Oh What A Time... - #100 Devon with Josh Widdicombe (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Yes, despite the fact we’re closer to episode 200 than 100, this really is episode 100! (We’d planned this ep a long time ago but only just got round to recording).For the first time ever we’re joined by a guest and it’s Devon native and friend of the show, Josh Widdicombe.In this episode we’ll discuss everything Devon related: Devon’s own Sir Francis Drake, the educational experiment that was Dartington Hall and one of the west country’s most notorious prisons.If you’ve got anything to send us, you can always send it in via: [e-mail] if you want more Oh What A Time, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh Water Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Water Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Water Time. Welcome to O Water Time. label this episode, episode 100, because we actually planned it around the time that episode 100 was coming up. And so I'm totally destroyed the numbering system, but this is actually episode 100. It should be like 91A, 91B and all that kind of stuff, just so that the 100 is exactly where he wanted to be. This is episode 100 that was originally planned back, long before episode 100 was just on the horizon. And then for some reason, we never got round to it, but we left the gap because we thought it was any week's way.

It doesn't matter we're here now. It's episode 100. Huge fanfare. This episode is on Devon. Is it just cheese rolling? Is it just knowing the postman? I don't think cheese rolling happens in Devon. Is it?

I think that's Gloucestershire. Dog ownership is huge in Devon. I'm just trying to think of all my biases as a London city ball. Cream, custard. Yeah, there you are. There we go. I go wonderful people, beautiful coastline. And of course, the wonderful people.

Exactly. The wonderful people of Devon, of course. The reason it's on Devon, of course, is because this is our first ever guest show. We have the brilliant Josh Whitakam joining us in a little while, and we're going to be telling him three interesting things about Devon. Proud Devonian. Yeah, proud Devonian. So much so that he's just moved back.

Yeah, he's Devon's big shot. Talking of Big Shot, what a live show that was last week, guys. Huge. Amazing to see. Two very different live beasts in that Tom Crane absolutely riddled with that. Chris Skull, bulletproof confidence. I like to think that I'm sort of... I'm a sort of halfway house.

The happy medium. Tom continually asking me if it was going to be fine in the sort of 35 minutes before we run on stage. My wife Sophie said to me, how were you like just before the show that last half an hour before you go on stage? How would you feel? Were you nervous?

I said, I was totally distracted by the fact that Tom, having been told that the custody prop that he planned to bring on stage wasn't yellow enough to register as cover. Pannicked and poured the custard down the sink and blocked the sink, which occupied my mind entirely for the last half hour. The absurdity of the situation, a podcast that talks so much about custard, should essentially put out of use a dressing room at our venue because of custard.

It's a great image, though, isn't it? A plumber turning up a theatre pulling out the u-ben and going, it's full of custard. And I'm not knowing why. And then them saying, have you had a history podcast on in this venue? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Just to be completely clear what happened, we thought it would be funny if I had a pint of custard before the show, because obviously my custard fan. I went to buy custard from a co-op that was just opposite the venue and Ellis told me it was the wrong colour of custard.

It was pretentious vanilla custard and it wouldn't read as custard. That's what you said. You said it looked like? Well, it looked like a pint of milk. A pint of milk, yeah. So it looked like you changed favourite drinks. That's just weird, taking a pint of milk on stage. I didn't know you could get custard that wasn't traditional birds yellow custard.

You can still find it. Yeah, it's Madagascan, isn't it? That's the thing. Oh, yeah, but that was new to me. Secondary in my defence, I also, I hadn't just poured custard down the sink. I cleaned out the pint glass. So it looked like it was a clean pint glass when we went on stage. That's what it was.

It was custard residue. Yeah, yeah. Minimally, exactly, thank you. And is that that blocked the sink? not just hard custard poured from a pot. Yeah. I felt sorry for the tech because, you know, we needed a lot of stuff

printing out. Tom very sweetly kept offering her money until eventually she said, it's not coming out of my wages, but I think that's quite sweet on my part. Yeah, yeah, well, that's what I said. He very sweetly offered her money. So she was doing a lot of running around for us,

a lot of printing. Then it's like, sorry, can you get the venue manager? We've brought the sink with custard. No, it's not euphemism, it's actual custard. It does look like custard because it's poshust custard so it's not going to read as custard. Oh, we're on stage in six minutes, Greg. And it's also worth noting that we, at the end of the show,

Tom had bought multiple custards, one of which did feature in the show. And at the end of the night, we gave it to an audience member called Ben, who had been fantastic. And then Ben necked the custard and then passed it onto our editor Jody, who necked a bit more custard. And then lovely Louise, who runs the O Water Time, No Context, Instagram page, who also had some custard. So it was a night.

bookended by Custard. I would say Custard was the binding agent in that show. It's what brought all the segments together. And can I just say, what a fun show. This was our first ever live show. Thank you so much to all of you came. It was so nice to see such a pack room full of people who really like the podcast and it really meant the world, even though I was very nervous beforehand. As soon as they realized how lovely you were, that quickly dissipated. And I just absolutely loved it. It did dissipate. It was so much fun. It was just great to see Tom as a quivering rabbit, Chris, a sort of cold-blooded emotions of a shark. Absolutely. His eyes rolled back. You just saw the whites. Yeah. But it was a lot of fun. What a great crowd. What a fun show. And I can't wait to do more of them. Right. Before we crack on to today's Devon special, should we do a little bit of correspondence? Should we do that off the bat? Oh, yes, please.

So, you sent us some correspondence, have you? Well, let's try to look at you then. This actually is correspondence that we failed to complete at the live show this week. It was from an audience member called Ben. Do you want to explain why he played such a crucial role in the show, Al? Ben is convinced he's my doppelganger, not entirely physically. I wouldn't say facially we look very similar. But there's an awful lot of parallels with our lives. We share the same birthday.

We both support football teams that play in white. We both have friends we met at university who are complete idiots, his words. We both have tremendously flat feet and massive bums to the extent that we actually compare. head bums on stage, much to the delight of the 200 or so people in attendance. What we didn't mention in the live show is there was a second point of comparison that I want to bring up here, which is his friend apparently is identical to me. And I'm happy about this because it makes me feel better about something that I do. The email from Ben in this point of the email says,

my friend Martin told our group about five years ago that when he is feeling a bit tired, he sometimes uses the wall as body support when going up the stairs, which we all understandably thought was ridiculous. So when a few months ago Tom revealed that he also does this, it was a source of great hilarity and Martin was also comforted, I'm providing comfort, Elle, to hear that he was not the only one. So my point is, you reacted like I was the weirdest man in the world, but there's lots of people out there like me, Elle. Well, there's two. We definitely have two. It begins here. Tom Crane and Martin, please send us an email if you use the wall as a support when you're tired at the end of the day. It is always the end of the day. It's not like when I'm at my freshest in the

morning. It's at the end of the day I will lean one side of my body against the wall of the house, thus taking the weight off the legs as I go up. Do you ever mark the wall? I don't, no. I wear very clean clothes. Then also, the other thing I do is I use the newel post. Do you want a newel post, is Elle? No. At the top of a banister, it's like a little bubble that's at the top of the banister. I will hook my arm around that and I will use that to swing round in into the corridor. So I use that as like a satellite going around a planet, basically. It slingshots me. I do that as well. I swing round.

I'm generally happy to hear you use a new old post as a swinging post. Oh yeah. I quite enjoy the swing. When do you use it? Whoa. Going downstairs are going up? Down. Down. Okay, right. Yeah. Because I'm tired of finding out of falling down the sister.

So what's a slingshocking you into, like the kitchen then? What's the... Into the hall. But more than anything, it's just providing a little bit of safety because our stairs are quite Slippy. So if I'm wearing socks, it's a little bit of little, it's just basically a security feature. That's how I use it. But genuinely, let's find out, am I the only person that uses the wall of support when going upstairs at the end of a long day? And does anyone else use a newel post in the way that L and I do? Do get in contact. I want to find out how alone I am. Is it

just me and Martin from Ben's email? Or we're the only people in Britain or the world that do this or other others like us? Do you use the newel pool in other people's houses? That's a good question. No, I don't really. I think I'm so used to the layout of my house. I know exactly when to drop the elbow and when to hit it. I've really got the rhythms of it. Yeah, and the sim.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to risk it. You know when you see like an elite skateboarder that really understands the bowl they're dropping into or the ramps they're about to do a flip from or do a grind? It's a bit like that. I completely understand the terrain that I'm doing with in my house. Yeah, you understand the angles. Claire's seen me do it. She hasn't left me yet, which to me says she finds it sexy.

It looks cool, man. Yeah, exactly. It looks cool. So, Ben, there completes your huge email. Thank you so much for A showing your bum, not literally. Well, he's comparing your bottom to Ellis on stage at the live show. I was quite disappointed with this flat bum. I didn't think it could.

Yeah, it wasn't what I thought it would be. It couldn't compare to mine. And also telling us about your friend, Martin. If anyone else has anything they want to get in contact with, here's how you do that. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oldwatertime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh What a Time pod.

Now clear off. So one of the benefits of subscribing to the Oh Watertime Patreon is that if you join the All-Time tier, we will mention your name and try to. figure out where in history you might have been and thank you to Patricia Lauson. She has signed up and gentlemen, where has Patricia Lauson

been before in a past life? I think it's someone who is very important at Bletchley Park during World War II but never got the coup of. Absolutely mad. That is literally what I was trying to remember where they were. Yeah.

I was trying to remember what the name of the building was. Yeah, Bletchley Park. Just a genius. And in the modern era Stockley Park. She's in charge of VAR. Head of VAR at Stocky Park. No, no, no, exactly that. One of the few women involved,

but didn't get the kudos until pioneering feminist story about 10 years ago discovered all of the hard work she did. And the Prime Minister has had to apologise. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because she basically did it all.

Yeah. And if you look back on her school reports from the sort of early Edwardian era, the subtext is, she's fucking clever. I mean, that's not the word The teachers used. But my God, she was bright.

And in her own lifetime, her achievements could not be celebrated due to the Official Secrets Act. Yes. Nice. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you do in the war, Patricia? Nothing.

But once a year, she got a hamper from the government. Which had some like middling wine in it and some jam. Yeah, middling wine and some Turkish alike. She didn't like it. Do you know what I'd love to know? Do you think there's anyone who's working at Stockley Park, whose ancestors worked at Bletchley Park. Do you think that's...

Yeah, good cue. I'd love to know. Sandrox not doing this on the rest of history. I feel like there's a lot of transferable skills. Yeah, definitely. The minds could easily switch if the nature of time allowed it. You could work it either. You'd be qualified.

Anyway, thank you so much, Patricia Allison, for being a know-what-a-time all-time. And if you want to join, you can. Here's how. Hello again, you are about. lot enjoying the show. Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon supporter today? For a mere handful of fatherings, you can get ad-free shows, two bonus subscriber episode each month, access to all the past bonus eps, first dibs on live tickets, and even help decide what

subjects the boys cover next. Your support makes everything possible, so sign. up today at patreon.com slash oh what's a time or oh what's the time.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling. Okay, welcome to the show. This week we are discussing Devon and it's our first ever guest-featured episode. As we've touched on at the top, it is episode 100 and our Devon expert this week, he suggested this subject. it is brand new Devon resident, Josh Woodigan. Brand new. I've gone back, to be fair. I was resident there from 1983 to 2001.

You like what you saw? Like what I saw. So I left. Three days before 9-11. Did you? No, no, sorry, three days after 9-11. Sorry. Okay. Get your alibis. Get my story straight on that one.

Maybe you thought Dartmoor is ripe for an attack. So I need to move to Manchester. Three days afterwards, a weird one to go, I want to move to a more built up area, having watched that. I'd already made the plan. Okay, okay, I see. Because I moved to, I didn't move to university on a whim. Just a brief summation.

Why have you returned? Why do you love Devon so much? And why are you interested about it, basically? What's your feeling towards it? Oh, no. Crucially, I hate London. Okay, right. And I thought there's got to be a plan B here. Having read your excellent book watching neighbours twice a day

About growing up in the 90s That's what I call it as well my excellent book Have you read my excellent book? The fact that you never locked your door Like you'd go on a holiday for two weeks And be like, yeah, that'd be fine Yeah Just close the door and that's that

I thought you meant it in the day Like if you went away If you went away for any period of time Yeah, we didn't have a key We didn't need one I had a moment that happened Two in the morning last night, and as I got back into bed, I thought, Josh would love this because this confirms why he should have left London. Someone banged on our door at two in the morning.

Bang, bang, bang, bang on the knocker. I wake up and go downstairs. And he's yelling through the door asking for money. Tom, the things that have happened on your road is, like, you basically live in the wire. But because you can get truffle crisps at the end of the road, you think it's all right. Like you've had someone steal your car and fill it full of heroin taking stuff because they found your keys in your door. That's right.

That wouldn't happen. Devon, because we don't, we never leave. I didn't once leave our keys in the door growing up for the obvious reason. To be more exact, when they got the car back, the police were cleaning it out.

They found a crack pipe and handed it to my wife Claire and said, is this yours? Yeah. She had to say, no, that's not my crack pipe. That's correct. You had a brief period where you had a man,

you had some school children. who threw a rock through your window. That did happen, yes. Someone who came down the road really fast and plowed into your park car. Wrote off our car, yeah. The pram nicked off the doorstep. Yeah, the pram nicked off the door. And you had at one point, a man across the road who had had a mental breakdown

so was blasting really loud music out of his window and everyone was too scared to tell him. He turned his speakers out to the street, that's right. Well, it wasn't music. Most of the time it was a sound of screaming. I don't know. If it's London or just my street. No, it's... I don't know if you're waiting for Nigel Farage to fix this in four years' time.

What do you think of this sentence? I said, when he asked him money, I said, it's two in the morning, mate. And he said, well, there's no good time for it, mate. As if to say, it was on me. Are you having a conversation through the letterbox? Yeah, I did. I just thought I want to keep it calm.

I said, I'm sorry, it's two in the morning. Now it's not a good time, all this sort of stuff. And eventually when... What? He eventually left. Is your house at a certain point, or is every house on this street getting it? It's where a few roads meet. I think possibly it's a focal point.

If you move, I'd worry about that, Crane, if you do move, because you might have to put that down. It is a focal point for the... Yes. The laylines converge on top of house. You know, there is a certain layline quality to its barely of this, yeah. What do you like to live in a circus of anarchy? In which case, no house.

It is just for you. Anyway, got it back into bed, lay there for two hours awake. But as I was lying there, I thought, you know, this is why Josh left. This is exactly it. So tell me about Devon. Tell me about Devon, rather than London. Right. Today's episode, as we say, is all about Devon, as requested by Josh.

I'm going to be telling you about Devon's most famous person. I think it's probably, yeah, famous person from history. It's a fair way of describing this person. What are you guys going to be talking about? I'm going to be talking about Plymouth's importance as a naval beast. Oh. And I'll be talking about Devon's engine of ideas, Dartington Hall. Josh Whittickham's house.

So I'm going to start by telling you Josh and you boys about... Is it Francis Drake? It is, yes. I just wanted... There was going to be a bit of a guessing game there, but you're straight in. You're straight in. Francis Drake is correct. I've got a list of other famous names from Devon. Let's see if you...

Dawn French? Well, I'll give you the names I've got. Dawn French, of course, is one of them. And I'm intrigued to know if you know who. who this person is and what their claim to fame is. Nancy Astor, do you know who that is? No, Astor's a famous surname, isn't it? It's a famous rich surname, but I don't know who Nancy Astor is.

This is the first woman to be elected to Parliament and to take up her seat. She's from Devon. Jack Leslie, Ellis, you might know this, and Joshua as well. Of course. I was heavily involved in the Jack Leslie campaign, thank you very much, Tom. Where were you? I gave it a couple of quotes. Okay, talk us through who he is then.

Jack Leslie was, he played for Plymouth Argyle in the 50s. Skull knows who Jack Leslie is. Yeah, I was involved in this campaign. Yeah, Skull was involved in this campaign. The offence that you've gone to Ellis, the only person who didn't want a statue to England's first black international footballer. Ellis actively campaigned against him.

Yeah, I was one of the counter-campaigners. He got dropped from the squad basically because they didn't realize he was black because it was, when was it? I don't even know what decade it was. 30s, 40s, maybe? Yeah, something like that. There's a statue of him outside home park these days.

But he ended up being in the boot room at West Ham. He went to West Ham for a long time, maybe 40, 50 years. He was in the bootroom, me. It was before that. He was called up for the England team in 1925. There we go. He played with a player called Sammy Black. I think this is right.

It might be a different player, but I think it was Sammy Black, who played with a cigarette behind his ear. Oh, yeah. That suggests he's playing at a very leisurely pace. Well, I think they all did. Well, Billy Meredith, Edwardian Football's first superstar. He was a winger.

He used to play for Wales and Man United and Mancet and he used to play with a tough pick in his mouth. And once he got crunched, caught tackled and choked on the toughby. Oh my God. Do you say tough? That's amazing. I say tough because I'm from Wales, yeah. Oh, right. It's that Welsh thing.

It is a Welsh thing. I didn't think it was weird until I started doing podcasts with English. Is it because none of you have got more than one teat? None of you use the word teeth. There is no plural. There is no plural. We just guess whenever we see some of more than two teeth. I'll give you one more.

You know obviously who this person is, Agatha Christie. Where with Agatha Christie from? I would never have guessed this. Is this such an unlikely place for her to come from? Yeah, Torquy. There you go. Very impressive. Yeah, Agatha Christie's from Torquy.

The point is Devin has its fair share of famous names. I don't know if it does. It's quite impressive when you go on Google. There's a decent list of people. Well, there's a whole county and Google covers all of history. Yeah, exactly. There's enough of them. And one of them, of course, is Sir Francis Drake, who for more than 400 years

has been the most famous person from the county. And for a variety of reasons, he's got an incredible swash-buckling reputation. The fact, this is a weird claim to fame for someone whose life was all. all about, you know, death and fighting and war, all the sort of stuff. He has an entire parliamentary constituency named after him. Do you know what that is, Josh? No, I didn't know that. Is that in Plymouth? Is there a Drake?

Yeah, Plymouth Drake, exactly. And he has a giant statue situated in Plymouth, as he mentioned, which was unveiled in the city on Valentine's Day, 1884. No, we mentioned the Jack Leslie one. Yeah. Oh, yes, we did. Is that why you didn't campaign? Because you already thought he had one. Let me be clear.

You mentioned statues just generally, which is funny. get this come up here. Let's talk about that. How would you feel about a statue in your hometown? How are you guys feeling about that? Are you going back as much? If there's one there in Kamarva now, what you're thinking? I've got a mural.

Have you? Oh yeah, he has. You know this, Tom. Maybe I've got no memory. Where's your mural? It's a mural of, it's on the outside of a music venue called Kuru, which means a much word for beer, and it's me and Gorky Zagotic Monkey

and a few. Rod Gilbert is there as well, a few others, a few musicians. Okay. Yes, I had my photo taken next to it with my mum a couple of weeks ago after I went to watch a pantomime. Yes. Yes, your mum wasn't that interested in going. And a lot of people saw me having my photo taken next to it

and I got quite embarrassed. Yes. Sir Francis Drake, big deal. Hundreds of books have been written about him. He's a complicating divisive figure. As are a lot of him with statues. Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah, completely.

Weirdly, precise details about his early life are sort of patchy at best. No one is quite sure when he was born. It's somewhere in a five-year window between 1539 and 1544, although most historians agree it was probably 1540. My grandma was like that. She didn't know if her birthday was August 9th or 10th. She just didn't know. She said no one had just kind of, they never knew.

Did she have two birthday parties? Or would you just go to one of them? It didn't feel as weird then. I just presumed a lot of people probably weren't certain of their birthday. But I've yet to meet anyone else. Well, Jake Humphrey, every time the GCSE results come out, he seems to change the date in which he got his GCSE results. That's just one way he's like Sir Francis Drake.

At least your grandma was in a two-year window. Two-day window, sorry. This is a five-year window in which they're not quite sure when he's born. Yeah. But most people say 1540 is probably where. But we do know that his father Edmund came from a prosperous farming family near Tavistock in Devon. Get this. In the 1524 lay subsidy rolls was essentially the tax record. It shows you how rich his family was. When Edmund was just 10, he was recorded to have four pounds in his pocket, which is the equivalent to £3,700 today. Amazing. What are you doing if you're 10 and you've got $3,700 worth of pocket? pocket money. What are you doing with that? My son got

20 quid off my auntie for his birthday on Saturday and within 20 minutes he'd spent it all on key rings. I thought, come on. Come. We were in central London and he bought a load of London key rings and they all say they all say

London in different funds. The only Londoner to have bought anything from one of those shops on Saltham Court Road, basically. Yeah, yeah. So he's got 12 London keyings. Oh, that is so... His room is plastered in Union Jacks. Josh, what are you spending

3,700 quid on as a 10-year-old? Where's that going? I actually did come into money. I came into £800 as a 10-year-old. How? Because my great-grandma died and she left £800 to all of her...

She skipped a generation. She skipped my parents' generation. We all got 800 quid. And my parents let me spend mine. and I spent £350 pounds on a Sony stack stereo that was the best investment I've ever bought. And the rest in shares in Google?

Massively paid off. Yeah. But I preferred the stereo. That's a very sensible purchase for a 10-year-old. It is. It's a great thing. But the rest I frittered away, I think. Because I don't remember any of the other purchases.

But you were 10. I know I spent the last 40 pounds at Games Workshop. Yes. Despery trying to feel some. I used to get £12 every three months from Bathabby Choir. That was my only money I had at that time. That's what we get for two services a week, two rehearsals. So the maths of that is mad, isn't it?

For 8, 12, 16. What is that? 16 times three. I can't word that out. But that was 12. Tom, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Yeah, there you are. Well, I should be fine then.

For work. It must be very difficult to negotiate if you're a priest, your wage, because they can just say that every time. And then you've got to go, yeah, fair enough. No, I'm glad. I'm glad, actually. You'll get your awards in heaven. Yeah, but, you know, I just want to go abroad on holiday.

I want to say you again. I want to see a different post-gold. So, Drake's father, Edmund, work-wise, he'd started out as a sheep shearer. He grew restless. Funny you bring up priests there. He then decided to follow his faith and become a preacher. By all accounts, he was fiercely Protestant, full of sort of six-sixthes. 16th century venom for the local Catholics, something that Francis would inherit and use later

in his dealings with the Spanish. And in 1549, age just nine, Francis saw this kind of religious rivalry come to a head. Are you aware of something called the prayer book rebellion in Devon? Have you heard of this? This was a huge rebellion between Catholics and Protestants. It was prompted by the introduction of the book of common prayer and the mainly Cornish rebels, they marched on Plymouth and successfully captured the city while their Devon comrades besieged at Exeter. So where you live now at Exeter was besieged during this sort of like this huge uprising.

And here's what Edmund did, his dad, this blew my mind. Fearing for his life as an anti-Catholic bully, he fled, made his way to Kent, where he set up home in an old ship. For fucking long way. It is. Literally, he's gone the other side of London.

And that's not even the most amazing bit. And this was before the M25. Yeah. It's certainly been quicker. That's taking seven days. Before you could rent a van as well and move your stuff with any E. That's not the most amazing bit. He sets up home in an old ship, which is mauled on the River Medway.

The crucial thing is, though, did he take his kids? No. Oh, wow. He left all of his kids behind with relatives. And there were 12 kids. He left all 12 children back in front. Why is the mum at this point? The mum, she was still alive at that point, but sadly she died in her mid-30.

She had quite a sad life. I mean, they all did, really. He was quite a violent man. Well, she don't come down with me? Had all the grace of reversing dump truck, exactly. But she, but he was quite a violent man, the father. The mum died early and Francis Drake is left, as I say, with his other 11 siblings in Plymouth while his dad's gone to live on a boat in Kent.

He's taught the ways of the sea, though, during this time in Devon. He's first guided by his cousins. We all are. And then from the age of 12 by a sea captain, local to Uchurch, which is a place where his father. It all sounds like session one with the therapist so far. The therapist saying, we're not going to get this all done today, to be honest. Tom, there's one phrase you said there, taught the ways of the seas. It's such an evocative and very Devon phrase somehow.

I don't know if that's Devon are so much. the 16th century, is it? Yeah. I guess it's got a coast. But I don't imagine at any point in history you're getting a vibe-based education on the sea. Glancing it, you're going to get the gist.

Famously, and I think it was slightly misreported, Plymouth University did a degree in surfing. Do you know when there was that, do you know when there was that spate of news stories about uni's doing joke degrees? Oh, yeah. You could do a course on the Beckham.

or something. Yeah. Yeah. So Francis, as Chris says, he was learning the ways of the sea. He then is taught further by a sea captain who's local to upchurch, which is a place in Kent where his father had been made of vicar. And eventually he moves to Kent to rejoin his family. But there's nothing to suggest at this early stage that he was going to become this renowned seaman. It's kind of everyone who lived near the coast east or west at that time was basically involved in the maritime trade. So the point being that basically everyone who lived near the coast at that point was involved in the maritime trade. It wasn't unusual. So he wasn't sticking out as unusual by doing that. However, one crucial thing changes. Back in Devon, Drake's

cousin, John Hawkins, was concocting an idea, one that would disrupt a major source of Spanish and Portuguese's wealth, which is their money from the slave trade. And with a group of backers, including London financiers, such as Lionel Duckett and the Breckenborn Sir William Winter, there you go, a Welshman, Hawkins, along with his fresh crew, sailed from Plymouth towards Sierra Leone, And there he attacked and seized Portuguese slave ships, sail for the Caribbean, where the slaves were sold at markets owned by the Spanish, and Hawkins and his men then returned to England hugely wealthy. In fact, Queen Elizabeth was so impressed by this that she gave a second voyage, a royal approval in 1564, and gave one of her ships, the Jesus of Lublek, on the proviso, that she would get a healthy slice of the prophet.

I never saw her as like a wheeler dealer in that way. I think the life at sea sounds so shit. Especially then. Absolute shite. I will never be a cruise ship comedian. No, you're not good enough. But, Elle, I don't think anyone ever sets out to be, to become one, to be honest. I'm not sure it's a dream that many hold.

And how many emails are you getting about that anyway, this is a little bit of a job? Well, all right, then. I wanted to be a cruise ship comedian, and no one wanted me. So now I tell everyone that it was my idea, okay? Do you think Joe Pesquale always wanted to sail the seven seas? Cracking people up as he were? I completely agree. It's an unpleasant thing to do.

And also, they were doing unpleasant, deeply unpleasant things. The second trip with Drake aboard, and he's now 20, the Hawkins fleet attacks a town in West Africa. Once again, they enslave the population. They sail for the Spanish slave market. They make even more money, including the ordinary members of the crew, Francis Drake, himself. This is awful, obviously, that he's evolved in slavery in this way. And it's why so many people...

It's not surprising. It's not surprising, but it is why so many people refuse to see him as a hero. However, and it is worth saying this, within a few years, Drake's relationship with the slave trade had changed. Not for ethical reasons, it's worth saying, but it did change dramatically. By 1570, he'd fallen out with his cousin following a fearsome battle with the Spanish, and he turns his back on the slave trade altogether. And he even began to form alliances with those who'd escaped enslavement in Spanish colonies.

And instead, he focused on private actions. So basically raids on Spanish fleets who are bringing back silver and gold, the vast wealth of the Americas back to Europe, figuring that this would be more lucrative. And he was right. Look at this. This is incredible, staggering amounts of money he made. Over his career, he made about 125 million pounds in today's terms. Wow.

Just him. He's the second wealthiest pirate in history. Who's the wealthiest? I think it might be Blackbeard. I'd need to check that. He's certainly the most famous. Absolutely. I've said that because the only one that comes to mine.

It might be Long John Silver. But the point is, you say that a life at sea is awful. Surely, when you get to like $5 million, you're going, I mean, that's enough now. I'm just going to stop going to raise the Spanish out on spending years at sea. I'm fine. Well, it's a one last job thing, isn't it? It's like. I suppose that is what it is, isn't it?

The problem I find with life at sea is, is 24-7. Yeah. There's no break from the sea. There's no break from the sea. There's no break from your work, colleagues. It must be suffocating. Often it is quite literally suffocating. And there's always a constant threat of danger at this time as well.

The sea is full of Spanish armadas and Portuguese ships that are looking to sink you as well. Yeah, awful. So it's not just. being trapped. It's also that fear of imminent death at all times must just be just be horrific. Talk of which, in England he's thought of as a hero. In Spain, he's known as El Draca, the dragon, a figure of hate. And his personal rivalry with the Spanish drove his actions thereafter from facing down to Spanish Amada in 1588 to his most famous feat, circumnavigating the globe 11 years earlier. And I'll tell you this, just to wrap the story up. It's an unbelievable achievement.

Obviously, his links with slavery abhorrent, but this. is just staggering. Drake and his men set out from Plymouth, I mean, this is horrific. In late 1577, they sail west for the Caribbean, then south for the cone of South America. It takes almost a year to reach the Pacific Ocean via Patagonia and the Strait of Magellan. So already you're a year in and you're nowhere near home. You've only, you've only then reached the Pacific. Thoughts on that? You don't know who's won the Premier League? It's probably Mancity. Yeah, it's pretty. Will Arsenal do it is what you wonder? That's the chat on the ship.

Exactly. And you'll have to wait even longer, L, because then it's north along the West Coast of that continent, modern Chile, Peru. By the time of 1579, he was on the Pacific seaboard of what is now the United States. He left in 1577. And next, it is across Pacific to Indonesia and from there toward the southern tip of Africa,

and then finally north all the way down to Plymouth. And Drake, in what remained of his crew, sailed into Plymouth Harbour aboard the Golden High. on the 26th of September 1580 and they had left three years prior. Fuck that. Horrendous. Rubbish.

You see why no one but then was going on holiday to the continent. Completely. What's the first thing you're doing as soon as you get home after three years at sea? What are you doing? Pret.

What are you ordering in Pratt? I'll have a mango and a lime. Yeah. Get rid of a scurvy. Yeah. I'd say anything with doesn't contain weevils, that would be my... She's difficult at impractor. I think just, yeah, just, just, just mango and lime.

And I think that the tuna and cucumber baguette. Yeah. Even though you've just been at sea, so surely tuna's been... Yeah, but there's me and it. So it's tuna with a difference. You try catching a cucumber. I completely agree, Josh. I'm saying, what's your most land-based sandwich?

What's the most... Yeah. I want vegetables and meat. Cheese and onion. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, it's an incredible feat, not only of exploration. What's the bit about in bowling?

I don't, you didn't cover that. Well, the point there is apparently that he continued to play this game of balls and he was just not concerned the Armada were approaching and basically suggested that he'll wrap up this game and then there'll be plenty of time to do away with them. Any guesses of how he died, what sort of heroic death he had? He died in his mid-50s. And any guess how he died?

It's a very classic death from this time, 16th century. Shot from McRaw's Nest. Cannibal in the chest. V-D. I always get confused between him and Sir Walter Raleigh. So Walter Raleigh got his head chopped off, but I think Drake died of dysentery or something like that, didn't he? Correct.

Oh, there we go. Dissentry, and he now lies somewhere under the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, really? Lying in a lead coffin, yeah, after a lifetime of adventure of bloodshed. A crap place to be buried as well. He is. Freaks me out. So no one can go and see you a grey.

you're at the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Awful. Like you're as far from other human beings as humanly possible. Do not bury me at sea. It's you and Osama bin Laden. And imagine if you're not dead. You're in a lead-lined coffin and he's seven miles down.

So that's the end of part one of Devon. If you want part two right now, you can get it. Just go to patreon.com forward slash oh, what a time. you can sign up. If, however, you're prepared to wait. We'll see you tomorrow for part two. Bye. Bye.

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