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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by staff writer Jane McGrath. Hey, Jane,

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Speaker 1: I said, the article we're going to talk about today

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Speaker 1: is actually one that came to my attention courtesy of

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Speaker 1: Mr Stuff. You should know Chuck Bryant, because he'd been

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Speaker 1: doing some research on maritime mysteries and sunken ships and

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Speaker 1: sunken treasure. And he asked me, have you ever heard

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Speaker 1: of El Casador? And I said, now, I haven't. And

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Speaker 1: he said, did you know that this sunken ship and

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Speaker 1: effect doubled the size of the United States? And it

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Speaker 1: sounded too unbelievable to be true, But in a roundabout way,

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Speaker 1: it kind of is. So trying to have a great

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Speaker 1: article on our slape by our colleague Christin Conger explains

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Speaker 1: this whole thing, and we're gonna go over a little

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Speaker 1: bit of bit here. So we talked about the Louisiana

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Speaker 1: purchased in another cast, but it has a fascinating story

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Speaker 1: behind us. Candice was saying, has to do with a shipwreck.

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Speaker 1: What happened with Louisiana a territory back in the age

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Speaker 1: of exploration. It ended up in French control, and that

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Speaker 1: was because this really fantastically named Frenchman, Robert Cavalier de

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Speaker 1: las Sal actually discovered the mouth of the Mississippi back

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Speaker 1: in sixty two, that's right, and he was the one

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Speaker 1: who named it Louisiana, after King Louis the fourteenth, I believe,

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Speaker 1: And there were a couple of Louis that you're gonna

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Speaker 1: hear about. We'll try to remember other Reman numerals, but

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Speaker 1: if we don't, you know, Janell, stop me and let

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Speaker 1: me know. And LaSalle I think, had high hopes that

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Speaker 1: he was going to establish a settlement there, but it

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Speaker 1: didn't really take off, and for a couple of reasons.

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Speaker 1: I think the primary reason for which it didn't really

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Speaker 1: take off or take hold of the settlement is because

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Speaker 1: it was so incredibly remote, and also the climate was

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Speaker 1: something that the French were unaccustomed to, and mosquitoes were

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Speaker 1: pretty crazy, so he did not succeed. The settlement that

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Speaker 1: he started didn't last very long, and an official settlement

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Speaker 1: didn't happen until about seventeen years later, and that was

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Speaker 1: in sixte nine with Pierre Syr deeper view. And I

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Speaker 1: really like saying these French names, and I don't know

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Speaker 1: if I'm getting them exactly right, but I'm sure if

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Speaker 1: there are any French listeners out there, they will let

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Speaker 1: us now. So he made a very successful settlement, and

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Speaker 1: then in seventeen eighteen louis actually established an official colony there,

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Speaker 1: so here we have New Orleans was the capital city

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Speaker 1: of this French colony, and it was a very important

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Speaker 1: trading post at the time. Obviously, the West Indies had

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Speaker 1: so many commodities that Europe wanted to get his hand

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Speaker 1: on hands on, and New Orleans was an important part

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Speaker 1: of that equation. So by the mid eighteenth century, France

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Speaker 1: was actually wrapped up in uh the Seven Years War.

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Speaker 1: Although they were in possession of Louisiana territory, including New Orleans,

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Speaker 1: they wanted to get out of their hands um, but

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Speaker 1: not so much to not have it anymore, but rather

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Speaker 1: to keep it out of the British hands because they

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Speaker 1: were fighting the British and the Seven Years War, and

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Speaker 1: over here we often called the French and Indian War

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Speaker 1: because the colonies were involved in it too, But any

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Speaker 1: the French and the British were enemies and France sort

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Speaker 1: of saw their indcoming. They saw that they were losing

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Speaker 1: the war, so they made a treaty with Spain, and

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Speaker 1: that was known as the Treaty of Fontainebleu, if I'm

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Speaker 1: pronouncing that right. So they handed over Louisiana territory and

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Speaker 1: New Orleans was included in that over to Spain's control.

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Speaker 1: And as as we now know, France did lose. And

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Speaker 1: when England did ask them for all the handover their

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Speaker 1: their very valuable land, they didn't have Louisiana to hand over.

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Speaker 1: They did. And and we should mention that Louis and

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Speaker 1: the king of Spain, that was King Carlos the second

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Speaker 1: actually had a relation, a distant blood relation through the

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Speaker 1: Bourbon side of louis family, so where the political ties

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Speaker 1: there obviously, So they were more friends with Spain than England.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think anyone would ever want to, let

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Speaker 1: you know, Louisiana and especially in New Orleans go, but

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Speaker 1: if you had to give it away to someone better

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Speaker 1: your very distant cousin, than mean old England, that's a

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Speaker 1: good way to put it. So Spain found out pretty

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Speaker 1: quickly that the Louisiana terrytory was very hard to manage.

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Speaker 1: Like we said before, it was very far away, and

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Speaker 1: it was a huge chunk of land. And so they

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Speaker 1: decided that something had to be done about dealing with

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Speaker 1: this remoteness and somehow keeping a hand on the crazy

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Speaker 1: counterfeiting and other uprisings that were going on in that

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Speaker 1: part of the world. That's where there was a shortage

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Speaker 1: of currency and this led to counterfeiting, and there's just

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Speaker 1: just crisis, economic crisis in New Orleans that uh, the

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Speaker 1: so Spain couldn't pay their own government workers to do

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Speaker 1: the work. And if you can't pay your government workers

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Speaker 1: and your soldiers, there's really no way to keep order

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Speaker 1: in a city. So in order to fix that, they

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Speaker 1: actually had a lot of silver commission to send over

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Speaker 1: in a ship known as il Calcador, and it the

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Speaker 1: ship contained a freshly minted silver and about nineteen tons

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Speaker 1: of it exactly. It came from very CRUs, Mexico. The

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Speaker 1: ment there some nineteen tons of silver coins and the

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Speaker 1: ship set out on January eleventh, seventeen eighty four, and

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Speaker 1: its mission was clear, take the money to New Orleans

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Speaker 1: and add some value back into the currency and say

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Speaker 1: the city. Unfortunately, and never made it now, it sunk.

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Speaker 1: It funk hard, y'all, and they didn't find it until

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Speaker 1: two years later, that's right. So it disappeared that they

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Speaker 1: declared it missing, and uh, New Orleans continued in their

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Speaker 1: economic crisis, and so basically it made the situation worse.

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Speaker 1: And uh it was just a problem on their hands.

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Speaker 1: Even though it was a valuable commodity to have New Orleans,

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Speaker 1: it was troublesome, it really was. And so enter Napoleon,

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Speaker 1: that's right. And we should say that France looked a

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Speaker 1: lot different between the time of the Seven Years War

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Speaker 1: when they gave it over to Spain and when Napoleon emerged.

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Speaker 1: If you've listened to our podcast on the French Revolution,

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Speaker 1: this happened during that time, and uh so France looked

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Speaker 1: a lot different. And Napoleon was set on rebuilding the

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Speaker 1: power of his country and so he thought the key

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Speaker 1: to getting friends powerful again was to start this great

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Speaker 1: empire in the west. He actually had control over what

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Speaker 1: is now modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic and

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Speaker 1: these lands of these territories, and the work he had

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Speaker 1: commissioned there provided him with trade of sugar, coffee and

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Speaker 1: exotic produce. Very valuable things. But he also wanted to

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Speaker 1: get the Louisiana territory back from Spain, and as we said,

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Speaker 1: Spain was certainly in a position to give it back

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Speaker 1: precise thing. So they made um a treaty known as

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Speaker 1: the Treaty of Sandel Defonso with Spain, which effectively, I think,

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Speaker 1: with a secret treaty, but anyway, it handed it back

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Speaker 1: to the power of France. But something happened to muck

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Speaker 1: up Napoleon's plans, basically for his his vast plans for

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Speaker 1: a Western Empire, and that happened with as we said,

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Speaker 1: the modern day Haiti territory. A slave uprising actually occurred

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Speaker 1: um in this territory, and our colleague Christian Conger talks

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Speaker 1: about how this is known as the only successful slave

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Speaker 1: uprising in history, which I found really interesting, and it

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Speaker 1: was started by those leaders known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, and

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Speaker 1: uh he led the successful revolt in this sort of

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Speaker 1: screwed up Napoleon's plans, as I said, at the end,

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Speaker 1: when he eventually lost control of the of the territory,

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Speaker 1: having Louisiana territory didn't make much sense to him anymore.

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Speaker 1: So if he if he lost control of this, of

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Speaker 1: this essential part of his Western plans, then there was

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Speaker 1: no point in having Louisiana territory. He didn't really want

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Speaker 1: it anymore. It was high time to unload it. And

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Speaker 1: if you have heard our podcast on the Louisiana purchase,

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Speaker 1: you know how that story went down. Thomas Jefferson decided

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Speaker 1: that he wanted to get his hands on that very

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Speaker 1: valuable port, and he is sent over an emissary, James

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Speaker 1: Monroe to try to negotiate getting New Orleans. That's right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we should emphasize Jefferson only one in New Orleans, only

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Speaker 1: wanted New Orleans, and he sent those specific budget and

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Speaker 1: gift with purchase. Napoleon said you want it, you take

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Speaker 1: the whole Louisiana territory, and like we emphasized before, that

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Speaker 1: turned out to be a very enormous parcel of land.

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Speaker 1: And in Jefferson instead it was signed for and it

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Speaker 1: is signed, sealed and delivered and being bang boom, there

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Speaker 1: goes the size of the United States. Just double yeah.

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Speaker 1: And Chuck's right, I mean in this ill Casador shipwreck

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Speaker 1: really was a key part. And it is interesting that

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Speaker 1: it was such a valuable territory and trading post in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans. But at the same time it was so

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Speaker 1: much trouble, and then it passed through three three countries

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Speaker 1: hands in a matter of I think three years, and

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Speaker 1: it's while Yeah, I mean we talked about the great

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Speaker 1: rivers of the world. You probably think of Amazon or

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Speaker 1: the Congo because they're so massive and rushing and mighty,

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Speaker 1: and they you know, neander and have so many different

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Speaker 1: types of wildlife and flora and fauna surrounding them. But

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Speaker 1: if you think about the truly powerful economics versus of water,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the Mississippi River was such a huge boon

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Speaker 1: to the United States and it's fledgling condition, and really

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Speaker 1: it helped build up a lot of controversy and secured

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of land for our very young nations. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Back in there is a fisherman named Jerry Urphy and

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Speaker 1: he was just out one day by the Gulf of

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Speaker 1: Mexico fishing and his nets pulled up some really heavy

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Speaker 1: stuff and as it turned out, it was a bunch

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Speaker 1: of slover coins and they were kind of molded together.

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Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, It's the longer things stay under water,

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Speaker 1: the more different types of I guess bacteria and algae

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Speaker 1: and things grow on them, and so they fused together

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Speaker 1: and they formed like this big masive coil of coins,

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Speaker 1: and he thought, well, that's interesting, and he was on

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Speaker 1: his toes. He called his lawyer to see if he

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Speaker 1: could get rights to the sunken booty, and he was

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Speaker 1: granted rights, and he found the treasurer called in some

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Speaker 1: underwater archaeologists and they determined, oh, yeah, we remember this ship,

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Speaker 1: the El Casador. It went down back in the late

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Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and Spain's been looking forward for quite some time.

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Speaker 1: And ironically the ship that Jerry Murphy was sailing in

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Speaker 1: that day was called the Mistake. But he didn't make

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Speaker 1: a mistake. He made a huge discovery. So it's a

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Speaker 1: good story, good story for everyone. Yeah, everyone involves. Thank god,

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Speaker 1: it's mystery solved. Jerry Murphy got some I guess, a

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Speaker 1: valuable find, and we had some thing else to talk about.

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Speaker 1: So another day in the life. And if you want

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Speaker 1: to read more about the shipwreck that doubled the size

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Speaker 1: of the United States, be sure to check the article

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Speaker 1: out on how Stuff Works dot com. And while you're there,

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Speaker 1: take a look at our blogs that we've started called

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Speaker 1: the Stuff You Missed in History Class, and Cannis and

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Speaker 1: I write on that What's a day? And maybe we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about another Louis. I know now we'll have to

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Speaker 1: say so. Be sure to check out the blog and

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Speaker 1: the article at half stuff works dot com for more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,

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Speaker 1: Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the Stuff you Missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot

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