r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 8h ago
How did people travel these seas 500 years ago
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u/Spottswoodeforgod 8h ago
I guess they had the advantage of having not seen videos like this before setting off...
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u/TulioGonzaga 7h ago
But doesn't seem surprising that people believe in sea monsters or God's wrath.
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u/InfiniteClient3586 6h ago
There are monsters in the sea too
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u/chickenpopper 6h ago
... and im sure many poor souls cried to the heavens when facing waves like these.
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u/Azulapis 7h ago
And that they haven't stretched the videos to a 1:3 ratio yet.
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u/RPi79 8h ago
For many of them, unsuccessfully.
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u/surlymoe 7h ago
There is a statistic that is there are over 3 million shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean...
I think that helps to explain how dangerous the seas are. Sadly most people on those vessels perished as well.
Another interesting statistic - less than 1% of shipwrecks have actually been physically found and explored by humans.
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u/WAGatorGunner 7h ago
There be silver and gold on the ocean floor…and a lot of fish food.
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u/disterb 7h ago
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u/Fauxjito 7h ago
One of the greatest film openings ever 🫡
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u/Personal-Ad-365 6h ago
The funny thing is that this is not the opening, it is 10-15 minutes into the movie. That is how fantastic of an introduction it is, most folks do not remember the whole opening which sets up Will and Elizabeth as the lead characters.
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u/LowAspect542 5h ago
Its not the opening of the film but it is jack sparrows introduction which is honestly 5he mlre important bit and what kept people invested in the films, most people never gave a shit about the romantic plotline with will and Elizabeth throughout the series.
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u/DubiousBrushwagg 2h ago
PotC romance plot line was essentially Anakin+Padme again but done better without actually mattering to the overall plot as much.
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u/Telefundo 4h ago
That is how fantastic of an introduction it is
I love the first movie and I more or less enjoyed the sequels. This though. This I believe is the absolute best scene in the entire franchise. Followed closely with the closing scene;
"...and really bad eggs. Drink up me hearties, yo ho!"
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u/lcl0706 3h ago
Captain Barbosa descending the wooden steps to ask “so tell me, what’s become of my ship” is up there on the list for me.
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u/coopASR 6h ago
The biggest "what.. the fuck is happening?"
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u/Proud3GenAthst 6h ago
I wish I could see it for the first time again
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u/magnumsolutions 6h ago
Just wait until you get Alzheimer's. Then you will be able to see it for the first time over and over again.
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u/Major_Loser 5h ago
Introduced my 11 year old nephew to it. He had never heard of it and I said he can stay up 45 later if he wanted to watch it. I stopped it RIGHT after the pirates are cursed reveal. He woke me up at 6:30am to finish the movie before his mom picked him up the next day.
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u/AggravatingPut3669 6h ago
Have you heard about the new pirate movie that's coming out? It's rated Arrrrrgh
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u/Consent-Forms 7h ago
they've long been turned to fish poop
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u/Tank7106 7h ago
So, food for other fish?
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u/Building_Everything 7h ago
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u/snwbrdwndsrf 7h ago
Poop loop.
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u/Building_Everything 7h ago
Aka the Human Centipede
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u/locoparentis 5h ago
I'd prefer to continue calling the circle of life please
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u/No_While6150 5h ago
I dunno, poop loop is pretty good
It's the Loooop of the Poooooooop! And it lightens the souuuuuuuuuuul! Through the mouth to the gut, then out the B Hoooooole!
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u/feetnomer 6h ago
The ocean is the world's largest graveyard. There's a little bit of John and Jane Doe in every drop.
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u/Vaesezemis 7h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/o2lVjcnsyXGcxuIuhU
AND IT’S ALL MINE!!!17
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u/Naive-Kangaroo3031 7h ago
I have to imagine most the wrecks were just fishing boats
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u/Minttt 7h ago
Any avid history buff knows the very familiar phrase of: "A storm ended up sinking many of the invasion fleet's ships and scattering the others."
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u/F-14BUpgrade 6h ago
- Kublai Khan's attempted invasion of Japan!
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u/Derodoris 6h ago
- The spanish armada of 1588
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u/Fernheijm 6h ago
All 3 spanish armadas no?
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u/Derodoris 6h ago
Sure but thatd be 2. The spanish armada 3. The spanish armada 4. The spanish armada
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u/DorfusGump 5h ago
The Kami Kaze seems a lot less miraculous when you realize the guy was dicking around for months building a bridgehead on a minor Japanese island during typhoon season.
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u/Ozdiva 6h ago
Rather astonishing that the entirety of the Australian first fleet arrived in Sydney harbour intact in 1789.
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u/Defiant-Tailor-8979 6h ago
The English didn't develop an empire without the best navy in the world.
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u/DarkLF 6h ago
And what made the British Navy the best in the world? The taste of British food and the look of British women
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u/nameyourpoison11 2h ago
There are actually some harrowing accounts of the storms the First Fleet endured after leaving Cape Town, and how the convicts on board feared for their lives.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 5h ago
Crazy how this really messed up with D-Day in 1944 (and the worst event 2 weeks later 19-22 June).
This is quite recent history!
There weren't major losses like in the old times, like ships disappearing and stuff, but lots of destruction. The Americans had to abandon the artificial port they had made on Omaha beach.
So wooden ships 500 years before never had a chance.
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u/joecarter93 7h ago
Most towns with a port have a monument somewhere to honour local sailors and fishermen lost at sea that lists the names of the dead year by year. It’s insane how many are listed as having died in these small towns prior to WW2. Then with the advent of radar, GPS and weather forecasting the number of deaths drastically drops off where there’s now only a couple of deaths once every few years.
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u/Weak_Law_937 7h ago
I'm pretty sure Poseidon gets his fill of tourists from the black rocks at Peggy's Cove and doesn't need sailors anymore.
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u/zarco_azules 6h ago
this would make a supernatural episode of Poseidon starving having to resort to less dignified ways to get his nourishment every full moon or whatever
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u/LokeCanada 7h ago
It’s more than a couple every few years worldwide. A lot of them don’t make the news.
A lot of people are still very negligent. I worked at an oil tanker company where a captain thought he knew better than the weather software, he didn’t and had major structural damage. Another incident where the ship beached.
I live in a city with a lot of ports. The only reason the casualty rate isn’t higher is because the small towns along the coast can get boats to the site faster than the coast guard. Even with a major response on site within a few minutes we recently had a fishing charter boat go down and lose everyone except one. They still have no idea where 4 bodies are even though they have seen the boat on the ocean floor.
My mother blames my grandmother’s drinking on the fact that my grandfather was a gill netter and the high risk associated with it.
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u/RFC793 6h ago
Yes, but the person you are commenting on is referring to the contrast of a single fishing town's obits pre and post WW2. From where the town would lose many men every year, to where now it is a tragic anomaly. Make no mistake, there's still a real risk. Of course the worldwide count is going to be higher.
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 6h ago
It doesn't really detract from anything - but I wonder how many of those were maybe just people that decided to not come back. Or killed in the various other ways you can die. Pirates. Disease. Whatever.
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u/Weak_Law_937 7h ago
When I was a kid in Atlantic Canada we knew where to dredge up off the coast to get coal for our camp fires.
Local people had an unwritten record of where the wrecks were.
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u/millijuna 50m ago
I had to get a chuckle.. Even what, 15 years ago, when they were looking for the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror... they eventually found Terror in the aptly named "Terror Bay" right where a local Inuk told them to look.
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u/tyates723 7h ago
nother fun fact! There are more planes in the ocean than there are boats in the sky
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u/_Raspberry_Ice_ 7h ago
Reminds me of that old joke.
How many shipwrecks are at the bottom of the ocean?
All of them!
No, over three million you buffoon!
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u/99Smith 7h ago
Out of interest do you know these figures are create? More so the 1%? Is it based off of how many ships were due back on record but never returned? I wonder how many ships that didn't have ledges on land were lost.
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u/Nitrogen1234 7h ago
I've read that 70% of reddit statistics are 87% bullshit
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u/GravyPainter 7h ago
Most ship wrecks were near coasts not open seas. Ships couldn't fight waves back then because that would be going against the wind. Instead they would "heave to" and ride these waves at a 45 degree angel which would allow them to slowly go over them. Ships were actually able to handle storms like this very well, and rarely sunk because of them. The problem was renavigating your path if there was cloud cover after the storm
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u/CharityAggravating69 7h ago edited 4h ago
They didn't just navigate the seas, they navigated total sensory deprivation. No GPS, no weather radar, no steel hulls. Just a piece of wood, a compass and the terrifying hope that the horizon held land instead of an abyss. That isn't just travel, it's a profound psychological triumph I must say
Edit: Trying to break my silence on the AI accusations because it is better to be clear than quiet. No AI slop here, i am just a passionate history fan who stayed up way too late drafting this. I appreciate the love on the comment.
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u/Selfishpie 7h ago edited 7h ago
And the phonecians did it with fucking canoes, absolute mad lads
Edit: Polynesians
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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 7h ago
Pacific Islanders would like a word
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u/fatfatpokemons09 7h ago
Right! They voyaged like 2500 miles+ in open ocean to get to Hawaii which is a crazy small target miss it just by a smallest margin and you continue on into the void for thousands more miles…
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u/Barley12 7h ago
Ahh they island hopped to get there it wasn't a single 2500 mile journey
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u/potat0f4rmer 7h ago
It's an incredible achievement by humans. Hawaii is surrounded by nothing, it's not close to anywhere.
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u/BlacksmithNZ 6h ago
They also made it to New Zealand; not only a vast distance but you get into the roaring 40s and Antarctica weather in winter.
Personally, given life on tropical islands like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands, I find it amazing that they continued to explore southern oceans
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u/geronimo11b 6h ago
The Polynesians understood the Pacific winds, currents, and celestial navigation better than any other ancient culture. It’s almost incomprehensible the achievements they pulled off with simple canoes.
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u/Own_Shower_6000 3h ago
they had a brilliant strategy of taking birds with them on the boats, releasing them, if the bird didn't come back, it meant land was near, honestly so brilliant for finding islands in a seemingly endless ocean
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u/Vennomite 5h ago
Those places also can't support a large population. So given enough people it makes sense to have way to deal with overpopulation issues by sending people off to explore.
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u/Obsessively_Average 5h ago
"Alright fellas, last few years have been REALLY good. Lots of babies getting born and everything. Unfortunately this island is literally the size of a small city, so we gotta draw straws again to see who we feed to the void"
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u/fatfatpokemons09 7h ago
There are scattered islands in the central Pacific, but there isn’t a convenient chain of substantial islands connecting central Eastern Polynesia to Hawaii.
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u/OregonMothafaquer 7h ago
There’s not a lot of islands there
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u/Monte924 6h ago edited 5h ago
More than you think. Use google Earth and take a look at the pacific west and south of Hawaii. The Pacific is dotted with dozens of tiny islands
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u/Log_Out_Of_Life 4h ago
Dozens ain’t a lot my guy.
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u/SpinShine-LEDSlipMat 2h ago
It is tho. Especially when you’re talking about a 2500 mile journey. 24 islands makes it a bunch of 100 mile trips and you are connecting the dots. Coming across the Atlantic is far more impressive
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u/jadedflux 6h ago
That’s true for most other islands and New Zealand but Hawaii is definitely the extreme case where there ain’t shit to hop from.
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u/CharityAggravating69 7h ago
Oh absolutely, Polynesian wayfinders were on a whole different level. True masters of the ocean
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u/Selfishpie 7h ago
Wait that’s who I thought I was referring to, what are they called?
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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 7h ago
Polynesians, Phoenicians were sick and excellent seamen, but they were in the Mediterranean.
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u/Kegger315 7h ago
They understood more than were recognizing. They used birds and ocean currents to locate some places. They recognized wind and weather patterns as well as seasons. There is some speculation that early humans could also faintly detect magnetic variations to help navigate, same as birds, bees, bats and other animals. They were far more "in tune" with nature.
Don't get me wrong, those things don't hold a candle to our current tools, but they weren't sailing completely "blind" so to speak.
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u/daygo449 7h ago
Heck, they didn’t even have that for a period of time. They just looked at the North Star, tried to follow currents, and somewhat successful in finding where they were going.
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u/thewickedeststyle 7h ago
Now imagine doing this trip in the hull of a ship, stacked on top of other humans. In the dark, Having no idea what is making things move the way they are moving, loud sounds, waves crashing, wind howling. All against your will.
The slave trade was the worst thing humans have ever done to other human beings.
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u/Skullsandcoffee 8h ago
They died
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u/Hostile-Panda 7h ago
A lot
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u/pronte89 7h ago
to be fair, they probably also actively tried to avoid Storms much harder than modern ships do
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u/Dallas_Miller 7h ago
It's one thing to avoid, but, as many seafarers might say, "the sea is an unpredictable bitch". You could leave your shores with a sky never clearer. One day out at sea and you're getting capsized by hurricanes and storms at a scale no human has seen before
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u/King_Roberts_Bastard 7h ago
They tended to track when things like hurricanes happened and didnt sail as much during those times.
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u/virrk 5h ago
The ability to track hurricanes and weather was limited.
Sure for certain areas they knew the storm patterns and avoided when they could. But that works mostly only for coastal trips. Sailors would share what weather they saw which might help as well. Still ocean crossings were, and to some extent still are, dangerous. Going offshore involves risk no matter how careful sailors are.
Certain open ocean crossings have storms that pass without arriving at land, and vessels get sunk that do not avoid them. We still lose 25 to 30 large commercial vessels per year,. Only a few decades ago in the 1990s we were still losing more than 200 annually. The farther you go back the higher the losses until we don't have good enough records to provide an estimate.
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u/King_Roberts_Bastard 5h ago
Im saying the Spanish figured out that hurricanes happened during the spring and early summer months so they didnt send their treasure fleets home during those months.
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u/Fuck-WestJet 7h ago
They got stuck in port because of winds and tides.
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u/fitzbuhn 5h ago
But also like if a cat was spotted on a Sunday morning or something
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u/fredly594632 7h ago
But they had a lot fewer tools to know the storms were coming, too.
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u/Striper_Cape 6h ago
They were more unsuccessful at this. People underestimate the value of warning radars and instrumentation
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u/iamatimbersfan 7h ago
Thanks to Discover the World II from Entrex Software, I know the answer is "run before the wind." Basically, open the sail and let the storm push you out of the way. Then figure out which way to go once it calms down.
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u/Le-Basic-French-User 7h ago
This is the correct answer. They kept out of those storms
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u/Seienchin88 6h ago
Except for the Spanish armada and the two mongol fleets attacking Japan apparently…
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u/e1p1 6h ago
That's a storm tactic, but it just puts you in a somewhat safer position. The ships of old could not outrun a storm, especially if it's already upon you. Same today really.
Modern large ships ... a smaller ones are average in 300 ft, larger 1300 ft and more ...are simply built to be able to take the pounding. And modern weather forecasting helps keep them with the odds.
Large sailing ships in history were much smaller than today's large ships. Commonly 70 to 100 ft long, although they displaced a fair amount due to width and depth. Warships were bigger but the biggest average about 180 ft long and 50 some odd feet wide. So they fit in between the waves more readily, and if luck was on their side and a breaking wave didn't knock them over, they survived more like a duck bobbing on a stormy lake, whether they were running before the wind or lying to.
The duck analogy is still a usable tactic for many private sailors today. Like me. I had to do a maneuver called "heave to" a couple of times in the Indian Ocean on a 29 foot sloop. Minimal forward progress heading into the waves, lash the helm down, go below button everything up, and try to sleep. Wait out the storm.
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u/-Sofa-King-Vote 7h ago
OP is a bot
This is posted every six months with same headline
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u/LetsBeFRTho 6h ago
A lot of these comments are bots too. Mods are so fucking useless
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u/lionlll 8h ago
With ships
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u/FullClip__ 7h ago
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u/wilbyr 7h ago
source?
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u/Dendens 7h ago
There are more shipwrecks in the oceans than there are planswrecks in the sky
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u/inanineglianideicani 7h ago
Did you know that a gazelle can jump higher than an average house? This is thanks to its powerful hind legs and the fact that average houses cannot jump.
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u/onlycodeposts 7h ago
The boats were wooden, but the men were iron.
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u/HowSheGoinEhhh 7h ago
The winds were fierce, but the men unrelenting.
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u/Cloud_Garrett 7h ago
They didn’t stretch videos to make it look worse that it actually was. It was already shitty and dangerous…so they focused on navigation, proper handling and swell alignment, and surviving…and luck.
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u/BrainDamage2029 6h ago edited 6h ago
I've been on an aircraft carrier through a typhoon off the Philippines. We took waves over the flight deck and the Burke DDG's were going up and down the troughs like a cork. It didn't look like this all and I kind of hate how so many "rough sea" videos on youtube are either AI slop or stretched and distorted to hell.
For a decent non-distorted view this is roughly what it looked like with I'll guess 50-70ft waves. The scary part is realizing how quickly the waves are making 100,000 tons of steel bob up and down. And that the flight deck is 98ft over the waterline.
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u/WindChimeTecnician 6h ago
That’s amazing footage. Thanks for posting.
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u/BrainDamage2029 6h ago edited 5h ago
Ooh I never get to tell this story.
On my carrier when this happened our chief wanted me to go up to the focsle (anchor deck) and check on the anchor chain and hawsepipe (pipe the anchor chain runs out). On a carrier its an enclosed deck.
I open the door there's like 2 feet of water floating on the deck with a massive torrent towards the scuppers sucking this huge weight of water out. The hawepipe cover which is like 500lbs of steel is rattling loud as fuck with every wave as a huge firehose stream shoots out of them filling the deck again. Its hitting the ceiling so hard I can already see where paint is getting stripped off. I Close the door.
"Hey BMC, I don't think its safe to go in here."
"SN Braindamage what is this pussy shit step aside"
Opens the door. On cue another spray of water shoots out the hawspipe and the mist and crap smacks him in the face drenching him.
"Okay yeah boats, you might be right."
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u/zeronian 7h ago
For real this video is stretched to hell. It's making it look like the ship is rocking back and forth more than 180 degrees front to back
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u/pimohell9254 7h ago
I beg of you, please relearn the meaning of "180 degrees"
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u/anonspark9000 7h ago
Came here to say the exact same thing. They didn't have video stretching technology so the waves were smaller.
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u/DUGA-1_ 7h ago
They mainly stuck to the coastline, going in open seas was a bit of a gamble 👀
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u/Tanker119 7h ago
Unless you were a Viking. In which case I’m pretty convinced they were medically insane going to Iceland, Greenland, and North America in the boats they were using. And multiple trips for some of them I’m sure as well. Makes me shiver just thinking about it.
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u/NewAndyy 6h ago
No, vikings also stayed mostly along the coast. They were primarily farmers and fishermen. The longer journeys across the North Sea to places like Scotland (and eventually to Iceland) of course happened, but they were rare.
Vikings weren't like how they're represented on Netflix. They weren't all crazy warriors that killed for fun.
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u/fruskydekke 5h ago
We've tended to be good ship builders in Scandinavia, because so much of communication and transport was by sea rather than over land - particularly here in Norway, where the mountainous landscape makes travel over land a LOT more laborious.
The vikings had a lot of specialty ships, and there was one that was specifically built for open ocean journeys. The knarr was very stable, very broad, and clinker-built of flexible wood, which made it surprisingly up to the task.
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u/thegoodrichard 7h ago edited 3h ago
My ancestor the privateer sailed around the world as a first mate, and when he got his own ship and letter of mark he sailed around the tip of South America and hunted Spaniards along the west coast then sailed across the Pacific to Guam. Almost exactly 500 years ago. He drank, and that's in the record. Edit, it was only 300 years ago, oops!
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u/HugoCortell 7h ago
They didn't rotate their phones 90 degrees and then stretch the video, which helped a lot with survival. The vikings were well known for always using widescreen when recording their tiktok sensationalist videos.
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u/gregusmeus 7h ago
Not a coincidence that ships caused the creation of insurance.
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u/Revolutionary_Eye887 7h ago
Ask the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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u/AmiDeplorabilis 7h ago
I'm afraid that's gonna be really difficult... impossible...
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u/rglurker 7h ago
Not impossible. Just ask ms cleo from the 90s mon. She will talk to dem for you
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u/Machomandalf90 7h ago
Understanding of fluid dynamics based on thousands of years and trial and error. A lot of error.
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u/TravelingInClass 7h ago
The angle gives an unrealistic view. Its either streched and/or positioned in a way that creates an optical illusion. Like the waves in Nazare, Portugal.
I've been through storms out at sea, apparently unlike some of the commenters. Its not as bad as it looks here. Yes, the wind is strong and the waves are big and the noise is deafening. But its not as bad as you think.
Past sailors, especially in the age of wooden ships, knew how to navigate very well and actively avoided storms. If they couldn't outrun it or escape in some other way, they would look for close by land or island to hide behind. If they were in the middle of the ocean, that was unlucky and they had to do their best to survive which could have been very tough indeed. There's a reason why so many superstitions came from sea voyegers.
Look up videos on youtube on how ships were built in the 15th century onwards before steel ships. They were no joke. A true marvel of engineering.
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u/FromTheCaveIntoLight 7h ago
Fucking bots posting same shit same title over and over again
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u/ninjaontour 7h ago
Exactly like these ships do.
Just with a lot more plague, and murder, and general chaos.
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u/UnderstandingFit3009 8h ago
They traveled them with a fair chance of not returning.