Transcript
Tim Fitzhayam (0:00)
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Catherine Cross (1:50)
From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles and in this hour we have three stories from our London main stage. Our first story comes from Tim Fitzhayam. In addition to being a writer, comedian and artist, Tim also holds several world records for unusual feats, including paddling a paper boat down 160 miles of the River Thames and personally inflating the world's largest balloon to raise awareness for environmental issues. Here's Tim Fitzheim live at the Mall.
Tim Fitzhayam (2:24)
Imagine if you will, I'm out rowing in the middle of the English Channel. It's a lovely stretch of water. It's very difficult to row, however, and I'm rowing quite quickly. Really, really quite quickly. Fast. It's the fastest I've ever rowed in my life. It's so fast that my lungs are beginning to die. And the reason for this incredible burst of speed, some would say legendary burst of speed, is that just there in this picture of me rowing at this angle just behind Me just bearing down on me is an oil tanker. It's a third of a mile long, and it is bearing down on me with really incredible speed, which is why I am rowing faster than anyone has ever rowed, even in their lives. I am desperately trying to get out of the way of that massive, massive oil tanker. Did I mention, by the way, that I am sitting rowing in a bathtub? It is at moments like this you question how these things happened. I think it started in a bathtub, very like the one that I was rowing in about eight months beforehand. I was lying in the bath and I had this idea. I was thinking to myself, I wonder if anyone has ever rode the English Channel in a bathtub. And then I started looking it up. And the more I looked it up, and the more I thought about it, the more it looked like no one had ever rode the English Channel in a bathtub. And the more I looked at this, I thought, someone should row the English Channel in a bathtub. And then the more I thought about this, the more I thought, you know what? The person that should row the English Channel in a bathtub, that should be me. That person should be me. And I said this to some friends of mine. I said, I'm going to row the English Channel in a bathtub. And they said, good luck with that. And so I started to go into the preparations for this. Now, the first, and I'm sure you're all very aware that the key preparation for this was get a bathtub. So I phoned hundreds of bathroom companies, I phoned hundreds and hundreds of bathtub companies, and nobody would get involved in what I thought was an incredible project. Until finally one of them wrote back to me. I got my bathroom company. And not just any bathroom company. I got the finest bathroom company in the entire world to give me a bath. I got a bath from Thomas Crapper and Company. A third of a ton roll top, Victorian copper bathtub. The sort of thing that you see in a museum. A fantastically beautiful piece of bathroom kit. It goes up and has a fluted roll top. It's a gorgeous Victorian artifact. And on that beautiful artifact, I screwed two outriggers from a rowing boat that would take the center of gravity slightly further out, which would help me to spread the weight over a wider area, so hopefully I'd be more balanced and I wouldn't sink. Secondly, a problem began to arise in my mind. It turns out that the English Channel turns out to be the busiest shipping lane in the world. There are more tankers, container ships, frigates, and just general traffic going up and down that tiny stretch of water than any other stretch of water in the entire world. And some of these tankers, as discussed, are huge. But what I didn't realize is that they also have giant stopping distances. Some of their stopping distances are 15 miles. That means that by the time they have seen you and applied the brake, they have already gone through you. And somebody is calling the undertaker. This is like. And they go north to south, these tankers and container ships and frigates. And I have to go from east to west, from England to France. So I am going to be like, crossing the. The busiest motorway in the world at right angles to the direction of traffic, riding a concrete snail. This is problem number one. The second problem is that half of the English Channel turns out to be owned not by Great Britain, but by the French. Now, I wrote to the French government and I said, now, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to row the English Channel in a bathtub. And they were kind and they were generous and they were helpful. They sent me tons of stuff to read. And all the time they were going into the French parliament and passing a new clause in the Shipping act of France making it illegal to row a bathtub in French water. So what I did is I went to the Ministry of Transport in Whitehall and I said, now, this is what we're going to do, gentlemen. We are going to register my bath as a registered British ship. And to my shock, horror and amazement, they said, yeah, fair enough, Tim. That's a good plan. Yeah, yeah. They put me on the captain's register. They gave me a small ship's registration certificate. They sent me a letter that genuinely said, Dear Mr. Fitzheim, please find enclosed the paperwork for your newly registered British shipping vessel. Brackets, bathtub, close brackets. Please keep it with you at all times and in all places, even on the high seas. We think the French are going to want to see this. To assist you in this aim, please find enclosed we've had it laminated. I don't think I have ever been prouder to be British than when I looked down and saw in my hand laminated paperwork. There was another problem that I became aware of, and that is that I couldn't row. And I also know nothing about the sea. Nothing at all. Never been on it. And so I phoned loads of people to try and get someone to talk to me about the sea. I tried all the various organizations I could think of. Nobody had time to talk to me about the sea. I tried the coast Guard. They seemed to be busy. In the end, I did what anyone would do in this situation. In total desperation, I phoned the Royal Navy, and by mistake at the switchboard, I got put through to an admiral. As it turned out, now the only sailor who's ever existed in my entire family is a great uncle. And he said to me a long time ago, tim, if ever you're talking to a member of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, he said, always start the conversation with the question, how are your futtocks, old man? What the heck is a futtock? I had absolutely no idea, but I thought, well, give it a go. So I said, ah, Rear Admiral, how are your futtocks, old man? And he replied, at the furthest reach, dear boy. At their furthest reach. Now, I asked my uncle about this, my great uncle, and he said, yes, Tim, that is the correct nautical response to the question, how are your futtocks, old man? I said, that's fantastic, uncle, but what does it actually mean? He said, well, that's the thing, Tim, nobody actually knows. I thought there was something incredibly British about the fact we had both just had a conversation that neither of us had understood a single word of. We might as well have just said, ah, ostrich, hairy gusset, straw strapped, Rear Admiral. Yes, raspberry flan's phantasma, blue ass cheese, dear boy. But the both of us were just too darn Britishly polite to admit to the fact we didn't understand. Now, after this slightly weird beginning to the conversation, me and the Rear Admiral were getting on really rather well. And after a while, I plucked up the courage to say, you know this vessel that we're talking about taking across the busiest shipping lane in the world? You do know it's a bath? And then the line went dead. And then the line crackled into life and the voice said, well, same rules of navigation apply. I'm on board. So in one second, I'd suddenly had the Royal Navy on backing the bath project. Now then I decided to do what any great British explorer I'd ever heard about has ever done in the history of Britain. I decided to write to the Queen and tell her what I was planning to do and say, you know, do you mind if I have a crack at the Channel in a bathtub? And to my shock, horror and amazement, she wrote back. Should we just recap on what's going on here? I've set off to row the Channel in a bath and I now have a letter from the Queen saying, not only do I not mind you rowing the Channel in a bathtub. You have my heartiest support. Good luck and let me know how you get on. Now, just to get back to this, I'm in front of a tanker, okay? What's happened is I'm in a third of a ton roll, top Victorian copper bathtub. There's a tanker bearing down on me. It's a third of a mile long. I'm rowing like no one has ever rode in their entire lives before, desperately trying to get out of the way of this thing. It's a terrifying thing because about two hours beforehand, I. I had taken what, as it transpired, was not a very good navigating decision. I had thought two hours ago, I reckon I could probably get round the front of that, as it turned out. So I'm rowing in front of the tanker as fast as I possibly can, and my only thought is, I'm about to die. I'm about to get killed in the English Channel in a third of a ton roll, top copper piece of Victorian bathroom equipment. And there's one thought that popped into my head, and that thought was quite simply, who has right of way? Now, in my bath, I had a radio and the Sailor's Almanac. And so as I was frantically trying to row with one arm, I was flipping through the Sailor's Almanac, desperately trying to get to the page that tells you about who has right of way in the English Channel. And I finally got to it, and I read it, and it says, massive big tankers like the one about to crash into me have to give way to sailing ships. Sailing ships have to give way to rowing ships. Rowing ships have to give way to rowing ships of restrictive maneuverability. And that's got to be me in a third of a ton roll, top Victorian copper bathtub. And so I grabbed the radio and radioed up to the tanker captain and said, I am in a bath. I am in a bath. Back down, back down. I am in a bath. Over. Now, then the weirdest thing happened, which is that the tanker did divert around a bathtub for the first time in the maritime history of the world and create what the admiral later called a naval precedent in law. He said, this is the first time in the maritime history of the globe that a tanker has backed down to a piece of plumbing on the high seas. We are going to name that president in law after you, Tim. The Fitzheim Precedent. You can look it up. Lawyers, however, the problem wasn't over yet because I carried on rowing out in the English Channel. And then something went a Little bit awry in that. The mist started to come in. And then very quickly, as happens at sea, suddenly there was a massive storm that hit the English Channel. It's a terrifying thing to be at in any storm. This was a 4, 7. For people who don't go to sea, a 4, 7 will give you waves of the height of sort of three, three and a half meters. At one point, the storm got so bad it ripped the roll top of the Victorian copper bath. It popped out of the water. I realized I was essentially ballast dived across the bath, pushed it back in with my shoulder and ripped my shoulder so badly on the serrated edge of the bath that it went all floppy and stopped working. But I thought to myself, with one arm, I can still keep rowing through this. I am British. I carried on going and survived in that horrible storm for 40 minutes, having lost the support boat totally on my own, rowing with one arm. And after 4, 40 minutes they found me because apparently for 40 minutes I had been heroically rowing in a giant circle. They pulled me back in, but the disaster wasn't over yet because we were in French water. The French navy came on the radio and said that their solution to the Bath Channel, they were calling me a problem. Their solution was to put explosives on on my bath and blow it out of the water. Now, I had lost a lot of blood at this stage and I wasn't thinking very clearly from my arm, but I went on the radio and apparently said the following, just to remind you that the sinking of a registered British ship without the permission of the captain will be taken as an act of war. In Dover, you could just hear the coast guard going.