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Short Stuff: Mystery of the Sarah Jo · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. Josh here, Chuck here,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: let's get going with short stuff because I love this one.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: That's right, yet another maritime disaster our most popular sub field,
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: it seems like.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to give a huge shout out to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Strange Company, a great website. They have a Friday link
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: dump every week. It's really great. But they also just
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: write on strange mysteries and weird stuff and that's where
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I first heard of this. But also hat tip to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the Maui Times and the La Times for some help
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: with getting our facts straight on this.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we could maybe even do maritime disasters.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: You should know as its own separate little short podcast.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: People love maritime disasters, can't get enough of it. They're
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: all sickos, all right.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: So this is the story of the Sarah Joe.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: It takes place in nineteen seventy nine when a guy
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: from California, a twenty seven year old named Scott Mormon
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: who is living in Hawaii, went with four construction worker buddies.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Went to them and said, hey, guys, let's not do
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  Speaker 2: our work today. Let's go let's go fishing. It's a
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  Speaker 2: great day.
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  Speaker 3: Let's do it.
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  Speaker 2: One of the guys, Ralph mala Yacchini. He had a
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: access to a boat from his brother Robert, who did
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: not go on this trip, but a seventeen foot Boston
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  Speaker 2: whaler named.
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  Speaker 3: The Sarah Joe. And the five of these guys.
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  Speaker 2: Who were you know, they weren't super experienced fishermen, but
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: they knew their way around a boat and ocean set
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  Speaker 2: out for you know, probably not a three hour tour,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: but maybe a six hour tour.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, from Hannah, Hawaii, I believe, on the island of Maui.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And because this was not supposed to be more than
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a few hour tour, they didn't pack a ton of supplies.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: They were just going fishing. It was a beautiful day
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and like you said, they skipped work to take advantage
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: of it. Robert, Ralph mala Yacchini's brother, later said that
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the sea looked like a lake that day. But within
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: two hours of them setting out on the Sarah Joe,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: it just completely turned. And within a couple hours of that,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: there was a gale that had whipped up and it
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  Speaker 1: was just not a good scene for somebody to be
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: out in an open boat on.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: No and it disappeared that boat was gone, the Coastguard
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: went looking. Obviously, they spent about a week searching. They
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: eventually called off their search, and then friends and family
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: kept looking for about another month and never found anything
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: at all, no trace anywhere of any of these guys,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: anything on that boat, any part of that boat. And
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I guess it seemed like that was probably the end
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: of the story at the time, until a decade later,
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  Speaker 2: in September eighty eight, when marine biologist named John Naughton
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: was doing some research on an uninhabited island, actually a
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: string of islands, the Tamgi Atoll, the Marshall Islands, and
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: he saw a boat and he was like, wait a minute,
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  Speaker 2: it's got a Hawaiian registry. I think that's the Sarah Joe.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: And the reason I know that is because I was
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  Speaker 2: one of the guys ten years earlier.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: That was looking for it. Yeah, in that nuts, it's amazing.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, what was just a crazy twist of fate,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: because if he hadn't been in the search, he said,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: he immediately thought of the Sarah Joe. If he hadn't
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: have been, you know, primed already ten years before to
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: be thinking about that boat, who knows if anybody would
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: have ever done anything about it. But John Naughton. He
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: started looking around and found near the boat there was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a pile of rocks and it turned out to be
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a burial mound. On top of it, kind of a
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: dead giveaway is was a driftwood cross and a part
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of a jawbone. And when the rocks were removed, he
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: found more parts of his skeleton. And then there was
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: one other thing, a little pad or a little stack
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of paper that had been partially burned. And that was it.
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  Speaker 1: John Naughton looked around the rest of the beach. He
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  Speaker 1: didn't find anything else. He didn't find any other remains.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't find anything but this weird assemblage of clues
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  Speaker 1: and human remains.
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  Speaker 3: That's right.
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  Speaker 2: Which raises some very big questions which will answer after
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  Speaker 2: the break, namely, how did this boat get twenty three
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  Speaker 2: hundred miles away, how did this guy die, when did
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: he die? Who buried this guy? And where are the
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  Speaker 2: other four guys.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of questions. We'll be right back, So, Chuck,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: you just rattled off a lot of questions. And first
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  Speaker 1: thing we should say is that after Naughton got the
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  Speaker 1: remains back into the hands of the US Army Central
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  Speaker 1: Identification Lab in Hawaii. They couldn't determine how this person
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: died or when they died, but they did determine that
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  Speaker 1: it was Scott Mormon, the Native Californian who was one
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of the guys who shipped out on that boat with
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  Speaker 1: the other four dudes. It definitely was somebody from that
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Joe Expedition fishing trip, and it definitely was the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Sarah Joe boat. But that was about all of the
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: questions that you just said that they could answer.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they you know, of course, his family was like
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: coming up with ideas how he could have made it
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  Speaker 2: that far, whether or not he was alive when he
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: got there. His family thinks that he may have gotten
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: there alive, but then you know, died of from the
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: elements and not having water. Other people say, well, maybe
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: he strapped himself to the boat and actually died out there,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: but that's how he finally reached land because he was
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: strapped to that boat.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And we just don't know, and we also.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Don't know who would have buried him, but that stack
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  Speaker 2: of papers is a pretty good clue.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, there's a theory that he was buried
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  Speaker 1: by Chinese fishermen, and the reason why is because that
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  Speaker 1: stack of papers, they were like little three by three
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: sheets of paper. Altogether the stack was less than an
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: inch thick, but one of the major characteristics of the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: stack of paper was that there was a sheet of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: foil in between each sheet of paper. And the reason
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: that some people think that this is a Chinese fishing
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  Speaker 1: expedition that found and buried him is because there in
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  Speaker 1: Chinese funeral customs something called joss paper, which is burned
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and it's considered spirit money, so it's a gift to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the deceased to use in the afterlife. And the defining
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: characteristic of joss paper is that it has a foil
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  Speaker 1: lining on at least one side. The big suggestion for
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  Speaker 1: why they would have put across is that they may
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: have recognized this guy as Caucasian, which would suggest that
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: they found him while he was still relatively intact. But
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that also still leaves the question, Chuck of when this
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: burial took place, and they think they got it within
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: like a six year window of when when he would
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: have washed up onto the shore.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they found out that there was a survey of
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: that atoll conducted in nineteen eighty two. The incident took
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: place in seventy nine. The report didn't say anything about
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: a boat. You would think it would be included. I
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: also saw that it's possible, you know, when you're at
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: these tiny remote islands, that they could have missed something
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: like that. It's those surveys aren't the most like detailed surveys.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: But if they didn't miss it, then that would mean
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: that something happened over the course of three years.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in that eerie So imagine that if he had
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: strapped himself to the boat and died in the storm
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: or shortly after, that would suggest that he was adrift
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: in the Pacific for three years, dead and strapped to
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  Speaker 1: the Mary Sarah Joe. That freaky.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know enough about how big the ocean
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  Speaker 2: is to know if three years is if you could
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  Speaker 2: drift around for three years without anybody seeing you ever,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: that seems lovely to me in the eighties.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but I don't know, man, this is a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: pretty remote part of the world. I think this is
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: where that Point Nemo area is, you know, the most
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: remote part of the world that's furthest away from any land. Masks.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it's in that area, that region.
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  Speaker 2: I guess it's possible, but it also had to get
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: from Hawaii to there over three years.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I don't speculating.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And if it wasn't just a drift
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  Speaker 1: for three years, who knows what happened then, Like, I
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: have no clue and it will probably never be answered.
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  Speaker 1: But the reason that they think the Chinese fishing expedition
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: didn't tell anybody is because it was probably an illegal
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: fishing expedition, which is, you know, they didn't tell anybody
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: that they found these remains, but at least they took
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the time to bury them and give them like some
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  Speaker 1: sort of funeral service, which is pretty top notch for
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: illegal fishermen if you think about it.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the kind of coolest part of
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  Speaker 2: the story, is that they've had enough respect for this
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  Speaker 2: human that they didn't even know to take care of
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  Speaker 2: it in that way.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: For sure. I think that's it for short Stuff, right,
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  Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Short Stuff is.
• 9:47
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• 9:50
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