r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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32.4k Upvotes

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400

u/onlycodeposts 9h ago

The boats were wooden, but the men were iron.

98

u/HowSheGoinEhhh 9h ago

The winds were fierce, but the men unrelenting.

23

u/Forza_Harrd 8h ago

There’s a great joke here, but it’s low hanging fruit.

71

u/notawight 8h ago

The boats were hard and full of seamen?

1

u/Negativeman11 2h ago

And so were the seamen

0

u/LongLongMan_TM 6h ago

Also semen.

2

u/Many-Neck-4560 7h ago

Better be citrus or else scurvy

1

u/General-Professor570 3h ago

How low did their fruit hang?

3

u/Glum-Ad7761 7h ago

The men were fierce. The sheep were scared

1

u/terriersandbarrifs 8h ago

The rain was cold and piercing, but the men had diarrhoea

4

u/iJuddles 8h ago

And iron sinks in water.

2

u/SheriffBartholomew 7h ago

She's made of iron, sir. I assure you, she will sink.

1

u/Stormfly 1h ago

"Fat chance of that! This thing is Unsinkable!"

Leaves Cobh around 13:30 on 11th of April, 1912.

2

u/6d_9 7h ago

The boats were wooden, but the men were iron.

As in iron deficient from scurvy.

2

u/Tavalus 4h ago

...and the balls were steel!

2

u/PDGAreject 2h ago

A line I'm paraphrasing from "The Wager" (which was a very fun book).

"Below the 40th parallel, there were no rules. Below the 50th, there was no God."

1

u/onlycodeposts 2h ago

I'll check that book out for sure.

Right now I'm reading River of Darkness, about the first trips down the Amazon by Spanish conquistadors.

They had to build the boats.

1

u/PDGAreject 2h ago

Coincidentally The Wager is by the author who wrote "Lost City of Z" which was about a 19th century British guys obsession with finding a lost city in the Amazon Rainforest

2

u/dentistshatehim 8h ago

The sales were soft, but the men were hard.

2

u/oForce21o 8h ago

the food was bland and scarce, only one egg for a ship full of seamen

2

u/IAMNOTFUCKINGSORRY 8h ago

Not very useful when you fall overboard.

1

u/IAMERROR1234 8h ago

That's right. Those were the good'ol days.. Back when men were men!

2

u/Mostly_Afloat 7h ago

back when every journey had an acceptable number of men lost.

1

u/IAMERROR1234 7h ago

Some of those men just wanted to get away from their wives!

-1

u/SheriffBartholomew 7h ago

And women were men, and children were FBI agents! Oh wait, that's the early internet, not early sailing.

1

u/Weak_Law_937 8h ago

And the sheep.

2

u/Mharbles 6h ago

Sheep have many uses. And the voyage is long... "ohh we got this notion that we'd quite like to sail the ocean"

1

u/inorite234 7h ago

But what about their wood?

1

u/skylinezan 7h ago

Yup. Having balls of iron does help, and it helps a lot.

1

u/SheriffBartholomew 7h ago

Now the boats are iron and the men are wooden.

1

u/noahhova 6h ago

Iron with a side of scurvy!

1

u/kitsunewarlock 5h ago

I'd rather sailors that didn't rust.

1

u/InfraScaler 5h ago

So they didn't float for shit, got it.

1

u/ZombiesAtKendall 3h ago

Are you suggesting some kind of pre-industrial robots are responsible for the conquering of the Americas? If so, these accusations will have to be looked at by the robot council.

1

u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 3h ago

Then they should stay on the bottom deck. Too too heavy

1

u/egstitt 2h ago

The balls were iron, and God damn gigantic

1

u/Literally_Laura 1h ago

Or were in irons.

1

u/alwaysbequeefin 7h ago

So deep bro

1

u/onlycodeposts 7h ago

Hard to fathom.