Short Stuff: Did a shipwreck double the size of the United States?

Finding a 1784 shipwreck

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1:02What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash BankGuy. Capital One N-A. Member FDIC. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. Josh, Chuck, Jerry, Dave. Let's go back in time. Do you know who else is in the room with us?

1:24Jerry Murphy? No. Do you know who wrote this article? No. Not you. Okay, yeah. Because I was going to say, I didn't even know about some of this stuff. Yeah, this, maybe the densest three pages I've ever seen written, was written by our old colleague, Kristen Conger. Conger. That's right. This is seriously, incredibly well written. She did a great job. Kong's did a great job. And Kristen is thankfully still around in the podcasting biz.

1:55She has her great show, Unladylike, that she used to co-host with Caroline. But eventually, Caroline left, and Conger kept doing it by herself, and it's still great, still around. She has a Unladylike book, and we think the world of Conger. So still support her, please. Way to go, Conger, and way to go for this article, because it really is incredibly well done, especially for something she probably wrote in a day, maybe a day and a half, you know? We used to crank these out. Yeah, we did.

2:26So the whole story starts in 1993. That's where Conger put it, and I think that was the right place, the right way to go. Out on the Gulf of Mexico, there was a guy named Jerry Murphy, who was a fisherman there, and he was trawling in the Gulf of Mexico. And when he brought the net up, there was some debris in it. He just assumed were rocks at first, but I guess he took a closer look and were like, those are silver coins that are fused together because they've been underwater for so long.

2:57Hot damn. That's right. So he did what anyone would do. He got in touch with an attorney. He said, can I keep this stuff? And then he contacted history experts and said, where did these things come from? And then about a year after that, they finally said, hey, dude, do you know what this is? This is from the ruins of the El Cazador or the Hunter. And this is a ship that disappeared in 1784 after it set out from Veracruz, Mexico,

3:28with 19 tons of Spanish currency, which was silver reels at the time. Yeah. They were newly minted, even. There was apparently a mint in Mexico, and they were headed to New Orleans. And at the time, you're like, well, why does Spain care about New Orleans? Spain cared about New Orleans because that was the capital of the Louisiana colony owned by Spain at the time. Sure. You thought it was France? No, there was a period where Spain owned Louisiana, and it was during this time.

4:00And the reason they sent 19 tons of silver coins to New Orleans was because New Orleans' currency had recently become devalued. There was a lot of counterfeiting going on. There was a lack of hard currency around. So they were bringing this hard currency to pay the soldiers, to pay government officials, and it went down. I can't imagine being King Carlos II and being like, are you kidding me? We lost 19 tons of silver coins forever.

4:30Yeah, and so King Carlos was like, I imagine, facepalmed and said, oh, God, is this, like, is Louisiana even worth all this, you guys? He said, I hate Mondays. He did. Ian Garfield. It was, it's so far away. We lost all this money. We just won it from the French a couple of decades ago. Like, do we really want to be in the Louisiana business anymore? And so, well, we should back up a little and just explain who he was.

5:03He was a cousin to King Louis XV of France. I said 25th, just a little behind the scenes there. Josh corrected me. It was awesome. And in 1762, Louis ceded the Louisiana territory to Carlos with a treaty of Fontainebleau. And it wasn't because they were family. It was basically he wanted to keep Louisiana out of the hands of the Brits. Right. Better in the hands of a cousin that's ruling another country than in the Brits who he has no friends with, you know?

5:35So now Louisiana and New Orleans is under Spanish rule.

Spanish rule in New Orleans

5:41And it was actually a pretty smart move because after the Seven Years' War ended, King Louis had to cede all of the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi to the Brits as part of the treaty, except New Orleans. And the reason New Orleans is such a plum was because if you wanted to move goods from one place to another, there were no railroads. There were no stagecoaches. You did it on the river. And the Mississippi in particular was a very valuable river because it went from the top of the continent to the bottom.

6:15And when you got your stuff down to New Orleans, you could prepare for a seagoing ship, put your goods on that. And now from the Gulf of Mexico, you can take that stuff and sell it anywhere in the world. That's right. Another reason New Orleans is a plum is because it's New Orleans. It's one of the great American cities. Man, I love New Orleans. I love that city. It's been too long. I need to get back there. It is. It's a cool city. It's almost like it's got its own vibe, you know? Like there's no other place like it. No other place like it. And one of the friendliest, like, if you're open to life and you go to New Orleans, there's a 50% chance you're going to end up in a stranger's home, like eating dinner with them or something.

6:5450%, man. 50%. Those are high odds. All right. Speaking of high, maybe we should take a break. And we'll be right back after this. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all. Turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work.

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7:59You can scan a QR code to enter, pick up what you need, and just walk out. Or, as Jaleah puts it, tap, grab, and go 24-7. We started to get flooded with folks saying, Hey, I need you in my city. It became their mission to develop a store that could open within three months, even without any infrastructure. And just when we were like, how are we going to accomplish this goal? We won the AT&T Small Business Contest Grant. That $50,000 got us over the finish line where we built the first AI-powered grocery shipping container in the country.

8:30For Jaleah, it's about building a legacy to show the world that you can solve any problem when you work together. Having the support of AT&T, the city of Atlanta, is huge. Look at how many people we've been able to help. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. All right.

9:04So, New Orleans is there. It's a very hot shipping port. That's one of the pros, for sure. One of the downsides is tons of mosquitoes, meaning a lot of yellow fever, a lot of smallpox. But it was great real estate, obviously, with that port right there.

Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase

9:22So, around that time, because of this, France starts looking back at New Orleans. And Napoleon is in power by this point, 1799. And he was like, man, I really want to get into the West. And New Orleans is pretty great, man. I got the mouth of the Mississippi right there. If I can control New Orleans, then that would be really great for my interest on that side of the world. Right. So, he goes back to Spain, and he's like, hey, I would love the Louisiana Territory back.

9:53What do you say I give your son-in-law the throne of Tuscany, right? And you give me back the Louisiana Territory. And so, Napoleon and the King of Spain came up with the Treaty of San Ildefonso, which in English is the Treaty of St. Fonsi. And France suddenly had the Louisiana Territory again. That's right. But around the same time, there was some French-owned Hispaniola,

10:24which was Haiti and the Dominican Republic is what we would call it today. They were farming sugar and coffee and tropical produce. So, that was all great for the French and for Napoleon. Getting New Orleans would mean you could trade that stuff much easier. Right. Much more easily. And so, he was like, this is all going to come together. However, the enslaved people there had other ideas, and they led what is the only, like, really successful slave revolt in history.

10:55Yeah, the Haitian Rebellion, led by Toussaint Louverture, which I was like, yes, that's going to be an episode. Yeah, for sure. So, I went and put it on the list. Oh, good. But this was in Haiti, which at the time was St. Domingue. Domingue. I don't remember how to say it. Domingue? Yeah. And St. Domingue was far and away the crown jewel of France's economic holdings over in the West, right? In the West Indies. And so, even if you had New Orleans, without the country that was producing all the stuff that you were going to take to New Orleans and then ship around the world, you're just basically your whole Western economic empire that Napoleon was going to build is just out the window.

11:40So, he said, you know what, I don't think we really need Louisiana anymore. The Brits are knocking at the door again. I'm going to have to fight them. I'm sick of those guys. I need some quick money. Let me see who wants to buy the Louisiana territory. And in walked Thomas Jefferson, reading a Bible that he edited himself. That's right. And Napoleon was like, it turns out I also hate Mondays. And Thomas Jefferson said, you know what, I love Mondays. And I love Louisiana.

12:11And I love New Orleans. So, TJ comes in. He's like, I don't want to fight with you guys. So, why don't we just see if we can work this out in a friendly way. So, he sent James Monroe down there to the French government to buy just New Orleans at this point for like three million bucks. He's like, that's as high as I'll go. Not a penny more. I'm not going to pay a lot for this territory. That's right. So, Monroe goes and talks to Napoleon and is like, what do you think? And Napoleon goes, how about this?

12:42Here's my counteroffer. You have to buy all of the Louisiana territory. And James Monroe dropped his teacup. Luckily, there's somebody there to catch it before it shattered on the floor. He said, for $15 million. And James Monroe did the math real quick in his head. And he's like, that's less than four cents an acre. And he said, sold. He said, sold. Yeah. So, he signed over to Jefferson. And, you know, of course, we did a whole episode on the Louisiana Purchase.

13:13That was a good one. Yeah, the nitty-gritty details. But that basically doubled the size of the country. And then, you know, when I looked at this article, and I might title it this, too, like, how did a shipwreck double the size of the United States? At the end of my first read-through, I was like, but wait, how did that happen again? I guess the idea is, had that shipwreck never happened, Spain would have been able to deliver their silver. Right. And maybe would have stayed in the Louisiana business. Exactly.

13:44Okay. Yeah. So, I got it. Yeah, you did. And I feel like we did Conger's article some justice. I hope so. Like I said, it was a really great article, and, Kristen, it's awesome. Yep. It was kind of one of our drunk history-style shortstuffs. That's right. Except we're not drinking. No. Because it's 2.15. Yep. On a Thursday, even. That's right. At any rate, I think shortstuffs out, guys.

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