Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchVenetian Gondola: Lopsided Hulls, the Forcola, and Tourist Redesigns
Episode 12528
The black gondola that stands for timeless Venice is largely a 19th century redesign shaped by tourists. Built for a lagoon of shallow mudflats and d…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Torrey Canyon Oil Spill: Napalm on a Tanker and a $50 Lifeboat Loophole
Episode 12527
On March 18, 1967 the supertanker Torrey Canyon, bound from Kuwait to Milford Haven, slammed into Pollard's Rock on the Seven Stones Reef off Cornwal…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Titanic's Gilded Age Luxury, Lifeboat Math, and the Birth of SOLAS
Episode 12526
The RMS Titanic's hold carried a jeweled Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a painting later valued by its owner at $100,000, yet the ship had no searchlig…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Shackleton's Endurance: Crushed in Weddell Sea Ice, Every Man Rescued
Episode 12525
Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914 aimed to cross Antarctica on foot, and its ship began life in Norway as the Polaris, …
3 days, 17 hours ago
Saturation Diving: Weeks Under Pressure, Helium Tremors, a 701 m Record
Episode 12524
Saturation divers live under pressure for weeks, commuting to the seafloor in a sealed bell and spending more than a week decompressing when the job …
3 days, 17 hours ago
Sailor Tattoos: Gunpowder Ink, Protection Papers, and Sailor Jerry
Episode 12523
European sailors were marking their skin at least 200 years before Captain James Cook's 1769 visit to Tahiti, which only gave English the word tattoo…
3 days, 17 hours ago
SOS Signal History: Marconi's CQD, the Titanic Switch, and Mayday's Origins
Episode 12522
SOS does not stand for save our souls or save our ship. It was chosen for its rhythm: three dots, three dashes, three dots sent as one unbroken signa…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Polynesian Wayfinding: Star Compasses, Swells, and the Hokulea Revival
Episode 12521
Polynesian navigators crossed and settled a Pacific larger than Russia and North America combined without compass, chart, or instrument. The expansio…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Liberty Ships: Obsolete Engines, Brittle Steel, and 2,710 Freighters
Episode 12520
Franklin D. Roosevelt called it a dreadful looking object and Time dubbed it an ugly duckling, yet American yards built 2,710 Liberty ships during Wo…
3 days, 17 hours ago
Mercator Projection: Sailors' Rhumb Lines, Map Wars, and Web Mercator Apps
Episode 12519
On a typical classroom wall map Greenland looks about as big as Africa, which is actually 14 times larger. That distortion comes from Gerardus Mercat…
3 days, 17 hours ago