Going Under

Today's tour might sweep you off your feet, or leave you feeling defeated. Either way, you're in for an explosive ride.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The Industrial Revolution brought significant

(00:30):
advancements to Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including
chemical manufacturing, the steam engine, and machine tools what we
would call power tools today. As new industries rose, existing
industries were also upgraded. One of the most significant and
the oldest, was beer. The actual method of brewing and

(00:51):
storing beer hadn't changed much over the past few hundred years,
but as with any period of change, competition bred growth. Literally,
London brewery started building their own cisterns and bats larger
and larger. Capacities quickly grew from two hundred barrels worth
of beer all the way up to nearly ten times
that amount, large enough for one craft brewery to actually

(01:14):
host a dinner party for one hundred guests inside a
single empty vat. Of course, revolutions don't just happen. They're
built up over long periods of trial and error, and
when you're racing competitors to build the largest beer vats
in the city, errors are bound to crop up. It
was a Monday evening in October in eighteen fourteen when

(01:36):
it happened a leak had sprung at the Henry mow
and Company Brewery in central London. Well leak might be
an understatement. A vat holding thirty five hundred barrels or
one hundred and thirty five thousand liters of beer, burst
wide open. The del uge was so powerful that it
also knocked over a number of casks of porter, resulting

(01:58):
in an ocean of ale to totaling over one point
four seven million liters. The flood ripped through one of
the brewery's twenty five foot brick walls like it was paper,
and collapsed part of the roof. Streets became rivers, and
nearby houses were obliterated. On the first floor of one
such house, a mother and her young daughter were at

(02:18):
tea when a wave of beer swept them away, killing
them instantly. Others in the vicinity were carried off in
the flood or crushed to death by debris. One major
problem contributing to the higher death toll and complicated rescue
efforts was the town's flatness, which prevented the beer from
draining away. Instead, it simply poured into basements and washed

(02:40):
out roadways. The current of the flood was so strong
that it dragged debris from the homes it had destroyed,
which created obstacles for rescuers trying to reach their victims.
By the time rescuers were able to reach the areas
hit the hardest, it was already too late. Bodies began
floating up from the ruins around midnight, including that of

(03:02):
a woman who had been in her backyard at the
time and had been buried under the wreck of her home.
All told, eight people perished in the flood. As you
should know by now, the story doesn't end there. A
week after the disaster, the brewery was taken to court
to determine the cause of the accidents. A brewery employee

(03:22):
by the name of George Crick came forward with his
account of what had caused the flood. George had noticed
one of the iron hoops holding the vat together had
fallen off. Now I know what you're thinking, Why didn't
George just picked the hoop back up and grab some
tools and put it right back where it belonged. Right? Well,
these weren't the usual metal hoops you might find around

(03:43):
pickle barrels. Each of these weighed roughly one metric ton.
George and the owners had determined that the rivets holding
the hoop to the barrel had simply worn out over time, and,
like the button on a pair of pants two sizes
too small, they popped out. The weight of the liquid
inside of too much for the vat to handle, and
the rest, as they say, is history history, but also

(04:07):
a tragedy. Lives were lost, homes were destroyed, businesses were closed, and,
most tragic of all, even though the accident was a
product of human error, the brewery got off without a hitch.
In fact, a year later they managed to get the
Crown to give them back the tax money they paid
on the lost beer. The court might have called it

(04:29):
an act of God, but looking back, I think a larger,
more universal truth needs pointed out. However obvious it might be,
some people just can't hold their liquor. They say, necessity

(04:56):
is the mother of invention. When spears weren't enough to
stop and end me, bows and arrows were created. When
those outlived their usefulness, along came guns and rifles to
get the job done. War transformed as weapons advanced, but
one thing never changed the ingenuity of desperate men faced
with impossible odds. That ingenuity was on full display during

(05:18):
the American Civil War, when battles weren't just fought in
fields and towns, but along coastlines and rivers. These waterways
were used to transport supplies, ammunition, and even soldiers from
one location to another. An army controlling the water could
cripple the opposing forces access to necessary items such as
food and medical equipment. The water was also used as

(05:42):
a venue for surprise attacks. Soldiers marching near an enemy
controlled waterway would often find themselves ambushed by waiting gunboats.
Rivers and coastlines quickly became a crucial part of an
army strategy, and if an enemy wanted a chance at survival,
that had to either avoid the water entirely or use
it to its advantage. It was at the height of

(06:04):
the Civil War when such an advantage presented itself. A
Union blockade had been stationed in the waters off Charleston,
South Carolina, led by a steam powered sloop of war
known as the Hughes Satonic. Armed with a dozen cannons,
the Hughes Satonic was known for capturing Confederate ships like
the four hundred ton iron hulled steamer the s S. Georgiana.

(06:26):
The Confederacy needed to break up the blockade to open
up Charleston shores, but to do so, the Hughes Satonic
had to go. There was only one problem. The ship
was five miles off the coast. Any opposing vessel launched
from the shore, it would be seen immediately and destroyed.
So the Confederate army had an outrageous idea. What if

(06:47):
they attacked it from below. It took them two years
of trial and error, but a submersible was finally developed
that could carry eight men. They would travel beneath the
water to the Hugh Satonic, where the men would detonate
a tord pedo along the enemy's hull. Something to keep
in mind, though, unlike our modern torpedoes that propelled themselves
through the water, the Hunley carried what was known as

(07:10):
a spar torpedo. It was basically a canister of explosive
powder attached to the end of a long pole, which
would be rammed into the opposing ship. On the night
of February eighteen sixty four, the Hunley and its crew
slipped into the waters off the coast of Charleston. Powered
by hand crank, it glided towards the Housatonic, that explosive

(07:33):
payload leading the charge about twenty ft ahead. Later, one
of the Housatonic crew members would report that he had
seen something strange in the water, something large and mysterious,
but before he could alert his crewmates it was too late.
The Hunley jab the Housatonic starboard side add about eight
forty PM and made history. Those eight men had completed

(07:56):
the first successful submarine attack on a warship. Five crew
members aboard the Housatonic died as the ship sank, and
if the story ended there, that alone would be enough
to cement the Hunley spot in Civil War legend. But
there was something else. According to initial reports, everything had
gone swimmingly Nope, pun intended. I swear, the Housatonic had

(08:18):
been destroyed and the Hunley had begun its return to base,
except it never made it. The sub and all eight
lives inside had been lost. Although for almost a century
and a half no one was sure why. The mystery
would remain unsolved until the mid nineteen nineties when the
vessel was found at the bottom of Charleston's Outer Harbor

(08:40):
in the summer of two thousand, marine archaeologists raised the
Hunley from the depths and got to work restoring the vessel.
Experts spent months cleaning up the hull before opening it
to see what was inside. And that's when the end
of one mystery led to the start of another. You see,
the eight crew members hadn't gotten out after the torpedo detonated,

(09:01):
A sad end to a daring operation, for sure, but
that's not the crazy part. Upon opening up the hall
a conservation experts noticed the crew had never even made
any attempt to escape. There were no external injuries or
signs of drowning the explosion. They believe it's simply been
so strong that the lung and brain tissue of the

(09:22):
men inside had been instantly obliterated. Sometimes you win and
sometimes you lose, and sometimes apparently you do both. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(09:43):
Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
the show by visiting Curiosities 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 world

(10:04):
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
H