Open Sea
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What stories are featured in this episode of Open Sea?
Today's podcast will feature two sailing horror stories. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Survivor's Guilt. While sailors are known to have many customs of the sea, there is one custom that is exceptionally dark. And once it begins, there's no going back. And that is the custom we will talk about in this story. And the second and final story you'll hear is called The Kaz 2. And it's about three friends' trip of a lifetime that turns into a nightmare. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week. Once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So, if that's of interest to you, please go through all of the Amazon Music Follow Button social media posts and be sure to correct all of their fans' spelling and grammar mistakes in the comments section. Okay, let's get into our first story, called Survivor's Guilt. On the morning of February 6th, 1821, four young men stood on the deck of a small boat out in the Pacific Ocean. The sun was out, it was beautiful and warm, the water was crystal blue, but none of these four men were paying any attention to their surroundings. Instead, all of them were just standing there in total silence, staring at each other. Finally, one of the four men spoke up. His name was Owen Coffin, and he was 18 years old. And Owen, like the other three men, had grown up on the water.
In fact, all four of these men had grown up on this small island called Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts, where the main industry there was whaling. Which meant sailors like these four men would go out and hunt whales and slaughter them for their oil. So from the time Owen and the rest of these men were very little, they were out on the water learning how to sail, and they were also learning the customs of the sea. And there was one custom in particular that Owen wanted to talk about right now with the other three men. So in a very serious and hushed tone, Owen asked the question of the other three men that sailors referred to as the delicate question. And after Owen asked the so-called delicate question, the other three men, who were already very serious and just kind of standing there in silence, suddenly their eyes started to go wide and their mouths went agape.
And then again, all of the men just kind of fell into total silence. The only sound they could hear was the splashing of the waves against the side of the boat. The captain of this vessel was a man named George Pollard. He was 28 years old, and he was actually Owen's older cousin. And what George wanted to say to Owen in response to his delicate question was no. But George didn't say that. Instead, he just put his hands up over his mouth and stared kind of incredulously at Owen and the other two men, who were also teenagers. Their names were George and Barzillai. And as he stared at these other three men, he realized that their answers to the delicate question was a resounding yes. They knew it had to be a yes. They had to do this.
And even though George could totally override them because he was the captain and so technically in charge, he knew in this situation, under this particular custom, he couldn't overrule them. And so, with his hand still over his mouth, George just nodded a yes. Yes, let's go forward with this custom. And so with a unanimous decision to move forward, Owen slowly reached down and pulled out the ship's logbook from underneath one of the seats behind him. And then he opened up the book and he flipped to the back pages of the logbook, which were totally blank. And he grabbed one of the pieces of paper and he ripped it out of the book. Then, Owen began to rip this piece of paper into strips. First, he ripped three identically long pieces of paper, and he held up all three at the same time to show the others that these are the three that are the same. And each of the three nodded their head, yes, we see that. And then Owen reached down, he grabbed the paper again, and he ripped a fourth strip out, and this one was dramatically shorter than the other three.
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