Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchKeelhauling's Real History: Byzantine Law, Jan Blank, and a Denial in 1880
Episode 12538
Telling a coworker the boss keelhauled you sounds harmless until you know what the Dutch word kielhalen, to drag along the keel, meant at sea. A heav…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Ship Anchors: Viking Stocks, Catenary Chains, and the Mushroom Anchor
Episode 12537
The classic anchor shape on a sailor's tattoo caused almost as many problems as it solved. This episode explains how anchors really work, starting wi…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Dry Docks: Song Dynasty Dragon Ships, Henry VII's Mud Wall, and PD-50
Episode 12536
Before dry docks, crews careened ships by grounding them at high tide and waiting for the water to drop, as the English warship Grace Dieu was bedded…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Mayday's Broken French: Frederick Mockford, Croydon Airport, and Pan-Pan
Episode 12535
In the early 1920s, Frederick Stanley Mockford, the officer in charge of radio at Croydon Airport in England, was asked to invent a spoken distress w…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Christopher Columbus's Math Errors: Shrinking the Earth by a Quarter
Episode 12534
Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa around 1451, the son of a wool weaver who also ran a cheese stand, and he taught himself Latin, Portuguese, an…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Splice the Main Brace: A Rope Repair Under Fire Became a Royal Rum Toast
Episode 12533
On May 6, 2023, hours before his coronation, King Charles III sent a joking message to former shipmates of HMS Bronington, the vessel he once command…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Robert Ballard: Nuclear Sub Cover Story, Titanic Debris Trail, and Sinop D
Episode 12532
Robert Ballard was born in 1942 in landlocked Wichita, Kansas, grew up in Southern California where his father became chief engineer for the Minutema…
3 days, 16 hours ago
Soviet Shadow Whaling Ledgers: 48,000 Secret Humpbacks and a Carbon Debt
Episode 12531
In 1994 the Soviet Union handed its official whaling records to the international community, reporting 2,710 humpback whales killed over several deca…
3 days, 16 hours ago
The Nautical Knot: Wet Rope Timing, Chart Latitude, and Pilot Airspeed
Episode 12530
The speed readout on a jetliner's seatback screen uses a unit born from sailors throwing a weighted wooden chip over the stern. The chip log floated …
3 days, 16 hours ago
Harmful Algal Blooms: Toledo's Toxic Tap Water, Red Tide Myths, Dead Zones
Episode 12529
In August 2014, 500,000 people in Toledo, Ohio were told their tap water was toxic and could not be drunk or even boiled for safety, all because of a…
3 days, 16 hours ago