Transatlantic Cruising Before the Titanic

Ships were of course carrying cargo for centuries before the idea of carrying passengers in any sort of vacation sense existed. But once the Black Ball line decided to prioritize passenger comfort, the development of the cruise industry began. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So, the
sinking of the r M S Titanic on April fifteenth
is perhaps the most famous of all maritime disasters, but

(00:24):
it's not as though that was the first time passengers
were cruising on a ship. Well before the Titanic, passengers
were traveling across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and North America. Uh.
And I know that it might seem like we're travel
obsessed lately because we keep talking about our Paris trip,
which you can still sign up for uh if you
go to our website and click on the Paris Trip
link at the top of the page. But this actually

(00:46):
came up in a whole other avenue. There is another
another podcast project I'm working on, which hopefully you will
know more about soon. But the subject of cruises came
up on it, and it it piqued my interest in
terms of where it had come for the historically. So
here we are, I decided I should do a whole
episode where I can just look at that on this show.

(01:07):
So I thought it would be really interesting to examine
the early years of the cruise industry, way before what
we think of as a cruise ship today ever existed.
They were not floating cities at this point. Uh. And
we're breaking this one sort of into two sections. So first,
we're going to talk about the initial push for ships
to start carrying passengers as a part of their business

(01:29):
model rather than just an add on in empty cargo space.
And second, the first true cruise ship and it's relatively
short period of service. For those of you who like
maritime disasters delight, there's a little bit of that involved here. Um.
There is also, we should warn you an instance of suicide,
so if that is not something you're comfortable hearing about,

(01:49):
be warned. It happens late in the episode, and we
will give you a heads up as we near that point.
It's actually going to be right after the second sponsor break.
Ships were of course carrying cargo across the Atlantic, four
centuries before the idea of carrying passengers and any sort
of vacation since existed. The man who was often credited

(02:10):
with first shifting this mindset is Jeremiah Thompson. At the time, Thompson,
who was a textile importer, had this idea. He was
living in New York, but he had been born in
New Yorkshire in northern England, and he had made that
journey across the Atlantic himself by boat when he emigrated
as a teenager. Yeah, definitely not in any sort of vacations,
since we have talked before about when people would book

(02:32):
passage on trans Atlantic ships just to get from one
to the other and the various ways they have to
shove in with parcels and animals and unpleasant conditions. So
this was definitely that kind of thing when he made
the crossing as a team and Thompson, his uncle, and
three associates had all been working together in the textile
trade in New York and they owned a number of

(02:55):
ships that they used for that purpose. And while their
cargo ships, like others, accepted past singer bookings, it was
definitely a secondary aspect of their business. Passengers were not prioritized.
Everything was basically timed and planned around the goods that
were aboard the ship, and as such, schedules were almost
always inconsistent, which left would be travelers in a sort

(03:16):
of hurry up and wait situation. While the shipping company
held departure up for loading more cargo or waiting for
ideal weather. But Thompson realized that they could probably make
more money by prioritizing passengers, their comfort and their schedules.
Thompson and his business partners announced their intentions to do
just that in the Papers of New York in late

(03:37):
nine In order to furnish frequent and regular conveyances for
goods and passengers, the subscribers have undertaken to establish a
line of vessels between New York and Liverpool to sail
from each place on a certain day and every month
throughout the year. This was, on its own, an entirely
novel concept, but the notice went on to promote d

(04:00):
crossings of the North Atlantic also novel and quote. Accommodations
for passengers are uncommonly extensive and commodious, so for the
first time a company was offering up the idea of
actual comfort while crossing the ocean. They may have sounded unreal,
but Thompson and his associates were professional shippers after all,

(04:20):
and they knew how to run a business. In January
of eighteen eighteen, the first two of their ships departed
New York right on schedule, and the company stayed on schedule.
That also had to add new ships to meet demand,
and ended up running two ships each way per month.
Their line came to be known as the black Ball
Line because of a black circle painted on their sales

(04:43):
to identify them. If you're imagining, even though I just
said sales, if you're imagining a thing that looks anything
like a steamship, no, this was still a vessel with sales,
sailing under wind power. Um, there are there are some images,
like illustrations still of these ships and they do not
look like a cruise ship today. No, not at all.

(05:05):
And we'll talk about sort of how steamships eventually supplanted
these these ships. Um, yeah, it's interesting, right you the
way this set up goes, you would normally expect like
and then they said it was going to be comfortable,
and then they said it was going to be fast,
and then they said it was gonna be on a schedule.
You're like, this isn't gonna work, guys, But it did.

(05:26):
They were so good at keeping this whole thing together. Uh.
And part of that was because the management of the
company offered incentives to captains to keep those calendar dates.
So if they made their trips in less than twenty
two days traveling from New York to Liverpool, or less
than thirty five days on the Liverpool to New York trips,
which took longer due to wind patterns in the North Atlantic.

(05:47):
The captain would get a reward and for his work,
the captain, who was responsible for everything aboard his vessel,
got a new coat and his wife would get a
new dress. And this reward system seemed to work because
black Ball got a really good reputation for reliability. The
black Ball line got a fair bit of press for
their new business model and how successful they had been

(06:08):
implementing it, and that gave them new business in both
passengers and cargo, which made other shipping companies want to
step up their own game to stay competitive. It wasn't
okay anymore to simply run supply ships on the well,
we'll leave when we're loaded and arrived when we can approach. Yeah.
Initially they were like, why would you want to prioritize passengers,
that's just secondary, And then a couple of years and

(06:29):
they were like, we would also like to prioritize passengers.
Soon other companies were running their own scheduled lines and
offering better passenger accommodations, and this in turn drove the
shipping industry into a more service minded mode of operation,
which then drove physical change in how the ships were built.
In eighteen three, black Ball once again staked its claim

(06:51):
above other competitors when it launched its new ship, the Canada.
The five ton vessel was lavish in ways no ship
had ever been for. It featured things like skylights in
the deluxe cabins, silk curtains, Turkish carpets in a fancy
dining room with beautiful furniture, among other luxurious design details.

(07:12):
The Canada's beautiful decor set off a new race among
all the shipping companies to offer similar amenities for their passengers,
and this desire to offer more sumptuous accommodations and entertainments
meant that ship designs had to shift to offer all
those things without losing their cargo space. After all, they
were still carrying things like mail and textiles and even livestock,

(07:33):
some of which were used to feed the passengers aboard,
and rather fine style. You know, one of the accounts
I was reading talked about the ship's cow, so they
always had fresh milk. On the cross thing and and
how sometimes you know the animals, some of the animals
would be used to be slaughtered and then used in meals,
and they would have chicken zick and lay eggs and that.

(07:54):
Really this is kind of the beginning of the idea
of cruises and food together, because for a lot of people,
the food was the best part of the trip because
it was all very fresh. A company called the Dramatic Line,
run by a man named Edward Knight Collins, gave Blackball
a run for its money. Starting in eighteen thirty six,
Dramatic started building flat bottomed boats, like the ones that

(08:16):
were required to traverse shallow waters at the mouth of
the Mississippi River. Collins had been running ships to New Orleans,
but he realized that he could use that same flat
bottom design to optimize space for trans atlantic voyages. The
ships in the Dramatic Fleet were aptly named. They were
the Shakespeare, Sheridan, Garrick, sit Ins, and Rauscius, and they

(08:37):
were massive. The Rascius weighed more than a thousand tons,
which was a record at the time for ships that
were running out of New York. But it was the
passenger cabins that really set the dramatic line. Apart from
the black Ball. They were as much as three times
the size of what other companies offered, and they were
higher up on the ship, not below the deck. Yeah,
they felt that passengers would be more comfortable up higher,

(09:00):
they would get better air circulation, they would not be
as prone to seasickness, which all sounds lovely. Also, we
should point out that even though their accommodations were three
times larger than other ships, they were still tiny. I mean,
even if you have been on a modern cruise ship,
the rooms are still pretty small unless you are very,
very wealthy. And this is you know, far past these

(09:22):
ships in terms of evolution of space. So the idea
though of a separate steerage class, which you'll often see
talked about, formed sort of organically during these decades. If
there was a cargo space that wasn't being filled with
letters or parcels or other goods, some ships continued to
sell reduced fair tickets for people to bunk there without

(09:44):
any of the amenities like dining and entertainment that a
regular ticket afforded. People who purchased these discounted tickets had
to bring their own food, and they were allowed to
prepare it in a designated space on deck, so long
as they remember to also bring pans and pots in
any other utensil required to do that prep And this
really wasn't all that different from how people had booked

(10:05):
passages before the idea of passenger amenities was introduced. It
just meant that now there were different levels, both literally
and figuratively, of travelers. In a moment, we will talk
about the celebrity status that some of these captains achieved,
but first we will pause for a word from one
of our sponsors. We mentioned just a few moments ago

(10:31):
how black Ball rewarded its captains with bonuses in the
form of coats for jobs well done, and captains actually
took on an odd sort of celebrity. In the time
that the cruise industry was in its infancy, passengers could
actually book passage with specific captains if they wish, and
especially skilled ones came to be recognized for their ability
to deal with weather issues and manage their crew and

(10:53):
socialize with their passengers. This job became a very coveted
one for men with the skills to hand all of
these different needs. As they also took a share of
the revenue for the cargo. So one of the things
that was involved was like for X pieces of mail,
you will get some tiny, tiny fraction of money for
each piece of mail, And so they would all get

(11:14):
that kind of like as a revenue share of their
their company's work. They also usually owned a portion of
the ship in terms of like both getting the revenue
from it and having responsibility for it. Uh. The sailors
who worked under them, though, worked very very hard in
jobs that were often very dangerous and sleeping in quarters
that were far less comfortable than most of the passengers had.

(11:37):
Traveling aboard this combination cargo and passenger ship, which was
called a packet ship or packets, wasn't the pleasure vacation
of today, even if there was beautiful furniture involved for
the people who could afford a premium ticket. While there
were normally women's quarters on such vessels, the vast majority
of the paying passengers were still men on business these words,

(12:00):
and really booked as one way trips, the way to
get to either Europe or North America, and the time
aboard the ship was more comfortable than ever, but it
was still a means to get to a destination. You
were not doing this for fun. No, it would be like,
I'm sure there are people that do it, but very
few are, Like, let's just go get on a plane
for fun today. You have to you normally have a

(12:24):
place in mind where you're trying to get to and
if the plane ride is enjoyable, great, but that's not
really your vacation. Uh. Even so, these transatlantic crossings were
growing in number, with dozens of ships traveling from New
York to Liverpool, London and Love and staying on schedule
became more and more important because it became a means

(12:46):
for the various operating companies to distinguish themselves. I know,
I just compared it to the airline industry, but again
very similar. Where you will hear airlines tout their stats
for like not canceling flights, are always arriving on time.
Very similar. In the US was building a very strong
reputation for its excellence in this industry. Part of that
strong reputation was a very small rate of accident or loss.

(13:10):
In the first twenty years of this industry, there were
only two ships lost. The first of this was the Albion,
which was part of the black Ball line. On April eight,
two three weeks after leaving port in New York, the Albion,
under the command of Captain Williams, ran aground and slammed
against rocky terrain on the southern coast of Ireland really

(13:33):
early in the morning, sometime between three and four am.
Seven of the Albion's twenty four man crew survived and
two of the twenty eight passengers, but everyone else aboard
died and the cause in this case was bad weather.
A written account by a local man named John Purcell
described the situation when he arrived on the scene shortly
after the ship hit the rocks, and he wrote quote

(13:56):
at this time, as it blew a dreadful gale with
springtime side and approaching high water, the sea ran mountains high.
Mr Purcell and several other men were able to get
the survivors to safety. Uh He describes in this this
account that he took in a number of them, and
the other men that were with him each took in
a number of people, and they also built coffins for

(14:18):
the bodies of the recovered dead. The second ship lost
in the trans Atlantic passenger and cargo get business was
called the Crisis. It's the name of the ship which
was part of the Black X Line in the case
of the Crisis, that was making its way back to
New York in eighteen twenty six, and it just never
made it to port. Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean it
presumably sank. Although these two incidents were obviously tragic, the

(14:41):
work of the packet ships traveling between Europe and the
United States was seen as very safe because it was
only those two. The second half of the nineteenth century
saw massive growth in passenger bookings on Transatlantic lines. The
idea of truly premium accommodations started to come into play,
and steamships became the standard. Up to that point, all

(15:03):
of the tightness of schedules was largely about leaving port
on time. But things were still a little bit wiggily
when it came to making ports on the other end
of the journey on a schedule, because, as Tracy had
mentioned earlier, you're still using wind power largely um and
once the reliance on wind was less of a factor,
cummings and goings were more precise at both ports on

(15:23):
any given cruise. Now we're going to jump ahead a
bit to nineteen hundred. That year, the world's first steamer
built exclusively as a tourist ship with no intent of
hauling cargo or mail. Was launched at Hamburg, Germany. The
ship was the Princess in Victoria Louise and it was
part of the Hamburg American Line. It was christened by

(15:45):
the Countess von Walder cy Nate Esther Lee, who had
married German army field Marshal Count von Waldr. See. The
idea for the Princess in Victoria Louise began with Albert
Balin in eight six. Balin had joined the company hop PAG.
You'll see that H A P A G, which is
an acronym for a much longer German name that I
dare not attempt for UH for desire to not turn

(16:10):
it into a horrible jumble of words UH, and that
is sometimes synonymous with You'll sometimes see it written as
that company running the Hamburg America line, or just being
synonymous for it and UH. The HAPAG company's business included
a great deal of immigration travel. As people left Europe
to move to the United States. The Homburg Victoria Line

(16:31):
transported them, and that company started in eighteen forty seven
and initially used sailing boats like the packet ships used
by the black Ball Line and its competitors, but eventually, they,
like everyone else, transitioned over to steamships. Albert Bollin, who
had an immigration agency as a family business, was a
perfect fit for HAPAG. He worked his way up the
corporate ladder and in became the head of the company.

(16:55):
At the beginning of eighteen nineties, he had initiated the
world's first leisure career US, which was a trip along
the Mediterranean aboard the s S August Victoria. This was
the first time the journey aboard a passenger ship was
built as the vacation itself. Fling himself was a passenger
on the August Victoria, and he interviewed the customers aboard

(17:16):
to see what was working and what could be changed. Yes,
so just for clarity in case it's confusing, that ship
was still the type of ship that had originally been
built to carry cargo and passengers, but this was the
first time that it was used as just a vacation
in and of itself. And then this next ship that
we're talking about is the first one that was built
entirely just as a passenger cruise ship. So as he

(17:39):
took control of the company, Balin came up with another first,
and that was a ship that was entirely designed and
built for passengers. The Hamburg America Line commissioned the ship
building firm of Bloom and Voss to construct what is
often called the first purpose built cruise ship, thus the
Princess and Victoria Louise, named for the eight year old

(18:00):
daughter of Kaiserville Helm. The second came to be and Balin,
who oversaw the entire project very closely from design to completion,
became the father of the leisure cruise. The ship was huge.
It was four hundred feet or a hundred and twenty
two long, forty seven ft or fourteen point three ms wide,
and twenty seven ft or eight point two ms deep.

(18:21):
It was also four thousand, four hundred nineteen gross tons,
which measures not weight but internal volume. The hull was
made of steel plates flush fitted with countersunk rivets rather
than overlapped. Yeah, it was built like a luxury vehicle basically. UM. Also,
I should point out, in looking at various different UM records,

(18:42):
those numbers in its length and width and depth are
a little bit different depending on which one you look at.
I'm not sure what the cause for that. Disparity is
but it's it's always small disparities. So if you look
at it anywhere else and are like, that's not quite
the same number, that's why. I can't explain why that's
the case, but we see it in different numbers all
over the place. And as a cruising yacht, this ship

(19:05):
was designed, as we said, entirely for leisure, and every
aspect of it was completely modern for its time. In
addition to having cabins that were well ventilated, which had
been a long term problem on passenger ships, it featured
a massive dining room, a smoking lounge, a parlor for
lady passengers, a dark room for any travelers that wanted

(19:26):
to develop their vacation photos there on the ship, and
a gymnasium, among other amusements and amenities, and it carried
only first class passengers. After it made its initial voyage
from Hamburg to New York, the Princessant traveled to the
Caribbean and then to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Eventually,
the ship's primary route was from New York to Jamaica,

(19:47):
offering a tour of the West Indies. On December twelve,
the Princess of Victoria Luis left New York bound for Kingston, Jamaica,
with Captain H. Brunswick at the helm. While the ship
boasted a hundred in twenty cabins, there were only seventy
five passengers aboard. And before we get into the story
of how that cruise played out, we are going to
pause for a break and hear from one of the

(20:08):
sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going. Hey, listeners,
As we get into this next section, I just want
to remind you this is uh the segment where we
will talk about the suicide you mentioned at the top
of the show. So if that's not something you want

(20:29):
to hear, you can maybe fast forward to the very
end or just skip this last part. What happened on
the Princess and Victoria Louis's trip was initially reported this way.
The ship made port at its destination as scheduled, and
then headed back to New York on December six, that
ran aground just below the lighthouse at Port Royal as
it was exiting Kingston Harbor. There was no inclement weather,

(20:53):
the waters were smooth and calm. All of the passengers
were safely evacuated to Kingston. Two other ships, the do
Gatin of France and the Bremen of Germany were nearby
and quickly moved to the scene to help. Though those
on board initially had been afraid, once they were reassured
that they were going to be moved to land, the
evacuation went completely smoothly. But despite everything post grounding going

(21:18):
as smoothly as possible, Captain Brunswig locked himself in the
cabin and shot and killed himself. It's really not clear
exactly what happened to the cabin, but his employers were
completely taken aback. In a statement given by the president
of the Hamburg America Line, Emile L. Boas he said, quote,
Captain Brunswig was one of the most capable captains in

(21:39):
our service. I cannot account for his act except on
the theory that his pride was crushed by the accident
and that he believed that only death would wipe out
what he regarded as a disgrace. But a follow up
to this story, published on December six in The New
York Times, offered a slightly different version of events. As
you know, even in today's modern world, where communication is

(22:02):
much faster, sometimes when you get the breaking news story,
all of the facts aren't entirely correct, and then later
on there's like an amended story where where everything kind
of gets smoothed out and the reality is described. This
is kind of what happened in this case. This version
had been relayed by survivors once they had returned to
New York aboard the steamships Sarnia. The accounts of those

(22:23):
who had been aboard all indicated that the ship had
been entering the harbor and not exiting as had initially
been reported. Captain Brunswig, upon approaching the harbor, issued signals
indicating that the ship needed a pilot. So a maritime pilot,
in case you don't know, and this job still exists,
is a person who serves as sort of a navigation

(22:44):
expert and advises captains on maneuvering through spots like port
entries and exits. The pilot is normally local to the area,
so they would be someone that is like on standby
at a port entry because they then know all the
specifics of the waters of that area intimately, and they
used that knowledge in advising ships and guiding them safely.

(23:05):
But though Brunswig requested a pilot, nobody came so he
decided to anchor near Port Royal rather than try to
navigate into the harbor without assistance. But in doing so,
he misread the lights on the shore and he accidentally
headed straight for the lighthouse. Yeah, apparently he thought the
lighthouse he was seeing was a different lighthouse, so he
was just completely oriented mentally incorrectly uh in the map

(23:29):
in his head, and he basically literally ran it right aground.
According to the ship's steward fo Schroeder, it was n
PM on the night of the sixteenth when this happened.
The captain immediately sent out a boat to report what
had happened and went directly to his quarters, where he
shot himself. And this countered an earlier report that made
it sound like the captain had waited a couple of

(23:50):
hours before he took that that final step. The passengers
were kept on board through the night, they weren't informed
of the captain's death, and in the morning the crew
formed a line of boats to the island. Passengers went
from boat to boat along the line to get safely
to shore. The Bremen that German vessel we mentioned earlier,
tethered itself to the grounded Princess u and actually tried

(24:13):
to haul it off of the rocks and back into
the water, but that effort was ultimately unsuccessful. Three days
after the wreck, on December nineteenth, the Hamburg America Line
ship was deemed a loss. In nineteen oh seven, a
German court determined that Captain Brunswick had been negligent in
his duties, and the loss of the Princess and Victoria Louise,

(24:33):
which again all passengers survived, was completely eclipsed by the
sinking of the Titanic less than six years later. But
the cruise industry, despite having ups and downs, has survived
despite these these tragedies and in fact thrived. Uh in
And estimated twenty five point eight million people went on
cruises globally, and the study cited in the Cruise Industry Overview,

(24:58):
which is published by the Florida caribbe and Cruise Association,
estimated that an average cruise ship pulling in at a
port of call in the Caribbean or Latin America generates
almost six hundred seventy six thousand dollars just by virtue
of pulling in and spending a few hours there in
spending by passengers, crew, and the cruise line. It's complicated.

(25:18):
I've been on a number of cruises and often there
will be conference conversations among the people who are going,
or like what's the environmental impact of this? Is that
offset by like the economic benefit that's coming into the Caribbean.
How does that economic benefit affect the lives of people
that actually live there. We have a lot of very

(25:40):
uh lengthy conversations that um and also like it you were,
we we have talked about like people continue to go
on these in spite of this incident. People also continue
to go on cruises even though norovirus is such a
known hazard on cruises that there's like a whole a
seizure when you are embarking on the ship, where like

(26:03):
you have to attest the fact that you have not
been ill in the past however many hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I I have not been on a cruise. I have
been at sea many times, like deep sea fishing, but
I have not been on a cruise cruise. UM, I
think that may be about to change. We'll see and
I'll report back. I'm very curious about how this goes

(26:28):
because I've had some conversations about about cruising and pros
and cons and not the cruise you think it is,
which helps get around my problem. My problem right is
that you're on a ship I would most likely do,
like a Disney cruise that's not actually the one I'm
looking at at the moment. Uh. And while I love
Disney like, the idea of being trapped on a boat

(26:48):
with a bunch of um little people, you know, kids
makes me a little nervous because I'm not a kid's person,
and once I reach my threshold, there's no return, like
you can't put the genie back in the ball, and
so so I'm a little concerned about that. But I
found a cruise that I doubt many children would be on, uh,
just because if it's seeming, which is not filthy in
any way, it just has to do with such an old,

(27:09):
nerdy pop culture property that I don't think any kids
would be interested. I know, whenever we mentioned our likes
and dislikes on the show, we get a lot of
uh ideas from listeners. I'm just gonna put it out there.
Holly and I have already talked about how cruise ships
have lots of entertainments for children, and there are lots
of adults only spaces on them, yes, But I have

(27:32):
also had friends who are very much aligned with me
mentally who are like, oh no, you can't escape them,
so um, until it's totally partitioned off, this will always
be a danger. And I bet your kids are the
best ones. But I'm just not comfortable around kids. It's
no dis on the kids. It's just not not my
space of comfort. Um. And when I'm on vacation, I

(27:53):
would like to be as much as possible in my
space of comfort. Anyway, that is the scoop. Do you
want to hear some listener mail that has nothing to
do with uses, but does go back to our slightly
grown up topic of the history of vodka, because we've
gotten some great email about vodka, a really great email,
more than I can read all in one thing. But
what I really liked is we got several interesting ones.

(28:14):
We talked in that episode about how vodka is to
some degree sort of a universal solvent. It gets used
to clean and disinfect things, and it gets used to
spruce up clothing in lieu of dry cleaning sometimes, and
you know, various treatment for ills. And so we had
a number of people right in with new things that
I did not always know about the vodka gets used for.

(28:36):
One of them is from our listener Peggy, who writes,
love the podcast listen every day. I am learning for
knowledge sake, not so I can just pass a test,
which to me is like the best way to learn knowledge.
And she writes, my daughter is an amazing cake decorator.
She backs this up with a beautiful photograph of a
cake that her daughter made. Uh Self taught who likes
to work with fondin and she uses vodka to smooth

(28:57):
out her designs. I am including a picture of one
of her creations, a Finding Nemo themed birthday cake for
a child. Thanks again for all you do to make
my boring job wonderful. I did not know about this
trick of using vodka to smooth fondent, but you better
believe I'm gonna use it going forward because I get
in wrestling matches with fondent and make an ugly mess.
We also got one from our listener Gregory, who wrote,

(29:21):
I hope you're staying warm. I'm up in Wisconsin where
the snow won't stop coming. I'm relatively warm here in Atlanta.
It's not a sweltering heatwave, but we've been in the fifties,
which is fine. Uh, Tracy is probably colder than I am.
It's snowed here yesterday, and Gregory writes, your vodka episode
reminded me of when I was studying abroad in Kurzakhstan

(29:42):
and one of my host families gave me a vodka
remedy for my sore throat. In the cold room I
slept in with my host brother, I was given a
cold towel soaked in vodka as a local cure for
my sore throat. It did not help, but it was
an interesting experience. Nonetheless, Uh, thank you for that info.
Good to know you can skip the the vodka soak

(30:03):
towel around your throat and then. Uh. Perhaps my very
favorite of these surprising uses of vodka is from our
listener Allison, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, thank you
so much for the wonderful podcast. It makes my commutes
to and from work much more entertaining and makes up
for missing out on a lot of history classes in
favor of science classes during much of my schooling career.
I just listened to your episode on vodka and I

(30:24):
wanted to add a fun fact from my own field,
which is veterinary medicine. For as long as I've been
in the field, every clinic I've ever been at has
always had a bottle of vodka tucked away in a cupboard,
and why it's there has become one of the favorite
questions to answer for new people in the field. Vodka,
when diluted and given intravenously to a patient suffering from

(30:45):
anti phrase toxicity, can save their life. It prevents the
creation of the byproducts which will cause organ failure and
make the anti freeze so deadly. This can technically be
done with any ethanol, but the favorite I've encountered has
been vodka or perhaps ever Clear. And yes, in case
you were wondering, patients get instantly drunk when this treatment starts.
Looking forward to see what's coming up next, and hope

(31:06):
you're having a wonderful start to I never ever, ever
had heard this story, which is surprising to me because
I have known a lot of veterinarians and I always
asked them a lot of invasive questions about their jobs
because I find it fascinating. Never learned this one, So
thank you, Allison brand New. Also, obviously, we are not
suggesting you do any of this yourself, but that's a

(31:29):
good little piece of info to have. If you would
like to write to us with your surprising use for
vodka or any other historically interesting tidbits, you can do
so at History podcast at how stoe works dot com.
You can also find us pretty much anywhere on social
media as Missed in History when you can go to
missed in History dot com to find our web page,
which is where you can sign up for that trip
to Paris again. Paris trip at the top with an

(31:51):
exclamation point takes you right to all the info. Or
you can listen to any of the back episodes that
have ever existed of our show for all time, long
before Tracy and I were ever involved with it, and
we encourage you to also subscribe to stuff you Missed
in History class. You can do that on the I
Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever
else you get your podcasts. For more on this and

(32:17):
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.