[HN Gopher] I solved the century-old mystery of a shipwreck surv...
___________________________________________________________________
I solved the century-old mystery of a shipwreck survivor
Author : Thevet
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-07-12 22:24 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| mosdl wrote:
| Its amazing how much and how little things have changed when it
| comes to media. Good reminder to always be skeptical about
| sensationalism.
| imglorp wrote:
| A good tall tale has an element of plausibility. A 6km swim is
| a common workout for a college swimmer these days. If the river
| conditions were favorable, the story on its own was not
| suspect.
| clort wrote:
| I mean, there is this Icelandic guy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%B0laugur_Fri%C3%B0%C3%BE.
| ..
|
| who actually did swim 6km in freezing waters after his vessel
| sank in 1984..
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Yeah, but that guy was well insulated with blubber.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| A 6km swim _in a 78F pool_ is a common workout.
|
| I've repeatedly swum in Lake Michigan (looking online, it has
| comparable temps to the St Lawrence in Quebec) as early as
| Memorial Day. The water temp is often in the mid 50s, very
| cold even with a full wetsuit, hood, and prep, but feasible
| as a ritual with which to open the season and start the
| summer. This year, in May, it was 45F/7C. Insanely,
| painfully, shockingly, unsafely cold...I decided to break
| tradition.
|
| In July, a 6km swim could be fun! In May, depending on the
| climate that year and the swimmer's metabolism and
| subcutaneous fat levels, it might be survivable. You might
| lose a few extremities to frostbite. Or it might not be
| survivable. 1 in 800-something odds, with an athletic
| 29-year-old being the only survivor, seems reasonable enough.
|
| It is a good tall tale, out on the murky limits of
| credibility.
| pge wrote:
| It's pretty impressive (and not always widely known) how
| much cold water impairs swimming ability. There are some
| good videos on this site - coldwatersafety.org - of Coast
| Guard volunteers trying to swim in 45deg water. They lose
| motor function before making it 20m or so. Only one is able
| to make the short distance to shore, and he is one of the
| largest guys and a professional rescue swimmer. A 6km swim
| in 45F water for someone that is not wearing protective
| clothing or well acclimated to cold water is not realistic.
| relwin wrote:
| Oceanliner Designs has a great recreation of this accident:
| https://youtu.be/-9ZLZ8hiA5Y?si=ElcaIqEQhTHsElkM
|
| ...and of the last 10 minutes of this accident:
| https://youtu.be/N5CxSRsiUys?si=wS42xVXUb5Awb95U
| hatthew wrote:
| If you liked this story, you might like the game Return of the
| Obra Dinn, which is kinda just this but for ~60 different people
| on a fictional ship.
| the_af wrote:
| A very cool game by the author of the also interesting Papers,
| Please.
|
| I second this recommendation!
| polivier wrote:
| When my wife was pregnant and had to stop working, she got
| bored so I got her this game. At first she said she didn't like
| it "because the graphics suck". A couple days later she was
| totally immersed in the game and had made spreadsheets to track
| the whereabouts of every character over time. It is a really
| well-made game.
| the_af wrote:
| The graphics are actually quite an impressive technical feat,
| Lukas Pope went into some detail in his blog/forums about the
| effort that went into making them. I remember lots of work
| went into getting the "dithering" right when the scene was in
| motion.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Not only did a lot of work go in, but after much trial and
| error the breakthrough ended up coming from some random
| mathematician that happened to be following the thread and
| decided to take a crack at it.
|
| Mathematician's posting starts here: https://forums.tigsour
| ce.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg121280...
|
| Next dev blog post from Lukas Pope mentioning this here: ht
| tps://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg121719.
| ..
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I tried to play it. But I just didn't 'get it'.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| I can't say I commiserate, as I was hooked at the very first
| flashback. > Scene is black, you hear "Come
| out, so Johnny and I can flay your bones" / "Get out of --
| *BANG!*" > Scene reveals, man is frozen in time, his
| body still in motion though he is clearly dead. > A
| half-dressed man stands inside the ship's main cabin,
| gunpowder still billowing from his pistol. Now
| you play "Clue". Who killed whom with what, and
| where? > KILLER: What? I have no idea!. Why
| would I know?! I know literally nothing, why would I ... Oh,
| hang on, this is the Captain's cabin! Nobody but the captain
| would be half-dressed in the captain's cabin so... he must
| be... the captain! Ha! > VICTIM: At least one of
| these assailants is "Johnny"... not sure if the victim is,
| though. I'll hm... have to figure out how to write down "some
| unknown guy wearing pointy-toed boots and another guy with a
| scar on his shoulder were on the deck at 4pm, and one of them
| died to the captain's pistol, and uh... one of them is named
| johnny" hm... > WEAPON: Close range pistol shot.
| Yeowch.
|
| ...
|
| Anyway. I totally dug it from the outset and only loved it
| more as I progressed.
|
| I hope you'll give it another shot.
|
| If you like, say... Myst-like games that blend puzzles and
| attention to detail with good storytelling, you'd like this
| game.
|
| It and Outer Wilds are probably my two most-recommended
| games.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I thought the artwork was striking and original and I
| wanted to like it. But I think detective games aren't for
| me. Very subjective, obviously.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I tried it too after it was recommended but it's a detective
| game that requires you to take notes or cram a bunch of story
| line in your head. If you want to "just play a game", this
| isn't it because it will get real boring real fast.
| hatthew wrote:
| Yeah, it's a game that's very easy to bounce off of. The
| first few hours can feel like a slog until you familiarize
| yourself with each scene enough to have a direction in your
| search rather than just wandering randomly.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Tldr: 'Davidson stripped off his nightshirt and swam away from
| the ship. The suction took him down, and when he came up, he swam
| into a frenzied crowd. "They tramped me under three times before
| I got through them. I swam on a little farther, but the water was
| fearfully cold, and I was out of practice swimming," he said.
|
| Davidson was picked up by a lifeboat and taken to the _Storstad_,
| which survived the collision.'
|
| The article was apparently edited to increase prolixity.
| hatthew wrote:
| I thought the background was interesting and helpful to know
| fisherjeff wrote:
| It's a book excerpt
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I thought he would explain how he figured all this out but it
| was not clear from the article how he did so.
| Cipater wrote:
| Thank you for teaching me a new word.
|
| Prolixity - unnecessarily or tediously wordy
| jolt42 wrote:
| I prefer the almost comical sounding word, logorrhea.
| jolt42 wrote:
| I wondered about this suction. Is he talking about the ship
| sinking as suction. Mythbusters demonstrated IIRC that this
| "suction" doesn't happen.
| windowshopping wrote:
| He says near the beginning that only 832 people died on Titanic,
| which is plainly untrue and made me stop reading because I felt I
| could no longer trust anything the author was saying without fact
| checking it. I mean that's a really basic thing to get wrong.
| anonymous_user9 wrote:
| That's the number of passenger deaths, not total deaths. It's
| pretty close to the sum of passenger deaths in the wikipedia
| article on the Titanic [1], 818. According to that article, the
| total death count is unclear, so the discrepancy seems
| acceptable.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic#Survivors_and_victims
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > Every schoolchild knows the story of the Titanic, the luxury
| ocean liner that hit an iceberg and sank in 1912. So why did the
| Empress tragedy, which claimed even more passenger lives a little
| over two years later, fail to embed itself in our collective
| national consciousness?
|
| Because the Titanic was the biggest ship ever, it sunk on its
| maiden voyage, although it was said to be unsinkable. It's
| probably one of few stories from our time which will be
| remembered in a thousand years.
| elchananHaas wrote:
| That, and there were survivors to tell the tale. Ships sinking
| with all on board lost was a reality. There was always the
| chance that one who went out to sea might not return. The
| Titanic's survivors made the story known and memorable.
| the_af wrote:
| The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable, so "there was
| always a chance" didn't apply in people's minds to this case.
| close04 wrote:
| The Titanic was the largest ship at the time, "unsinkable", on
| its maiden voyage, carrying some of the richest people in the
| world, greatest maritime disaster at the time, still basically
| at #2 after more than a century, and the wreck lost for 70
| years. The story is definitely more sensational and mysterious
| than other sinkings.
| chopin wrote:
| The 'Wilhelm Gustloff' had at least 4000 casualties in 1945.
| I believe the memorability of the Titanic is only loosely
| coupled to the number of casualties .
| close04 wrote:
| I included the casualty count as a response to the article
| quote in OP's comment:
|
| > So why did the Empress tragedy, which claimed even more
| passenger lives a little over two years later, fail to
| embed itself in our collective national consciousness?
|
| The Titanic sinking caused ~50-60% more casualties. But
| casualty numbers alone are probably not enough to make
| either of them memorable. But an "unsinkable" ship, biggest
| ever, carrying the worlds richest, inexplicably sinking on
| maiden voyage and disappearing for decades is a very
| powerful story.
| Yeul wrote:
| Titanic happened in peace time. In WW2 many ships went
| under with thousands on board.
|
| And after 1945 people were encouraged to forget about
| everything and not ask any uncomfortable questions.
| bombcar wrote:
| And popular media grabbed the story. Fame for shipwrecks is
| hugely dependent on that - if it's going to live past its time.
|
| Gordon Lightfoot ensured that people a hundred years from now
| will know the _Edmund Fitzgerald_ but the thousands of other
| wrecks in those lakes will be known to locals and researchers
| only.
| jolt42 wrote:
| I understand 30,000 have died on the Great Lakes as a result
| of shipwrecks.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| Also, the author could read himself and notice that final
| paragraph where he tells that "Empress" sunk right before the
| WWI. Which obviously made all other news mostly irrelevant
| pergadad wrote:
| It was the biggest ship of its time, but we have much bigger
| ones now (both on tonnage and passenger capacity).
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's why I wrote it was the biggest ship ever, not that it
| is the biggest ship ever.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > On May 28, 1914, the Empress began her 192nd trip across the
| Atlantic, from Quebec City en route to Liverpool, carrying 1,056
| passengers and a crew of 423.
|
| I have to say I'm surprised by the size of the crew, both from
| the economic perspective and from the fact that it's steam and
| not sails. I guess I'll need to read more on how these ships were
| run.
|
| > After a minute and a half, the boiler rooms were flooded with
| the equivalent of nine Olympic swimming pools of water.
|
| Oh for crying out loud
| Xss3 wrote:
| Another ship struck it between the boiler compartment and the
| one next door.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I wonder how big was that ship in terms of football fields
| PMunch wrote:
| The headline as I read the article was "How I Solved the Century-
| Old Mystery of a Miraculous Shipwreck Survivor", but it doesn't
| actually detail _how_ the mystery was solved. They talked to a
| couple different people, found an old newspaper clipping, but the
| crucial
|
| > Davidson was picked up by a lifeboat and taken to the Storstad,
| which survived the collision.
|
| The actual meat of the article, doesn't have any clear source. I
| guess it might've come from the mentioned piece in "St. Thomas
| Journal", but it's not exactly clear.
|
| Cool story, but not exactly the "How I solved a mystery" that
| you'd expect from the headline.
| hatthew wrote:
| It was structured a little oddly so it took a reread to
| understand, but I believe the wrong story was from the
| Vancouver Province, while the right story was from Davidson's
| letter in the St. Thomas Daily Times.
| Sprotch wrote:
| Thats because Davidson said so himself. This whole thing is a
| clickbait
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Hi I'm from [outlet] news can we cite your piece about how he
| successfully fashioned an aeroplane out of scrap deck chairs and
| flew to safety?
| Sprotch wrote:
| He was picked up by a lifeboat. There is no mystery; he had made
| clear himself multiple times that this is how he was rescued.
| Neywiny wrote:
| Yeah I mean it was an ok article, and I understand we're all
| trying to make a living, but it could be summarized in one
| sentence. "The reporters made up a story and he couldn't
| convince them to report the truth: that he had been picked up
| in a lifeboat." Because yes the mystery is solved by knowing he
| was in a lifeboat, but it's also critical to determine how the
| falsehood originated.
| jolt42 wrote:
| Both are clickbait both false, "man swims 6k to shore" versus
| "I solved the mystery".
| chiffre01 wrote:
| Claiming the disaster was worse than the Titanic seems pretty
| thin just because more passenger lives were lost?
|
| Total Lives lost:
|
| Titanic: 1,500 Empress of Ireland: 1,012
| mattlondon wrote:
| There was also a suggestion that more people knew about the
| titanic because there were more upper-class people on the
| titanic and no one cares about poor people or some other social
| commentary like that, which I think is disingenuous.
|
| I suspect titanic is/was more well known is simply due to the
| sheer hubris of it all - a much-heralded and much-trumpeted
| "unsinkable ship" that sank on its _maiden voyage_. It was
| supposed to be this amazing new technical marvel and yet it did
| the very thing it that they were claiming was impossible on it
| 's very first trip. Sticks in the mind somewhat, compared to
| the frequent "ordinary" ship sinkings that happen all the time
| (then and yes ships still sink now, although fewer passenger
| ships I expect but probably just down to their being fewer of
| them)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-15 23:02 UTC)