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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild.
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Our world is full of the unexplainable.
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And if history is an open book,
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all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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The Kuril Islands are a relatively remote place off the east coast of Russia, north of Japan. It's a volcanic chain that most people would struggle to point out on a map. The winters are cold, the summers are thick with fog. Not what one thinks of when you mention volcanic island in the Pacific. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained a garrison on the island of Yturup. The garrison was small, but had six self propelled barges to help maintain supply lines between them and the mainland. During the winter of 1959, most of these barges were beached in order to protect them from winter storms. However, in early January of 1960, Soviet command alerted them of an incoming supply ship. So two of these barges were fueled and pushed back out into the sea where they were attached with mooring lines. These barges, designated T97 and T36, were maintained by small skeleton crews. On January 17, while these men were aboard, a storm struck. Intense winds battered at the moorings of both barges. The tether on barge T36 snapped and the 100 ton ship began to drift in danger of being swept out to sea. The crew went to work right away, starting the barge's engines in an attempt to keep her away from the rocks, and all the while they radioed to shore requesting assistance. At the time, T36 had four men on board and that was it. They fought that storm on and off for around 10 straight hours until finally the winds let up. It was a slight relief, although only a temporary one. You see, they were in the eye of the storm and they realized that their safest course of action would be to approach the beach with their barge. Around the same time, though T97, the other barge, was attempting to do the same thing and it had managed to beach the barge successfully. As the crew of T36 steered their barge toward a safer part of shore, the unthinkable happened. They ran out of fuel. There was nothing the four men on board could do but wait for the storm to return. The currents carried them south farther and farther away from the island until they were floating in open ocean. Their radio had been damaged during the storm, so there was no way to call for help anymore. The last message that they Sent to the garrison was, we anticipate disaster. We cannot come ashore. Once the storm subsided, the garrison launched a search party in the surrounding waters. They found wreckage floating in the ocean and assumed the T36 had sunk. At the same time, the T36, still very much afloat by the way, was drifting through the North Pacific on a strong current to the east, taking them at a speed of 78 miles per day. The water around the T36 barge was open and very empty. And even worse, the strong current meant that fishing was impossible. Although the four men did try their best, T36 floated through a stretch of sea reserved for Soviet missile testing, not seeing a single vessel along the way. On their second day of floating, they took a complete inventory of their supplies. Their food was scant. A small supply of cereal, a loaf of bread and a bunch of potatoes. During the storm, diesel fuel had gotten into the potatoes, so those were useless. Their only source of fresh water was the system that cooled the engine. They rationed all of these carefully and collected rainwater when they could to stave off their thirst. Their three day supply of food lasted for 16 days. Once they ran out, though, they boiled leather objects such as one of their belts, their shoelaces, and the strap from a walkie talkie so they could eat them. As you'd imagine, the men lost weight fast, and in the winter cold, they all had to share one bunk for warmth. However, none of them turned on each other, all grimly determined to press on wherever their barge might take them. And then, after a grueling 49 days, their ordeal came to an abrupt end. On March 7, they were spotted by helicopters dispatched by the US aircraft carrier the USS Kearsarge. At first, the Russian sailors attempted to explain to the helicopters that they only needed food and supplies and then could get back on their own. They feared that accepting American help would be seen as betrayal by the Soviet Union. But eventually, they caved in and accepted American rescue. The four Russian soldiers, skinny and disheveled, stumbled aboard the carrier in a kind of daze. They were cautious with how much they ate, aware of the danger of overeating after starvation. Remarkably, they received a hero's welcome in
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both San Francisco and Moscow.
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It seems that even in the height of the Cold War, their achievement was seen as a universal human triumph, because for as cold as the war might have been, the open ocean was far colder. We all know the names of famous Western explorers, people like Christopher Columbus, Francis Drake, Ferdinand Magellan. But there is one explorer who beat them all to the punch. Exploring the Oceans decades before they did. The explorer in question wasn't European either, but Chinese, and his name was Zheng He. Zheng he was born in the early 1370s in southwestern China to a Muslim family. Unfortunately, they were caught up in the constant fighting between the Mongols and the Chinese emperors at the time. When Zheng he was a young boy, his father was killed and he was captured by the armies of the Ming dynasty. After that, he was taken to work at the royal court, which should have been a significant opportunity to improve his social standing. However, although medieval China was a fairly prosperous and enlightened place, service within the court was often brutal. As a result, Zheng he and other young male captives like him were castrated. Now, this was a common practice at the time. The rationale was that a eunuch, as these young men were known, would not have the ability or the desire to have children and therefore create a dynasty of their own. Therefore, they could be trusted as the most loyal possible servants to the emperor. Zheng he was then made a servant of the emperor's son, Zhudi. Zhudi was bold and brash and prone to getting into trouble. But Zheng he, who eventually grew up into a seven foot tall bodyguard of sorts to the prince, was always there to keep him safe. When his father passed away in 1402, Zhudi became emperor. He was fairly arrogant and selfish as an emperor, looking to expand his authority as much as possible. This was difficult when the Mongols continued to be a problem in the West. Zhu Di actually moved the imperial capital from Nanjing to Beijing so that he could be closer to the Great Wall and better direct his armies. But he had other plans in mind for his friend Zheng He. The new emperor wanted Zheng he to expand Chinese authority across the ocean to Southeast Asia and beyond. He believed that all neighboring countries should acknowledge Chinese superiority and be forced to trade with China. To this end, Zheng he and Zhudi oversaw the construction of the largest navy the world had ever seen. They built hundreds of ships, some of them the length of a soccer field. These huge ships had four to five masts and double layered hulls where large amounts of drinking water could be stored. It was still a hundred years before the era of European exploration. And here they were making ships more advanced than anything the Europeans would eventually use. Zheng he set sail on his first voyage in 1405. He had a combined crew numbering in the tens of thousands. Their flotilla was really more of a large city. They visited Vietnam, a large part of Southeast Asian islands like Sumatra and Java. In subsequent voyages, Zheng he sailed as far as India, Eastern Africa, and even the Persian Gulf. And in all of these places, Zheng he would present the leaders with Chinese gifts like silk and porcelain, and demand valuable goods such as spices and jewels. In return, the leader had to verbally acknowledge the superiority of the Chinese emperor, becoming a vassal state of sorts. Now, sometimes Zheng he ran into a leader who wouldn't give in to his demands. In these cases, he would capture the leader and take them back to China, where they would be forced to literally bow to the emperor before being returned home. Zheng he's fleet never made it as far as Europe, not because they couldn't. They just didn't have any interest in doing so. All the evidence they had about Europe at this time was that it was a poor, violent place with little in the way of luxury goods or culture. Zheng he's seventh and final voyage took place from 1431 to 1433. Now, by this point, Zhu Di had passed away and been replaced by his son, who was much more conservative. He wasn't exactly excited by the fact that his father had nearly bankrupted the country on expensive building projects like Zheng he's treasure fleet. So Zheng he took his final opportunity to visit Mecca in modern day Saudi Arabia, an important pilgrimage for many Muslims. It was something that his father had done, but that he had somehow not yet had a chance to do. Zheng he passed away shortly after. Whether he died at sea or in China isn't known. The new emperor had many records of his voyages destroyed, as well as the entire fleet. It was seen as a decadent national embarrassment. Only recently have historians been able to piece the story of Jing he's life back together. His voyages may not have been practical, but as we all know, sometimes curiosity is its own reward.
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I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosity's podcast. The show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series and television show and you can learn all about it over@theworldoflore.com and until next time, stay curious.
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.