Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Did a shipwreck double the size of the United States?

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Did a shipwreck double the size of the United States? Sort of. Listen in to find out what the heck that means.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude.

is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the Iheart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Dave. Let's go back in time. Do you know who else is in the room with this? Jerry Murphy? No.

Do you know who wrote this article? No. Not you. Okay, yeah. Because I was going to say, I didn't even know about some of this stuff. Yeah, this, maybe the densest three pages have ever seen written. Yeah. Was written by our old colleague, Kristen Conger.

Conger. That's right. This is seriously, incredibly well written. It is. Kong's did a great job. And Kristen is thankfully still around in the podcasting biz. She has her great show, unladylike, that she used to co-host with Caroline. But eventually Caroline left, and Conger kept doing it by herself.

And it's still great. Still around. She has an unladylike book. And we think the world of Conger. So still support her, please. Way to go, Conger. And way to go for this article, because it really is incredibly well done, and especially for something she probably wrote in a day, maybe a day and a half, you know?

We used to crank these out. Yeah, we did. So the whole story starts in 1993. That's where Conger put it. And I think that was the right place, the right way to go. Out on the Gulf of Mexico, there was a guy named Jerry Murphy, who was a fisherman there, and he was trawling in the Gulf of Mexico. And when he brought the net up, there was some debris in it.

He just assumed were rocks at first. but I guess he took a closer look and we're like, those are silver coins that are fused together because they've been underwater for so long. Hot damn. That's right. So he did what anyone would do. He got in touch with an attorney.

He said, can I keep this stuff? And then he contacted history experts and said, where did these things come from? And then about a year after that, they finally said, hey, dude, do you know what this is? this is from the ruins of the El Casador or the Hunter. And this is a ship that disappeared in 1784 after it set out from Veracruz, Mexico, with 19 tons of Spanish currency, which was silver reels at the time.

Yeah, they were newly minted even. There was apparently a mint in Mexico, and they were headed to New Orleans. And at the time, you're like, well, why does Spain care about New Orleans? Spain cared about New Orleans because that was the capital of the Louisiana colony owned by Spain at the time. Sure. You thought it was France? No, there was a period where Spain owned Louisiana and it was during this time. And the reason they sent 19 tons of silver coins to New Orleans was because New Orleans currency had recently become devalued. There was a lot of counterfeiting going on. There was a lack of hard currency around. So they were bringing this hard currency to pay the soldiers, to pay government officials.

And it went down. I can't imagine being King Carlos II and being like, are you kidding me? We lost 19 tons of silver coins forever. Yeah. And so King Carlos was like, I imagine face palmed and said, oh, God, is this like, is Louisiana even worth all this, you guys? He said, I hate Mondays. He did. Ian Garfield.

It's so far away. We lost all this money. We just won it from the French a couple of decades ago. Like, do we really want to be in the Louisiana business anymore? And so, well, we should back up a little and just explain who he was. He was a cousin to King Louis the 15th of France. I said 25th, just a little behind the scenes there. Josh corrected me.

It was awesome. And in 1762. Louis ceded the Louisiana territory to Carlos with a treaty of Fontainebleau. And it wasn't because they were family. It was basically he wanted to keep Louisiana out of the hands of the Brits. Right. Better in the hands of a cousin that's ruling another country than in the Brits who he has no friends with, you know. So now Louisiana and New Orleans is under Spanish rule.

and it was actually a pretty smart move because after the seven years war ended, King Louis had to cede all of the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi to the Brits as part of the treaty, except New Orleans. And the reason New Orleans is such a plum was because if you wanted to move goods

from one place to another, there were no railroads, there were no stage coaches. You did it on the river. And the Mississippi in particular was a very valuable river because it went from the top of the continent to the bottom. And when you got your stuff down in New Orleans,

you could prepare for a seagoing ship, put your goods on that. And now, from the Gulf of Mexico, you can take that stuff and sell it anywhere in the world. That's right. Another reason New Orleans is a plum is because it's New Orleans. It's one of the great American cities. Man, I love New Orleans. I love that city.

It's been too long. I need to get back there. It is. It's a cool city. It's almost like it's got its own vibe, you know? Like there's no other place. place like it. No other place like it. And one of the friendliest, like, if you're open to life and you go to New Orleans, there's a 50% chance you're going to end up in a stranger's home, like eating dinner with them or something. 50%, not 50%. Those are high odds.

All right. Speaking of high, maybe we should take a break. And we'll be right back after this. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and Auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us.

Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to be. book your first trip. I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So New Orleans is there. It's a very hot shipping port. That's one of the pros for sure. One of the downsides is tons of mosquitoes, meaning a lot of yellow fever, a lot of smallpox. But it was great real estate, obviously, you know, with that port right there. So around that

time because of this, France starts looking back at New Orleans, and Napoleon is in power by this point, 1799, and he was like, man, I really want to get into the West. And New Orleans is pretty great, man. I got the mouth of the Mississippi right there. If I can control New Orleans, then that would be really great for my interest on that side of the world. Right. So he goes back to Spain, and he's like, hey, I would love the Louisiana territory back. What do you say? What do you say? say, I give your son-in-law the throne of Tuscany, right? And you give me back the Louisiana territory. And so Napoleon and the King of Spain came up with the Treaty of San Ildefonzo, which in English is the Treaty of St. Fonsi. And France suddenly had the Louisiana territory again.

That's right. But around the same time, there was some, in French-owned Hispaniola, which was Haiti and the Dominican Republic is what we would call that today. They were farming sugar and coffee and tropical produce. So that was all great for the French and for Napoleon. Getting New Orleans would mean you could trade that stuff much easier, much more easily. And so he was like, this is all going to come together. However, the enslaved people there had other ideas. And they led what is the only really successful slave rule,

revolt in history. Yeah, the Haitian rebellion led by Toussaint-Lover-Chair, which I was like, yes, that's going to be an episode. So I went and put it on the list. Oh, good. But this was in Haiti, which at the time was St. Domingue, Domingue. I don't remember how to say it. Domingue. Yeah. And St. Domingue was far in a way the crown jewel of France's economic holdings over in the West, right in the West Indies. And so even if you had New Orleans, without the country that was producing all the stuff that you were going to take to New Orleans

and then ship around the world, you're just basically your whole Western economic empire that Napoleon was going to build is just out the window. So he said, you know what? I don't think we really need Louisiana anymore. The Brits are knocking at the door again. I'm going to have to fight them.

I'm sick of those guys. I need some quick, Let me see who wants to buy the Louisiana territory. In Inwalk Thomas Jefferson, reading a Bible that he edited himself. That's right. And Napoleon was like, turns out I also hate Mondays. And Thomas Jefferson said, you know what? I love Mondays.

And I love Louisiana. And I love New Orleans. So T.J. comes in. I don't want to fight with you guys. So why don't we just see if we can work this out in a friendly way? So he sent James Monroe down there. to the French government to buy just New Orleans at this point for like three million bucks. He's like, that's as high as I'll go.

Not a penny more. I'm not going to pay a lot for this territory. That's right. So Monroe goes and talks to Napoleon and is like, what do you think? And Napoleon goes, how about this? Here's my counteroffer. You have to buy all of the Louisiana territory. And James Monroe dropped his teacup.

Luckily, there's somebody there at catch it before it shattered on the floor. Uh-huh. He said, for $15 million. And James Monroe did the math real quick in his head, and he's like, that's less than four cents an acre. And he said sold. He said sold. Yeah.

So he signed over to Jefferson. And, you know, of course, we did a whole episode on the Louisiana Purchase. That was a good one. Yeah, the needy-girdy details. Mm-hmm. But that basically doubled the size. of the country. And then, you know, when I looked at this article and I might title it this, too, like how did a shipwreck double the size of the United States? At the end of my first read-through,

I was like, but wait, how did that happen again? I guess the idea is, had that shipwreck never happened, Spain would have been able to deliver their silver. Right. And maybe would have stayed in the Louisiana business. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So I got it. Yeah, you did. And I feel like we did, We did Congress article some justice. I hope so. Like I said, it was a really great article. And Kristen, it's awesome. Yep.

It was kind of one of our drunk history style short stuff. That's right, except we're not drinking because it's $2.15. Yep. On a Thursday even. That's right. At any rate, I think short stuff's out, guys. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio.

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