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Episode 2 - Schooner? I ‘ardly know ‘er!
37 Plays7 months ago
Ever looked at the coins you have in your junk drawer at home and wondered what the deal is with the boat on our ten cent piece? In this episode, Tamarack explores the BLUENOSE and how a sailing ship from the early 20th century ties back to contemporary politics.
This episode's news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/lamborghini-ditch-west-vancouver-1.7162865
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/police-lamborghini-vancouver-crash-1.7164856
Bluenose IV links:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090220152136/http://www.schoonerbluenose.ca:80/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110202193236/http://www.schoonerbluenose.ca/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110706202635/http://www.schoonerbluenose.ca/
Witch in the Wind: ISBN 978-0-88662-224-3
A Race for Real Sailors: ISBN 1-55365-161-8
Video link for moment:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/bluenose
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Never gets old. No. Hello and welcome to the Schwinnigan Moments podcast. I'm Tamarack, my pronouns are they them or it it's. And my name is Heather and I use she or they pronouns.
00:00:22
Speaker
How are you? How are you doing? Oh, no, I want to go first. It's my turn. No, it's not. It's just your turn today. Yeah, it's my episode. It's my episode. You cannot take it from me.
Playful Banter and 'Chicken Post' Talk
00:00:32
Speaker
Oh, damn it. Except the part where you immediately take it from me because you need to top my chicken post. Oh, no, no, I don't. I can't top a chicken post. Can I top a chicken post? I can top a chicken post. It's time for the news.
00:00:52
Speaker
God. Okay. What do you got
Driver's Licenses and Growing Up
00:00:55
Speaker
late? All right. All right. Tamara, when did you get your driver's license? Oh Christ. Um, I got a little bit late. I got it when I was 18. So where did you grow up? Um, look,
00:01:13
Speaker
I bummed a lot of rides with my brother and also just stayed home and was depressed most of the time. And you don't really need a car to drive to depression. I don't know about that part, but I didn't get my license until I was... Oh, I got my learners when I was 16, because all the cool kids were doing it. And I also grew up in the part of the lower mainland of Vancouver,
00:01:40
Speaker
where transit wasn't exactly all that great. So for quite some time, though, like I didn't really care to drive, like I would drive my mom's car, which was a 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier who had four doors and was colored blue. And we nicknamed it Sure Me because it seemed to be indestructible.
00:01:58
Speaker
And yeah, no, it was it was an okay car to learn how to drive on it. You know, it was your standard four door sedan, right? Like nothing fancy about it. But my mom actually had to force me to get a driver's license, like a proper driver's license. Like I remember her driving me to work one day and she was so sick and tired of driving me to work that I think I was like 17 or 18 at the time. She's like, you're getting your goddamn license.
00:02:22
Speaker
Cause like I just wasn't going to walk to work. Like for whatever reason, I just didn't feel like inclined to do so. So the driving light limits here is like you have to, or the driving age limit is you have to be 16 to get your learners. Although I think in Alberta and Manitoba, you can be 15 to get your learner's permit. Something to do with foreign vehicles or whatever.
Vancouver Lamborghini Crash Incident
00:02:41
Speaker
But what would you say is an appropriate car for a 13 year old child?
00:02:48
Speaker
Well, I learned in a 97 Chevy S10, so not that. No, but you're also 13. You shouldn't be driving at the age of 13.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. Yes. Like, I don't know what country in the world permits this, but the story is from the CBC. It comes from West Vancouver Police, a 13 year old was charged after crashing a Lamborghini into a ditch.
00:03:23
Speaker
Oh, wow, that is that is a Vancouver story if I've ever heard one. Yeah, I remember like in the past 10 years, it just kept seeing all these rich kids from overseas coming in with like, tons of money and not knowing what to spend it on. So they go and buy Lambos. But yeah, the story here is police in West Vancouver say a joyride by a 13 year old in a Lamborghini set off a single vehicle crash that resulted in a total write off by the insurance company. Police say in a news release issued Wednesday. This is an article from
00:03:51
Speaker
April 3rd, 2024, that they were called to a report of a crash last week and found the Lamborghini Huracan badly damaged in a ditch. Nobody was at the scene, so officers began a search to ensure those inside during the crash weren't hurt.
00:04:08
Speaker
This is where it goes funny. It's like police say the cooperation of the vehicle's owner, with the cooperation of the vehicle's owner, they were able to promptly locate the 13 year old driver who confessed to taking a friend along for a ride. Okay. Yes. The youth also admitted to being unable to control the car in dark and rainy conditions.
00:04:32
Speaker
I mean, yeah, the visibility on those things is not good if you're a normal height person. Okay. So I'm going to have a complaint about this whole thing, but yes. So in the follow-up article, also from the CDC, again, Lamborghini owner gave keys to child 13 who wrecked car. Oh my fucking God. No. Yeah, it gets worse.
00:05:00
Speaker
OK, so how this goes is OK, so this is where it happened. So crashing, yeah, crashing a Lamborghini Huracan into a ditch off Highway 1 near Cypress Bowl last week. So like perfect place to go and take a Lamborghini Huracan like it's it's not highway. OK, if you don't if you're in Vancouver, you know how awful Highway 1 is like the North Vancouver and West Vancouver. It's not particularly pleasant. I can't imagine being a 13 year old kid taking a supercar and driving it on this freeway as their first joy ride or whatever.
00:05:30
Speaker
Um, but here's the thing that makes us ridiculous. And I haven't a hard time containing myself because it's so stupid. Uh, the sports car was in the process of being sold and the owner who handed over the keys didn't know the age of the driver. Okay. So this 13 year old basically rolls up to do quote unquote, buy this Lambo and is just handed the keys to go for a test drive. Yeah.
00:05:59
Speaker
How much do you think this Lamborghini is worth? Oh, God, like several hundred thousand dollars to be sure. Just throw a number. I mean, it's worth nothing now because it got wrapped around wrapped around a pole, presumably. This is
High-Value Cars and Owner Mindset
00:06:13
Speaker
true. This is true. Yes. No, it's more. According to AutoTrader.ca, the website shows you use Lamborghini hurricanes as between three hundred eighteen thousand and five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And that's in Canadian dollars.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds about right. Why does a child have that much money? Okay, did the child actually have that much money or was dealing with somebody with real good speech skill?
00:06:45
Speaker
The thing is, I don't understand how you con your way as a 13-year-old into getting access to any vehicle, let it loan a car that's cost, I shouldn't say it's cost as much of a house, this is Vancouver, but costs as much as a down payment on a house in Vancouver.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, that seems... But, okay, on the other hand, I think you do kind of have to be a moron to already own a luxury sports car. So like, maybe they basically just selected for each other.
00:07:20
Speaker
I wouldn't say you're a moron. That's maybe not fair, but you definitely the person in this case here is a moron. I mean, that's the easy thing. Like I would I'm not going to say I'm not going to go defend the rich here, but like I feel like most people who own vehicles like this probably aren't usually going to give keys to a 13 year old.
00:07:40
Speaker
No, but I think there's a I don't know. I don't know. I don't know quite where I'm going with this, but I don't. I think if you if you spend that much money on like such such a dumb like like piece of consumer goods, basically.
00:07:58
Speaker
um clearly you don't value like money or practicalities so i don't know maybe maybe pissing away 300 grand worth of car is totally fine
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, I do like cars from a performance perspective. I otherwise hate car infrastructure, so you can't really- There's one good car that has ever been made, and that is the Travant.
Training for High-Performance Vehicles
00:08:26
Speaker
Oh, the Travant. Okay, close enough. I thought you were going to say a Lada, but anyway. I mean, yeah, a lot of Neva is kind of the other one. Those are the good cars, the 80s Volkswagen Rabbits.
00:08:39
Speaker
I can't remember the name of
00:08:58
Speaker
That would be a cool car. I would probably make an electric conversion so it wouldn't let go and try and murder my family or whatever. Just to close out this article. No one was at the scene when officers arrived, so search began to ensure blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The good news is nobody was hurt, surprisingly. The photo of the car, which I will show you the car over chat real quick here because you didn't get to see the car.
00:09:27
Speaker
Surprisingly, nobody was injured. So it just looks like the front panel is ripped off. These cars are usually, what, fiberglass panels and that sort of thing? Oh, yeah. When they crash, it looks like they just explode. Yeah, it's just glue and other adhesives keeping it together. And of course, finally, we do not believe the owner was aware of the driver's age or lack of a driver's license.
00:09:51
Speaker
but also did not check. Nope, did not check. So yeah. And here's the thing that I find hilarious is when you get your learners, there is nothing by law that says you cannot drive this car to learn how to drive it.
00:10:07
Speaker
no no and that's kind of it's kind of terrifying yeah like i i honestly think that specialty vehicles and i include like the like giant yank tank sort of like emotional support vehicles that you have nowadays like the cybertruck honestly like
00:10:29
Speaker
The thing that's sad about the Cybertruck is that every truck is the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck's just honest about what it is. You need to have special training for these vehicles that are increasingly
00:10:48
Speaker
becoming like a commercial vehicle. They have huge blind spots. They are not as maneuverable. They're a lot heavier or require you to be a little bit more on the ball with braking and things like that. And a similar thing with sports cars.
Transition to New Segment
00:11:05
Speaker
You can get into a hell of a lot of trouble with a lot of horsepower in a rear-wheel drive vehicle if you're not ready for it.
00:11:14
Speaker
And like that sort of shit should be separately licensed and should be tested. Um, both for sports cars and for, and for trucks. Um, come at me fucking truck weirdos. Oh, that's okay. I don't think they will.
00:11:30
Speaker
They're too afraid to listen to a podcast about facts. Um, well, I guess that's the news. Timer, do you want to go up? Yeah. Let's, uh, let's, uh, let's roll the clip.
00:12:00
Speaker
her last race and still undefeated. The Blue Nose out of Bloomberg, Nova Scotia was fastest in the world for almost 20 years. We're going to get into that undefeated. Is this Jurassic Park? Is this Jurassic Park? Oh, yeah. No, I think it's a legally distinct Jurassic Park. My evidence for this is that Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and this episode is from 1995.
00:12:30
Speaker
Oh, okay. Inspiration were drawn for sure. I have to wonder if it's the same track, but who knows? Well, they wouldn't have, they would have had to license it. It is, it is very reminiscent. So what is this about? What are we talking about here? First things first, do you have a dime I can borrow? My purse is on the other side of my apartment.
00:12:55
Speaker
That's okay. Uh, do you know what famous boat is on the dime? Do you know what I should and I don't. Uh, well, it turns out that despite the, the dime face not changing, uh, since 1937 or the, the, the artwork on tails side of the, of the dime not changing. Um, yeah. Cause we've had like four, four monarchs on the, on the dime since 1937.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yes, and the boat that's been on the opposite side of the coin, the art hasn't changed, but only in 2002 was it acknowledged as being the Blue Nose. I've seen some conjecture that it was originally slated as a
00:13:44
Speaker
as a composite of many different schooners, but also like the time that it came out, there really, and we'll get into this, there really only was one Canadian schooner it could be. But stay tuned for Tam's conjecture on why that might be.
00:14:04
Speaker
So yeah, today we're talking about the blue nose. It's not the fast fairies, it's not the Pacific cats, but it is a fast boat that carries things. What does it carry? Well, mostly fish. How does a fishing boat end up on the frickin' dime? Well, it wins some races. So people are racing fishing boats, okay. Yeah, so it's kind of...
00:14:34
Speaker
The story of how we get there is kind of weird. We think of boat races today in regattas. It's rich people racing their expensive yachts. Sailing boat races happen
00:14:49
Speaker
I don't know if there's any around here, but where I grew up there used to be an annual regatta, which was just the yacht club. Weird sailing people would go out on the lake and do a little course on the lake. But the fact that it's fishing boats, and a thing that always struck me strange with the Bluenose story is the social studies textbook version of this just kind of assumes that, yeah, of course they were racing.
00:15:17
Speaker
and never really explains why. So we're going to get into that. But first we need to ask. What the hell is a schooner? Oh, I know this one. That's the failed CFL team from Halifax. Wait, actually. Yeah, there's like they've been trying to create the schooners for like as a team for a very long time. We don't have to get too much into it, but I just felt like making that joke there. Sorry for anyone in Halifax.
00:15:42
Speaker
Okay, interesting. I should have added that. Alright, so Scooter is a pretty loose category of ship. It doesn't really actually have a lot of hard requirements for like a whole shape of like four and a half castles.
00:15:59
Speaker
like the hull design or anything. It mostly refers to the rigging and sail arrangement and just has at least two masts. There's three masted schooners, there's five masted schooners. The whole point of it is that it's rigged with sails on both ends and uses a particular arrangement of smaller sails.
00:16:28
Speaker
for being very associated with late 1800s, Atlantic Canada, and the Eastern Sea Board of the United States. It's actually a fairly old design, dating back to the 1600s is the first depiction that we've seen of them. They generally have one advantage is you can have a large ship
00:16:52
Speaker
well, large, relatively ship, so decent cargo capacity. But the individual sails are quite small. So you can still have, but because you have a lot of them, they're very small. They're very manageable by a smaller crew, but you still have a lot of surface area, so you can still travel very quickly. Then something with a simpler rigging scheme with large square sails, which would require a lot more people.
00:17:19
Speaker
Uh, so it's, it's a labor saving implement. Oh, nothing like cutting labor costs, right? Oh, we'll get into that. Um, that's, that's my understanding of it. I'm not a boat person. So, uh, I assume we're going to get roasted by a bunch of boat nerds. That's okay. I pretty next episode will have me getting roasted by plain nerds. That's okay.
00:17:40
Speaker
Why do we pick engineering related topics? Okay, so the Blue Nose competed in a particular series of cups called the International Fisherman's Cup. But that's not where our story starts. Our story with the Blue Nose really starts with a thing called the America Cup.
00:18:04
Speaker
Oh hey, it's that event that Larry Ellison has a huge fetish for. Yes, and is very like very much divorced from from like fishing boats and kind of the working class character that is typically associated with the blue nose. So again, put a pin in that.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, just so everybody knows, Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle. I'm not going to say anything in specific, but he's a piece of work. What is it with those 90s tech people who just fucking went off the deep end? I have no idea. It's better not to figure that one out.
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, true. Something was in the water. Our story starts in 1851 with the £100 Cup, which is hosted as part of the 1851 exhibition. £100, as in 100 British pounds are around $20,000 today. The only reason why I know this off the top of my head is since the last episode we had to talk about inflation.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yes, so this is sometimes also labeled the RYS 100-pound cup, and that stands for the Royal Yacht Squadron, which is a fancy lad yacht club of a bunch of people racing small sail yachts. And just like having them as pleasure craft. Again, rich people thing.
00:19:36
Speaker
Yeah, modern day billionaires do the same thing. They never change. So this is like pretty much what you would imagine if you pictured yacht racing today, you know, just a bunch of like rich people sometimes paying crews to man their ships.
00:19:52
Speaker
just racing for sports reasons. And the Royal Yacht Squadron decided to specifically invite the newly founded Yacht Club in New York, the New York Yacht Club, to compete at this race for the 1851 exhibition.
00:20:10
Speaker
and they obliged, sending a ship called the America, quite appropriately, which arrived packing several guns on deck, but otherwise it's just a personal, personal saleship. Just one thing, because we didn't, it was not made clear here, the 1851 exhibition took place in London and had a really beautiful building attached to it, but unfortunately it burnt down in the late 1910s, I want to say, something like that. But anyway, just wanted to add that in there.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, this was a fairly, this is like a lot was happening in this section. It was a big deal, that event. It was a very big deal.
00:20:49
Speaker
Yeah, this was peak Victorian England sort of stuff. You could come and see some rich aristocrats and industrialists, race some boats. You could see a cast iron frame piano. You could see a lot of stolen jewels from India. Or if you didn't like stolen jewels from India, you could also see some stolen carvings from New Zealand.
00:21:15
Speaker
Okay, so the race at this time was a mix of cutters and scooters of wildly different sizes. The information that I had is primarily from A Witch in the Wind by Marc de Villiers and A Race for Real Sailors, a phrase of hauntology that will come up a lot by Keith McLaren. And they quoted these ships mostly in tonnage.
00:21:41
Speaker
So the smallest ship in this competition was a 47 ton little cutter called the Aurora. And the biggest one was a 392 ton schooner called the Brilliant. Oh, she large.
00:21:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, and the discrepancy in number of masts, the sails, the configuration of them, the design and purpose of the ship was all over the map at this point. This was some truly wacky racist stuff going on. But the end results of the regatta, out of 18 ships that entered, 15 actually set sail.
00:22:18
Speaker
Five only finished, and in first place was the Schooner America, which won by eight minutes. So not by a nose. Pardon? Not by a nose. Not by a nose. This is sort of how these go. Because they're saleships, once you catch a good wind and start to pull ahead, you have a tendency to keep that lead until you have to turn.
00:22:44
Speaker
That's kind of why these are design and triangle courses where there's three legs of them. It's really at the turns that you start to overtake these things. Upon receiving the cup, the owners of the America, who were a steam ferry line owner and an Irish nobleman who emigrated to Toronto, renamed it to the Emperica Cup.
00:23:08
Speaker
real classy. They also in a deed of gift set out rules by which challenges could be issued by any yacht club and must be accepted by whoever holds the cup. Their idea was to basically turn this one-off event into a series of international regattas around the cup.
00:23:28
Speaker
There also was kind of a little sub-goal here where basically the owners of the America were kind of looking to advertise American shipbuilding and like
00:23:40
Speaker
This was sort of a dubious goal given that the Age of Sail was coming to an end. Not that they had the kind of hindsight on where technology would go at that time, but the writing was on the wall. Another piece of hauntology when you look into this stuff is you will see different writers indicating the Age of Sail is coming to an end at wildly different times, starting in the mid-1800s.
00:24:08
Speaker
They never really died. And in fact, it's possibly going to experience a renaissance even with cargo ships, which is bizarre. But yeah, it turns out free power is really good. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you got all this power here. Do you really need to burn all that bunker fuel?
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. We have switched from using fairly dependable wind currents to push things for free to basically burning the worst oil for questionable reasons, particularly for things that aren't very time sensitive.
00:24:48
Speaker
Anyway, I think that's kind of interesting about this is at the time, it was pretty normal for competitions, particularly at this like scale that a, like a cup or chalice or a trophy would be created for that competition that year. And it wasn't intended to be returned by the winner for the next season for the competition. Like, like today's Stanley cup or, or like.
00:25:17
Speaker
like what the America Cup was. This was more like high school trophy case sort of stuff. So this was kind of interesting that the hundred pound cup wasn't actually really intended to be passed around, but it would be.
00:25:32
Speaker
Well, sort of. So the competition was issued 1851. It would take until 1870 before the first of a series of attempts by British and Canadian, just general rich folks, trying to take the cup from the New York Yacht Club.
00:25:54
Speaker
possibly because it was a difficult journey. But the competition format at this time was kind of Calvin ball. Oh, no, a Calvin ball in the Atlantic famous for being a rather calm ocean.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yes, so the Defender and Challenger could race multiple ships as they did during the exhibition, but just like in the exhibition, the logistics of sailing multiple ships from your, like even for rich people, over the Atlantic, boarding multiple crews for kind of just a pastime or a sporting event is a bit much.
00:26:36
Speaker
So realistically, one, maybe two ships are going to come from the Challenger on the Defender's home turf, which we will see causes some problems. There was also the issue that there are no real definitions about what kind of ships could be entered. So small cutters and sloops were raced alongside three masted cargo-carrying Atlantic traversing schooners that were double their length.
00:27:04
Speaker
as was in the exhibition. So the first real concerted effort to repatriate the cup was by a British Rail magnate, James Lloyd Ashbury. That's a name I'm actually familiar with, surprisingly. You should be familiar with. Because I've read a lot on British Railways.
00:27:24
Speaker
Yes, true, true bastard as all rail magnates are. He made it his personal mission that he was the first one to roll this particular rock up this particular hill to repatriate the cup to Great Britain.
00:27:39
Speaker
and basically affected a few changes and refinements to the format whilst not actually succeeding in doing so. So his first attempt was kind of a failure, but it's not really notable apart from being mostly like the exhibition race he sent to ship.
00:28:02
Speaker
The New York Yacht Club sent out a lot of ships, and surprisingly, the single ship did not win. In 1871, in his second attempt, he proposed a best of seven match race, so just two ships at a time, and sent a new ship that was purpose-built for this competition, the Livonia.
00:28:26
Speaker
During the competition, the ship that was primarily racing it was a ship that was also brand new for this competition called the Columbia. It was actually damaged critically during after two races. And what they did, because this was still just a match race,
00:28:48
Speaker
They just subbed in a new ship and continued racing. The, uh, the remainder of the series was, was raced by a ship called Sappho. Oh, I'd love to be on that ship. Presumably under friends. Yeah. I want to be on that ship. I want to be on that ship. I mean, I, yeah, everyone's very friendly there. Very personically friendly on the Sappho. I do kind of wonder if the name was lost on them. Yeah, probably.
00:29:16
Speaker
Okay, so Ashbury protested saying this was against the rules. It was a race between two ships. However, the competition format, like I said, was basically Calvin Ball, and technically the rules were one club versus another club. So this was at the time above board, if kind of against the spirit of the competition, if you could claim it had one.
00:29:42
Speaker
It's similar to that of F1 because most racing teams will have more than one vehicle, despite the fact that they're racing for the same team, ultimately. There's a lot of politics around that, but yeah.
00:29:57
Speaker
Yeah, so the result of this is that the rules were amended so that each club could only enter a single ship, whether defender or challenger. So in this instance, yes, Ashbury's ship would have won with those modified rules, but he does not actually try for the cup again.
00:30:17
Speaker
Uh, the next kind of notable attempt is the introduction of the Canadians. One thing I'll say is Asbury went on to be a Tory politician in the British, um, House of Commons. It, it happens. He's not even the only Tory politician that we're going to talk about. That's too bad.
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, so Bay Aquint Yacht Club enters a little sloop in an unsuccessful challenge. I couldn't find the specifics of this, but for whatever reason, this particular challenge introduced two rules, this and presumably another unsuccessful challenge that happened at the time.
00:31:01
Speaker
that I also couldn't find much for. So, 1881, Bay of Quint, Yacht Club, introduces their sloop in an unsuccessful bid. It's not notable so much the race itself. What's notable is that
00:31:20
Speaker
The ship had to come from Lake Ontario, like through the Erie Canal, through the St. Lawrence, and then race in the Atlantic. Again, famously calm waters of the Atlantic. I don't know the specifics of what happened and couldn't find good resources for this reason.
00:31:41
Speaker
A lot of material for this, particularly the failed early Canadian attempts, are quite scarce. And honestly, a lot on the Canadian attempts at the American Cup are scarce in general. But as a result of this, after the year of 1881, a handicap system was introduced for ships with a waterline length over 26 meters. And it also stipulated that ships had to travel under their own power
00:32:10
Speaker
which I believe was in reference to the Quint Challenge, from where they were docked to the competition location and that only yacht clubs that were on the actual sea could issue a challenge to the America Cup.
00:32:29
Speaker
Here's a question. I guess it's not going to be answers. Like if you had a tugboat guiding you out of a canal because that's a requirement, does that violate the rule? I don't believe so. But I think being based in a place where you have to go through a canal does disqualify you. OK, that makes sense. There was kind of vague illusions within both the Wikipedia article for this, which cites a source I couldn't find access to.
00:33:01
Speaker
And between that and Witch in the Wind, it didn't really provide a lot of details as to what happened, but it seems like there was some damage to the ship during traversal, and it may not have even survived to compete. Because again, at this time, these are all ships that are purposely built for racing and nothing else.
00:33:26
Speaker
I've got to have that drag tunnel coefficient and all that sort of thing dealt with. And that's all it's good for. And then end up like that Lamborghini from earlier, if you don't do it right. That is quite literally what starts to happen. Oh, Jesus. Crap. Yeah, so we're going to we're going to fast forward like through to the early nineteen hundreds. So that's the America Cup.
00:33:56
Speaker
Blue Nose didn't actually compete in the America Cup, but the America Cup kind of has this like inextricable link to what the Blue Nose would compete in, the International Fisherman's Cup. So this is where we enter Sir Thomas Lipton of the Iced Tea fame. Well, he also does like, well, he, excuse me, the Lipton Company, which I can't remember who owns them now.
00:34:25
Speaker
does regular tea, which is, you know, it's fine. I'll happily consume some tea from them. Yeah, so we have a Scottish aristocrat this time, fancy, who's making some serious efforts in the early 1900s to repatriate the cup to the UK.
00:34:50
Speaker
He's building just a series of ships, all named Shamrock for some particular reason. And kind of a side thing that's happening at this time is both he and several others, like Lipton dating back to 1892 and Thomas McManus during the fishermen strikes of 1886 are funding these like fishermen schooner races as kind of one-off events.
00:35:18
Speaker
So there's a little bit of precedent for it, but the main racing event is still the America Cup. Where he enters the story of the Blue Nose is actually on one of his last attempts, the 1920 America Cup, where he's racing the Shamrock 4 versus the Resolute. These two ships
00:35:37
Speaker
are purposely built to take and also hold the America Cup. This is their only purpose, and these yachts have a lot of innovations and a lot of refinements specifically for these purposes. Where he enters the story more directly is
00:36:01
Speaker
during one of his last attempts. You have the 1920 America Cup, the Shamrock IV, the last ship as far as I can tell in a series of ships that are meant to take the American ship designed specifically to defend the cup called the Resolute.
00:36:21
Speaker
where the Fisherman's Cup kind of starts is this sort of bubbling sentiment about how around the one of the races in the 1920 challenge being
00:36:37
Speaker
canceled due to rough seas, which I couldn't find a quantifiable measurement for, and high winds at 23 knots, or 43 kilometers an hour, which two Atlantic fishermen who have to be out there in order to eat,
00:36:55
Speaker
these are acceptable conditions so this and a number of other factors sort of kind of bubbles up the sentiment of like the the hardy working class like fisher folk would be able to like do better race in more extreme conditions and like perform better than these like
00:37:19
Speaker
basically the billionaires of the day fucking around with their with their pleasure yachts. Okay, makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Because like, that this was the only outlet they had for, you know, looking really cool. Because like, it was this or racing trains, which you can't really do.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. And like this sentiment was pretty pointed. Like I said, the American Cup was a bunch of American Scott and British millionaires building specialized specialist racing ships that were built for no other purpose other than racing. A lot of them just for racing for the America Cup. And a lot of these were retired or scrapped after
00:38:07
Speaker
one or a few races. And the sentiment kind of got first publicized by Colin McKay, a maritime celebrity, writing a letter to the Montreal Gazette that got eventually published in the Halifax Herald, decrying the America Cup as a millionaire's frolic of fooling around with costly devices.
00:38:32
Speaker
I mean, he's not wrong. He is not wrong. Again, very pointed criticism. And this is where we introduce a piece of just like a haunting phrase that sort of
00:38:48
Speaker
permeates this entire era, which is a race for real sailors. And I want to, as we go through this, check in about the race for real sailors as we go through this. This is like the quest for real ale or camera. It was the coalition for real ale. Is it similar to this?
00:39:13
Speaker
Uh, I'm not familiar. Okay. I'm not going to get into camera here. Okay. It's campaign for real ale. That's what I was like. That's what it was. But anyway, it doesn't matter.
00:39:24
Speaker
Okay, so with the sentiment bubbling and a little bit of political wheeling and dealing from the owner of the Halifax Herald, a Canadian senator by the name of William Dennis, who is a man we are going to see and hear a lot from, a $4,000 prize pool is put together, a cup is cast,
00:39:47
Speaker
and a date is set for November 1st, 1920, the same year of the 1920 America Cup. This happens incredibly quickly, which we'll get into. There's a fairly explicit set of rules laid out for the length of the ship,
00:40:06
Speaker
Uh, it's overall displacement, things like that. And all entrants need to be working fishermen with at least one full season of work behind them. And all ships need to use their normal complement of sales in rigging. This is basically, um, like formula one for ships, the way that you're describing this to me. Oh yes.
00:40:26
Speaker
I attribute it more to NASCAR. Yeah, but were they doing bootliking? Well, okay. We'll get into that. Fuck. So on the Canadian side, fairly straightforward, they host a trial to basically a trial race to select their Canadian entrance.
00:40:51
Speaker
Basically, ships that would want to compete in this trial having to basically eat two weeks of losses, like re-rigging and re-ballasting the ships, there were nine entrants for the race. The Senator Dennis' committee eventually did offer compensation for the lost time.
00:41:11
Speaker
So a thing to note about ships of this era, they're kind of cooperatively owned. A lot of times like individual crewmen would be paid either in full in part with shares of the ship's profits or literal ownership shares in the ship. So these were not the like toys of millionaires or even like the property of individual investment. So
00:41:34
Speaker
When the call for basically trial races for the Canadian entrant came out, these folks were like the entire crew were looking at losing a bunch of money. Eventually the dentist committee did offer compensation and
00:41:51
Speaker
The winning ship was Delwana, which isn't as important as the second place captain, or the second place ship, which was the Gilbert B. Waters, captained by Angus Walters, behind by only five minutes, despite having cracked a mass during the event. Put a pin in basically all of that. We will get back to Walters.
00:42:16
Speaker
and also damage to ships. On the American side, the challenge was a bit more controversial. The claim in this fisherman cup was to quote unquote improve the breed of the Atlantic Fisherman's, maybe make sailing ships a little bit safer. But the Gloucester, the Gloucester, Massachusetts
00:42:38
Speaker
fishing industry typically had smaller ships, and also a lot of the ships were out to sea working at this time, and kind of their best entrant was ever so slightly too long by three foot seven inches. The book that I was reading on this, Witch of the Wind, kind of suggests that this may have been an intentional exclusion.
00:43:04
Speaker
which is a little bit of conspiratorial thinking that this book kind of indulges in from time to time. In addition to this, while the Canadian entrant from from Lunenberg had weeks of selections, preparations, trial races, the Americans received a telegram with a week to respond with their selection of a ship and only 10 days to get to the location for the race. They had no notice. Oh god.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah, just get down here real fast, fuckers. That's all you have to do. Just get down here real fast. Pretty much. They got only slightly more notice than a you up. So with all these constraints, their only practical choice was a ship that had barely come back to port called the Esperanto.
00:43:50
Speaker
which still needed to be unloaded, it needed its torrent sales patched and mended, and a plethora of other maintenance items, which would sort of, like, from the beginning, we had the pre-race repair montage, which just happens for all of these.
00:44:07
Speaker
All these ships and it left on time captain by Marty Welsh who is not the captain of that ship and a crew of volunteers Seven of which were from other ships as well, which Sort of runs against the goal of a race for real sailors since we're horse trading crew captain and ship But this is what they said fair enough
00:44:29
Speaker
Another change from the America Cup that they did mostly for spectator experience from the trial races was they set it up so that the course, and this is kind of where the coverage from the clip that we played comes from, they set up the course so that it was fairly easy to spectate the entire race, particularly the final leg, which is kind of just a neat little thing.
00:44:56
Speaker
floating in the middle of the ocean. Like just imagine that like you just have these floating stands in the middle of like, you know, like off the Azores or something like that. And
00:45:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of strange that nobody thought about making these racing series. This really goes to show how much the America Cup was for the consumption of the people in the yacht clubs, whereas these were very much spectator events. The race was designed to be easily spectated.
00:45:30
Speaker
fair enough, yeah, makes sense. So the fine folks of Halifax, Nova Scotia got an incredibly clear look of the Esperanto smoking the ever-loving shit out of the Deluana. They won 2-0, won the first two races.
00:45:51
Speaker
and went home with the inaugural Halifax Herald Cup, also known as the Dennis Cup colloquially. So after the race, there was the usual fanfare, speeches by tangentially evolved mayors and premiers, and the Esperanto went home. Fair enough.
00:46:10
Speaker
We're done. We can take it home. We can collect our accolades and all that. Yeah. And accolades, they did collect. Although the day after they arrived home, they made port in Gloucester at like two in the morning. And they did their own round of political, like politicians' beaches and fanfare. But then we get a little bit of an unexpected side effect of this.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yachting magazine, which is a publication specifically for the various millionaires that participated in and were invested in the America Cup, published an article basically declaring that this is what the sport should be and that the Halifax race should be made annual, piquing the interest of all these folks. I think you can see where this is going.
00:47:02
Speaker
And sure enough, the event was made annual, the Dennis Commission sets about formalizing the rules, and kind of a little bit of horse trading is done over the actual size and specifications of the ship, so that eventually Elizabeth Howard is actually made admissible but doesn't actually beat the Esperanto, which is kind of an interesting little tidbit. It never gets to the point of the weird math that ends up kind of dominating the America Cup, but
00:47:29
Speaker
There's basic requirements for sail area length, ballast, things like that, as well as, again, each ship and its crew need to have completed a full fishing season. Okay, that sort of makes sense. I get that. Okay, that's an interesting way of doing that, but that makes perfect sense. Yes.
00:47:49
Speaker
So the Dennis Commission is setting all this up. Meanwhile, our second place Canadian entrant, Angus Walters, gifts the ship, the Gilbert B. Walters, to his brother and sets about to order a new boat, keeping a keen eye on what the rules are going to be for the 1921 race. At the same time, you have Senator Dennis himself
00:48:17
Speaker
And the very wealthy yacht club elites that, again, this whole event is a critique of, start to start to put out feelers for a specifically designed schooner that fits within these rules. This is going to be the blue nose, isn't it?
00:48:33
Speaker
This is the Bluenose after 17 drafts of which the first was too large to match the specification. Their man, William Rui, I don't know how to pronounce the name, a man who's kind of waxed about wax poetic about being an amateur, but this guy
00:48:53
Speaker
was building model boats when he was five, designed several racing yachts for his friends and fellow yacht club members, because he was a member of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Club. They found their guy, they get their ship, and this ship would indeed become the Balloons. I don't know exactly when Dennis brought Walthers on board, but
00:49:18
Speaker
It was noted that Walters was present for the entire for most of the construction of the Bluenose and was actually a bit of a pain in the ass for the design and like making design changes and stuff like that while they're while they're constructing it. But let's let's recap what's happening here.
00:49:34
Speaker
The man who started the competition, chairs the commission that sets the rules, has funded the design and construction of a ship that happens to fit specifically within those rules, and has partnered with the captain who already previously attempted to compete. This kind of seems a little...
00:49:55
Speaker
not in the spirit of the competition. The kind of insane thing is that their primary rival, Gloucester, Massachusetts, doesn't do this? I think it's Gloucester, by the way. Gloucester? I think so. Anyway.
00:50:11
Speaker
They do exactly what the Canadians did the year before. They host a competition with all the compliant sailing vessels and one of them wins, weirdly enough, the one captained by the same person who borrowed the Esperanto the year before. Keep in mind Esperanto and not Esperanto.
00:50:31
Speaker
I'm actually sure no no no I'm making the language does not exist for another 30 years. Oh okay. Yeah I thought the whole time I was thinking about that weird movie with with that Disney movie.
00:50:48
Speaker
Uh, oh, wait, that's not the name of that movie. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. William Shatner shot a film entirely in Esperanto. He did? Yes. We should watch that sometime. I need to see this. Anyway, as a, as a sign of doom to come, a ship is also entered from Boston. Um, the Mayflower, which was designed very much like the blue nose. It was designed specifically for this race.
00:51:16
Speaker
kind of skirted the lines of the regulations but was eventually cleared to race by the commission. A problem you might have if you weren't being constructed by the people setting the rules. It didn't matter though, in 1921, during the elimination races, the Bluenose swept and in second place was the Elise. Or Elsie?
00:51:40
Speaker
I have it here twice. I just want to double check which it is. An annoying little side note is when you are looking for Wikipedia on the International Fisherman's Cup, you get directed to the wiki page for the Esperanto, the schooner.
00:51:58
Speaker
Oh, that's not annoying in the slightest. Yeah, it is. It is the LC. Oh, it is the LC. OK. The Mayflower ended up not being a big deal despite a mild controversy over its design. The Blue Nose swept the competition and the LC was was the second place ship. So it was the final race for the cup would go between the Blue Nose and the LC, which
00:52:23
Speaker
the Bluenose also one-handedly, because again, it's purposely designed for this race. Yeah, it makes sense. Because if you're defining the rules or you're rather intimate with the rules, you can sort of have a leg up. Yeah. And the 1922 season, same thing. Another purpose-built ship, the Henry S. Ford, is again, unsuccessful in challenging the Bluenose. Was the Henry S. Ford actually owned by Ford?
00:52:49
Speaker
This is, again, an annoying thing about this. Finding details on that ship is goddamn impossible. It's probably owned by him. Either that or somebody who's people who worship Elon Musk would worship Ford in that same era. Very much. And that sort of thing does happen.
00:53:11
Speaker
So 1923 is where I want to add a little disclaimer. Angus Walters is somewhat of a Canadian maritime hero by his association with the Bluenose, but it was a really good ship. It was purposely designed to win this competition, which pretty much only leaves operator error to decide the victory of a lot of these races. So this is kind of just going to be a bit of a rundown of all the ways he kind of
00:53:36
Speaker
lost the game that was his to lose. So 1923, a new rule is introduced where you can't overshoot marker boys for safety reasons. If you overshoot some of these marker boys because they're so close to shore, you can run aground fairly readily.
00:53:53
Speaker
And, lo and behold, in the second race, the Blue Nose does in fact run afoul of this rule, and is declared to have lost the second race, putting the series at a tie. Well, at least they didn't hit a bridge. Did not hit a bridge. Yes. So, Angus protests this, but his protest is ignored.
00:54:10
Speaker
Quite correctly, I might add, and he took his ship and his crew home and refused to participate in the third race, which was eventually the series was declared as a draw, technically keeping the trophy in Lunenberg, technically meaning that the Bluenose was undefeated.
00:54:26
Speaker
Also, just anger and resentment over how this all went down prevented the International Fisherman Cup from running for eight more years. In the intervening time, there were some internal races. Halifax Business People commissioned another ship called the Haligonion that made some unsuccessful attempts at the Bluenose. And despite there being no International Fisherman's Cup, there was slated for 1930 to be the first
00:54:53
Speaker
annual. We'll see how that goes. Sir Thomas Lipton International fishing chat the fishing challenge cup because Lipton would never let it go that Americans kept the America Cup. You know, it's so funny when you say that name out I keep thinking it's like some sort of Mario Kart circuit. All of these have names like this. I don't understand.
00:55:13
Speaker
The Gloucester fishery enters a purpose-built ship of their own, the Gertrude L. Thebaud, which doesn't seem to have been constructed in the same sort of, like, specifically to beat the Bluenose way that you would expect out of ships from the America Cup. I'm not saying that didn't happen, but it seemed like a fairly normal, typical schooner. And it is also the last fully sail ship that their shipyards would ever produce.
00:55:40
Speaker
And during this inaugural Sir Thomas Lipton International Fishing Challenge Cup, it defeated the Blue Nosed 2-0. Oh no. The undefeated Blue Nosed. And this is where we get into that asterisk. It lost to the Ice Tea Man. It lost the Ice Tea Cup.
00:55:57
Speaker
Um, the thing that's important to note is when the Blue Nose says it's undefeated, uh, and like, when, when, like in the, in the history minute, what they mean is in the International Fisherman's Cup, not like they mean in the International Fisherman's Cup, not in total.
00:56:17
Speaker
Okay, going back to the name of this, it still screws me up here because it's the Sir Thomas Lipton International Fishing Challenge Cup, which implies that Lipton also made like a fish tea.
00:56:29
Speaker
I mean, no, please, please don't. I like tea too much to think about like a tea made out of fish. Like it's not going to happen. It'd be disgusting. Yeah, I don't. I mean, maybe maybe out of the soup line of nope, nope, nope, I'm good. But like, yeah, I I.
00:56:47
Speaker
I harp on this partially because this man will not let this go, and also because he has no involvement whatsoever in the Atlantic fishing industry. Yeah, because he runs a tea company. He's just here.
00:57:09
Speaker
Even Senator Dennis has his own investment in this. He's the owner of the Halifax Herald. He's a Canadian politician. He's got a vested interest in this to spend money on these sorts of events, but Lipton can just leave. He can just leave at any time. He doesn't need to be involved.
00:57:35
Speaker
In his defense, considering that most teas came from, like, what was then Ceylon in India, Ceylon being Sri Lanka, it's not really surprising that he would be involved in boats in some way. And I guess it sort of makes sense that he would be involved in fishing. But it is a little strange, admittedly.
00:57:57
Speaker
But I do believe he ended up owning I know he had some investments in the United States and want to say video of all places you end up like a packing plant or something like that in the middle of the Midwest. Oh interesting yeah I only know so much about the man but that was one of the things I remember from reading up on a major to go but yeah.
00:58:17
Speaker
Okay, so, um, we've, we got our first defeat and the captain of the, of the, the bod, uh, issues a challenge to the blue nose for a, for resurrecting the international fisherman's cup for 1931, a series that it would unfortunately lose keeping that technically undefeated record of the blue nose. What do we know about the year of 1931? Everything was fine.
00:58:45
Speaker
Um, everything was not fine. Uh, cause our boy, William Lyon, Mackenzie King, was, uh, uh, like his government dissolved. Uh, RB Bennett took over and things went immediately to shit. Yeah. We're going to be, we've made it a point to bring up William Lyon, Mackenzie King as often as possible because, uh, yeah.
00:59:10
Speaker
Um, he is actually tangentially involved in this story. So you own a racing boat that also kind of part-time carries fish. How are you going to survive the apocalypse exactly? Uh, scams? Uh, well, the first year in 1931, they had the prize money from the International Fisherman's Cup. But the same year that happened, the Lunaburg Board of Trade sent a telegram with an urgent plea to Ottawa.
00:59:38
Speaker
for a ban on trawling in the banks, the primary fishery off the coast of Newfoundland, for two reasons. One was a fear of the collapse of fish stocks, which... Which never happens again after all of this.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah. And the other one is that fishing trawlers require less crew, which means that there's fewer jobs for the same number of ships. And with the looming Great Depression caused entirely by R.B. Bennett and also the stock market crash,
01:00:12
Speaker
These were both of grave concerns for the sustainability of the fishery, as well as keeping people employed. These pleas would go ignored, not just in 1931, but also to this very day. Yeah, the federal government is there to ignore your pleas. They'll say, oh, well, we'll take that into consideration. And then 40 years later, you're still boiling your water on your indigenous reserve.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, this is literally true for Indigenous Canadians living on reservations and also basically the entirety of the Maritimes. Oh, the Maritimes are not an important voting bloc. That's the reason why Newfoundland is not allowed to do cod fisheries anymore because, well, the federal government was just like, eh, whatever. We're not going to do any sort of sustainable things out here. You're on your own.
01:01:02
Speaker
Well, during this period of time, the cod fishery was like the death of the cod fishery was started here, like the critical collapse of the North Atlantic fish stocks. Yeah, we totally learned her lesson after that.
01:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, we never, like, no policy changes was affected, but basically facing this kind of competition, particularly because the fishery was still open mostly to foreign ships, kind of due to lack of enforcement, kind of large trawling operations were taking over. The Blue Does was not doing so hot. It kind of bounced around within the Great Lakes.
01:01:50
Speaker
During the Great Depression, there was a couple of attempts, one in 1934, to sell the Blue Nose, but no takers. In 1936, they had a profitable season in the Great Lakes and were invited to participate in King George V's Silver Jubilee, which sort of convinced them that
01:02:11
Speaker
Sort of provided them the funds to and also convince them that maybe just drop some engines in this thing remove its top mass Like stash the sails they did it in a way that they could convert it back for racing if they needed to the next year 1937 a new dime is minted with a two masted fishing schooner of unnamed origin is is released
01:02:34
Speaker
Which is our dime that would not be confirmed or stated to officially be the blue nose until 2002 So I have a collection of coins because when I was a kid I was a little bit into coin collecting And the one thing I'll say about the 10 cent piece that we have which is still in still in circulation today we've don't have the penny anymore, but I
01:02:57
Speaker
Um, is that prior to 19 was it 37 you said it just had like two reefs on of like maple leaves on the side. So I think it had a crown on the top. Um, and it just said 10 cents in the year that it was minted. Um, and then of course you would have the monarch of the time on there, which in 1937 was King George the fifth, I want to say.
01:03:26
Speaker
And yeah, because then because after that it was for one, there was he he died and then his brother took over and got I can remember his name and his brother hung around for a year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then this came towards the six. I think that's how it worked out. Got it. Yeah, you know, fuck monarchs. But anyway, but yeah, like the coin that came out with the like the 10 cent piece that came out to replace the previous one was aesthetically nicer. Yes.
01:03:53
Speaker
one could suggest that the reason it wasn't officially named as the Blue Nose on the dime, it's probably so that they wouldn't have to maybe pay Angus Walters or the cooperative or the board that owned the Blue Nose. There was no response from him with respect to the piece being made, was there?
01:04:16
Speaker
I, not that I could, not that I could source. Okay. These were sort of dire straits. I think generally was just mad about a lot of things. That's fair. All right. So things start to turn around in the, in the, in the late thirties economically. Then everything's going to be fine.
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, Mackenzie King's back in. Oh, good. And we got this brilliant prime minister in the UK, Chamberlain. And there's this really interesting Austrian painter who's become leader over in this country called Germany. It's relatively new in the grand scheme of things. Yeah.
01:04:55
Speaker
And also, there's this new country to the east called the Soviet Union, and they have a really strange economic model. I mean, good economic model. Well, it's strange by that then standards, you know, like equality. I don't know about that. Actually, that's a whole different topic.
01:05:13
Speaker
I mean, yeah, at this at this point, at this point, the the the Stalin era reverse of like actually no being gay is illegal again has already happened. So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's a nuanced topic for not for today's podcast.
01:05:32
Speaker
Yeah. So, Ben Pine, who is the captain of the Thabod for most- Made out of wood. Pardon? Ben Pine. I know, nominative determinism. Here we go.
01:05:48
Speaker
I don't think this was out of the, like very out of the blue. I'm sure this was, was talked about in advance, but basically issues a challenge again, because between the Lipton cup before the depression and the 1931 Fisherman's cup, the Thobod and the Bluenose were one and one.
01:06:06
Speaker
So scraping together some money from various donors in Boston, the Canadian Fisheries Department and the province of Nova Scotia also donated some money basically to repair, repaint, and refit the Bluenose so it could compete in this final race. Prize money was also cobbled together mostly through donations and the prologue chapter to which in the wind does this incredible justice
01:06:30
Speaker
if you are interested in this, read it, it's beautifully written. But the Blue Nose is basically steamed over to Gloucester for this one last race, basically, the tiebreaker race, kind of to reignite some of the spirit that got lost
01:06:52
Speaker
in the region during the Great Depression, which was incredibly hard on the region. They did not get a lot of help on either side of the border. So the Blue Nose is basically fixed up, the engines removed, the top mass reinstalled, the sails reinstalled, and on October 9th, the first of this series of race, so the race is underway, the Blue Nose starts to fall behind,
01:07:20
Speaker
And during the race, while already behind, the bow spirit, the wooden pole at the front of the ship, cracks. And what was a near defeat turns into a total defeat. Three days later, with a brand new bow spirit, the ships head out to race and find themselves without any wind.
01:07:44
Speaker
But that's, you know, that you could just use mode. Oh, right. They took them off. Yeah. You can see why you can see why this was like this was obsolete technology in the mid 1800s when this whole thing started by the by the mid to late 1930s. Like these were the only two ships left.
01:08:08
Speaker
that even qualified for the race as true fully sailed ships. Which is also why the schooner on the dime being a composite is kind of laughable. There was only one schooner
01:08:26
Speaker
of the time like in the water on either side of the border. October 13th, the second race went ahead. The Blue Nose took an early league after the first leg and basically won the race quite handily. And this is kind of this is kind of how it goes. The clip that we played was of the final race where the blue were at the bod and Blue Nose were tuned to before the race.
01:08:53
Speaker
for one last little reunion of the band, William Roy, the ship's designer, was sent down by the provincial government, by ferry, to consult with the crew on ballasting and trim and other boat stuff, which he and Angus Walters had not really get along super well this entire time.
01:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, they were meddling. I will note the Canadian Fisheries Department and the province of Nova Scotia did basically shell out three grand to make this race possible. So they wanted to secure their investment to a degree. Tons of ballasts were removed from the ship at Roy's request.
01:09:35
Speaker
And the final race happened on October 26, which you heard the results of. What isn't clear from the clip or from the audio, a part of the rigging actually broke on Blue Nose in the final leg of the race, but the lead that it held since the second marker just held. They were ahead, they stayed ahead, and while the thobod caught up, it wasn't enough.
01:10:03
Speaker
Bluenose won the final of the race series. Well then, that's great. So Canada won. Canada always wins, right? Yes. Bluenose is undefeated except for the times that it was undefeated. Exactly. Except for the times where it was defeated. Thank you, Ice T-Man.
01:10:25
Speaker
Yes, thank you IceTman for the 1L and also presumably a bunch of random other races that they participated in during the Great Depression that just weren't recorded or weren't notable.
01:10:36
Speaker
So what happened to the Blue Nose then? So I've been seeing the praises of the book that I read for a lot of these details, The Witch in the Wind. Here's my critique. This chapter is called Her Final Adventure. I disagree with this characterization. Oh, OK. During most of the Second World War, Blue Nose is kept docked. She's a sailing ship. She's not going to do well against German U-boats.
01:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, she's a sailing ship during a way worse, way more effective like submarine warfare campaign. Well, actually, I don't know if that's if it's more effective, but once again, submarine warfare is taking over. A lot of ships are needed. A lot of quality ships are needed. And Blue Nose is not the latter. We're actually going to be talking about this, not in the next episode, but in the episode following that. So we'll be talking about German U-boats and all that.
01:11:35
Speaker
Yeah, so at some point during the war, the Blue Notes is actually sold to the West Indies Trading Company, where she is once again-
01:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, where she is completely stripped of mass and rigging's and just converted into a coastal freighter. I that's that's a horrifyingly depressive depression. Like that's just sad because like there there could be way worse fates, but to be treated to the
01:12:08
Speaker
West Indies Trading Company and I'm assuming that has nothing to do with the Dutch. I know that doesn't have anything to do with the Dutch West India Company, but I'm assuming it has something to do with the Caribbean.
01:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, it spends a few years being a coastal freighter around the Caribbean, bouncing between islands, where it runs aground on a coral reef on the 28th of January 1946, where it is abandoned and eventually just breaks apart on its own with the weather and time. That's a sad ending to a boat. I understand that was a rich person's boat.
01:12:43
Speaker
It wasn't. Well, okay, it sort of was. It started out that way, but because of the way fishermen were paid, it sort of ended up being cooperatively owned, like a lot of these working fishing vessels. But yeah, I will note that its final and fatal damage that it received was this time not Angus Walther's fault.
01:13:09
Speaker
I guess not. Was he even alive by this point in 1946? Cause like he would have had to have been like fairly old at this point. Yeah. He was, he was old as fuck when he had during the anchors. He died in 68. Yeah. Okay. No, he would have been, uh, he would have been in the sixties by this point. Okay. So he wouldn't have been that old. Okay. Interesting. Cause like, uh, Ben Pine was really fucking old. And so was, um, so was, uh,
01:13:37
Speaker
not Walters, a guy who piloted the Welsh. Marty Welsh was like in his 60s during the first Fisherman's Cup, the Esperanto. Anyway, yeah, so sad, tragic and minor critique, Marc de Villiers. It wasn't her final adventure. It was going upstate.
01:14:04
Speaker
You mean a province. Come on, we have provinces. Not province, yes. To a farm up province. Oh shit, we talked about this last episode. I know, that's why I'm making fun of you. Going to a far... Yeah, this wasn't her final adventure. She was sent to a farm up province. But this was not the end of the story of the Bluenose, because there were Bluenose sequels. Oh dear. See, the thing about Canadian nationalism is, as we discussed in the last... You have to not be American?
01:14:31
Speaker
Yes, as we discussed in the last episode, anything, any little thing we have over the Americans, we will hyperfix aid on, and this was no different. So in 1963, Sydney Oland of the Oland Brewing Company and Alexander Keith's fame commissioned a replica of the Bluenose.
01:14:49
Speaker
for as a promotional thing for his brewery schooner lager brand. This that brewery Alexander Keats has had such a history and has really managed to pick some real winning decisions. Oh, yeah. Honestly, bonus episode fodder that. I don't know if I want to do a bonus episode on Alexander Keats. I'm not I'm not going to lie to you. I really don't want to talk about that, dude.
01:15:15
Speaker
Ah, fair. Anyway, so wealthy Halifax businessman commissioning a sequel to the Blue Nose, not quite the betrayal of the spirit of the Blue Nose as we discussed that one might think it is. Oland hangs onto the boat until 1971, where he sells it to the province of Nova Scotia for one dollar, who use it for promoting tourism in the province until handing it over to a preservation trust in a few years.
01:15:41
Speaker
I was gonna make a loony joke, but they didn't exist until the 1980s. Yeah, it was not sold for a single loony.
01:15:48
Speaker
Okay, so in 1995, so this is the Bluenose 2, because Bluenose is still a name of a vessel on the books. In 1995, the Bluenose was refit using public funds just in time to be caught up in the sponsorship scandal. That's a throwback. It's like the sponsorship scandal is what ultimately killed the Jean Kuchen liberal party and why Paul Martin never was a prime minister beyond 2004.
01:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, it this was one of my earliest memories of politics was the was the sponsorship scandal and basically Paul Martin's government falling apart. It's really funny. The sponsorship scandal almost made me a Tory. Yeah, it because back back then I was like when I left I have to cut this. Oh, no, no, no, no, this is this is staying in because whenever anyone who knows me now knows that I'm a huge raging socialist, but
01:16:46
Speaker
Back then, I was raised Catholic and came out of high school.
01:16:53
Speaker
I became more familiar with politics. But what it will say, in my defense, I never voted Tory. I ended up voting liberal anyway in that election, and I remember never voting Tory. Yeah, at least that's what I was trying to say. I have never voted Tory. They can go on record in saying that.
01:17:17
Speaker
Please do not cancel me for voting, Tori. It never happened. You aren't going to be sent to the lulags or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Justin Trudeau at fucking COVID concentration camps or what? I don't know. Whatever those fucking imbeciles are doing, yeah. Yeah, whatever stuff future Prime Minister of Canada peel our pollings off of that. Okay, let's move on. I don't want to think about this.
01:17:47
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, I got caught up in the sponsorship scandal because you can't just give money to the Maritime provinces without fucking it up somehow. And it sort of changed hands a couple times for administrative reasons after its 1995 refit, where it eventually ended up in the care of the Lunenberg Maritime or Marine Museum
01:18:07
Speaker
where it eventually ended up in the care of the Lunenberg Marine Museum Society, where it kind of just stayed as a museum and kind of as a museum piece essentially. In 2009, because these ships do not last long, they require constant maintenance, it was in need of a rebuild and a full rebuild project went underway, which took until 2013.
01:18:31
Speaker
One thing I'll add for that is this is a little side note, but with the seizure of assets against the Russian oligarchs as a response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the United States government, I think, has like a dozen yachts that they actually have to pay people to maintain. Like if you don't do things like sweep the desk, sweep the decks, excuse me, or like, you know, constantly wipe it and all this sort of thing.
01:19:01
Speaker
the ships that begin to rot. And you may think, oh, well, you know, the government should let it rot. Well, no, the purpose of seizing the assets is to likely resell those ships or just hold on to them until they decide on what to do with them ultimately. But like, letting them rot is not financially sensible for a government to do so.
01:19:18
Speaker
So as a result, there's like a dozen, you know, super yachts that are owned by these really wealthy assholes that have to be paid, maintained using taxpayer money. Yes. And there there is a saying that a boat is a hole in the ocean you pour money into. And just like a star. Yeah, this is
01:19:40
Speaker
related to our news item. And this is doubly so for these wooden sailing ships. There was a reason why metal-hauled ships became so prolific once they became cost-effective to build. And that's because wooden boats require constant care and maintenance. So having one that's just sitting in the water as a museum piece isn't going to fly. It's going to rot. It's made of wood, for Christ's sake.
01:20:07
Speaker
boats don't fly though uh yeah well they they do briefly when they get uh get pulled into drydock that's fair yeah so that's two sequels but i promised many sequels in 2007 i won by the name of joanne or joan rue which that last name might seem a little familiar
01:20:31
Speaker
starts to raise funds for the construction of a new Blue Nose. But due to the impending rebuild that would start in 2009, the name Blue Nose 3 was actually take reserved by the provincial government. So this new Blue Nose would end up being named
01:20:48
Speaker
the Bluenose 4. Oh, no. This never really went anywhere. She did receive some private funding. Nowadays, the website for this is absolutely dead, but it is an interesting piece of internet like hauntology or like just just weird dead internet stuff. OK, this is weird to look at. So I pulled up the link that you put in here and it shows a photo of what I assume is the Bluenose, but, you know, whatever has a
01:21:18
Speaker
flying animated gif flag of Nova Scotia to the left of it saying proudly Canadian current update coming soon. This is dated for July of 2011. And the weird thing about this is like this website gives me fives of my grandma who used to run like she's been dead for eight years, but she had a website and she would like maintain family tree and all that sort of thing. And it was going back as far as 1998.
01:21:44
Speaker
This website looks like it's from 1998. It really does. So I left in the episode notes three distinct eras of this website. Oh my god, the original version of it is just as cursed. Yeah, it's very web 1.0. It's very like... No, I'd say this is web 2. It has columns.
01:22:10
Speaker
It does have columns. It does have a table which is bulging. Oh my god, this thing is, this is so cute. This is made by somebody using Microsoft front page. Absolutely. So the progression of the website for the listeners, and we're going to drop the links in the episode descriptions because like this is worth looking at.
01:22:30
Speaker
2009 it has kind of a blog layout promising update soon 2011 it has the same blog layout promising update soon, but with a slightly different Slightly different news item. I'm just reading this here. This is the update for 2009 on June 9th 2009 a majority NDP government led by Darrell Dexter was elected in Nova Scotia on Friday, June 19th
01:22:56
Speaker
the Honorable Darryl Dexter took the oath of office and became the 27th Premier of Nova Scotia, at the same time naming his cabinet to include the Honorable Percy Paris as Minister of Tourism, Cultural and Heritage, a portfolio that includes all-in-caps, Blue Nose. Monday, June 22nd, 2009, we initiated communication with Minister Harris requesting a meeting whereby we might present our plan for a new Blue Nose
01:23:20
Speaker
Premier Dexter, MLA. I don't know why it's all in caps, so I'm just going to say it this way. Premier Dexter, MLA for Cole Harbor and Pam Burtzel, MLA for Lindenburg were also contacted. Premier Dexter as our MLA and Ms. Burtzel as MLA for the region that is home to Blue Nose and her legacy.
01:23:39
Speaker
While this venture can be carried to fruition privately, it has always been and remains our preference to have a new Blue Nose built in Nova Scotia in collaboration with the government of Nova Scotia. Should you feel the inclination to contact your local MLA on our behalf, we appreciate it. We need this project to move forward in a timely fashion in order to ensure the construction of a new
01:24:00
Speaker
Bluenose can be completed traditionally in Nova Scotia in order to replicate as closely as possible construction of the original vessel that created the legacy and the lure. Bluenose!
01:24:12
Speaker
Yep. Oh my God, it goes on and it keep it goes on. Why are these all in caps? I listeners, I implore you to read all three of the links. The last one is the last one is just a like this website is about to become completely dead. Most of the content is removed in in July of 2011.
01:24:35
Speaker
And the next snapshot in archive.org is is from 2014, and it's just a domain parked ad site, which is tragic. Blue nose, blue nose. So what did we learn? Well, you should always name your boat and lowercase and never use uppercase. Yeah. Why can't we just have the blue nose? Yeah, as opposed to blue nose. Blue nose. Yeah.
01:25:04
Speaker
Oh my God. Yeah, this was fascinating. Again, I'm not a boat person. I don't really give a crap about boats personally. The only boats that I've ever ridden have been ferries. I've only been on one pleasure craft of considerable size once, and that's when I was graduating from high school. We did a party on a boat. It was done by the school.
01:25:24
Speaker
And I guess my uncle has a power boat that he uses on the Shuswap lake. Like, you know, that's, that's sex by experience of boats. I overall just never really got interested in boats. Um, but this was actually an interesting story to say the least. It explains why it was deserving of a history moment. So thanks to our good friends at historical Canada.
01:25:47
Speaker
They're not friends with us, but we're friends with them. Yeah, they probably do not appreciate too rabid communists. I never said I was a communist, I'm a socialist. We'll get you.
01:26:04
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I think that kind of interests me about this story is like this is very much a Maritime's corruption story and also like kind of an instance of how these sort of working class colored sporting events
01:26:23
Speaker
effectively immediately get co-opted by money to interest. The International Fisherman's Cup was supposed to be a race for real sailors, for real working sailors and real working sailing ships, but as we found out, almost immediately that was thrown by the wayside. It's debatable that the first race was that.
01:26:45
Speaker
But there on out, it was it was very much a vehicle of just fishermen flavored America Cup, which is probably why America Cup is still going today. And the International Fisherman's Cup is not because at the end of the day, the moneyed interests are going to cut out the middleman. Of course. Well, I guess that's a podcast. That's a podcast. I'm so glad I kept this under one hour.
01:27:11
Speaker
Um, yes, I can looking at the timer here and this is going to be fun to edit. Um, well, what's our next episode? Christ, it's going to be on the Gimli glider. Oh, fuck. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody.
01:27:48
Speaker
Thanks everyone. Bye!