Here and Gone

This tour will help you learn about a pair of bodies, where they came from, and where they went.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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. Even though thousands of soldiers may fight in
a war, few become household names like Georges Patton, Ulysses S.
Grant or Robert E. Lee. But one man was so
beloved by his country that when he died, all efforts

(00:48):
were exhausted to preserve his body, and in the process
they also made a pretty gross cocktail out of him.
Horatio Nelson was born in England in seventy eight to
a well to do family. He joined his uncle, a
Royal Navy captain, on January one of seventeen seventy one,
aboard the HMS Reasonable as a seaman. He was only

(01:09):
thirteen at the time. After serving aboard several ships in
the East and West Indies for the next six years,
Nelson returned to London for his Lieutenant's exam, which was
presided over by two Navy captains and his uncle. It's
safe to say that he passed and was almost immediately
appointed to a ship bound for the Caribbean. Throughout his career,
he commanded a number of vessels and continued to fight

(01:30):
for his country. He may have been the poster child
for nepotism, but he made the most of that privilege
and it earned him a great amount of acclaim and
admiration from his fellow Briton's. He was a strong leader
who tried not to let politics influence his decisions, so
when he was killed by a musket ball in October
of eighteen oh five, his death was mourn all over England.

(01:53):
He'd been shot while standing on the deck of his ship,
the HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. He'd been
shot through his left shoulder and spine. The musket ball
had also punctured one of his lungs as it traveled
through his body. He died from his injuries three hours later.
Word of his death made its way back home in
sixteen days, which sent the country into an emotional tail spin.

(02:15):
People wrote so many poems and letters to newspapers expressing
their grief that the press had to issue statements asking
them to stop. But there was a greater problem than
the abundance of odes. Vice Admiral Nelson's body still had
to travel back to England, and it was rotting. It
was brought to the ship's surgeon, William Beatty, who believed

(02:36):
that he could help. Beatty was something of an anomaly
among surgeons. At the time, surgery was not the respected
profession it is today. If someone needed a limb amputated,
they had about thirty percent chance of surviving the procedure,
and if they needed a new organ, well that was
the end of them. But Beatty was different. During the
Battle of Trafalgar, where Nelson was killed, he treated one

(02:59):
and two injured soldiers. NINETI survived thanks to his efforts. Unfortunately,
by the time Nelson made it to his table, the
Vice Admiral was already gone, which left Baby with the
job of preserving his corpse for transport. Common practice dictated
that Nelson be submerged in navy rum. The alcohol would
keep him fresh ish until he could be properly interred,

(03:21):
but the surgeon chose to go another way. Rather than
use rum, he opted for something a little stronger, namely
ethanol and brandy. It was a daring choice, but one
that was made while the ship was struggling to stay afloat.
The Victory had taken serious damage during the battle, and
the goal was to get Nelson home in one piece.
More or less, the brandy ethanol combination was of a

(03:43):
higher proof than the rum, and Baby believed that it
would better preserve the corpse. Nelson was quickly placed in
a cask of the mixture as the ship began its
arduous journey home. The thing about brandy, though, is that
it doesn't make a great embalming fluid. After two weeks
at sea, the cask erupted, It's lid blown off due
to the gas building up inside. It was so shocking

(04:05):
that a watchman task was standing guard over Nelson's body
thought the Vice Admiral had come back to life and
had pushed the cask open from the inside. The Victory
eventually arrived back in England to throngs of people, all
hoping to catch a glimpse of their beloved hero. But
he wasn't exactly ready for his close up. For one,
Baby still needed to conduct an autopsy. What was left

(04:27):
of Nelson was then wrapped in linen and removed from
the cask so the surgeon could locate the bullet that
had killed him. From there, the remains were moved into
a lead coffin, which was also filled with a concoction
made of brandy, mirror and camphor for further preservation. There
was concern that Nelson's skin might slough off like a
loose sweater when moved one last time, but luckily his

(04:49):
corpse retained its composure and was placed in a wooden
coffin its final resting place. The funeral was held on
January nine, eighteen oh six, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
It was a spectacle too, totally one point two million
dollars by today's standards, and the ordeal left a lasting
legacy on British culture, specifically it's drinking culture. Folks started

(05:13):
calling Navy rum Nelson's blood, and if someone stole liquors
straight from the cask, they referred to it as tapping
the admiral. As for Baby, he was given the musket
ball as a gift. He turned it into a watch fob,
which he carried in his pocket for the remainder of
his life. Baby died in eighteen forty two, and the
ball was then passed on to another high ranking official,

(05:34):
Queen Victoria. It's been a show piece at Windsor Castle
ever since. But although it was an impressive artifact from
the Battle of Trafalgar, it pales in comparison to the
story of how Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was pickled and
brought home after his death a curiosity. Indeed, when we're young,

(06:07):
many of us think our parents are superheroes, invincible and constant,
like they'll be here forever. It's hard to imagine a
world without them in it. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.
Our parents are not bulletproof or invulnerable, and before long
we must confront their mortality head on. In eighteen eighty,
the Lang children didn't have a chance to say goodbye

(06:29):
to their father. They had no reason to think anything
would happen to him, But on one afternoon they witnessed
the unthinkable and couldn't explain how it had happened. David
Lange was a farmer in Gallatin, Texas. He was a
humble man, living a modest life with his wife and children,
just trying to get by. It was a sunny September
twenty three and David was walking through his fields taking

(06:51):
care of the day's work. These fields were fairly flat,
with no obstructions or plant life to get in his way.
He wasn't behind a fence, and there wasn't a ingletree,
and he were in sight. Mrs Lang and the kids
were back at the house watching him move across the property.
As they sat inside observing his movements, they suddenly realized
that he wasn't there. Literally, in the blink of an eye,

(07:14):
David had simply disappeared. Their first thought was that he
had tripped and fallen, maybe down a sinkhole or other
open cavity, but as they ran toward where he was
last seen, they realized there was no hole to be found.
He was just gone. Others who had heard the commotion
came to help Mrs Lang, who was beside herself with
fear and grief at the disappearance of her husband. They

(07:37):
helped her back to the house while her neighbors formed
a search party. After some time, though it was clear
that David was nowhere to be found. Such an event
would be enough to traumatize anyone, but David's children never
gave up hope. They knew their father was still out
there somewhere, And so one year later, their daughter returned
to the field where he had disappeared. Perhaps there was
a clue or a remnant from that day that indicate

(08:00):
where he had gone. As she stood there, looking out
on the vast expanse before her, she called out to him.
She shouted for him several times, but heard nothing in return.
It was a silly thing to think that someone who
had up and vanished would just reappear out of nowhere,
and so she began her trek back to the house.
Perhaps she had been distraught or the wind had hit

(08:21):
her ear in a certain way. But as she was
turning away from the field, she heard her father's voice,
and he was in distress. She ran back to the
house and fetched her mother, bringing her back to the
field with her. She called out again her father's voice
let out another cry for help. The next day they
heard it yet again. It lingered for almost a week

(08:44):
until it just disappeared, just as Lang had done one
year prior. Those who were familiar with the story claimed
that the grass where Lange was less seen grew better
than anywhere else on the farm, and that his cattle
wouldn't eat there Others said that the spot was barren,
with the grass only growing around it. Maybe a beam
of light or energy had carried him off into another

(09:04):
dimension or a plane of existence. Whatever the case, there
was something about that part of the farm that drew
inquiry from the family and neighbors, or did it. After
the tale had been reported a number of times over
the years, researchers looked into it. A Tennessee librarian in
the nineteen seventies claimed it had come from a hoaxer
named Joseph Mulhattan. Mulhatton had lived in Tennessee in eighteen

(09:27):
eighty and had invented the story to win a lying contest,
although there was no evidence of that having never happened either.
Some attribute David Ling's disappearance to Student Palmer, a mystery
writer who wrote his own version of the story in
nineteen fifty three. Palmer's narrative was published in Fate magazine
and was believed to be the first account, or at

(09:49):
least among the earliest. When asked about its origins, Palmer
said the story was not his. Sarah Lang, David's real
life daughter, had told it to him. He had simply
written the account down for them. Magazine, but experts believe
that Lange had actually borrowed the idea from author Ambrose Beers,
who had published a similar tale in eighteen eighty eight
titled The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. It was about

(10:11):
a plantation owner who disappeared under similar circumstances. But when
she was challenged, Sarah Lange said that Beers was actually
the story thief and not her. Ever since then, it's
been a case of he said, she said, And despite
the lack of proof that anyone named Lange was living
in Gallatin, Tennessee in eighteen eighty David's story has persisted
to this day. But hey, if you want to see

(10:33):
it for yourself, you can always try to catch a
production of the two thousand two stage adaptation of Beers's tail.
It too, is called The Difficulty of Crossing a Field,
with music written by a composer named David Lane. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(10:55):
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting curiosity these podcast dot com. The
show was created by me Aaron Manky 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

(11:15):
world of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.