Sea Control - Sea Control 340 - LEGO Lost at Sea with Tracey Williams

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Links1. Adrift: The Curious Tale of the LEGO Lost at Sea, by Tracey Williams, with Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Mario Cacciottolo, Unicorn Publishing Group, 2022.

Hey folks, it's Jared. This week I'm joined by author and beachcomber Tracy Williams and we'll be discussing her book Adrift, The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost at Sea. Tracy did want me to annotate here that in the episode she did misspeak at one point and incorrectly cited the number of green dragons in the container, and the correct number is 514. And if you're now utterly confused what it is that I'm on about, listen to the episode, 514 Green Dragons. This episode was edited and produced by Alexia Bulagi. We are still looking for additional audio editors, so we're happy to provide you with some very basic training materials and instruction in a low-stress environment. If you're interested in finding a way to contribute to SimSec

and add to your resume and personal skill set, please send us an email with your resume, ccontrol at simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International Maritime Security.

Aloha, showmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Tracy Williams. We'll be discussing her book, Adrift, The Curious Tale of the Lego Lost Seas. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Hello, my name is Tracy Williams, and I'm a beachcomber in Cornwall in the UK. Well, thank you again for joining us. And as a reminder, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Tracy, before we get into the written content of the book, can you tell us a little bit about the book's final design?

I know you sent me a comment yesterday, it was one of the most aesthetically pleasing things that I've ever held my hands here. But you've collected newspaper clippings. There are poems in the book. There are these beautiful paintings, which you're going to have to tell me about the origin of some of the paintings as well. But pictures, there are little asides in the book to tell stories from your time as a beachcomber. How did the design of the book come together? I think it all started as an online scrapbook, if you like. I've been following the story of the Lego Lost at Sea for 25 years, and every time something interested me, I made a note of it, jotted it down, wrote it in a notebook, I put some of it on my social media feeds, and gradually that became the basis of the book. and when I was first approached by a publisher I sent them my scrapbook if you like to show them what I'd accumulated and that became the basis for the book but I have to say much of the design of the book the credit must go to Felicity Price Smith the illustrator and designer who did a fantastic job I think of pulling it all together. And can I ask where the different paintings came from were those from your private collection just things you've encountered over the years or were

those were those felicity's choices it's a mixture the photographs many of the photographs are mine but many lego finders also gave permission for their photographs to be used too the illustrations were produced by felicity and she came to stay with me in cornwall to get a feel for the landscape if you like and based her illustrations on what she saw while she was here now we're gonna go a bit out of order with the questions because you brought this up already but you're a self-identified beachcomber so what does that label mean to you? For me beachcombing is scouring the shores for treasure. I think the nature of beachcombing has changed very much over the years. When I was a child we used to go beachcombing as a family and in those days we would search for shells and

sea glass and interesting shaped pebbles but I think beachcombing has changed now. There's so much plastic washing ashore and I think many people these days hunt for plastic as well as shells or sea glass. What makes it into your personal treasure bag as you're going down the shore? The Lego. I'm always interested in finding the Lego. Anything that's got a story behind it really. Old plastic interests me. Anything with writing on. Anything that you can trace back to source. I don't know if you've heard about it but a few years ago we found some shipwreck cargo washed up. Many beachcombers found these slabs of gutta percha which had the name of an Indonesian village in it and we traced the story behind those as they washed up all the way from Bermuda to

Holland and we found out they were coming from a shipwreck where a salvage operation was going on and these blocks were being released while the salvage crew were looking for something else so that became a story as well so anything that's got a story behind it I particularly like the really old plastics the cereal packet toys anything you can date we recently traced some of the cereal packet toys back to the 50s and 60s there are lots of resources where you can check the dates of these finds. So what happened to the Tokyo Express then on February 13th 1997? So the Tokyo Express was en route from Rotterdam to New York when it was hit by a rogue wave 20 miles off the coast of Cornwall and 62 containers fell overboard. One contained nearly 5 million bits of Lego and many

of the pieces were sea themed. We know what was in a couple of other containers. There was hose parts in one and lighters in another but it's a mystery what was in a lot of them. Most of the goods sank to the seabed but interestingly even though the goods sank we're still finding them washed ashore 25 years on and many are making their way along the seabed. How did you become aware of what had happened with Tokyo Express? At the time my parents had a house on the cliff tops in South Devon and we often used to go beach camping there and bring home all the treasure we found and in 1997 we started to find bits of lego washed up and there was just so much of it that we knew it's from a cargo spill so we found little life jackets and bits of ship rigging and tiny

flippers and little life jackets and we gathered them all up and we used to keep them in tupperware boxes on the kitchen windowsill and then as our hoard grew we transferred it to my father's shed on the top of the cliff tops as well as the little pieces we found the occasional dragon or lego octopus the lego octopuses were really the holy grail of the lego hunting at the time there were something like 33 000 dragons but only 4 200 octopuses so we were always on the hunt for those well that was going to be my next question uh were there specific pieces that you were looking for i think at the time the you know the most exciting finds with it were the dragons I still remember my neighbour finding a green dragon. We never found one of those. There were, as I said, 33,000 black dragons, but only 400 or so green dragons. And so they became highly sought after. And interestingly, a week before we published the book, somebody found one of the green dragons washed up in North Cornwall.

so we think it's probably been lying on the seabed for the last 25 years but at the time we didn't know everything that was in the shipping container we only knew the same 12 or 13 items used to wash up all the time and back then we didn't know of all the other items that had fallen to the seabed and we still never found many of those such as the lego shocks where are they they over 50 000 lego shocks in the container that fell off the toko express but as far as we know none of those has been found so they might be still trapped in a plastic box at the bottom of the sea or they might just be in the remains of the shipping container we're not sure how did you determine what exactly was in the shipping container with the lego because i think this is a good opportunity

as well to talk about your your co-author your contributor and i can't remember his name because i don't have the book title in front of me but curtis ebersmeyer yes i started corresponding with him after finding the blocks of gutta-percha washed up and I knew he'd written a story about the lego at the time it turned out he had written to lego and they had sent him a list of all 100 items that were in the shipping container but at the time we were finding lego we I didn't know that but we just kept finding these same old pieces and but then we started to find new pieces And so I wrote to Dr. Ebbersmeyer and said, you know, could these pieces also be from the spill? And it turned out he published a list of all the pieces he thought would float, but not ever published the list of all those that he thought would sink.

And so there was a more comprehensive list that included all the Lego that sank to the seabed. So I managed to get hold of a copy of that. It was actually quite complicated working it out because there was just a list of part numbers. um these days it's quite easy to trace a bit of lego you could there's websites galore but i think back in 1997 when these lists were put together there weren't these resources available so it was a bit of detective work actually trying to match all the part numbers with the bits of lego in the box but we did eventually do that and we found out that actually about perhaps 80 percent of the the lego sank perhaps more than was originally anticipated but interestingly we are now finding

the bits of lego that sank they are still gradually making their way ashore but there are still many pieces we've never seen there are things like magic wands and dragon wings we've never seen any of those what we don't know is whether the container might still exist or whether it long since rusted away it'd be really interesting i think to to go and have a look and see if we could find them and uh one of the things i was surprised about was how what's the right word forthcoming lego was as you know you and your co-author there corresponded with them as far as what they provide you so explain to us a little bit about the way the company responded to you the items that they provided and then what you observed from other companies or the way they

handle cargo that's lost at sea i think at the time lego was extremely helpful i mean it's very rare that companies would actually divulge what they've lost overboard. It seems to be a secret world. Very often you only hear about cargo spills when you start to find items washed up. And very few companies are forthcoming about what they've lost. But Lego were very open at the time. And I think also at the time, we know a lot more about plastic in the ocean now than we did back in 1997 and I think for many people a cargo spill of nautical themed Lego was a bit of fun and it became a treasure hunt and everybody joined in and Lego sent free samples of Lego to people who wrote in to say they'd found it I think nobody realized at the time that we would still be

finding it 25 years on and I did interview Lego when I was writing the book and they said you know they really wish they could turn the clock back it was an accident it was out of their control and they certainly wouldn't want it to happen but what do you do you know if you ship something and a container falls off it's not like when you lose a container on a road is it where you can go and sweep it all up when it's lost at sea these days sometimes companies will offer to go and pick up the pieces but there was a spill of printer cartridges in 2014 it was the hp printer cartridges and they did offer to send people to pick up the cartridges but the cartridges washed up all the way from bermuda to norway and they didn't wash up in vast numbers all on one beach

you know there was they were spread you know far and wide so it's actually very difficult for a company i think in circumstances like that to actually make amends so sometimes companies will do what they can they'll set up recycling services and fund beach cleans and some say nothing some just keep silent and hope nobody ever notices that they've lost a container of goods now did you have a pre-existing relationship with lego before you started researching this topic and by pre-existing relationship i mean you mentioned in your foreword i believe it had lego sets or you played with them as children and stuff like that yes i mean i think everybody has some lego in their household don't they certainly I grew up playing with it and my children grew up playing

with it and we still have boxes full of it in in the attic I've always loved Lego I didn't set out to write this book as a sort of to focus attention on Lego as a source of marine plastic I think for me it was searching for Lego that really made me realize how much plastic there was in the ocean it was while I was picking up the Lego that I noticed everything else that was there and I think for many people it's been the same I was contacted I set up a Facebook page called Lego Lost at Sea because I'd become part of a beach clean group and I thought it would be really interesting if we could map how far the Lego had traveled over the years and I was keen to find out who else had found it and which pieces they'd found so I'd set up these Facebook pages and

various Lego designers actually got in touch with me so the relationship with Lego really began then And they said to me, you know, in fact, one designer asked me if he could have a Lego octopus to put on his desk so that every time he designed something, he had it in mind that it could end up in the sea. So I did have a relationship with various Lego team members over the years. But it was when I was actually writing the book that I contacted Lego and asked them for some input, really. And did you provide the octopus or was that too valuable to part with? was too valuable at the time i only had two i said i did i did invite the designers beach caming with me to see if he could find find his own that's tough but fair they're still quite sought after they are still turning up though now this bill and others have contributed a number of

scientific discoveries relatable tide and the impact of plastics on the ocean which we've mentioned a couple times now what were some of the scientific discoveries that have come out of this One of the things we did was teamed up with scientists at the University of Plymouth to see if we could work out how long Lego could survive in the ocean. During beach cleans, we pick up all sorts of different pieces of Lego. They're not all from the cargo spill. Some of the pieces we find date back to the 60s, perhaps the 50s. So we supplied all these samples to the university and they tested them to see how long they would survive in the marine environment. so not Lego from the spill but just general classic style bricks and they worked out that the bricks could last anywhere from 100 to 1300 years and in the marine environment so that was

quite enlightening. We've also been mapping and tracking the Lego as it's washed up so keeping a database of how far it's traveled over the years and we're also now adding to that by keeping a record of all the lego that's been found that's not drifted ashore but has actually worked its way along the seabed so the lego that originally sank because i'm not i think probably not as much as known about how far lego and all items generally on the seabed can travel so i live about 55 miles from the site of the spill and this winter i found numerous bits of lego from the spill that sank back in 1997 so we've known they've taken 25 years to travel 55 miles and in fact a few last week even i found one of the lego life rafts from the spells it's all still coming ashore and what

we don't know is whether all the pieces we've never seen will also soon start to make their way ashore as the research as far as the mapping and tracking is that available anywhere online where people can it's not available online at the moment but again i i'm teaming up with scientists at the university of plymouth we haven't written that paper yet that's the one we're working on next we did publish a paper on the spread of the hp printer cartridges we tracked 1500 as they washed up around the world on hundreds and hundreds of different beaches so that that has been published but the lego mapping one will be our next paper well thank you so much Tracey unfortunately that's all the time we have for today the book is Adrift the Curious Tale of

the Lego Lost at Sea there are a number of different places you can find it online but we'll include a link to it if you'd like to order it I'd like to thank my guest Tracey Williams Tracey where can we find you online and I know you mentioned a number of projects that you have going but what are you working on next so I'm on we're on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as lego lost at sea and my next project actually is i'm providing chapter on the lego for a book on plastic archaeology and also working on our scientific paper about the spread of the lego over the last 25 years well thank you again for joining us to the listeners thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

We'll be right back.