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The Brendan Voyage
44 Plays1 year ago
A discussion and review of Tim Severin's book "The Brendan Voyage."
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Transcript
Introduction to Letters and Legends
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Speaker
Welcome to Letters and Legends. I'm your host, Trevor Maloof. This show is about history, literature, mythology, and everything in between.
The Brendan Voyage Overview
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Speaker
In this first episode of the show, I will be discussing the book, The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, with Zeb Gerard and Andy Hughes. The back cover reads, could an Irish monk in the sixth century really have sailed all the way across the Atlantic
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Speaker
in a small open boat, thus beating Columbus to the New World by almost a thousand years.
Recreating Historical Voyages
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Speaker
Relying on the medieval texts of St. Brendan, award-winning adventure writer Tim Severn painstakingly researched and built a boat identical to the leather Kura that
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Speaker
carried Brendan on his epic voyage. He found a centuries-old family-run tannery to prepare the ox hides in the medieval way. He undertook an exhaustive search for skilled harness makers, the only people who would know how to stitch the three-quarter inch thick hides together. He located one of the last pieces of Irish grown timber
00:01:12
Speaker
tall enough to make the main mast. But his courage and resourcefulness were truly tested on the open seas, including one heart-pounding episode when he and his crew repaired a dangerous tear in the leather hull by hanging over the side. Their heads sometimes submerged under the freezing waves to restitch the leather.
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Speaker
a modern classic in the tradition of Kontiki, the Brennan voyage seamlessly blends high adventure and historical relevance. It has been translated into 27 languages since its original publication in 1978. Tim Severin's biography reads,
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Speaker
Tim Severin, explorer, traveler, author, filmmaker, and lecturer, made his first expedition while he was still a student at Oxford, following the route of Marco Polo on a motorcycle.
Discovering Tim Severin
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Speaker
He has also recreated the journeys of Ulysses, Jason and the Argonauts, Sinbad, and Sufu, which required sailing across the Pacific on a bamboo raft.
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Speaker
And without any further ado, here's my conversation with Andy and Zeb. Okay, we're here for a nice conversation about Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage. We're joined by Zeb Girard and Andy Hughes. Hello. And Andy, I'd like to hear how we first as a crew discovered the Severin story.
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Speaker
It was our own voyage of discovery, wasn't it?
00:02:58
Speaker
Well, you had a book that was called The Sinbad Voyage, and on the cover was this unbelievable picture of a sailing ship in the sunset, and I just remember thinking, what is this? And I think you and I were both fascinated with this book, and it had all these pictures, and we read about it, and we read that it was made by this guy, Tim Severin. There were these pictures of him with a beard. He kind of looked like Phil Collins in the 70s.
00:03:26
Speaker
and he was in the under the deck of his ship pouring over his maps and i had this book on loan from you i want to say for like five years before i actually
Impact on Historical Scholarship
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Speaker
read it at least at least a couple years because it was just like so amazing just to have and i just was like i don't know if i actually this and then i finally did read it and we talked about it and then over the years you and i both just got really into him and the sinbad voyage had you know if you like
00:03:54
Speaker
Tim Severn look at these other books and we're like there are other books there are other voyages and it opened this whole world and one of the things i really want to mention is that like nobody really talks about this about Tim Severn like in modern life uh you don't really hear it that much uh but i'm just like so amazed that he's not more well known considering what he did and we can certainly talk about the absurdity of some of this but like
00:04:23
Speaker
Um, yeah, he was an explorer and he would, uh, or adventurer, I guess, and he would make recreations of famous or mythological ships and go on these different voyages. And yeah, Trevor's doing a boat sign with his hand.
00:04:39
Speaker
And it turned, you know, as we were reading more about him, the one that kept coming up and sort of his big claim to fame, and I think his breakout sort of voyage and book was the Brendan voyage. And I actually had not known about Saint Brendan before that night, you know, we can talk more about this, but
00:04:57
Speaker
You know, so this finally, you know, Trevor, you had seen the documentary had gotten us all into this and I finally read the book and yeah, I could see why this was kind of a phenomenon at the time because it is like just such a wild thing to even attempt to do.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I think it also has made a huge impact on the scholarship of that time in a way like if you look up St. Brendan or any of the names like associated with him you will eventually find Tim Severn like he is connected to this. So I think
00:05:32
Speaker
You know, this has had a bigger impact, arguably the biggest impact of anything. It's like the thing he's most famous for doing. So that's kind of just a little background on Tim Severn and these books.
Financial Feasibility of Voyages
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Speaker
And I would recommend, even if you listening to this don't want to read them, like pick them up and look at them and like look at the pictures in them. And because it's like, you'll see this and you'll be like, this guy really does this. He really makes these giant sailing ships. And yeah, so it is pretty astounding.
00:06:00
Speaker
Okay, great. Now, we're going to talk about the specific story we, Severn has done over, he's passed away, but he did about over 10 of these voyages. Yeah, I don't have the full list. We could, we could take a look at that full list, but he did many and the Brennan voyage was not his first. He had done a few before and he had researched
00:06:29
Speaker
them and went along and did this voyage. And I think this is sort of like his
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Speaker
the apogee of Severn. I don't know if that's true. He did some other really crazy trips, but this is like the one that got him the most renowned. Now I'll do the quick reader's digest of how I got into Severn, which is that I discovered this when I was like 10, and it was, what is this book? And similar to what you're saying.
Authenticity of Historical Texts
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Speaker
Then I gave it to you, but you bought me
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Speaker
my own book, The Jason Voyage. So I have The Jason Voyage. That's the only Severn book that I own. Later, I started looking around for as much Severn stuff as I could find. And I found interviews with him and I found
00:07:24
Speaker
the Brendan voyage for the first time and then went to visit you two at your apartment. Does this make sense? Yeah. No, I don't remember. That part I definitely remember. So this is when Zeb is coming into the story. So I explained this and I said, well, you know, the fact is he sailed in a leather shoe to Iceland because it was in the shape of a shoe. It looks like a shoe.
00:07:53
Speaker
It's been bound like a shoe. This thing is a shoe. And he sailed this thing to Iceland and then Nova Scotia. And then someone said to you. Yeah, it was the one I was dating at the time.
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Speaker
said, how can you all find this so fascinating? How can you not? He sailed a shoe to Canada. Not the most fascinating thing that you've heard recently.
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Speaker
This is my thing, right? It just sort of feels like we should be talking about this more, right? Like, doesn't this feel like kind of a big deal that nobody... Yeah, it should be shouted from the rooftops. There was a guy! His name was Tim Severn! He made rough-looker ships! Rough-looker ships! Now, there was a guy, I think, that inspired Tim Severn, and I think Andy knows about him a little bit more than me that...
00:09:02
Speaker
Tiki, what is the name of it? Oh, yeah, Thor hired all the Con Tiki guy. Con Tiki. Okay. Yeah. And that was in the late 50s or something. Right. And that was a raft. Might have been earlier. I think that was a raft. They were trying to prove that the Polynesians could could navigate the islands. Isn't that what that was about? I never read it.
00:09:28
Speaker
I know. So I thought you just read a Wikipedia article about it. I tried to read that one time. And actually I tried to read that funnily enough when I was on vacation in Iceland. And I think I was just so tired because we were like going on hikes and stuff. And I was just like, I can't get through this wall of text about rafting. But but yes, no, it's mentioned in
History and Mythology of St. Brendan
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Speaker
the book. They talk about Contiki.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, which book that severed in brendan voyage. They there's a reference maybe it's just the introduction But there is a reference to either thor hired all or well, you're going to be a content expert on this because But let's just there's nothing more to be said about contiki. It's just probably was the inspiration For tim severan and I do know that he went on his motorcycle marco polo journey for college in oxford with
00:10:19
Speaker
the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson's dad. And what he said about it was the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So you could take in how much you want about that. So oh, here's the list. Yeah, you have the whole list here.
00:10:41
Speaker
Well there's some additions. I made a list. Now for now for looking for Rip Van Winkle did he fall asleep for 20 years. That was a so I was looking for a special potion that would put me into a coma.
00:10:58
Speaker
for which I was not awakened for 20 years. I gave specific instructions not to cut my beard. Yes, I was abandoned in the wilderness in upstate New York. I had to wear penny loafers and long knit socks. All right, go ahead. No, I was just saying that I just I made it what Trevor's referring to is I just made a list and I added some fake ones in there just to show. Santa Claus Odyssey. No.
00:11:29
Speaker
In search of Moby Dick did happen, right? And probably was very unsuccessful because that would have been a whale that had died hundreds of years earlier. You're not going to find it. I know. And if we're going to be technical, that never existed. And the inspiration for him died hundreds of years earlier. Wait, why did it never exist? Because he's in search of Moby Dick. That's the actual whale was Mocha Dick. Yeah. Is that the one that sunk the Essex?
00:12:00
Speaker
Maybe that was the real one that was based on it. But did it, the Essex is what the story is based on. I don't know if that's the way, I don't think they were able to get a, you know, post Instagram what the whale was and say it was, I mean, unless they said it was white, it was a white whale, it sunk the ship.
00:12:20
Speaker
me and my best friend well and also like we were joking about in our text thread it's like if you read Moby Dick and you're like this sounds fantastic I gotta go hunt this wit like maybe you didn't take the best lessons away from from Moby Dick
00:12:33
Speaker
that you should hunt whales yeah if it made you really want to track down Moby Dick I need to learn how to hunt the whale this book is all about how great it is when you chase after a giant white whale I think everything needs so much can be said by the fact that this man was born in 1940 in British occupied India
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Speaker
I feel like that says it all.
Tim Severin's Early Life and Spirit
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Speaker
I read it. I think his father owned a tea plantation. I don't know if he was born on the tea plantation. Oh, here it is. Travel the route of Marco Polo. You've got it all here. Recreating historic or mythical journeys became his thing. Yep. You know, some people get into knitting.
00:13:24
Speaker
you know, some people like to bake. He wanted to- I heard there is an interview with him on a podcast where the guy's talking to him and he's like, well, I was never going to work in an office job. And I was just like, well, I guess some people they're just, you know, it was just like, so the logical next step was to go build a giant shoe. Where are you getting your fund? Who's funding you for this? There's so many things that are not in that I would love to have found him.
00:13:52
Speaker
and ask him who gave you the money we can talk about that because that is something he mentions that in the second half of the journey they were running out of money and he was like i was scraping the last of my funds to get right yeah well maybe he was like skipping from project to project like the first project was small that was the mongolia one then it skipped up a level
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah, and that was getting a little bit of money. We did that in drama drama club. Yeah, drama. We did. We made no money and then we made a little bit of money. And it was kind of going up and then also and then it kind of goes down again. Like you start losing money. So he probably started to lose money on his projects. I would love to know which of these was the most expensive journey, like the Jason Voyage or the
00:14:46
Speaker
Jerusalem voyage. Yeah. Well, certainly the one where he had to go to Hong Kong in some sort of a, what was it? Yeah, there was a thing where he didn't go down the Yangtze River. I can't remember, but he went. He did like a giant river thing. The River of James Billy job. OK, so we've got some pretty good. It's a pretty good start here.
00:15:16
Speaker
So Andy, you're the content expert. Yes, I am, thanks. For this, for this. Tell us, why do you like, before we get to Brendan, what draws you into the Brendan's voyage story?
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, as I was saying before, I mean, I think it's the scope of it and the uniqueness of it, the fact that it is it was a super ambitious project. I don't know if maybe we should because I don't know if we've actually said
00:15:53
Speaker
I think you did mention a little bit but basically it was attempting to prove whether or not either Brendan or other Irish monks or Irish people who lived in the fifth century could have possibly sailed as far west as North America and using
00:16:12
Speaker
technology and tools of the era trying to replicate a boat that would have been around that time feasible and then try to go as far as possible and see if people could cross and that was part of what made it so I think that's part of why it's sort of his big
00:16:32
Speaker
Like you said his apex is because I think this was a big deal for scholars of the time Whether or not, you know, it's considered serious scholarship or not and to his credit He points out in the book like different things, you know different caveats you can have with it and
00:16:50
Speaker
we can get into some of that later or maybe in a later part but he admits that like look all i'm doing is testing the boat the only thing that's ever going to prove is this ever actually happened if irish people came to north america in the fifth century or sixth century is if they find physical evidence in north america which
00:17:06
Speaker
from a cursory Google, as far as I know, to date, they still have not. So he admits that this is mainly just to test this boat and see if it's possible to put this boat to those circumstances. And the fact that he did make it sort of, he comes across very much as a believer that they could come
Testing Ancient Journeys
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Speaker
over. And I think he makes a decent case, but there are certain things that you can definitely take issue with in his reasoning. I think he definitely cherry picks some things.
00:17:36
Speaker
But it was just, like I said, such a spectacular idea and, you know, the grandness of it and also just kind of the, like we said, sort of the absurdity of being willing to do this. Both of those things kind of drew me and I think all of us to it. I think because you have so much more knowledge about
00:17:57
Speaker
about St. Brendan and the voyage itself. I think the thing that I wanted to comment on, which is more in a general way, what Trevor and I anyway were trying to do, is piece together parts of history that aren't so
00:18:20
Speaker
easy to discern so I think this this fits really well into that category because yeah for sure people aren't going to scour those the shores of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to see if maybe there's some random Irish skeleton and like
00:18:35
Speaker
they all supposedly came back alive except for one person that they maybe left somewhere? I don't know. Like, what would they even find, like an Irish toothpick? And so I think it's wonderful that somebody is using their imagination here to try to fill in those gaps. And so in this case, it's Tim Sutter, and he's like, well, at least we could see if a boat could make it there. And then we can answer the question, yeah, was it even possible?
00:19:03
Speaker
And then from there, well, at least we could probably say that he sailed to Scotland or something. And maybe he went all the way to Iceland. Wouldn't that be crazy? There's no way we'll ever know, for sure. I mean, that's not true. It's possible that they'll find that toothpick on Iceland, but that's not going to happen. I'm pretty sure. It's unlikely, yeah. Yeah. So we're left with educated guesses.
00:19:32
Speaker
So I guess that's a good lead into a very direct question. Like, was this an educated guess? Do you feel like Tim Severn had the data going into this to even ask the question, is this reasonable? No, he actually...
00:19:52
Speaker
It is laid out like again, I think he does a good job of making his case and this is part of why I like this one. I think this one was a better read that I don't think the Sinbad voyage is a bad read at all, but I think this one is a little more captivating because he's making the argument and also he's just there's a lot more to describe in terms of the relationship with his crewmen and the various things they see.
00:20:13
Speaker
But it begins with, there's a whole chapter called The Idea. And it comes across as very like, I don't know, quaint, the way he talks about it, where it's like he and his wife, because his wife's a litter, or his wife at the time, his first wife, is a literary scholar. I believe she's now like Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of Liverpool.
00:20:34
Speaker
So she was discussing about, you know, one night we were just talking about Brendan the Navigator, St. Brendan, and she said, you know, if you read this text, there's too much detail in it for it to be just fiction. And so the way he puts it in the book is that that starts the snowball of
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, if I look at this book, you know, if I look at the the text that was written about him like there's the specific directions maybe I can extrapolate from that. And I think like the portrait he at least gives of himself is that he starts with these details in the medieval text, then goes to people in Ireland because I think he was living there at the time, and starts asking about
00:21:16
Speaker
the boats. And I have a theory that I've said before that he's the sort of person who he would have found a justification to do this no matter what. But I do think part of why it's more engaging than the other book, and I have to imagine, you know,
00:21:32
Speaker
more engaging than something like the Moby Dick book is that there is compelling there's there's enough compelling him because it's kind of like a few steps away from ancient aliens you know it's like it's not like something where you're like okay i really you know this didn't happen let's stop putting shows about this
00:21:51
Speaker
like you said Zeb, we won't know for sure, but there's enough there to kind of get him going. So I think it was the combination of the material from the Middle Ages, like the sources written about him, the most like famous source about him, which we'll talk about later, and talking to different craftsmen, because there's, you know, multiple chapters where he's talking to, he goes from like worker to worker, and they're like,
00:22:14
Speaker
Oh, you need to talk to this guy. You need to talk to this guy. This man is the best leather worker. He talks to saddlery people. And so he gets information from them about what the materials can do. He has this information about the text, and he combines them. And so he was going into it with some data. And at the end of the book, there are tables of all the tests they did on the boat. So like I said, there is some serious rigor behind it. It's not like he's just making it up.
00:22:42
Speaker
um and that that also kind of impressed me that it wasn't just you know because it seems I feel like when we think about adventurers we think about like Richard Branson or like rich people like Jeff Bezos or like rich people who just like go screw around and don't really know what they're doing and at least here he there did seem to be some some data and some genuine interest in the medieval history
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's probably what I'm most curious about, too, is I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, but the nabagatio. I guess. I guess what stuck out to you, for one? That Tim Severn could have even pulled from.
00:23:28
Speaker
Were there things that were historically helpful or was it just a fanciful recounting of a priest like diving through the seven circles of hell?
00:23:39
Speaker
Well, how about, do you mind if I just kind of do an overview of Brendan real quick, just so? Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. Because I
Significance of Brendan of Clonfert
00:23:46
Speaker
think that'll help. All right, so who we're even talking about is Brendan of, and I might butcher this as well, but I believe the English pronunciation is Brendan of Klomfert, also known as St. Brendan and Brendan the Navigator. Historically, we believe he was born sometime between 484, maybe 489 CE or AD.
00:24:06
Speaker
um you know around late fifth century in Trahli in Ireland uh southwest Ireland uh in the area now known as County Kerry um and they refer to it as a hand but I think looking at it it kind of looks like a foot which is why it's also kind of funny that he's sailing around in a shoe because the bottom left of Ireland kind of looks like a foot
00:24:26
Speaker
and if you think of it as that he's in like you got like the four toes and he's in like the pointer toe or the pointer finger if it's a hand so that's where he was uh said to be born um he was raised uh to be a monk and studied under another saint saint enda and ordained supposedly in 512 um he founded uh multiple monasteries uh and
00:24:52
Speaker
he's known as Bernad of Clonford because that's one of the monasteries he founded supposedly in 561. The book associates him with St. Patrick and I think other people also associate with him partly because he was born not too long after, about 20 years after the death of St. Patrick, but also he's one of the, I think they are both part of the 12 apostles of Ireland and I didn't list all of them in my notes, you can look them up.
00:25:16
Speaker
But, you know, they're considered the saints of Ireland and the Irish Catholic Church. But like St. Patrick, St. Brendan was associated with converting the pagans, converting the Celtic people to Catholicism. There's a lot of things named after him, a lot of towns and rivers, places.
00:25:36
Speaker
in other countries like in territories like the Faroe Islands which he gets part of the voyage takes Tim Severin and all them off to. They believe that he died sometime around 570 or as late as 583. I think he says 578 in the branded voyage. There's another source I forget where I got that
00:25:59
Speaker
and he's buried in Klonfer. So the Navagatio, the Navagatio Sancti Brendani Abatus, which I believe is the voyages of Saint Brendan the Abbot.
00:26:14
Speaker
um it is like you were saying a collection of stories kind of told very episodically almost like uh the Sinbad stories or it's not done in verse um as far as i know but almost like the Odyssey uh and the version that's in the book in the Brendan voyage is said to be very condensed they talk about we have
00:26:34
Speaker
stripped it of all mystical material. We've tried to boil it down to just the geographical elements because one of the big pillars of this book, The Brennan Voyage, is that Tim Severin argues that this Navagatio, although it seems to be a collection of tales about how we went to different islands, different fanciful things happened, met sea serpents, you know, there's an island
00:26:58
Speaker
with like different groups that wear different colors. There's an island full of magical fruit, you know, all these different things. There's an island of devils or they're called Isle of the Smiths where fire comes out of it. And his argument was that these were based on real voyages that Brendan and other people of that era took. And there's too many of these things that match up with the real geography and the real landscape for it to be a coincidence. So that's what he was saying.
00:27:24
Speaker
And, you know, I think there's some cherry picking going on there but the basic idea was there was that because it also mentions, there are mentions of numbers, there are mentions of directions, the directions aren't necessarily consistent. The big one is that at the beginning they talk about sailing off to the Promised Land and they sail westward and then later they sail eastward from one of the islands.
00:27:49
Speaker
But Tim Severn actually brings this up in the next chapter, which I thought was funny because he was like, you may be wondering why, you know, if they sail to the east. And he's like, well, the reason is this thing has been copied so many times and the words they were using, you know, was copied by monks and passed around throughout the generations and the words they were using were inconsistent. So we can't. But the word West is used enough times to refer to the promised land that we think that that is new. So
00:28:15
Speaker
That's his argument for why he thinks that this is about sailing to the promised land and the promised land is Newfoundland, North America, which, you know, maybe that's not everybody's idea of promised land, but that was, uh, that was what Tim Severin argued. So that was just an overview of, so, and the Navagatio gets mentioned throughout the Tim Severin book. Yeah. Are you, are you heading out? Oh, sorry. Um, I got a few more minutes. Okay.
00:28:42
Speaker
Anyways, I'll wrap up that section. Basically, he uses different things mentioned in this mythical text or this C story text and tries to make the connection throughout the book where it's like, we saw this
Navigational Challenges
00:28:56
Speaker
thing. This must be what they saw in the book. And I know you guys also watch the documentary and they do that in the 70s documentary as well, where they'll cut to illustrations of the different things that they see.
00:29:10
Speaker
Honestly, this just kind of reminds me of Andy, you're in my adventures in Wyoming, where we were instructed to follow a path more.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yes. Instead of north with an M. Go M. Go more for three miles. And I think that that's kind of what's happening here, right? Wait, excuse me. What? I don't even know what this is. I miss this story. That was very funny. We downloaded these directions onto my phone because we knew we were going to lose service.
00:29:49
Speaker
And then we realized when we were out of service and could not download any more directions that at a certain point we were pretty sure that it meant to say west, but it said east instead and had a W on it. So it was just like, we aced or like, I think, I think they mean west and not, and not waste. And then further down it just said go more east.
00:30:18
Speaker
Like, this is like old English. Yeah. I feel like that's what happened here with the Navagati. Yeah. Yeah, Morth. It was West for a while. These were like handwritten directions. No, just poorly typed. Yeah, poorly typed. Somebody put in an M instead. But when you're driving on a dirt road somewhere in rural
00:30:42
Speaker
Wyoming and you need to get to camp before sundown and that's my favorite place to be and it says my favorite place to be is on a dirt road in Wyoming you know when i went over the same one multiple times because we were trying to be like where are we possibly going and there was like somebody's big house looking at us yeah i i don't know if i've apologized enough for how Ted uh not Ted Nugent but the CNN mogul
00:31:10
Speaker
Oh, Ted Turner? Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:17
Speaker
Well, certainly a number of apologies need to be sent from my side as well, which is maybe a good segue back to how many apologies Tim Severin... Let's just kumbaya. We're gonna have a big kumbaya. How many apologies did Tim Severin owe to all of his crewmates for the direction that he took them? He needed penance his whole life for almost getting them all killed a number of times.
00:31:43
Speaker
Oh my god. Well, this is like, so I enjoy being the center of attention. And I also enjoy having, being like the reporter, like I'm the reporter that's come back from this book. Yeah, that's the best one I'm going for. Yeah. And now we have to try and find all these guys. So that are still alive. Like we get the guy to come on. Yes, I was on to
00:32:06
Speaker
I don't know how to do an Iceland. Yeah, I don't even know what a Faroese person sounds like. I'm doing the drawing. He was a weak Englishman. He knew a lot about history.
00:32:27
Speaker
There was an awkward news clip I saw that was like the Severn voyage reunion. And the only person that they kind of watched who was from the original crew was Tim Severn. And they're sitting on the skeleton of a boat. And yes, Piper, it looked like he was it looked like there was like he was shaving a gyro meat. Yes. I don't know what was happening. There was like a spinning.
00:32:59
Speaker
Like, what is happening here? I'll try and find the link for you, Zeb. Do you want to talk about the crew? Well, I'm wondering if Zeb wants to say more stuff. Yeah. No, I feel like we've touched upon the main thing. And so if I'm heading out and you're going to keep talking. We'll keep chatting.
00:33:24
Speaker
I think the general avenue, and we'll probably end up doing this together, all three of us again anyway, but the thing that I'm always curious about is how do we get back to historical Brendan and how realistic it is. Sure, I think that's a big thing too, but also like the why of it. What kind of world was it where they decided to set out in a leather shoe?
00:33:53
Speaker
I think that's what I'm most curious about. What would have prompted him to take a voyage at all, which it seems like he did take some sort of voyage. And then what would have prompted somebody to write an apocalyptic odyssey about it. I think that's what I'm most curious about. Though I am also curious about the voyage itself, I think for me it's more about what was happening in the 500s through 900s that
00:34:22
Speaker
that brought us this wonderful tale that may have some tie to historical events.
Irish Identity and Christianity
00:34:29
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. No, that's cool. Maybe, um, if we do a part two, we could like, I don't know, have those questions written down or something or, or I don't know, just have, have some structure so we know to talk about that stuff. Yeah. And either way, uh, if I'm heading out here right about a minute, um, I think what I'll do, cause I, I have no job starting Friday. Whoa.
00:34:52
Speaker
It's all, I'll listen to the second half too, where it's just the two of you. And then I can probably fill in whatever questions I have the next time that we sync up. Yeah. All right. That sounds good. I don't know. I mean, you could, you could dig deep into this, Brendan. Well, it just depends on what we want to do.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's all part of the same narrative here. Like, I think what we're trying to target the other interview that we've had, that's more about Hadrian's Wall and like the fall of the Roman Empire and the British Isles. Like, this is very germane to that topic too. That, you know, what happened after the Roman Empire fell in Ireland? Well, they sailed somewhere in a leather shoe. We're not sure where. So I think it dovetails in nicely with this stuff we're already talking about.
00:35:41
Speaker
And I feel like just St. Brendan on its own is deserving of an entire episode and potentially two interviews. A series. Yeah.
Catholicism's Influence on Culture
00:35:51
Speaker
Well, and like I said, like you guys, I think have no more of just history in general or more historically minded. I just really get into like fables and I like to say I do myths, not history. I just remember them more. But one of the things that the real world things that comes up a lot is just the sheer, um, expanse of the Catholic priests in Ireland at this time. And just like how quick, how fast they were expanding out. And they talk about anchorites and all these different colonies and.
00:36:21
Speaker
monasteries that were supposedly spread out all over the islands. So there's definitely historical background of like, how the church was expanding and gaining power, you know, what, you know, why this idea of Brendan traveling around to find the promise and why that was, you know, important and resonant with people, and all the different people that they expanded to, like, yeah, I definitely think and their relationship with the Vikings as well. Yeah.
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's profoundly interesting. Especially so in this case, I don't know if St. Patrick was native to Ireland. Was he born in Ireland as well? I think he actually was not. Because a lot of our famous monks in history were missionaries. They came from somewhere else. They came from France or sometimes Africa. And I think that it's
00:37:10
Speaker
It's supremely interesting that it has become like an Irish folktale. Like how do we build this Irish identity around how Christian we are when they weren't at the time, you know, in, in the four to five hundreds, for the most part, the Irish were not Christian. And then it becomes a label of, Oh, this is what made us Irish when it was actually like over time, just
00:37:37
Speaker
hundreds or thousands of missionaries showing up to be like, hey, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? And then meanwhile Vikings coming from somewhere else say, hey, have you accepted Thor as your personal Lord and Savior? Like all of this was happening while somebody sailed in a leather shoe.
00:37:56
Speaker
Well, and we don't have to necessarily get into this, but I also thought about the fact that, you know, Tim Severin's an Englishman living in Ireland. I mean, he seems to have a good relationship with Irish people, but giving orders to members of his crew are Irish. This is the 70s, kind of a fraught time in Ireland. Like, I wonder of the, you know, the impact. I mean, I think he got funding to talk about the funding thing. Part of how he did these voyages was through
00:38:19
Speaker
historical societies and governments. I know the Sinbad voyage one, I think he got funding and support from Oman and the Sultan of Oman.
00:38:29
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so like the whole thing of, of basically like, Hey, I'm here. And I know that you guys hate the British, but let's all build this Irish boat together and go sail together. We're all friends. So like, I wonder how, you know, when they're trapped out in the ice flows and the British captain is telling me to do these things, according to Tim, everything.
00:38:50
Speaker
the crew all got along fine all the time, but I wonder about those relationships as well. Everybody was from different countries, pretty much. Irish, English, Faroese, different countries in that area. Some of them spoke different languages, all the crew members. There was a Norwegian guy, yeah. Well, we can run through some of that. Yeah, I think this is probably a good time for me to take that lead. Parting. Yeah. Parting is such a sweet sorrow. Thank you so much.
00:39:20
Speaker
Thank you for thank you for doing this, Andy. I think it'll be a it's a lot of fun for me and be I think we're gonna get a lot of knowledge out of it, too After Zeb left Andy and I continued the conversation about Brendan voyage Now we could don't have to be totally linear here, but let's just jump to
00:39:41
Speaker
you know, the ship itself, because we haven't talked about this.
Constructing the Brendan Ship
00:39:46
Speaker
It sort of reminds me of Star Trek, the motion picture, which about 40% of it was just looking at the ship. And that that might be too much in here, but we could do a good chunk about the ship. Oh, yeah. So let's let's just dig into this ship here. Absolutely.
00:40:05
Speaker
I believe so. Sorry, I believe if you have a do you have a copy of this book with you? Yes, I have a Brendan voyage. Yeah, I have the Brennan voyage the complete idiots guide for dummies. Yeah. Brendan and 10 days.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm just asking because my book has a schematic at the back, which shows you the diagram of Brendan. I believe there was a reference that it was 36 feet long.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, his design was for a boat. Oh, yes, I have. I have this eight feet. I have. Oh, my goodness. Because this is British. It looks it looks scary just looking at it, like having to step into it. And it's this open boat. Yeah. With what with a capsule of canvas.
00:40:56
Speaker
Yes, so the boat, so one of the big things they talk about in the book is that there are these Irish boats called carags, which are like canoes. And those are made of canvas, but he's like, so in the Navagatio, they say oxhide. So we have to make this boat out of oxhide. And that's, I think. Yes, I remember that part that they tried every type of leather. Yeah. And they all dissolved into water.
00:41:25
Speaker
And you're going, this is making me very nervous. I would be very nervous if every leather I tested was dissolving into a glass of water. One of my favorite lines, I have to go back and find it, is he's talking to some expert and the guy's like, if you take this out to the ocean, it will be polarized into jelly. Like the leather will be. Well, he does that classic writer thing where he's opening in media race.
00:41:52
Speaker
at the beginning of it, because now we're skipping away from the ship and going right. So anyway, we're starting at the beginning of the book, he's in media rates at this storm. Yeah, they're only a few days out from Ireland, right? Yeah. And he's kind of like trying to get some shut eye in this in the
00:42:14
Speaker
ship or not the they have this little tent and he's trying to leave and he's immediately awakened to this guy going huh like how did this happen why is this boat so and they almost get run over like completely destroyed by a huge cargo ship
00:42:33
Speaker
It's so like something and my immediate thought is, oh, this is like what teenagers would do where they're just not really realizing how dangerous this is. Well, and I think that's another thing. It's a wonderful moment.
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I think part of why this book is so interesting or like why we get so fascinated with it is because it's like that combination. It's like, you know, reading it, that there was all this preparation that went into it and stuff, but it still kind of feels like a dare or like something they just kind of. It's haphazard. Yeah. And also really.
00:43:12
Speaker
it really fits to the feeling where he's in the middle of the night manning the oars. He's like, I had this kind of man's folly, where he is thinking, Oh, I have a way to get out of this with the oars. And they're all starting to try and move it the boat, but it Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
the ship. Is it a ship or a boat? It's a ship. I think it's so tiny. It's technically a ship, I guess that there's got to be has to do with how, how much water displacement and how many people fit on it and things like that. But anyway, what's so funny about that, and I feel like it says so much about everything he does is that it would have done nothing. It didn't move the boat fast enough out of the way. It just they were lucky and the other large boat missed it.
00:44:06
Speaker
Right.
00:44:08
Speaker
And that's also another thing he brings up a lot is he talks about Brendan Luck, where he's like, well, we just had the luck. And like we were saying also, like I'm kind of a skeptical person by nature. And like a lot of this stuff, you're just kind of like, really? Was everybody really? Like it makes it seem like everybody was great. Oh, everybody was fine. And you kind of think like, no, I bet people were scared that they almost ran into this giant boat.
00:44:40
Speaker
He's constantly putting down his other crew members. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird the way he writes about them. There's some moments of it. The writer thing I was saying is that he transitions from being on this boat to, it's made of a thin skin of leather, and then it goes into the next paragraph. He's talking here, and I guess that's also
00:45:06
Speaker
you know, and if this were the movie version, it would be Tim Severn in his whatever weird medieval canvas. Did he make them all wear? That would have been the kind of cult leader side is if they all had to wear medieval dress. He did not do that. And he said, we can't have a radio on board and we all have to drink like wine out of
00:45:32
Speaker
and you're like okay now this guy it's on another level it would have it would have ended up just being him alone yeah where does it where does it end you know that's what you want to know well he did say that's what I say he he made a distinction at one point he says we were testing the boat not ourselves because he brings that up he's like
00:45:53
Speaker
Yes. No one could tell us how to steer our boat through the gale. That doesn't sound good. No boat quite like her had been afloat for the past thousand years or so. Or so. So maybe 1100 years, 900 years. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I know boats, you know, from the past 500 years.
00:46:17
Speaker
To a casual observer, a craft looked like a floating banana, long and slim, with her tapering bow and stern curved gently upward. Now, that's an uncomfortable description of this boat that he started. I was going to say, we're going to just glide past that. And then he's watching the waves. I recall, see, there's that word, this is the rider, the switch, where now he's going to a past event.
00:46:45
Speaker
the bleak warning of one of the world's leading authorities on leather science. Before we started our voyage, I'm going, you know, when you build a boat, you really don't want to need to talk to a leather science expert. One would hope you're making out of fiberglass. Well, I kept thinking when I was watching it, like the video thinking like, we could have made it out of more modern
00:47:11
Speaker
materials, but our probability of dying would have been less probable. And where's the fun and adventure in that? So we had to make it out of oxide, of course.
00:47:23
Speaker
This is, I love the paragraph. I think it's maybe it's like a page or two from where you are where he says, I turned and looked at my crew. Cause that's like a very, yeah. See, that's what you were trying. You were saying that he was, and then he starts describing each one. It's like that felt like something from a movie where he had sort of taken on the, uh, right. He was like the leader and these were his.
00:47:50
Speaker
I don't want to say minions but like his followers.
00:47:54
Speaker
Well, he's always, because like you said, the thing about insulting them, it's not overt. It's more like he's always trying to frame things as like, this is like a grand adventure. And he does talk about like the bad things that happen, but it's just like these weird ways that he describes people or like unflattering ways.
Leadership and Crew Dynamics
00:48:13
Speaker
There's the whole thing with Peter, the cameraman, where he talks about him and like makes it, you know, he makes it seem like he gets along fine with the guy, likes the guy, but he's kind of acting like,
00:48:23
Speaker
because like in that paragraph he's like I looked at my crew I knew Rolf the hardy sailor would be all right but Peter the cameraman from the city was he was worrying me and so there's a little bit of coding of like he's a city boy yeah
00:48:40
Speaker
Yes, you indeed read the same book as I. Aren't copies amazing? Peter struggled with the helm, trying to turn Brendan away, but the wind had locked us on what seemed to be a collision course. This is where he's talking about the thing almost ramming them, the cargo ship. Oh, yeah, the idea. Yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
No, we got to find this. Where's this thing? That I looked at my crew. Yeah. So for me, it's page six. It's right after the paragraph that ends with, while Brendan toboggan down the waves.
00:49:28
Speaker
Well, this thing of, why on earth then were my crew and I sailing such an improbable vessel in the face of a rising gale? Is it later? Yeah, it's a couple paragraphs after that. It's basically like him saying, yes, that's me. I looked at my crew and wondered if they appreciated the situation. George, I knew, was well aware of the danger. He was one of the best sailors I knew.
00:49:59
Speaker
Rolf, this is what you're saying, knew the risks. He was from Norway, but Peter, the cameraman of our team, worried me. Peter had sailed single-handed from England to Greece in his own boat, so he was no stranger to the sea, but now he was looking rather glum. I wonder why.
00:50:21
Speaker
Well, and also, he was feeling the pain from damaged muscles that he had strained two days previously. And spoiler alert, that's why he eventually leaves the crew. Yes. Because his doctor tells him, yeah. Stop roaming a boat in the middle of the coast. One of the serious personal problems that he just wrote, I wanted to write parenthetically, get me off this boat. Yeah, it sounds like my serious problem is that I was stuck on a boat.
00:50:50
Speaker
Oh, my God. Arthur, the youngest member of the crew, was totally oblivious to danger. Yep. There you go. There's that kind of backhanded. And now he's saying, I only had three men from a total crew of five who were in a fit state to handle Brandon and the gale picked up. You can see that he's having some feelings of, I don't want to say, maybe not hostility, but it's like a kind of
00:51:17
Speaker
This will, you didn't meet my expectations. Right. And now that I'm- Well, it's sort of underhanded. Yeah, that's what I, there's a little bit of like, you know, kind of like, like we're saying, kind of like backhanded compliments or sort of like the fact that he does, he kind of considers himself, you know, he, I mean, he is the captain. So, and he tries to be, he always portrays it like they get along very well, but yeah.
00:51:45
Speaker
so let's let's walk through the building of this ship yeah okay there there isn't going to be some perfect linear way of going about it because this guy didn't even he started it in the middle of a storm where they almost got hit by a cargo ship so i feel no compulsion to go in any particular order but you can't have a voyage without a ship
00:52:12
Speaker
right and we know that he he did leather originally this monk because um you know i guess he was at the for the time that was like nylon
00:52:28
Speaker
Well, so that's one of the things. Yeah. Yeah. We'll look into it some more, and I'd love to hear what maybe next time we can go more into the construction. So what I remember is that so they have these carags that are canvas, right? Those are still used today. And there is a history of leather boats, but he gets very fixated on the oxhide part of it because it says in the Navagati used. Yeah, 49 oxides. That was the guy that said.
00:52:55
Speaker
yeah because he said he kept putting the other leather everything you do if you go out you will die you will sink you need a year you need a year to make this oxide
00:53:13
Speaker
He wants to follow it to the letter. So it's oxhide tanned with oak bark. And so he's like, tan this oxhide. And I don't know, maybe that's, I mean, clearly they did it and it worked. But I wonder if that's like, because there's a lot of stuff in the navigatio that seems to be allegorical or like biblical references to things. And I don't know if that's supposed to be literally
00:53:38
Speaker
Oxhide with Oakbark. I think he was like, we literally have to do this. What does that mean? He kept saying like that was a dessert. He kept saying, Oxhide with Oakbark. Oh yes, Oxhide drenched in the fresh Oakbark.
00:53:57
Speaker
with a little bit of flex. And then it was like, there are guys in Ireland who are still just making it all day. And they're like, we've been waiting for you. We've always been waiting for you to be making your oxhide ship. Yes, we will happily do this. I mean, that's how it was in Sinbad too. It's like, I went to this person and they said, yes, I will do this for you. And it's just, it seems like
00:54:21
Speaker
too good to be true how linear well it's a little bit like and I don't want to get into too much psycho analyzing but like he's a little bit out of touch like he has his own image and is in his head about what other people are thinking yeah like this is but they're all like why are you coming to me I don't understand why do I have to make oxide
00:54:44
Speaker
Yeah. I didn't want to, we don't have to get into this too much, but I was feeling like big colonizer energy. Like just very much like, Oh, your Irish boat. Show me how to make the Irish. They're just like, well, we just make canoes with canvas. We're not going to make a leather boat and put Kelty, you know, it's, it's 1976. Yeah.
00:55:04
Speaker
But anyways, yeah, so there's the process of testing the leather, testing the leather for its durability.
Challenges with Leather Construction
00:55:14
Speaker
There's tables in the back. He makes it seem like it's Intel, like they're doing really vigorous, this is a vigorous technology. I'm like, we've invented other stuff since this.
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, there's literally a table called Table 3 Thong Testing Program. And if you can get through that without snickering, you're a better man than I. But we all need that. Yeah, there's so much about leather thongs.
00:55:45
Speaker
Basically, so they had to test the leather, this oxhide, and they had to tan it with this bark based on his perception from the Navagatio. And then they had to stretch it onto the frame of the boat and let it, and they had to rub it with wool grease. And one of the other hilarious things about it is that he's like, we just are constantly smelling and tasting wool grease over on this ship.
00:56:14
Speaker
because they have to do that to keep the oxide in the right condition. So they're constantly having to re-grease this ship. I would love to be on some sort of vessel that if I didn't continuously do something to it, it would stink. That just adds another layer of anxiety and terror that I didn't keep
00:56:41
Speaker
painting this thing at any moment, water's gonna start coming in. I mean, also, I was wondering when they said, they kept saying over and over like, oke, oke, I tell you, when I treat this tan in oke leather, they made it seem like it was, you know,
00:57:07
Speaker
sort of, oh, just of the, the, the humors of the universe that made this concoction, but I'm like, well, someone knows why this is waterproof, right? I'm sure someone could say, this is the chemical process that's happening. I could tell you why, but we never really get that, right? We just get someone saying, it works.
00:57:31
Speaker
I know because I read it in an old book. Yeah, I read it in a tome from the sixth century. There's something there's something not connecting there that doesn't quite like
00:57:45
Speaker
You read it. Was there no one else who had done a ship like that? I mean, I'd have to go back. I think so. I think it's a combination of things. Like I said, there was there were leather ships and maybe there were other ships that used ox hides. But I feel like this particular thing was less common.
00:58:06
Speaker
So there were samples of oak bark leather, okay. I'm sorry, I'm just skimming through right now. How were we to cover the wood hull with ox hides? What should we use for thread? How did we join the hides together? What method of stitching was that? These are the questions that puzzle, man. I mean, couldn't he have just put this in a pool and said, it floats?
00:58:32
Speaker
But then you could, well, and they did, apparently they also tested it in Boston at one point, I think after the voyage, they rode it around on the Charles River. Really? But yeah, so they did do other, yeah, cause they said something about after Newfoundland doing that. Can we draw tea off of this? Yes. Into the water. I took it to every historical harbor and port.
Crew Roles and Departure
00:58:55
Speaker
So Andy, I was hoping we could go over some of the crew members,
00:59:02
Speaker
kind of as if it were like a rock band. Yeah. And that would be kind of has that same origin story of a rock band, like the main leader, you kind of think of John Lennon was sort of the founder of the Beatles. I'm not an expert on this, but that's what people got to think of. And you have the other members of the band.
00:59:24
Speaker
that come along, Paul, George and Ringo. You have like the front man who's like the lead singer and the flashy guy and then you got the drummer. Well, I think you say that Rolling Stones is actually better because the Beatles were kind of like a little unit, but the Rolling Stones are like, who even knows? I mean, I know, but Charlie Watts, how many people are thinking, Charlie Watts, yeah, he's a drummer. There's so many, there was a lot of people in these rock bands.
00:59:54
Speaker
So let's look at this crew. We've got our lead guy, our lead guitarist, lead vocals, Tim Severn. We've kind of covered him a little bit.
01:00:05
Speaker
Now, why don't you go over what you've written? Is that easier? I have it here. Tim Severn, the narrator, Captain, navigator, cinematographer, radio operator, Phil Collins impersonator, occasional cook.
01:00:25
Speaker
Uh, he had several different roles. You know, it's his ship. Like you said, he's, he's, he's the skipper. Uh, he paints kind of a jolly portrait of himself, but he's also kind of the guy in charge. And he's, he actually seems kind of like a severe man in, in some of these interviews and stuff. I don't know how, you know, much fun it would be necessarily, but he's the, he's the leader, like you said.
01:00:53
Speaker
Okay. All right. Next up is George Maloney or Maloney. Yeah, I don't know the pronunciation. Well, the other thing is the last names are kind of hard to find. You have to go dig them up. Like they don't have like a full roster. He introduces them at different times. There is a chapter where he talks about the original crew members.
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, so George is, I believe he's British, he's a sailor, he's a soldier, he's there till the end. So I think of the original crew, there's just three that stay till the end. And he's always referred to as like, George was the reliable one, you know, he was the guy with sailing experience, I guess he had worked organizing.
01:01:37
Speaker
military for some government thing i forget in another country but yeah he had experience there and i think tim sees him as like you know i don't think this is a first mate or anything there's only like a maximum of five people on this at a time so um but he he sees him as kind of like a reliable sailing master okay um
01:02:04
Speaker
You wrote The Sailing Master and Hardy Military Guy. That's how he was described. Peter Mullet, the Metropolitan Cockney Cameraman.
01:02:17
Speaker
departs at Bally Husky on doctor's orders to muscle strain. This is like spinal tap. I mean, well, and I also saw guys. It was like that guy, the pet pet, the guy who walked across the World Trade Center. Oh, yeah. There was a whole crew of people that helped him do that, too. That's the same. It's the it's the crew.
01:02:43
Speaker
yeah yeah it's well and the other thing is we were talking about it was kind of like a video game like it sort of feels like Oregon Trail or something yeah okay people join and leave but yes Peter is described as a cameraman and I feel like Tim characterizes him as being like you know uh from the city you know I think they mentioned him doing like uh photo shoots and stuff and photography and so he sees him as
01:03:09
Speaker
And I can't speak to their real relationship, but at least in the book, like you read, it's like, Peter, worry to me. So he's sort of seen as he's kind of snarky, but he's less experienced with the sailing aspect, although he has sailed some, but he's not like a military guy. And he ends up leaving when they get to Ballyhorsky in the northern part of Ireland for, I think, a very legitimate reason. And the book makes it sound like they had a very amicable conversation. And I would be like,
01:03:38
Speaker
I can't use the left side of my body because it you know like it it's like massively like hurting his chest and arm muscles
01:03:47
Speaker
Because of all the rowing they've been doing. This is the stiff upper lip because you say, well, he has muscle strain. He has muscle strain. I can't move. He has no motion. He carried away. I need to find it. I don't think it's precisely like this, but there's a thing where he's like, the doctor says I shouldn't row for two weeks. And Tim's like, all right, well, no problem. We'll do it after two weeks. And he's like, no, I can't do that.
01:04:16
Speaker
He says, the doctor said I've strained the muscles down the left side of my chest. I'll have to have two weeks rest before I can go back on board. Well, that's not too bad. The rest of us can take Brendan up through the Hebrides by ourselves. When you're rested, you can join us in Stornoway or some other northern port ready for the long hop to the pharaohs.
01:04:34
Speaker
And then Peter says, looking more despondent, it's no good, I'm afraid. The doctor is also warned that the same trouble is likely to recur if I put any strain on the muscles. If it doesn't, it could be more serious. And the next time, we might not be able to get to a hospital. And Tim says, this was a blow.
01:04:50
Speaker
In an emergency, I needed every member of the group. The guy I didn't even like can't keep coming. Yeah, the guy I suddenly made fun of for being not as- Suddenly bells are ringing of James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as Captain Nemo. You don't understand what's underneath this ocean. I am total command of this vessel.
01:05:18
Speaker
You know, it is funny because like, I feel like a lot of captains in popular media, not good, like they don't come off as great. No, they don't. I mean, that's one great example. Yeah. You know, there is a thing of I want to put myself in a situation where I'm the one in command of all these people. Yeah. Anyway, I
01:05:44
Speaker
So let's cover the rest of it. I love Tim Severn. These books are just like, there's just so much like you said. So, Rolf Hansen, the drummer, no. Rolf Hansen, the Norwegian maritime history expert, departs at Stornoway to go home for urgent
01:06:07
Speaker
I can't even get it out. Those are literally... Start over. Departs at Stornoway to go home for personal, urgent personal reasons. Which are the literal words in the book. Get me off this boat! I want to be on this thing. Mutiny.
01:06:34
Speaker
Urgent person. The personal reason is I don't want to be on this boat. I mean, I don't know what it was. Maybe it was something really serious. But the way that Tim writes about it and also he doesn't go into much
Crew Dynamics and Humor
01:06:46
Speaker
detail. Well, he doesn't go into much detail. So it just sort of feels like an omission. This is like we could never stop talking. All right. Now we're going to move in.
01:06:56
Speaker
I was going to say the guy that, I know Zeb's going to have a lot to say about this. Arthur Boots Magen, but it's like Magellan. He's trying. Oh, a little bit, yeah. Yeah. These are all color-coded for the audience, too. Well, there's a reason for that. Members, they actually wore color-coded clothes. Okay, and you matched them up. I don't know if they did with the later guys, but they did. I was saying, Severn could just say, Blue, get over here. Blue.
01:07:27
Speaker
Start painting the side of the tannin. Put tannin on the side of the leather. Where's the wool grease? Time to grease the boat up. And whack it with oak bark.
01:07:44
Speaker
um anyways so boots so the thing about Irish fishermen yeah the quiet fisherman quiet Irish fisherman photographer and Zeb's favorite so-called so-called because he has to order special sized farming boots to fit his large feet and because nicknames can't all be clever
01:08:05
Speaker
So Zeb, when we were watching the documentary, was talking about how in the documentary they're like, and here comes Boots, who's well known, like his nickname is Boots, because he wears boots. And they don't really explain, it just kind of seems like, all right, well, that's kind of a dumb nickname. It's like calling somebody like hair, you know, or like, you know, hands or something. Yeah, they've run out of, do we have anything to say about Arthur Maggen?
01:08:31
Speaker
Just so he's described as the ladies man of the group whimsically and also that he's like a very quiet like he writes a letter that's basically like, hi, I've done these two things. I can explain more in person. Please let me be on your crew. And then he beats him and then they they hire him until the end as well. Are you willing to go on the boat?
01:08:55
Speaker
You do see that there's very... I mean, we gotta also talk about the quarters. Yeah, you can play bits of copyrighted material. I mean, a lot of it is just if they enforce it. Anyway, so... Okay.
01:09:09
Speaker
Wallace Clark, Commodore of the Irish Cruising Club, joins in Ballyhorsky as a short-term replacement, departs in Iona to get back to his job. Again, get me off the boat. Yeah, this is also kind of like a cast of characters for a play because that's a specific thing that happens later when they lose Peter. They have Wallace
01:09:32
Speaker
This is like the thing of, I only can get friends if I build a leather boat and make them go across the ocean with me. It looks like that meme of men will do X instead of go to therapy. Men will build a leather boat and force guys to get in and have friends. Don't you guys want to be my friend? I want to go on this leather boat. I miss you. Do you guys like the kinks? What kind of?
01:10:00
Speaker
Anyways, Eden Ganet Kenil, the Jester. Oh, that's why you were the Jester. So Nick came because he will eat anything and flaps his arms around a while. A lot.
01:10:16
Speaker
Oh my God. So Nick Dave, because he will eat anything and flaps his arms around. He's nicknamed the Gannet, like the bird, because the Gannet birds eat anything. You know, this is Captain humor, I guess. This is all cat. This is all wanting to live in a fantasy, a bit of a picaresque fantasy world. Yes. Yeah. Like George Mallory going up Everest and. Right. You know.
01:10:44
Speaker
So I feel like you would, because like Gannett is like the character where he's like, he was the live wire. He says the jester and the live wire of the crew. Yeah. Oh, you're implying that would be me.
01:10:57
Speaker
Well, I just feel like you'd appreciate him. Oh, I see. Departs after Iceland to run his charter business. Get me off the boat. Get me off the boat. This could be a t-shirt. You get this when you get off the boat. Get me off the boat. You get a fine knits t-shirt that says, get me off the boat.
01:11:15
Speaker
They go from Iceland to Newfoundland, 50 days on this boat with four guys. That was your one shot. Iceland was your get off. You couldn't get off. Do they touch base at Greenland? No, there's nowhere to go in Greenland. And they make it seem like this is like
01:11:38
Speaker
like little Lake Winnipesaukee like oh he got off at the uh you know at the dock and we kept going around it's like this is the Atlantic Ocean and it's over a month it's over a month in a boat that could like collapse at any
01:11:59
Speaker
But yeah, we'll get to it later with another time. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that just gives you like a surge of joy when you read about these guys trapped on a boat. You can't take this too seriously. No, but I think we could recreate this. We could get a Coleman tent.
01:12:19
Speaker
uh put it out we could be stuck in it and just say you can't leave this and have a rope in the shape of a reenactment yeah and you say you can't leave this boat for 30 days like you can't leave this little outline of rope and you guys have to and then we're gonna throw cold water on you
01:12:37
Speaker
That sounds like a YouTube like challenge that we could do, yeah. And then finally, I think the best- Trondor, yeah, go ahead. The most interesting guy is Trondor Patterson, I think is how you pronounce it. Yeah, we're gonna try and get him.
01:12:52
Speaker
I mean, he's still alive. He's still around. How do we get him? Can we contact him? When they describe him, and again, we'll go into it. When Tim meets him, he keeps calling him a Neptune. And he like a Neptune. He's like this Neptune was staring at me and.
01:13:07
Speaker
The guy, because he doesn't speak much, Trondor doesn't speak much English, Trondor's girlfriend has to introduce him to Tim, and his first impression, because Trondor has huge beard, huge bushy hair, and he's like, this Neptune of the sea has come here. And he's like a sketch artist, and he's a real artist and sculptor, and you can go to his website and see his stuff, and apparently he's still around. Yeah, we're gonna try, I'm on him, we're gonna see if we can get his email.
01:13:35
Speaker
but all the stuff he does is wild and he wears like this giant cable nut sweater he catches he like spears these i think they're birds the fulmars uh he's and he spears whales and all that like and he eats whale blubber and gives one to gannett it's like we finally found something gannett didn't want to eat yeah he has a a man crush on this guy it feels yeah it feels like he's it well because again that kind of manliness is like i see him as a
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, he's looking for something. This is like Thoreau who said, many men go fishing and fish all day, not realizing it's not the fish they're after. Oh, yes. And that was the only wise thing Thoreau ever said. I was going to say, recording Thoreau, Thoreau, the seventh member of the... Do you have the diagram in front of you?
01:14:26
Speaker
I'm going to say, go ahead and tell me what you're talking about. So there's two shelters. There's a three-man shelter and a two-man shelter. The two-man shelter, I believe, is at the front of the boat. The bow, I think, that's the front of the boat and the front of the ship. And the second shelter is behind the main mass.
01:14:51
Speaker
These shelters have like, they're kind of like nested in there. They're not like hanging cots, but they're basically like cots that they're sleeping on. They have sleeping bags and they have containers of food and stuff stuck under there. I mean, it's very close quarters.
01:15:11
Speaker
And so at different times, you know, they take shifts. They mentioned, I think there's a Faroese fishing thing where they do shifts so that only, you know, so everybody can take turns and get rest. And so there's a certain amount of people in the shelter.
01:15:27
Speaker
um at any moment but uh yeah it seems extremely cramped and also there's parts where the boat gets swamped with water and so water gets into the shelter at one point and it it ruins some of their things that they have some of the food and things that they were carrying around um and in the documentary yeah it just looks extremely close i i think it was extremely close
01:15:51
Speaker
And the big crazy thing about that is, according to Tim Severn and according to the Navagatio, Brendan was said to have 14 crewmen. And so he's like, well, they could have fit 14 men on this thing. And he kind of just brushes by that later. And just like, it would have been very uncomfortable, but they would have done it because they were monks. And I was like, I feel like that would have been, I don't know, maybe a breaking point for somebody.
01:16:21
Speaker
I think we could make one presumption about what could have happened there, which is some of them died.
01:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was not a tenable situation.
Survival Speculations
01:16:35
Speaker
Well, like I said, it seems ridiculous that he would take this into the hardest part of the voyage. Sounds like the stretch from Iceland to Canada to Newfoundland. And like he had four people.
01:16:51
Speaker
That was lower than their main quota And they've been picking up people all along the way, but they still went for it. Which is does it say 14? Does it say that amount in the Navagatio? It says Brendan took 14. So that's 15 Yes, so you had a crew of 14 not counting him. Yeah, and how do we know the dimensions of the ship? I believe they are in the Navagatio or there's a
01:17:19
Speaker
There's a reference to it, which they extrapolated from it. Maybe they were small monks. I mean, there is that theory, right, that people were smaller in centuries past. I hope you can see that they were small monks that were helping.
01:17:34
Speaker
What about like children? Like Brendan was really like 12 when he did this? We don't know exactly when this is supposed to happen because, spoiler alert, I don't think it actually happened. You don't think it happened? Oh, so now we're skipping ahead.
01:17:50
Speaker
no we'll we'll go over this in another voyage i think it's an amalgam i mean zeb basically said i think it's an amalgamation of he did voyages around um the pharaoh islands and that's good enough though that's good enough well yeah but it's different from north america well what is it what line is it that's saying it's north america it doesn't say it in the original but tim believes that it is tim severan
01:18:16
Speaker
right yeah that's his argument and he makes an argument and he's he says like he acknowledges that you know it's it's gonna have to be on faith to some extent but yeah he he claims that there's enough evidence there that he says that they did go to north america this is the most i would say about it yes in terms of for now and we can stop is um
01:18:42
Speaker
Having done some sailing and things, things just happened where you're caught in a vortex, you're caught in a stream. So it could have happened by accident, like they didn't even mean to. But they were sucked over to America. And then they didn't really even understand what it was, and then they sailed home. But that's the most that I would venture.
01:19:10
Speaker
It's possible. Well, he talks about the Gulf Stream on the way back could have helped them return but it sounds like it was Yeah, I mean it's a cozy idea like all way back when they got in a boat and they sailed all the way over and they had this lovely time and they had fruit, you know ale wonderful ale and wheat ale and they had bread to eat and
01:19:34
Speaker
In the Navagatio, they talk about there was an island where they had fruits that were like grapes the size of apples that they would eat and that would feed you for eight days. I feel bad. This is what I'm going to start. I'm going to start saying that about everything now when I'm like, I have an urgent if I have to go to the bathroom. I have an urgent.
01:19:58
Speaker
Feel bad cuz what if it was like, I don't know like somebody died or something My favorite thing I think to be on that ship is if someone said to me instead of going on like a Walt Disney cruise You're gonna you're gonna be on the leather ship the leather shoe. You don't have to do anything You don't have to put any tannin on the sinking ship. Yeah, you don't have to put anything up
01:20:26
Speaker
I mean, no one has been this irreverent about Tim Severn, ever. Yeah, and I wonder, well, because it's not something, like I said, people don't talk about him. Well, they don't talk about it, and you're not immediately, you're not immediately thinking to be finding it ridiculous. You're supposed to be like, this is so fascinating. I mean, I am fascinated, but it's fascinating and absurd. And honestly, like, I think we can make fun of him. But I want to have a cruise ship.
01:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, he had a bit of a... I'm calling him Captain Nemo from now on. Yeah, I mean, I think... And I know you said, like, he's dead, we referred him respect, but on the opposite end, he's dead, he can't sue us, so, you know... Well, we have to get this guy... We got to get an Icelandic translator and get this guy... Faroese. Yeah, and... Oh, Faroese. Faroese, which I think is really... Part of what country? Norway? Faro Islands, I think, are a territory of Denmark.
01:21:21
Speaker
So yeah, I need to look up what it sounds like because I was trying to find a Google Faroese to English translator. But again, why was he in Iceland? Is that where he went to? Yeah, he was in the Faro Islands. This is the Lake Winnipesaukee version of the North Sea. They would show up and according to Tim Severn, they would show up and then people would just be like, I want to be on your boat.
01:21:44
Speaker
It's a happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a bunch of mimes doing something in Central Park. You're like, oh, guys, look, we got to go see whatever that is. It's a ship made of leather. It's a shoe. And it was all funded by the leather workers in Ireland. I came up to them and told them I was sailing. And no, I I I cherish this. I know I was I.
01:22:14
Speaker
I guess we're wrapping up with that. There's so much more to say. I know. I'm just happy. Thanks for having me on. I do appreciate this. Thank you, Andy and Zeb, for joining me in exploring the story of Tim Severn's The Brendan Voyage. And thank you for listening to Letters and Legends. This podcast is produced by me, Trevor Maloof, copyright 2022. Tune in for more soon. Goodbye.