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- [00:01]
Sponsor
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- [00:37]
Charlie Gibson
Welcome back, Bookcasers. Charlie Gibson here. And your name again was Kate Gibson.
- [00:43]
Kate Gibson
When you choose to remember it. I am your daughter and the other half of the team that hosts this.
- [00:49]
Charlie Gibson
Show, for better or worse, the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson. Last week we mentioned the fact that this is the official podcast of the National Hockey League.
- [00:59]
Kate Gibson
And we didn't get sued.
- [01:00]
Charlie Gibson
No, we didn't get sued, but some people asked, why would the National Hockey League need an official podcast? And I have an answer for you.
- [01:09]
Kate Gibson
Okay. I can't wait. What would it be?
- [01:11]
Charlie Gibson
Well, those people, they get into the penalty box, they need something to do, so they read.
- [01:17]
Kate Gibson
Oh, my God. Okay.
- [01:18]
Charlie Gibson
That's absolutely why we haven't been sued yet by the National Hockey League. So it's okay.
- [01:23]
Kate Gibson
It's coming any day now.
- [01:25]
Charlie Gibson
Well, we're also the official podcast of Betty Crocker's cake mixes. We'll get into that later.
- [01:30]
Kate Gibson
We'll get into that. We'll offend those people later. Stay with us. Stay tuned. You don't want to miss a minute.
- [01:36]
Charlie Gibson
Enough of this. Anyway, the book this week, marriage at Sea. Written by a woman named Sophie Elmhurst, Marriage at sea involves a 1973 incident that really happened. This is a nonfiction book, but it's a fascinating book about a couple who decide that they want to sail from England, emigrate to New Zealand. They're going to sail their boat that they built and put together. And all of a sudden, when they're off the coast of South America heading for the Galapagos, they're in the Pacific, heading for the Galapagos. A whale rears up. An injured whale that has been injured by a fishing boat rears up and sinks their boat. And then they have to survive for, what is it? 117, 118 days.
- [02:26]
Kate Gibson
They survive 118 days without rescue. And this book is not just a spellbinding play by play. And it is that, but it's an incredible examination of Marilyn and Morris's psyche as they survived these 118 days. How they survived them with their food supplies, their water supplies, et cetera, but also how they survived them psychologically. And it's quite a feat. This was not a couple that went down lightly. And it's amazing that they survived. It's also amazing some of the things they saw while they were desperately trying to be rescued.
- [03:01]
Charlie Gibson
Well, it's really interesting that here's a. Here's a whale that rears up, puts a big hole in their boat. They try to repair it, they can't, so they repair to the life raft. And which, which is. When you see pictures of it, it's hard to believe it's a kiddie pool.
- [03:17]
Kate Gibson
With a tent on top of it.
- [03:18]
Charlie Gibson
Yes. Basically how it can survive in heavy seas of the Pacific. As they say, they were bailing all the time. But how did they get. They were so cool headed when the whale reared up and they got what they could off the boat, but they had no food.
- [03:36]
Kate Gibson
Yeah. And there must have been fights. I mean, there must have been moments where she wanted to push him out of the life raft and there must have been moments where he wanted to do the same. These were not people who, you know, one was sort of determined to be rescued and was convinced that they would be. And one of whom was very fatalistic and was absolutely convinced that their life was over and was just thinking about how they could do that quickly and quietly. Like these were not two people who necessarily thought the same way. That's not to say they weren't in love and they weren't dependent upon each other, but they had very different ways of looking at their situation. And yet they became totally dependent on each other. And they survived and were emaciated and couldn't hold their legs up when they were rescued. I mean, it's just, it's an incredible story.
- [04:21]
Charlie Gibson
Ingenious how they figured out what to eat and were willing to eat it. Some of it makes my stomach crawl. But they, they were surrounded by fish. They found flying fish coming on the life raft. They ate turtles, they ate sharks.
- [04:37]
Kate Gibson
This was an incredibly resourceful couple and they made. Before we get to the interview, they made some distinct choices. They decided that their journey was going to be without contact to the outside world because you might say, why didn't they use a radio? Well, they didn't have one, so consciously.
- [04:54]
Charlie Gibson
Decided not to take one.
- [04:55]
Kate Gibson
Consciously decided not to do that. So they really were without contact to the outside world when they went down and they sat in that life raft and watched their boat go down. I can't imagine how that must have felt. This is a. And a wonderful book. And it's also beautifully written.
- [05:10]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah.
- [05:10]
Kate Gibson
So we actually had Sophie do a little bit of a reading because we wanted you to get a sense of the fact that not only is it a terrific nonfiction book, but it's, it's. It's just beautifully written. So we had Sophie read some of her work and we will go to that now.
- [05:24]
Sophie Elmhurst
But like all utopian visions, theirs had its contradictions. They'd sold all their belongings to build a boat. They were abandoning everyone they knew to live afloat alone, unshackled from obligation and community, from all the things that bind a person to a place or its people, from the day to day indignities of ordinary life and the unseen rules whose weight perhaps you feel only in the place you were raised. After all, what is more self interested than running away?
- [05:55]
Charlie Gibson
That reading about the fact that they had this. This idea that they wanted to get away from the rest of the world. Sophie Elmhurst discovered this story when she was looking for pieces that she might write in a journalistic manner about people who wanted to get away and, and.
- [06:11]
Kate Gibson
Live on the ocean.
- [06:12]
Charlie Gibson
And this story fascinated her as it fascinated us as we read Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst. Sophie Elmhurst, it is a pleasure, really a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. A Marriage at Sea. Both Kate and I loved this. And I wonder, just to start, if you could give us an impression of the two principal characters, Maurice and Marilyn Bailey. What sense did you form of them, their motivation for such an adventure? Were they naive? Were they very clear headed about what they were drawing? Give us a little thumbnail sketch of the two of them.
- [06:51]
Sophie Elmhurst
Sure, they were wildly different, I guess that's the first thing to say. But were sort of wonderfully united around certain things, not least going on this adventure in the first place. So I guess to backtrack a little bit, to give a sort of sense of where they came from as characters. They both grew up in this town in the middle of England called Derby. And Morris had had a pretty tough upbringing. Fairly affectionless, I think he would have described it. And he'd become quite a lonely, awkward young man. You know, he did his job, he had some hobbies, and he lived alone. And it was a kind of quite a small life that he led until he met Maharilyn. And she was a bit younger and she was just a kind of live wire, you know. By all accounts, this isn't just my sort of impression, but talking to her half sister and people who knew her when she was younger, she was a real force. She grew up with her parents and stayed, was still living at home when she met Morris, you know, this was the 60s, so it was a more conventional time. But she just had this spirit in her and a kind of desire to experience life in various unconventional forms. And I think through Morris sort of found someone who was already exploring the world more than she'd had the chance to yet. But, you know, he flew planes and loved climbing mountains and sailed. And so I think he opened a bit of a door to the world for her. But without her, he would never have embarked on what they ended up embarking on, which was this, you know, sailing around the world in their little boat to go. And eventually the idea was to move to New Zealand. And he always said, you know, if she hadn't sort of driven through, as was her way, the plan, and decided to sell their house, all their belongings, move, you know, spend years building a boat, you know, it was a sort of major undertaking. They weren't rich people. This wasn't something they could just do in their spare time. It was a full life transformation. And that was, I think, largely because of Marilyn and this almost kind of supernatural fervor and drive that she had for life.
- [08:53]
Kate Gibson
I've got to ask about two. Two choices that they made and ask you, were these two choices reckless? They go on this journey around the world, they don't carry a radio and she doesn't learn to swim. Are they reckless in those choices? And were they reckless in general? Because they don't strike me, when I read their backgrounds as reckless people.
- [09:13]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, they had these, like, anomalous kind of decisions where it seems mad, it seems beyond reckless. It seems sort of delusional that you would embark on a voyage like this and not know how to swim and not have a radio. And yet somehow it's completely in keeping, I feel like, with them, once you get to know them a bit more, you know, that the radio thing wasn't whimsical. It was almost like a philosophical choice for Morris, it went right to the heart of who he was and how he thought about the world and how he thought about this trip. And he wanted to be cut off. You know, he wanted to be away from civilization. He wanted to escape his past, his upbringing, England, everything. And I think it was very symbolic, therefore, not to have a radio. And Marilyn and not learning to swim is sort of, in some ways more perplexing. But again, speaks to a kind of almost like a self belief, a stubbornness, a resilience to her. You know, I think she just thought, well, look, she's probably right to a certain degree. If something goes wrong out in the middle of the ocean and we're, you know, the worst happens, well, how likely are we to survive that anyway? Or, you know, what's the worst that can happen?
- [10:19]
Charlie Gibson
As you researched their story, were you most struck by the physical hardships they endured or the emotional and psychological hardships that they endured?
- [10:30]
Sophie Elmhurst
That's such a good question. Definitely what interested me the most and what I spent the most time thinking about was the latter, the emotional and psychological. And that's really why I wanted to tell the story that, you know, the physical hardships, well, I suppose they're more obvious and they're more extreme, but they're practical. And you deal with them in a way quite quickly. I think if you're people who are going to survive as they were, they were practical people. And she especially, you know, could set up these systems, you know, could figure out how to catch the rainwater, figure out how to fish, how to catch, you know, the turtles with your bare hands and, you know, the rest of it. Those were kind of almost simpler or more straightforward to overcome. Right. Each one was a sort of practical challenge. And then you had to find your way through that challenge. Whereas the emotional and the psychological, the sheer just idea of being trapped on a life raft with your spouse for a long period of time, how that works, what happens in that kind of crucible, that like fiercely claustrophobic setting. And especially as she was dealing with a spouse who was really struggling psychologically, to me, that was endlessly fascinating, you know, and I still feel like I'm still thinking about it.
- [11:40]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, I was very struck by how practical they were about things. If, if I were in a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and a whale reared up and destroyed my boat, I'd panic right away. But it was amazing how cool headed they were.
- [11:56]
Kate Gibson
Well, and Marilyn did some things that I think, you know, on land would be considered whimsical. She made cards, she made dominoes out of paper, she planned menus for future meals. And yet there's a practicality in that because in some ways that probably stopped them from, from their mind snapping in a way. I mean, was there a practicality to that?
- [12:16]
Sophie Elmhurst
Totally. No. I think she realized very early on, once she realized that Morris was sort of having the reaction he was having, it was a lot of self blame, a lot of guilt. He, you know, and clear sort of depression, you know, despair and into depression. And she realized that the task that lay ahead of her, the sort of greatest task that lay ahead of her was trying to keep his mind occupied, to try and ward off those sort of circling negative thoughts. And what he was very honest about in the aftermath, you know, very, you know, quite sort of specific suicidal thoughts as well. You know, he was thinking, how, you know, how do we end this? Is there enough gas in the canister that we can. We can just end this now? But she knows the truth, which is like, you've got to do anything you can to keep your mind sort of feeding on something apart from itself. Because there's nothing that's worse for a mind than when it returns on itself.
- [13:05]
Charlie Gibson
I've seen pictures of the life raft. I sort of had an image of that. It would be a little boat with pontoons on the side. No, it was sort of like a kiddie pool with a cover. And then I've seen a chart of how they drifted, how far from South American shores they were. And they came up with schemes to try and control their movement, which I found fascinating, which involved rowing and turtles. You should. You should explain what schemes they came up with. And how did turtles fit into that?
- [13:40]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, I mean, the first one, the rowing makes more sense. And they tried it. It was too hot in the day, but they tried overnight to take turns rowing. You know, one would sleep and one would row and they were just burning through their water supply. They were exhausted. They quick. You know, it's obviously just hugely, physically arduous task anyway. But if you're doing it in shifts overnight, you know, they. They just knew it wasn't sustainable. But the turtles, they had this kind of. Yeah, dual relationship with. Whereas they. Where they would pull them out and cut their heads off and eat their eyeballs. But they would also try to. Would adopt them as sort of pets. Sometimes in. In the life raft, they would have one or two kind of pattering around. And then there was. You know, there was so. They were so plentiful. Cause they were near the Galapagos. It was this sort of rich part of the ocean. And they were so plentiful that they tried sort of harnessing these kind of turtles that became almost their sort of friends. And Marin would try and kind of rig up a kind of rope around them and thought they were such strong swimmers that maybe they'd be able to sort of tow them into the Galapagos again. Obviously it didn't work for very long. But it was kind of indicative of her. Yeah, well, her sort of sometimes I think almost otherworldly ideas of what might be possible. But you know, that those ideas were sort of also what kept her going in a way, like trying these things.
- [14:52]
Charlie Gibson
So we'll ask Sophie Elmhurst to take a pause. We'll be back. His name is Maurice, but it pronounced.
- [14:57]
Kate Gibson
Spelled Maurice M A U R I.
- [14:59]
Charlie Gibson
C but pronounced Maurice in in England and I guess here in the United States. Anyway, we'll be back with more with Sophie Elmhurst after this. If you went on a road trip and you didn't stop for a Big Mac or drop a crispy fry between the car seats or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that would. It wasn't a road trip. It was just a really long drive.
- [15:27]
Sophie Elmhurst
At participating McDonald's.
- [15:29]
Charlie Gibson
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal.
- [15:45]
Sponsor
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- [15:47]
Charlie Gibson
Give it a try and mintmobile.com switch.
- [15:50]
Sophie Elmhurst
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- [15:57]
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- [16:35]
Kate Gibson
I've read a lot about your research process and I know that you read Morris's self published book of letters where he sort of arduously goes over his feelings and his grief and his memories of that time. And I was wondering, you know, you have so much of Morris perspective. Was it harder to get at Marilyn's feelings?
- [16:55]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, no, it was definitely harder. I mean, I had, it was lucky enough in the sort of, you know, the really rich sort of body of materials. But chief among them in a way was this diary that she had written day to day, you know, that literally sort of handwritten and preserved and that Maurice had kept for years and years and years, and then someone had photographed. And it gives you a sense of all the things she's trying to do and the importance just of keeping the log in terms of sanity. So in a way, it becomes a sort of evidence of what. The kind of ways that she was sort of finding to, like, keep her mind in order.
- [17:27]
Charlie Gibson
He did despair. Did you ever get a sense from the readings that she was ever on the verge of despair?
- [17:35]
Sophie Elmhurst
No. There's a couple of moments in her diary, actually, and I think I quote one or two of them where, particularly when the ships are going past. And, you know, so there are about seven, I think, ships that go past that they try in all these different ways to get their attention. You know, flares that don't light or, you know, they burn whatever they, you know, old rags. These ships go past. And you can imagine in that moment that is just sort of the peak of despair in a way. Like you've done everything you can do to survive within this sort of terrifyingly limited kind of context. And there are these potential sources of rescue just sailing past, you know, probably only a couple of miles away, and somehow you're invisible to them. You know, they never get. And in the. There are a couple of times after that happens that she writes, and it's very short form. She just will write something like, you know, despair, no hope. I give up. You know, maybe we just. This is. You know, there's no hope for us. And it's. It's never more than that. It's never more than a line or two. As I say, you never get the feeling that she sort of dwells in the despair in the way that Morris did.
- [18:33]
Kate Gibson
It's really. It's. It's. Those were the moments that really got to me, when the ships pass by. Because Hollywood movies tell you it's always the first boat, and it's always the intrepid captain who's looking through his thing.
- [18:44]
Sophie Elmhurst
He says, oh.
- [18:44]
Kate Gibson
Oh, my gosh. But I can't imagine that many boats going by and not being seen.
- [18:50]
Sophie Elmhurst
Right. I know it is. I mean, I found that there was so much about the story. You know, I've never been sailing. This is not my world. You know, I've never been to the. You know, I can't imagine.
- [19:00]
Kate Gibson
You want to go now.
- [19:02]
Sophie Elmhurst
No, it didn't really recommend itself, but I think it was all these sort of. It was such a. It's such an extreme story, and yet it kind of, in all its sort of I don't know. In all its particular. In certain sort of specific moments, it seems to have such a sort of universal kind of impact, I think, or resonance. And one of those is that, like, those ships sort of represent hope, don't they? Like the ultimate hope and the ultimate feeling of, like, crushing disappointment when hope is lost.
- [19:32]
Charlie Gibson
So ship number eight that they spot finally rescues them. What state were they in physically, at the time they were rescued?
- [19:41]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, well, I mean, they were physically, you know, right near the end. I think if they'd had even a couple, a few more days, they wouldn't have been alive. I know the sort of. The sort of physical state of them. Mostly from an amazing account that was published in the Korean newspapers by the captain of the ship that rescued them. It was a South Korean fishing vessel. He can't even tell what he's seeing at first. He knows this sort of physical, you know, moving bodies, but he can't tell if it's a man or a woman or what age they are. They look. Clearly, they're so emaciated, sort of grizzled, long hair, you know, emaciated and very. I mean, everything stinks. Basically. Everything smells. And so it's. His description of them is almost animalistic, apart from. I mean, particularly because of the fact that they once. They sort of somehow managed to get up a ladder on the side of the boat. And once they're on deck, they can't even hold. They can't hold themselves up. They have no sort of body strength anymore. And so they're sort of on all fours. And he sort of describes them almost as being like sort of dogs or just these. These creatures that can't essentially sort of almost don't resemble humans. You.
- [20:48]
Kate Gibson
But you get the impression in terms of their fame, because they're very famous for a while. They go on everything. They open on shopping malls and factories and all of that. And you get the impression that Maurice is more okay with it than she is. Which strikes me as antithetical to a man who wanted to escape society and was sort of. I don't know, I. In some ways, I get the impression. Frightened of people. What was their. What was your impression of how they embraced or were wary of their fame?
- [21:15]
Sophie Elmhurst
No, I really agree, and I was equally surprised. I think. I always assumed he would have found. And I think very, you know, initially the impression I get, you know, when they first sort of land on Hawaii and there's this. They're surrounded by press, and there's this sort of press conference. And he's being asked all these questions. And he finds, as he often does with other people, Morris finds the questions just sort of very aggravating, very stupid, like no one gets it. Whereas actually when it comes some time passes and they. I think he starts to enjoy it. I think he enjoys the opportunity it affords. I think he enjoys the travels that they go on where she and I get this, you know, mostly from him, the way he described it in that sort of aftermath period that actually she was the one that got really sick of doing all the interviews and people following in the round and asking him questions. She just wanted to go back to a sort of normal, practical, day to day private life. And so, yeah, I was very surprised.
- [22:06]
Charlie Gibson
By that too, as I read. I was hoping that you were going to spend a good bit of time talking to us, writing to us about their lives after they got rescued. And that's really. I got the sense that that was the part of their lives that got you fascinated by them.
- [22:21]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, I mean, for me, that was the sort of soul of the book in a way, or at least the part that felt very important to me and important for me to write. You know, I think a lot of people might say, you know, a different version of this book would end with their rescue. Right. It would just be this sort of dramatic episode and happy ending. But I just wasn't. I wasn't interested in writing that. Not just out of a kind of biographical sort of desire for like completionism. I knew I wanted to tell the story of their whole lives, but also because it didn't feel true. And I think what is very true to, to Morris is that that episode is the sort of central episode of his life. It had it cast an enormous sort of shadow. And, you know, he's still thinking about it, as we know, like right at the end of his life. But, you know, he then reverts in a way as an older man and a man without his wife, almost to the state that he was in before he met her. And in a way what I found very moving about him later in life, that sort of loneliness that returns to the awkwardness, the sort of reclusivity almost. You know, he doesn't see many people. He finds it hard. He's always found it hard. But he used to have Marilyn to kind of smooth his interactions with the world and he doesn't have her anymore.
- [23:26]
Charlie Gibson
Well, it's a fascinating story, very well written and I love the way you get into their. You really do get into their minds and give us a great sense of what they were about. Sophie Elmhurst. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.
- [23:40]
Kate Gibson
Yes, it has.
- [23:41]
Sophie Elmhurst
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [23:43]
Charlie Gibson
Foreign rapid fire questions for Sophie Elmhurst.
- [23:50]
Kate Gibson
Do you read more fiction or non? Fiction?
- [23:53]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah, fiction definitely and always have done. I do read more and more nonfiction. I've been a journalist for 20 years, so, you know, that's my sort of day to day life, but for sort of pleasure and my kind of nourishment fiction.
- [24:06]
Charlie Gibson
You said you've never been a sailor. Does this story make you more or less likely to ever want to be one?
- [24:12]
Sophie Elmhurst
Undoubtedly less. Yeah. Never. Not gonna happen.
- [24:15]
Kate Gibson
Lesser known book you recommend to everyone?
- [24:18]
Sophie Elmhurst
Oh, I always recommend English writer who I feel is sort of criminally under loved, called Penelope Fitzgerald, who was wonderfully well known in her time. She won the Booker Prize. She wrote a sequence of unbelievable novels and some nonfiction earlier in her career as well. They're very slim. They're the best written books you can. Yeah, you can read.
- [24:38]
Charlie Gibson
The single thing in your research that most surprised you, that. That made you think, oh, I. I didn't expect that.
- [24:46]
Sophie Elmhurst
Okay, let me think. The single thing in my research that most surprised me, I think I had no idea how you got through the Panama Canal. I mean, that's the thing that's coming. That's what's coming straight to mine. I mean, there were a lot of things that I had no idea about in this book, but that one really was like, wow, it's an undertaking.
- [25:06]
Kate Gibson
So you've done a mountain of research. You've got, you know, you've consulted a ton of sources. How do you know you're ready to start?
- [25:13]
Sophie Elmhurst
Good question. I think, you know you're ready to start when you start going around in circles, when you're going over the same stuff twice, and when you've spoken to everyone that everyone you've spoken to has told you to speak, you know when you start kind of coming back on yourself. Right. But and also I think when you're kind of. When it. When it feels like it's sort of starting to come out of your fingers.
- [25:31]
Kate Gibson
Right.
- [25:31]
Sophie Elmhurst
When it sort of feels like you've just got to get some stuff down.
- [25:34]
Charlie Gibson
And how do you know when you're done that there are no visions that you do?
- [25:39]
Sophie Elmhurst
When. No. Yeah. When it's torn out of my hands. Yeah. I'm a real stickler. I would go on reading and note annotating drafts and forever if someone didn't stop me.
- [25:48]
Charlie Gibson
You immersed yourself so much in their lives and in their Thoughts in the end, did you like them? And would you have liked them, do you think, if you'd known them?
- [26:00]
Sophie Elmhurst
I think so. To me, they're very familiar characters, you know, in all their eccentricities and, and sort of infuriating behaviors, especially in terms of Morris. But I'm deeply fond of Morris. I think a lot of people really struggle with him and I understand why. I think a lot of people struggled with him, you know, while he was. Who loved, you know, who knew him well. But I know Morris is. I know those people. You see them on the bus, you see those sort of lonely old men who are kind of, in a way at war with the world. And most people they meet and you just sort of feel like they need someone to just pay them a bit of attention or to hear their stories for a bit and that will probably help. And Marilyn is a woman, that kind of post war British stoic woman that I feel very familiar with. I feel like she's in my family in the form of my mom, my aunt, you know, various people I know, and she's a, you know, these women are powerful, incredible women and I wish I was more like them. But yeah, I, I'm very fond of them both.
- [26:54]
Charlie Gibson
Thank you ever so much. It's really, really a wonderful book.
- [26:58]
Kate Gibson
Yeah.
- [26:58]
Charlie Gibson
A Marriage at Sea. Sophie Elmhurst. Thank you.
- [27:01]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, thank you.
- [27:02]
Sophie Elmhurst
Thank you.
- [27:07]
Charlie Gibson
So interesting about a couple that would, that would do this and be so cool headed. It seems to me to be so rational about how they approach it. Even though he is deeply depressed, Marilyn is really the thing that keeps the person, that keeps them going.
- [27:22]
Sophie Elmhurst
Yeah.
- [27:22]
Kate Gibson
And if you do read this book and you want to look up photos of them or materials on them, we would suggest you listen to Morris's final interview where he really, you know, in some ways, although I think that it was a living nightmare and I don't think that he probably romanticized it on his first 15, 20 days after they were rescued. But in some ways they accomplished exactly what they wanted to accomplish, which was to get away completely from man, man's social structures, man's. The pressure that society puts on men and women to succeed, to grow, to change. And they just lived with nature. They lived with fish, they lived with whales, they lived with turtles.
- [28:07]
Charlie Gibson
It's fascinating in his final interview to hear him discuss the fact that another whale came to them during the 117 or 18 days that they were at sea and was right next to the, you know, a whale had put them in the situation in the first place. Another whale comes along and he's fascinated by it. And the whale just is right next to them for about 20, 30 minutes and then goes away. And he just sort of matter of fact about it and matter of fact about all the nature that they were, that they were encountering. He says in his final interview, if I knew I was going to get rescued, I'd have do it all again. That's. That seems to me a little bit crazy, especially because of the fact that he was the person who got so deeply depressed and that she had to sort of emotionally rescue during the time that they were at sea.
- [28:54]
Kate Gibson
Well, I think about that Beatles song, there's nothing you can see that can't be seen. There's nothing you can say that can't be said. But Marilyn Morris really did see things no other human being sees or saw like a whale riding next to their, you know, just checking them out for 20 or 30 minutes. And they coexisted with this whale for 20 or 30 minutes in quiet, with nothing else around them. And again, that's something that almost. No, I mean, no human being should have to see it because no human being should be shipwrecked for 118 days. But they got to see things no other human being got to see. And I think maybe, and I don't know because I never met the man, but later in life I think he appreciated how unique his life really was and how unique their adventure really was. And I think he gained a new appreciation for that because that interview is almost romantic about what I would think would be the darkest period of their lives.
- [29:46]
Charlie Gibson
Right. All of this took place, as we said earlier, in 1973 when their ship sank. She died in 2002, I think he said, and he lived for quite some years afterwards and said he was lonely, but that was what he wanted to be all the time. That's why they went to sea. And so he said, yes, my life is very lonely in that final interview, but I like it. It's worth going back. You can find the interview on YouTube, I think, and it's about seven minutes or eight minutes. And it's very interesting to hear him reflect. Maurice and Marilyn. M A R A L Y N. Marilyn Bailey was their last name. Anyway, fascinating story, all well depicted in Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst. We thank her for taking the time to talk to us. And we both love this book. As Katie says, it's a fascinating story, but very, very well told and very well written.
- [30:42]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, there are some sentences that really brought me up short, so I would highly recommend this book not just for its incredible plot, but for its amazing.
- [30:50]
Charlie Gibson
Writing just out marriage at sea. Here are the folks who make the podcast possible. And then a final thought from Sophie Elmhurst.
- [30:57]
Kate Gibson
The book Case With Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.
- [31:25]
Sophie Elmhurst
The way you really get to truth is through detail. And you think that, you know. I think writers often make the mistake of thinking truth is something large and epic and, you know, universal. And it should be universal, but that it lives in the details.
- [31:43]
Charlie Gibson
From National Geographic Whoa, look at that comes an all new special with Nat Geo explorer Birdie Gregory.
- [31:50]
Sophie Elmhurst
We're going to attempt to dive with a great white shark without a cage.
- [31:54]
Charlie Gibson
As he sets out on his most ambitious mission yet.
- [31:57]
Sophie Elmhurst
I have dived with a lot of.
- [31:59]
Sponsor
Sharks around the world, but I have.
- [32:01]
Sophie Elmhurst
Never seen the most famous and the.
- [32:03]
Charlie Gibson
Most feared sharks up close. With Bertie Gregory, now streaming on Disney and Hulu.