it was just secured as much as possible. possible, and sailors would stand on like a temporary wooden stage that was suspended over the carcass. Now, you would also have a bleeding whale, and sharks would be biting at the outside of this whale

while it was next to it. Now, the head of it, like we talked about, was the most valuable prize. It was severed in whatever situations they could from the body and hauled up on the deck or held literally right up against the boat, because this is the money pots that they're going after. It was called the case And it contained hundreds of gallons of that pure liquid Spermaceti oil They would literally just lower buckets into the head And scoop it out

Unbelievable Now once it got to the point where they couldn't scoop People would be standing waist deep In the cavities in these heads Guys would have to go through the hole And go down The blow hole? No, a hole cut

in the top of it and go into this to try to like scrape out and get as much of this stuff as possible. This was an actual job on the boat was to go in there and get the rest of like the fat. You don't get that smell off you, do you? You better hope to God you're not the small sky

on the ship. This was like a cabin boy job that would happen. So on the ship's deck sat this thing called the Triteworks and it was this like large brick furnace basically holding these just massive iron pots or cauldrons. So the blubber chunks that they would strip off this thing were tossed into like the boiling pots

and as the oil rendered out these crispy leftover skin bits they call them cracklins. They were skimmed off and then literally thrown straight into the furnace because they were rendered, boiled off fat and they would continue to fuel the fire to keep it hot. So it's like a self-feeding thing.

So not like pork cracklins that you eat. I'm sure someone tried to eat one. And it just... Fuck, I don't know. Yeah. So once boiled, like the hot oil, it was ladled into the copper cooling tanks. And then once it was safe to handle, then it was funneled into these heavy wooden casks.

Those were the things that were lowered into the ships like cargo hold underneath it. And that's where everything would be stored. And then after each of these things, you would hope you could get a couple at the same time. Because after every single one of these, the crew had to spend the next few days scrubbing the ship with lie and seawater to remove that slick. like putrid grease that got left over everything because you're doing this as quickly as possible. Well, and there's just boiling pots that are probably spraying hot. Depending on if it's calm water or anything like that.

Can you imagine trying to do this when there was a storm? Did you imagine getting a vat of boiling hot whale fat splashed on you? They said it was super dangerous because the whale weighs so much that if it was pulling taut on these roast and broke it or anything like that, or a situation where someone was inside the cavity and it busted loose, because it would sink. You'd get taken down with it.

That, I think, is maybe the biggest factor when you talk about how small the Essex was. I mean, it says an adult male can typically weigh between 35 to 50 tons, which is gigantic, a female of 14 to 18 tons. So you're looking at, you know, 45,000 kilos, what, 50 tons, you're looking at 10,000 pounds, or 100,000 pounds? Sure. But it's all muscle.

50 times 2,000? But it's all muscle. It's, they're shaped like a sperm whales are shaped like freaking torpedoes. And they're just, I mean, and they're completely, you know, they're perfectly tailored to be in the water. They're meant to survive like deep ocean depths. They are. but when you strap them to the side of the boat. Correct.

And I mean, they're not getting huge ones. That's why I was saying kind of the average and everything. So there's the whaling facts. So getting back to the actual Essex itself, two days into the voyage, not a great omen, but a severe storm hits the ship and gets it like when it's kind of stuck in the Gulfstream. Storm nearly capsizes the vessel,

destroys two of their whale boats, and damages another. they're only two days out. You would think at that point you would just say, hey, this sucks. We're going to lose some days, but let's go back to Nantucket where we can get professional repairs done

and then we can head back out after that. They're like, no, you know what, screw it. We're not heading back in. We're not, you know, they're going to think maybe it was my fault that we sailed into that storm. So basically refusing to return to Nantucket for repairs, Pollard ends up going to

the Azores, because I guess to get down to where they were going, you have to sail east a little bit. You probably want to hit like a Gulf Stream or something like that. Yeah, and then once you hit east, you go further down and then you start working your way further south. So they find a boat with some old spares in the Azores that just having the storm and everything, they were like, this isn't a great omen, right? I mean, we already got pretty tossed around two days into this thing. Before we get further along, a hand up here. I don't feel a bit bad for these guys. I can get this out now.

We're going to talk about some pretty horrific shit. But the things that lead up to them getting out to the whaling grounds, bad people. Totally bad people. The storm could have saved some whales' lives, and it could have saved a lot of people's grief. Had they turned around and gone to Nantucket, we wouldn't have gotten Moby Dick probably. I mean, it still would have probably come out in some way. I don't know. But it's just wild to think that that one storm could have stopped this whole entire, like, literary thing that everybody studies in high school.

Well, I mean, again, you had mentioned it. Two and a half years is what this is supposed to take. So they spend over a year hunting across the Atlantic and around Cape Horn, but they're not hitting whales. Because, again, this is during a time of, like you're saying, the Industrial Revolution. Whaling is huge because it's fueling this entire industry. as far as the oil goes and for lanterns, things like that, they're just, if you don't have to go far for the whales, you're not going any further than you have to.

So you're just constantly pushing them further and further and further away as this industry continues to operate to the point where, yeah, around Cape Horn, they're not finding very many whales. So Pollard basically picks up a tip. I want to say they hear about the offshore grounds through a chance encounter with another Nantucket whale ship called the Aurora in May of 1820. And they're well short of what they need to even return to Nantucket,

as far as like the amount of oil they've gotten. So Paul, they're just like, you know what? If that's where the whales are, that's where we're going to have to go. And it's supposed to be this newly discovered, highly remote whaling area in the South Pacific. So now not only have they gone around Cape Horn, now they're going out into just the open Pacific at that point. They're in another ocean at this point.

Yeah. It's wild to me to think that whaling had been going on for so long at this point, that the reason Nantucket was so popular and so famous, you could just drive your boat directly out from Nantucket and be in the whaling ground. But they had depleted that so much that then they're like, okay, well, we've got to move south a little bit more. But those people have been whaling there, so they're like, okay, we've got to move south a little bit more. So they hop their way down the Atlantic because...

They had wailed their asses. completely into another ocean. They had fucked the Atlantic out of so many whales that they were like New Ocean, who'd is? You got whales? Hey, whales, you up? Yeah, dude, wild.

So after they, they round Cape Horn like you were talking about, the competition is just, there are whales off of the coast of Peru, but there's 10 whaling boats for every two whales. No one's going further than they have to. Yeah. Within two months after,

they had rounded Cape Orne and ended up in Peru, they had only had about 450 barrels of whale oil. So not enough to call this a successful voyage at all. With that average, you're maybe talking 20 max whales. Yeah. Which is still a lot. Yes. It's undoubtedly a lot, but it's just not enough. So May 1820, like you were talking about, they're out 1,000 miles off the coast.

By October 8th, 1820, they have to make a stop at Espinola Island and the Galapagos Islands to resupply and to catch some sea tortoises. Now, disgusting a tortoise to me doesn't look like it would taste good, but apparently these were very good to keep on ships because they would go out and catch them, and then they could stack them shell on top of shell in the hole. And these things were so slow and so used to living on so much, or so little, that they said that they could survive up to. a year in the hull of the ship stacked up. It was just a food source that would continue living. They would keep them alive. Yes. They thought that they didn't need, they thought these were like immortal creatures that didn't need sustenance. And they just ate so infrequently. And maybe they figured, we'll give them a little bit of water because

everything needs water. Yeah. But they would just be able to have a constant, weird walking around food source. Sometimes they'd just bring them up on deck and there would be like Murphy and Stella just hanging out on deck. And those would be the deck tortoises. they stacked up 300 of these giant sea tortoises. Which is crazy. You just stack up, you got so much room you're just stack. You go below deck and it's just fucking tortoises. Well, and there's 300 eyes that stare at you when you come walking down the stairs.

That's not going to creep you out at all. But I mean, I guess these things are heavy. They're a great source of food. Again, so sad. They end up moving on to Charles Island to go out hunting some birds and some other things. that are on this island. And one of the crew members thought that it would be funny, just a nice little gag to light a fire,

to end up scaring some of the other guys on the island. Fire gets out of control, as fires tend to do. And everybody abandons the island and goes back out onto the ship and watches the entirety of Charles Island go up in flames. These guys were more than likely the arbiter of extinction, or extinction for all of the species that had lived on Charles Island. All because of a fun little gag joke

of lighting a fire while you're out hunting. Fucked up. I know. It's stupid. So the choice to sail to the offshore grounds ends up placing the Essex in kind of one of the most remote corners of the planet. What was the distance

west of South America that they reached? Because I saw a few figures. They went off a thousand miles from Peru to the Galapagos, and then they went a thousand miles west of the Galapagos. Okay, so they're about 2,000 miles west of South America. On the morning of November 20th, 1820, the Essex was positioned just kind of south of the equator in the offshore grounds. The weather was clear, sea was calm, and the crew spotted a large pod of sperm whales in the distance.

So that's exactly. You're looking for either the tails, the flukes, or the spouts from them coming up in spraying mist up into the air when they're you know they're breathing so uh george pollard and the second mate whose name was matthew joy lowered their well boats uh to pursue the pod at that point i think essex was under the command would have been under the command of owen chase at that point because there were so many whales chase also lowered his boat yeah to go chase them but this left them in a situation where they were supposed to have a certain amount of people in the whale boats and a certain amount of people back on the ship. They had lost one guy when they had stopped at one of the islands.

Either one of the islands or one of the cities on the coast of Peru before they came completely off the mainland. But now they only had 20 guys, so they could only leave two left on the ship because you had like four rowers, a guy to steer and a guy to harpoon or something like that. It still doesn't seem like enough, but I guess if you're just getting drug, it's not like it's or drag. But that's also counting on your guys like not dying. It doesn't seem very smart when you don't have at least a few backups, right? You want some guys back on the ship. So Chase lowers his boat, too, ends up going out harpooning a whale, but the creature

ends up, like, the whale ends up hitting it with its tail and smashes a hole in the boat. Now, these things are light. They're meant to be raised and lower and everything, and just meant to be dragged by these whales on these sleigh rides. But, I mean, they're pretty easy to damage. Yeah. and so he has to end up cutting the line going back to the Essex and he has to have them get the ship or the boat back up on deck

where you can get the thing turned over and start trying to repair it so while this is happening this huge male bull sperm whale they estimated about 85 feet long weighing roughly about 80 tons based on the size surfaces near the ship and it's just kind of laying there, which this has to be creepy as fuck.

Yeah. Because there is somebody that's keeping an eye out on the ship itself. And it's for someone saying, hey, guys, and you see this enormous sperm whale, just kind of like laying on the surface for a few minutes,

pointing right at you like, it's getting ready to T-bone you. This is the T-Rex eye. in Jurassic Park. But I mean, it's point. It's surf. What it's doing from what it sounds like, and they've kind of speculated what might have attracted it,

is like the hammering and the vibrations from him repairing the boat. No. This is nature being like, you've chased us all the way into the Pacific. No fucking further. But the thing is on the surface where you can see it, stopped to get your attention and pointed straight at your ship. and as it began to move,

they said it spout about two or three times so it was like building up its head of steam and accelerated. So basically they see you remember in the cartoons or you see the bull do the thing where it rakes the ground and you see it breathe out a few times. That's what the thing does. And charges directly

at the ship from about 100 yards away. It hit it just forward of what's called like the four chains or something like that. So I'm guessing probably somewhere in the front half of the boat. and just they said it knocked every single person off of their feet and the ship was like trembling like a leaf. Yes.

Score one for nature. And I mean, it's not just hitting it once. It's shoving this thing to the side. And they said after it kind of like they heard it scrape past the hole, it shook its head and then kind of like seemed like it was disoriented from the impact, which I'm sure it kind of was. Yeah. And just kind of drifted.

like a short distance away and kind of laid a little bit like still or like paralyzed on the surface for a couple minutes. And as they're going down to survey the damage and everything, they're taking on a whole bunch of water. It's there's a pretty big sizable break in the whole of this thing. Chase is there. He's ordering the pumps to get started and everything. He ends up coming back out and the ship is already kind of like starting to settle by the bow. So the whale is still kind of sitting out a little bit away. They said it swam roughly about a quarter of a mile ahead of the ship, just kind of like in a dazed pattern,

and then literally just turned around and faced right at the ship. And this comes from Chase because he ends up, spoiler alert, he ends up surviving. He states that this thing started beating the water with its tail, like slapping it a few times, and just charged the bow. said it moved at double the previous speed that it hit it,

and when it struck the ship, it caught it right in the bow, kind of like right at the water liner below, and completely just caved in the bow of the ship. You can't tell me that that's being attracted by hammers and poundings. No. That's pure animal aggression. That's retribution for so many of his whale cousins

and whale brothers and sisters that have been lost. Whales are insanely smart. Yeah. You're not going to tell me that, that this is either the male in this entire herd based on its size. I don't think it's going to have any other challengers. So it's traveling with those whales that you're chasing down, that have calves with them, that you're harpooning some of them,

there's squeaks, there's click, there's communication and distress going on in the water. And all that animal knows regards of its intelligence level, but still being a whale, is that this did not occur until this thing showed up. and if I make this thing go away, then guess what? All of this distress and everything like that will be safe.

Sounds logical. It's just, it's a protective nature type thing, exactly. And so this thing, I mean, this second impact pushes this thing backward through the water. I think they said within 10 minutes

of the second strike, the thing had rolled over onto what they call its beams end, enough to where when Pollard looked back from his wellboat that was miles away, saw the sails basically disappear from the horizon. And as soon as that happened, him and the other boat cut their lines

and hauled ass back to where the Essex was basically sitting there, almost capsized in the water. They said that over the next two days, they just spent trying to salvage what they could. They had broken through the hull of the ship, or broken through the whatever was still sitting on top. I don't know what part of the boat it was. Yeah, he shows up. He said that he said his first words to Chase were, my God, Mr. Chase, what's the matter? And Chase replied, we've been stove by a whale. So I think stove is where the front of it gets caved in or something like that. But I mean, like you said, to upright the ship even slightly, they had to use axes. They chopped down the masts. So it stopped putting so much weight dragging over to the side. They said stripped of that, like the sails that were kind of like in all the rigging, the whole kind of righted in itself to about a 45 degree angle, bringing it.

it like partially out of the water to where then they could try to like access down below and start pulling supplies off of it. So they chop holes through the planks in the upper hole to access it. They pulled out about 600 pounds of ship's biscuits, which were like hard tack that had basically been soaked in seawater though. So they're all salty as shit, which then just accelerates the dehydration. Well, yeah, they'll dry. You can eat them again, dry.

They're just going to have the salt left out. they're going to be flavorful. You just got an extra salted ritz that you're about to eat in a situation where fresh water is not readily available. Oh, no, they retrieved a... Oh, no, they're set on that. They got like 65 gallons of fresh water.

Oh, and they were also able to get two Galapagos tortoises that had been kept up on the deck. It's a shame that the Galapagos tortoises didn't take the cue from the whale and see one of those guys crawled down into the hole and it's just Galapagos chomping and whoever's trying to get a hold of it. Or they're just, they finally just eat the sides

out of the ship and it starts taking on water. You just see a tortoise head pop out of the side look around like, oh fuck, we're out. We're out, free. They use like scrap lumber from the Essex to build up the sides of the, they call them the gunwolds of like the whale boats by about six to 12 inches.

To basically just prevent like any type of waves from splashing inside and swamping them. These are not things that are many, to be out on the open water. They're meant to go out a little bit from the ship, do the whaling stuff, and then come back. Well, and the row boats. You're not going to row yourself a thousand, two thousand miles back. Oh no. You're not row row row rowing your boat out of this situation. You need sails. They end up constructing masks on these boats and then cutting parts of the big sail on the Essex to create something to carry them a little bit further.

Once you get settled, once you get enough provisions or what you think is enough provisions before the boat ultimately ends up capsizing, you need a plan. You need somewhere to go because you're not just going to live out your days on these boats. And you have a little bit of navigational understanding, but you're 2,000 miles off the coast of South America. There is a chain of islands called the Marquesas Islands that are about 1,200 miles away. You have about 2,000 mile ride to the society islands. And depending on which way you want to go, you're probably

thinking about going to one of the sets of islands because it could be the most easily navigable ways, right? You're also at the mercy of whichever way the winds or the tides are going to. So you could be a thousand miles west of South America or the Galapagos. Be like, let's

head back. That's the closest area. They're like, none of the winds take us there. Like, we're going to be rowing against the tide the entire way. So that also has to be take into account, but Owen Chase and Matthew Joy, who were the first and second mate, overruled Pollard, who wanted to go to the Marquesas or the Society Islands. They overruled him, basically, fearing that the islands were inhabited by cannibals. So they chose to sell 3,000 miles south and east towards South America, because again, they're up by, you know, just south of the equator,

and basically that completely just hosed him because it forced him to sail against the prevailing winds and the currents. Well, and what they were hoping to do was if they could go 1,500 miles south, they could be picked up and basically ride the winds into Chile or Peru. But the fact that they didn't know enough about the area, and maybe that was it. Maybe this new hunting ground was so far out that they didn't quite have an understanding. You could have had, honestly, you could have had a dozen, two dozen voyages out to that area, and everyone is still coming back with new information about stuff. At that time, when they say, oh, well, the Marquesas Islands and the Society Islands are both filled with cannibals.

We can't go there. Go ahead and have been further from the truth. Yeah. Both of these islands had been accepting any voyagers friendly every single time. Nobody was going to eat them. This might be the most ironic part of the story. It was the two islands that could have saved probably everybody on these ships were both abandoned to go try on this weird path to try to hit Chile or Peru. And what's crazy too is the reason these islands probably end up getting the reputation for having cannibals.

No one ever returns from these islands. They're so fucking nice and the people are so great that nobody wants to leave the island. Well, crazily enough to where they were if they were going to try to hit Peru, it was going to take them right by that Fernandez chain that Alexander Selkirk's island was. Oh, really? Yeah. They could have floated into Selkirk's island. island, but they bypassed it because they didn't know it was there. So they could have had like a Robinson Caruso part two. That would have been nuts. Had that like occurred on the same island?

Yeah, they hit it. Yeah. Okay. So the Essex is done for obviously. So they have to divide up into three different lifeboats or not life. They're life boats apparently. At this time they have been converted to lifeboats. Cease to be whaling vessels. Yes. will be a much smaller amount of whaling being done at this point. George Pollard ends up commanding the first boat. His crew includes the cabin boy, William Bond, and five other seamen. Owen Chase commands the second boat. His crew includes Benjamin Lawrence, who's one of the boat steers and four seamen.

I was waiting for you on that one. And then Matthew Joy, who's the second mate commands the third boat. His crew includes Thomas Chavill, who's another boat steer and five other seamen. So it's going to be a lot It's going to be a lot of Seamen swallowed on this voyage By the sea So at night when

Visibility pretty much drops to zero Because again this is There's nothing to provide light If the moon's not out or anything like that It is pitch black They use ropes to literally tie the three Wellboats together And basically just to prevent them from drifting apart

While they slept arrested But at the same time it's highly dangerous Because if a sudden wave hits Or a storm rolls in one boat capsizes and drags the other two down with it. So someone had to constantly be up. And man, when it was rough and you're sitting there and you're trying to lay down and get rest, like, is there anything other than fear or just, does being in that field of work,

you just get over the fact of the weirdness of being out in the ocean? I mean, there always has to be fear, right? I think they have gone. beyond their scope of understanding how to survive on the ocean. Because I'm sure some of them had gotten into trouble. They'd seen boats capsized, things like that. They'd seen people drug under by whales. But now you're in a situation where there's no home base to go back to.

There's no Grand Essex to return to from a whaling ship. So this is your profession. You're around this, whatever, however long you've been doing it. you know how easy and you know all the stories that you've ever heard about every ship that's gone down with its crew how many people survived you know the odds not only have you heard those stories about things that happened just in the atlantic off dantucket or a little bit further along you know the east coast of south america you're in an area that nobody goes to that really doesn't have anything charted other than the fact that it's this grounds to get whales and now all of a sudden you're you're in an area that nobody goes to you're in a area that really doesn't have anything charted other than the fact that it's this grounds to get whales and now all of a sudden you're you're in this boat, you've got to just be, like, do you just say fuck it at that point? You know that it's already predetermined.

You're just like, I guess I'm just going to see where we're going. In the back of your head, you're probably thinking, I'm going to die, but there's a chance I might not. But in that time frame, every fucking wave that comes over you that makes the boat rock and seeing all these other people with you and everything, everyone just has to have the same depressed, just acceptance, or at least maybe not an acceptance at that point of being like, so we're just going to like all die slowly, separately, right? Or is it all going to happen at the same time? Like, how's this going to go down?

There's a numbness to really any of it? People were built different back then, so I don't know if there's just this, it's the semen mentality that it just kind of, I don't know. The water creates a fear in me. It does, but also it's this madness of what do you do? The ship's only so big. You can only take care of so many things on the ship during a day.

Yeah, you need the mom in there to sing the stories with the kid. They sing the songs with the kids. You're just stuck out on this boat kind of floating around aimlessly with nothing to do for basically the entirety of the time the sun's up? The entirety during the day, so they cast off the ropes, but they stay within like visual distance of each other. And they use their makeshift sales to try to match each other's speed and try to go all in the same direction. Again, staying within visual sight. December 20th, 1820 rolls around. This is one month of drifting and basically suffering from extreme dehydration.

They end up landing at a place called Henderson Island. And they're able to, I believe they're able to get some water off of Henderson. They're able to, they pretty much just decimate any food or animals or anything consumable on. the island itself. And three of the crew members, a guy named William Wright, Seth Weeks, and Thomas Chapel, they're just like,

you know what, we've seen enough water. We're good with the water. We know you guys have probably, you know, we've destroyed everything on the island, we've eaten everything. We're going to stay here

and look a little bit harder. We're not going back out there. Well, then, also, just with the way that this is playing out, as you're rolling up onto this island, there's got to be so much hope.

And you get there to feel dry land under your feet. Yeah. After such an ordeal has to bring you back. You get a little bit of almost a reprieve from the water. I don't know if I want to get back on that boat. Fuck no. Fuck no. I'm with Willie, Seth, and Tommy on this one.

I am not leaving dry land again. We talked about it earlier. These guys that go back to sea and everything like that. Fuck that. I survive something like that. That is the universe's way of saying, hey man, you got your one. Stay away from the water from this point going forward.

Here's the thing too. If the thought in your head is, well, there's nothing left on this island. We're going to eventually die here. Yeah, but I think, honestly, there's an equal or greater chance of dying out there on the boat. And if they do have the better chance of survival, they're going to tell them that we're on this island,

whether a ship comes out here to, rescue us. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But if they survive, there's a chance that will survive. And frankly, I don't like the water anymore. I'm staying. I kind of flip-flopped on this one because I think it's because the Batavia, I wasn't almost killed by a whale. But this time, I think I would stay on the island because I just survived a whale attacking a giant ship and almost killing me. I don't want to mess with the water. I just also survived severe dehydration. at this point as well. Running a ground on coral reef,

at least I know kind of I can get away. I'm not stronger to swim. Yeah. Like if something happens to this fucking rickety ship, everyone's... Mm-hmm. I saw how everyone was looking at me during the last voyage when people started to get hungry.

I feel like that's a little foreshadowing. Yeah, god damn me for doing all those squats before I got on the ship. Exactly my big meaty trunks. A big problem with their net. navigation is they thought they landed on Ducey Island. Ducey Island was 220 miles away. God damn it, white boy.

Ducey. Just so much further away. And by December 20s... Yeah, you're dehydrated. You're delirious as fuck, man. Come on. The problem with the navigation, though, is if you believe you're on Ducey Island and it's 220 miles away,

the next place that you leave from, you're already 220 miles off course. So that's going to be an issue. By December 26th, the crew had decided to leave the island. Like you say, those three sounds like, fuck this. Stay in here. I'll suck crab before I get back on there.

I'm going to be eating bark from the palm trees. Just to show you where Pollard's heads at, Pollard had written a detailed account and letters to his wife, and then put them in like this makeshift mailbox and just nailed them to a tree on the island. Fully

knowing that that was probably how this story was going to get told. If by some chance somebody found that island and found the box. But they end up tailing off after this. As they leave, they believe that they're setting out for Easter Island on December 7th. Or there were, yeah.

On December 27th, they set out for Easter Island. 17 of them. Now divided again in their three boats. But January 4th, they were pretty much nautically fucked. Yeah. They had missed Easter Island. The food from Henderson Island had been completely. completely exhausted. There's this new attempt to head for Masafura Island, which again,

you don't know how to find Easter Island. How are you going to find Massifera? At that point, where we had island? I don't care what island it is. Is it just one of those things? It's like, I don't know where we are, but if we just head west, we're bound to hit South America if we live that long, right? You're just grasping at straws at that point, which is kind of a sad lead into how this all turns out. By January 10th, the first death at sea occurs. By January 11th, Chase's boat gets separated in a squall. A man named Lawson Thomas dies on one of the boats, and Lawson Thomas becomes the first victim of the cannibalism that they were trying to avoid by not going to those first two islands. Yeah. So I mean, and stuff

kind of happens in, in like, short bursts here. And it happens because boats end up getting separated, things are going to kind of happen individually to these crews. So like you said, January 10th, that's when Matthew Joy, who was the second mate, he's the first to die after 50 days in the open ocean. Now, he was actually sick even prior to, like, the sinking of the Essex. I think they said he might have had like tuberculosis. That same night, Owen Chase's boat ends up getting into another whale encounter. They thought it was either, it could have been a killer whale or it could have been a shark, where it actually takes a fucking chunk and bites a chunk and a hole out of it that kind of initiated their the final separation

between like some of these boats because this occurred i believe at night so while the boats were drifting in pitch dark it um bit through the like the thin side planks and it was just above the water line but because of the water you know coming over it caused water to pour inside they scrambled to stay afloat they had to stuff a bunch of clothing into the hole to plug the leak until daylight when Chase managed to nail like a piece of canvas and wood over the hole, but it also caused them to be much, much slower. I said that that was the main way that they would fix these boats,

because I guess they grabbed like a couple bags of nails, was if there was a hole or a leak in the boat, they just slapped another piece of wood over the top of it and just nailed it on. Like there's no sap, there's no pitch that you're putting in. You would try to put canvas between it and then nail it to where we would try to seal some of the gaps. but that's okay you're sitting there in this boat

all of a sudden you can't tell if it's a shark or another whale just something from the ocean is coming back to try to finish you off again there's signs it's like get the fuck out of the ocean get out of the Pacific motherfuckers you don't watch the boys didn't get attacked by a whale again

you haven't watched the boys have you the first season okay so this is the last season everything and there was a scene last week's episode where the deep the ocean character basically the ocean kicks him out. And it's Samuel Jackson is a hammerhead shark. No.

Yes, that tells him he's like, take one more step in the ocean, motherfucker, and we're going to kill you. This is basically what is happening. They're telling them to get out of the ocean. So as it's, you know, now much slower, during the day, they're just getting separated further and further.

Or if they're separated at night and they're further away, it's much less likely they're going to be able to catch back up to each other. Two days after the midnight attack on January 12th, a storm hits it. It basically throws up a bunch of waves, separates him even more. And by morning on the 13th of January, Chase looked out across the horizon. The other two boats were completely gone.

And that was onward is when Chase's boat was completely isolated. Joy's boat, the one that was captained by the second mate, or that was being led by the second mate. Hendrickson? Was that his name? He's the guy that took over. Or Obed Hendricks? Yes, he's the one that took over Joy's boat.

It was still with... Oh, before you continue, Obed Hendricks, the ripe old age of 20. Oh, yeah. It's now in charge of this boat. Oh, he's one of the elder statesmen of the boat. But that one ran out of provisions and got so weak, you know, the crew of that being able to keep up.

Pollard had to share some of his own rations on January 28th, that boat drifted away from Pollards in the dark, was never seen again. All seven men vanished into the Pacific. So that ship is completely gone now. That was the ship that they said months later, off of the coast of Peru, there was a ship that pulled up onto shore. Or a little boat.

Yeah. Three skeletons were the only thing that were found inside the boat. Really? Yes. Yeah, they said that they couldn't definitively prove that it was them, but it's weird that weeks later, a ship, or a boat in that area. Where else is it coming from, right? Exactly.

Especially skeletons. They almost made it. So by February of 1821, the three remaining men with Owen Chase were Chase, were Chase, Benjamin Lawrence, and Thomas Nickerson. But they were so close to death. They had resorted to cannibalism to survive. The rations, including the meat from the other bodies, were completely gone and they were too weak to move.

I think it was at 7 a.m. Nickerson spotted a sail on the horizon. It ended up being a British whale ship called the Indian that was captain by William Crozier. Are we not going to talk about the drawing of Lott? Oh, that actually comes up on, doesn't that come up on the other guy's boat? Or were they doing it on all of them?

Pollard's boat. Yeah, I'm getting to Pollard. He didn't get rescued a little bit later. So just kind of going in order and everything. Okay. So just to clean up what we got going on, Lawson Thomas dies eaten. Two days later, Charles Sorter dies eaten. Next few days, Isaiah Shepherd dies eaten. Samoa Reed dies eaten. And this is going on the way that they talk about this happening in the way... That's right. I asked you this before the start came. So how did... It's morbid as it is, man. It's like you, they're at sea. how does it work?

These bodies, the ones that got off lucky were the ones that died early before they became a menu option because they said that what they did was they just sewed them into their clothes. I assume so they didn't wash up naked. I don't know what the fuck you'd sewed in their clothes. And then they toss them overboard. They said, when these guys came on the menu, the problem with eating them was their bodies were so emaciated and just shitty that it's not like you could cut off like a thigh or like a, bicep and eat that, they had to go straight for the organ meat.

So they would cut their chests open, they would pull their heart and their lungs out, that would be what they would eat. And they didn't have many fires or any real heat source on this thing, so it was pretty much raw. And when they had eaten all the organs that they could harvest, they just dumped them off the sides of the boat. So not even like eating a leg or anything like that. They started because that's when they started on bones.

Yeah, you're going straight for the organ meat. and then if you don't have anything else usable, you have to go down to sucking on bones. Pretty nuts. Because thinking about it, normally cannibalism, people die at least with a little meat on them. But these guys had gone so long

that their bodies had used up all the reserves. Because they were all dying, like, within a week or two weeks of each other and everything in similar conditions. They said when Chase's ship pulled up alongside, they basically found three living skeletons. They were so emaciated

that their skin was, like, split tightly across their, bones and they couldn't speak or stand. So Jason's boat. Didn't they try to fight them when they brought them on the boat? Huh? Didn't they try to fight them when they brought them on the boat? No, that's, that's Pollards, guys.

So they were rescued about 300 miles off the coast of Chile, having survived 89 days in an open boat. The crew of the Indian did a really good job because they all three of them survived carefully getting them kind of nurse back to health and feeding them.

On February 23rd, five days after Chase was picked up, the Nantucket, Welsh ship, Dauphine, which was commanded by this guy, Captain Zimmery Coffin, spotted Pollard's boat. Now, as this boat got close, the crew witnessed, I'm going to try to kind of read through this a little more casually than one would. Pollard and Ramsdale were the guys that were left in that boat. They were so traumatized and delirious from starvation, they didn't even realize that they were being rescued. They were crouched in the bottom of the boat, covered in blood, frantically gnawing on the dry bones of one of

their deceased crewmates. Now, even as they were pulled onto the dauphin, they were holding the bones, like to their chest, terrified that someone was trying to steal like their food. And what ended up happening on that boat is it came down to, I believe it was Pollard Ramsdale and Pollard's cousin who was on the boat and they had to draw straws for which one of them was going to die. His name was Owen Coffin.

He was a shipboy. I believe he was... Not related to Zimri Coffin, I don't believe. He was the captain of that Dauphine. I think he was. I think that was how we got on the boat. No, it was Pollard's cousin.

Okay. But the captain of the Dauphine was Zimri Coffin. So it was just... But I believe you're right. I believe the name, the last name was the same. And as Coffin draws the short straw, Pollard goes to, and he goes,

If a man takes a step towards you, I will wipe him out, basically. And Coffin says, I'm just as satisfied with my lot as everybody else that drew. And basically resigns himself to being killed to be eaten. They draw lots again. I believe there was four of them on the boat. Okay. They draw lots again. Coffin's best friend on the boat.

the boat is the one that draws the short stick to kill him. Gotcha. He walks over, he puts a bullet in the back of his friend's head on the boat. I want to say he was like 16 years old. And they eat him. So the guy that Pollard got on the boat, he is the kid that Pollard got to the boat. You're just, I mean, how are you not like, you are psychologically just fucked for the rest of your life, right? Yeah.

Like, there's no coming back from that. And I think, in regards of what stage you are in the evolution. of society, that is something that you do not come back from. Pollard does. Somehow, Pauler does. Not well, but... Yeah. So they were rescued having survived 94 days at sea.

So out of the 20 crew member stranded sea, seven men total were eaten by their starving shipmates. Six of them died of natural causes related to starvation and exposure. And yes, Owen Coffin was the one that was deliberately executed. three crew members, the ones that were that stayed on the island, Wright, Chapel, and Weeks, they actually were rescued. April 19th by the Constellation. Yeah, and that's not that much for longer after the other ones.

That was like two months later. Yeah. So it's not like they even had to send a boat from Nantucket. There was one where they were able to direct from somewhere to go out and to get them. Pollard and Chase eventually returned to Nantucket. Chase wrote his famous, like, narrative about the sinking, and that's what later inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. Pollard lost his very next ship to a coral reef

and basically spent the rest of his life working as a night watchman in Nantucket. When they got back, they told Pollard that he's never going to be a captain again because he could never muster another crew because he was just bad luck. That's why he had to switch professions. I mean, at that point, yes. There's no question about it. Well, how does Pollard even think about going back to doing the same? thing again. He just had to eat his cousin. You got at it. You survived despite so many things to the

contrary trying to kill you. Just no. I mean, Chase retired from the sea in 1840. He ended up becoming kind of wealthy and successful as a captain. But in the final decades, once I guess you start to do a little bit of reflection back on your life, they say the trauma of the starvation he'd endured caught up with him. He suffered from severe headaches, nightmares, and crippling fear of starving again, which yeah, you're going to have nightmares about people. You killed an eight and all of that, especially a whale possibly haunting your dreams as well. And basically compulsively started hoarding crackers and food in the attic of his Nantuck at home. And then he was eventually institutionalized for several years and died insane in 1869, which I wonder if that was kind of the inspiration

for the whale driving him and saying like the Captain Ahab type character or something like that. Push that plot line to the kind of the forefront. Yeah, made it while he was still like insane in his retribution or journey to go back and get the revenge. Maybe in thinking about it that way, maybe it wasn't based. It was an amalgamation of Chase and Pollard as Ahab. But after having lost that, because Pollard went back out, but what if he went back out crazy with the intention of just trying to take out that whale. Yeah.

Nature, man. What the hell? How does a whale have that much wherewithal to just know to attack a ship like that? So you're on the Dauphin. You end up getting back to Nantucket, and you're just a dude, and you get back, and they're like, all right, everybody, you know, we'll get in touch with you,

and we're getting ready to shop off again. Everyone hears your pay. And you just walk into the bar with somebody else that was on the boat, and sit there and your order to drink the bartender's like what the like what's wrong with you guys like you won't believe the shit that we just saw like we saw two guys non on the bones of their crewmates after we had rescued them and how and how that had because you know that that made its way all over town which means when it came down to it and they're offering paulard another captaincy or another position

everyone knew had been like man this guy had to eat his fucking crewmate to stay alive. Probably not another whaling ship that went out of Nantucket without everybody on that ship thinking about what happened at the Essex. And how, but not believing him too. To be like, bullshit that you guys got attacked by this huge bull sperm whale or anything,

it was a shitty captain or some accident that drove you guys onto a reef or a rock or something like that and you sunk. You mean, Pollard, the guy that drove you through a storm that busted your mask, and then the guy that took another ship out and ran into a coral reef. He just got attacked by a whale.

He didn't crash into something or fuck up the boat. Yeah. Okay. That's a lot. I mean, it's dark. It's, we've hit a bad bitch in history who survived the aisle of the demons. We hit a crazy unhinged Batavia Cornelius.

That one was more Lord of the Flies than the next one we're actually going to talk about. Yeah. It truly was. We hit Selkirk, who's kind of the swashbuckling hero of his story. We move into cannibalism. A Swiss family Robinson type. Yeah, that's kind of what Selkirk seems like. And now we get to talk about these six boys from Tonga that, I mean, it's maybe one of the cooler survival stories that I've ever heard.

It's Tonga Bueller's Day Off. Pretty much. Yeah. It's six kids who, between the ages of 13 and 18, got real tired of their treatment at whatever colonial school that they were being forced to go to. St. Andrews Boarding School

in Nuku Alofa Tonga. This is 1965. So we've gone all the way from the 1500s up to 1965 with these stories. These six boys, Luke, Sioni, Stephen, Mano, Kolo, David begin concocting this plan to escape this boarding school.

They're tired on. Nuku alafu. They know that there's this shithead fisherman. His name is Tevita Sioka, the Siokia. And every single day, Tevita pulls his 24-foot fishing boat up to the same spot on the beach and goes and has lunch for a few hours, leaving his boat unattended. These boys have scoped this out, and they have a pretty strong desire to get off their island and head towards Fiji.

Fiji or New Zealand, I think. I think it's Tonga, to the east of that is Fiji, and then to the east of that is New Zealand. Okay. So you have this row to head, and we're not talking in terms of a Catholic boarding school is the rich kids on the island. No.

This is a time when the Catholics are on their missionary shit, and they're sending all of their priests to Tonga and all these far off islands, American Samoa. It's conversion. Yes. They're conversion schools. And so I believe, and we're going to talk a lot in this story just about how these boys survive. And to me, it's not as far off as an incredible story.

Because when you grow up poor on these islands, you learn to rely on your community and you learn to do a lot of things by hand. Apparently, sailing was not anything that these kids were. kids were very advanced at. As they're leaving, June 1965, they set off to Fiji with two sacks of bananas. Got some coconuts with them. In a gas burner.

To get from Tonga to Fiji is, I want to say it was like a couple thousand miles. Let me see. Oh, yeah. This is definitely a, you know, when you're a kid, and you're like, I'm going to run away from home

and how it always used to be in cartoons is you would put stuff in a stick and bendal. Yeah. Or like a tiny bag and you would, like how Kevin McAllister packed when he was trying to leave the hotel and Home Alone 2, where he just threw some cookies in

and he thought he was going to survive out in Central Park for like days on that. So it is 430 nautical miles between Tonga and Fiji. Might as well be to the moon for these kids. Yeah, I'm not sure that, that many bananas. Buddy, it's 13 to 8 year old

or 13 to 18 year old kids that are just trying to get the fuck out of here. They're taking their chances. Well, they don't get too far because the first night after the Oh yeah. Also, along with that stuff, they didn't take a map and they didn't take a compass. Two seafaring

necessities. Don't need it. Yeah, I just are. Keep it behind us. We're heading south. You know, the sun rises in the east and and sets in the west. Yeah, you're pretty much solid. Uh, the first night, all of them fall asleep on the boat during the middle of the night, a storm rears its ugly head as it tends to do. It ends up snapping their mast and their rudder five miles north of Tonga. So you're five miles north of the islands. As we talked about, Fiji's the other

direction. Feige is the opposite way. Details. As they wake up in the morning, they have no way to steer and they have no way to be pushed anywhere. without a mast and they just basically float for the next eight days rationing what little food they have they collect just minimal rainwater at one point in time one of the boys is trying to use the gas burner to see if he can boil salt water and i mean that's not going to desalinize it i guess you could collect the vapor but regardless when you're out there on the ocean the burner the burner ended up tipping over and just burning the ever-living shit out of his leg just torched his leg. Eventually, they do end up drifting about 200 miles southwest, which again, south,

closer to Fiji west, opposite way of Fiji. So like takes them north of the island, takes them to the side, one side or the other, and then they come back past the island. Not in, I'm guessing, not in visual range. Whereas if they were or not, they might have been technically visually watching the island pass. Yeah. but it's not like anyone if they're not looking out for them the mast is gone

they can't see anything raised up well you have to expect too that by this time with them being gone for eight days as they're floating back by their family has to know that they're gone the boarding school has to realize that they're not there

I'm sure they put it together and it's been like this ship is gone these kids disappeared at the same time there's got to be some type of correlation between that but how far does a rescue party end up going out

buddy from Tonga probably not very they don't have a coast guard man like it's not like they're gone this is well they're gone unless they show back that's what it is they're gone unless they show back up luckily they end up citing this a toll named

herb that goes by Atta and Atta is kind of an interesting story because I believe it was Peruvians again that had made their way out to Atta they enslaved like 150 people of the 400 people on the island of Atta. And once word gets back to Tonga, or once word gets back to the area that they have been taken, they just basically evacuate the island. So they're spotting an abandoned island that they have no idea if it's inhabited.

They have no idea where they are in the ocean. They just see that it's land. They do not care. No, yeah, land is land. Mono ends up jumping out first and swims to shore. By the time he gets to shore, he's so tired and exhausted that he can't even stand up and wave back to tell them to come in. He's just screaming that he made it and that it's safe for them to come back in. Eventually, the other five boys end up swimming on, and they kind of raided everything that they could get off the boat.

but they took some wires and a few other bits and pieces with them on land. Once they get there, no water. So they just start catching seabirds and killing them. They don't have any fire yet. So they are eating the meat raw. And for drinking water, they're just drinking the blood of the seabirds. Just cracking their necks, ripping their heads off, and just letting it drain into their mouths. Tell me that's not.

So they didn't even get. I didn't even see that part. They didn't even get the boat to the island with him. It didn't wash up. They literally pitched off and swam. Yep. And all of them made it. Everybody made it.

Oh, that's right. Yeah. But again, we're talking about kids that grow up on an island. Like it's... But you're still dehydrated. Yeah. You're still weak and everything. Very true.

For the first three months, they didn't have any fire. They struggled to make any sort of fire. They eventually used this old Tongan method that had been taught passed down to them. Months. Yeah, three months. For the first three months. Once they start this fire, this fire never goes out for the whole rest of the time. It's a 15-month continuous fire, I believe, right?

So once they get fire figured out, they start to explore this island, and they trek up the island finding this old volcanic crater that as they walk into, they realize that it was an abandoned village that had been there previously. and in the remnants of this old village, there are wild terror roots that have been planted. There were, of course, bananas. Banana plants. There had been like a cultivation of some type of agriculture on this island,

and enough of it remained that they were like, oh, we can just kind of pick this up again. Yep. There were beans that were planted. And the other thing that they had was the population of wild chickens. Yes, feral wild chickens. that it just ballooned up and gone nuts. So if you're going to walk into a marooning type story at this point in time.

This is like, you know what this is? This is like as far as where you can be stranded. This is the equivalent of being inside like a, maybe not a Costco, but a decent, smaller mom and pop grocery store during a zombie apocalypse. Yep. Yeah. You got fresh food. Fresh water.

Water now because you've remembered this old trick that their fathers taught them of basically tapping into the bottom parts of the trunk of the tree near the root system and then digging out wells below. So as the water secretes out of the tree, it lands in these wells to where they have fresh water. They would take trees that had fell and they would dig cavities in them and like depressions and everything. So they would collect rainwater and all the dripping water. off of like in the evenings and everything. And again, if this was six kids from, I don't know, New Hampshire, anywhere on the mainland, dead. I believe that they would have died.

But these kids growing up in a community-driven environment in less than great means to where they have to do this manual labor themselves, they're almost built in a way to where they're going to be the preeminent survivors in a sense. situation like this. Well, and it's not just that. This could have very easily became something reminiscent of the Batavia's situation where one person takes control and makes everybody else do everything. This is not a, this, when did, when did Lord of the Flies come out? It was after, after before.

I want to say it was before just because this is the 60s. I want to say as well. So this is a situation where everybody basically puts themselves on equal footing. and they create a way of going about their survival that puts them into teams of two where they all run separate rotations doing things. Sometimes they'll be on guard duty, they'll be on cleaning duty, or they'll be like on food preparation, like fire maintenance duty. And they just switch these shifts and they're all working together.

If there are disagreements, they separate to separate sides of the island for like four hours, they said, and then they'll come back and apologize to each other. they would do just things daily that would keep them all kind of, you know, kind of in like higher spirits, but to make sure everybody was kind of pulling their weight. Well, every night they would sit around the fire and they would talk about their grievances that they had with people, which, I mean, people in normal societies don't do that. Well, they also, didn't they also make like a makeshift guitar out of like a box in the wires that they'd take in and like a coconut? Yep.

They created a guitar and I forgot which one that it was, but they had actually written like five songs that they would sing at night together just about their time on the island. And then, spoiler alert, they do make it off the island. The kid that had built the guitar ends up becoming a musician and he still sings the songs that they sang for the rest of his life on this island. But they had it so good. so they did so well that they had a garden that they had cultivated that they had planted in. They built a shelter that had separate sleeping quarters for all six of them. They even had time to build a badminton court. They had like a makeshift gym as well.

Yeah. And in this badminton court, they would pluck the feathers off of the chickens for the shuttle cocks. Yeah. And then they would wrap it around like a ball of sap or something like that. And there's this old, it was a documentary that gets made by this guy that we're going to talk about here shortly. But it's basically him taking them back to the island and recreating this stuff. And they're playing on the badminton court. I'll be goddamn if it doesn't look like they're playing with a real shuttlecock on the court.

Like it's crazy to see it just float like a regular shuttlecock does. It was awesome to see. Along with all of this, they are kind of going around the island in almost replanting the areas that they've cultivated. They're tending to the land just in case they're. They need it at a later day. There are markers, too, on this island that there are people here. There's like some burned out areas, I think, where maybe like either a fire got out of control or they were burning off stubble to, like, replant or do something like that.

Because the way that they're able to kind of, not scar the island, but to make it visually apparent that somebody is there is what ends up getting them rescued. Can't talk about the rescue yet. No, we're not. Okay. I just, I'm so excited about this next part. Because it's not all good though. It's not all easy and it's not all good what happens when they're on this island.

No, but everything kind of seems to fall into this community standard because as they're going out hunting, Stephen and whoever his partner are go out to hunt these seabirds. And as they're climbing around on the cliffs, Stefan was moving down the cliffs in order to get a hold of some of these other birds. and ends up falling 40 feet and landing on this little cliff outcropping, breaks his leg. The boys end up scaling down this sheer face and take him back up to where they're... Yeah, they're able to create some type of like lift or harness system or something like that. Not only that, but they're able to use, I think it was like bamboo to create a splint and set his leg to the point where once it's fully healed, it's healed perfectly. They set it like perfectly.

They used banana leaves and cooked them and were able to wrap them in like a semi hard cast around his leg that protected him. He was down for four months. And they just continued to function all the way around. I think Sione was the guy that was joking with him. And he said, you go ahead and lay here while we do all the work around you like you're the king of Tonga. Yeah. But they pulled weight. If anybody was slow, if anybody was having a rough day, they would pick each other up.

They made sure that it wasn't a situation like in Lord of the Flies when you have somebody that tries to take control. It was a community, a commune of these six boys that were working together and they were thriving. I know that I said it a couple times with Marguerite, but this is the example of thriving. Correct, yes. This is them working, making everything work. for them that they have available yeah and then one day as they're up surveying this area there was kind of like an outlook where they had built their shelter to where you could look out and you can see a million miles away they spot sales on the horizon a man named peter warner was out hunting spiny

lobster peter warder pretty weird story he's this australian fisherman and his family he's an to this electronics industry's fortune. His father owned this company that was big into radio manufacturing and had made their nut doing that in Australia.

And, oh, this is the story. So Peter ends up trying to cut his teeth as a fisherman. He ends up sailing from Australia all the way up into Russia and ends up getting his Dutch mariners

license and comes back down and shows the mariner's license to his father and he says i'm going to be a fisherman and his father says you're going to be a part of this business you're not going to do anything else you're set up i didn't bust my ass building radios in world war two for you to just go be a fisherman you're going to stick to this so he ends up being the accountant for this electronics industries while at the same time owning a fishing fleet down in australia that were down there fishing and any time he got a couple months off or something like that, he would go jump down in this fleet and they would go out and fish. He makes his way out to Tonga and asks the king of Tonga

if he can hunt the spiny lobster that's native to their waters. And the Tongan king says, you're not going to do that in our waters. You can fish outside of our waters, but you're not going to be anywhere close. So as he's trolling out there, he ends up pulling by this Atta Toll. and he spots the scarring on the side of the island

and he sees the smoke and for a fire to break out on an island in the middle of the tropics is pretty unusual he starts to pull in towards to see what's going on he sees this naked long-haired boy screaming and jumping into the water and immediately he's like oh fuck this could be a crazy prisoner that somebody marooned out here

because they were a violent individual as he then sees five other people boys jump off the rocks into the water and start swimming toward his boat. He panics. Everybody on the boat draws their weapons. As the kid gets nearer and near somebody that's up near the front of the boat says I can hear a child's voice. And as the closest boy gets up there, he starts speaking perfect English to him. He's like, oh.

So you guys are all just marooned out here, huh? The rest of the boys, butt-ass naked with long hair, I'll get on the boat. they tell him the story he gets on the radio and he radios back to Tonga to their island and on the radio in Nuku alofa he says i have these six boys they say they're from this st. Andrews school i'd like to confirm their story radio silence for 20 minutes as they sit there i'm sure not knowing what to talk about anything like that on radio comes back on and they say those are the boys. We've already had funerals for them. Yeah. Fifteen months, these kids were on this island.

Yeah. And ended up surviving this whole or ordeal. As the boys returned to all this fanfare and love after this 15 months. Not everyone's happy. Well, before not everybody's happy, they go in for checkups and the doctor checks all the boys and finds that they're all in perfect health. And this is when they get confirmation that Stephen's leg. had healed basically perfectly from what they had done. They were going to be taken to a celebration that was down on the beach.

And before they could, Johnny Law shows up. The dude that they had stole the boat from apparently wasn't too impressed, considering he didn't get his boat back, wouldn't drop the charges for the theft of the boat. And so not only does Peter Warner rescue them from the island, but then he shows up a second time, ends up raising enough money. to go ahead and pay off the dude for his boat that was stolen and then hires all of the boys to begin working on his fishing. Yeah.

And that's, it's crazy. I mean, you can go back, the documentary is like eight minutes. Yeah. And it shows all of these Tongan people celebrating and drinking from coconuts during this big celebration. And then you just see pasty-ass, white-ass Pete Warner trying to figure out how to drink from a coconut.

It's just such a funny juxtaposition. but the king of Tonga, king Tuafu, Ahu, Tolupo, the fourth, ends up thanking Warner and gives him a royal concession and asks him what the royal concession is. And the only thing that Warner asked for is permission to fish Spiny Lobster in Tonga. He's like, okay, that's fine. It is so. It is so. Yeah.

Yes, it is so. Since Warner has permission to fish there, he buys up a flea. lead of boats and leaves them in Tonga, hires all six of the boys to work for him. And along with that, he calls back to Channel 7 in Sydney and arranges the film rights for the story and sells them the local film rights as long as he's able to keep the international film rights. So that's when they go out and do this Channel 7 documentary where they show everything. And of course, everybody in Australia is eating this up.

but he's able to sell the documentary out to everybody internationally. So he's making a small fortune on that. Eventually, he ends up quitting his job with his father and just moves to Tonga. He's just living there. Oh, he's a celebrity. Yeah, in working with the boys. Maybe, I mean, the wildest part of this in 1974. So this happens in 1965.

Lord of the fries. Wow. Lord of the flies. I want French fries now. So bad. Comes out in 1955. He rescues the boys in 1965. And then in 1975,

Warner rescues a second group of castaways from this shipwrecked boat off of Middleton Reef in the Tasman Sea. And the person that spotted the distress mirror signals was Sione. So one of the kids that he rescued from the island was the one that spotted the distress signal. when they went in to rescue these people.

Really? So Peter Warner rescue Sioni and then Peter Warner and Sione rescue other castaways. That's pretty nuts. What a story, man. They all stayed friends up until their deaths. Just an incredible story of

a triumph of the human spirit. Five vastly different stories. We know so much about them because all of them include survivors and everything like that. but just such a different situations and different handlings of the situation, different age groups, different, like there was a little bit of everything on that. And it turns out that the youngest group was the one that thrived the best.

Yeah, there might be something to that. Yeah, for sure. All right, man, you got anything else? No, I think this was an incredibly fun episode. Yeah, we're going to have to do more like this where we figure out just a situation that people have been in just throughout human history and just discuss. instances of when that's happened. Fun flashbacks in history.

Yeah, exactly. All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us on this episode. We'll catch you next time. Peace.