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The Nemi Ships
209 Plays2 years ago
Caligula builds a couple of ships on Lake Nemi!
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Transcript
Introduction to Killer Shipwrecks Podcast
00:00:23
Speaker
I hear that music and it's like I instantly like Pavlov's dog start thinking about a shipwreck and maybe it's because that literally sounds like a shipwreck but also because it does signal another episode of killer shipwrecks.
00:00:37
Speaker
Can I tell you, I'm a little out of sorts. I had to drive into town to record this episode with you. Power is out on the mountain yet again. Oh, I am at Mary's tonight. They let me use the back office again. I don't want to make you feel jealous, but they constructed a beautiful vegan meal for me, brought it back here. And now I'm raring to go.
00:01:03
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, nice of Mary to put you up for the night. Excellent food at Mary's.
Fascination with Shipwrecks
00:01:10
Speaker
We're in season three for our newest listeners, more like season one, but season three, episode two. Before we dive into this week's episode, do you want to give a quick overview of what killer shipwrecks even is? Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. We both love shipwrecks. We're fascinated by them. We like to read news accounts of any new discoveries.
00:01:33
Speaker
And what we do here on killer shipwrecks, which once upon a time was known as talking ship for legal reasons. We have a new title this season and we're on a new platform, which we're very excited about. But what we're going to do each week here, much as we did in the first two seasons, we're going to take turns telling each other.
00:01:56
Speaker
week by week about a particular shipwreck. You don't know the shipwreck I'm going to tell you about this week. You're going to be learning along with our listeners.
00:02:06
Speaker
These are nuggets of history, time capsules, if you will, scattered around the world in all sorts of waters. So the fact that we can learn from these frozen in time, if you will, moments in history makes it even more exciting to me. I don't know if you agree. Oh, I wholeheartedly endorse that sentiment. And I love that you said history because without giving too much away, we're going way back today.
Caligula's Rise and Reign
00:02:36
Speaker
I'm going to give you a name, a name from the distant past, Caligula. Sounds like first century. Super exotic. I think it's very much pornographic, maybe soft or porn. So I'm guessing Caligula is associated with just that full on Emperor gets to do whatever they want.
00:03:03
Speaker
That's my impression. Don't know how you're going to bring this into the whole realm of shepherd. His job title on LinkedIn was Roman Emperor. He became emperor in the year 37, four years after the death of Jesus Christ.
00:03:23
Speaker
Hot stuff. How old was Caligula when he became this emperor? Oh, Jesus. Now that requires in-depth historical research. He was born in the year 12. He was like 25 when he became emperor. Is that possible? Holy cow.
00:03:43
Speaker
Okay, now here's the thing. People were pretty excited when Caligula became emperor. Mostly they were excited because he was not the old guy, Tiberius, who they were totally sick of. They also felt like they knew Caligula. He was from Rome. He wasn't one of these, you know, guys who came in from the territories. He was a local boy, makes good. Sadly for those in our audience who are vegans, and I do want to give a trigger warning here,
00:04:13
Speaker
During the first few months of his reign, the public was so excited that a record 160,000 animals were slaughtered during the public rejoicing over him becoming emperor.
00:04:26
Speaker
That's a lot of animals. Yeah, it's just a tough time for the animals. The beginning of his reign looks promising. He's very generous in opening up the state coffers. He's given out bonuses to troops, bonuses to the Praetorian Guard who are in charge of guarding him, guarding his palace.
00:04:48
Speaker
He's he undertakes a bunch of important construction projects, a couple of big aqueducts. We love the aqueducts. So kind of impressive for 25. He also improves the harbor in
00:05:04
Speaker
at Sicily and somewhere else and when I say he does I mean he's probably not down there with the with the shovel but you know he's giving out orders and he's just burning through the cash and just four years after the death of Christ.
00:05:20
Speaker
Almost 2000 years ago. That's incredible. Now, people do say of Caligula that there were two Caligula's. There was the Caligula in the first six or seven months of his reign. And then toward the end of that year, he gets very, very sick. And it's not clear whether possibly he was poisoned or what happened.
00:05:45
Speaker
I feel like they all get assassinated. Like, it's a great gig while you have it, but then it's scary. Okay, after he gets really sick, a lot of people think he's gonna die. He does not. When he comes back, he's not the same Caligula. He's not the kid that they all liked, that they were all excited about. His name, by the way, Caligula, is a nickname.
00:06:09
Speaker
His father had been a Roman general, and the kid spent a lot of time around the troops out in the field with his dad, and the troops came up with a nickname for him. There was a word for the boot that the military guys wore called the Caliga, and he was a little boot, so he was Caligula.
00:06:30
Speaker
Still very curious about how this ties into
The Luxurious Nemi Ships
00:06:33
Speaker
her shipwreck. He says, listen guys, I want to build two massive boats. Okay. I want them to be 230 feet long. And one of them said, it's sort of like, if you imagine like a spa, you know, nowadays you go into a spa and it's got like the muted colors. It's got the soft music and it's got sort of.
00:06:53
Speaker
attractive, but very low-key staff. He goes, on one boat that's that, maybe it's got a little fountain that just makes some running water noises. He goes, that's the boat which is devoted to our worship of Diana, the goddess.
00:07:14
Speaker
All right, so those of us who are in the cult of Diana, she's associated with a few things. She's the goddess of the hunt. She's the goddess of nature, the countryside, goddess of the moon. She had a lot on her plate. And so you can see why he's like, look, we should do something for her. We should worship her. Let's build a boat that's sort of, it'll be like the temple boat, kind of, like the Diana boat.
00:07:40
Speaker
Next to it, just as big, we're going to have more of the fun boat, if you will. Like this is the boat I picture like this sort of like bumping like electronic, you know, like kind of a Vegas. This is the floating pleasure palace.
00:08:01
Speaker
the Ibiza boat. This is where you get to feeling Caligula spends 99% of his boat time he's on that boat and then maybe Sunday morning if he's super hungover he goes over to the temple boat to do some repenting or something or confess
00:08:19
Speaker
It's spring break at Lake Havasu. I mean, it's Caligula, it's a pontoon boat, and everyone's got a six pack. I mean, let's go. Come on, we're 25. It is exactly Havasu, and that is genius that you brought that up, and I'm gonna tell you why. Because everybody's like, okay, two massive boats, we can do this, that makes sense. We're
00:08:42
Speaker
He says, just to throw an extra wrinkle in here, boys, I'm not going to put it in the ocean that we live on the coast of. He said, you know that lake up in the mountains, like Nemi? You know the one where people worship Diana? We're putting those two fat ass boats up there on that lake, which is not even that big a lake. We're going to build them up there.
00:09:04
Speaker
The scale's off. You don't put that kind of ship in a little lake. The scale is so off, but you're right. It's such a Havasu vibe. I've never been to Havasu, but it's just the name. You can already tell what it is by the name Havasu. These boats, first of all, they're much bigger than historians realized the Romans were capable of building.
00:09:26
Speaker
There were some accounts from back in those times talking about the massive Roman grain carriers that would export grain and maritime historians were like, yeah, but actually that's probably just puffed up and exaggerated because the Romans did not build huge boats. Turns out they did.
00:09:46
Speaker
Wait, so in saying that, are you saying the maritime historians have had it all wrong? Yes, pretty much. That's what I'm saying. So, you know, maybe if you're going to go, you know, if you want to go do some Reiki healing or saying you go to the Diana boat, but most of the time you're going to be on the pleasure palace.
00:10:05
Speaker
Let me talk to you a little bit about the boat. It has hot and cold running water in an elaborate system of lead pipes. The hot water feeds the baths, the cold water feeds the fountains and gives them drinking water. It was a ship built 2,000 years ago that had hot and cold running water. Thank you for zeroing in on that because, again, this is a technology that people did not realize they had going that early.
00:10:35
Speaker
It's something that doesn't really show up again until the middle ages. From a buoyancy perspective, I'm surprised the choice was lead, as don't associate lead with some sort of wood-based watercraft. That seems like an indelicate balance situation. I'm glad you mentioned the buoyancy because not only do you have the heavy lead pipes, but you also have marble floors everywhere,
00:10:59
Speaker
incredibly elaborate mosaics. It's like a palace, but it just happens to be a floating palace. This is like a cruise ship. This is like, I feel like I'm watching the love boat. I think I saw every episode of it. And Fantasy Island came on right afterwards. Such a blockbuster. Maybe Lizzie can upload drawings and stuff of this ship. So this episode should be called the Nemi Ships. N as in Nancy, E as in Edward, M as in Middlestadt.
00:11:26
Speaker
And I, as in Icarus, Nemi ships. But the hilarious thing is that the method of propulsion is just oarsmen. So it's this massive ship. And you see the picture, it literally looks like a millipede. It's just like a million oarsmen around the edges of this huge ship.
00:11:42
Speaker
So they had hot and cold wine and water, but they needed like a hundred people to like move an inch. Like that seems crazy. Wow. I know Dr. Troyer, before we get to the next part of your story, which I'm sure does involve a wreck given the title of this show. I do believe we need to give some attention to our sponsors. I think we're starting with one that you know well, because obviously you cultivated a relationship with Terry very early on. Let's hear from Terry right now.
00:12:10
Speaker
David, we know from our many listener emails that our fans like to tune into the show while doing tasks around the house or even at work. That's true. Thank you. So whether you're thinning varnish or paint, cleaning off wood stains, maybe making moth repellent at home. Moth repellent? Yes, you gotta know. Yeah, could happen. Or you are cleaning a firearm or just maintaining industrial equipment. Terry's turpentine has you covered.
00:12:39
Speaker
Terry's turpentine has been family owned and operated since 1993 as one of our podcasts, very first sponsors starting us way back in the year of our Lord 2018. Wow. Love Terry. Terry's turpentine is a proud member of the better business Bureau of Southwestern Ohio and offers free delivery to customers in the Columbus Dayton and Cincinnati tri-city area. Beautiful area. Is it really not entirely sure. Sounds nice.
00:13:08
Speaker
Terry's turpentine natural solvents of unnatural quality Just a bit of housekeeping. We do have to keep an eye on the Terry situation. I did not update you earlier No, how much detail to get into it sounds like there may be Some personal issues in Terry's life some marital issues. He So it's such a bummer, but he is
00:13:36
Speaker
Made a comment to me that it makes him sound super rich if he's sponsoring a podcast. It is a lot per listener how much he's paying if you think about it. He does. He hasn't backed out totally yet, but I just want to put that on your radar. I wish Terry well. I do too. Such a nice guy.
00:13:53
Speaker
And actually, I love Susan too, but we love you guys. I don't think anyone appreciates how difficult it is to start a family-owned turpentine business. You're dealing with huge biochemical companies. And I think his family's been doing it even before him they were doing it. One of the best solvents in the Midwest is what I hear. Some people don't like the smell of turpentine. I love the smell of turpentine. It comes from pine trees.
00:14:19
Speaker
But let's get back to what you were saying before the break, because that was crazy. Here's the deal. As Caligula is spending more and more money and he's getting increasingly erratic and he's making lots of enemies and suddenly the people in Rome who had been so excited that they were killing all their animals and either eating them or sacrificing them to the gods keep
00:14:42
Speaker
bringing that up. I thought we moved on from the animal. We haven't. We haven't. I'm going to circle back on that a few more times. So his basically the way he's leading his life and the way he's acting around the palace, it becomes clear he's not long for this world. Not only will he not be ruling for a long time, he won't be living for a
00:15:03
Speaker
burning the candle at both ends. Even if one of those ends on the boat of Diana or whatever, it's like you're burning it too hard on the other boat. I'm secretly a little curious about the Diana boat too. Anyway, so in the year 41, a group of conspirators trick him into coming down into a tunnel underneath his palace, land palace, not his floating palace.
00:15:25
Speaker
They get him in a tunnel down there. They say, oh, we want you to come down, talk to some of the officers, give them a pep talk. You know, it's tough work down there. It's dark. They work long hours, you know, pick them up. And once he gets down there, they just set upon him a group of men with knives, stab him up. He's pretty bloody. So the lead tainted water was the least of his problems at that point.
00:15:51
Speaker
Now, for the next emperor, they haven't thought that out totally, but they do find another member of the sort of imperial family, Claudius, the one with the stutter. He was supposedly hiding behind some curtains, very frightened by the events. So you put that in a play and people are like, yeah, right. He's hiding behind curtains. Like, what are you talking about? But this actually happened. And this was like 2000 years ago.
00:16:20
Speaker
They pull them out and either on the spot or soon thereafter, they say, Claudia's, you know, try to get the stutter under control. Try to just sort of spruce up a little bit, maybe dress a little better because you're going to be emperor from now on now.
00:16:35
Speaker
Now, Claudius, just because the last emperor didn't go out, like on a winning streak, he is trying to distinguish himself from Caligula, run away from his legacy. And one of the first things he does is those freaking ships up there, Lake Neme.
Aftermath and Recovery Efforts
00:16:53
Speaker
He said, I don't, you know, he says, I don't know if any of you are going to be up in the, he says, listen guys, we had some great times up there, especially on, on the, not
00:17:01
Speaker
the non-Diana boat, and we'll always remember that, but times have changed. Don't have a lot of money in the Empire accounts. So any of you going to be up in the Nemi area anytime soon, I want you to strip all the valuable stuff off those ships, get the jewels, get any metal, any gold, silver, anything we can
00:17:25
Speaker
fence, anything we can sell off at the pawn shops. I knew it. I knew it. Get rid of the pleasure boats. Why? But get this, they strip the ships and then they scuttle them. You know what that means? They sink them. Oh, no. Right there in the lake. The whole lake is 100 feet deep at that point. And where the ships come to rest, it's about 60 feet deep. So within a year, I think of
00:17:50
Speaker
the assassination the ships are underwater and they sort of become lost to memory and to history and you know there's people who have a vague kind of like oh yeah aren't there some there's some ships down there or whatever and there's even a couple of people in the 1300s and 1400s I think maybe there's some boats down here and they make some efforts at like you know dropping down some ropes and hooks and trying to pull some stuff out they they really just basically do some damage before
00:18:20
Speaker
you tell us what happened in terms of like did someone actually raise the ships what's happening are we gonna get to see them is lizzie gonna have photos to post before we do that i think we need to hear from our second sponsor one who similar to terry has been with us since season one which i understand cannot be accessed on this platform.
00:18:41
Speaker
But I think we need to hear from our friends at choppy streams who, by the way, were in the news last week. They're doing well. They have, they have, um, I don't know. They have some new investor or something, or they completed some new investment round or something. Well, that's fantastic. And I know you follow the various tech blogs. Let's hear from our good friends at choppy streams and congrats on the funding. As kits said, that's fantastic. Kit, do you like sitting in never ending video meetings on zoom or Google meet? You like that?
00:19:08
Speaker
the worst. Exactly. I find them unbearable. But how do we get out of these video meetings? Well, our sponsor, Choppy Streams, has the answer. Choppy Streams is a browser extension that enables you to surreptitiously introduce realistic network errors that causes your video and audio streams to appear, well, choppy. The choppiness in the stream increases at a natural pace until you are forced to apologize and sign off.
00:19:36
Speaker
How much would you expect to pay for that kit? Oh, I would pay a fair amount. I mean, it would get me out of some endless meetings. We hate the meetings, but at only $1.99 per month, that's less than $2 a month. You get an unlimited number of choppy streams. Looking to get out of endless video meetings? Get choppy streams and enjoy smooth sailing the rest of the day.
00:20:03
Speaker
super impressed by the sound effects at the end of that spot. And that's like editing, that's like finding tracks and combining. So go on because this is insane.
00:20:16
Speaker
So the years pass. It's not until the late 1920s that somebody gets serious about just jumped from the 1300s to the 1920s. Yes, I did. Go ahead. You know, it's a we like to keep this podcast at a reasonable length. We're in the late 1920s and it's one of probably the few other Italian leaders that I can name who's involved in the recovery. Also a leader with some bad PR sounds like a Mussolini.
00:20:45
Speaker
This is not good. Benito Mussolini. Excellent. You get an A plus. You get an A plus on your history. Now we have an interest in the ships of Mussolini. Like he had time to like, you know what? We've got a lot of issues in the world, but what about those ships?
00:21:02
Speaker
Mussolini in 1828 directs his underlings. Hey, you know, let's get to the bottom. Let's figure out what's, what's down there. If there's anything valuable, you know, we've been talking about this and it's been, um, on my mind, let's do it. He's like, you know what? We've got 13 years till the world war starts. Let's, let's get a look at the ships.
00:21:22
Speaker
They do a massive project of draining as much of the lake as they can. They use huge pipes, they get rid of a lot of the water, they drain it down enough so they can definitely see the full one ship. They can see one ship and the top of the other. Then there's some sort of disaster where the lake fills back up and
00:21:43
Speaker
They have to come back at it again a few years later, but soon enough, they get both ships. They move what they can up onto the shore, I guess. They build a museum to contain the two ships. It's about 20 miles south of Rome, but up in the mountains.
00:21:58
Speaker
The problem is we cannot go see those ships because during World War II, the Allies bombed the freaking museum. Museum caught fire, the ships were basically destroyed. There's some pieces that are left nowadays and there is still a museum, but it's not the museum. It's not Mussolini's museum. The museum used to be a kick-ass museum. Now, pieces of these ships still find their way back to Italy. There was a story that came up,
00:22:27
Speaker
years ago where a man was publicizing his big, beautiful, coffee table style book about mosaics, ancient mosaics. And he's in New York, he's giving talks, he's showing it around, and a few different people say, hey, you know, that one mosaic on page 63, yeah, that's Helen's coffee table. And he's like, what do you mean? And they're like, yeah, that's Helen Fioretti or some Italian woman.
00:22:53
Speaker
And her art dealer husband turns out somehow these guys came into possession of a mosaic from the Nemi ships and had used it for years as a coffee table. Incredible. From 2,000 years ago. That's incredible.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, how cool a coffee table must that have been again? We'll see if Lizzie can can track down the picture. The art dealer couple. So yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. You guys can we'll send the mosaic back to the museum. I think they were interested in not being prosecuted for having looted artifacts so that if you do go to the museum, which is beside Lake Neme, you can still see that beautiful mosaic.
00:23:36
Speaker
The net me ships are famous among shipwrecked historians basically for some of those technologies I talked about that had not been realized that they were operative that long ago. There was also they had some big huge statues on the ships that rotated and I guess they were on a bed of huge
00:23:55
Speaker
ball bearings, you know, they, they stripped those too. But, um, basically the design for that, people thought like, Oh God, we thought like Da Vinci came up with that hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later. Now, one of the things I love is that these shipwrecks also become an excuse for you and I to find out about topics that we really should know about, but we don't. Caligula, I did not know a goddamn, the lake
00:24:18
Speaker
Lake Nemi, I don't know how it got associated with Diana originally, but like the real hardcore Diana adherence, they loved to go up there. There was a festival up there. There were all kinds of temples up there. Like if you were a Diana freak, Lake Nemi was kind of your jam. It was sort of like dead heads, maybe hacky sack. That is a hacky sack haven. I mean, are you going to tease? Also, I'm not going to tease the next episode. I'm just going to say this one will hit a bit closer to home.
00:24:48
Speaker
Is there any particular or anything that I should be studying up on or you want me to come in fresh? I think we just need to get excited for next week. Can't wait.