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  • The Convict Who Talked Saved the Fleet — and Changed Prisoners' Fate

    The Convict Who Talked Saved the Fleet — and Changed Prisoners' Fate
    2026/09/07
    The Convict Who Talked Saved the Fleet — and Changed Prisoners' Fate

    Below deck, in a hold with six feet two inches of headroom, two hundred and fifty-three convicts crossed the ocean toward a penal colony they had no say in reaching. One of them had been chosen by the others to lead a mutiny. Instead, he walked up to the ship's officers and told them everything — but what happened to him afterward, and to the ship that carried him, never made it into the histories that remember this voyage.

    In this episode, we trace the twenty-three-year working life of the transport ship Scarborough, from her outfitting for the First Fleet in 1787 to her final battle against a French privateer in 1805, asking what a system that praised a ship's endurance owed to the men who did not survive the voyages inside her.

    Person: Samuel Burt
    Location: aboard the Scarborough, en route to Port Jackson, New South Wales
    Date: February 18, 1790
    Case: a convict-led mutiny plot revealed by the man chosen to lead it
    Status: plotters flogged and chained; the Scarborough continued on to Port Jackson

    - The Scarborough was refitted at Deptford in 1786 under Naval Agent George Teer, who increased headroom to six feet two inches and fitted an Osbridge machine to filter drinking water
    - She carried 208 male convicts on the First Fleet (departed Portsmouth May 13, 1787) and 253 on the Second Fleet (departed January 19, 1790)
    - On February 18, 1790, Samuel Burt disclosed a mutiny plot to the ship's officers; several conspirators were severely flogged, others chained to the deck
    - Of the Second Fleet crossing, 68 convicts died at sea and 96 of the survivors (37 percent) were sick on landing at Port Jackson on June 28, 1790; a further 124 died in the colony afterward
    - On January 26, 1805, a crew of twenty-seven men and boys aboard the Scarborough repelled a French privateer carrying nearly two hundred men; the ship foundered off Port Jackson, Jamaica roughly three months later, in April 1805

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 分
  • The Trash Can Ignited the Stairway and Sealed Thirty‑Four Lives

    The Trash Can Ignited the Stairway and Sealed Thirty‑Four Lives
    2026/09/07
    The Trash Can Ignited the Stairway and Sealed Thirty‑Four Lives

    A galleyhand climbs back to his upper-deck bunk after emptying the trash, closes his eyes, and hears a single pop. Below him, thirty-four people are asleep in a wooden-hulled dive boat anchored off a remote California island, and within minutes both of their exits will lead to the same burning room. What made an inspected, decades-old vessel into a sealed trap before anyone above deck even opened their eyes?

    In this episode, we reconstruct the final hours aboard the dive boat Conception using recovered iPhone footage, a classified ATF report, and NTSB testimony, asking how a routine overnight anchorage became one of the deadliest maritime disasters in modern American history.

    Person: Captain Jerry Nehl Boylan
    Location: Platts Harbor, Santa Cruz Island, California
    Date: September 2, 2019
    Case: the fire aboard the dive boat Conception
    Status: 34 dead, 5 crew survived; captain convicted and sentenced

    - A confidential ATF report, completed in January 2021 and made public in September 2023, traced the fire's origin to a plastic trash can beneath the main staircase, the only practical escape route from the lower bunkroom
    - The Coast Guard had not cited any operator for failing to post a required roving patrol since 1991, a 28-year gap in enforcement
    - An iPhone video recovered by the FBI from passenger Patricia Ann Beitzinger, timestamped 3:17 a.m., showed people awake and moving inside the already-sealed bunkroom
    - NTSB Member Michael Graham stated he did not see how an average person wearing a life jacket could fit through the bunkroom's secondary escape hatch
    - Captain Jerry Nehl Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of a ship officer in November 2023 and sentenced on May 2, 2024, to four years in prison

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    19 分
  • The entertainer who poured pool water onto an oil fire sank the ship

    The entertainer who poured pool water onto an oil fire sank the ship
    2026/09/07
    The entertainer who poured pool water onto an oil fire sank the ship

    The smell of burning oil reached passengers long before anyone realized their ship was dying, somewhere below the waterline in a compartment no one was watching that hour. When hoses failed, the crew turned to the swimming pool, forming a bucket brigade to fight the flames by hand — and one man aboard, a survivor of another famous sinking, understood exactly what that water would do to burning oil. Why did they keep passing the buckets anyway?

    In this episode, we trace the Achille Lauro from her interrupted 1939 construction through five decades of collisions, explosions, hijacking, and fire to the night an engine-room blaze forced nine hundred and seventy-nine people into a full-scale evacuation, asking how a ship with that much history left almost no margin when the fire finally came.

    Person: Moss Hills
    Location: Indian Ocean off Somalia
    Date: 30 November – 2 December 1994
    Case: engine-room fire aboard the Achille Lauro
    Status: ship sank; wreck never located, no one charged

    - The ship was laid down in 1939 at the Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde yard in Vlissingen and launched in July 1946 as the Willem Ruys.
    - She measured 192 metres long, 25 metres in beam, and 21,119 gross register tons, with capacity for 900 passengers on her maiden run.
    - The Willem Ruys collided with the Oranje on 6 January 1953 and sank the coastal tanker Cornelis B on 26 June 1953.
    - Renamed Achille Lauro in 1965, she suffered an onboard explosion that year, plus further fires in 1972 and 1981, and sank the cargo ship Youseff in a 1975 collision.
    - On 30 November 1994, a crankcase explosion in the engine room ignited an oil fire; the crew and passengers formed a bucket brigade using swimming-pool water before the ship was aband

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    21 分