The Dark Reality of Life at Sea

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode Summary: The Dark Reality of Life at Sea

Date: October 2, 2025
Hosts: Anthony Delaney, Maddy Pelling
Guest: Dan Snow

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Overview

In this episode, historians Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling are joined by maritime historian and presenter Dan Snow to dive into the gritty realities of life at sea during the so-called golden age of sail (16th–19th centuries). Far from the romanticized tales of swashbuckling adventurers, this discussion unpacks the sheer brutality, daily challenges, and harrowing ordeals faced by sailors—including disease, mutiny, press-ganging, and shipwreck—all within the claustrophobic world of a wooden ship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Romanticism vs. Brutality of Naval Life

• Dan Snow dismantles the romantic image of heroic seafarers, emphasizing the unimaginable hardship and high death toll from disease and disaster compared to battle ([01:12]–[04:56]):

  • “The reality was far from romantic. This was an era where more sailors died from disease than they did in battle.” – Anthony Delaney [01:12]
  • Ships were “engines of unimaginable transformation” and “the most complex objects ever created by human beings to that point in history.” – Dan Snow [04:56]

• The technological marvel of ships like HMS Victory (built with 800-strong crews, miles of rope, and cutting-edge science) contrasts with the misery endured by sailors ([04:56]–[06:54]).

2. The Psychological and Physical Toll

• Dan Snow shares personal sailing insights, stating that even with modern technology, storms remain terrifying and unfathomable ([06:54]–[07:49]).

  • “I've been in a big storm in the Southern Ocean and I have actually no idea how they survived.” – Dan Snow [07:13]

• The hosts and guest ponder the human drive toward adventure versus naivety or necessity (eg, being a second son or escaping poverty) ([12:49]–[13:43]).

3. The Complexity and Design of Ships

• Ships were multipurpose, reflecting a hellish web of compromises between speed, seaworthiness, armament, and cargo ([10:50]–[12:10]):
  • “They're a product of hellish compromises. You can build a boat that goes fast. ... Everything's a compromise. It's a nightmarish compromise.” – Dan Snow [10:50]
• The crew’s comfort was often secondary to cargo profits, with tragic consequences for mortality ([12:12]–[12:36]).

4. Recruitment and Press Ganging

• The infamous press gang: The British Navy forcibly impressed sailors (especially in emergencies), often targeting experienced mariners rather than landlubbers ([13:43]–[17:29]):

  • "The navy were literally allowed to round people up. ... You could be at sea for years. Oh God, it is hardcore." – Dan Snow [14:05]

• Volunteers also sought wealth or escape, with prize money as an incentive ([16:24]).

5. Shipboard Hierarchies, Discipline, and Mutiny

• Discipline ranged from strict (flogging with the cat o’nine tails) to more sophisticated “management” by experienced officers ([20:59]–[23:57]).

  • “There were some brutal captains, ... flogging ships ... but there is a lot of booze involved. I really do think that without alcohol, this age of European expansion ... would have been completely intolerable.” – Dan Snow [22:11]

• Mutiny was rarer than popular imagination suggests, especially in the Royal Navy’s more professional era ([23:57]–[24:30]).

6. Diversity, Tension, and Social Microcosm

• Ship crews were often extremely diverse (Irish, Danish, North African, Black sailors), creating both tensions and a unique social microcosm ([26:04]–[27:19]).
• Hygiene and disease were rampant dangers; strict rules on sanitation evolved after whole fleets were wiped out ([27:19]–[28:11]).

7. Scurvy and Diet

• Diets were devoid of fresh produce, leading to scurvy: “That is a diet without vitamin C... scurvy is really bad. ... Your old wounds open up, your teeth become loose in the gums. ... Zombification.” – Dan Snow [31:52]–[32:54]
• Hardtack (infested with weevils), salt beef, and daily alcohol rations kept sailors barely alive ([31:52]–[32:53]).

8. Shipwrecks and Battles

• Death by shipwreck was more common than by enemy action; mass casualties due to accidents, storms, and new technologies ([33:09]–[34:32]).

  • “More Brits are killed when the Royal George capsizes off Portsmouth than in the Battle of Trafalgar.” – Dan Snow [33:21]

• Battles themselves were brutal:

  • “You basically... bombard them at not point blank range, at touching range. ... Carronades... just annihilate... First World War levels of casualties.” – Dan Snow [38:12]–[39:14]

9. Piracy: Myth vs. Reality

• Piracy was closely intertwined with legal trade and naval service; the boundaries were often blurred ([35:59]–[36:33]):
  • “There would have been a very very fine line between pirates, merchantmen and naval officers.” – Dan Snow [36:03]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the romanticism gap:
  “There is actually very little way that we can really imagine what this would have been like.” – Anthony Delaney [40:01]

• On the myth of mutinies:
  “There’s very few examples of mutiny in the Royal Navy in the era of [Admiral] Nelson ... The Royal Navy by that period is pretty professional.” – Dan Snow [23:57]

• On hygiene:
  “Weeing and pooing is a massive issue. Because in the middle of the night, it’s howling gale up above...” – Dan Snow [27:19]

• On shipwrecks vs. sea battles:
  “More people killed in shipwrecks than in battle — these are mass casualty events.” – Dan Snow [33:09]

• On choosing a ship for adventure:
  “You’d want to be on a frigate: so, fast, free ship ... just causing trouble.” – Dan Snow [41:20]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:12] – Debunking romantic images: death and disease at sea
• [04:56] – Technological and cultural impact of the Age of Sail
• [06:54] – Modern and historical sailing: storms and the unimaginable hardship
• [10:50] – Design compromises and life onboard
• [13:43] – Press gangs and the recruitment dilemma
• [20:59] – Daily shipboard life: discipline, routine, and alcohol
• [23:57] – Mutiny and the reality of naval discipline
• [26:04] – Diversity and social order on ships
• [31:52] – Scurvy and the horrors of the sailor’s diet
• [33:09] – Shipwrecks, casualties, and disaster
• [35:59] – The true nature of piracy
• [38:12] – Naval battles: carnage and surgery
• [41:07] – Dream voyages: if you could pick one ship...
• [43:21] – Reflections and ship history recommendations

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode starkly reveals that life at sea during the Age of Sail was a hazardous, often desperate existence. Far removed from Hollywood swashbuckling, these were diverse floating communities bound by strict discipline, brutal conditions, and the constant spectre of disease and disaster. Technological marvels though the ships were, their construction and use demanded human endurance few could imagine today. The conversation closes with the hosts and guest reflecting on which ship, if any, they'd have chosen to sail on—emphasizing again the curious mix of adventure and sheer danger that defines the dark reality of life at sea.

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For more episodes on maritime mysteries, shipwrecks, and the dark corners of history, visit After Dark or send in your ship recommendations to [e-mail].

Transcript

[Anthony Delaney]

Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.

[Maddy Pelling]

Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.

[Anthony Delaney]

Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe hey, what's up?

[Mario Lopez]

It's Mario Lopez. Back to school is an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated, a vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect. Everyday moments can become opportunities for someone with bad intentions. Whether you're a parent, teacher, coach or neighbor. Check in, ask questions, stay connected. Blue Campaign is a national awareness initiative that provides resources to help recognize suspected instances of of human trafficking. Learn the signs and how to [e-mail] blue campaign.

[Anthony Delaney]

We all have a picture in our heads of what life was like in the golden age of sailing. We think of adventure, buried treasure and swashbuckling heroes, but the reality was far from romantic. This was an era where more sailors died from disease than they did in battle. Life at sea in this period was a daily struggle for survival in cramped, scurvy, ridden, rat infested exile in the middle of the ocean. Today we're going to explore this brutal reality and find out what it really took to survive a life on the high seas. Welcome to After Dark.

[D]

You look up into the ragged sky. The ship's ropes are coated in ice. All other storms are nothing compared with the violence of these winds that are raising mountainous waves. Any one of them could send you straight to the bottom. These are days of continual terror. The ship rolls incessantly gunwale to so violently that you're in danger of being dashed to pieces against the deck or sides if you ever lose your grip. Already one of the best seamen in the crew has been decanted overboard and drowned. Another dislocated his neck. A third set sent crashing through the hatch to break his thigh. The most remarkable thing about all this. It's only going to get a few lines. In a book you'll eventually write about your adventures at sea. It'll be just a passing mention amidst the tales of mutiny, scurvy and the hunt for treasure on the high seas during the glorious and gloriously dark days of the Age of Sail.

[Maddy Pelling]

It okay, we've done a lot of ship episodes on After Dark. We have done, and I'm gonna list them now and you won't remember okay, go on. Single one.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'll tell you if I remember them.

[Maddy Pelling]

The Terror in Erebus.

[Anthony Delaney]

Remember that one?

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay. Mutiny on the Bounty.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes.

[Maddy Pelling]

The Ghost Ship Marie Celeste.

[Anthony Delaney]

Not a clue. Really don't remember that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow. Okay. The Batavia. You must remember the.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, I remember the Batavia quite soon.

[Maddy Pelling]

And we got a lot of people writing in.

[Anthony Delaney]

I still get pictures of the Batavia in Australia.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay. But today we are joined by the captain of the good ship history here, himself. Our lodestar.

[Dan Snow]

Yes.

[Anthony Delaney]

Maddie, well done. Did you make that up yourself or is it in your.

[Maddy Pelling]

Absolutely did not. This is part of Snow. It's only bloody Dan Snow. Hello, Dan.

[Dan Snow]

Hey, guys. I have heard many of your ship episodes. I love the Batavia. That was cool.

[Anthony Delaney]

Everyone loves the Batavia.

[Dan Snow]

And do they do well? Because if so, I've got. I promise I've got more where that came from.

[Anthony Delaney]

Ships do very well.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And also the stories of the sort of desperate struggle to survive after the ship sinks. Okay, well.

[Anthony Delaney]

And I think it's like this. You come to the right place, enclosed world narrative. Right. Where it's like everything is happening within this wooden world. And people are really intrigued by that.

[Maddy Pelling]

When human nature breaks down.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes, of course. So, Dan, we're Talking about the 16th to the 19th century, generally speaking, in today's episode. This is a really formative part of life at sea and what we understand of the history of life at sea. But how kind of wild and dark is this particular time period for naval travel?

[Dan Snow]

I mean, it is a formative time, as you say, for life at sea. It's a formative time for our planet. I mean, the reason that the world looks the way it does is because these Western Europeans, who hadn't been at the forefront of sort of human development at that point in history, we're talking about the Basques, we're talking about the Portuguese, talking about the Bretons, the Normans, the Cornish, the people from Devon, people from Bristol. So these are the peninsulas. On the end of the peninsula of Eurasia, it just explodes. And they start making, obviously, huge cultural attraction elsewhere and borrowing technology. And out of this sort of milieu of the 15th century comes these gigantic ships capable of ocean travel, which the Chinese had evolved. Fascinating. Then sort of turned away from, but capable of sailing around the world for the first time, for example, crossing the Pacific for the first time, for example. And those become these engines of unimaginable transformation. They take smallpox in the America, just Americas alone. Europeans arrive, 90% of the indigenous population of Americas, as I've heard on your Podcast many times will die over the next 200 years. Right. So that's because of these ocean going ships and the disease they unwittingly travelled across in. They are the most complex objects ever created by human beings to that point in history. Look at HMS Victory in the sort of middle of this period, 1750s, it's laid down and fights the Battle of Trafalgar. Famously, 1805, it is. There's 800 people on board. Imagine logistics keeping them all alive on these long ocean journeys. There's something like 20 miles of rope required, hundreds of oak trees have gone into the construction of that. There is cutting edge science there in terms of guns, in terms of the navigational equipment. So I mean you're talking technological revolution and copper sheathing on the bottom, which in turn is an engine for further industrial revolution. This is military industrial complex stuff. Right. But for the human beings on board to get to the point. Unimaginable. I mean unimaginable because sailing is miserable today. I've crossed the Irish Sea many times.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes, absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

And you just wish you were anywhere else in the world, right? There are seasickness and that's with gps, that is with waterproof clothing.

[Anthony Delaney]

You have done more than just cross the Irish Sea, though. So this is why this is really interesting. Because actually, okay, I know technology has changed, I know the experience is slightly different, but at the baseline those waves stay the same. And you have gone quite a way around the world in some of these things. And what does that do to you in terms of your understanding of the world? How does that shift things?

[Dan Snow]

So what it does to me is I find you can study the history and then usually when you study history and you go somewhere that you guys have been to place. Oh yeah, I can understand. This is beautiful. I get why this story happened in this community, in this place. I understand less. Like I've been in a big storm in the Southern Ocean and I actually go. I have actually no idea how they survive. No idea at all how any human being did this could survive with the equipment they had in the 18th century. Simply unimaginable.

[Maddy Pelling]

Dan, is that what grabs your imagination about it though? Because there is that mystery that you can, as a sailor yourself, go out to some of these places and actually you're not getting any closer to the.

[Dan Snow]

History, you're getting further away.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, that's not what peels.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, I guess so. Cause you read an account of Vasco da Gama's voyage to India for the first time, a sort of European ship has left From Europe, sailed around the bottom of Africa and reached India. And I mean, just the weather. The other humans that deal with the issues within the cruise, the equipment failures in the cruise. I mean, the ship sinking, the scurvy. When you get scurvy, no one knows. No one has a clue about. Yeah. What it is. Your old wounds open up, your teeth become loose in the gums. It's unimaginable that we got corpses lying next to the barely living. You've got just a handful of men left steering the ship. I mean, just total breakdown. I guess what I find fascinating about it, it's a bit like sort of mountaineering. Or when people say, why are you interested in military history? It's not. Cause you're like a sort of bonkers Spitfire passion, you know, I love a spitfire, but for me, it's.

[Anthony Delaney]

Roll it back down.

[Maddy Pelling]

People will be writing in.

[Dan Snow]

It's never. You cannot find humans placed in more extreme situations than in those trenches of the First World War or in that front line of Roman Union or battling around Cape Horn on the wager that's been the subject to that. Or the bounty you guys had talked about. They had a rough time. Or Drake entering the Pacific. Humans cannot be anymore and actually are artificial. They're not meant to be out there in a wooden tub in the 16th century Eating weird food, battered by those winds. We're not designed for that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Let's talk then about these vessels themselves, because you say they're such complex objects, Dan, and that really interests me. And sidebar, by the way, as someone who grew up in Staffordshire and who you know, Reginald Mitchell, home of the Spitfire. How dare you? And it was a long way from the sea. That's very true. Yeah. I'm not. I'm someone who can appreciate the sea from the shoreline. Gorgeous. Love it.

[Dan Snow]

Nice view, nice backdrop.

[Maddy Pelling]

Don't want to be on the water.

[Anthony Delaney]

Can be an ass.

[Maddy Pelling]

No, Absolutely not. Any circus.

[Anthony Delaney]

I think I'd like to.

[Maddy Pelling]

The only time I want to be on the water is I want to be buried like a Viking and pushed up to sea in five, two.

[Anthony Delaney]

Okay.

[Maddy Pelling]

Specifically from Lindisfarne. So if anyone.

[Anthony Delaney]

She's thought about it all week.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh, yeah, that's the plan.

[Anthony Delaney]

Welcome to After Dark, where we think about our funerals.

[Maddy Pelling]

Of course we do.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, of course we do.

[Maddy Pelling]

I have to. And interestingly, in a ship. But yeah, the rest of the time, no. But let's talk about some of these vessels, because, Dan, you've been on replica versions of these, and of course, you know, you can still, you mentioned the Victory. Is that at Portsmouth or Southampton? Portsmouth.

[Dan Snow]

How could you? Only someone from Staffordshire could ask that.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, sorry, I know Portsmouth.

[Anthony Delaney]

We're getting regional now, guys.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's all just the south to me. Yeah, it's just the south.

[Dan Snow]

That's monstrous.

[Maddy Pelling]

But you know that. I mean, that's. I have been there and I have been on Victory and it's such an incredible space telling. The thing I found most interesting was the officers quarters and the interiors, the furniture. Like that's what interested me is. And the. The complete beauty, the complete giving over to aesthetics in a space that is otherwise completely functional. That fascinated me.

[Dan Snow]

Designed to inflict murder. It's bizarre.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, exactly. But let's talk about these vessels, though, because you say they're designed to inflict murder. They are designed in this really complex way to keep a whole community of people alive. They are also war machines. They are for going across the globe, getting to places that in lots of instances, people have never gone to before. Certainly not Western Europeans. So what is it about these objects that is so remarkable?

[Dan Snow]

They are this. They're a product of hellish compromises. Because you can build a boat that goes fast. You can build a boat that's so safe in big storms. You can build a boat that can carry lots of goods and make lots of money when you get home. Or you can build a boat that can put lots of cannon on and rain death down on your enemy. And you can build a boat that's designed to go to uncharted territory with shallow draught and a thick built keel. So if you do bump on the old coral reef, you get away with it. Or you can build a boat which you're very confident in where you're going and you just want to get there to and fro very quickly. And so what you get in this period is this mad melange where everyone's just going, well, I have a bit of this. Everything's a compromise. It's a nightmarish compromise. As you know from the Bounty, they're sort of trying to stick all this breadfruit in. You've got the crew are all packed in or falling out with each other. So Captain Cook chooses, for his trips of exploration to the Pacific, he chooses these colliers, these ships that were designed to carry coal from, roughly speaking, Newcastle to London. So you're always choosing the right. And if you choose the wrong ship, you're in big trouble. So you're trying to design for all of these different jobs and all of these different conditions you sail from Portugal to India. You're leaving the North Atlantic, you are going through the doldrums, the place where there's no wind and it's incredibly hot on the equator. You're crossing the line, you're going through. Then you're going around the tip of southern Africa. It could be driving, it could be gale force winds, hurricane force winds, and then you're going up into the monsoon of India. So, I mean, how on earth are you building a ship that's capable of.

[Maddy Pelling]

How do you plan for that?

[Dan Snow]

How do you plan for that?

[Maddy Pelling]

And I suppose as well, people on board these ships often don't agree what the function of them is. I'm thinking about Cook's voyages when, you know, Joseph Banks, the botanist on board is like, I want to bring all of these plants that we found. And everyone's like, no, there's no way you can bring some of them, but there's not quite that many.

[Dan Snow]

And the owners are always, always saying to the skippers like, we want you to make more space for all these goods. We're going to make more profit on the nutmeg. We're going to bring back from the east. The skip's like, yeah, but I've got to take more supplies for my crew. And Nan's like, don't worry about the crew. Come off, there won't be that many left.

[Maddy Pelling]

By the time you get back, there'll.

[Dan Snow]

Be loads of room and the mortality on these ships. It is simply extraordinary to me why anybody went on this ship. You know, Magellan sells around the world. He doesn't make, he's killed in Southeast Asia and I mean a handful of the hundreds of men that leave.

[Anthony Delaney]

You say this, you say this, but you know, you'd be on one too.

[Dan Snow]

Well, I tell you, as a younger, as a 17 year old, I probably would have done because. And I think it's the same reason that we send young men into battle, because they, at the Battle of Somme, they know it's going to be, well, maybe not Somme, but certain, at certain stages, Passchendaele, for example, later, you know, there's going to be horrific casualties. And I think every One of those 18 year olds think it's not going.

[Anthony Delaney]

To be them, it's going to be them. There's a naivety to it and I.

[Dan Snow]

Think if you're a second son, if you're an island and you like, and you're being beasted by the Protestants, you think, actually I might just escape. And like. So the algorithm feeds you the success, right?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

Dead Men don't tell tales. What you do see is the lad, the local lad that's made good. Everyone knows who Sir Francis Drake is, comes from a very modest family, becomes one of the richest men in Tudor England because of his buccaneering piracy. Call it what you're on the high seas. And so you're all thinking about Drake. You are not thinking about the hundreds of men that follow Drake. Hundreds of men who know only watery graves.

[Anthony Delaney]

Let's talk about then this idea of, you know, we're talking about these people who choose this and who go on this as a form of maybe adventure or escape or whatever it might be. But there are also things called press gang and press ganging. And this could never be me, by the way. I would want comfortable lodgings if I was going to sea. That would be on my rider if I was going. But this isn't exactly what we're getting with Prescott.

[Dan Snow]

This is the opposite of riders. Yeah. So the British government realised that the defence of the ocean around Britain is so essential that you will allow the navy to breach our sort of the God given rights of an Englishman, which are obviously only partially implemented. And there's a lot of hypocrisy. But there was an idea on the continent, if you're a divine right ruler on the continent, you're a sort of tyrant. You just grab anyone you want army and throw them to the front line. In Britain you're not allowed to do that. You have to actually recruit people. You have to. So you take the, you know, you have to take the king shilling. Now there's all sorts of skullduggery in the army. You go and you get them drunk and they sign up, they realize. So look, it's in practice, I think it may have looked quite similar, but the navy were literally allowed to round people up. They could just come and knock on your door like. No. And drag you away and then you could be at sea for years. Oh God, it is hardcore.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

But typically how this was used was the hot press, which was we're just going to take everyone. And that was in times of emergency, the outbreak of Napoleon war, for example. Typically what you do is you don't want landsmen on board. You don't want people that don't know the ropes. That expression, it's incredibly dangerous.

[Anthony Delaney]

I've just gotten that expression that's amazing.

[Dan Snow]

I mean, when you go on one of these tall ships, there is a forest of ropes. Each one has a very precise purpose. No, the ropes.

[Anthony Delaney]

Of course, yes.

[Dan Snow]

That's great. You would go grab the halyard of the fore staysail.

[Maddy Pelling]

I'd be like, stop yelling at me. I don't know what to do.

[Dan Snow]

Then you get hit with a little whip thing as well. But anyways, so actually you want mariners, so what they do is go on the quayside, you go to sailors pubs and you burst in and just drag them off. So typically you're taking them from the merchant fleet. So it's not the case on the whole that they're like breaking into your house, up country farming community. They're just like, sorry, lads, you're all coming to see. But there are some examples of people getting caught up in the press.

[Maddy Pelling]

Wow. And this, it's so telling that this happens for the navy and not necessarily the army, as you say. There are other forms of pushing people into the army. At home, I have an auction. It's an old pewter mug that's got. I think it's from a regiment that was in India in the 19th century and it has a glass bottom. And the idea was that you take the King's shilling, so someone would pop the shilling in your drink and you'd be drinking and then when you got to the bottom of it, you'd be like, oh, shit, somebody's giving me this. And the glass was to check that nobody had done that to you. So, you know, there were other ways to do that. But I think the fact that this is happening to the navy shows how important the British Navy is in this moment, right, that it just needs a constant supply of men because so many of them are going to die out.

[Dan Snow]

Well, many of them gonna die. They just require huge manning. The peacetime navy was smashed because no one's paying tax. So it just is reduced to a shadow of itself. And then in wartime, you have to take all the wrappers off all those ships that are anchored there in the Medway or in Rochester or elsewhere, and then you just have to surge crew on board them. So there's no sort of ta, no reserve, no National Guard. It's really, really intense. But there is a lot of volunteering, I should say. Captain Cook famously volunteered. He left the coal trade and volunteered in the navy. So it could be a route to wealth and a social escalator for men like Cap. Captain Cook, who was born illiterate to a working family, so. And also a captain's success was Captain Cochrane. He was famous for being lucky and he would often stumble across enemy vessels and you got prize money, you got a share of that. The crew even the crew got a very small share, but they got a share of that prize money, so he never struggled to get recruits so people would sign on serve with him. Foreign.

[Anthony Delaney]

Hey, what's up?

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[Anthony Delaney]

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[Dan Snow]

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[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, so we've been press ganged. We've made it onto a Royal Navy ship.

[Anthony Delaney]

Speak for yourself I definitely have not been press ganged.

[Maddy Pelling]

I'm less happy about it than others.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'm like the surgeon on board or something. I have to have some form of comfort.

[Maddy Pelling]

I think you have a choice in this.

[Anthony Delaney]

I don't know.

[Dan Snow]

They wouldn't.

[Anthony Delaney]

Look, look, come on. If you were press ganging, would you come for me?

[Dan Snow]

No, but, you know, I think you're. Whether you're doing this on purpose or not. The famous character from Master and Commander who's the Irish surgeon played by Paul Bettany. So I'm seeing you the sort of handsome, chiseled rather.

[Anthony Delaney]

You can stop there, Dan. It's fine. You've said enough.

[Dan Snow]

Slightly uncomfortable in the maritime world around him, but an intellectual.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, sure, I'll take all of that. That's what I will be. I'll be the ship.

[Dan Snow]

I'll tell you later what the surface do in battle.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, shit. I haven't seen that show, that film. I need to watch it, actually. I think I quite like it.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, so we're on the ship. Obviously, we don't know the ropes necessarily. Well, you might do if you were an experienced sailor already, but we certainly don't. What is life gonna be like aboard? What's our daily routine?

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so if we're on. Sorry, listen, this is all very. I mean, if we're on. If we're on the. Let's go Royal Navy and let's go sort of, roughly speaking, the sort of famous aegisl that people will be familia with the era of Nelson and things. So things are getting sorted out. This is a long way, actually from the age of Drake, where it was all quite freelance y and just utterly chaotic. I mean, again, how anyone survived in the sixth century, actually, I almost don't know. And Drake indeed did in fact die at sea. But he almost died very early in his career in a particularly rough crossing the Atlantic, having been ambushed by the Spanish very early on. Anyway, so if you're in the sort of age of Nelson, you're being paid, there is food provided for you. There's a lot of historians like to argue about this. As you'd expect a lot of it different from ship to ship. There were some brutal captains, no doubt sort of traumatized lunatics or just psychopathic. Some crews were quite famous as being sort of flogging ships. The Cat Nine Tails would come out, which is a whip with nine strands to it, knotted strands, and there would be nine. So cat nine tails and you'd be flogged for a whole range of misdemeanors There was also just arbitrary punishment that got banned as you go through the 18th century, which is senior rates. Could just sort of whack you with a little whip occasionally if you just needed.

[Anthony Delaney]

As long as it's a little whip then as well.

[Maddy Pelling]

Just needed a little bit of encouragement.

[Dan Snow]

Remind you of your duties. Yeah, there was a lot of booze involved. I mean, I really do think that without alcohol, this age of European expansion, which would rewrite the demography of the planet and the political strategic balance of the planet, I think it was almost impossible. And unless people are drinking alcohol, I think it would have been completely intolerable.

[Anthony Delaney]

Isn't it so depressing, though? Can you imagine waking up the next morning with a head on you like a hammer, where you're going, oh, my God, I'm stranded in the middle of. I don't even know where I am. The world that I thought I knew, in Portsmouth or wherever it is, whatever little harbour town, the south, the general south, is totally gone. And here I am with a pounding headache in some kind of a hammock or in some kind of like a wooden slat thing, depending on what the accommodation was. That's not where I am.

[Maddy Pelling]

You'd be used to it, I guess, after a few days.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes, true.

[Dan Snow]

14 inches, by the way, if you have it. You're bumping up against people all the time. I throw it at Drake again, but Drake lied to his crew, said he wasn't going around the world. They all thought they were going to the eastern Mediterranean. So he sails past Morocco and they all start going, hold on.

[Anthony Delaney]

When are we going home? Because I'm tired.

[Maddy Pelling]

But I do think that's really interesting though, that you are at the whim of the person in charge of the ship often and thinking about Mutiny on the Bounty and Captain Bly, and obviously that doesn't go that well for him in the end. But he's someone who has a very strict idea of what discipline should be aboard the ship and how he's gonna run it, and is incredibly unpopular from the get go. And if you've been press ganged into maybe an infamous ship where, you know, the crew is brutally punished, the person in charge is someone who's well known for being violent and meting out these. I mean, it's not an appealing life. And if you suddenly end up on a ship like that and you realize what you're doing, where you're going, what's happening, you can't turn around, there's no jumping off, you're just Stuck in that situation.

[Dan Snow]

And yet there's very few examples of mutiny in the Royal Navy in the era of nurse. There are a few and well, there's some famous examples around weirdly pay mostly in the 1790s, but there are examples of sort of mutinies that happen on a ship like the Bounty and there aren't many where the crew just go, I'm absolutely done with this guy. You know, this guy is completely bizarre. And I think the Royal Navy by that period is pretty professional. There is an understanding that actually the best way to get a crew to sail fast and for everyone to be to everyone to win here is to sort of, roughly speaking, work with the grain.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And it's not now listen, they're all like, there are different periods, different times, different places. There are obviously slave ships that are just a point where they take enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to be sold in the Caribbean and the Americas. Conditions on those unimaginable. Huge numbers of enslaved men, women and children dying and left in amongst their fellow prisoners shackled. They couldn't sit up, they couldn't stand up below deck. So there are, there are all sorts of different types and the crews on those ships were fantastically cruel and I think in turn their officers would have been by this period in the Royal Navy. You're getting a sense that like good leadership there is beginnings, a little bit of hr, there's a little bit of sort of managing the crew and also you don't want the crew to just jump overboard when you do arrive at a and abscond, which would happen as well. You do think I might try and keep them a little bit. Sweet. Promising. Recent scholarship has said that actually it was. I mean modern humans wouldn't be able to cope with it. It's a brutally hard life. But punishment wasn't the worst feature of it probably for me.

[Anthony Delaney]

I think this idea that you're talking about of rowing together in more cases than not, it's certainly what we encounter. Obviously when we cover these ship histories, something usually goes wrong. So actually it's an exception in those cases and we're very aware that it's an exception. But when you're talking down about like press ganging and bringing groups of people together who may not necessarily encounter one another in everyday life, otherwise I'm imagining that it can still be quite tension filled and potentially that there's like dangerous elements, individuals that are brought on. Do we have accounts of that happening?

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, definitely. So I don't want to get the old woke history. Don't slide into our DMs of the woke history. But everyone who goes on board a ship at this time says it was an extraordinarily cosmodern place. You hear Danish, you hear there are people from North Africa. Africa. There are people of, you know, people of color. There are a lot of Irish.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

Vast number of Irish.

[Anthony Delaney]

We tend to get on the sea if we can.

[Dan Snow]

An astonishing portion of Nelson's feet at Trafalgar off the top. Astonishing.

[Anthony Delaney]

So we don't know that in Ireland. You know, we're very difficult with those histories.

[Dan Snow]

We're not comfortable with them yet. It's difficult history. And so obviously Waterloo, as you know as well, the land armies, famously these Irish units and Irishmen serving in English units anyway, so that's why it's thought rich. And you're all living within unbelievably confined space. There is disease. There is a lot of focus on troublemakers, dealing with troublemakers. They might be lashed. They might. I suspect you'd get rid of a troublemaker. You'd say, actually get rid of them at the first port of call. If there's a sort of socialist revolutionary on board. They'd be a bit anachronistic. You might. Which you do see in some of these mutinies in the 1790s, see kind of individual leaders described as troublemakers. But they got quite political and discipline apart from anything else. So less even than the harmoniousness of the ship. Weeing and pooing is a massive issue.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Dan Snow]

Because in the middle of the night it's howling gale up above, you know.

[Maddy Pelling]

And you go actually what, inches from.

[Dan Snow]

Some of the ships? Yeah, I might just go and have a quick wee down the side. Ship and French ship for famously unhygienous. But you. But the Brits were obsessed with cleanliness because they'd learned from bitter experience. I mean, you're talking 1500, 1600 fleets get wiped out by disease. There's a French fleet in the 18th century, seven years war that survives back in Brest just. And then passes on that sort of plague basically to the people of Bress. I mean, wipes out French naval, further undermines the French naval capability in that first out war. And so the Brits were really, really strict on that. So there were serious punishments even for having a little wee down the side. You think? I know what I'll notice in there. It's dark, pitch black in there. Bear in mind. Right, yeah. And no, you had to use the heads. You had to go up to the head of the ship and use the heads and that, where the water would still, with seawater would spray and wash off the. Whatever it was, you know, do you think?

[Maddy Pelling]

I suppose because these ships are floating microcosms of the British Empire, they embody these values. We have, you know, the men below decks with their sort of earthenware mugs and then you've got, you know, beautiful blue and white porcelain in the officers quarters. Like everything is coded according to the structures and hierarchies of the world. Back in Britain, do you think it's fair to say, with the exception. I mean, you referenced the 1790s mutinies. I'm thinking of Spithead and nor in particular, which obviously happened somewhere in the south. I don't know, it's just the south somewhere near there, but, you know, very, very close to home. Whereas, do you think it's fair, Dan, to say that the mutinies that occur, the famous ones, at least in this period, are happening when ships are getting further and further away from that centre of empire in that.

[Dan Snow]

I think a little bit, yeah. When the elastic's stretched. I mean, there are times when, if a ships company arrives back in Britain and they were expecting either leave or to be released from Parisco and they literally that day go, sorry, turn around, lads, you're all transferring now onto HMS Tonnant. We're leaving Port Tom.

[Maddy Pelling]

There were issues that still happens in the army today.

[Dan Snow]

Well, exactly. Well, exactly. But if you're not there, if you're not there because you want to be.

[Maddy Pelling]

Then well, yes, yeah. If you haven't chosen it, but on.

[Dan Snow]

The whole, yes, if you're by yourself on the other side of the world and things get. Things get a bit loose, you can imagine bounty is a great example of that, I think. Again though, I want to say that the nature of the sea in the army, posh people can buy a command with absolutely no experience. Because the theory, there's various theories around that. One is that you want posh people in command of an army because they're revolutionary entities. You've experienced Vola Cromwell in Britain, Ireland. You do not want normal common people being in charge of an army that can march into London and take over power and execute the king. So in army you want posh people also. All they have to do really is show that. There's an old expression in the British army. Sergeants teach men how to fight, officers teach men how to die. If you just get your gear on, stand up straight back in front of the men as the French are advancing and don't flinch when the bullets start. That's sort of the job of that's.

[Anthony Delaney]

How you're gonna do this.

[Dan Snow]

Most people can do that, right. If you want to.

[Anthony Delaney]

Probably not me, but most other people.

[Dan Snow]

You give someone the keys of a naval ship. These are the most expensive thing the British state is building at this point. You want somebody who knows what they're doing. Now there is patronage, surprise, surprise. Well connected and posher. People tend to rise to the top. But there are exams that you have to pass. There is an apprenticeship, you have to serve, you have to do years at sea. People like Captain Cook can move up the ranks. So there is a meritocracy and there. And therefore they are quite. Given the, you know, in all the panoply of the Georgian state, there are people who knew what they were doing in charge of these ships and they knew how to run a crew. They'd gone to sea at 14 and so I think they were quite good at. Some of them didn't need to use the lash. Some of them were good at keeping that very heterodox, crazy, multi confessional, multi ethnic ships company all pointing in the same direction. I think that's just experience. These were really, really good sailors.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. The fact that, that so many of them have gone to sea so young. I'm thinking of. Is it Thomas Raffles who goes to Singapore. He was born on a ship so his mother literally gave birth to him at sea. And so there's so many people like that who are just knocking around this system.

[Dan Snow]

Son of a gun.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. Who lived in the ship.

[Anthony Delaney]

Fancy that, Maddie. Fancy giving birth on a ship.

[Maddy Pelling]

Oh my God.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's a no.

[Maddy Pelling]

I'm in denial and will not be giving birth at any point. Thank you very much.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's not happening.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's not. I choose not to.

[Anthony Delaney]

We were talking about all of these things that, you know, you're talking down about keeping order is important and it's actually relatively common and, and sometimes inspiringly so depending on who's at the helm and all of those things. But some things you don't have control of or to a lesser extent. And I'm talking specifically about one of the big things that we all hear about when we talk about these ships history and that is scurvy. You know, for me it's. I think limes, I think vitamin C deficiency. But what does that actually look like if you are on board all of these ships?

[Dan Snow]

It's a hellish thing. They didn't know. So no freight. You can't transport fresh vegetables so the food is salted beef, salted pork, bit of dried fish sometimes. And it's vegetables for the first few days and then none and hardtack. So bread that's baked super hard, hard, and will last. And you. You whack it to get the weevils to come out of it, and then you soak it in.

[Anthony Delaney]

What's a weevil?

[Dan Snow]

A weevil's just a little. It looks like a little caterpillar, yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, they're actual insects.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah, they're insects, yeah. Oh, so you whack it. Some people ate the weevils for protein.

[Anthony Delaney]

Not for me, but.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. And you dip it in. You know, you dip it in your punch, and then you try and gnaw into it. Just your molars would get torn out. So that is a diet without vitamin C. And that is why on long journeys, like. Like Doug Garmer, like Magellan, frankly, like most like the wager. Like anyone you can mention. Oh. Like Anson going around the world, he takes loads of Chelsea pensioners with him. These old guys. He can't find enough people, so he takes old people from the. From the army's retirement community and all their old wounds from decades before. Start opening up your whole body. I mean, scurvy. Scurvy is really bad.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's quite. Zombification.

[Dan Snow]

Zombification, yeah. I actually don't know why my kids don't get scurvy. Because they avoid cultural outbursts.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do you know, someone in my. My university halls got scared?

[Dan Snow]

Really? That's going some.

[Maddy Pelling]

It was a boy, obviously.

[Dan Snow]

That's. That's white toast every day.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. Yeah, white toast and, like, cans of Coke. I think that's like, literally.

[Anthony Delaney]

That's insane.

[Dan Snow]

That is insane. So. No, and that's hellish. And then, of course, you've got shipwrecks as well, which is loss of life at sea. I mean, you will lose more men in a shipwreck than you do in a battle.

[Anthony Delaney]

You will lose more men in a shipwreck than you will in a battle.

[Dan Snow]

Okay. More people battle Trafalgar. People heard of more Brits are killed when the Royal George capsizes off Port Portsmouth than in the Battle of Trafalgar. More people were killed with Queen Caroline. HMS Queen Caroline, in fact, blew up by mistake than were killed in the Battle of Nile. I mean, so these are mass casualty events when these ships sink. And then in the 19th century, you got the complication of they don't really. They're trying to use all this new technology and incorporate steel and iron and heavy guns and things on all these ships. So you get HMS Captain when the most number of naval personnel killed in an instant between the Napoleon War 1815 ending and the First World War, some about 800 people just gone in an instant flash in the most hellish death you can imagine. Capsizing trapped below, boilers exploding, steam fragments obliterating people anywhere nearby. Complete darkness and the ship sinks to the bottom of the sea in the Bay of Biscay. So these are horrific events and you know, and again, there are ships lost with all hands regularly through this period.

[Anthony Delaney]

Hey, what's up?

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[Anthony Delaney]

I want to talk before we kind of wrap up about one aspect of this shipping history that we recently went to Royal Museum's Greenwich and we were looking at some of the pirates exhibition there.

[Maddy Pelling]

Is this the Royal Week? So I was thinking, I didn't do this.

[Anthony Delaney]

No, Dan and I. Oh, Dan and you.

[Maddy Pelling]

Right, okay.

[Anthony Delaney]

And the Royal we as well. I refer to myself in the third person for now. But what struck me about that exhibition is just the variety within piracy and what that actually looked like and where it was coming from and the different worlds in which pirates were operating in and functioning in different ways as a result of that. Talk to me about that pirate life, say in the 18th, early 19th century. Is it what we see in Pirates of the Caribbean is a Treasure island, or is it something far more nuanced?

[Dan Snow]

I think there were a few less sort of ghosts involved, but. Well, although, depending on your point of view, I think there would have been a very, very, very fine line between pirates, merchantmen and naval officers and all certain naval ratings. And actually in times of peace you've got a massive all the navy just fires all of it. Lots of sailors and lots of its experience of senior sailors and like ships, petty officers and things. And a lot of them would go and work in the merchant fleet and part of the merchant fleet might be, you know, if you sail past a Danish ship and you had a rather. If you sailed past a Spanish ship and there was a war going on and you might, you know, there was a fin between trading and sort of buccaneering I think. And you see that, you see it from Drake onwards. So as you say, it's everything, you know, the dirty world of the transatlantic slave trade. You're down there, you're a ship, you've got some Africans on board, there's another ship trading. You go and take their Africans and sort of kill a few crew members. It's just another little twist in the tale of what is just a sort of monstrous scene going on. Generally in the same way that you might a bit of. So smuggling. Where does smuggling tip over to piracy? You're bringing excise free, you know, tax free brandy into the coast of England and you sort of shots are fired occasionally with some excise men. You're branded a pirate, you know, whatever. So it's a very, very diverse world. But what's amazing I suddenly thought as I was saying this is that we haven't even talked about sea battles yet because everyone, everyone's perception will be the mass calculus. We talked about disease and discipline and ships lost at sea. But of course we haven't even talked about the horror that would be in a sea battle where you. Basically the idea is Nelson's plan was to get as close as you can to the enemy and bombard them at not point blank range, at touching range. So much so that when enemy ships catch fire, you have to start throwing buckets of water on your own ship because you're worried the fire's gonna spread. I mean you're interlocked with the enemy ship and you're firing are people jumping over then people jumping over. One famous Irishman at the Battle of Trafalgar climbed up the rudder of a French ship and sort of fought his way through the main. It was full Hollywood. It's an extraordinary story. Yeah, it's full, but yeah. And at one stage HMS Victory, actually I think it's the Temeraire. A British ship curiously crashes into the redouble French ship and the French crew had been gather on the bows they knew they couldn't beat HMS Victory in a cannon battle. They began the bounce to jump onto HMS Victory and take it over by force, hand to hand. And Temeraire just comes out of the smoke, out of nowhere, crashes into her and just fires these carronades, these cutting edge, state of the art guns that just annihilate, I mean First World War levels of casualties. This French, Korea, supersonic pieces of iron just scream through these men, shattering limbs, tearing people. When they do hit wood, they gouge, splinter. You've got foot long sharp splinters of wood just sort of flipping through the air, ripping people to piece. And that's where the surgeon comes in because he's so vaguely, vaguely hiding.

[Anthony Delaney]

And then I'll emerge.

[Dan Snow]

No, he's down the depths of the ship and they're carrying people down these long queues. Nelson's carried down at Trafalgar and he says, and everyone goes, the Admiral's here. And Nelson says, there's nothing the surgeon can do for me. I don't want to jump the queue. And he just puts himself in the corner and slowly drowns in his own blood. But, you know, so. And the surgeon's just there, his tools are getting blunt and he's soaring limbs off, trying to save. Because he's trying to save limbs that have been smashed or rather trying to save the human life after a limb has been smashed. So those are the battles that people know about and they're terrible, they can be terrible enough, but more people die of disease.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

And whether the stories in the Seven Years War where they're working the sails in sub zero conditions outside Louisburg on the coast of Canada, you can imagine stuff, places that we can hardly go today in the winter they're there trying to work sails and ropes. I mean, it's just wild.

[Anthony Delaney]

I think that's one of the things I will take away. We do have a closing question for you, but before we get there, I think that's one of the things I'm going to take away from this conversation is that there, there's actually very little way that we can really imagine what this would have been like. I think that was a really good point to go. You think you might be able to. Oh, I feel a bit seasick. Oh, we're very close together.

[Maddy Pelling]

But there's so much Hollywood depiction.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. Because also we don't know just what the months of sleep deprivation, of that kind of diet, perhaps some shortages of food, of the trauma that we've witnessed. Like we, I don't think we can be Begin to sort of, you can go, I've climbed a mast and I've in sub zero temperatures and certainly.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah, but then you in your modern.

[Dan Snow]

Gear then you had hot chocolate.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, that kind of soul destroying thing.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yeah. The psychological and the physical effect is.

[Dan Snow]

And we know from bones of sailors, for example, the Mary Rose sailors is their, their skeletons were hammered, you know, they were showing signs of extraordinary hard labor quite early in all.

[Anthony Delaney]

Dying at 32 or something. Ridiculous. Okay, my final question before we go is this. If you had to pick one ship.

[Dan Snow]

Oh, like how can you ask me this?

[Anthony Delaney]

Because it's a podcast and I've been asked to ask questions. No, if you had to pick one ship that you could go on the voyage, be that a battle, be that piracy, be that exploration, whatever it might be, what ship would it be?

[Dan Snow]

My. Well, it's too cruel. It's like asking truth to your children. But I think there's a. You'd want to be on a frigate so fast free ship operating by itself. You don't want to be in a big battleship where you're being ordered around by the Admiral, battleships around all the time waiting for a battle to occur. So it's 99% boredom, 1% absolute carnage. You want to be on a ship and you're just raiding, so you're just causing trouble. So people might have heard of Thomas Cochrane, Lord Cochrane. He's the character in fact who the master and commander film and books are based on. His job is just to go around the coast of Europe and just make an absolute nuisance of himself. And he lands in the middle of the night and he captures French shore batteries and blows them up and he captures ships full of wine and silver and he pretends he's Danish and attacks a conqueror. He just, he's just naughty and brilliant and he goes on to have this extraordinary career. And he at one stage creates a big floating bomb and sails it towards a French fleet at anchor with a gale rising. He sets the powder thing, jumps off the back of this ship, they row away into this huge storm. The ship blows up and all the other ships going and try and attack the French. I mean so it was just sun up to sundown. In fact, beyond that, hijinks. Yeah, yeah. So that is the ship I'd like to take.

[Maddy Pelling]

We are overjoyed. You a period drama of this. I know there's the film, but they.

[Anthony Delaney]

Only made the Disney can do something or something. And who is your favorite child? No, no. Okay, we won't make you answer that one.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do you not want to answer about the ship yourself?

[Anthony Delaney]

I wouldn't know enough about ships to.

[Dan Snow]

Know the only ships you've covered on this podcast. They've all ended. Very, very.

[Anthony Delaney]

I will say I am a ship history converse. Before I started doing After Dark, I was like, I don't care about ship histories. But I actually since doing this, I love them now. It's really. And actually I was talking to you the other day. I'm thinking about writing about a ship history at some point in the future. This world on the sea fascinates me, this little enclosed thing. So I don't have enough broad knowledge to say, but maybe something like the Beagle where it's a Discovery ship and it's, you know, like that kind of a thing and a little more gentler. And what about you?

[Dan Snow]

Do you have one?

[Maddy Pelling]

If I could be not an active participant, but a fly on the wall where I don't die and I don't have to partake of the diet or the punishments or anything, it would have to be the terror. I'd want to go and see what.

[Dan Snow]

Happened to those went wrong there.

[Anthony Delaney]

Except you'd never be able to come back and tell us.

[Maddy Pelling]

No, I'd have like a hot water bottle and like a coat and I'd be fine. I'd just be observing and they wouldn't be able to see me. Like, I just, I just like to see what happens.

[Dan Snow]

Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, that cold.

[Anthony Delaney]

I'd like the cold anyway.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, well, there we go. If you have any ship recommendations, that's ship recommendations for episodes, then do email in after darkhistoryhit.com we really want to hear. We want to do more, I think. And also the other day we did a train episode and now I'm obsessed with doing more train trains, crimes on trains. So any kind of transportation.

[Anthony Delaney]

Yeah, basically.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts and we will see you next time. Goodbye.