Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Diego was a smuggler, or at least that was one
Speaker 1: small part of his family business. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: a Spanish banker working in international trade from the Basque
Speaker 1: city of bill Bao. He hadn't started the business, though, No,
Speaker 1: that was the work of his father, Jose, a savvy trader.
Speaker 1: Jose did all kinds of legitimate business and built up
Speaker 1: a company big enough to keep his children busy as
Speaker 1: they grew up. So Diego, the second of Jose's eight children,
Speaker 1: was among them. But he didn't just learn on the job.
Speaker 1: Jose sent Diego to London to study economics and trade,
Speaker 1: and Diego did just that and plenty more. He learned
Speaker 1: English and made friends who would give him the idea
Speaker 1: for his smuggling empire. Because along the way he came
Speaker 1: to see that if there's one thing big, international shipping
Speaker 1: companies like It's making money hand over fist while dodging
Speaker 1: government oversight and government tax collectors. And in that business,
Speaker 1: Diego was about to become an international superstar. In fact,
Speaker 1: he had a plan to do some club or dealing
Speaker 1: that would see him set up a smuggling network that
Speaker 1: criss crossed the Atlantic. After Diego wrapped up five years
Speaker 1: of studying business in London and arrived back home in Spain,
Speaker 1: he saw his competitors making quite a pretty penny all
Speaker 1: under the table. He saw wealthy American buyers paying big
Speaker 1: money for illegal Spanish oil and wine on the black market.
Speaker 1: If Diego was really dialed into just how much smuggling
Speaker 1: was going on, he would have known that other shipping
Speaker 1: companies were dodging taxes and pocketing profits not just on
Speaker 1: wine and oil, but on all kinds of Spanish merchandise,
Speaker 1: even cloth and raisins. And Diego wanted in on that game.
Speaker 1: So after his father Jose died, Diego rallied his brothers
Speaker 1: and set his plan in motion. First, he helped some
Speaker 1: businesses across the pond find new ways to sell their
Speaker 1: own products, like lumber and even prefabricated houses. Those were
Speaker 1: shipped to Spain. Diego even set up a successful gambit
Speaker 1: to smuggle American wheat flour from Philadelphia to northern Spain
Speaker 1: and then back across the Atlantic to Cuba. It dodged
Speaker 1: authorities and kept things out of sight. The documents aren't
Speaker 1: quite clear, after all, smugglers don't usually want a paper trail,
Speaker 1: but we can easily guess that the shipping lanes from
Speaker 1: Spain to Havannah were a little more open than the
Speaker 1: lanes from Philadelphia to Cuba. And that wasn't all. There
Speaker 1: were also luxury goods going the other way. To working
Speaker 1: with the family business in Massachu Sits, Diego and his
Speaker 1: brothers shipped across fine European silk in unprecedented amounts wealthy
Speaker 1: Americans with a taste for the opulence of distant shores.
Speaker 1: We're getting a little something special and all under the radar,
Speaker 1: and American money was getting back to Diego's Spanish bank
Speaker 1: just the way he wanted. But then things took a
Speaker 1: turn because other orders started to come in and they
Speaker 1: weren't just for silk. Now, Diego's smuggling partners wanted something
Speaker 1: far darker. Guns you see his American contacts had been
Speaker 1: shipping in weapons from other places in Europe, not least
Speaker 1: the Dutch city of Amsterdam, but a recent crackdown had
Speaker 1: dried that up. It sent them looking for a new
Speaker 1: contact to get weapons of war into their hands, and
Speaker 1: Diego's contacts in Boston realized that he had a talent
Speaker 1: for doing business while ducking the law. They offered Diego
Speaker 1: and his brothers an enormous sum of money to become
Speaker 1: merchants of death. We don't know whether or not this
Speaker 1: made Diego feel guilty, but we do know that he
Speaker 1: was the and for the job. He hesitated at first.
Speaker 1: He told his Massachusetts contacts that guns in Spain, while
Speaker 1: they were only made for the government. Even so, he
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose the deal. He told them that
Speaker 1: he had found a stockpile of over one thousand handguns
Speaker 1: and three hundred rifles that had just been manufactured for
Speaker 1: the Spanish army. If his American buyers wanted them, they
Speaker 1: could probably get them out of the country. And of course,
Speaker 1: this sounded just like what Diego's contact wanted, so he
Speaker 1: got his hands on the weapons with ammunition to follow.
Speaker 1: He was now officially a gun runner. It didn't take
Speaker 1: long for his guns to be put to use, though
Speaker 1: in fact, the same year he sent that first shipment,
Speaker 1: there was an open gun battle in Massachusetts. Even without
Speaker 1: his name in the headlines, Diego's illegal firearms were all
Speaker 1: over the international news. That didn't stop him, though. Over
Speaker 1: the next few years his family trading company would ship
Speaker 1: across thirty thousand rifles, five hundred thousand bullets, and twelve
Speaker 1: thousand grenades, and more than two hundred pieces of artillery.
Speaker 1: In fact, Diego was so successful making business contacts for
Speaker 1: selling illegal weapons in America that years later Spain would
Speaker 1: make him the ambassador to the United States because the
Speaker 1: people of Massachusetts in Philadelphia, well, they were fighting the
Speaker 1: British government, and Diego de Gardoqui was the smuggler who
Speaker 1: provided guns for the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1: According to some figures of speech, getting numerous people involved
Speaker 1: in a project can spell doom for its completion. Too
Speaker 1: many cooks spoil the broth, the more chickens in the coop,
Speaker 1: the more poop, and the fewer the eggs. And of
Speaker 1: course a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Speaker 1: All those phrases have some truth to them, and that
Speaker 1: last idiom is particularly appropriate when discussing a project like
Speaker 1: the Bristol Brabazon. As World War Two raged across England,
Speaker 1: Germany and beyond, the British aircraft industry decided to put
Speaker 1: all of its effort behind manufacturing combat planes, with their
Speaker 1: focus dedicated to one pursuit that left a gaping hole
Speaker 1: in another demographic civilians. After all, the war would end
Speaker 1: one day, and without a commercial airline industry for public use,
Speaker 1: Britain would fall behind the competition, especially the United States.
Speaker 1: So the government formed a committee to be led by
Speaker 1: a man named John Moore Brabazon, first Baron Brabazon Terra,
Speaker 1: a name as large as the plane that would share it.
Speaker 1: Under the Baron's leadership, the Brabazon Committee developed a report
Speaker 1: in which five plane designs were studied and four were
Speaker 1: recommended for construction. They varied in size and range, with
Speaker 1: some being smaller puddle jumpers and others a bit larger
Speaker 1: in scale. However, it was the Type one that captured
Speaker 1: everyone's imagination. The Type one would be a massive transatlantic
Speaker 1: airliner capable of carrying three passengers across the ocean, but
Speaker 1: the committee was worried that first class travelers would dislike
Speaker 1: flying for hours with little room to spread out. Instead,
Speaker 1: they opted for sixty first class seats and plenty of room.
Speaker 1: In fact. Comfort with such a priority, there were plans
Speaker 1: to include a movie theater and a cocktail lounge as well.
Speaker 1: The Bristol Brabazon, bearing the model name of Type one
Speaker 1: six seven, boasted a few solage of one hundred eighty
Speaker 1: feet long and an enormous wingspan of two hundred thirty
Speaker 1: feet in length. For comparison, the Boeing seven forty seven
Speaker 1: has ranged in wingspans from one d ninety feet to
Speaker 1: two hundred twenty four and it was to be powered
Speaker 1: by eight Bristol Centaurus eighteen cylinder radial engines capable of
Speaker 1: producing over twenty six hundred horsepower each. This plane wasn't
Speaker 1: just going to be the largest to ever take to
Speaker 1: the skies, It was also going to be the most
Speaker 1: technologically advanced. It featured servos and sensors to prevent the
Speaker 1: wings from bending during turbulence. Engineers also outfitted it with
Speaker 1: high pressured hydraulics and electric engine can trolls, a first
Speaker 1: for modern aircraft at the time. But aaron you might
Speaker 1: say that is a lot of airplane, and it was
Speaker 1: probably heavy, and you wouldn't be wrong, but a unique
Speaker 1: fabrication process was developed to use the least amount of
Speaker 1: metal necessary all over the wings and body, thus reducing
Speaker 1: its overall weight. The original plan had been to build
Speaker 1: a total of eight of these planes. Little hangars were
Speaker 1: even constructed to house them, but only one was ever
Speaker 1: fully made. The Bristol Brabazon had its maiden flights in
Speaker 1: early September of nine after working out some kinks with
Speaker 1: the steering, It soared over Bristol, England for about twenty
Speaker 1: five minutes at an altitude of three thousand feet and
Speaker 1: the top speed of one sixty miles per hour. The
Speaker 1: British press dubbed her the Queen of the Skies, and
Speaker 1: that was just about the nicest thing anyone had or
Speaker 1: ever would say about it. The Bristol Brabazon was heavy, slow,
Speaker 1: and unresponsive. It was also costly to build, maintain and
Speaker 1: operate at a time when airlines were focused less on
Speaker 1: comfort and more on carrying as many passengers as possible
Speaker 1: at one time. So when the Brabazon finally went on sale,
Speaker 1: nobody bought it. Three point four million pounds mostly down
Speaker 1: the drain, but all wasn't lost. Many of the new
Speaker 1: technologies that had gone into building it were used on
Speaker 1: more successful planes later on. Plus, John Moore Brabazon, a
Speaker 1: pilot in his own right, had done the impossible. He'd
Speaker 1: managed to get two pigs to fly during his lifetime.
Speaker 1: There was the Type one six seven that bore his name,
Speaker 1: and in nine he carried an actual live pig in
Speaker 1: a basket tied to the wing strut of his own biplane.
Speaker 1: And if that's not curious, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,