The History of the North Atlantic Ocean — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:21Thousands of miles of emptiness.
2. 0:25Nothing but blue, grey, green and white.
3. 0:28Giant waves, shrieking gales, water so cold that will kill you in minutes.
4. 0:35This is what millions of people in history had to cross in order to begin new lives.
5. 0:42Witnessing the greatest migration of peoples in history as well as the longest and most
6. 0:47bitterly fought of all naval battles it connects two hitherto unknown continents.
7. 0:54There is perhaps no stretch of water quite as forbidding, no stretch so important to
8. 0:59human history as this one.
9. 1:02Which is why I wanted to tell its story, a story of discovery, adventure, tragedy and
10. 1:09triumph.
11. 1:10This is the story of the North Atlantic.
12. 1:41The North Atlantic Ocean.
13. 1:44Separating Europe from North America from 3000km (1868 miles) at its narrowest to 7000km
14. 1:49(4300 miles) at its widest, it is today just a fraction of a day’s travel away.
15. 1:53But for thousands of years in the past, this stretch of turbulent water acted as a total
16. 1:59barrier of separation between ancient peoples.
17. 2:02While civilisations rose and fell in Europe, the native peoples of North America continued
18. 2:07their own journey forward, utterly oblivious of each others’ developments an ocean away.
19. 2:14To the peoples of Europe during antiquity, the Atlantic was considered to be the end
20. 2:18of the world, a violent ocean of storms and deep swells beyond the “Pillars of Atlas”,
21. 2:24that is the Gibraltar strait that separates this ocean with the more placid Mediterranean
22. 2:29Sea.
23. 2:31South of these straits is the last peak of the Atlas Mountains of today’s Morocco,
24. 2:35Jebel Musa, and north is the rock of Gibraltar.
25. 2:40The ancient Greeks believed that these peaks were the two pillars of the Titan Atlas, holding
26. 2:45up the known world.
27. 2:46The Greek historian Herodotus first referred to the sea beyond as the “Sea of Atlas”,
28. 2:52which the Romans then adopted as “Mare Atlanticum”, and eventually became known as The Atlantic
29. 2:59Ocean.
30. 3:01The galleys of the great civilisations of the ancient world, using a combination of
31. 3:05sail and oars were ill-suited to Atlantic travel, due to the inability of oars to make
32. 3:11regular contact with the water in heavy swells.
33. 3:15Some evidence suggests that sea trade between the British Isles and the Mediterranean did
34. 3:19occur via ship, however, and the most likely candidate for these traders were the Phoenicians
35. 3:23originating from today’s Lebanon.
36. 3:27There have been many theories advanced in recent decades that the ancient world had
37. 3:31contact with North America, whether it was the Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans, but these
38. 3:36theories have not been accepted in peer-reviewed historical journals.
39. 3:41In later antiquity, the Navigatio, an Irish book of the 6th Century AD, tells of the monk
40. 3:48Saint Brendan undertaking a long sea voyage in search of the Garden of Eden or the mythical
41. 3:53land of Tir Na Nogh to the far west of Ireland in that nation’s folklore that some have
42. 3:59compared to a voyage to North America across the Atlantic.
43. 4:03But the only source for this journey is the story written down by the monks of the time,
44. 4:08and we can not know for certain if indeed the voyage occurred at all, and if the places
45. 4:12described in the Navigatio relate to places within North America.
46. 4:18The first confirmed crossing of the Atlantic from Europe to North America did not occur
47. 4:22for another five centuries after Saint Brendan.
48. 4:26The Vikings of Scandinavia had developed the most advanced ships in the world at that time.
49. 4:31Their “longships” had similarities to the galleys of the ancient world, in using
50. 4:35a combination of oars and sail.
51. 4:37But the use of overlapping planks and iron rivets resulted in a much stronger construction
52. 4:42able to withstand rough ocean waters, as well as a high curved bow and stern enabling the
53. 4:48ship to cut through waves without flooding the vessel.
54. 4:52The Vikings had used these ships to expand their influence through raiding and settlement
55. 4:56well beyond Scandinavia during the “Viking Age” of the 9th-12th Centuries.
56. 5:02This time coincided with a regional warming around the North Atlantic known as the Medieval
57. 5:07Warm Period.
58. 5:09Their superior ship technology, in combination with remarkable courage and curiosity of far
59. 5:15lands, and this warm period, enabled the Vikings to colonise Iceland in the northern mid Atlantic
60. 5:21in the 9th and 10th Centuries.
61. 5:24According to the Norse Sagas of the time, the mariner Erik the Red of Norway had been
62. 5:30exiled from Iceland over a murder, and, sailing west settled on the southern tip of Greenland,
63. 5:36which he named, around 982AD.
64. 5:41The favourable climatic conditions of the time meant farming was possible this far north,
65. 5:46but much later with the onset of cooler conditions some four centuries later, contact with the
66. 5:51colony was eventually lost.
67. 5:55Prior to that outcome, however, either as a result of being blown off course on the
68. 5:59way back to Greenland from Norway, or part of a deliberate expedition to follow up on
69. 6:03a supposed earlier sighting of the Canadian coast by another Viking mariner, Erik the
70. 6:09Red’s son, Leif Erikson, was the first European to set foot upon North America, somewhere
71. 6:16between today’s Newfoundland and Labrador, around the year 1000AD.
72. 6:23He named the land Vinland, after sighting a valley containing many vines and grapes,
73. 6:28and the area was settled for some time after, confirmed only in recent living memory by
74. 6:33the discovery of the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in 1960.
75. 6:39It is still unknown what happened to the Viking settlement of Vinland, but the current consensus
76. 6:45is that it was probably inhabited for less than a generation.
77. 6:49Because the Sagas were not widely known in Europe outside of Norse and Icelandic communities,
78. 6:54it is unlikely that the voyages of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson were known to Christopher
79. 6:59Columbus who is universally known for his voyage across the Atlantic in that storied
80. 7:03year of 1492.
81. 7:06Originally from Genoa in today’s Italy, he received sponsorship for his expedition
82. 7:11across the Atlantic by the monarchs of the new joint kingdom of Spain, Ferdinand and
83. 7:16Isabella.
84. 7:18Having a misunderstanding of the size of the world, he believed that he had reached the
85. 7:22East Indies of Asia when he set foot upon the islands of the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola,
86. 7:28and carried that conviction to his death.
87. 7:31We have Columbus to thank for perhaps the most confusing set of terms of geographical
88. 7:36history, with the word “Indian” being widely used to describe the first peoples
89. 7:40of the Americas when in fact their last contact with Asia, and not even India itself, would
90. 7:45have been some 12,000 years prior when their ancestors first crossed the Bering Straits
91. 7:50between today’s Siberia and Alaska during the last Ice Age.
92. 7:55In recent years the commonly used expression “Columbus discovered America” has been
93. 8:00qualified extensively, not just for political correctness, but to actually assign his nonetheless
94. 8:05bold voyage the correct place in history.
95. 8:08The discovery of the Americas by humans was obviously made by the first peoples as just
96. 8:12mentioned.
97. 8:13And as we have seen with Leif Erikson, Columbus wasn’t even the first European to reach
98. 8:18the Americas.
99. 8:19But he rightfully has his place as the most significant figure in this story between two
100. 8:24continents because knowledge of his voyage upon his return to Spain spread like wildfire
101. 8:29across European society and initiated a new wave of exploration westward, now that he’d
102. 8:34taken that first step into the hitherto unknown.
103. 8:37Both continents would never be the same again as the world departed the Middle Ages and
104. 8:43entered the Early Modern Era.
105. 8:47While the Venetian John Cabot, sailing under the sponsorship of England’s Henry VII was
106. 8:52the first European since Leif Erikson to set foot upon North America in 1497, it was a
107. 8:58third Italian, Amerigo de Vespucci of Florence whose name would appear on the continents
108. 9:03of the New World, after German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller was inspired by tales
109. 9:09of the latter’s voyage enough to call these new lands after the Italian’s latinised
110. 9:15name, “America”.
111. 9:17In crossing the North Atlantic, Europeans changed a major part of the world more suddenly
112. 9:22and more violently than at any other time in recorded history.
113. 9:27The native population of the Caribbean was virtually wiped out by European diseases that
114. 9:32they had no resistance to.
115. 9:34The Aztec and Inca Empires of today’s Mexico and Peru were toppled within a generation
116. 9:40of Columbus, and their native populations would be reduced by half over the next century
117. 9:44as a result of the same European diseases.
118. 9:48In their place would come slaves from West Africa, sold by their own kin to slavers of
119. 9:53Portugal, Spain, England and the Netherlands in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe.
120. 9:59Their passage across the North Atlantic would be the worst of all, crammed into the lower
121. 10:04holds of ships in chains with barely arms length to move.
122. 10:08They would replace most of the population of the Caribbean, to work on sugar plantations
123. 10:13that would later enrich the early British Empire in particular.
124. 10:17Others would arrive on the shores of North America to also work plantations, but this
125. 10:22time in cotton and tobacco, replacing the earlier British indentured servants that paid
126. 10:27for their passage across the ocean by years of unpaid service to landowners.
127. 10:32The native peoples of North America, while not suffering the fate of slavery, would still
128. 10:37be afflicted by European diseases, the scourge of introduced alcohol and be forced off ancestral
129. 10:42lands in a series of betrayals by those coming from across the ocean.
130. 10:47These were the darker, sadder outcomes of the story of the North Atlantic.
131. 10:53For Europeans, however, the prospect of a new continent across the sea was seen by many
132. 10:58as an escape from poverty and religious persecution in Europe, and so the initial waves of migration
133. 11:04that came in the 16th and 17th Centuries were largely driven by reformist religious communities.
134. 11:10Such a journey would be a harrowing affair, lasting up to 3 months depending upon weather,
135. 11:15upon relatively small ships that would be dwarfed by the infamous swells of the North
136. 11:19Atlantic.
137. 11:21Gradually, as ships grew in size and seaworthiness, the journey would become more comfortable
138. 11:26so that, by the end of the 18th Century, the journey would be considered by a wider section
139. 11:30of Europeans looking to escape the boundaries of class-driven societies and begin a new
140. 11:35life in America.
141. 11:38Up until the American Revolution around that time, the vast majority of settlers from Europe
142. 11:42to North America were British and French, with some Dutch.
143. 11:46These centuries were but a prelude to what would come in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
144. 11:52The population of Europe exploded in the 1800s, as a result of reform of agriculture, industrialisation
145. 11:58and other factors.
146. 12:00Already relatively crowded, the continent’s people looked for somewhere to escape to.
147. 12:05At this same time, the first steamships had appeared, making the crossing of the Atlantic
148. 12:09a more predictable affair, as vessels were less at the whim of changing wind and weather.
149. 12:14The result was that as much as 50 million Europeans made the journey across the Atlantic
150. 12:19over the next century or so to begin new lives in the United States and Canada.
151. 12:26This time the ethnic blend would be across all of Europe, from Ireland, Scotland and
152. 12:30England in the West, to Scandinavia in the North, Germany, Poland and Russia in the centre
153. 12:36and east, and Italy and Greece in the south.
154. 12:40Practically all of you watching this video from Canada, the United States and Mexico
155. 12:44will have had at least one ancestor who had taken that brave choice to leave their life
156. 12:49in Europe behind, either on their own, or with their family, crossing this turbulent
157. 12:53ocean on a ship to begin a new one on a new continent.
158. 12:58It was the greatest migration of people in history, bringing together two continents
159. 13:02across an ocean with a common culture that today lives with us as the singular concept
160. 13:07of “The Western World”.
161. 13:10And what ships these were that evolved during this period of the passage of so many across
162. 13:15the Atlantic.
163. 13:17The transformation of ship size and design from 1800 to 1900 alone is one of the greatest
164. 13:22advances in the history of technology, and one that had a marked effect on everyday people,
165. 13:27and the world as a whole.
166. 13:30Wooden ocean-going sailing ships at the turn of the 1800s were actually regarded as the
167. 13:34most advanced technological packages of their day, with each ship taking a year or more
168. 13:39to build and at vast expense.
169. 13:42But this investment in capital was expected to be returned many times over as the ship
170. 13:46took fares from passengers or profit from traded goods over the many decades it would
171. 13:50spend in service.
172. 13:52As the decades of the 1800s moved forward, the nature of these vessels that would transport
173. 13:57people across the Atlantic would change.
174. 14:00Steam power gradually replaced wind power, and iron and steel replaced wood.
175. 14:06Steam made the crossings faster and more reliable, iron and steel made the ships much stronger,
176. 14:11allowing the size of the vessels to increase dramatically in the latter half of the century.
177. 14:17A sailing ship of 1800 could make the passage in around 6-8 weeks.
178. 14:22By the turn of the 20th Century, the voyage could be achieved in 6 days, a seven-fold
179. 14:27reduction in time.
180. 14:29A fully rigged sailing ship of 1800 was at most around 60m (200ft) in length and as much
181. 14:34as 400 gross tonnage.
182. 14:37The giant ocean liners at the turn of the 20th Century were over 260m (850ft) in length
183. 14:42– a five-fold increase in size, and over 50,000 gross tonnage, a twelve-fold increase
184. 14:48in weight, in just a hundred years.
185. 14:52The reason for such a dramatic increase was that a larger ship not only represented economies
186. 14:57of scale for shipping companies such that they could reduce their fares and make the
187. 15:01passage affordable to all, but also that a larger ship could handle the infamous swells
188. 15:06and waves of the North Atlantic that much more smoothly, making the crossing safer as
189. 15:11well as more comfortable.
190. 15:12At the height of their glory, the most famous of all these liners began its maiden voyage
191. 15:18from Southampton, England to New York on 10 April 1912.
192. 15:22Hailed at the time as “unsinkable” due to its double hull, the RMS Titanic was also
193. 15:29the pinnacle of style and luxury, an effective floating palace of exquisite interior design
194. 15:34and comfort.
195. 15:36As we all know, the Titanic never made it to New York, struck by that infamous hazard
196. 15:41of the North Atlantic, an iceberg, on the night of 15 April.
197. 15:47Cruelly, the grazing blow of the impact subverted the “unsinkable” design, meaning that
198. 15:52multiple compartments of the hull were opened to the sea, flooding them and eventually causing
199. 15:57them to overflow and fill the remaining compartments until, several hours later, the whole ship
200. 16:02was lost, along with 1,500 lives.
201. 16:06This tragic loss of life would be overshadowed in the next few decades however, as the North
202. 16:11Atlantic would, for the first time in its history, become the site of a monumental battle
203. 16:16for military and strategic dominance, as two World Wars unfolded.
204. 16:20In both World Wars Germany attempted to blockade her opponent Britain, dependent upon supplies
205. 16:26of food and fuel from abroad, and assisted by munitions, materiel and fighting men from
206. 16:31North America and its colonies.
207. 16:34While Germany’s surface fleet of dreadnought battleships such as the Tirpitz and Bismarck
208. 16:37of World War II were much vaunted, the principal weapon at Germany’s disposal in both wars
209. 16:43was its U-boat fleet of submarines.
210. 16:46Short for “unterseeboot”, meaning under sea boat, the German U-boats of World War
211. 16:52I were the most advanced submarines of the day.
212. 16:56Initially the u-boats targetted the British Grand Fleet, but within a year of the opening
213. 17:00of hostilities, Germany applied the doctrine of “unrestricted submarine warfare” against
214. 17:06any vessel, military or civilian arriving in British waters.
215. 17:11The campaign, while not achieving its goal of starving Britain into submission, was nonetheless
216. 17:16devastating, with half of Britain’s merchant fleet sunk during the course of the war.
217. 17:22Equally important, and infamous in its day was the sinking by u-boat torpedoes of the
218. 17:27cruise liner Lusitania, one of the largest and most luxurious cruise liners of her day,
219. 17:33just south of Ireland on 7 May 1915.
220. 17:371,200 lives were lost, including 128 US citizens.
221. 17:42Outrage at the incident is cited as a key reason for the previously isolationist United
222. 17:47States joining the allies against Germany in early 1917.
223. 17:51In total, throughout four years of war, 4,000 ships were sunk and tens of thousands of lives
224. 17:57lost.
225. 17:59Twenty years later, and the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II began, upping the
226. 18:03ante significantly upon the battles of the earlier war.
227. 18:07It has been regarded as the largest, longest and most complex naval battle in history.
228. 18:13The strategy of both sides was more or less the same – Germany intended to starve Britain
229. 18:18into submission, while Britain and her colonies, later joined by the United States wished to
230. 18:23ship men and materiel across the Atlantic use the British Isles as a springboard to
231. 18:27launch an invasion of German occupied Europe.
232. 18:31The highlight of this protracted battle centered around two of the war’s most famous surface
233. 18:36ships.
234. 18:37The sinking of the pride of the British Fleet, the battleship HMS Hood, on 24 May 1941 occurred
235. 18:44in only a few minutes, with all but 3 of its 1,400 crew lost as a single lucky shell from
236. 18:50the equally famous German battleship Bismarck hit the Hood’s magazine causing the whole
237. 18:54ship to explode.
238. 18:57In response the British launched an all-out effort to find the Bismarck.
239. 19:00Two days later, the Bismarck was located, and an outdated biplane launched from the
240. 19:05British carrier Ark Royal managed a lucky hit with its sole torpedo, damaging the ship’s
241. 19:10rudder, reducing its mobility and making it vulnerable to attack.
242. 19:14Two British battleships subsequently engaged the Bismarck and by the 27 May, just three
243. 19:19days after the loss of Hood, the Bismarck was sunk.
244. 19:23Beyond such highlights however, the true battle was under the waves.
245. 19:28Most of the 3,500 merchant vessels sunk in the Atlantic during the war were a result
246. 19:32of u-boat torpedoes.
247. 19:35The German response to allied merchant shipping being escorted by armed naval vessels was
248. 19:40to hunt together in “wolf-packs”, especially in the “Mid-Atlantic Gap” where there
249. 19:45was no air cover.
250. 19:47Submarines were especially vulnerable to detection and attack from aircraft, and so considerable
251. 19:52effort went into developing aircraft with longer range and more sophisticated radar
252. 19:56to close this gap, which it eventually was in 1943, after which u-boat losses mounted
253. 20:03significantly.
254. 20:04But perhaps the most significant advance in technology from the Battle of the Atlantic
255. 20:10came with application of first generation computers by British engineers’ successful
256. 20:15attempt to break the enigma code used by u-boat submarines to encrypt their coordinated attacks.
257. 20:22This secret battle of numbers and codes was only revealed in the 1990s and advanced the
258. 20:27development of computer systems by at least a decade, the effects of which undoubtedly
259. 20:31changed our world today.
260. 20:32The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.
261. 20:34I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight
262. 20:35called the 'Battle of Britain'.
263. 20:36– Winston Churchill More than 100,000 lives were lost in the Atlantic
264. 20:37between 1939 and 1945, with about a third each between allied naval crews, allied merchantman
265. 20:45and u-boat crews respectively.
266. 20:48The fatality rate of u-boat crews of 75% was the highest of any of the armed services of
267. 20:54Germany in World War II.
268. 20:58After the war, the North Atlantic once again resumed as the channel of civilian traffic
269. 21:02between the two continents.
270. 21:05Ocean liners continued to dominate passenger traffic for a time, but this would all change
271. 21:09during the 1950s and 60s with the development of the jet airliner.
272. 21:15Flights across the Atlantic via waystops such as Iceland and the Azores had begun relatively
273. 21:19early in the history of aviation.
274. 21:21Charles Lindburgh’s solo crossing of the ocean by the custom built monoplane Spirit
275. 21:26of St Louis in 1927 made him one of the greatest celebrities of his era.
276. 21:32And throughout the 1930s and 40s piston engined airliners had been making the crossing.
277. 21:37But the cost of a transatlantic airline ticket was beyond the means of most, and the journey
278. 21:42in the lower atmosphere compared to today’s airliners was turbulent and uncomfortable.
279. 21:47Journey times gradually improved from a whole 24 hours in the 1930s down to 8-12 hours by
280. 21:53the 1950s.
281. 21:54But the development of jetliners in the 1950s, initially the British De-Havilland Comet,
282. 22:00and later the perfected Boeing 707 cut journey times to today’s standards, with a flight
283. 22:05between New York and London now taking only 7 hours.
284. 22:09With ocean liners still taking several days, there was no competition, despite the still
285. 22:14high cost of air travel among the so-called “jet set”.
286. 22:18By the mid 1960s, centuries of civilian sea travel across the Atlantic all but came to
287. 22:23an end, as the modern jet age began.
288. 22:27For a few decades, between 1976 and 2003, this time was halved again, down to only three
289. 22:34and a half hours, as the Anglo-French supersonic airliner Concorde plied its handful of routes
290. 22:39between New York and Washington, London and Paris at twice the speed of sound.
291. 22:45In this, most beautiful of all engineered artefacts of humans, we could see the time
292. 22:50taken to cross this ocean fall from 3 months… to the same number of hours.
293. 22:57The North Atlantic today is by far the busiest intercontinental air traffic corridor in the
294. 23:02world.
295. 23:03The surge of traffic from west to east begins in the evening of North America, while the
296. 23:07opposing flow surges during the day as seen in this video from the UK National Air Traffic
297. 23:12Service.
298. 23:14So many aircraft cross this ocean connecting the sister continents of Europe and North
299. 23:17America, that separate tracks are needed to ensure safe and coordinated traffic.
300. 23:23The journey of humankind’s interaction with the North Atlantic, then has gone from emptiness
301. 23:28to one of perilous discovery and then mass migration across its surface, witnessing two
302. 23:33terrible wars and finally to simply watching silver streaks fly quickly and smoothly several
303. 23:39miles above its infamous swells and white water.
304. 23:44Two continents, hitherto unknown to each other came together, for many, yes, tragically,
305. 23:49but for so many more, bringing a new life of freedom and prosperity.
306. 23:55The North Atlantic became that blue, white and grey link between a shared culture that
307. 24:01today we simply call “The West”.
308. 24:06And that’s it for this video.
309. 24:08Please like and share if you enjoyed it or found it useful, and please let me know your
310. 24:11thoughts in the comments, especially if you have your own experience of travel across
311. 24:15this ocean, and if I missed out anything you feel is important.
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