Oh What A Time... - #20 The Coast

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

This week we're heading for the coast to discover the story behind the birth of modern weather forecasting. We're also off to learn about the world's first lighthouse: the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria. Elis will be bringing some coals to Newcastle. And there's also a 4th part to this one (explain that in a second!) which is the real 4th emergency service: THE COASTGUARD. As we mention in the show, we've launched a subscription! With a subscription you'll get the 4th part of every episode, ad-free listening, get episodes a week ahead of everyone else and get a bonus episode every month! (We'll also make sure you get first dibs on tickets to any live shows) Subscriptions are available here: anotherslice.com/ohwhatatime And via the Apple podcast app (just go to our show page). We'll also have a Spotify subscription available imminently. For the options you can also go to: ohwhatatime.com And you know the drill: Interesting relatives? Prove an interesting fact to someone in 500AD? Historic jobs that are easy? ONE DAY TIME MACHINE? Send us your thoughts by emailing: [e-mail] Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Oh and please follow us on Twitter at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod And thank you to Dr Daryl Leeworthy for his help with this week’s research. Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you next week! (Or get next week's episode now if you fancy subscribing!!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh, What a Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was absolutely rubbish. I'm Tom Crane. I'm Chris Scull. And I'm Ellis James. Each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject. And today we're going to be discussing the coast. Or the birth of weather forecasting. Selling coal to Newcastle, the first lighthouse.

And an extra part in this episode. We'll explain that in a second. The Coast Guard. But we said we promised last week we would have a big announcement and boy have we got a big announcement. We have decided to launch a subscription. What do you mean a subscription? I can hear you shout. It's not a magazine. What are you talking about? A subscription? What? Like a 442 magazine where it lands on my mat every month? Yeah, a little bit like that, but it's a podcast. You get an extra part of every episode. You get episodes a week ahead of everyone else.

It's ad-free, for crying out loud. Plus, this is the big one. You get a bonus episode every month. And because the three of us are live animals, we're like Elvis Presley when he had that, when he was doing those long runs in Las Vegas, when he was just doing the strip, because he just needed to perform in front of people.

We're the same. So should we do any live gigs, you would get a pre-sale for the live show so you'd be able to get in quick just before anyone else now tom yes could you talk me through your week this week my week this week well i was uh writing on unforgivable with mel goodroyd on dave i've been writing on when did you do that mond Monday and Tuesday? That was Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Right, okay. Also The Last Leg on Channel 4.

Okay. I've been recording. We've done three episodes of this as well. Yeah, yeah. Talk to me about the TV writing work. You wrote for Mel Giedroyc for her programme Unforgivable and then for The Last Leg featuring Adam Hilsack, Brooke and Josh Willikam, of course. You were a writer on that, weren't you?

I was, yes. Chris obviously will be able to butt me up on this. Tom doesn't want to do that with his life. He hates every single second of it, having to go into the office, he's sitting there, he's coming up with ideas. He's grey, he's drawn. he's coming up with ideas he's grey he's drawn he looks like someone um with consumption which obviously is a historical disease the kind of historical disease

that we discuss on this podcast which is tom's first true love now should enough of you sorry what is this section what's happening here should enough of you subscribe to Oh What A Time, Tom will be able to quit Mel Gidroy, which is unforgivable. He'll be able to quit The Last Leg, and then he can live his real dream of being a podcast historian 24-7, 365. I think that's a really good idea. So if you would like to subscribe, Chris, how can people do it? So the subscription is £4.99 per month the price of a

london pint buy tom a london pint look at the man he needs one yeah and as ellis said you get an extra part in every episode we do you get episodes a week ahead of everyone else so if you want to listen to next week's episode it is now available by the subscription every episode ad free a bonus episode every month and pre-sale tickets for any live show and i think it's worth saying chris by the way that extra bit in every episode is a brand new section on history it's a brand new period a brand new subject on history in the episode it's not just you know more waffle but how can people sign up to this chris yes you've got a range of options to sign up. You can go to owhwattatime.com if you want to see them all.

But you can go to anotherslice.com forward slash owhwattatime to subscribe. You can also go to Apple on your Apple podcast app. Just go to the Owh Wattatime page and there it is. We also offer a subscription on Spotify as well. But if you want all the links to those things, you can go to owhattime.com. Shall we begin with some correspondence? I want to read out one email. Now, this is absolutely fascinating. I'm going to read this in full. It's quite a long email, but it's just so interesting. Normally, I'll be honest, guys, we sub them down a bit sometimes. We read, then we go, we'll take out that middle paragraph

and the fourth paragraph and the eighth paragraph and whittle it down to a couple of sentences so it becomes broadcastable but um this is from a guy called ben collins and it refers to battlefield artists is what he's written at the top he said hello history buffs you taking that yeah oh yeah nice very pleased after listening to chris's section about ambulances on your most recent episode, it reminded me of something whilst reading about the Crimean War. Now, this absolutely blew my mind. One thing that greatly surprised me was the apparent numbers of war tourists,

ordinary, curious civilians, who made it a point not of just going to visit the battlefield after the action, but to witness and experience the conflict at first hand while it was still going on. That is insane. What? A local battle has doubtless always attracted the curious such as sightseers who drove out from Brussels in their carriages to enjoy the spectacle of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 or the wealthy citizens of Washington who in 1861 turned up with their picnic hampers to watch the first battle of bull run and eventually got caught up in the route however during the crimea people were traveling all the way from

britain france and other countries to observe the fighting up close in all its horror over several days and sometimes over many weeks and he's written here for instance when the british fleet in 1854 sailed into baltic to, bombarded the forts protecting St. Petersburg, they were accompanied, this is so mad, by a small flotilla of private yachts and chartered tourist ships. No. What? While the Royal Navy bombarded the Russian forts at Bomarsand, the Reverend Richard Hughes and his brother got their ship to land them on the beach

alongside the disembarking 10,000 French soldiers who were to assault the fort from the land. I'll give you one quote before we finish. My brother was off soon after dawn and secured an excellent position amongst the French sharp shooters where he got a capital view of everything. I followed soon after and quickly came into view of the fort which was blazing away pretty briskly. The brightest colours flew in the merry breeze which was blowing stinking smoke and burnt gunpowder into the eyes of our unhappy foes. This was turning war into a holiday with a vengeance.

So people would turn up and watch the action and sometimes basically get amongst it. That is... That's incredible. That's extraordinary. I had no idea. Like, the three of us are parents. Yeah. And there are

occasionally things that I will not do, because I will think, oh, that might be quite full on. For instance, I probably wouldn't take my kids into central London in the run-up to Christmas, because I think I'll be a bit busy with Christmas shoppers. Yeah. The idea of going to a war zone just to watch, as you're packing your bags to go to a war zone just to watch. As you're packing your bags to go to a war zone,

would you or your wife not say, I'm not sure this is a good idea, actually, man. It's a war zone. That's absolutely blown my mind. But again, I would quite like to, I wouldn't mind going, but again, to use your example of a few weeks ago, I'd have to be a ghost. If I would go, I'd happily go to to war zone if I could be a ghost.

I'm sure that could be offered quite quickly in that experience. After about two hours, I'm sure you'd achieve that dream. Do you think if you went to see a battle and you got killed and you were a ghost, would you hang around? I'll see how this goes. I would, actually. I don't know if as a ghost you're the one who gets to make that decision I can tell you why I would hang around by the way

which would be to I'd wait till it finished and I would follow the person who had killed me back home to their home and then I would haunt that house yeah and make them subscribe because you've no way of knowing where they live unless you follow

you just hope they survive and you get to follow them home and ruin the rest of their life. And then you get there and then you sort of rattle chains and things until they eventually subscribe to the Oh What A Time subscription to get free episodes.

Add free episodes. And if there are any ghosts listening, it's actually quite a good offer because these episodes will be available forever. And you will be in the afterlife or the middle ground forever. So you can keep coming back to them, which is nice. And if there are any ghosts listening,

just make yourself known. No, don't. Don't. I am not interested. Do you believe in ghosts, Chris? I imagine you do, actually. I remember once me and my wife stayed at this hotel. We were lying there in the dark at night

and you could hear all these creaks. And I said, is there anyone there? And she was like, shut up! Shut up! I was like half joking. Is there any spirits in the room with us? She's like, shut, do not engage this.

Oh, I love that. Don't engage with the ghost and then it will go away of its own accord. It will go and haunt another podcaster. I can't remember what scary movie it was. It was something like Paranoia, Normal Activity or something like that. And then we'd had an argument afterwards. We don't really argue much, but this was years ago. And such that I decided,

I was in such a huff, I was going to sleep in the spare room. And I went and slept in the spare room. But then after about half an hour of being alone in the spare room, I was so scared after watching Paranormal Activity that I had to come back in

and get back into bed. And it wasn't because I wanted to sort of offer an olive branch. It was because I was too scared to be in my own new spare room. How lame's that? I can't do this. I'm furious, but I can't be in my own.

What did you say to her? I don't think I said anything. I think I just got in and lay there rigid as a plank. Not in that way. Not like, sorry, just to be absolutely clear. Sorry, that's not what I'm into. The ghost made you all randy um would we do an episode where we stayed at like britain's most haunted hotel

yes would you do it would you do it i want to see a ghost oh no but i want to have a conversation with a ghost what would you say say? Where are you from? But you don't have to say it in that voice. No, I know exactly. In the way that Stephen Claren adopted a bit of a Dutch accent. Exactly. A bit of a ghost accent.

They'll understand you better. I like the idea that you start with where are you from? And the reaction is, well, Stephenage, but it's quite normal. It's immediately just quite a flat, normal voice. Yeah, I never spoke like that when I was alive, and I don't speak like that now. Maybe this is a question for the listeners.

If we wanted to go see a ghost, where's the best place? Here is how you get in contact with this blooming show. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh, what a time dot com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh, what a time pod. Now clear off. Looking for a path to accelerate your career? Clear direction for next-level success? In a place that is innovative and practical? A path to stay current and connected to industry?

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Earn them on your adventure and use them how you want, when you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Learn more at amex.ca slash yamxtermsapply. All right. We were talking about the coast on this week's episode, and I will be looking at the birth of weather forecasting. I will be talking about bringing colds to Newcastle. And I will be talking about the very first lighthouse.

But also there is an extra part to this episode. Tom is also going to be talking about the Coast Guard in an extra part to this episode tom is also going to be talking about the coast guard in an extra part for subscribers so once again if you want this episode in full the extra part will be at the end go over to owattime.com or hit subscribe wherever you get this podcast so i'm going to talk to you about the first lighthouse in recorded history, which, as I'm sure you're both aware, is the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria. Okay, and it's the second most famous lighthouse ever behind, and you may know this as well,

the one that the family lived in, in Round the Twist, which of course is the most important lighthouse of all time. Round the Twist, I grew up on Round the Twist. It put something, like a fear in me about lighthouses because there was always strange stuff going on and I so associate lighthouses with spooky, weird, mystical things. Great theme tune as well.

Have you ever felt like this? When strange things happen when you go in Round the Twist. Last night I was trying to work out whether I would rather live in a lighthouse or a windmill. A windmill like Jonathan Creek or a lighthouse like round the twist. What are you thinking? My worry with the windmill is the noise from the fan and the creaking of that would just be a bit annoying compared to waves, which are quite relaxing. I think waves are relaxing, but I think think a lighthouse you've got far more responsibility

like imagine if you're woken up by a horrendous crashing noise and a ship has like been smashed on the shore and your first thought is oh my god what's that and your second thought is i think that's my fault i forgot to turn the lighthouse on. Or I turned out the light before I went to bed because it was affecting my sleep. Yeah, yeah. Damn. If you lived in a lighthouse, you would be sleeping up the top next to the light. That's so bright. The most uninhabitable bit of a lighthouse.

Yeah. Great for your bedtime reading. Not so good when you want to drift off. Lots of responsibility. I don't think it is good for bedtime reading because you'll have to walk around following the light. Well, you get tired, it'll make you more sleepy. It's perfect.

Can you imagine how bright that light would be if you were in the room with the light yeah yeah too much too much i'm gonna say it right before we start this story how about a fun little lighthouse story from history it's a different one um in 1881 this is one of the maddest things i've ever read in maryland virginia an ice flow forced the Sharps Island lighthouse off its foundations, after which it floated nearly five miles down an estuary with its keepers still inside it.

Oh my gosh. Until it eventually ran aground, allowing the men to escape unharmed. A lighthouse got dislodged from its foundations and then floated down an estuary for five miles with people trapped inside it. The implication is there that the guy didn't realise

that he was asleep. And when he's woken up, he's like, oh, I'm in town. Yeah, yeah. I'm in town. That story's obviously doing the rounds as well if you're among lighthouse owners. And I think that worry would always be in your head,

wouldn't it? And a storm. Am I about that worry would always be in your head, wouldn't it? A storm. Am I about to get washed over here? Yeah. On the plus side, it'd be easy for the Coast Guard to spot you if you're a lighthouse floating down the street with a huge beam at the top

of all the things that rescue ships can spot. It's a lighthouse. Whenever I... I always, even though I don't do much stand-up anymore, whenever I meet stand-ups, I always have a real empathy. I have a do much stand-up anymore, whenever I meet stand-ups, I always have a real empathy. I have a connection with stand-up comics because I did it for so long.

Are lighthouse owners the same? Like, are they like lighthouse keepers, sort of knights out, where they just talk about the problems of being a lighthouse keeper? And how itchy rollnecks are. Which seems to be the only other thing I know about lighthouse keepers is they all wear rollnecks. Yeah, well, I suppose it must be quite a bonding thing, mustn't it? Bump into someone else who lives in a lighthouse.

That's your evening done, isn't it? Or is it like a busman's holiday? Yes, it is a big bulb. Yeah. Yes, it is difficult trying to get a sofa which is bendy and fits the living room it's very annoying okay the great lighthouse was constructed in ancient egypt during the first half of the third century bc by order of the new emperor ptolemy the first now and this thing was an incredible sight it was over 300 foot tall and at the time it was the second tallest man-made structure in the world only behind the pyramids of giza to give

you an idea that is double the height of the statue of a statue of liberty wow that's back in the third century bc unlike the modern image of a lighthouse today it was built more like a more like a tiered skyscraper it had three stages which each layer sort of sloped inward slightly the lowest structure was square next was octagonal and on the top it was a cylinder and on the very top of that there was a colossal fire that was just raging at all times i think i find it quite hard to work in a building where there's a huge fire on the roof at all times yeah that would upset me i think that is i mean that's the if you work in a modern lighthouse you're flicking a switch there exactly i've just looked at a picture of this thing it is insane it's like a castle an enormous bonfire at the top of it so you're having to lug all the

wood up there presumably yes and there were rooms throughout the structure as well in which people were to sort of keep the lighthouse going you wouldn't want to be in one of the top rooms near the fire because i imagine that's quite it's quite hot working conditions you're already in egypt and just above your head this is the biggest fire in the world just how hot that would have been trying to get your office work done. Just baking naked. It's the only way you could deal with it.

Everyone in the open plan office is naked. It's just too hot. So, in fact, some reports even mention that the lighthouse may have had a large curved mirror at the top which helped project those flames, the lights from the flames, further. Oh, wow.

So the ships could see them far away. But also, and this is an amazing thing, so that they could be used as a weapon to concentrate the sun and set enemy ships ablaze. What? What, like burning ants with a magnifying glass? Exactly like that. But massive.

But massive. So I guess you'd be on your ship out at sea, and then someone would point out you've got a red dot on your arm, and you're sizzling. Then they'd realise what's happened. Why do I smell bacon? I think I'd like to put that up there in the list of horrific ancient weapons. I think that's up there.

Yes, and it's a long long list but that's definitely a worthy inclusion so in terms of resources i'll tell you about how this thing was built it was built using solid blocks of limestone and granite it cost 800 talents of silver to build which is the equivalent of 16 million pounds today using surviving wages list from not long before just one talent could pay the wages of a skilled laborer working five days a week every week of the year for nine years wow okay does it still feel like a bargain i wouldn't say a bargain i'd want to know as well how effective it was a cost benefit analysis yeah because this is the first lighthouse so you know you're having to sell in not only this lighthouse but the idea concept of lighthouses so it's a

tough sell it is a tough sell however i have an answer for that in that almost the use of the lighthouse was slightly secondary it did help guide sailors through the limestone reefs around the shore but the main reason it is built was it was primarily a symbol of growing power for the pharaoh Ptolemy the first so basically the reason he built it wasn't really about the its use as a lighthouse it was primarily bragging rights uh so and so he insisted on having his name inscribed around it this is a little thing that I quite enjoyed the guy who are the architect Sostratus or some people debate whether Sostratus was actually the architect but many people feel that he was he was so annoyed about the fact the pharaoh was taking all the claim for this that he hid his own name on the

stone underneath the plaster on which he wrote the king's name, knowing that when the Pharaoh died, the plaster would drop away, revealing his name. Oh. That's like Arsenal fans who worked on the new Spurs stadium, burying Arsenal shirts in the foundation. Is that what they did? Yeah. My worry with this, Al, I don't know if you're saying

is that you've got to make sure you get the timing right as to when that plaster is going to drop off it can't be like a week later when the fair is coming

round again and then it plops and there's your name a second look at his brand new lighthouse hang on sort of tapping it you know when you check walls

when you're being shown round a flat you sort of tap on the walls you don't really what you're doing but the most pointless tap there is i think exactly so it was built as this sort of bragging right but it had a striking impact on the image of alexandria this is what's interesting about it really much like the statue of liberty in new york it soon provided alexandria with an identity and it started to draw in tourists, ancient medieval European Levantine, Christian, Jewish, Arab,

and they could all buy merch. Would you like to guess what the merch was for this massive lighthouse? Lighthouse hearings. I'll basically capture the picture of a lighthouse. Little bits of a lighthouse, like at the Berlin Wall. T-shirts, a massive pencil. Have your photo up the lighthouse. Little bits of a lighthouse, like at the Berlin Wall. T-shirts.

A massive pencil. Have your photo up the lighthouse. Yeah. Well, the main one, this was the big seller. I went to visit humanity's first ever lighthouse and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. And it doesn't even really work as a lighthouse either.

Edible beans stamped with the symbol of the tower. That was the big one, which were also purchased and consumed by the residents of the city too. I'm managing the idea of us taking our children around a gift shop and trying to fob them off with that. You can't have the T-shirt, you can't have the maracas, you've got to have the edible bean. I don't know, though.

If we went to visit a tourist destination of that type and they were and there were sweets that were stamped with a picture read on they were that that would be the choice okay yeah see i'm imagining it's like a kidney bean though it's not a sweet i'm imagining yeah but in a pre-haribo age oh yeah you know beans would be quite nice and it would be seen as a treat i think that's actually that's very modern that strikes me as very i really like pre haribo so we've got bc ad and ph with free haribo i think that's i think we found a more new format point if anyone has uh is that an abbreviation what would that be what's that called yes for a time period that people think needs to be noted with two letters

if you want to rename some eras knock yourself out we often talk about um ancient jobs that we could have done because it's a constant theme on this podcast how how hard and difficult old jobs were and how unsuited we would have been to them. Working, selling sort of, you know, merch for a lighthouse is absolutely something I could do. Working in a gift shop for a lighthouse is definitely

something I could do. I actually, I'd go as far as to say, Ellis, I think I quite enjoy being the bean seller in Alexandria at the lighthouse. It would be quite a nice job. Some lighthouse beans? No problem. And a t-shirt? Yep. Do you think in antiquity you could get a guided tour of the lighthouse?

Do you think they were doing tours three times a day? If you've got a gift shop, surely you're doing tours. It's possible. It's perfectly possible because it was all about selling the idea of Alexandria and their achievements. So it may well have been possible. And to wrap up,

so in fact, this lighthouse was kind of so successful and so loved and drew in so many tourists that it soon became a feature of most ports. It really impacted the world,

particularly in Roman times with the technology carried by the Empire as far north as Dover and west to the Iberian Peninsula. And the medieval world, too, adopted the technology. Several surviving examples include La Lanterna in Genoa and the Kopu Lighthouse in Estonia. So it really had an impact and it spread. That's incredible. There we are. So that is the first lighthouse and the first gift shop bean.

I'm going to talk to you about a time. I want to talk to you about weather forecasting, but I want you to imagine, firstly, a time before weather forecasting. Can you really even wrap your head around that? Well, the other day... Wow. Are you too old enough to remember the great hurricane of 1987? Yes, I do, actually.

Seared into my memory, and I don't think anyone talks about it enough, a big tree fell down in our garden. It was huge. Yes, so a fence fell down because there's the there's the really famous weather forecast the bulletin where michael fish says and a woman from france rang the met office today to say there's a hurricane on the way i can i just say this reassure her it might it might be quite windy but there certainly isn't a hurricane and then the next scene in the documentary is you know sort of cute gardens has been destroyed and that kind of stuff. The other day I saw something I'd never seen before.

It's Michael Burke bollocking Ian McCaskill. He started off by basically saying, fat lot of good you were last night. Would you probably explain for overseas listeners who Ian McCaskill is? Ian McCaskill was a very famous weather forecaster. He was a weather reporter on the BBC News. And Michael Burke was the anchor of News Bulletin. So he was a very, very famous TV journalist.

And the cock-a-butt happened on the BBC. And Michael Burke is presenting on the BBC. But that does not stop him from going in two-footed on Ian O'Caskill, who looks chasing like some little boy who's being told off. It's awful. Do you know what as well? It's Michael Fish, isn't it? He's the one who gets the forecast wrong on the great storm of 1987.

It's weird when you watch the footage of that weather broadcast, where he's doing banter. And he's going, when have you ever seen a weatherman go, what, we're getting all kinds of messages in in from people you're like to tell the weather when has this ever happened in the history of weather forecasting what it's really really strange and also this woman in france correctly calls there's going to be an enormous storm and he's going absolute moron i've got a letter from this wanker in france what i basically need from the weather is for them to come out and just say,

to tell me if I need a coat or I don't need a coat. That's all I need it to be stripped down to. It doesn't need to be more than 10 seconds long. Put on a coat or you're fine in your jumper. I don't want to criticise Izzy, my fantastic fiancée. However, the mother of my children, her inability to decide if she needs a coat or not is honestly like an illness.

And every day we have this discussion at length about whether she'll need a coat or not, or what sort of coat, or whether she'll need a cardigan, or whether she'll need to wear ankle warmers. So is she looking out of the window? What's happening here? But also asking my advice. I'm like,

it's November, she'll wear a coat. I can't believe this. This is coat weather. And Izzy lives in an age where you can just, there's so many ways of finding out what the weather's going to be like in the next hour. Apple do this

great thing where you can actually see the rain clouds moving over London. And there's so many options for finding out what the weather is going to be. Throwback of 100 years more, there was just no way. One of the ways people used to tell the weather is they would look at animals. And animals would sometimes exhibit unusual behavior before storms. Have you heard this? Yeah, cows laying down and all that kind of stuff. No one knows for sure what it is,

but they think it's their keen sense of smell, hearing, sensitive instincts. Maybe dogs, they think, can sense a change in the barometric pressure that comes with storms, causing them to bark, cuddle or hide in an attempt to seek shelter. Before the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, eyewitnesses said they saw elephants screaming and running for higher ground, dogs refusing to go outside, flamingos abandoning their low-lying breeding areas, zoo animals rushed into their shelters and could not be enticed to come back out.

So it's a long-held belief going back centuries that animals possess a sixth sense for the weather and know in advance uh whether a storm is coming or not so if you ever see you know a robin with an umbrella then you realize that you probably need to go and get your like a football hoolie it was really um pelting it down raining the other day and i looked out into my garden i just there was a pigeon just stood outside my back door to my kitchen, just stood there in the rain. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's what you do, isn't it? You're just outside. I don't know what I was thinking.

I was like, is there not like a pigeon shelter? We might have a coop, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just stood there in the rain. I'm actually quite sorry for it. For hundreds of years, people would look up at the sky, look at the lining of the clouds, try and just sense, is rain coming?

It's almost like this sixth sense that you have to try and pick up. That's how it worked. For thousands of years, that was probably your only method, really, of trying to predict the weather. But we knew, given the concerns of shipping and international trade,

people wanted to be able to predict the weather. So there's a real kind of drive to understand how it might be possible. And throughout history, various different cultures have attempted it. The ancient Babylonians used a mixture of astrology and omen and proto-scientific observation of clouds, winds, and halos of lights predict weather patterns. And they wrote these down in a series of astrological diaries that survived from the 7th century BC. But it's going to be bullshit, isn't it? Yeah.

And when you'd get it right, you'd think, it's a good system. And then you'd get it wrong and you'd be like, yeah, well, weather's unpredictable, isn't it? So let's not blame the system. I'm still fairly confident that the system is a good one. Yeah. The ancient Greeks tried to understand the weather. Aristotle, philosopher, scholar, author, and tutor to Alexander the Great,

even wrote a book on the subject, Meteorologica. The book penned in the middle of the 4th century BC and had observations on rain, clouds, wind, thunder and lightning and even coastal erosion. And it gave us the name for the science of weather observation and recording to this day, meteorology. Thank you very much, Aristotle. So for centuries, thousands of years is a mixture of omen and observation. an observation but that in the 19th century science and technology intervened and one man already famous as the captain of hms beagle the ship that carried charles darwin on his voyages in search of natural evolution invented modern weather forecasting his name was robert hot coffee fitzroy now why do you think he's got the nickname hot coffee i don't know but i love it what a fantastic nickname

rabbit hot coffee fits roy what you say he was a captain he was a ship's captain yeah yeah what you're saying yeah so i'm gonna go very very basic uh he never slept he just constantly had coffee so he was always on the watch uh you can't i mean he's got the nickname hot coffee because he's got a violent temper. Oh, right, okay. Angry man. I don't know about Hot Coffee, though. I can't really... You're very kind, Chris.

Your reaction there suggested I was on the outskirts. Well, you know, he's had four nights drinking coffee. I couldn't have been more wrong. If he's had four nights drinking hot coffee, he's going to be angry. He's naturally, I think... There's no way I'm squeezing through with a half mark in my GCSEs for that answer.

I'm nowhere near. I'm very flattered. Hot coffee. Yeah. Robert Fitzroy was born into an aristocratic family in Suffolk in 1805. He joined the Royal Navy in 1819, aged 13 years old. It's mad, isn't it, when people are joining the Navy at 13? 13!

Following year, he was posted to his first ship, the HMS Owen Glendower. By the time he was 19 he had secured a commission as a lieutenant and was rising steadily through the officer ranks in his 40s however fitzroy's health began to decline and he retired from active duty in the royal navy in 1850 and it was at this point he started working seriously on his scientific study of meteorology in 1854 he was appointed as the meteorological statist to the Board of Trade, Britain's first stato of the weather and the head of what is today the Met Office. Oh! The proto-Michael Fish.

Wow. would gather in information on the sea and coast using the telegraph network, which was new, to produce data and charts that would aid navigation for the ships. In a globalised maritime economy, as existed in the 1850s, with Britain at its centre, getting goods from port to port safely was vital for business. And so that really led to the desire to kind of get weather forecasting nailed down.

Fitzroy as well. So they would, just to be clear, they would receive all the information and they would basically map out what the weather situation was for shipping around the world from this information that was coming into them. Yes, exactly that.

A storm in the Black Sea in 1854 amidst the Crimean War had destroyed vital supplies being delivered to the British and French allies in support of their battle against Russia. Only in the aftermath

was it realised that the storm had been tracked through the Mediterranean on its way to the Crimean Peninsula, but there was no method of reporting its existence. So this was the idea behind what Robert Fitzroy was trying to do, get the information in one place and disseminate it widely. Much like our podcast in a way, isn't it? That's what we do. You think.

And it actually has more global significance. Yeah, exactly. The French astronomer Urban Le Verrier, who correctly predicted the existence of the planet Neptune in 1846, similarly recognised the potential of a central office for the study of meteorological phenomena. Le Verrier was to be tasked with providing a method to disseminate that information in 1855.

So from a room in a Paris observatory, he established the French equivalent of Fitzroy's meteorological office. Within a decade, Paris was receiving telegraph reports from all over continental Europe. And at 2.30pm every day day the bulletin was was to be issued i wonder how accurate it was and how and whether people believed it or how much they believed it or how much faith they had in it is probably a better question because people this has bothered people for thousands and thousands of years and it's been useful knowledge, you know, forever.

Yeah. So an accurate weather forecast is such a useful thing. Well, I imagine they would have embraced it with sort of faith and hope, wouldn't they? If previously it had been, you know, looking out for a robin with an umbrella, now at least it's something. I think you probably would have to embrace it with faith it'd be so much better than what had been before the real drive for weather forecasting in the uk and came after a civilian tragedy i don't know if you've read about the the royal charter disaster

of 1859 with a ship sank with over 400 souls on board in a terrible storm off of anglesey and this led fitzroy to really put his his plan for genuine forecasting into effect so he he oversaw the installation of more effective weather warning systems and marshaled predictive weather data using a network of barometers he ordered to be placed around the coast of the uk and the first set of forecasts created by fitzroy using the readings he received in london were to meet the demands of the board of Trade and so were published in February 1861 as the Shipping Forecast, the first one. Oh, interesting. And then the Weather Forecast, more generally,

produced by what we now know as the Met Office, was adapted for The Times in August 1861. So August 1861 is the first time you could buy a newspaper and see a weather forecast in there. So within a year, fitzroy's weather signals were available in newspapers all over britain and ireland and very soon they spread to australia and new zealand as well but because this is early weather forecasting they're getting it wrong a lot the government began complaining about the cost of all the telegraph signals being sent

shipping companies complained that storm warnings led to fleets being grounded when the weather didn't actually turn out to be kind of stormy. So there was an enormous, everyone riled against the Met Office, essentially. You keep getting it wrong. Fitzroy began spending his own money. And on the 30th of April, 1865, he took his own life. And after his death, others had to champion the cause of the weather forecast. And they succeeded, obviously. Fitzroy succeeded because look all around us now.

The weather forecasting is relatively quite accurate. Never been as accurate as it is now, I would say. And there is still to this day, I don't know if you've heard the shipping forecast, which I love a great thing about British culture, the shipping forecast. And if you listen carefully, you'll hear a name. Fitzroy is one of the areas in the shipping forecast. Can you name any others? I love that.

No, because it's just gobbledygook, isn't it, the shipping forecast? Can I tell you something genuine? The hairs on my arms just stood up on air. What are you talking about? I found that genuinely quite really moving that his name is in that. Yeah, his name's, he's got one of the shipping forecast areas is Fitzroy.

Oh. I love Dogger. Well, richly deserved. You must know Dogger. Oh yes, Dogger. German Bight, Forth, Humber, Thames, Dover, Shannon, Rockhall, Bailey. It just sounds like complete stream of consciousness nonsense, doesn't it, the shipping forecast.

And every time I hear it, I always think to myself, imagine understanding this. I go, oh, yeah, yeah, that good shipping forecast tonight, I thought. Dogger and Fitzroy. To me, they sound like lands on a stag do. Where's Dogger? What's he up to? Don't ask.

I think we all know. Amazing. What a legend, Fitzroy. That's incredible. Thank you for that, Fitzroy. Before I begin, I was very surprised by something that Tom and Chris admitted before we began recording. I'm going to be talking about the coal trade in Newcastle. And I said, coals to Newcastle, which I thought was a very, very famous idiom, which the two of you hadn't heard.

Never heard that in my life. I've never heard it. It does make sense to me when you when you explained what it meant yeah i completely get it but i've it's not a phrase it's also that embarrassing thing where you ask someone for i asked you four times what you were saying and in the end i went yeah yeah yeah yeah and i didn't know well it's it's um it's a it's a very famous British idiom, and it means to take something to a place where it's not needed because a large amount of it is already there. For example, introducing a history podcast

to an already overcrowded market. Yeah, yes. Yeah. So it's an idiom of British origin describing a pointless action. We should have called this podcast Coals to Newcastle. Anyway, I'm going to begin by discussing the coal trade in Newcastle in the North East. I know an awful lot. I have studied the coal industry in South Wales, so I do know a bit about the coal industry in South Wales.

I didn't know an enormous amount about it in the northeast. And it's got slightly different beginnings. So in December 1756, George Blount, who was a purveyor of wood and coals, wrote to the royal family proposing to supply fields of the household of the then Dowager, Princess of Wales, from the 1st of January 1757 to the 31st of December that year. And it was £2.02 for every child run, right, which is about 2.7 tonnes, and then to pay an extra shilling for delivery, because she lived in Kew. So this was a big contract.

So Blount had supplied hundreds of children of coal, and he charged £385 for delivery, which meant that the energy bill was nearly £72,000 in today's terms. Wow. Now, we're all struggling with our energy bills, but that is excessive, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Now, the coal he supplied was sea coal, so it was shipped along the coast from Newcastle down to London.

Oh, okay. So those two points were really, really important in a global network of trade, right? The global network of trade in energy. And it made early modern Britain enormously wealthy. But the sea coal, it didn't mean coal sent by sea, but rather coal collected, at least at first, from the sea. Now, this was something I didn't know anything about. So you had terrestrial open-cast mining, that followed. But this field, sort of the early coal that they were getting from Newcastle,

it had broken off from exposed or underwater coal seams, and then it washed up on the coast, on the Northumbrian coast. And then it was collected by people a little bit like cockle pickers. They were just picking it up from the beach. Now, I had no idea... So small pieces of coal we're talking about here. So it's not like things they're whacking with axes to break.

Yeah, yeah. It's not like... You're not excavating coal like you would in a coal mine. It was being washed up on the shore. Fascinating. And then it was taken to Newcastle and it was sent by ship to ports all over Britain. And then from there inland, but mainly to London,

where from the reign of Elizabeth I onwards, coal steadily became the mainstay of energy consumption. So the sea coal trade was known from at least the 14th century onwards. Now, coal is an interesting one because when I think of coal in South Wales, I think of it starting sort of late 1700s, maybe, so 19th century. But there were coal mines in Pembrokeshire, for instance, much, much earlier than that. But you had alternative supply routes. That was from Whitehaven in Cumbria, where Benjamin Franklin, during a visit to London in 1772, he wrote home and he told his family, he said, listen, I went to Whitehaven,

I went down the coal mines until they told me I was 80 fathoms under the surface of the sea, which rolled over our head. So I've been nearer both the upper and lower regions. I find that genuinely scary, by the way, as an idea. It's terrifying. Why would you? Actually, on a deep level, unsettles me. You could not promise me enough that it was safe.

In 1772, 80 fathoms. I don't even know what a fathom is, but it sounds deep. It doesn't feel good, whatever it is. Do you remember when those Chilean miners got stuck in that hole? Oh, awful. And we got them out with modern technology. It's happened, hasn't it, throughout history that people have been trapped under it,

like in that kind of scenario. Oh, yes. Horrific. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got absolutely no chance. If you go to things like the Big Pit Museum in South Wales or the Rhondda Heritage Park and the museums, there's loads of stories about this.

Oh, no. It's just horrific. A fathom is about six feet. It's about 1.8 metres. And how many fathoms did you say? 80 fathoms under the sea in 1772. No, thank you. No, no, no, no, no.

I'm going to say humans aren't meant to be there. But do you know, like, last week we were kind of mocking the channel, the attempts to start building a channel tunnel in 1880, thinking there's no way you can dig under the sea. But here they are. They're digging 80 fathoms under the sea. Every creak and every noise would be absolutely petrifying, wouldn't it? Could be a ghost.

Could be a ghost. Don't rule that out. Make it a ghost. Could be a ghost, don't rule that out. Make it a ghost! I'm imagining, with every noise, Ellis, you're dropping your axe and you're heading straight for the door. And this is happening at least 70 times a day. Yeah. And then you return, you're sorry about that, guys.

Sorry, I thought it was, it's all right. Anyway, where were we? God, I'd be fit. Slight noise, and Ellis is off again. Constantly running back to the surface. If you're on shift with Al and you're like, oh, for God's sake, he's going to be constantly legging it. He never gets around him, though.

He's completely skint. He's had about 10 feet over the last year. He's never downed it for long enough. He's alive and that's the main thing. And then you had a route which ran out of Scotland, Scotch coal, and that was often the subject of trade disputes between Scotland and England. So in 1563, the Scottish Parliament banned the export of coal entirely because it thought the supplies were about to be extinguished.

They weren't, obviously, but that decision allowed Newcastle, which was already a major supplier, to race ahead. It would face no serious competition as a coal port until the 19th century, when South Wales and its ports at Cardiff and Barry became the most important coal field in the world. Now, sea coal was not without its problems. I didn't know anything about sea coal. I found this so interesting. In the 1680s, the diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys complained that the London air was so filled with the fuliginous steam of sea coal that one can hardly see the street and it fills the lungs with its gross particles. Has there ever been a time where air in London has been of a high quality? No.

It just... My mum grew up here. She was born during World War II, very tail end. But she remembers walking to school as a child and the smog being so thick that you couldn't see further than your own hand, is how she described it.

Yes. It was like that heavy with smoke, London, back then. Yeah, the Clean Air Act of 1956 was in response to London's Great Smog of 1952. And when you read about the Great Smog of 1952, you just think, just the idea of not being able to see and your lungs being full of smog and smoke would be disgusting because they banned cold fires in London. smog and smoke would be disgusting because they banned um cold fires in london our old house was a victorian house built in the 1880s we had a big leak um in the attic and it just made everything dirty because there was a load of soot trapped in the brickwork from before the the clean air act which banned cold fires in london so you just think if everyone act which banned cold fires in london

so you just think if everyone has got a cold fire in london yeah it's amazing that anyone uh it's amazing that anyone was able to breathe at all isn't it do you think people in that time were like looking at their clothes going i'm caked in like dirt what is this doing to my lungs do you know what it must have been like we're all old enough to have gone to the pub and gone to nightclubs pre-smoking ban yes and i would come back from the pub from a nightclub and everything about me would stink of cigarettes yeah and you know sometimes i would have a shower before going to bed because my hair hand and my clothes were disgusting and you just put up with it yeah i never ever thought that was weird i never ever thought it was wrong and i never thought anyone should do anything about it and

when they brought in the uh the smoking ban in the mid-2000s i remember thinking listen just not going to work is it people will yeah people carry extension to that because you're listen, it's just not going to work, is it? People will carry on smoking a canter. By extension to that, because you're so right, it's just what you're used to. The thing I often think about is kissing your partner in medieval Britain. You keep coming back to this. I know, but it's fascinating. You're such a horny history podcaster, Tom.

Welcome to Horny History with Tom Crane. That's quite a good spin off Do a sex podcast Tom Be done with it No but When neither of you Have ever cleaned your teeth But it must have been just fine

And there's just bits of food Stuck between your remaining four teeth And you're kind of like But it's just what is what it was But you know like Sometimes your partner If neither of you If one of you's brushed your teeth

And the other one hasn't It's noticeable That you're like, oh, your mouth smells minty, or I can tell I stink. But if you both haven't brushed your teeth, they kind of, it equalises a bit, doesn't it? You don't notice. No, Chris, I think that's mad. No, I insist on double brushing.

And what is the evidence? I want to feel a damp end to a toothbrush and i i want a breath chest and then and only then we indulge it wasn't just pollution seacole began to transform the way the houses were built so people noticed that the temperature of a wood fire was lower in intensity than that produced by sea coal. So there was that mini ice age, wasn't there, during the 17th century when the Thames regularly froze over, which meant that that heat was welcomed. But because the existing wooden buildings in towns and cities were at risk of burning down because of the heat generated, wood was swapped with and with stone so houses got bigger and taller and population density grew so britain's economy was then transformed from a rural to an urban industrial one because coal fires were more

intense than wood fires and so they needed to change the buildings that people were living in that is incredible yeah because it was a fire risk. That's bad. Wow. So there's this one product that's fundamentally changed the way cities are built and how we live, basically. Yeah, and the Dutch understood that if you disrupted the coal shipping between Newcastle and London, you could potentially cripple the entire British economy.

So the American revolutionaries, people like Alexander Hamilton, they understood this and they thought it would be a potentially useful tactic during the American wars of independence so you would try and nobble the trade between Newcastle and London and then you could cripple the UK so the Americans they'd read Adam Smith

who wrote a very famous book Wealth of Nations and he'd said that the coal trade from Newcastle to London employs more shipping than all the carrying trade of England so to be self-sufficient in coal the revolutionaries thought that would make us properly free of the crown and from you know british rule so that meant they exploited coal seams that had been discovered in virginia and the sea coal supplies found on the banks of the ohio and illinois. So then they wanted an American coal trade because they were too reliant on the British coal trade.

Amazing. Absolutely incredible. Because before that, they'd imported the coal from Britain or along the coast from Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island to Boston and to New York and to Philadelphia. So, you know, it's not bad, is it? For a little bit of rock picked up on the beaches of the northeast of England and thrown onto the fire for heat and light. It's had this enormous effect on global industry.

Well, we're about to get into a fourth part that only subscribers are going to hear. So for £4.99 per month, you can subscribe to this podcast, get four parts in every single episode, get next week's episode a week early, listen ad-free, and get a bonus episode every month. If you want this fourth part, you can go to owhattatime.com. And Tom, you've done the research for the fourth part.

I have. I'm going to whet the listeners' appetites. It's pretty good research, isn't it? It's possibly the best research in any research that's ever been done. How interesting. Saving good research back for our subscribers. I don't know if you remember the pandemic and the work that Pfizer and different companies did to... AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca, exactly, to bring balance back to the world. This research is better than that. Well, $4.99. Go to awatertime.com.