207-The Bluebelle's Last Voyage

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1961, Wisconsin optometrist Arthur Duperrault chartered a yacht to take his family on a sailing holiday in the Bahamas. After two days in the islands, the ship failed to return to the mainland, and the unfolding story of its final voyage made headlines around the world. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll recount the fate of the Bluebelle and its seven passengers and crew.

We'll also sympathize with some digital misfits and puzzle over some incendiary cigarettes.

Intro:

John Brunner's novel The Squares of the City encodes an 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin.

Around 1730 Ben Franklin laid out 11 "necessary hints to those that would be rich."

Sources for our feature on the Bluebelle:

Richard D. Logan and Tere Duperrault Fassbender, Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean, 2011.

"The Sea: The Bluebelle's Last Voyage," Time, Dec. 1, 1961.

Herbert Brean, "The 'Bluebelle' Mystery," Life, Dec. 1, 1961.

Erle Stanley Gardner, "The Case of the Bluebelle's Last Voyage," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 25, 1962.

"Shipwrecked Girl, 11, Rescued After 4 Days on Raft in Atlantic," United Press International, Nov. 17, 1961.

"Skipper Is Suicide After Yacht Wreck," United Press International, Nov. 18, 1961.

"Yacht Girl Rallies," New York Times, Nov. 19, 1961.

"Yacht Girl Questioned; Survivor of Sinking Reported on Way to Full Recovery," Associated Press, Nov. 20, 1961.

"Rescued Girl's Story Indicates Skipper Killed Others on Yacht," Associated Press, Nov. 21, 1961.

"The Mystery of the Bluebelle," New York Times, Nov. 22, 1961.

"Dead Skipper's Papers Are Held by Court Order," Associated Press, Nov. 22, 1961.

"Rescued Skipper Showed No Grief," Associated Press, Nov. 23, 1961.

"Yacht Survivor Hears of Deaths," United Press International, Nov. 24, 1961.

"Bluebelle Survivor Tells Story Again," United Press International, Nov. 28, 1961.

"Coast Guard Rules Harvey Was Killer," Associated Press, April 26, 1962.

"Bluebelle's Owner Sued in Deaths of 4," Associated Press, April 28, 1962.

Mary Ann Grossmann, "'Alone' Book Recounts Green Bay Girl's 1961 Ordeal at Sea -- and Life After," Saint Paul Pioneer Press, May 30, 2010.

John Bogert, "The Tale of the Bluebelle Still Captivates Decades Later," [Torrance, Calif.] Daily Breeze, May 26, 2010.

Marlene Womack, "Out of the Past: The Mystery of the Yacht Bluebelle," [Panama City, Fla.] News Herald, Nov. 10, 2014.

Listener mail:

Wikipedia, "Isle of Man" (accessed June 28, 2018).

Wikipedia, "Geography of the Isle of Man" (accessed June 28, 2018).

Wikipedia, "Wallaby" (accessed June 28, 2018).

Wikipedia, "Red-Necked Wallaby" (accessed June 28, 2018).

"Searching for the Isle of Man's Wild Wallabies," BBC News, Oct. 17, 2010.

"Isle of Man Wallaby Population 'Increasing,'" BBC News, Sept. 16, 2014.

Nazia Parveen, "Wallabies Flourishing in the Wild on Isle of Man," Guardian, Aug. 14, 2016.

Christopher Null, "Hello, I’m Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to Computers," Wired, Nov. 5, 2015.

Associated Press, "Apostrophe in Your Name Can Cause a World O'Trouble," February 21, 2008.

Anna Tims, "I Was Denied Boarding a Plane -- All Because of a Hyphen," Guardian, April 27, 2018.

Tim O'Keefe, "Apostrophe in Name Causes Computer Chaos," April 29, 2016.

Freia Lobo, "Here's Why Airlines Have Trouble With Your Hyphenated Name," Mashable, June 25, 2017.

John Scott-Railton, "#HyphensUnite: A Decade of United Airlines Ignoring the Hyphenated," June 21, 2017.

Click consonants are speech sounds that occur as consonants in Southern and East African languages.

This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Mike Wolin, who sent these corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle).

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset.

Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history.
0:14.0	Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a science fiction novel based on a chess game to Ben Franklin's tips for getting rich.
0:22.7	This is episode 207. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1961, Wisconsin optometrist Arthur
0:30.5	Duproalt chartered a yacht to take his family on a sailing holiday in the Bahamas. After two days
0:36.1	in the islands, the ship failed to return to the mainland,
0:39.2	and the unfolding story of its final voyage made headlines around the world. In today's show,
0:45.1	we'll recount the fate of the Bluebell and its seven passengers and crew. We'll also sympathize
0:51.1	with some digital misfits and puzzle over some incendiary cigarettes.
0:59.7	In 1961, Arthur Duparalt began to plan a special vacation for his family.
1:05.2	He'd worked for years to build up his optometry practice in Green Bay, Wisconsin,
1:08.8	and now he could afford to treat his wife and kids to an
1:11.0	extended holiday. During the war, he'd served in the Pacific and had fallen in love with the tropics,
1:15.9	so he proposed that they all take a year off and spend it together sailing in the islands.
1:20.6	That fall he took his kids out of school, and the five of them headed for Florida, Himself, his wife, Gene, and his kids, Brian, Terry Joe, and Renee, ages 14, 11, and 7.
1:29.8	The plan was that they'd spend the fall trying out life at sea, and if it went well, they'd
1:33.5	extend the adventure to a full year. They'd all been to Florida twice already for winter
1:37.6	vacations, but they'd never sailed together. They decided to begin with the one-week shakedown cruise through the Bahamas on the Bluebell, a two-masted sailboat moored in Fort Lauderdale. Their skipper would be Julian Harvey, a retired
1:49.4	pilot who had won both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal during 19 years in the
1:53.7	Air Force, but had retired three years earlier to pursue his dream of becoming master of a sailing
1:58.1	yacht. No one knew much about Harvey's earlier life, but he was 44
2:01.5	years old, sophisticated, and charming. He'd be bringing his wife, a TWA flight attendant named
2:06.3	Mary, whom he just married that summer. On November 8, 1961, they all set sail for the Bahamas,
	...

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