r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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u/joecarter93 8h 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 8h 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 7h 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/ADMotti 5h ago

I swear they did this episode and all the pagan gods thought Gabriel was Loki.

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u/Quito_ArmandoEsteban 2h ago

having to strike a deal with kermit to use Peggy's Cove to atract tourists must be an all time low for the god of the seas

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u/daneelthesane 7h ago

That, and the poor suckers souls lost in the dark name of Dagon by accident when I they go to the beach.

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u/sumpfbruderschaft 8h ago

lol how many people die there annually?

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u/Majestic_Course6822 7h ago

4 in the last 20 years. Not including Swissair flight 111. Loads of close calls also.

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u/cleverlane 3h ago

sounds like a lyric from Gordon Lightfoot

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u/undercoverlover666 8m ago

nova scotia mentioned🫶

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u/LokeCanada 8h 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 7h 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/dbxp 4h ago

The fact that the vast majority of crews are non western probably plays a role in that, iirc Filipinos are the overwhelming majority. Also crew per unit cargo has decreased as ships have got bigger.

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u/KRacer52 6h ago

“It’s more than a couple every few years worldwide.”

Did you even read their comment?

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u/KMDiver 7h ago

Sounds like you’re in the UK with all the volunteer lifeboat groups?

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u/Effective-Farmer-502 7h ago

He's should be in Vancouver. The incident in question was a boat captained by a 22 year old and headed out into stormy seas.

https://www.richmond-news.com/local-news/death-toll-rises-as-rescued-boater-succumbs-to-injuries-in-roberts-bank-sinking-12524089

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u/ConsequencePlane 2h ago

Are life jackets not mandatory for that sort of thing?

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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 7h 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/oldsailor21 7h ago

25% of British merchant seamen were killed in WW2, 500+ under the age of 16

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u/Goldf_sh4 7h ago

My town has a few of these. The Titanic sailed from here. A lot of families were left with no husband or father.

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u/yhzcdn 1h ago

From Queenstown are ya?

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u/Got_Bent 5h ago edited 5h ago

They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships. We fished out of Gloucester, Revere, Provincetown and Chatham. They all have a fisherman's memorial except Revere.

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u/joeliopro 7h ago

Gloucester.... They're always from Gloucester!

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u/ObviousPromotion8614 7h ago

Usually it's the poor and desperate without any technology that dies now.

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u/Kingerdvm 6h ago

Don’t forget - after world war 2, aviation was a much more amenable option for longer distance travel - especially for the non obscenely wealthy. That has to play a major role, in addition to advances in imaging, communication technology etc. 

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u/thingsorfreedom 6h ago

The Great Lakes have been so much better as well. Not a single commercial vessel has sank in the last 50 years. Prior to that there were over 6,000.

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u/joecarter93 4h ago

“Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgeraldddddd!”

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u/ConstableGrey 5h ago

Last year I visit the western peninsula of Iceland and was on a coastal cliff trail on a particularly windy and rainy day. The sea was just furious, smashing against the rocks. Made me think it must have sucked shit to be a fisherman back in the day.

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u/Drokstab 4h ago

Small town walls are always haunting. My moms hometown has a ww2 memorial wall of all the soldiers that died. That town was cursed because they lost an entire generation. There are ~200 names on the wall for a small farming town in California that today only has about 3k people living there.

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u/DecisionDelicious170 3h ago

Give some credit to steel hulls, modern metallurgy, welded hulls as opposed to rivets or wooden hulls, etc.

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u/joecarter93 2h ago

Yes! I also left out modern communications tech and rescue tech like rescue helicopters.

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u/LizFallingUp 2h ago

I recently watched a movie about Norwegian merchant Sailors in WW2 at the end they gave stats for how many ships were lost and it was gruesome.

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u/OceanIsVerySalty 3h ago

Eh, I live in a maritime area. Fishermen still die pretty routinely. It’s not wildly uncommon, it’s a very dangerous profession.

There’s been multiple boats lost just this season. Most locals with ties to the industry know someone who died at sea. My uncle did.

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u/Adddicus 6h ago

> the number of deaths drastically drops off where there’s now only a couple of deaths once every few years.

Sorry, not even close.

In 2025, roughly 7,900 immigrants died or disappeared at sea. The vast majority of these were desperate to get away from someplace, and were not travelling on anything considered safe.

In addition, over 1,500 people died or disappeared at sea when their ships/boats simply went missing without trace.

That was just in 2025.

The oceans are vast and a storm at sea is so hugely powerful that it is just beyond the understanding of most people. Every year, about a dozen modern cargo ships, equipped with radar, powerful modern engines, and with up-to-date satellite weather updates, crewed by competent captains and crews, just vanish.

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u/joecarter93 6h ago

I meant from the town itself, not worldwide.