Oh What A Time... - #4 Life at Sea

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

"Ahoy there landlubbers!" this week we're taking a look at seafarers from down the ages. We'll be talking Welsh pirates and the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty plus we'll take a 'deep-dive' into the toilet habits of the Vikings. Shiver me timbers! etc.. This first series will contain 12 episodes that we’ll be releasing weekly. If there's an episode you'd like to hear, please let us know! And thank you so much for your support for the podcast since our launch a few weeks ago. If you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? (Thus taking heed of our increasingly desperate pleas for reviews). If you’d like to get in touch with the show (perhaps to tell us when was the worst period in history or if we've INEVITABLY got something wrong) you can email us at: [e-mail] We’re also on Twitter and Instagram @ohwhatatimepod Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Eligibility and member terms apply. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was as awful as it seems. I'm Tom Crane. I'm Chris Scull. And I'm Ellis James. Each week we'll be looking at a

new historical subject. And today we're going to be discussing life at sea. Very good. 18th century Welsh pirates, the toilet habits of seafaring Vikings and the mutiny on the bounty. It is all here. But shall we kick off with a little bit of correspondence? Now, one thing that regular listeners will know is that every week we nag you to leave us a five-star review because we're needy and we need the back-slapping. Is that the right phrase? Tom is needy. I'm damaged. And also, it helps spread the word.

It's very, very useful. Yeah, that's what we say. But I'm actually very damaged. Yes, okay. But I'll tell you who did listen to those messages and did fine work is a lady called sal who lives in north wales i'm going to read you up two emails from sal because it's a real story it's quite heartwarming the first email said dear lads what a brilliant podcast i don't know how to leave a five-star review on the podcast i mean mean, I've searched high and low too, worried face. So I thought, bugger it, I'll just email.

And then, half an hour later, second email, dear lads, it's me again. I've just worked out how to leave a five-star review. Big smiley face. Keep up the good work, Sal from North Wales. Sal, you're an absolute legend. Thank you so much for pushing on. And keeping us abreast of the whole thing.

We've also had, lads, our first clarification of the series. Excited about this? I feel like the teacher just said to us, see me after class. It was always going to happen. Oh, boy. What have I done? But the important thing is that we are transparent throughout this process. Yes.

And that is that ancient Rome should actually be called really old Rome. I don't know that. That's what historians call it. Really, really old Rome. I knew it. I knew it. Don't get embarrassed ourselves. No, this is about fashion.

And a chap called Paul has messaged the show to say that when he went to Morocco, he was told that the fez tassel, now I don't know if you remember this. We discussed how we couldn't work out how the fez had any use as a hat offering any sun protection or anything. He has told us that he thinks, this is what he's been told, that the fez tassel was designed to keep flies away from the wearer's face.

There you go. That's what he thinks. That's what he's been told when he went to Morocco. That is the actual reason for the tassels. Paul, we need to see your qualifications. Your qualifications, according to your email, are that you've been to Morocco on holiday. the actual reason for the tassels paul we need to see your qualifications your qualifications according to your email are that you've been to morocco on holiday yeah paul would you mind just sending us your cv that would be ideal and if you really love this podcast you'll do it i i did actually do a bit of uh googling to find out if paul was correct i couldn't find anyone who was backing up this argument.

I did find one thing I found quite interesting. But apparently, we didn't talk about this, but apparently how the fez tassel was worn denoted people's attitude back in the day. So the favoured tassel was to the back of the hat and down the neck. But if you were antisocial or a roughneck, you'd wear it to the front to show your rebellions. How can the tassel kind of waft away flies? Because the

tassel doesn't go down beyond the bottom of the fez. It kind of tucks in halfway up the fez. Chris, Paul's lost it. Paul doesn't know what he's talking about. Just so listeners know where they are with the podcast, if they email in the future, should they be expected to be roasted quite so badly as this?

Is this the vibe? Yeah. Sorry, Paul. Thank you very much for your correspondence. And I've got a great deal of respect for you as a listener and for all of the lifestyle choices you've made. I don't know what they are, but I'm sure the Rapsuit Belt does. Now, if any of you other wonderful listeners would like to be humiliated on a podcast,

here's how you can email the show. All right, you horrible lot here's how you can stay in touch with the show you can email us at hello at oh what a time dot com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh What A Time Pod. Now clear off. So what are we talking about on today's show? Today I am going to be talking about the Vikings and their incredible boats. I'll be talking about the mutiny on the bounty because I'm obsessed with the film. And I'll be discussing Welsh pirates because we are world class at producing pirates. We certainly were many hundreds of years ago.

I thought we'd begin this episode with a little excerpt from a 1956 book by Eric Newby called The Last Grain Race on his experiences as a young sailor. At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the noise was an unearthly scream. The high whistle of the wind through the halyards, and above all the pale blue, illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance. As time passed, the ship possessed us completely. Our lives were given over to it. A hundred times a day, each one of us looked aloft at the towering pyramids of canvas, the beautiful deep curves of the leeches of the sails, and the straining sheets of the great courses. Yes, this week we're talking about life at sea. And I'd like to begin with, you know that expression, worst things happen at sea?

And I would like to begin with, you know that expression, worst things happen at sea. I actually think that is the most accurate expression ever said. At no point, if that was my day, would I not be thinking I've made a terrible mistake. I should have gone into data entry. A nice, really safe office job. Yeah, absolutely. You know what, Donny Part job. Yeah, absolutely.

You know what? Dolly Parton sang 9 to 5. And I'm almost bemoaning it. What a luxurious existence compared to a life at sea. I think the sea is possibly the most overrated destination on earth. Whenever I'm on holiday and there's a choice between beach or pool, I never pick beach. When you get close to the sea and the seaweed and the stench and then you get out there the jellyfish i can't i hate the sea i love looking at the sea

but i also have an unbelievable fear of the sea now there's a couple of things um sort of ground me in this first of all my grandfather who was a the uh of the Merchant Navy in World War II, was torpedoed in World War II and went down. He died. A bit of confusion in primary school in that I used to go around telling everyone he'd been harpooned. Quite a different story. My mum was always having to correct me. Today's episode, we're talking about this, me no no no so today's episode we're talking about this a life at sea that's what we're talking about it feels early doors like we might not be the people that are best suited to this but i think we are because because of my hatred for the sea i've always been fascinated by terrible stories of stuff that happened at sea

yeah and i've always i i once went on uh i got the ferry to Santander once on a holiday. And it was really rainy on the deck and I was running around chasing my brother and I slipped. And I just, and I hit the edge of the boat. I was never close to going overboard. But in that moment, it really struck me. That was 300 years ago and I went overboard. You've got no chance. Of course.

Absolutely zero chance of pulling through that. No. You'd land in the sea and you'd think to yourself, someone needs to invent the course guard now. It'd be annoying that you came up with the idea as you hit the go. Why did I come up with this earlier? As a matter of urgency,

someone needs to invent the thing I've just imagined. But also the other astonishing thing is that a lot of the time they didn't bother to go back and try and save you. Really? No, that... I've got a real issue with that. Go on. I would be lying there,

standing in the water, floating as best as I could, treading water as best as I could, just thinking to myself, this shows a lack of empathy. If everyone on that boat over there, currently sailing away from me, could put themselves in my position, I would really, really appreciate that. Because, I've got to be honest,

I'm frightened now, and I'm cold. And I can only see the situation getting worse. Also, it's a bit like being sucked out into outer space. But the benefit there is you die instantly, like your head explodes, whatever. In the sea, you've got the ability to keep your... Just the head. So the helmet stops working when you're stuck in the air. I haven't researched what happens in outer space.

But in the sea, you've got the ability to keep yourself alive for potentially days. Yeah, yeah. There's food swimming around you for a start. Yeah, delicious. You're quick enough. Delicious cod. So for delicious cod, a little costume,

and then some delicious batter, and then a delicious fryer, and then a delicious plate, knife and fork, salt, vinegar and tomato ketchup. We're looking at life at sea this week. We're looking at life at sea this week. So I thought I'd choose pirates and piracy because there's a slightly odd quirk about piracy in that a lot of very world-class pirates happen to be from very near where I grew up.

Yeah, Wales is very good at producing world-class wingers. Your Ryan Giggs is, your're Gareth Bales and pirates. So three of the characters from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island were based on the Welsh pirates Harry Morgan, who grew up in Llandrubny,

Black Bart, Barty Lee, as he was known in Welsh, John Roberts, who's from Pembrokeshire, and Hoel Davies, who was also from Fishgard, which is also in Pembrokeshire.

Do the films Pirates of the Caribbean sort of bite a little bit? Should it be Pirates of Pembrokeshire. Do the films Pirates of the Caribbean sort of bite a little bit? Should it be Pirates of Palf or We Love You? I think there's room for Welsh actors in Pirates of the Caribbean. It annoys me that they went for the big Hollywood names. So the golden age of piracy is the 1650s and 1730s. The golden age of piracy is the 1650s to 1730s.

And, yeah, we produced an awful lot of top pirates. And the interesting thing, I think, with pirates is that they came from all sections of society. So you might be a landowner's son, but if you weren't the firstborn and you didn't inherit your old man's fortune, or if you were a farmhand, you just thought, well, it's probably better to be a pirate than to do this. This is rubbish. So the one I'm really interested in is a guy called John Roberts, Bartholomew Roberts, known as Barty the Black Bart. And, I mean, he was a world-class pirate who stole a lot of ships and stole a lot of stuff. But he's quite a curious bloke because he only drank tea. He was an abstainer.

He was a sabbatarian, so he didn't like stuff to happen on a Sunday. It's a weird thing I was just thinking about pirates is, like, having rules. Because by your very essence, you are lawless. There should be no rules.

So to create rules. He had loads of rules. You are lawless. There should be no rules. So to create rules. He allowed no women aboard his ships. Any man who brought a woman on board disguised as a man, that was punishable by death. He allowed no gambling. He was a pirate who didn't like gambling. So he wouldn't allow to gamble at cards or at dice. That couldn't be played for money.

He strongly disapproved of that. He had musicians on board and they were, so every pirate on his ship had the right to demand a tune at any hour of the day. It's like early Spotify. Apart

from Sundays when Spotify was turned off. That's probably more like Napster if he's pirating it. Yeah. There you go. Very nice. So you could just go up to them and say,

I want to hear, what would it be? Yeah, Murder on the Dance Floor by George Wallace Beckster. Get lucky by Daft Punk. Yeah, yeah. And then they would have to get the violins up and approximate it as best as they could. And he really looked the part as well when he was dressed for action.

So he was tall, very dark, used to wear a rich Damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his cap, a gold chain around his neck with a large diamond cross dangling from it, a sword in his hand, and he had two pairs of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling

that was flung over his shoulder. He kind of looked like a cartoon pirate, but he was a Welsh bloke. He used to run chapel services on a Sunday. So do you think that a lot of this, I guess, is about controlling his crew, isn't it, really? That's what it is. It's about feeling that your crew is going to be unruly. I imagine that's where it's stemming from, isn't it? Trying to create some kind of structure and organisation where you fear it sort of imploding and mutiny.

And they were pissed all the time. Exactly, yeah. Because it was impossible to take large supplies of water on board with you. So you would drink rum. I mean, that's a sort of cliche that's born out of real life. I found a list of Martin Fin frobisher's second voyage to north america in 1577 there was a list of all the food that's prepared that the men could have per day do you want to hear it each day you would get one pound of biscuit one gallon of beer per man

per day one pound of salt beef oatmeal and rice uh that's a lot of butter and a half pound of salt beef, oatmeal and rice, a pound of butter and a half pound of cheese per man per day, honey, a hog's head of cooking oil and a pipe of vinegar. It's like a really mad bag on Ready Steady Cook, isn't it? See what you can do with that. A gallon of beer is a bit much. I'm not sure I need that A day that list is like I mean how is not

how is everyone not constipated they used to eat a lot they used to eat a lot of fermented vegetables and things because the problem is if you're going on if you're on a ship for months and months it's impossible to keep anything fresh

everything would go mouldy. Yeah. So you'd have lots of cured meat, biscuits. Biscuits was a staple diet. And then, yeah, fermented stuff, if you could get hold of it. But it's not an ideal way to live. The reason that the pirate diet doesn't exist is because it was a very, very bad diet.

Imagine you go round someone's house and they've got a gallon of beer there, a pound of salt beef, a pound of biscuit. What are you eating here? Oh it's the pirate diet, you're not hurt. Gwyneth Paltrow looks rough these days I can't tell you. She's got awful scurvy. She's ill a lot. It's quite cool she's wearing a eye patch these days. Is it a pound of meat? Is that what it was? A pound of salt beef. I suppose they're doing quite hard work, aren't they? We think about the amount of calories that we burn in modern life.

That's top podcasters. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Where we walk to the top, top poster letter or something. But they're battling the elements. They're sort of pulling ropes. They're doing, you know, so they're clearly burning it. So maybe it's not for me to judge.

I don't want to body shame a pirate. No. Did you come back from being a pirate and did people go, whoa, you look great, have you been away? Or did they go, bloody hell! That's why they grew those massive beards, Ellis, to hide how much weight they put on. So this guy, he's running a strip ship then, Ellis, this guy.

Yeah, I just think it's really funny because... What's his name again? Bartholomew Roberts, Black Bart. Because he'd grown up in a very religious place and he sort of took that with him and I think he did have... So he had sort of a normal legal job and then the ship was captured. And he was initially a reluctant pirate,

but it was captured, the ship was captured and he was initially a reluctant pirate but he was captured the ship was captured by another welsh pirate who was from down the road in pembrokeshire and they spoke welsh to each other and he persuaded him basically to become a pirate and bartholomew roberts is said to have been reluctant initially but quickly came to see the advantages of this new lifestyle and so it's a great opportunity. So someone said that, someone reported him as saying, in an honest service, there is thin commons, low wages and hard labour. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power. And who would not balance creditor in this side

when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto. So he was like, listen, I can either get my head down and work and probably die at 51, having had quite a shit life, or I can die at 37, having had a really exciting life I'll just have my sort of you know stomach blown off by a cannonball and I will cross that bridge when I come to it so he he opted for a short life full of excitement so they would have become quite wealthy then

obviously this is there was a lot of money I'm not sure. The interesting thing is it's not... You imagine that it's sort of gold that they were stealing and treasure, whereas often they were stealing things like grain and molasses, which is a slightly less sexy version of being a pirate, isn't it? It's like, God, I'm a great pirate. Oh, yeah. What have you been stealing? Loads of grain on the way to Portugal.

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visit connectsontario.ca. so i'm going to talk about probably the most famous 18th century merchant ship of them all you familiar with hms bounty yes hellish you'll know yeah if you see i mean the film yeah yeah the bounty you didn't know about it, Tom. I don't understand. Because this, for me, is the classic story of being at sea. Wasn't it? It was two small ships full of coconut. Is that right? Two small boats.

Yeah. Coconut on the inside, chocolate on the outside. The main party was coconut. Coconut, yeah, yeah. The dark chocolate one, that was slightly less popular than the milk chocolate. Yeah. People would go, oh, it's the dark. As it pulled into port, there'd be sort of an audible groan.

For God's sake. Can't be bothered with that. Yes, I do know. I won't give you the full story. The bounty was a Royal Navy vessel, 1787, sailed to Tahiti. They were collecting breadfruit plants to take them to the West Indies. But what they did is, on the boat, they converted most of it into a big greenhouse. So the ship was really overcrowded.

And then in this kind of 1787, you're going to have crap food on the boats, low pay, high risk of dying. And then you've got William Bly, the captain, lieutenant, who's really strict, having a go at the crew the whole time, including famously making them listen to music and have enforced kind of dancing sessions for exercise purposes.

Oh, my gosh. It takes them a year to get to Tahiti is the headline. They try to go around Cape Horn, they fail. They eventually get to Tahiti. They're there in Tahiti for five months. Tahiti is paradise. It is packed full of Polynesian women, almost a limitless supply of food and drink.

They're basically on a lad's holiday for five months. Eighteen of the crew get treated for venereal infections. Wow. When they get there. Having had none by the time when they first arrived, according to the shipped doctor. I also imagine that the treatment was fairly old school. Rub this coral on it.

Yeah. That barnacle, all the way up. Okay. So they're on the Tahiti for five months, and then it's time to go home. They're at sea three weeks on the way home. They're all falling out of each other. William Bly's a bit like really strict.

And then famously, the crew decides to mutiny. And the thing that really struck me about the mutiny on the bounty is that why didn't this happen all the time? They're in paradise, Tahiti. This is the funny thing that I really learned about life at sea is that this is why you have these ranks and these strict rules is that there's so so much of the life at sea is to constrain the individual so they don't try and mutiny so this is why the mutiny on the bounty i think sticks out it's because a crew said i don't want i don't want this life i don't want to go back to rainy london thank you very much well it's amazing that didn't happen all the time.

And I'm not sure, myself as an individual, if I was on that ship, I'm not convinced that I wouldn't mutiny as well. Because how is that not better? It's a bit similar to the life of a pirate. Yeah. But then I suppose there'd be such a fear that if you did risk mutiny and it went wrong,

you're going to be killed. Which is quite a sort of thing to have hanging in the back of your mind as a possible. You're not going to have to just go to HR and have a chat. That's my issue. I think what I would do, I would ensure I had loads of holiday photos.

And I'd accept that the good times were over and now I'd have to go back to London. And I'd say things like, there's no place like home over in London. Until I actually believed it. Yeah, it's nice to go away, but it's even nicer to come back. Can we quickly backtrack to the enforced dancing lessons as well? So what was that? How does that work?

He would play music and the crew would be forced to dance. Yeah. They would be forced to dance to the music, which, when the good times were good, by all accounts, the first part of the journey was good and everybody was dancing. They're loving it. But on the way back, when the atmosphere was really sour,

less good. And when they got to the final six, they sailed back to Blackpool. Is that right? For the final. You'd think that, if you're doing it for exercise, that being on a pirate ship is exercise enough. Yeah, absolutely.

Forcing someone to dance is the highest form of bullying, really. Yes, I agree with that. Like Back to the Future 3, Biff makes Marty McFly dance. Because it's humiliating. Dance. And you know as well, making someone who doesn't want to dance dance it's like it's different to like if you were friends if you were like school friends with a really good dancer who's gone on to dance in the west end and that's their job they're not a wedding saying go on mark show

us what you can do that is different to what marty mcfly is made to do by biff isn't it i guarantee you also about twice in every journey there would have been someone who'd have done, for a laugh, a bit of a jig down the plank and then just fallen in. And that would have been me. Or falling down that trap door bit that goes down to the second section of the boat.

That would also have been me. So because they were often drunk because it was difficult to take supplies of fresh water. They were often asked to be dipped in the sea just to have a wash. Because there's no... If you were a high-ranking, there might be a place for you to have a wash. But if you weren't, then...

Wow. Yeah, yeah. They were really dirty guys. How do you dip a man in the sea? Yeah. How does that work? Like on a long net. What's going on? Are you... They were really dirty guys. How do you dip a man in the sea? Yeah, this has to be expected. Like on a long net.

What's going on? It's a trust exercise. It's a work-based trust exercise. I've done some reading about history much further back. I've read about the Vikings. That's what I've been reading about this week. Would you like to hear about the Vikings? Yes, please. And what life was like at sea as a Viking.

So to sort of give some basic scope to the Vikings for people who don't know much about them, the Vikings were sort of seafaring raiders and traders from Scandinavia. The Viking Age is considered to be AD 700 to about 1100, that's kind of what people think. from Scandinavia and sort of conquered parts of France, Normandy, Mediterranean, even made it as far as the Americas at a point when no one else really in Europe was doing that. No one else was braving going across the oceans like that. And the main reason for this is to the success of their prize invention, which was the ship called the Long Ship, which would be a ship you guys would have seen. It's like the classic Viking ship. It's sort of like really thin. seen it's like the classic viking ship it's sort of like really thin yeah um it's the one that if a thousand years ago our ancestors saw coming at them on the sea you'd shit yourself yeah

well it's been a nice life mary yeah you know i've heard of these yeah this is gonna end badly but what i did not never understood About the Vikings Is that obviously violent people When they arrived at these shores You know Murdered But How did they pull off the element of surprise

Because Surely it's like They're coming over the horizon In a shit yourself boat That's not a thing that happens in five minutes. How are they getting to that? Because I would run. Is that too simplistic?

The longship is very shallow. It's got the ability to go into the shallows, and it could sneak into coves and stuff. They're coming at night. Amazing. They can move it across land as well by putting it on logs, and they cover the logs in fish guts. It's still very pleasant.

And then they'd roll it. So they could move it into rivers and all this sort of stuff. It was a very manoeuvrable boat. So they could sneak in. It had a real ability to get into inlets in a way that other boats at the time couldn't do. So it actually was quite a stealthy little thing. So I thought we could talk about what life is like on a long boat um because i think none of us would particularly

uh fare well with it so i'll take you through some of the things okay first of all so the long boat it had it had a large sort of square wool sail that it used most of the time and if it wasn't windy they'd have to row it okay so they had 70 vikings on a boat and then they'd split half and half so either you'd be rowing or you'd be resting and if you were rowing your rowing assistance would last for 12 to 18 hours fucking hell so do you know how you feel about that even steve redgrave is going to struggle yeah like 12 to 18 hours. I don't know

the exact science behind this, but I'm pretty sure both of my arms would pop off. They would come off at the shoulders like a sort of plastic toy after about sort of 30 minutes. Like an action man. Yeah, an action man, exactly. A discarded action man on a railway siding. I mean, I went,

Claire and I, our first ever date was, we went on a, this is so cliché, we went on a rowing boat in Victoria Park across a pond there. Yeah, for 18 hours. For 18 hours. Exactly, yeah. I thought, if we can get through this. And then came ashore and looted the locals.

What a bonding experience, to be honest. But the guy yelled at me. I was rowing the boat backwards, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't. I was facing the way that I was going, which is wrong. Right, right. You're supposed to go backwards and row.

Yes. Right. It was so moronic. And there were, like, children going past doing it correctly, and there was a guy yelling at me across a lake. So even with that three-minute snapshot of what it's like to be rowing, I hated it. And I think 18 hours is going to be...

Only 17 hours, 57 minutes to go before you get your rest. Well, I mean, talking of rest, you'd have to sleep sat up there was no space because basically these boats were so expensive that they crammed as many men as they possibly could onto them to make them financially viable there was just like no room whatsoever there was also there was no um shelter whatsoever there was no cabin there was no cover there was nothing so you're constantly under the the sun or the rain you're just getting battered by the elements consistently no cabin or cover no cabin or cover occasionally they would bring down the sail when they're in port to cover under it but when you're

out rowing norway yeah and they're going to greenland a place like this as well i actually um i went in Norway. I saw a Viking longship. There's a Viking museum in Norway, in Oslo, I think it was. And I saw one. And exactly that point, there's nowhere for you to relax. Which is interesting when you can say that 18-hour thing. Because what you do in the six hours,

you're just sat in the same seat, but you're not rowing. Yeah. Yeah, well, you're trying to sleep you're trying to sleep oh man it's like trying to sleep on a plane is horrific isn't it yeah like an economy can't do it and i trying the the long ship must be even worse yeah yeah it was very hard for the drinks trolley to get down it as well that was classically one of the problems with i flew back from new ze Zealand and I was delayed in transit at every point. And so I was delayed leaving. I was delayed in Sydney. I was delayed in Singapore,

wherever it was we were changing. So I'd been in the air or on the plane for 36 hours and I cannot sleep sitting up. I just can't do it. Can't do it. Just can't be done. I just came back from Qatar for the World Cup. I can't sleep sitting up. I just can't do it. Can't do it. Just can't be done. I just came back from Qatar for the World Cup. I can't sleep sitting up.

Can't be done. I was so delirious with tiredness on the way back from New Zealand that I leant down on my sort of knees and put my face, I rested my face on where my bum was on the seat, where my bum should have been. And so if I'd been, even if I'd

been rowing for 18 hours, I just can't sleep sitting up. I can't sleep in cars. I can't sleep on a bus. So now... You don't want to be shoving your face where people have been sitting, where bums have been going for the last... I'd gone mad. And I thought to myself, well, it's my bum. It's been my bum for the last

35 hours. Yeah. So that will have masked other people's bums. Well... But, you know, if you're rowing across the North Sea to Northumberland, then, I mean, that's a fair old stint of physical exercise, isn't it? Well, and also, there were other things to go with that, because you weren't even breathing in fresh air and enjoying that. The place stunk these ships were clinker built which were where they use overlapping wood to link the ships together and the gaps between the pieces of wood were then filled with tar

and animal hair and they were constantly having to put new tar down to basically keep it seaworthy so you always had tar on you you're always really sticky and the place stunk of tar rubbish also if people wanted to go to the toilet they would go to the toilet over the side of the ship so you shove your arse over the side then you you do your business on the top of a passing blue whale or whatever wouldn't be able to do that yeah exactly that's funny as always because if you're in a job you hate That is a slog You will disappear off to the toilet To kill 20 minutes

But on a Viking longship You can't even do that Because you're on full display And it's probably the most dangerous Part of your day I could see myself holding it in Just going I'm going to try And see if I can make Greenland

Just six months And then doing one Yeah, and hitting the ceiling Doing a big one On the cycle to Greenland Turning myself inside out Would you have the confidence To sort of like

To stick your behind Over the side of a boat In front of your work colleagues? We Imagine now in this podcast record I could see you on the screen If you just continued talking And dropped your trousers and went

to the toilet do you know what though I think people were shitting alfresco until far more recently than you'd think have you seen the Peter Jackson documentary they shall not grow old

yes yeah there's the bit where there's four or five Tommies and they're all just ticking a shit next to each other and sort of waving at the camera. Yeah. You know, not my scene. My Irish grandad, who was born in the 1920s, so this would have been in the kind of 1940s in Ireland.

He didn't have a toilet in the house. None of them had a toilet. They would go do their business in a field. They'd just walk out the door yeah wow that so it's not that it really isn't even that long ago the i mean you say about the the splashing being a problem that sort of stuff but that's interestingly the vikings invented the b-day after seeing that i i don't know why I was so naive about this. I knew that life on board a pirate ship would be hard. I knew deep down that life on board a long ship would be hard. You've made it sound worse than I'd imagined.

Has it put you off the idea? It's given me a newfound respect for the Vikings. Because they actually, a lot of this stuff has been drawn from uh contemporary rebuildings of these boats and they've gone off on missions to see what they would have done so obviously a lot of this isn't isn't written history it's they've had to draw conclusions from so this will be a historian who will have stuck his uh behind over the back of a boat at least two years ago, going past a P&O ferry and giving him a nod.

It's like... Yeah, with a team of people in white coats and clipboards going, yeah, yeah, he's definitely shitting there. Next to an oil rig. But for me, actually, the discomfort and the stench isn't the worst bit. The worst bit is, at that point is the navigational aspects because at that point there were such sort of poor navigational aids it was like really hard to hit your destination so like like an easy jet airport you'd be sort of quite

some way away from where you actually need to be so there's loads of tales of ships just going off course and then sort of sailing across the atlantic and then then they either the ship sinks or they just starve basically it's horrendous oh that's the that's the aspect of seafaring that prangs me out the most especially in this age is where yeah you're setting off for somewhere it's like we don't even know if we're in the right direction we don't even know really like is it going to be a week is it a month or are we never going to get to where we're trying to get that absolutely That is something I cannot get my head around. The intrepid nature of people just getting in a boat that's covered in animal fat and tar and thinking,

oh, well, fingers, I'll probably never see you again. Firm handshake with your wife. Yeah, like, I own a car and I filled it up last night and if I just got in the car and just kept driving I would probably at some point end up in Leeds, I reckon I could get to Leeds on a full tank

and then I'd be in Leeds and then I would fill up and I would drive home and I would say to Izzy, sorry, I don't know what happened there It felt like a really good idea when I said it on the podcast, I don't really understand Sorry And yeah it felt like a really good idea when I said it on the podcast I don't really understand sorry and yeah it's the ability

I suppose you were putting your fate into God's hands yes absolutely well in line with that it's all the more straggling when you think about the relationships the relationship sorry the Vikings had

with the sea. A lot of Scandinavian belief there was there was this huge serpent at that time that wrapped itself around the earth and was under the sea. So it had a real fear of the sea as well. So it wasn't like our relationship with the sea is a place you go swimming and just have fun or whatever. This was a place that

was the home to this horrendous beast that could destroy you at any point. So not only were they choosing to go out not knowing where they're going, they were going across the home of this thing that they thought could annihilate them. So they were taking the piss. They were taking the piss.

Things can't be good at home if you're choosing that as an option. If you're choosing to take the piss out of a global serpent. Wow. So there were some navigational aids they had a couple of ones that stuck out um tell me how reassuring you'd find these one was um thing called a plum bob which they would drop to the bottom of the ocean it was like a little weight on a string to see how deep the uh ocean bed was and it would also bring up some of

the silt from the ocean bed and then apparently they feel that um experienced captains could then taste that ocean bed and tell whether there was fresh water coming into it and whether they were close to land so they can taste the base that is the bed that is the classic man at the pub yeah i can taste a seabed and tell you where the... Yeah, shut up. You have a sip of your... You have a sip of your Estrella and you say to yourself, yeah, they've just cleaned the lines.

Yeah, that's what that is. Do you think that's the first step on... Those are the people that became sort of wine connoisseurs. These unbearable people you see at a dim party who claim they can taste the forest when it's sort of you know from a wolf glass and the other thing they had was they would take a non-migratory bird with them on board any guesses why that might be so they could fly up and then they would head to the land damn right so if it flew to land they'd follow it if it came back to the boat then they would head to the land. Damn right. So if it flew to land, they'd follow it. If it came back to the boat, then they weren't near land.

But I don't know what that tells you. If it comes back to the boat, you just go, oh, we're not near land. I don't know anything else. I haven't got anything else to add. It's basically a really shit sat-nav. Yeah. That is quite clever, though. I'll tell you where you are if you are within 500 metres of actually being there.

Yeah. And then the final thing, of actually being there yeah and then the final thing of course at the end of the bike it shows you how sort of in touch and how important their life on their boats were uh were for them that uh the high-ranking vikings would be laid on their vessels with their grave goods their grave goods is after they died which are items they need in the afterlife you'd be shoved out into the sea and they'd set fire basically to it um and you just see all your your belongings go up i always thought that must be a bit heartbreaking if you were sort of waiting for your inheritance and you're on the side seeing your stuff go up and go up in flames and that's what happened but but another interesting

thing i found on this briefly uh part of your funeral which i thought was quite interesting a third of everything you owned, all of all your wealth would go on booze for the funeral. There you go. That's quite good. Wow. I've always thought the Vikings nailed the funeral. How much better would a funeral be if you went there

and your mate or whoever it is, grandma, just goes up in a massive towering inferno. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually on a beach. In my mind mind's eye it's on a beach with all their stuff and then it's like oh one of their but also they put 100 grand behind the bar tonight What really interested me is, like, we touched on there, journeys that begin and you just don't know where you're going. And specifically in the animal kingdom, one thing that I've always stuck in my mind was that

the Galapagos Islands and their famous turtles, they believe those turtles arrived two to three million years ago, having travelled 600 miles on the South American coast on vegetation rafts wow they think they just blew out there and they're similar model for madagascar as well they think the mammals that are in madagascar got there aboard natural rafts so to madagascar's would have been a 270 mile ocean voyage taking about three weeks and i mean who knows how long and where they came from for the galapagos as well before we end this episode though i just want to briefly tell you about a famous storeway a guy called purse uh blackborough and he was a storeway on ernest shackleton's

uh ill-fated imperial transantarctic umition of 1914 to 1917. So he wanted to go on Shackleton's ship Endurance, which is en route to the Antarctic. But Blackborough wasn't hired, right? He was 18 and Shackleton thought, you're too young and you haven't got enough experience. So he sneaked aboard and he hid in a locker amongst piles of clothing now at which point they discover him

and they're angry because they've got a stowaway he's a young kid, he's 18 they're like bloody hell, this is all very difficult but now we've got to look after this child effectively who's 18 years of age so Shackleton said you do know that on these expeditions we often get very hungry and if there's a stowaway available he is the first to be eaten.

To which Blackborough replied, they'd get a lot more meat off you, sir. Which is a big call, I think. It's a real shit or bust move, isn't it? Had he been comparing the clubs up at that point? He was a very capable circuit compare. yeah yeah absolutely so shackleton grinned and was like all right then let's let him on so he's um he's on the endurance now and they're going to the antarctic and he's doing quite well and they're all very fond of him he's always looking after the ship's cat mrs ch Chippy. But the endurance sank,

at which point they salvaged what they could. Obviously, because he's a stowaway, he's taken the wrong sort of boots. He's basically gone in trainers because his feet were exposed to the really cold waters of the Antarctic Ocean. He developed severe frostbite. And this is the bit I just find incredible. So everyone is ill and everyone's in poor health, poor spirits.

But he's contracted gangrene, Perse Blackborough now, due to his frostbite. So they had a surgeon on board, a guy called Alexander Macklin. And Blackborough was his greatest medical concern. So they're like, OK, what are we going to have to do? Oh, God. Now, he's been away for a month. At which point the surgeon carries out an amputation on Blackbro's left foot using chloroform for anaesthesia.

This is how he described the operation. Blackbro had all the toes of his left foot taken off, quarter-inch stumps being left. The poor beggar behaved splendidly, and it went without a hitch. Time from start to finish, 55 minutes. When Blackbro came round, he was cheerful as anything and started joking directly.

People in the past are so hard, aren't they? Especially this era. The hardest people are at sea. They are hard. Right, shall we decide who would fare better at a life at sea? I think that seems to be the conclusion from all of this. If our listeners can take one thing from it, and I hope they do, it's who we think would fare better at life at sea.

I'm going to count myself out of the running because of my profound ship fear of sharks. This sea serpent thing the vikings were panicked by and um the propensity with which ships seem to sink i just i think it would be an issue for me so i i absolutely i think i'm i'm out of the running to be honest i quite enjoy physical exercise okay i quite enjoy rowing the thing that would really hold me back is how... How much rowing have you done? I mean, at the gym for 25 to 30 minutes at a time. In a gym? In a gym, yeah.

So I'm 17 hours, 35 minutes away from my 18 hour stint. The thing that would really hold me back is that I'm quite introverted and I do need time alone. You're not going to get that on a long ship. So within a day, I'm getting grumpy.

Within two days, I'm getting people. Within three days, I've been thrown overboard. How do you think the phrase, I need a bit of me time would go down on a Viking ship? I'm quite intrigued by that. How would you try and achieve a bit of me time? You've got no chance. Jump overboard. a bit of me time You've got no chance Jump overboard

What are you doing You've got no chance Hanging on the back of the boat And being dragged along So if the introverts are all staying at home In Denmark or Sweden or Norway That means A long ship

Would be full of super hard Vikings who are all extroverts Yeah yeah yeah It'd be a bloody nightmare Oh yo yo Okay so So Ellis you can row But you're an introvert And I do so ellis you can row uh but you're an

introvert and i do need in me time as i've counted myself out i'm gonna decide i'm gonna decide out the two of you who's gonna be okay chris give me a look when i was nine years old we went on a family holiday to ireland we we got there via uh a boat from swansea to ireland and it was it was rocky seas i was about no and i didn't understand what seasickness was. I remember getting to the canteen, buying a can of tango and sitting at the table and the can of tango was going from one end to the other.

Then I remember going, I need something to eat. I went to get toast and beans and the beans were coming out. At that point, I said to my dad, I'm going to be sick. I need to throw up. We went in the toilet, opened it. of the trip and at that point i was like i said to my dad i'm gonna be sick i'm like i'm gonna i need to throw up so he went in the toilet opened it and it's one of those doors they kind of they they lock they lock and they'd like you've got to step over to get inside the door opened on this

toilet all the cubicles were open there was vomit filling up every single toilet blocking up the sink there was vomit up the walls and on the floor and then i was sick on the the floor. And this is like, I wouldn't describe this as really rough seas. Not like some of the pictures, some of the videos you see online of really rough seas. And I was all over the place. So the idea that I could have been a sailor, a proper Viking, and spent any kind of life at sea, when I can barely get across the Irish Sea without throwing up everywhere, I think there is no chance I would have been sued. Plus, I hate the sea.

The seaweed is so overrated. The jellyfish. An away game when you're in the water with the fish. I'm so happy that I don't need to accept this as a career. Do you know what? First time I was on a ferry, Plymouth to Roscoff, I spewed everywhere so yeah

I'd forgotten about the seasickness I'm beginning to feel that none of us none of us is going to make it as I like to speak in that case what are the Vikings going to say to me when I'm 20 minutes in to the trip to Greenland

and I'm and I'm throwing up while the guy next to me is trying to have a shit over the side and he's like you've got 17 and a half hours left mate what are you having a shit 20 minutes in? You can still see land.

You've got a dicky tummy, Chris. Why didn't you go when we were back? I asked you if you wanted to go before we left. Why didn't you go at the terminal? All right, that's it for this week. And we would love your correspondence. Now, Tom and Chris and I decided that we would be absolutely rubbish at a life at sea, just not really for us.

However, if you're listening to this podcast and you have worked at sea, maybe you were in the Navy or you worked on a cruise ship or you worked on a ferry, who knows? Maybe you're, I don't know, maybe you're a fisherman or a fisherwoman. Then contact us on hello at ohwatertime.com because we'd love to hear your stories. I like very briefly, Ellis, that you listing those things will have nudged someone's memory that, oh yeah, I do do that thing. You've said maybe you work and they've thought nothing, that's not me. Then you've said fisherman. Oh yeah, I am

a fisherman. Oh yes, yeah, for 40 years I was a fisherman. Well, if you are on deck and you are listening to this, please do leave us a five star review. And that's the same for everyone listening because it really does help the show. I can't thank you enough for those you have and keep doing that because it really helps spread the word. Yeah, and every week we'll be getting more and more desperate

as we ask for ratings and reviews so if you want to if you want to see whether you can get to the stage where we've had enough ratings and reviews and just keep doing them because we will be getting more desperate will the uh will the quite polite way i'm asking at the moment will that change yeah here's a nautical term what ellis has just said is a shot across the bow very nice chris very nice yeah thanks for joining us guys and we'll see you next week for more history fun bye goodbye Thank you.