The secret weapon that changed war forever

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G'day, Matt Bevan here.

We're off for one more week while we get our Australian election series ready.

It's coming on the 24th of April.

Instead of a normal episode, today we've got something really special.

My colleague Mark Finnell has a new podcast that I think you'll probably like if you like this show, which I assume you do because you are listening to me talk right now.

Following on from his incredible success with Stuff the British Stole and about half a dozen other massive hit podcasts, Mark is now launching a new weekly show with Radio National called No One Saw It Coming.

It's about the moments, the accidents, and the people who changed the course of history, but at the time, no one realised it.

Mark and I had a really excellent chat that very expectedly went quite far off the rails.

I'm sure you're going to like it.

Here it is.

G'day, Mark.

Hello.

How are you?

I'm so good.

And I'm so excited to talk to you about this show because, you know, you and I have known each other for some time.

And I think it will not surprise you that this kind of a concept of, you know, a moment that no one...

expected would come to much but ended up changing the course of history

is something that I am quite interested in and obsessed with.

It's so far up your alley that it's practically wedged.

Yes, it is.

It's actually one of the things that annoys me most:

I so want these to be everywhere, you know?

Yeah.

I so want to find the thing, you know, the one thing that explains the first domino that

leads to the, you know, the fall of the Soviet Union or something like that.

And it's so hard sometimes to find those

things.

how have you gone about approaching the various issues with with finding these moments that that change everything well the first thing i would say is two words episode five uh because we will be doing an episode exactly about the fall of uh specifically the fall of the berlin wall which obviously is a is a piece of that story yeah um look uh for the the longest time in my career whether it's something like stuff the british stole or the documentaries i make at sbs i've realized that there's a there's a certain way my brain operates and it's what i call a small doorway into a big world.

And I must confess, I know that you see the world through similar terms, right?

So you're looking often for like one quirky moment that sort of grabs your attention.

And that's fine.

It can, you know, whether it's a stolen object in a museum or something throughout history, but it can't just be that.

Because if it's just that, it's like a weird ephemeral story from the past.

Eh, doesn't matter.

It has to open a doorway to something bigger.

So in the case of, you know, just to pick something that people will, at least in Australia and places, will know, is stuff the british style which is the doorway there is contested objects in museums reveal how the british empire actually worked and i guess the the origin of this series is that over the years people have been emailing us through stuff the british style and other shows with like can you do a story about this and i realized as we kept track of them there was actually

like a trend emerging and all these objects that actually or people or accidents that changed the world but actually at the time people just didn't realize and it's only that when you look back with hindsight, where you connect the dots that you see the dominoes have fallen in a certain way.

And there was something that's just very intriguing about that.

And there were so many of them that I was like, well, this feels like a podcast.

This feels like a podcast you could do every week.

And the crucial point is that

there's all these people that we've recruited, like historians and experts, people who have direct connections to the story,

that are fabulous at telling them.

And so they come on board the podcast and we kind of co-pilot it together, as it were.

That must be a very encouraging thing for you, because the thing for me, when I find these moments, I'm always like, can I really say that this thing caused that thing?

You know,

I so desperately want to.

How do you approach that when it comes to these sorts of things?

Whenever you do anything about the past, and I do a lot of shows about history, I think it's always important just to be very honest with the audience.

These are some things that we know.

These are some things that we can prove.

These are some things that it's contested.

Some people say this, some people say that.

And then sometimes, like, the story that's been passed down is this.

No one can really tell you if that's true or not.

And I think one of the things I love about, particularly about people that listen to the shows on the ABC, is that they're smart, right?

If you're listening to this right now, congratulations.

Statistically, I've decided you're smart.

This is a non-binding definition.

I would also say that often when it comes to recorded history, recorded history is also limited.

So it's also important to give context around what we do know and what we don't know.

And I think people are respectful.

I've found anyway anyway over the years that people are quite respectful of the honesty with what we know and what we don't know.

Yeah, I think you're right about that.

Which is also why I think shows like your show and my show are important, right?

Because you actually do need...

you do need the benefit of the passing of time to look back and see how those dominoes fell and to make an assessment about was this as important as they thought of at the time or is it actually was it more important than people thought of at the time and it's a lot easier to connect the dots and retrospect sometimes than it is in that moment, which is why I think these sorts of shows are important to kind of give you context.

Understand, you know,

in some ways, a show like No One Saw It Coming or even Stuff the British Doll, it's actually not really about the past.

It's actually about understanding how we ended up with the world we have today by looking back.

One of your first episodes is about a submarine.

And look, talk about a Venn diagram of my interests.

You know, significant historical events and submarines.

That's the very middle of the Venn diagram.

There we go.

Anyway, so

you're talking about the invention of the first submarine and it is not when I expected it to be.

I expected the invention of the submarine to be

a World War I U-boat or something like that.

It's well before that, isn't it?

Well, it's interesting because submarines conceptually have been around for a very long time and there are various different attempts at it that you can go back into like the 17th century.

But this is the first time a submarine was successfully used used at war.

This is the first time a submarine was used as a weapon and the first time it was used successfully.

So we're in the U.S.

Civil War.

It's the mid-1800s, 18 sort of 60s.

And

what's interesting about the American Civil War is when most people, and certainly when I think about it, I think about it as a land war, right?

And you've got these, you know, Gettysburg and Shiloh and these very well-known events, but there is this whole maritime component to it that I don't think gets enough attention.

So

the the you've got, just bring people up to speed, you've got the Union in the North under Abraham Lincoln.

You've got the Confederates in the South who, I mean, the Civil American Civil War is actually about a bunch of different things, but at its core, let's go with slavery.

The South have an entire economy built on slavery.

They would like to keep it that way.

North, less so.

And so they pull apart and they're at war.

Forgive me, American Civil War scholars.

I know there's complexity, but let's just go with that for the basics.

So what's the maritime component is that the Confederates have this interesting edge, right?

On their southern shore, they have all these ports, and the ports are crucial, right?

That's how they're getting cotton out, that's how they're maintaining their economy, they're selling into Europe.

And so, the Union decided to make a blockade of ships they have to stop people getting in and out of ports.

There are blockade runners as well, and it's really effective.

It really worked.

It's really screwing over the Confederates.

So, the Confederates are desperate.

They need to come up with a plan.

And that's when this idea for a top-secret weapon is developed.

And this is where the submarine comes into it.

And it was a top-secret, secret weapon that the Confederates were building.

And that's the origin of that's kind of where we start, Matt.

Okay.

So, yeah, as you say, you know, there were experiments with, you know, diving bells and all sorts of things to go to the bottom of the ocean beforehand.

So they wanted this submarine to destroy the blockade or to sneak under it with loaded full of cotton?

Or no,

we're talking about loaded full of cotton oh now there's a mental image no this was uh this was designed to take out in his submarine packed in with cotton balls trying to sneak off to europe to export his cotton yeah i'm very comfy here on my ship no so

it's so soft so soft no it was a it was a weapon it was designed to take out union ships and so uh what what we're talking about here is something that's about uh it's 1.5 meters tall and you've got space for sort of eight or nine men inside.

Now, ask yourself, eight or nine men, 1.5 meters tall, what is this thing powered by?

If you had to guess,

what would you power

an ancient submarine with?

I mean,

you can't take a horse down there.

That's what most things are powered by.

I mean, you think that, but it's worth trying.

Cotton and a horse.

So, I mean, I assume I would go with pedal power to start with.

You know, that would be

my guess, would be pedaling.

So, they experimented with steam power.

They experimented with electromagnets even, but no, in the end, it's actually, well, it's literally manpower.

So, what you've got down the middle of this

long metal tube is essentially a crank.

And the men are in there.

going around.

I'm doing this visually, so they're going round and round.

They're pushing this thing around, and that's how they're doing it.

Now, there's one interesting thing that's important to know about this submarine.

It has two hatches, and those hatches are not big enough for a person to climb in and out of easily.

In order to do it, what you basically have to do is put your hands above your head and you're sort of shimmying down.

Now, that is a crucially important thing to keep in mind as I tell you the story of this ship, which was called the HL Hunley.

It's named after the benefactor.

And so, they did a bunch of tests.

And, Matt, how well do you reckon those secret tests went?

My guess would be that everyone on the submarine died several times.

And you would be correct.

The multiple tests they did of this submarine were so disastrous, it ended up getting a nickname of the murdering machine.

The peripatetic coffin is my other favorite one, mostly because I don't genuinely know what peripatetic is.

No, no, that sounds a fun word.

Yeah, there's one time where the story goes that the guy who was piloting it, the captain, for lack of a better term,

accidentally put his foot on the downward plane and basically sent it.

I shouldn't laugh, it's a terrible story.

They sent it down to the bottom of the ocean, and the front of the craft was stuck in the bottom of the harbor.

Now, you're right, it did kill many people multiple times.

The problem is, once they die, they're like, well, we've spent all this money on this thing.

We basically need to go down and get it.

And so they go down.

It's a literal sunk cost fallacy.

Exactly.

They go down, they get it.

They've basically got to cut these poor men inside, out, and then they try.

Oh, no, the tiny hatch.

Yes, the tiny hatch.

Yes.

Now, of course, when things go down badly, you cannot get out of this thing fast, and you have to get out one by one.

You've got two small hatches.

Remember, you've got a shimmy.

Got a shimmy.

Shimmy alive, hard.

Shimmying dead, harder.

Anyway, this thing is a disaster.

Already, it's killed, I think, above 12 Confederate soldiers.

Now, the interesting thing here is the soldiers themselves, sailors, I suppose is what they would be.

They're not all American, right?

So some of them have died in the war from Confederate states, but some of them are born overseas in Europe.

And one of the things that I think gets overlooked in this story is there was actually a bounty.

The Confederates were so desperate for this thing to work, they offered up the men on this

very dangerous trip and a bounty.

And had they been successful, they were in for a lot of money.

So after these multiple tests, they decide, okay, for one reason or another, possibly out of sheer desperation, it's ready.

The time has now come.

We are going to take this thing into war.

And so they take it into the water, into enemy territory, and they set their sights on this gorgeous-looking ship called the USS Houston Tonic.

So it's got sails, but it's also got steam.

It's very pretty.

I didn't think I was into boats.

Apparently, I'm a boat guy now.

It's inevitable once you reach a certain age, Mark.

Is this middle age?

Is this what it is?

Yeah, you get really into World War II and you get really into old ships.

Do you know what?

I'm actually kind of into this.

This is great.

I turned 40 this year and I'm really embracing it.

So they have this thing at the front of the Hunley and it's called a torpedo.

Now, it's not the torpedo that you and I would probably think of as a torpedo.

It's a giant stick.

And at the front of the stick is a bunch of explosive powder.

I may have referred to it as a unicorn boat at some point.

I pray to baby Jesus that we edited that out a bit

because that is what it looks like to me.

So you've got this long metal tube of metal that's been riveted together, eight or nine men inside this thing and at the front a giant stick, and at the front of the stick, explode-y things.

Now, because of the disastrous way the tests had gone,

they brought in some safety measures.

And one of the safety measures is that it could not approach the ship underwater.

So it's actually just skimming along the top.

They turn off the lights inside, so you can't see any lights coming out of the very, very unhelpful hatches.

And so

they're making their approach.

People on the Husatonic notice something's weird, like a log or something in the water's coming towards you.

It's moving against the current.

This isn't right.

And they set off the alarm.

They're like, something's coming towards us.

We don't know what this thing, but they set off the alarm.

It's too late.

But the Hunley gets the unicorn, hits the Husatonic, makes a big hole in it, and the Housatonic takes about a matter of minutes to hit the bottom of the ocean.

Five men are killed.

This is, in this one moment in the US Civil War, the first time a submarine has successfully been used in battle.

Wow.

But

ask yourself this.

What happened to the Hunley?

Well,

it's exploded at the front

or it

did it.

Did the explosion make a hole and the Hunley actually accidentally went into it and was dragged down by the ship?

I can only imagine that something bad has happened to the Hunley.

All of these things are infinitely more interesting than what actually happened.

it sailed by and it was fun and everything was fine and the men collected their money and lived happily ever after well actually what happened is the hunley destroyed the the housatonic went to the bottom of the ocean five men on the husatonic died and then the hunley just disappeared no one knew what happened to it what actually happened to it we think now after all these years is that the shock wave from the explosion did as much damage to the Hunley as it did to the Housatonic and it sunk to the bottom of the ocean with the men all inside.

And in that moment, not only was the Hunley successful, it also, again, killed more Confederates than it did Unionists, even though technically it was successful.

And it took more than 100 years for them to locate it and then pull it out of the ocean.

And the guest on the show this week is actually a guy by the name of James Hunter, who is one of my favorite people in the world.

He's a shipwreck hunter.

He has a real job at the Australian National Maritime Museum, but he's a shipwreck hunter to me.

But he was part of the.

His name is Hunter.

Okay.

Yep.

I know.

I know.

It's like it was built in a lab for me.

So he is part of the team that was part of the restoration.

He just finished grad school as they'd located where the submarine was.

They pulled it out.

And one of his first jobs was to open up this Civil War submarine.

And inside it was perfectly preserved.

As in the skeletons of the men were still there.

They still had the neckerchiefs around their neck.

It's literally stepping back.

into history, into America's history, because James is American, he's from Indianapolis, but it was an amazing piece of of history that he got to live through in a way in it albeit in a somewhat gruesome fashion it's funny because you know obviously we're talking about this because it was the first successful submarine attack but it's essentially they it was just a manned torpedo really i mean pretty much yeah yeah and you know the the weird thing is one of the key parts of the submarine is you have to survive the attack i would have thought so but you know it's interesting because uh james said something that i had never really processed which is the idea this was subterfuge right?

And the idea of sneaking up on a boat and destroying it in the dead of night was actually considered ungentlemanly.

And so in the wake of this, two things happened.

One, the Union...

don't want to admit what's happened to their ship, right?

So they're not going to publicize, oh my God, there's this new weapon called a submarine, but also the Confederates themselves,

A, because they don't know what's happened, B, because it was considered ungentlemanly, they also don't make a big deal out of it either.

So the submarine in many ways, it disappears, but it kind of disappears from popular consciousness for a long time.

But, you know, it becomes the stuff of myth and legend.

I mean, P.T.

Barnum, I think, has a bounty out for who can find it.

It becomes sort of whispers through time until it's eventually found.

And of course, the other component to this is, of course, it's a Confederate.

invention as opposed to a Union invention.

So it's an invention of the losing, for lack of a better term, the losing side.

And one of the reasons why I was really interested in doing this story is I'm fascinated by the stories of the losing sides of wars right so some of my favorite or most intrigued memorials around the world are for the losing sides of wars if you go to Hiroshima in Japan or if you go to Berlin in Germany they have a much harder time memorializing awful things right because they have to

they they they have to terrible things happen to Berlin terrible things happen to Hiroshima but they also have to kind of maintain this level of contrite around you know we were on the wrong side of this and I think with with the US civil war particularly in in light of what's become of American politics today, I think it's a really interesting time to look back at it because had this been a union invention, and there was eventually the union, I think they have a USS alligator and things like that.

But eventually the idea does catch on.

But I'm always intrigued about if this had been an invention of the union,

would it have been recorded in history differently?

Would there have been a different attention paid on it?

And even James, who is American, he was like, we discussed how we would handle this because this is essentially a tool that would have been built in the service of people who are pro-slavery.

And how do you make sense of that?

It's an incredible achievement.

Traders to the United States.

And traitors to the United States.

So how do we memorialize this?

Because it's an important invention.

It's a critically important invention in the history of war.

But at the same time,

it's not what, you know, that gets classically taught, at least amongst our cohort, as quote unquote, the good guys, right?

So that's complicated.

That being said, you know, one of the things I found most intriguing is when they did finally pull it out of the water and they did restore it, they actually had a funeral for

the men of the Hunley, and they gave them this full-blown draped and Confederate regalia funeral

in 2004,

right?

Which, I mean, it was firstly intriguing because I think a few of the guys were almost definitely like paid mercenaries, given where they had originated from.

Sorry if I'm libeling you from beyond the grave, but I think...

Oh, no.

Please, please don't libel dead Confederates on my show, Mark.

I feel like if I was going to do it on any show, it would be this.

But, you know, I think it's probably also worth acknowledging that people from Confederate states,

their attitudes to that time in history

can vary.

That's me being diplomatic.

I've spent a bunch of time in southern states for various different programs.

And I think, you know, the way that time is talked about is super different to what you get if you go to the northern states of America.

And I think there, again, it shines a light on on something that it gets talked about on your show understandably a lot, this great big divide that only seems to be getting wider in America

exists in part with the memory of the U.S.

Civil War and its reasons for existing and how you reckon with the parts of quote-unquote southern culture that people are still proud of and the parts that get kind of minimized, slavery.

And I think America is still, in my estimation, when I'm there working, it's still very much trying to navigate that.

And now more than ever,

it's kind of, given the political situation there, that divide, that rift has, I don't think, ever been bigger.

Well, yes.

I mean, our colleague Nick Bryant, who hosts Saturday Extra on Radio National, his latest book is called The Forever War.

And it's about this.

It's basically making the argument that we're still in the American Revolutionary War.

We're still, you know, nothing ever gets resolved in America.

It just swings backwards and forwards between various things.

Because it's interesting, you mention the Germans and the Japanese and Hiroshima, which is an extraordinary memorial to peace and to

everyone can make terrorist, you know, we made a terrible mistake.

This terrible thing happened because of it.

And, you know, we're trying to look at it in a way that is sensitive,

which...

It has not happened in the southern US.

Well, I think one of the things, it's actually something I weirdly learned from stuff the British stole more than anything, which is that

when you win, you don't have to be introspective about the good and the bad.

And so in the case of, you know, in the case of the British Empire, because essentially, in the long view of history, they won.

They won all of these lands, all of these people.

And yes, it's shrunk over time, but they own the narrative.

right they won and so the there's been a lack of introspection in the british empire or the the countries left in its wake.

I think America has elements of that, right?

Where if

you are the winning side, you are not necessarily forced to evaluate the good and the bad of that particular endeavor.

And the wild thing is that the Confederates lost.

The Confederates lost that war.

But of course, it's because of...

you know, Jim Crow and the compromises made in the years after the assassination of Lincoln that they basically kind of got to go, well, yeah,

you know,

let's call it a tie.

You know,

it's an extraordinary anomaly, I kind of think, in America.

I think the sense of winning means a lot.

I think that the idea of being on the winning side of something conceptually, I think, means a lot in America.

And

maybe you can link that back to free market economics or,

you know, independence.

I don't know where it comes from initially, but there's a necessity within American culture to win.

It's a predominant part of the culture.

I won't do a sweeping statement for, you know, more than 250 million people, but I think it is something that is very much part of the identity that I've noticed there, perhaps more than other countries.

Like, certainly, I don't notice it in Canada or the UK or other countries where I've been.

There's not as much we're number one, every other country sucks, that kind of thing.

Even here, we're even just a little bit, well, we know that we're the best, you know, we're the best place to live, but we're not going to, we don't, we don't want to, we don't want to be a, you know, but even

the best place to you know the even that like the you know most successful multicultural country best place to live like

even that is it doesn't come necessarily at the expense of other places whereas i think there is an i i think because it was america was such a dominant cultural force for so long and and you know that's where you get light on the hill and and uh the world's police and all of these things or all these things things the superpower of our time

and then to live through the decline of that which is what you and I are living through right now which is sort of you know you go through America right now and I love Americans most of my most of my podcasts I do with Audible they're all made in America with Americans and I love Americans but it's hard for anyone to argue that it's not a superpower in decline.

It's hard to not argue that when you're going down freeways that are, you know, require,

require a vote in in congress to get fixed you know like it's it's hard not to to be faced with that that flailing infrastructure and not feel like you're navigating a a

an empire in decline so your your series stuff the british stole is obviously about artifacts and things we've been talking today about kind of an artifact a thing you're not just talking about you know objects that uh are dug up from the bottom of the ocean that kind of thing what else can we expect well one of the things i really want to do with the series is take a wider view so we've got stories stories that dive into fashion history and food history, our science history.

So the episode next week is about the potato.

One of the reasons why you find potatoes in menus right throughout the West is partially, you can link it back to Marie Antoinette, the French queen.

We've got an episode about...

That's fantastic.

A man who accidentally sent a metal pole through his head survived amazingly.

Yes, Finico, don't you love this?

But thanks to that one event, we now understand tons about the human brain that we wouldn't have before.

There's a story about a bunch of seeds in Germany that could have saved people's lives in the short term, but ended up saving people's lives in the long term.

Each one of the, what I'm looking for is stories with big heart, big emotions, and big surprises.

And one of the things I'm most excited about is people, and I know if you listen to this show, if you listen to Matt's show,

I know that you have ideas.

So we're really encouraging people to email in.

If you've just heard a story that you'd like us to investigate, send it it in.

Because that's what stuff the British style was largely built out of.

Like once we started the podcast, people literally around the world sent me

thousands of like, I saw this one object in this one museum.

Can you find out how it got there?

And from that, the podcast has grown.

And now the TV show sends me to 11 countries around the world each time we go back and do it.

And that all is because people who were listening went.

hey, we've got this thing in this museum up the road from me.

Can you look into where it came from?

And I'm hoping that we can build that same kind of community around this new show.

I always say one of the reasons I love audio is that you, the person listening to this right now, you are an active part.

of the storytelling because your imagination is building the image in your mind of you know what's going on with a metal pole through somebody's head or with a submarine under the ocean it's it's you're part of it and and i love you know it's often said that audio is the most intimate medium but it's also true it we're all creating the image in your head together television is wonderful don't get me wrong i love you know particularly stuff of British Dollars a TV show.

You know, I get to travel to incredible places and stand.

I remember standing under the, underneath the pyramids as this drone flew around me when we shot the second season, just being like, how the...

This literally started with me holding a microphone by myself.

And now it's become this big event.

But I think the elegance of audio and particularly with history, right?

Particularly with stories where you're trying to bring the past to life.

Audio is such a fabulous way of doing that.

And I love the length and breadth.

I really want to do the length and breadth of the past, you know, jumping from the 20th century to the 15th century.

And

I think that

there's a little part of my brain that tingles with excitement about being able to take on

a different part of the past week on week.

You've also, yeah, I mean, the great thing about having a historian to talk to is, you know, I am in many ways shackled by what I can find audio and video of

because you know I have nobody to talk to so I need I need other voices

you you have quite literally hundreds of thousands of people that feel yes yes but I know I don't I don't have anyone else to bounce off and so

you know to avoid having oh you you've like you were angling for a hard time

I'm so lonely here in my basement

but no you it's it's you know we're kind of limited a little bit to talking about things that have happened in the last hundred years because you know we we want to uh have pictures and we want to have audio to to dress it up and make it sound like it's not just me giving a big long monologue but i think that's but but nobody gives a monologue oh thank you very much like there no no no i mean i sorry if you're listening to this matt and i just gonna bless my courage

uh nobody gives a monologue like mark bevan it's a it's a it's a very special thing

thank you very much mark that is very appreciative i appreciate that very much but um uh i'm very much looking forward to he's gone pink you can't see this because it's a podcast.

He's gone.

Bless you, Matt.

The whitest man alive have gone a colour that is not of God.

You've gone so big.

I'm almost going through to purple.

But I appreciate that.

But

I think it's liberating for you to be able to talk about things that happened, you know, the Civil War and right back to the 1500s.

I think the scope of your show is so broad and that's going to.

end up bringing some really interesting stories.

I'm really looking forward to listening to it, Mark.

Thank you, Matt.

Yes, and you don't have to...

No, I'll tell you what, no one stands next to a pyramid like you do.

With a drummer.

I'm really good at staring at wearing black and staring up in the middle distance and being like, hmm, empire, how did it happen?

No One Saw It Coming is available now on the ABC Listen app.

By the way, we've had a lot of emails to, if you're listening, at abc.net.au asking for information about our second Newcastle live show, which is still TBA, but we've also had a lot of emails asking why we're doing live shows at all.

Why aren't we just focusing on making more normal episodes?

It is a fair question, but the reason is live shows not only give you and me a chance to see each other in person, which is lovely, but we're also using these live shows to generate stuff which we're going to use in episodes later this year.

I promise we're not doing one at the expense of the other.

They're kind of symbiotic.

Thanks so much for listening, though.

Catch you next week for the first episode of our series, Australia vs the Internet.