March 27, 2021 • 37 mins
The earliest seafaring women had to disguise themselves as men just to be allowed aboard ships. In this acquatic installment of their series on exploration, Cristen and Caroline chart the incredible adventures of women on the high seas past and present in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told you a production of iHeart Radio. How
are you on the seas, Samantha, not surprising. I get
really sick, so not great motions like this is not
(00:31):
my friend. However, I do love looking at the ocean
and the endless waters. I'm also petrified of dark waters
where I can't see the bottom, So there's interesting. Okay, okay, yeah,
I feel that we see I feel like I know
there's a specific fear like phobia word for this, but
when I look out and all I see us water,
(00:54):
that makes me panic, like if I'm swimming in it
just water. Yeah, that does make me nervous. And I
used to have I guess I still do this, but
it doesn't matter because I can't go anywhere. But it's
for the start of every summer. I would watch Jaws. Yeah, okay,
I did that from like as a kid, which I
that just shows how much I love fear, because I
(01:16):
feel like this is gonna really mess with me when
I'm in the water. So I would go to being
with my dad, who was a real wild boat driver,
and he had this move called the figure eight, and
then he would sling shot you through it. The slingshot
is the worst. When the rope would go, it would
just go slacking, like oh, I'm gonna fall off, and
(01:38):
so I fall off, and I would think this is it.
The climb up on the tube as quickly as possible,
as if the tube is gonna help me, as Jaws
Too showed me, it's true. Oh gosh, that seems scared
me so badly. Although I've kind of deviated from my
original question where I feel like I don't I get
(02:02):
sea sick some time, like if the if I can't
see outside and the boat is rocking a lot, that
will get me sick. So I don't think I would
have necessarily been a great explorer back in the day.
Oh no, I couldn't have made it. We wouldn't have
gout it. Oh no, just tossed me overboard. It's fine.
(02:24):
Oh there's a lot you had to deal with back then,
like scurvy yourself right, Oh my goodness. Well, we wanted
to bring back this classic episode because we recently did
our our episode on women and pirates. Yes, yes, please
enjoy this classic on women explores. Welcome to stuff Mom
(02:46):
never told you from House Supports dot com. Hello and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline or
should I say Caroline? Oh boy made ahoi ladies. Yes,
we are talking about women explorers on the high seas
(03:06):
because in our summer series on women and Exploration, we've
talked about overland explorers and Antarctic explorers, and now it's
time to explore the parts of the globe. But knit
all of these excursions together the seas, that's right. A
lot of cross dressing on the ocean, that's right, because
(03:28):
women weren't allowed on big boats for a long time.
They were not women, and our lady parts were considered
bad luck for ships and sailors. That's right. Along with priests, pigs, flowers,
and leaving harbor on a Friday. Women aboard ships for
a long time, we're considered unlucky, probably because of the
(03:50):
whole thing about distracting sailors who would then think of
sex instead of thinking of you know, a sex stance, right,
because men only think about sex when women are around. Yeah. Well,
but you know where women were welcome naked on the
carvings of the ships, that's right, because the ocean, while
the sailors shouldn't look at or even think about women ever,
(04:12):
because it's bad luck and etcetera, etcetera. The ocean itself
needs to see naked women. And hint, the carvings of
like topless mermaids, And I guess, I don't know, would
you say a mermaid is just naked? I mean, I
guess you couldn't wear bottoms, that's true, topless, we would
call them topless mermaids. Topless mermaids. Yeah, that's why you
see them so commonly on ships, because they're sort of
(04:34):
offerings to the seas, which all of it doesn't make
a whole ton of sense, but then again, we're talking
about superstitions. Um. But then early in the seventeen hundreds,
speaking of cross dressing, we start to see some daring
seafaring women like Mary Ann Talbot and Bonnie and Mary
(04:55):
Reid who in various ports of call disguise them selves
as men in order to join the ship's cruise. Yeah,
and and Bonnie and Mary Read both hooked up with pirates, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it was. Was it Anne Read? One of
them ended up marrying the pirate known as Calico Jack.
(05:16):
Oh yeah, that was Anne. Bonnie Yeah. Yeah, so they're
they're a happy pirate family until they weren't, you know,
and their their ship was caught, and then they were
in prison and the men were hanged, and there's all
sorts of legends about maybe what happened to uh Anne
and Mary, but nobody really knows for sure. Yeah. Well,
and maybe we should do an episode on women in piracy,
(05:37):
as in ce piracy, not internet internet piracy. But then
when we moved into the eighteen hundreds, you start to
see more commonly the wives of say military officers, merchants,
and whaling captains joining their husbands on board more often. Yeah,
and these actually became known as him frigates. Yeah. If
(05:59):
you had ship with women on board, I think all
you needed was one woman to constitute a hen frigate. Yeah.
I feel like that's making a big deal out of nothing.
It also reminds me of how bachelorette parties in the
UK hen parties just ladies of clucking. Interesting. I wonder
if women are called hens and other capacities. I mean,
(06:20):
I guess they are, but I wonder if it's supposed
to be derogatory in the same way as chicks chicks,
or maybe we have We're hitting on so many other
potential podcast topics here. Let's just stopping our research right now.
But anyway, So, so Mary Anne Talbot and Bonnie and
Mary Reid were all pretty impressive tough women. They were
obviously pretty tough to dresses. Men hang out with these
(06:43):
like big burly, scary pirate people. Obviously they were tough,
but they were not as tough as the first woman
who circumnavigated the Globe, who really only recently we found
out about. Yeah, we're talking about a French woman named
Jeane Beret, who once she completed the trip, it was
(07:03):
known that she was a woman, that she had done this.
She actually ended up receiving a commission from the French Navy.
But it seems like her story has only been told
in more recent years. She was sort of lost to
the history books. But her story is fascinating. Yeah, Glenny's Ridley.
You just read a book about her called The Discovery
of Jean Beret, And yeah, her life story is pretty incredible.
(07:26):
So she was born to peasants in France in seventeen
forty and I just as I'm reading her life story,
I'm picturing the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
you know, like, oh, I would be unimpressed. Um. Anyway,
she became an herb woman, and this is basically part
of a feminine tradition surrounding the medicinal properties of plants
(07:46):
and the emerging field of taxonomy, which aimed to name
and classify the natural world. So basically, Beret was part
of this oral tradition because it's not like they could
read and they were at the library studying all these plants.
It was an oral tradition where these family has trained
each other on how to identify plants and their healing properties. Well.
And it's notable too that being an herb woman in
(08:08):
particular was considered this feminine folk loreic art because it
sort of ties into what we were talking about in
our Overland Explorers podcast about how a lot of the
wealthier Victorian women who went on all these explorations did
so as botanists because similar to the whole herb woman thing,
(08:30):
you have botany at the time being the one approved
science for women to be interested in because ladies love flowers,
that's right. I love flowers. I don't know what any
of the names are, but I love them anyway, so yeah,
botany during this time was an emerging field. So basically
what does that mean, Like herb woman versus botanists, you
(08:52):
have the professionalization of the field, which means that more
men are getting into it, while women are considered like improper,
you know, it's not appropriate for them to study it.
So anyway, Beret is out out in the field one
day looking at some flowers and she ends up meeting
botanist Philibert Commerson. They they, I guess they They end
up talking quite a bit, getting to know each other
(09:13):
and talking about flowers and the birds and the bees
and whatnot, and of course, you know, they grow to
like each other quite a bit. Yeah, And at first
it seems as though Commerson takes on Jean Beret as
a student of his, but as Glenni's Ridley talks about
in her book, she thinks that it's actually likelier that
(09:37):
Commerson ended up working with Beret because she had things
to teach him about all of the herbal knowledge that
she had cultivated through this kind of folkloric medicine that
she practiced. That's right. And so basically Commerson was going
to go on this journey to identify plants and what not, etcetera,
(10:00):
et cetera. He needed an assistant to go with him,
and who better to go than Jean Beret. But the
thing is, she's a lady. She can't go. Yeah, she
can't go because at the time the French Royal Navy
completely forbade women on ships. And this journey took place
from seventeen sixty six to seventeen sixty nine. And so
(10:22):
Commerceing said, what are we gonna do? I love you,
you know so much about plants. I want you on
the ship. Hey, here we go. Why don't we just
dress you up like a man. Put on man's clothes,
bind your breast, deepen your voice at voila right, And
so she ends up getting to accompany him in this disguise,
(10:43):
dressed as a man on this journey, which was led
by French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainvilla. And if that
sounds familiar, it should because while they were in Brazil,
they discovered a certain type of plant, which they then
named for the explorer bougan Vilia. Yeah, and it's thought
that it was Beret who discovered this now famous plant species.
(11:08):
But then the story takes a tragic turn because it's
it's not terribly surprising that on this three year jaunt,
at some point the crew started to suspect that Jean
Beret was not in fact a man, and she was
found out. And there are a lot of conflicting stories
about how her outing happens. But what Glenny's Ridley thinks
(11:31):
happens comparing all these different primary sources that she used
to research her book, she thinks that Beret was actually
gang raped by the crew after she was outed at
one point and soon after that. Bougun Villa actually in
seventeen sixty eight leaves Beret, who was then pregnant at
that point, possibly due to the gang rape in the
(11:53):
French colony of Mauritius where she then had the baby,
gave it up for adoption, and then Philip there dies
like rough time Jee, but Jean does not give up.
She certainly didn't. She remarried and went back to France
in seventeen seventy four seventy five about she ends up
receiving a pension from the French Navy, which is pretty
(12:16):
shocking considering the time she was living in the fact
that she was a woman and she wasn't even supposed
to be on that ship, but they they ended up
basically compensating her for her time that she spent looking
at plants and identifying plants and working on this ship. Yeah,
and they knew by that point obviously that she was
not a he and Ridley thinks that maybe this was
(12:39):
due to an affair with Bougunvilla that she received this pension.
But nonetheless, there was this prince aboard the ship at
one point who was sailing with them, and in his
diary he wrote about Jean Beret quote, she dared to
confront the stress, the dangers, and everything that happened that
one could realistically expect on such a voyage. Her adventure
(13:02):
should I think be included in the history of famous women.
So that's what we're doing. Yeah, we're doing our part.
But I but I I love that that that somebody
of his stature would write something like that. But talk
about going to great lengths to explore I mean putting
herself in I mean direct danger. That's right now. I
(13:25):
want to see a movie about this. Yeah, that's what
I want to see next. But it would take a
while for other women to end up making and breaking
records of their own on the high seas. Yeah, we're
now going to leap forward in time to the twentieth century,
which is when we start seeing other women. I mean,
(13:47):
there have certainly been other women in the meantime who
had sailed around the globe, but once we get into
the twentieth century, that's when we have a lot of
races of women trying to go around the world on
their own or sail across specific oceans. And so you
start out in nineteen fifty two with Anne Davison, who
(14:07):
becomes the first woman to sail across the Atlantic alone. Yeah,
and her story of what really drove her was was
pretty interesting as well. In the nineteen thirties she actually
learned how to fly, which is how she met her
future husband, Frank, and after World War Two, the couple
took up sailing with plans to sail to the West
Indies to start a new life. But soon after embarking
(14:30):
in nineteen forty nine, a storm hit, the boat capsized
and Frank died. So and to sort of continue their
their goal. To reach their goal, she sets off in
May of nineteen fifty two across the Atlantic alone and
it was not easy. No, apparently she maintained a steady
(14:51):
diet of benz adrine and rum to keep on keeping
on because it was such an arduous journey. But she
made it, and she broke this record now has a
place in the history books. And and then in nineteen
sixty nine, you have a similar story actually with Sharon
sites Atoms becoming the first woman to sail the Pacific alone,
going from Japan to California because she discovered sailing after
(15:15):
the death of her husband. And in nineteen sixty four
she had already become the first woman to sail solo
from the mainland US to Hawaii. So in a pretty
short period of time she just started racking up all
of these records. Sailing back and forth across the Pacific
alone a big deal. And I mean these women were
not exactly using GPS systems, you know. This is this
(15:37):
is back in the fifties and sixties. And I mean,
I I imagine like the quiet and the birds and
the water sounds, and I'm like, god, that was so nice.
For like two hours, that would be really nice. And
then my Scottish skin would just like turn purple and
I would turn into like leather and shrivel up and
(15:58):
just throw myself overboard, would need a lot of bends,
a green and rum. Maybe just the rum. It's just
the um, maybe just the downers. But I think it's
so interesting, like these stories of perseverance through emotional turmoil
from Beret to women like Sharon sits atoms Um. But
then things start getting a little more competitive in the seventies,
(16:20):
and apparently in ninety women had sailing fever. Sailing fever,
that's right. In June of nineteen seventy eight, Poland's Christina
Chanoska Liskawitz, who was a shipbuilding engineer and yachting sea captain.
I hope she had a jaunty hat. She was the
first woman to single handedly circumnavigate the world singlehandedly, that's
(16:43):
the important part. She actually ended up getting dubbed the
first Lady of the Oceans and was admitted to the
very exclusive, gender exclusive Explorers Club. But obviously that wouldn't
be for another couple of years, because as we discussed
in a previous Explore episode, it wasn't at the Explorers
Club even started letting women in. Yeah, I did a
(17:04):
little digging on that, and I think it might have
been the Polish chapter of the Explorers Club. And I
was surprised too that there wasn't more information or celebration
regarding Liskowitz and her accomplishment. She just sort of a footnote,
even though it seems like a pretty huge accomplishment. And
(17:25):
I don't know if it's simply because she was an
American so she didn't get quite as much fanfare, But yeah,
I mean you would think, because I feel like for
a lot of these women who you know, we're the
first at something or or did something the best. Uh,
there's usually like an interview or an article somewhere. Yeah,
why don't we know more about someone called the first
Lady of the Oceans, Because it seems like Naomi James,
(17:49):
who completed a similar solo circumnavigation, say that five times
Fast has received more historical attention. She was just narrowly
be buy List Go It's for that title, but she
actually completed her trip one nine days faster, which is
especially impressive considering that James had barely two years of
(18:12):
training on a yacht before she was like, oh hey,
I'm just gonna sail around the world alone. And for
a little bit of comparison with men's sailing, women weren't
terribly behind guys and doing these solo trips around the world.
Robin Knox Johnson had become the first man to solo
circumnavigate the globe in nine Interesting. I like hearing about
(18:37):
people who just kind of, whether it's smart or not,
just jump into something like this. I mean, after only
two years of training. She's like, Yeah, I'm gonna do this.
It's cool. I'm just gonna go like around the world
and stuff and do it really fast on my boat. Yeah.
I don't know. I guess I would need a lot
of bensdreen for that one. But more recently, in twelve,
Laura Decker became the youngest woman to sail around the world,
(19:00):
and she set out when she was fourteen, completing the
trip in two years. Yeah, listeners might be familiar with
her name a because there's a fantastic documentary about her
trip called Maiden Trip, because she actually took a camera
with her and filmed the entire thing, and it was
incredible to watch her on the boat taking care of things,
(19:22):
fixing things, sailing through storms, and generally just being by herself.
Can you imagine thinking back on when you were fourteen
fifteen years old spending that much time alone, I feel
like there was I was in a state of constant
frenzy of wanting to be around other people and hang
out with friends and all of that kind of social stuff,
(19:44):
whereas she prefers that kind of solitary lifestyle. It takes
a strong person to be alone that much and too
and to buck what is normal for your social group
or your age group or whatever. But her name was
also in the news before she even set sail, because
the Dutch government was so opposed to her even embarking
(20:09):
on this trip that they initially took her away from
her dad, who has sole custody of her, and I
think she ended up having to legally like separate emancipate
herself in order to do this. It was just like
a whole I mean, she was making national news the
whole time, and you see in the documentary this process
(20:32):
of her and her dad having to deal with all
of this unwanted media attention because genuinely, all she wanted
to do was sail around the world. She grew up
on boats, her dad worked. She wanted to do all
she wanted. I mean, all a girl wants to do
is take two years out of her life and sail
around the world. But I mean, I think I think
that's a great gift. I mean, maybe not sailing around
(20:53):
the world, but I think that type of independence is
a great gift that a parent can give to a
daughter to let her do something on her own. Absolutely
kind of ambition and bravery, because I mean she would,
even you know, at certain ports, get off and you know,
hang out on land for a while and just explore
on her own and meet people and talk to people.
(21:13):
I don't even know if I approaching thirty and brave
enough to do that. At sixteen, I was just meeting
from I was going by myself to Starbucks to meet friends. Yeah,
big move, big move. I'll take a Venti frappuccino, thank you.
But next up, we want to dive in to the
seas to talk about not just the women who have
(21:35):
explored the oceans by sailing on top of them, but
also the women who explored the sea by diving into
its deepest depths. And we'll get into that when we
come right back from a quick break. So far, we've
talked a lot about. Yes, Jean Beret was an explorer
(21:59):
in a literal definition of the term, she was going
out around the world doing science and research and all
that stuff. But we've talked a lot about adventurers, to
people like young Laura Decker, who became the youngest woman
to sail around the world. Now let's let's dive in,
as Kristen said, to some more of these explorer stem
Field types. Yeah, the women who are getting into the
(22:22):
oceans in order to learn about how that aquatic world works.
And just for a little bit of historical context, and
this is coming from National Geographic to understand what is
leading up to these notable women. In nineteen thirty four,
we have William Baby being lowered into a tethered bathosphere
(22:47):
to over three thousand feet into the ocean, and he
and his partner Otis Barton pioneered manned exploration of the ocean.
So this is in the mid thirties. This is when
we're really starting to get into the depths, right. And
in ninety three, this name should be familiar to you.
Jacques Cousteau and his partner, engineer Emil Ganyon, modified a
(23:10):
demand breathing regulator to engineer the aqua lung forever, changing
how people interact with the ocean. In other words, they
made scuba diving possible. Yeah, and and so my panic
attack hyperventilation when I tried to go snooba diving in Mexico,
which is like a combination of scuba and snorkeling. Total
(23:31):
panic attack because my brain I have him to thank
for it, because my brain was like, you're underwater. Did
you not know you're underwater? You're not supposed to breathe?
Panic attack. But anyway, speaking of Custo, because we're not
here to just talk about these dudes, as impressive as
they are with their aqua lung, we have to talk
about Custo's wife, Simone Melchior Custo. So seven, she and
(23:53):
Jacques get married, and she actually sold family jewels and
furs initially to help and uh the Calypso, which was
the famous ship that they sailed on. And she became
known as the first Lady of the Ocean because of
all of the incredible work that she did alongside Jacques Cousteau.
For instance, she became the first woman scuba diver and
(24:17):
played an essential role in the development of scuba diving
technology as well as basic undersea operations because she was
helping test out the equipment, get dive into the ocean
with it on and see what there was to see
in the sea. Yeah. Yeah, and and looking fabulously French
while she with a with a little like short haircut
(24:39):
and striped shirt with the boatneck. Yeah, I kind of
want that to be my summer style. The Simone chic um. Well.
So in nineteen sixty three she actually became the first
aquannot when she visited the con shelf to undersea habitat
in the Red Sea. But I do want to mention
too that there was a scandalous undercurrent to the Custo's
(25:03):
relationship because and this didn't come out until after Simone died,
but almost the entire time, or at least for a
good portion of their marriage, Jacques Coustou had a secret family,
and he ended up marrying the woman that he had been,
you know, having this long term affair with and two
children with while he was married to Simone. He married
(25:25):
this other woman after Simone died. But I mean, it
just seems like, I don't know, I wonder if she
was how could she not have been aware of that?
And I think she just loved the exploration in life
on the Calypso so much that perhaps that overshadowed any
kind of you know, relationship turmoils. I mean maybe maybe.
(25:50):
I mean, after all, her son with Cousto, Jean Michelle
often said that she was the real captain of the
Calypso and that she spent more time on Calypso than
my father, brother, and myself combined. Yeah, and I hate
that I didn't even know about her accomplishments because everyone
knows about Jacques Gustau, but I don't think that that
(26:11):
many people know about the important Simon. Yeah that she Yeah,
that she was just as critical to these explorations as Jaquas.
But if first Lady of the Ocean, Simone's moniker isn't
impressive enough, here we go. Let's take this radness up
a notch with Sylvia Earle known as her Deepness. Yeah.
(26:34):
We we mentioned Sylvia Earl in our first introductory episode
and and talked about how her resume is incredible. Um.
In nineteen seventy, Earle led the first team of women
aqua Nuts, which I love that Aquanuts during the tech
Type project, and she set a record for solo diving
to a depth of one thousand meters. And now the
(26:58):
first tech type project was all men, but then she
was part of a follow up project that brought all
women explorers down to the ocean, and that tech type
project in nineteen seventy was the first NASA mission to
include women and it's still the only all female NASA
mission ever conducted, right. And it's it's interesting too when
(27:20):
you think about the context of when this was happening.
I mean, this is this tech Type two project that
Earle lead was happening during a time when women were,
you know, more entering the workforce. They were entering jobs
that had traditionally been held by men, and so it
was really showing that women scientists and explorers could do
(27:42):
the same things that men could do and had a
lot to contribute to the field as well. Yeah, And
one of the engineers and assistant scientific director on that
Tech Type to all female mission under the Seas, Peggy
Lucas Bond, said about that expedition quote, one of the
(28:03):
things is probably true to any minority group. Ours was
bound and determined to do everything better than the men
could do. And she from there talked about how they
completed more projects and tried to bring back more data
than other projects had because This was the point in
which they had to prove themselves, and it actually paved
(28:26):
the way for other female aquanats to be regularly included
in future missions, and also paved the way for women's
inclusion in NASA space missions. Yeah, exactly, You're you're either
floating under the water or you're floating in space. Yeah,
because this tech type project was meant to help simulate
(28:46):
how life in space would take place. Oh, and Peggy
Lucas Bond also talked about the claustrophobia aspect of living
in that capsule underwater, and because it would be the
same kind of thing if you're in, say the space station,
you can't leave. Nope, No thanks brave women, No, thank you.
(29:09):
But I'm glad other women did it. I said, no
desire well, and I thought Sylvia Earle's career lead up
to becoming her Deepness resonates a lot with the other
explorers that we've talked about, because she was introduced to
all of this through guess what botany Yeah, studying algae
(29:29):
for her thesis of all Things Algae. Yeah, and just
for another career note this was actually before tech Tight two.
In nineteen sixty eight, she discovered undersea dunes off the
coast of the Bahamas. That would be nice, that would
be cool. I want to go there. Um. In nineteen
seventy nine, she actually set the world untethered diving record.
(29:52):
She descended twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the surface
of the Pacific Ocean in one of these special diving
suits that maintain a constant interior pressure. Because holy goodness,
I cannot believe that she went so far down, just untethered.
I with the painted attacks like I'm feeling one coming on.
I just I can't. She's she's so cool. Well and
(30:14):
for that, I think she got the name her deepness
because she went so deep into the ocean. Um. And
in nineteen ninety she became the first woman to become
the chief Scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
which is pretty cool. And in she wrote a book
called Sea Change, A Message of the Oceans, which is
(30:36):
kind of considered the Silent Spring for the oceans. And
then in which seems a little too too recent for
this to be a first, but in she became the
National Geographic Society's first female explorer in residence. And she's
still working. She's still doing stuff. She's still diving and
(31:00):
learning about the ocean and conservation and spreading the gospel
thereof Yeah, I saw a picture of her with her son.
They were both in diving suits, And then I was
thinking about pictures of the Custos and their family, and
I was like, can you imagine that that's your normal?
Like my parents worked for Delta Airlines and that's my normal.
(31:20):
And like other people, their parents are like teachers and
firefighters and the office people like, but no, your your
parents were just like super awesome underwater explorers. That's normal. Well,
it seems like with a lot of the seafaring women there,
there's usually a family tie of either growing up on
boats or around boats or by the water. Yeah. And
(31:43):
I one thing that I do wish as far as
inspiration is concerned, like I do wish we knew more
about what inspired those early women like an Bonnie to
dress like men and go out on the oceans. I mean,
I know that they loved these pirates and they wanted
to have adventures for them selves, but it's like, oh,
I just want to kind of get inside their brains. Yeah. Absolutely, well,
(32:05):
and even today, I mean there are so many women
also in oceanography. There there are many other women doing
similar work to Sylvia Earle. There's even a website, Women
oceanographers dot org dedicated to highlighting all of the different
career paths that water loving women have taken. In its
(32:26):
similar stem oriented jobs that they're doing. Yeah, and I mean,
in in earlier episodes, we've we've hit on this over
and over again that you know, people are asking what
is left to explore, what is left to discover, And
the answer is only that it's everything. You know, people
who are whether you're on top of the water discovering
things or you're underneath the surface of the water discovering things.
(32:48):
There's everything from microbes and habitats to the plant life,
the animal life, I mean everything in between. Well, and
so much of us two deals with broader issues of
climate change and its repercussions down to our day to
day lives. So while it might seem rather exotic to
you know, have a job that involves scuba diving, it
(33:10):
actually can have a trickle down impact into our day
to day cubicle bound existences. That's right. It can make
us better podcasters, that's right. Indeed, well, this wraps up
the portion of our summer series really highlighting the women
who are professional explorers and adventurers. And next up to
(33:34):
close things out, we're going to take a look at
women who are just traveling on their own just to
see the world today and what that's like. So in
the meantime, we want to hear from you. Do we
have any oceanographers, any marine biologists listening? Anyone who knows
Sylvia Earle her deepness? Are you listening? Let us know
(33:54):
moms Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I've got
a letter here from summer in response to our episode
on why a fiction. She writes. As a teacher in
(34:17):
New Zealand, teaching students eighteen years old, I try to
make sure that I teach something new with at least
one of my classes every year so that I don't
get bored. I get to choose what I teach and
can sometimes arrange for class sets of texts to be
purchased if I want to teach something that we don't
already have. I think the best part of my job
is seeing young people excited about literature and choosing the
(34:38):
right text for the class is so important. You touched
on the need for greater diversity and fiction, and in
New Zealand this is represented by the need to have
relevant New Zealand text rather than relying on American and
British fair and specifically Maori and Polynesian stories. My recollection
of New Zealand literature when I was in high school
was not entirely positive. Either it wasn't relevant to me,
(35:00):
or I often found it boring because New Zealand literature
is characteristically dark. That's surprising, and I liked more optimistic
fare at that stage in my life. Furthermore, as a
Maori living in the suburbs of Auckland, I was somewhat
disconnected from my heritage and so called Maori stories did
not apply to me is they tended to be set
in rural communities or in violent gang lands. That said,
(35:23):
as the market grows, there are more of our stories
being told and the students I teach are less likely
to experience cultural cringe than I did when I was
in school. My favorites include Guardian at the Dead, by
Karen Healy, a supernatural thriller that contains elements of Maori mythology,
and also Rangatira by Paul Morris, which is historical fiction
(35:44):
based on real events. So thanks for that insight, summer
and fun. Fact, my brother is also a teacher in
New Zealand, so hats off to you. I have a
letter here from Melissa. She says, I was so excited
to listen to your did world Ward Who Really help
Rosie the Riveter podcast? From my master's thesis in history,
(36:04):
I wrote about Millie Jeoffrey, who was the first woman
to have a department at the United Auto Workers. She
ran the Women's department from nineteen forty four to nineteen
forty nine. One problem she encountered during the end of
World War Two is the disregard of women's special seniority
that they accrued during the duration of the war. When
men left their auto factory jobs to serve in the military,
they continued to accrue seniority, while the women who replaced
(36:26):
them got special seniority. Women therefore wouldn't outrank returning veterans,
but they would out rank men who had never worked
in the factory. However, veterans who were new to the
auto industry were hired over women workers who had more
seniority than them. When the war ended, Unfortunately, million or
colleagues got little help from their union and the auto
companies on this matter. I hate that story, but I
(36:48):
love the story, and I'm glad you shared it. So
thank you, Melissa, and thanks to everybody who's shared their
stories with us. Moms stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media outlets, blogs, videos, and every single
one of our podcast head on over to stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
(37:11):
thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told you a production of iHeart Radio. How
are you on the seas, Samantha, not surprising. I get
really sick, so not great motions like this is not
(00:31):
my friend. However, I do love looking at the ocean
and the endless waters. I'm also petrified of dark waters
where I can't see the bottom, So there's interesting. Okay, okay, yeah,
I feel that we see I feel like I know
there's a specific fear like phobia word for this, but
when I look out and all I see us water,
(00:54):
that makes me panic, like if I'm swimming in it
just water. Yeah, that does make me nervous. And I
used to have I guess I still do this, but
it doesn't matter because I can't go anywhere. But it's
for the start of every summer. I would watch Jaws. Yeah, okay,
I did that from like as a kid, which I
that just shows how much I love fear, because I
(01:16):
feel like this is gonna really mess with me when
I'm in the water. So I would go to being
with my dad, who was a real wild boat driver,
and he had this move called the figure eight, and
then he would sling shot you through it. The slingshot
is the worst. When the rope would go, it would
just go slacking, like oh, I'm gonna fall off, and
(01:38):
so I fall off, and I would think this is it.
The climb up on the tube as quickly as possible,
as if the tube is gonna help me, as Jaws
Too showed me, it's true. Oh gosh, that seems scared
me so badly. Although I've kind of deviated from my
original question where I feel like I don't I get
(02:02):
sea sick some time, like if the if I can't
see outside and the boat is rocking a lot, that
will get me sick. So I don't think I would
have necessarily been a great explorer back in the day.
Oh no, I couldn't have made it. We wouldn't have
gout it. Oh no, just tossed me overboard. It's fine.
(02:24):
Oh there's a lot you had to deal with back then,
like scurvy yourself right, Oh my goodness. Well, we wanted
to bring back this classic episode because we recently did
our our episode on women and pirates. Yes, yes, please
enjoy this classic on women explores. Welcome to stuff Mom
(02:46):
never told you from House Supports dot com. Hello and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline or
should I say Caroline? Oh boy made ahoi ladies. Yes,
we are talking about women explorers on the high seas
(03:06):
because in our summer series on women and Exploration, we've
talked about overland explorers and Antarctic explorers, and now it's
time to explore the parts of the globe. But knit
all of these excursions together the seas, that's right. A
lot of cross dressing on the ocean, that's right, because
(03:28):
women weren't allowed on big boats for a long time.
They were not women, and our lady parts were considered
bad luck for ships and sailors. That's right. Along with priests, pigs, flowers,
and leaving harbor on a Friday. Women aboard ships for
a long time, we're considered unlucky, probably because of the
(03:50):
whole thing about distracting sailors who would then think of
sex instead of thinking of you know, a sex stance, right,
because men only think about sex when women are around. Yeah. Well,
but you know where women were welcome naked on the
carvings of the ships, that's right, because the ocean, while
the sailors shouldn't look at or even think about women ever,
(04:12):
because it's bad luck and etcetera, etcetera. The ocean itself
needs to see naked women. And hint, the carvings of
like topless mermaids, And I guess, I don't know, would
you say a mermaid is just naked? I mean, I
guess you couldn't wear bottoms, that's true, topless, we would
call them topless mermaids. Topless mermaids. Yeah, that's why you
see them so commonly on ships, because they're sort of
(04:34):
offerings to the seas, which all of it doesn't make
a whole ton of sense, but then again, we're talking
about superstitions. Um. But then early in the seventeen hundreds,
speaking of cross dressing, we start to see some daring
seafaring women like Mary Ann Talbot and Bonnie and Mary
(04:55):
Reid who in various ports of call disguise them selves
as men in order to join the ship's cruise. Yeah,
and and Bonnie and Mary Read both hooked up with pirates, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it was. Was it Anne Read? One of
them ended up marrying the pirate known as Calico Jack.
(05:16):
Oh yeah, that was Anne. Bonnie Yeah. Yeah, so they're
they're a happy pirate family until they weren't, you know,
and their their ship was caught, and then they were
in prison and the men were hanged, and there's all
sorts of legends about maybe what happened to uh Anne
and Mary, but nobody really knows for sure. Yeah. Well,
and maybe we should do an episode on women in piracy,
(05:37):
as in ce piracy, not internet internet piracy. But then
when we moved into the eighteen hundreds, you start to
see more commonly the wives of say military officers, merchants,
and whaling captains joining their husbands on board more often. Yeah,
and these actually became known as him frigates. Yeah. If
(05:59):
you had ship with women on board, I think all
you needed was one woman to constitute a hen frigate. Yeah.
I feel like that's making a big deal out of nothing.
It also reminds me of how bachelorette parties in the
UK hen parties just ladies of clucking. Interesting. I wonder
if women are called hens and other capacities. I mean,
(06:20):
I guess they are, but I wonder if it's supposed
to be derogatory in the same way as chicks chicks,
or maybe we have We're hitting on so many other
potential podcast topics here. Let's just stopping our research right now.
But anyway, So, so Mary Anne Talbot and Bonnie and
Mary Reid were all pretty impressive tough women. They were
obviously pretty tough to dresses. Men hang out with these
(06:43):
like big burly, scary pirate people. Obviously they were tough,
but they were not as tough as the first woman
who circumnavigated the Globe, who really only recently we found
out about. Yeah, we're talking about a French woman named
Jeane Beret, who once she completed the trip, it was
(07:03):
known that she was a woman, that she had done this.
She actually ended up receiving a commission from the French Navy.
But it seems like her story has only been told
in more recent years. She was sort of lost to
the history books. But her story is fascinating. Yeah, Glenny's Ridley.
You just read a book about her called The Discovery
of Jean Beret, And yeah, her life story is pretty incredible.
(07:26):
So she was born to peasants in France in seventeen
forty and I just as I'm reading her life story,
I'm picturing the peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
you know, like, oh, I would be unimpressed. Um. Anyway,
she became an herb woman, and this is basically part
of a feminine tradition surrounding the medicinal properties of plants
(07:46):
and the emerging field of taxonomy, which aimed to name
and classify the natural world. So basically, Beret was part
of this oral tradition because it's not like they could
read and they were at the library studying all these plants.
It was an oral tradition where these family has trained
each other on how to identify plants and their healing properties. Well.
And it's notable too that being an herb woman in
(08:08):
particular was considered this feminine folk loreic art because it
sort of ties into what we were talking about in
our Overland Explorers podcast about how a lot of the
wealthier Victorian women who went on all these explorations did
so as botanists because similar to the whole herb woman thing,
(08:30):
you have botany at the time being the one approved
science for women to be interested in because ladies love flowers,
that's right. I love flowers. I don't know what any
of the names are, but I love them anyway, so yeah,
botany during this time was an emerging field. So basically
what does that mean, Like herb woman versus botanists, you
(08:52):
have the professionalization of the field, which means that more
men are getting into it, while women are considered like improper,
you know, it's not appropriate for them to study it.
So anyway, Beret is out out in the field one
day looking at some flowers and she ends up meeting
botanist Philibert Commerson. They they, I guess they They end
up talking quite a bit, getting to know each other
(09:13):
and talking about flowers and the birds and the bees
and whatnot, and of course, you know, they grow to
like each other quite a bit. Yeah, And at first
it seems as though Commerson takes on Jean Beret as
a student of his, but as Glenni's Ridley talks about
in her book, she thinks that it's actually likelier that
(09:37):
Commerson ended up working with Beret because she had things
to teach him about all of the herbal knowledge that
she had cultivated through this kind of folkloric medicine that
she practiced. That's right. And so basically Commerson was going
to go on this journey to identify plants and what not, etcetera,
(10:00):
et cetera. He needed an assistant to go with him,
and who better to go than Jean Beret. But the
thing is, she's a lady. She can't go. Yeah, she
can't go because at the time the French Royal Navy
completely forbade women on ships. And this journey took place
from seventeen sixty six to seventeen sixty nine. And so
(10:22):
Commerceing said, what are we gonna do? I love you,
you know so much about plants. I want you on
the ship. Hey, here we go. Why don't we just
dress you up like a man. Put on man's clothes,
bind your breast, deepen your voice at voila right, And
so she ends up getting to accompany him in this disguise,
(10:43):
dressed as a man on this journey, which was led
by French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainvilla. And if that
sounds familiar, it should because while they were in Brazil,
they discovered a certain type of plant, which they then
named for the explorer bougan Vilia. Yeah, and it's thought
that it was Beret who discovered this now famous plant species.
(11:08):
But then the story takes a tragic turn because it's
it's not terribly surprising that on this three year jaunt,
at some point the crew started to suspect that Jean
Beret was not in fact a man, and she was
found out. And there are a lot of conflicting stories
about how her outing happens. But what Glenny's Ridley thinks
(11:31):
happens comparing all these different primary sources that she used
to research her book, she thinks that Beret was actually
gang raped by the crew after she was outed at
one point and soon after that. Bougun Villa actually in
seventeen sixty eight leaves Beret, who was then pregnant at
that point, possibly due to the gang rape in the
(11:53):
French colony of Mauritius where she then had the baby,
gave it up for adoption, and then Philip there dies
like rough time Jee, but Jean does not give up.
She certainly didn't. She remarried and went back to France
in seventeen seventy four seventy five about she ends up
receiving a pension from the French Navy, which is pretty
(12:16):
shocking considering the time she was living in the fact
that she was a woman and she wasn't even supposed
to be on that ship, but they they ended up
basically compensating her for her time that she spent looking
at plants and identifying plants and working on this ship. Yeah,
and they knew by that point obviously that she was
not a he and Ridley thinks that maybe this was
(12:39):
due to an affair with Bougunvilla that she received this pension.
But nonetheless, there was this prince aboard the ship at
one point who was sailing with them, and in his
diary he wrote about Jean Beret quote, she dared to
confront the stress, the dangers, and everything that happened that
one could realistically expect on such a voyage. Her adventure
(13:02):
should I think be included in the history of famous women.
So that's what we're doing. Yeah, we're doing our part.
But I but I I love that that that somebody
of his stature would write something like that. But talk
about going to great lengths to explore I mean putting
herself in I mean direct danger. That's right now. I
(13:25):
want to see a movie about this. Yeah, that's what
I want to see next. But it would take a
while for other women to end up making and breaking
records of their own on the high seas. Yeah, we're
now going to leap forward in time to the twentieth century,
which is when we start seeing other women. I mean,
(13:47):
there have certainly been other women in the meantime who
had sailed around the globe, but once we get into
the twentieth century, that's when we have a lot of
races of women trying to go around the world on
their own or sail across specific oceans. And so you
start out in nineteen fifty two with Anne Davison, who
(14:07):
becomes the first woman to sail across the Atlantic alone. Yeah,
and her story of what really drove her was was
pretty interesting as well. In the nineteen thirties she actually
learned how to fly, which is how she met her
future husband, Frank, and after World War Two, the couple
took up sailing with plans to sail to the West
Indies to start a new life. But soon after embarking
(14:30):
in nineteen forty nine, a storm hit, the boat capsized
and Frank died. So and to sort of continue their
their goal. To reach their goal, she sets off in
May of nineteen fifty two across the Atlantic alone and
it was not easy. No, apparently she maintained a steady
(14:51):
diet of benz adrine and rum to keep on keeping
on because it was such an arduous journey. But she
made it, and she broke this record now has a
place in the history books. And and then in nineteen
sixty nine, you have a similar story actually with Sharon
sites Atoms becoming the first woman to sail the Pacific alone,
going from Japan to California because she discovered sailing after
(15:15):
the death of her husband. And in nineteen sixty four
she had already become the first woman to sail solo
from the mainland US to Hawaii. So in a pretty
short period of time she just started racking up all
of these records. Sailing back and forth across the Pacific
alone a big deal. And I mean these women were
not exactly using GPS systems, you know. This is this
(15:37):
is back in the fifties and sixties. And I mean,
I I imagine like the quiet and the birds and
the water sounds, and I'm like, god, that was so nice.
For like two hours, that would be really nice. And
then my Scottish skin would just like turn purple and
I would turn into like leather and shrivel up and
(15:58):
just throw myself overboard, would need a lot of bends,
a green and rum. Maybe just the rum. It's just
the um, maybe just the downers. But I think it's
so interesting, like these stories of perseverance through emotional turmoil
from Beret to women like Sharon sits atoms Um. But
then things start getting a little more competitive in the seventies,
(16:20):
and apparently in ninety women had sailing fever. Sailing fever,
that's right. In June of nineteen seventy eight, Poland's Christina
Chanoska Liskawitz, who was a shipbuilding engineer and yachting sea captain.
I hope she had a jaunty hat. She was the
first woman to single handedly circumnavigate the world singlehandedly, that's
(16:43):
the important part. She actually ended up getting dubbed the
first Lady of the Oceans and was admitted to the
very exclusive, gender exclusive Explorers Club. But obviously that wouldn't
be for another couple of years, because as we discussed
in a previous Explore episode, it wasn't at the Explorers
Club even started letting women in. Yeah, I did a
(17:04):
little digging on that, and I think it might have
been the Polish chapter of the Explorers Club. And I
was surprised too that there wasn't more information or celebration
regarding Liskowitz and her accomplishment. She just sort of a footnote,
even though it seems like a pretty huge accomplishment. And
(17:25):
I don't know if it's simply because she was an
American so she didn't get quite as much fanfare, But yeah,
I mean you would think, because I feel like for
a lot of these women who you know, we're the
first at something or or did something the best. Uh,
there's usually like an interview or an article somewhere. Yeah,
why don't we know more about someone called the first
Lady of the Oceans, Because it seems like Naomi James,
(17:49):
who completed a similar solo circumnavigation, say that five times
Fast has received more historical attention. She was just narrowly
be buy List Go It's for that title, but she
actually completed her trip one nine days faster, which is
especially impressive considering that James had barely two years of
(18:12):
training on a yacht before she was like, oh hey,
I'm just gonna sail around the world alone. And for
a little bit of comparison with men's sailing, women weren't
terribly behind guys and doing these solo trips around the world.
Robin Knox Johnson had become the first man to solo
circumnavigate the globe in nine Interesting. I like hearing about
(18:37):
people who just kind of, whether it's smart or not,
just jump into something like this. I mean, after only
two years of training. She's like, Yeah, I'm gonna do this.
It's cool. I'm just gonna go like around the world
and stuff and do it really fast on my boat. Yeah.
I don't know. I guess I would need a lot
of bensdreen for that one. But more recently, in twelve,
Laura Decker became the youngest woman to sail around the world,
(19:00):
and she set out when she was fourteen, completing the
trip in two years. Yeah, listeners might be familiar with
her name a because there's a fantastic documentary about her
trip called Maiden Trip, because she actually took a camera
with her and filmed the entire thing, and it was
incredible to watch her on the boat taking care of things,
(19:22):
fixing things, sailing through storms, and generally just being by herself.
Can you imagine thinking back on when you were fourteen
fifteen years old spending that much time alone, I feel
like there was I was in a state of constant
frenzy of wanting to be around other people and hang
out with friends and all of that kind of social stuff,
(19:44):
whereas she prefers that kind of solitary lifestyle. It takes
a strong person to be alone that much and too
and to buck what is normal for your social group
or your age group or whatever. But her name was
also in the news before she even set sail, because
the Dutch government was so opposed to her even embarking
(20:09):
on this trip that they initially took her away from
her dad, who has sole custody of her, and I
think she ended up having to legally like separate emancipate
herself in order to do this. It was just like
a whole I mean, she was making national news the
whole time, and you see in the documentary this process
(20:32):
of her and her dad having to deal with all
of this unwanted media attention because genuinely, all she wanted
to do was sail around the world. She grew up
on boats, her dad worked. She wanted to do all
she wanted. I mean, all a girl wants to do
is take two years out of her life and sail
around the world. But I mean, I think I think
that's a great gift. I mean, maybe not sailing around
(20:53):
the world, but I think that type of independence is
a great gift that a parent can give to a
daughter to let her do something on her own. Absolutely
kind of ambition and bravery, because I mean she would,
even you know, at certain ports, get off and you know,
hang out on land for a while and just explore
on her own and meet people and talk to people.
(21:13):
I don't even know if I approaching thirty and brave
enough to do that. At sixteen, I was just meeting
from I was going by myself to Starbucks to meet friends. Yeah,
big move, big move. I'll take a Venti frappuccino, thank you.
But next up, we want to dive in to the
seas to talk about not just the women who have
(21:35):
explored the oceans by sailing on top of them, but
also the women who explored the sea by diving into
its deepest depths. And we'll get into that when we
come right back from a quick break. So far, we've
talked a lot about. Yes, Jean Beret was an explorer
(21:59):
in a literal definition of the term, she was going
out around the world doing science and research and all
that stuff. But we've talked a lot about adventurers, to
people like young Laura Decker, who became the youngest woman
to sail around the world. Now let's let's dive in,
as Kristen said, to some more of these explorer stem
Field types. Yeah, the women who are getting into the
(22:22):
oceans in order to learn about how that aquatic world works.
And just for a little bit of historical context, and
this is coming from National Geographic to understand what is
leading up to these notable women. In nineteen thirty four,
we have William Baby being lowered into a tethered bathosphere
(22:47):
to over three thousand feet into the ocean, and he
and his partner Otis Barton pioneered manned exploration of the ocean.
So this is in the mid thirties. This is when
we're really starting to get into the depths, right. And
in ninety three, this name should be familiar to you.
Jacques Cousteau and his partner, engineer Emil Ganyon, modified a
(23:10):
demand breathing regulator to engineer the aqua lung forever, changing
how people interact with the ocean. In other words, they
made scuba diving possible. Yeah, and and so my panic
attack hyperventilation when I tried to go snooba diving in Mexico,
which is like a combination of scuba and snorkeling. Total
(23:31):
panic attack because my brain I have him to thank
for it, because my brain was like, you're underwater. Did
you not know you're underwater? You're not supposed to breathe?
Panic attack. But anyway, speaking of Custo, because we're not
here to just talk about these dudes, as impressive as
they are with their aqua lung, we have to talk
about Custo's wife, Simone Melchior Custo. So seven, she and
(23:53):
Jacques get married, and she actually sold family jewels and
furs initially to help and uh the Calypso, which was
the famous ship that they sailed on. And she became
known as the first Lady of the Ocean because of
all of the incredible work that she did alongside Jacques Cousteau.
For instance, she became the first woman scuba diver and
(24:17):
played an essential role in the development of scuba diving
technology as well as basic undersea operations because she was
helping test out the equipment, get dive into the ocean
with it on and see what there was to see
in the sea. Yeah. Yeah, and and looking fabulously French
while she with a with a little like short haircut
(24:39):
and striped shirt with the boatneck. Yeah, I kind of
want that to be my summer style. The Simone chic um. Well.
So in nineteen sixty three she actually became the first
aquannot when she visited the con shelf to undersea habitat
in the Red Sea. But I do want to mention
too that there was a scandalous undercurrent to the Custo's
(25:03):
relationship because and this didn't come out until after Simone died,
but almost the entire time, or at least for a
good portion of their marriage, Jacques Coustou had a secret family,
and he ended up marrying the woman that he had been,
you know, having this long term affair with and two
children with while he was married to Simone. He married
(25:25):
this other woman after Simone died. But I mean, it
just seems like, I don't know, I wonder if she
was how could she not have been aware of that?
And I think she just loved the exploration in life
on the Calypso so much that perhaps that overshadowed any
kind of you know, relationship turmoils. I mean maybe maybe.
(25:50):
I mean, after all, her son with Cousto, Jean Michelle
often said that she was the real captain of the
Calypso and that she spent more time on Calypso than
my father, brother, and myself combined. Yeah, and I hate
that I didn't even know about her accomplishments because everyone
knows about Jacques Gustau, but I don't think that that
(26:11):
many people know about the important Simon. Yeah that she Yeah,
that she was just as critical to these explorations as Jaquas.
But if first Lady of the Ocean, Simone's moniker isn't
impressive enough, here we go. Let's take this radness up
a notch with Sylvia Earle known as her Deepness. Yeah.
(26:34):
We we mentioned Sylvia Earl in our first introductory episode
and and talked about how her resume is incredible. Um.
In nineteen seventy, Earle led the first team of women
aqua Nuts, which I love that Aquanuts during the tech
Type project, and she set a record for solo diving
to a depth of one thousand meters. And now the
(26:58):
first tech type project was all men, but then she
was part of a follow up project that brought all
women explorers down to the ocean, and that tech type
project in nineteen seventy was the first NASA mission to
include women and it's still the only all female NASA
mission ever conducted, right. And it's it's interesting too when
(27:20):
you think about the context of when this was happening.
I mean, this is this tech Type two project that
Earle lead was happening during a time when women were,
you know, more entering the workforce. They were entering jobs
that had traditionally been held by men, and so it
was really showing that women scientists and explorers could do
(27:42):
the same things that men could do and had a
lot to contribute to the field as well. Yeah, And
one of the engineers and assistant scientific director on that
Tech Type to all female mission under the Seas, Peggy
Lucas Bond, said about that expedition quote, one of the
(28:03):
things is probably true to any minority group. Ours was
bound and determined to do everything better than the men
could do. And she from there talked about how they
completed more projects and tried to bring back more data
than other projects had because This was the point in
which they had to prove themselves, and it actually paved
(28:26):
the way for other female aquanats to be regularly included
in future missions, and also paved the way for women's
inclusion in NASA space missions. Yeah, exactly, You're you're either
floating under the water or you're floating in space. Yeah,
because this tech type project was meant to help simulate
(28:46):
how life in space would take place. Oh, and Peggy
Lucas Bond also talked about the claustrophobia aspect of living
in that capsule underwater, and because it would be the
same kind of thing if you're in, say the space station,
you can't leave. Nope, No thanks brave women, No, thank you.
(29:09):
But I'm glad other women did it. I said, no
desire well, and I thought Sylvia Earle's career lead up
to becoming her Deepness resonates a lot with the other
explorers that we've talked about, because she was introduced to
all of this through guess what botany Yeah, studying algae
(29:29):
for her thesis of all Things Algae. Yeah, and just
for another career note this was actually before tech Tight two.
In nineteen sixty eight, she discovered undersea dunes off the
coast of the Bahamas. That would be nice, that would
be cool. I want to go there. Um. In nineteen
seventy nine, she actually set the world untethered diving record.
(29:52):
She descended twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the surface
of the Pacific Ocean in one of these special diving
suits that maintain a constant interior pressure. Because holy goodness,
I cannot believe that she went so far down, just untethered.
I with the painted attacks like I'm feeling one coming on.
I just I can't. She's she's so cool. Well and
(30:14):
for that, I think she got the name her deepness
because she went so deep into the ocean. Um. And
in nineteen ninety she became the first woman to become
the chief Scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
which is pretty cool. And in she wrote a book
called Sea Change, A Message of the Oceans, which is
(30:36):
kind of considered the Silent Spring for the oceans. And
then in which seems a little too too recent for
this to be a first, but in she became the
National Geographic Society's first female explorer in residence. And she's
still working. She's still doing stuff. She's still diving and
(31:00):
learning about the ocean and conservation and spreading the gospel
thereof Yeah, I saw a picture of her with her son.
They were both in diving suits, And then I was
thinking about pictures of the Custos and their family, and
I was like, can you imagine that that's your normal?
Like my parents worked for Delta Airlines and that's my normal.
(31:20):
And like other people, their parents are like teachers and
firefighters and the office people like, but no, your your
parents were just like super awesome underwater explorers. That's normal. Well,
it seems like with a lot of the seafaring women there,
there's usually a family tie of either growing up on
boats or around boats or by the water. Yeah. And
(31:43):
I one thing that I do wish as far as
inspiration is concerned, like I do wish we knew more
about what inspired those early women like an Bonnie to
dress like men and go out on the oceans. I mean,
I know that they loved these pirates and they wanted
to have adventures for them selves, but it's like, oh,
I just want to kind of get inside their brains. Yeah. Absolutely, well,
(32:05):
and even today, I mean there are so many women
also in oceanography. There there are many other women doing
similar work to Sylvia Earle. There's even a website, Women
oceanographers dot org dedicated to highlighting all of the different
career paths that water loving women have taken. In its
(32:26):
similar stem oriented jobs that they're doing. Yeah, and I mean,
in in earlier episodes, we've we've hit on this over
and over again that you know, people are asking what
is left to explore, what is left to discover, And
the answer is only that it's everything. You know, people
who are whether you're on top of the water discovering
things or you're underneath the surface of the water discovering things.
(32:48):
There's everything from microbes and habitats to the plant life,
the animal life, I mean everything in between. Well, and
so much of us two deals with broader issues of
climate change and its repercussions down to our day to
day lives. So while it might seem rather exotic to
you know, have a job that involves scuba diving, it
(33:10):
actually can have a trickle down impact into our day
to day cubicle bound existences. That's right. It can make
us better podcasters, that's right. Indeed, well, this wraps up
the portion of our summer series really highlighting the women
who are professional explorers and adventurers. And next up to
(33:34):
close things out, we're going to take a look at
women who are just traveling on their own just to
see the world today and what that's like. So in
the meantime, we want to hear from you. Do we
have any oceanographers, any marine biologists listening? Anyone who knows
Sylvia Earle her deepness? Are you listening? Let us know
(33:54):
moms Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our
email address. You can also tweet us mom Stuff podcast
or messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of
messages to share with you right now. So I've got
a letter here from summer in response to our episode
on why a fiction. She writes. As a teacher in
(34:17):
New Zealand, teaching students eighteen years old, I try to
make sure that I teach something new with at least
one of my classes every year so that I don't
get bored. I get to choose what I teach and
can sometimes arrange for class sets of texts to be
purchased if I want to teach something that we don't
already have. I think the best part of my job
is seeing young people excited about literature and choosing the
(34:38):
right text for the class is so important. You touched
on the need for greater diversity and fiction, and in
New Zealand this is represented by the need to have
relevant New Zealand text rather than relying on American and
British fair and specifically Maori and Polynesian stories. My recollection
of New Zealand literature when I was in high school
was not entirely positive. Either it wasn't relevant to me,
(35:00):
or I often found it boring because New Zealand literature
is characteristically dark. That's surprising, and I liked more optimistic
fare at that stage in my life. Furthermore, as a
Maori living in the suburbs of Auckland, I was somewhat
disconnected from my heritage and so called Maori stories did
not apply to me is they tended to be set
in rural communities or in violent gang lands. That said,
(35:23):
as the market grows, there are more of our stories
being told and the students I teach are less likely
to experience cultural cringe than I did when I was
in school. My favorites include Guardian at the Dead, by
Karen Healy, a supernatural thriller that contains elements of Maori mythology,
and also Rangatira by Paul Morris, which is historical fiction
(35:44):
based on real events. So thanks for that insight, summer
and fun. Fact, my brother is also a teacher in
New Zealand, so hats off to you. I have a
letter here from Melissa. She says, I was so excited
to listen to your did world Ward Who Really help
Rosie the Riveter podcast? From my master's thesis in history,
(36:04):
I wrote about Millie Jeoffrey, who was the first woman
to have a department at the United Auto Workers. She
ran the Women's department from nineteen forty four to nineteen
forty nine. One problem she encountered during the end of
World War Two is the disregard of women's special seniority
that they accrued during the duration of the war. When
men left their auto factory jobs to serve in the military,
they continued to accrue seniority, while the women who replaced
(36:26):
them got special seniority. Women therefore wouldn't outrank returning veterans,
but they would out rank men who had never worked
in the factory. However, veterans who were new to the
auto industry were hired over women workers who had more
seniority than them. When the war ended, Unfortunately, million or
colleagues got little help from their union and the auto
companies on this matter. I hate that story, but I
(36:48):
love the story, and I'm glad you shared it. So
thank you, Melissa, and thanks to everybody who's shared their
stories with us. Moms stuff at how stuff works dot
com is our email address and for links to all
of our social media outlets, blogs, videos, and every single
one of our podcast head on over to stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for more on this and
(37:11):
thousands of other topics. Isn't how stuff works dot com
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