Sunken Treasure

Here is a set of curious stories that are sure to leave with you a sinking feeling.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. It's often the case that we find what
we're looking for when we're looking for something else. Search
for our missing keys might unearth a pair of glasses
we thought we had lost forever, or a child's hunt
for his favorite toy could lead to the rediscovery of

(00:48):
a toy he'd previously abandoned. In those situations, the original
search leads to serendipity, what a popular artist on television
would have described as a happy accident. Though one man
set out to find more than his keys, he was
looking for something that had gone missing decades earlier. His
plan was to find the proverbial needle in a haystack,

(01:10):
but in this case, the haystack was the entire ocean.
Born in nineteen two, Robert had been fascinated by the
sea from a young age. He grew up in San Diego, California,
before earning a bachelor's degree in geology and chemistry from
UC Santa Barbara, followed by a graduate degree in geophysics
from the University of Hawaii in nineteen sixty six. Robert

(01:31):
was also a member of the Army's Reserve Officers Training
Program r OTC and was called to serve. In nineteen
sixty seven, he requested to join the Navy, where he
assisted in several underwater expeditions over the years. As part
of his doctoral thesis, he even mapped out the ocean
floor in the Gulf of Maine. Robert practically lived at sea,

(01:52):
which made him the perfect person to lead a team
to the bottom of the ocean in five During the
summer of that year, the U. S. Navy asked Robert
to take a small submersible to the bottom of the
Atlantic to find a pair of lost nuclear submarines. The U. S. S.
Scorpion and the USS Thresher had both gone missing in
nineteen The circumstances surrounding their disappearances were of the utmost

(02:14):
importance to the government, who wanted to know what had
happened to the sub's nuclear reactors. There was also concern
about the effect of their radioactivity on the underwater environment. Now,
a few years prior, Robert had asked the Navy about
financing the development of the deep sea technology that he
had been working on. It was an unmanned submersible fitted

(02:35):
with cameras that could scour the ocean floor for debris.
He called it Argo. The Navy hadn't been interested in
Argo at the time, but now they realized just how
useful the little robot might be. In late August of
that year, Robert deployed his submersible. He and his team
tracked the field of debris left behind by the subs
after they had exploded, figuring that if they followed the trail,

(02:57):
it would eventually lead them to the missing vessels, and
their plan worked. The Thresher had suffered a mechanical failure
that had led to its sinking. The fate of the Scorpion, though,
was less obvious. Several theories were posed as to what
had caused it to implode. One suggested it was the
accidental explosion of a torpedo inside the sub. Another theory
claimed that hydrogen had built up in the ventilation system

(03:20):
and had exploded. Whatever the case, the Navy was satisfied
with the results of the expedition, but Robert wasn't done.
In fact, he had made a deal with the military
as a condition of his research. In the event that
he was able to find the missing subs, the Navy
would allow him to pursue a personal project of his
own with any remaining time on the mission. And the
only reason they allowed it was because they didn't think

(03:42):
that he would find what he was looking for. You see,
Robert had a hunch that a missing shipwreck was located
near where the Scorpion and Thresher had been found. He
had already learned an important lesson from studying their trail
of debris, too, the heaviest pieces sunk quickly, while the
currents carried the lighter remains away. So Robert's team combed
the ocean floor with argo It's cameras, sending back gray,

(04:04):
grainy footage of smooth terrain two miles below the surface.
He was looking for a much larger debris trail than
that of the two submarines, something so big that it
would lead him straight to the wreck of one of
the most famous ships of all time. And then on
September one, is hard work paid off. The cameras picked
up something massive, a boiler, the image of which caught

(04:27):
everyone off guard. It was as big as a house,
and sure enough it was sitting mere feet from the
ship's majestic bow. Seventy three years earlier, a brand new
vessel had pulled out of Southampton, England, bound for New
York City. Sadly, it never completed its journey. In the
early morning hours of April fifteenth that struck an iceberg
and sunk into the depths of the North Atlantic. The

(04:50):
Titanic was advertised as many things luxurious, safe, and of
course unsinkable. Well history would prove otherwise, but the ship's
final resting place would have remained unknown had it not
been for Robert Ballard's obsession and his keen negotiating skills.

(05:22):
Despite the Titanic's short lived existence, it's made in voyage
spawned countless tales, many of which were based on the
lives of those on board. Hundred souls were lost when
the ship sank, in nine hundred stories that would never
get their happy endings. However, there was one story that
did go on to have a happy ending. In fact,
it had about one thirty of them. Charles Lightsoler was

(05:45):
the second officer on the Titanic. He grew up as
part of a working class family in a small town
in Lancashire, England called Chorley. Charles's mother died soon after
giving birth to him, and his father remarried, moving him
to New Zealand ten years later. As a result, young
Charles was raised by other family members until he was
old enough to find work on his own. Charles was

(06:06):
only thirteen when he set out to pave his own way,
but he didn't want to end up in a factory
like his parents. Instead, he enlisted as an apprentice with
the sailing vessel known as the Primrose Hill. He traveled
for years aboard different ships, going to far away places
like India. By the time he was twenty one, he
had earned his second mate certificate. Charles tried his hand

(06:27):
at other professions, including gold prospector in the Yukon, as
well as a cowboy in Canada, but the sea continued
to call to him. At the turn of the century,
he returned to the ocean, this time as an employee
of the British shipping company White Star Line. Charles had
worked his way up, functioning as fourth officer on the
s s Medic before moving to the s S Majestic

(06:49):
a few years later. The Majestic happened to be captain
by one Edward J. Smith, who would go on to
lead another White Star ship, the ill fated RMS Titanic.
Charles boarded the Titanic in Belfast, roughly one week before
its maiden voyage was set to begin. He was made
second officer behind first officer William McMaster Murdoch. Charles was

(07:11):
thorough in his duties as second officer. He was in
charge of the last bridge watch shift on the night
of April fourteenth of nineteen twelve, and made sure other
lookouts on duty kept an eye out for ice in
the water. Murdoch then relieved him for the nights, allowing
Charles to get some shut eye for a few hours.
At least that was the plan. The second officer hadn't

(07:31):
even crawled into bed when the Titanic brushed against the
side of a massive iceberg, and the rest, as they
always say, is history. Charles was instrumental in evacuating passengers
off the ship and followed the captain's commands to the letter,
perhaps to the detriment of himself and others. Smith had
ordered the lifeboats to be filled with women and children.

(07:51):
Charles seemed to believe that meant only women and children,
and so he began lowering lifeboats that were partially filled
when no other women or children could be found. Even
leaped aboard a lifeboat full of male passengers and aimed
his unloaded revolver at them. He called them cowards for
not staying to help the others. The ashamed men then
disembarked back onto the Titanic's deck. In a last ditch

(08:14):
effort before the water overtook the bow, Charles attempted to
launch a collapsible boat that had been stored on the
roof of the officers quarters. It landed upside down. As
the front of Titanic slipped below the waves, the water
rushed the deck and Charles dove off the roof into
the icy North Atlantic to save himself. He tried to
swim away from the ship as quickly as possible, knowing

(08:35):
the suction would pull him under as it sank, but
he was still too close, and Charles was pulled against
the ventilation shaft as Titanic continued its descent. He was
unable to break free and believed he would drown until
suddenly in eruption from below forced a wave of hot
air through the vent, launching him back to the surface.
It was a boiler that had exploded from inside the ship.

(08:58):
Charles got his bearings and caught of the collapsible lifeboat
he had tried to launch earlier. He tried pulling himself
on board using a rope hanging from its side, only
to see one of the Titanic's funnels collapse close by.
It landed inches away, and the ensuing wave sent him
and the lifeboat flying fifty yards from the ship, but
he was able to climb on top of the collapsible,

(09:19):
along with several other survivors, as they watched the Titanic
disappear into the murky depths below. After that, he helped
to keep the people in the boat calm during the night,
showing them how to shift their weight to prevent ocean
swells from tossing them back into the water. Hours later,
the RMS Carpathia, a passenger steamship that had received Titanics
distress calls, arrived on seeing to rescue Charles and over

(09:42):
seven d other survivors. The Titanic second officer had been
given a second chance, one he made sure to use
to help others for the rest of his life. He
went on to fight in World War One, serving in
the Royal Navy Reserve on board another White star ship,
the RMS Oceanic. At end of the war, he retired
from service as a commander. Charles lived a fairly quiet

(10:04):
life after that, writing a book about his time at
sea and what he had encountered aboard the Titanic, and
then in nineteen forty he got the opportunity to jump
into action one more time. Charles sailed to northern France
in his motor yacht Sundowner, along with his son Roger.
Charles refused to let the military requisition his boat against

(10:25):
his will, so he chose to sail it himself where
it was needed. Sundowner had a maximum capacity of twenty
one passengers. That didn't stop Charles and his son from
loading one seven British servicemen on board anyway. The battle
and subsequent evacuation of Dunkirk saw the deaths of thousands
of Allied soldiers, and thanks to one perfectly timed boiler explosion,

(10:47):
Charles Lightholer was there to help as many as he could,
just as he had done on board the Titanic thirty
years before. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided to were
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

(11:08):
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
and television show, and you can learn all about it
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious. Ye