Behind the Scenes Minis: The Grisly Shipwreck

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. Am Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about shipwrecks, which are often people's favorite stories, although I don't know how much they'd love this one. It's a particularly gruesome one. It's grizzly, it's rough, and I mean I cut for time a lot of grizzly things. So yeah, and then we talked about, you know, the aftermath of that shipwreck and Teyo Doorgerico, who's work I'm in love with anyway, and got to talk about him in his own little grizzly fascination with this whole thing, yeah, which is a little bit yucky. Well, I mean I understand like becoming kind of morbidly fixated on something like this. Yeah, Like I'm sort of thinking about how when the submersible imploded, Yeah, everybody wanted all the details. Everyone wanted all the details. And then when the hearings happened about the implosion of the submersible with the Titan, is that what it was called, Like the hearings happened, and like everyone wanted all the details from the hearings. Not everyone obviously, we know what I mean, and like, yeah, then you know documentary is about it people. I feel like this, if the Medusa had happened now similarly, would have been like a thing that everybody was fixated on trying to detail of for sure. I mean it's really interesting too because we do have very detailed survivor accounts. Right. We didn't explicitly mention it in the episode, but we did talk about there being counter accounts and whatnot and people trying to put forth their own version of it events. But like all of these accounts have been questioned in terms of the bias of the narrative, Like there are even people who have accused Couryer and Savignye of making the raft sound worse than it was, even though everyone found these men skin and bones like a absolute mess when they finally were rescued, like there was no doubting that they had been through this terrible ordeal, But there are still people that question the accuracy of their version of events. Yeah. Yeah, I was struck by just the kid falling overboard near the beginning, and how people still fall off ships today and it can be really hard to find people because ships move fast. Here are on a ship. You see somebody fall overboard, you need to point at them and look at them and el to someone else that someone has gone over, Like don't take your eyes off them. Yeah, don't break your visual line. Yeah, avoid it because it's really hard to find people in the ocean. So like, it doesn't surprise me at all that they couldn't find them and they had to give up. Yeah, me either. It's just heartbreaking though, Like the many things that happen on this whole thing, the one thing that is I think really compelling about the various survivor accounts, right like Charlotte Picard's account, which she wrote a little bit later down the road. She didn't write it right after they were rescued because she was still quite young. Then really does validate the experience of like the crew member's account. M And it's good because it's from a very different point of view, you know what I mean. It's like one of the wealthier families that was going to be part of this like new you know, poorly intended, but you know, this new colony set up for her to be like, oh yes, we all recognized that Chow Marae was like dicey as hell was very good. It made it seem not just like people that were maybe bristling against command or you know, not right, like for her to also be like he trusted this guy that we all knew was a crazy loser, Like we knew he did not have any kind of actual information or expertise, but he trusted him even though we all were like, what are you doing. Yeah, that's the other thing that really really gets me in this and we mentioned it a little bit, but there were so many people saying to chow marae, yo, we're in trouble, Like I am a you know, lifelong sailor. I have been on a lot of ships. I'm telling you right now, we're in trouble, and him going, no, we're not. My friend Reshore says fine, We're not fine. I'm like, you know, in a world where people are disregarding experts in things in favor of their own opinions being made into what they think is fact. It was a little a bit of a gut punch at times in some of those accounts. I also feel like I've obviously never been in a situation like this where we were on a ship with people's lives in our hands at all. Right, My jobs have always been way more inconsequential in terms of the chair, in terms of life and limb. But I have one thousand percent and had many occasions where there was a decision being made or a change being contemplated, and a lot of people have been like, hey, this is a bad idea and here's why, and that was like just not listened to or heard. Yeah, yeah, it stinks. One thing that I did not include that is also harrowing. Even after the raft group was rescued and they were put aboard the Argus, the Argus was still carrying people from the boats, the other lifeboats, so it was quite crowded and some of them had to sleep in like these makeshift quarters that were like down in the you know, lower parts of the ship. There was actually a fire on board that threatened their lives, and like they mentioned in the crew account, like so they we kind of got saved twice because some of their crew was on it and like put out the fires. But they were literally not put in like cushy, Oh my gosh, you've been through so much, like let's make sure you're taking care of conditions. It was literally like, there's a corner over there by the boiler. You could probably curl up over there if you want, like these poor men. It's interesting that book that we mentioned by Jonathan Miles, if you want an in depth dig in on that. I was kind of using that to triangulate, Like I was going off a lot of the coryar and seven year and the Charlotte Pcard accounts, and then I would triangulate with that and be like, is he interpreting this the same way I am, so that I would like kind of get like the whole thing with guns versus cannons. That book says it's canons that they were trying to shoot off and that didn't have powder, but I don't. I said that was one of the things that I was looking at. But one of the big things that he points out is that there had been prior to this instances of shipwrecks or similarly harrowing circumstances where people had turned to cannibalism to survive, and how there was like this precedent that like, obviously that's not great, but people give a little bit of grace understanding the situation. But I think that too added this whole other layer of like grim fascination to the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, And even in the coryar and seven year account, there's a really really upsetting passage where they talk about having to survive off of the body of a person who had been holding their hands like two days earlier, and it's just so upsetting. Yeah, like that he was one of their crewmates that was like, we're going to get through this. We're going to you know that they were all trying to and it didn't work out. There's an interesting story here about Jericho and abolition that I also didn't get into because he was an abolitionist. And what's very interesting is his choice because he did study this whole case so in depth, as we noted, he talked to the survivors, he made diagrams of the rafts, so he understood what he needed to paint. But he made a very deliberate choice in changing up the details of what went on when he created his painting, which is that in the painting raft of the Medusa, there are three black men on the raft. There was only one black man on the raft, and that has long been perceived as part of his effort to draw attention to the need for abolition, and as we said, he was planning to do a large scale painting, possibly as big as this one, about the slave trade. So that was kind of an interesting, yeah, interesting thing. And he had actually hired a model. I didn't write it down, and I don't remember where he was from, but he hired a black man to model for him, who is the model of two of the people on the boat, but like they're at different angles, so it doesn't look like a repeat person. But that was kind of interesting, just an interesting detail about him. Yeah, there's another interesting thing about his son. Okay, So he and Alexandrine had this son that was surrendered as unknown parents, but of course people knew and when Jericho and some people had clearly kept up with what was going on with that boy. Because when Jericho knew that he was dying, he made his will, and he made his will so that his father, who was still alive, would inherit everything. But his father in turn made a new will of his own where everything that Jericho had willed him went to that boy. Oh, so that even though there had been a disconnect, he still got his father's legacy, which is kind of cool. Yeah, it's a cool little trip. There is a very sad detail about Coriard that was also fascinating to me. Okay, as we said seven year, it seemed like wanted to not even though he was he was a participant in the multiple editions of the book that kept being published year after year after year, but he just was not as like, he did not get as politically active as Courard and whatnot. So I feel like I don't have as much information about what his life turned out to be. But apparently Coriard had gotten married, clearly adored his wife, but he did this very weird thing after his wife died where he had like a dress mannequin that he kept in his room and he changed her clothes like with his wife's clothes all the time, Okay, because he just wanted to feel like she was close to him. Yeah. And it's so sort of odd and a little like from a Hitchcock film and an also sort of endearing in a strange way. Well, based on the gruesomeness of the episode. When you started describing this, I took it to a very different You were worried that it was going to be a different thing. Yeah, Yeah, And when you said benign in that regard. It hurts no one, you said, clothes, I was relieved this is not the cook to thief his wife and her lover in any kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, it's so sweet and sad and a little creepy, but also I can understand it. Mm hmmm. I don't know. I just he did not have an easy life, and like there was I mean, he got called in front of the court so many times for you know, his treasonous printings. Like his life was not easy and he clearly. I mean, that's the thing that isn't talked about much in any of these even though it's discussed in some ways, but not at the depth that we would understand it today. These people that survive this experience like trauma that will change your brain mm hmm. And like there isn't a ton of discussion about their mental condition and their mental health in the years that follow. But that's where I really like, that whole three years in prison and then you get to go live your life in the country. I'm like, cool, cool, cool. There are other people that are never gonna outlive like the hell you put them through, right, Because sometimes inept people don't actually get as punished as they should be, which is frustrating to all of us. Anyway, I'm fascinated by this case, and we'll probably keep reading more things about it because I can't stop because I'm fascinated. And also the art. And I will say, if you get a chance to go to the loop and you see this piece of art, it will rock you back. It is so striking and so moving and also just huge. Listen, I'm a girl who loves huge art. I love it, and so this is very much up. Anyway. I remember studying this in high school and being like, what is that? Like? I immediately was obsessed with it in my r glasses. So I'm glad I got a chance to talk about it because it's very good. And then you find out why it's so good, and it's like, ooh, still really good. So now I want to go back to Paris just to see it again, because it's been a minute. That's what's up. May we never live through such heroic moments. That's a good wish we all have goodness. Yeah, if you are coming up on your weekend where you have time off, I hope that quite the opposite happens that you have delightful moments, and you have time of joy and laughter and rest and relaxation and hopefully fun with your friends or whoever's close to you, And that you pet a kiddy if that's your thing, and that you eat delicious stuff. Maybe have some cake. Cake is delicious. If it's not your weekend coming up, I bet you could still sneak a piece of cake in there, or whatever it is that you eat that makes you feel very happy and that delights your palette. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we will have something brand new. 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