#154 The shipwreck of Hendrick Hamel in ancient Korea

Transcript

Yo, welcome to Roaming Holiday. So in case you happen to just click on this because you were looking up information about 17th century Dutch sailor Hendrick Hamel, this is a travel podcast where in these current episodes, I'm walking around the Olle Trail that's a trail that goes all the way around the outside of Jeju Island, which is just a little bit south of Korea and is part of Korea. Last episode, I got to this point that was in the southwest of Jeju, and from there I could see a couple of islands, and there was a little plaque that said these are the southernmost point of the Korean territory. That's it. That's the end of the line. Apparently you could take a ferry there, but it only leaves a couple of times a day and I didn't even know that was the thing, so I didn't do that. I just observed it from a distance, but it was still really cool. To see it and just be like, well, there it is. That's as far south as you can go. And one of these plaques talked about Hendrick Hamel and said, in the 1600s, this Dutch guy shipwrecked there and spent many years in Korea and then wrote the first account of what was then called the Josian Empire, but then became Korea.

And that was very little information, but obviously pretty enticing of what now? What? Some guy shipwrecked over there and then in the 1600s he just had to live in Korea when no one knew what Korea even was or what was going on here at all, and it seemed extra cool to be in that place, like to be looking at it. That's the place, that's where that happened.

It wasn't the very farthest island south. He shipwrecked on Gapetto Island. That's the second, most southerly, although I could see them both from my vantage point on the coast, but I kind of tucked that away of like, I should look that up later. I should see what that story is all about. So let's take a little break from my circumnavigation of Jeju, and let's learn about Hendrick Hamel, because I did a little looking up about this guy. If you want cold, hard information about this guy, I'm sure you could do better than me. You know, I read the wiki page. I found an occasional little YouTube video talking about him. I dove in here and there. I couldn't find any easily accessible version of the book that he wrote about his travels. I found one on archive.org, but it wasn't in English. So I've just got other information, other people found. But I got the basics down. So let's just talk about the basics.

Because I think this is really dang interesting. This is something like, I wish there was a movie about this guy. I'd never heard of this guy. And I guess there's only so much room in the public consciousness for explorers. There's only so many that you just know their name. Everyone is just kind of aware of them to some degree. But Hendrick Hamel is not one of them. I never heard of this guy ever. And even looking him up, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find information about him.

Yeah, I just think this story is so interesting. This is where I wish I was like a film executive purely just so I could get people to make movies that I want to see, you know. When I hear about an interesting story or something, we're like, man, there's like so many World War II stories. You'd think like how many could there be left? They've done so many World War II movies. But there's still crazy stuff that happened that would make a fine film. All kinds of stuff throughout history. Tons of weird stuff, but this is one of them. This is a thing that I think would make a fucking interesting movie.

So the basics of this guy born in 1630 in Gorin-Cham, Netherlands. That's I think a pretty small city, 37,000 people or something. Although I noticed that. I thought that was interesting that, you know, like my hometown, Frederickton, New Brunswick has more people than that. Not a ton more, you know, double or whatever, but our list of notable people is not especially long. Gorin-Cham, Netherlands, has like, is it just Hendrik Hamill? Now, man, so many people because again, it just goes back so much farther. Just like hundreds and hundreds of years of previous history more than North America has. The number of notable people from this one random little Dutch town is a shit ton.

When he was 20 years old in 1650, he got a job with the Dutch East Indian trading company, sailed to the Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia, and he got work as a bookkeeper. 5:00 So I think it's probably not totally coincidental that he wasn't the only one that got shipwrecked. There was a bunch of them, but he's the guy who wrote the book because he, maybe I'm just presuming here, was not like a prototypical sailor, you know, he was there to be a bookkeeper. So maybe he was a little more inclined to be the guy who writes about this when he gets back, which is neat, because like, who knows, maybe nobody else would have. You know, maybe they just want to let this event go basically unrecorded. So cheers to you, Hendrik. The Dutch sure did get around too. I mean, I don't have an extremely great understanding of, I don't know, the scope and scale of Europe is a little tough for me to comprehend, because North America is such a different situation. Like I even think about that speaking of World War II. It seems weird to me this notion of like, what if Germany won? I mean, that's putting it too simply, I guess. But I'm like, look at the size of Germany. It's so tiny. What do you mean, what if Germany won? These like alternate reality TV shows where everyone's speaking German in America. And it's like, I don't think that even, that doesn't seem like it makes sense on any fucking level to me at this tiny little country. What are you talking about? You can start some shit, but you can't win. You can't win against America and the USSR. They're enormous. And I don't know, maybe there's something I'm not understanding here, but they didn't, they didn't win. So it seems kind of similar with the Netherlands where I'm always surprised how at so many points in history all over the place, there's always a Dutch guy showing up. And it's like, man, this little country just got all over the place. And in fact, when I visited the Netherlands, that was one of the first things that I was aware of. I have an uncle who's Dutch. Six foot four gigantic white guy. And then I got there and I'm like, wow, look at that. Everyone's like me, a tall skinny white guy. The women are as tall as me. It's amazing how tall Dutch people are. But then there's all kinds of people who are not tall white people. And I quickly learned like, I don't know, I found like a clip from Oprah where these two black ladies from the Netherlands were on Oprah. And telling her about the slave history of the Netherlands. And Oprah was like, I didn't even know about this. I didn't know, I didn't know there was a big black population in the Netherlands. And hey, if Oprah didn't fucking know, I think it's okay that I didn't know either. But I learned fast when I got there, the Dutch man, they got up to a lot. But again, that's that tangle of Europe. Everybody got up to a lot. There's just so much more history. The density of history is crazy compared to North America. We got nothing. We got some railroads.

So it seems Hendrick was not too deep into this new career. If you got the job in 1650, because by 1653, he was sailing to Japan on a ship called the Sparrow Hawk. He was going to a little harbor off Nagasaki called Dejima.

That I think I read was like basically a man-made little island. I don't believe it exists anymore. But it was basically the only part of Japan that was open to trade. You know, they had the isolationist policies going on, which will become important because apparently they weren't the only ones. Asia was big on isolationist policies. So he was on his way there and he didn't make it because at that exact point where I was standing last episode on this podcast, he and 35 other crewmen all shipwrecked on Gapido, the little island that I was staring at with mine eyes. That was one idea I had if they were to make, if they were to make the movie version. That's like one of the conceits you could do is a modern day guy visiting Jeju. And then, or just visiting Korea in general because this guy ended up going all over the country. And, you know, comparing and contrasting the modern day version with what happened to Hendrick and his crew.

But that would probably be a bad way to approach it because the modern day part would be so boring. Like, he's going through all this crazy shit meanwhile in the present day. Like, ooh, a plum popsicle. Oh, I can buy a coffee with my bank card from an unmanned station. How neat. Oh, the rice balls in Korea aren't the same as Japan. I mean, it would be this podcast. You know, it would just be a bunch of nothing happening. I think contrasting the two things, maybe it would not be such a great idea because the modern day part would just be beyond pointless seeming.

So yeah, this is one thing where I don't have the exact info because I heard different things from different places. Or not different things, just more complete information. Like, the wiki page just says he and 35 other crewmates survived. But I believe, I don't know, I just kind of took that to mean everyone survived. But I think I heard somewhere else that like 28 people didn't survive. So half of them almost didn't make it. So off to a bad start. Real bad storm. Major shipwreck. Which I guess their lucky Gapato Island was there. Like, it's relatively close to the shore. I think it's only two or three kilometers away. But that's a big difference. That's a big difference compared to drowning. But Gapato was off the coast of Josian, which is now Korea. The Josian Empire was around for the weird number of 505 years. 500 years before modern day Korea. It was Josian. So they were deep in the midst of that particular dynasty at that time. And right away began kind of the push pull of them kind of being treated not so bad and also being treated bad. You know, kind of back and forth for the next 13 fucking years.

Because they were first awoken on the beach or whatever with like hundreds of armed soldiers all around them. Josian soldiers and they were scared of shit and they were like, oh man, we're going to die. And then some government officials showed up and seemed to have more, a bit more awareness of what was going on. Although these Josian people, they didn't know much about the outside world. Like they didn't, when they were later told about all these other countries that exist, they kind of laughed it off. Like nah, you're just talking about little villages and stuff. Like to them, there's Japan, there's China. They're awareness stretched to about Siam and like that was it. Or I guess they were aware of Portugal because they got tobacco from Japan and apparently it was rife in Josian. Everybody smoked. Hendrick said he saw a four year old kid smoking once. Just everybody was smoking. But they knew that the Japanese got this amazing tobacco plant from the Portuguese. So they thought maybe these Dutch people were Portuguese, whatever that was. But these officials were a little more aware of what was going on. And we're kinder to them and nicer to them. But you know, needed to have instructions from on high. So we're like, we're going to have to take you to talk to some people. And any of the locals who stole from the Dutch were harshly punished. And that's one thing that comes up a lot. That would be like one of those gruesome parts if this were a movie. I don't know, you'd have to have a little bit of a sit down maybe with the Korean government first. I think just to make sure you're not hurting feelings too much or whatever. If we're going to make a movie about this, we want it to be accurate. We want to show what Josian society was really like. But you're going to look bad. Because the shit they did was like severe beatings were very normal. Or just like if someone committed high treason, you kill them, you kill their whole family. You burn their house down. They're not allowed to build another house on that spot. If a wife killed her husband, they would kill her. But then also bury her corpse next to a major road with her head poking out. So everyone was very aware what happened. And then that whole town would be punished where they weren't allowed to have. A government representative for some amount of time. Just like a lot of crazy shit going on.

But again, a lot like with Japanese history or probably the history of any island nation that really doesn't know about the outside. Like they're just doing their own thing. The stuff going on there is like in some ways severe. But also it's like these are just picking out the examples of the craziest shit that he saw day to day. It was just day to day. So this is an unexpected twist. They took the shipwrecked Dutchman to Jeju City, where the local prefect, Yeewon Jin, had to send an announcement to King Yo-Jong of Josyeon to describe what was going on. Asked for advice. And what came back unexpectedly was another Dutchman. It was this guy, Yonsei of El Terri. And it turns out that guy had shipwrecked there 27 years before. So this wasn't the first group of people who had ever shipwrecked in Korea. It just included the guy who was the first one to tell anyone about it. Because this guy, Yonsei, he never left. 27 years he'd been there. He took a wife. He eventually passed the government service aptitude test and became a government official. And apparently at this point, it was a little hard to communicate with him. 15:00 He had kind of forgotten a lot of how to speak Dutch because he just hadn't used it in 27 years. So that must have been weird too, right? You see another, not only, another white dude, an actual Dutchman. Again, the Dutch, they're all over the place, getting into all kinds of stuff. Of course the one guy there would be a Dutchman. Why wouldn't he be? And you're like, wow bro, what up? Oh shit, you're going to help us out? Yeah, and then it's all weird and awkward because this guy's essentially Korean at this point and can barely talk to you. And they were a bit crestfallen because basically what this guy told them is like, I don't fancy your chances of being able to leave. I mean, that's why I'm here. They wouldn't let me leave. Why would they let you leave? And they're like, oh okay, oops, uh oh. You know, things again, starting bad, looking better, looking bad again. Again, that's this whole story just back and forth.

So they were kind of stuck in Jeju for a while. They couldn't get an audience with anyone high enough up to decide their fate. And the prefect that they liked, Yuan Jin, he got replaced by a new guy. And the new guy sucked and the new guy was way more mean to them and things were less good. And then the message that had been sent to the head officials in Seoul, I wonder what Seoul was called at the time.

But that finally came back. And basically the announcement said there was no chance these guys were leaving. And later, like way, way later, when they finally did get out of there and the Japanese were asking them, so what's the deal? Why? Why didn't they let you leave? What's that all about? Like even to Japan with their closed-off ways, they found it weird because I guess presumably in Japan, if that happened, you know, the notion of isolationism would be like, get out of here. We don't want you to be here. But in Joseon, from what Hendrick could determine, it was that they just didn't want anyone to know they were there. They were happy to just be only known to China. Well, they already got fucked by China, real bad, because they lost a war to China. And they were giving all kinds of their natural resources to China every year. And their relationship with Japan didn't seem great either, because they warned the Dutchmen. But kind of beyond just saying you're not allowed to leave, they fed them all these stories of like, you shouldn't leave anyway. If you show up on the shores of Japan unannounced, they'll just kill you. They'll kill your ass. But later, when they did arrive in Japan, that was not the case. And yeah, when the Japanese asked, what was the story here? Hendrick says, as far as he could tell, it was just they didn't want anyone to know. They didn't want word of their nation to spread. They were happier being invisible as much as they could.

So that meant the Dutchmen were not leaving. However, the message from the Capitol did say that the government had a moral obligation to ease the existence of the Dutchmen. Or whatever they were referring to the mess, because again, they thought maybe they were Portuguese. That must be a weird thing too. I mean, that's just like the most hard-headed bureaucracy you can imagine. Of like, we got nothing against you. Really, we're going to try to ease your stay here in our country. But it's our policy. It's the bureaucracy. You're just not allowed to leave. But at the same time, that weird hard-headedness of like, hey, we're Dutch. We're from the Netherlands. This is our country. We're trying to tell you about other countries. And these Josian people are like, I don't think so. I don't think any of those places exist. Really, you're probably just Portuguese. Like just this weird little isolated island life of just like, now what we think goes, you know, whatever we had in our heads, our first initial impression. That's probably just the absolute all-encompassing truth. And I guess he did run into a lot of stuff just from living there and observing things. Stuff like extreme superstitions of like you would ask some religious authority when and where you should bury a dead-loved one. And if you didn't follow the rules right or if the tea leaves changed, you know, so to speak, you dig them up and put them somewhere else just to make sure you didn't run a foul of whatever.

Or there was one point when there was two shooting stars in the sky at the same time. And that apparently had happened before during some period when they got attacked by the Japanese. So when it happened again, pretty much literally the whole country was freaking out. Everyone was terrified of just this little phenomenon in the sky, you know, like just what a weird notion. Not only 500 years ago, but again, just being so isolated. The harsh light of rationality and reason just might never reach the place, you know, beyond just the actual physical realities of the nuts and bolts of surviving. Other than that, you can make up whatever. And there's no one to tell you different. And the words just going to kind of spread and become part of the nationwide fabric. 20:00 But that was also interesting that some of his observations about Josian society, ancient Korean society, are still surprisingly in line with stereotypes of today. You know, where he talked about how extremely studious the kids were and how seriously everyone took education. And I mean, that's a stereotype to this day. Asian families really want you to do well in school. They really push hard for that.

And he described how their marriage system worked and it extremely favored the man. To the point that he almost described the wives as practically slaves. Very few, if any, rights. Meanwhile, there were also slaves. There was a free society and a slave society. And one thing he said that seems especially uncharitable, but I do still think is interesting, is again, this is where I would want to smooth things out a little before I made the movie. It's like, hey, before I paint your entire previous society with this brush, let me just, you know, talk to some researchers and check things out a little more and maybe talk with Korea a little about this. But he basically described the entire nation as, like, is immoral too strong a word? Basically just not moral, maybe not e-moral, but not concerned about morality. Like if you were able to trick someone or rip someone off or give someone a bad deal or pull off some kind of scheme or scam, they were like proud of it. Like you did the right thing. Like that's what you're supposed to attempt to do. Get one over on the next guy.

And that seems like a weird brush to paint everyone with. But I can kind of see it because it is that thing of like writ large societies are, you know, there are certain, certain stereotypes you can kind of apply to, like, I mean, you know, I just, I've talked to with this before in this podcast, but I just think about Canada. I could rattle off 10 things about Canada that again, not every Canadian is that way, but essentially every Canadian is that way, you know, it just is that way. Like you just grow up a certain way. I mean, this is a dumb example, but like for Canadians, we are not very direct as far as like if you're doing something we don't like, you know, I think the stereotype is that an American will tell you and maybe it'll be seen as rude. It certainly is seen as rude to us. But isn't that better? Isn't it better if you have a problem with someone to tell them? Because what we do in Canada is we politely don't tell you about the social faux pas that you're doing or the way that you're rubbing everyone the wrong way. But we'll just ice you out. You'll just won't be part of the friend group anymore. It's like you should know what you've done. You know, we have like courtly manners, like it's some kind of fucking Jane Austen book that, you know, it just I don't feel like it is that way when I go to America, for example.

And then you could say, well, that's not a good way to be. That's a weird thing about Canadian society, but everybody's raised this way. This just feels natural. This feels like how it's supposed to be. It feels like I shouldn't have to tell you what you're doing wrong. You should just know. And if you don't know, too fucking bad. I'm still not going to tell you. You're just not going to get invited around anymore, you know? And I mean, I just feel like, again, not every Canadian is that way. But seven out of ten of them are like an overwhelming number of them are. Enough of them are that you'll just feel like it is that way whenever you're in Canada, you know?

So why not take that same notion of the unspoken rules, the courtly manners, and just apply that to what if the prevailing attitude that you're raised with or that you're raised to expect is the not only the normal way to be, but a beneficial way to be. A way that you should be proud of acting if that is to get one over on the next guy. It seems very easy for me to believe that, yeah, of course, why not? Especially when you're on this little island. You don't have any outside influences. If your whole life has been, hey, if you can get a deal off somebody, if you can rip somebody off, if you can overcharge, if you can do this, if you can do that, just fucking do it and be proud of yourself that you did. Then yes, suddenly everyone would just be that way. Why wouldn't they be? It would be weird if they weren't. So it seems uncharitable, these descriptions, Henrik has of the society, but it seems believable, you know?

So anyway, all this fucking bureaucracies happening, and I guess at this point, you know, they had little like accommodations for the Dutchmen and they were kind of basically looking after them or again trying to ease the situation they were into some degree. 25:00 But again, not letting them leave. So by 1655, they were finally taken to Seoul, which, yeah, I guess it just says Seoul here, and I'm just looking at the wiki page to keep place of where I met in this tale. I guess if it had a different name, they would use it. So maybe it was called Seoul. Was it called Seoul 500 years ago? It just seems unlikely. I always noticed that incidentally, like there's a YouTuber I watch, the average Korean man, just the pronunciations, like I just say Seoul, like your Seoul. But he always says Seoul, Seoul, Seoul, you know, because he really pronounces it every time. And Busan isn't Busan at all, it's Busan with a P. I don't know why it's spelled with a B, but that's not how they pronounce it. But that's where you're in that weird spot where if I, like if I call it Busan all the time, doesn't that seem affected? Like I'm an English speaker, talking to other English speakers, I should just say Busan. So everyone knows what I'm talking about, but that's not right. That is not how anybody pronounces it except us. So they eventually get to Seoul. They get to see King Yo Jong, and they still had the other Dutch guy, Yancei, who helped them plead their case. But yeah, again, they just were like, hey, can we, can we go? But the note that got sent earlier was not overturned. The guy just said, nope, you're not leaving. But in fact, this is where, like, this, this would be so frustrating, so annoying where you're stuck in this country and they won't let you leave. But then the King was like, please regale me with dances and songs of your homeland. And again, he just had like guards everywhere, and you know, it's the King, and you're just in this other country. Apparently, like the other Dutch guys, like everybody kind of did it, but nobody was enthusiastic about it. Like I'll show you some dumb dances and shit, I guess, but like fuck me, dude. Could you pick a worse time to ask for this? You just told us we're not allowed to leave. And then you're like, now dance for me, but that's also probably just how isolated. I mean, if you're not only in this isolated country, you're the god damn King. You're not listening to anybody. You know, you would just think like, hey, if I decree this, who's gonna argue with me? Who's even gonna think badly of me? He probably doesn't even have a conception really that these Dutch guys would be very pissed off about this. He probably just assumes like, well, they'll just accept my decree because I'm the mother fucking King. Anybody else would. And essentially, these Dutch guys did. They had no choice, but yeah, they were not happy about it. And while they're having to dance for this fucking guy, Christ.

So they weren't allowed to leave, but they were basically given freedom to live within the Josian society. And then for the first couple of years, a lot of Hamil and his crew worked as the King's Guard. They took guard jobs, which I guess is probably also just like cool, right? Just cool that I have these fucking white guys in my guard. You know, you just like to have them around. And apparently that was kind of a thing as you would expect. Just, you know, fancy pants, rich people and stuff. We're just like, wow, this is neat. Let's go see the white people. And like, again, with just the misinformation or weird superstitions that can happen. Word would start to spread all around of like these fucking weird white people, like their monsters, they're all fucked up and they're all deformed and crazy. And Hendrick said that people were kind of visibly disappointed and maybe a little annoyed when they would see them. And it's all these like, you know, Dutch sailors like fit, fit people. Not only were they not monsters, most of them were in better shape than the locals. And it's just like, what? These aren't monsters. Get these handsome ass fucks. What is this? You know, like in a weird way, annoying that they're not. The tales of their monsterism was totally not true.

So they were guards for a while. They lived in these little houses run by Korean landlords. I'm going to say Korean rather than Josie on, but you know, it's all the same, ultimately. And they'd have to do like little maintenance and whatever, just odd jobs also pay their way, but they got paid a little basic wage or so much rice per month, whatever. Just kind of lived their lives, but they didn't have any particular means of escape because their ship had been totally destroyed in the shipwreck. They had these warnings about like you shouldn't anyway. I don't know why you thought you could go to Nagasaki because if you show up there, you're going to die. And then in 1656, only about a year later, two of Hamilton's crew ambushed a Manchu envoy. So Manchu, as far as I understand, was basically China of the time. There's so much I don't know, so much stuff. I mean, I don't know about modern history. Go back 500 years. It's extra complicated to me. But apparently there's this envoy going around from China. They ambushed this guy and we're like, you got to help us. You got to help us get out of here. 30:00 Those guys got caught and punished severely. I don't have the details, but I don't think they lived. They're just sort of mysteriously because I don't have the full story here. By the end of this tale of the 13 years that they were there, not all of them were there by the end. Most of them weren't, you know, just like slowly. Some people stayed, like there's even a whole clan that was started by one of the Dutchmen marrying a Korean lady and they started a whole new clan that I think still exists to this day. But a lot of them just got killed here and there and stuff happened to them. And this was one of them. It's like they got caught, hassling the Chinese envoy, punished and I presumed killed. And there was like starting to be pressure to get rid of the Dutchmen, even though the Dutchmen didn't want to be there. The government didn't want them to be there either, just wouldn't let them leave. The people didn't want them around.

So Hamel and his crew got banished to a military garrison in Geola Province on the southwest corner of the peninsula. And then apparently once they were there, they were there for like seven years. It wasn't the worst, you know, like military garrison sounds bad, but it wasn't like a prison or anything. Once they got there, they got houses. Some of them got wives, you know, they just got set up now in their own little life, just not in Seoul. Just go, go do this somewhere else. Go do this off to the side where no one's paying attention. And then based on who was in charge, you know, sometimes things were okay, sometimes things sucked. And at one point, when things were especially bad, and like they're aid from the government was really, really low, and they weren't really even being given enough rice to live, they had to beg, which I guess was a little bit of a common thing, because there were monks already. Like, I don't know, it's interesting to hear all this stuff described where the Korean people dressed more or less like Chinese people did at the time, you know, the Chinese style fashion, whereas there were these monks who dressed like a traditional Japanese monk. So they were around in ancient Korea, but they weren't really very respected, and they mostly had to beg. So there was a bit of a culture of people begging already, but the Dutchmen ended up having to partake because they didn't know what else to do. You know, it's like we are still having a pretty hard time integrating into this society, when whoever's in charge is especially harsh to us, we got to do something. But it was still like regimented. They still got permission to beg four times a week from whoever on high. But they did, and apparently that went pretty well because people were interested in them, you know, how like even to this day, you know, people talk about like, oh, if you went to Japan in 1999, everyone was like, wow, a white guy, or my friend Ken who went there in the 80s, it's like, holy fuck, a six foot four white guy. What's this all about? And nowadays it's like no one cares, but they still do a little like when I got to some of the more obscure parts of Japan, you can feel the difference where people are a little more like, oh, what the fuck are you doing here? Or it's coming up on this podcast, but I'm a return to Japan instead of taking the bullet train down the coast like most people do, I took the local trains the whole way. And yeah, you could really kind of feel it where you're just on a local train between fucking Gamagori and Issei. And it's like, why are you here? What the fuck is going on? So just imagine that in the 1650s. Why the fuck are you here? Why is there a white guy here and he's begging? And it's like, okay, I'll give you some stuff. Tell me, tell me a story, tell me about your homeland, tell me whatever. Let's just, you know, they were such a novelty that apparently the begging went actually pretty well.

Like again, man, so many scenes that would be great in a movie. This would be just the coolest movie.

So then, beyond just whatever was going wrong with whoever was in charge at the time, there was also a famine between 1659 and 1663.

So that's a pretty, pretty rough famine. And like, again, just the other side of all the weird superstitions and stuff, the one thing you can't fake is just reality, just the harshness of reality. And this was so bad that people were like eating acorns and eating bark, which interesting to note that a lot of the similar stories came out of famines in North Korea recently. You know, it's just interesting to think how North Korea has such close correlaries to what Korea was like 500 years ago, you know, when there's a famine and no infrastructure to help you and no modern day help. You better start eating acorns because I don't know what else you're supposed to do. So at this point, they had their own problems. They especially didn't want to deal with these fucking Dutchmen, which they never did in the first place. 35:00 Like, again, why didn't they just let them leave? It's so crazy. Just let them leave.

But I suppose also beyond just wanting to stay isolated, quote unquote, let them leave. But it was a whole bunch of sailors. What are you just going to give them a giant ship? That's your ship. You need that thing. See, I'm not really sure how that would have worked either, how they would have even secured. Surely, though, well, I don't know. It's going to say surely they could just hitch rides on Korean ships, but maybe there weren't any, you know, maybe they weren't going anywhere. Maybe there wasn't there was no trade or, you know, whatever trade was coming to them.

If they were super isolationist, yeah, maybe they fucking quarterly ship to wherever just doesn't exist.

But yeah, of the 22 Dutchmen still alive. So how many did I say there were during the initial shipwreck?

35 down to 22.

So yeah, again, there wasn't any kind of a big execution or anything or like, let's get rid of these guys. But quite a few of them didn't make it this far. So that's obviously got to be weighing on them too. If like, maybe, maybe we could just live our whole lives here like the previous dude did, the young say guy, but maybe not because we seem to keep fucking dying on the way. But because of this famine and the extra pressure everyone is feeling, they decided to split up these remaining 22. So five went to Suncheon, five went to Namwon, and 12 including Hamil went to modern day Yosu. And apparently the government official in that area, he got along with them well, he was a nice guy, he was cool, and he even broached the topic to them of like, I'm surprised you guys haven't left. And they're like, well, I mean, we can't, we don't have permission.

And this guy was like, yeah, okay, I'm just saying, you know, there's like, there are some fishing boats and stuff, you know, they're not like big vessels, but you're not a big group anymore. There's not a whole ton of you, but I'm just saying, like apparently this Korean official is the one who kind of planted the seed of like, shit, maybe we really should. If this guy's telling us, maybe it really is time.

Because then it just says they were down to eight from their original 12, even of just the people in Yosu by 1666. Yeah, I don't know, it would be interesting to get my hands on this guy's whole book at some point, because there's so many details I don't have, and just so many little things that I don't know. I don't know what happened. But down to eight, this seemed doable. So they negotiated some payment and some supplies and stuff to get a fishing boat from a local. And, you know, they couldn't do it all in secret, so they still had to make up some stories about why they wanted this, like presumably just, I don't know, we just want a fish, whatever. Well, help, we'll have local fish stuff going on. But they wanted this boat to get the fuck out of there.

So then on September 4th, 1666, an especially dark day with good tidal conditions. The men left their compound, loaded their boat, and headed out to sea. And then again, like, let's just, you know, again, this is just a summary. But four days later, Japanese boats found Hamel and his crew near the Goto Island chain, like, fuck me. That might be the most terrifying part of the whole thing. Like, I think about naval voyages back in the day. For some reason, I just think about that a lot, because it seems so scary. Like, I mean, it's one thing, if you think it's the edge of the earth and you're gonna sail off it, but even without that. I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe, I don't know anything about navigating, maybe navigating by the stars and stuff. Like, maybe navigation is just more reliable than I thought it was. But again, this whole story started because they just shipwrecked during a storm. Lucky they didn't all die. It's just terrifying. Being on the fucking ocean is terrifying now. I was on a goddamn cruise from Florida that a fucking Mexico once. And when you're out in the water and you can't see anything in any direction, it's fucking like freaky. To do that on a little fishing boat in 1666 on a dark day. In September, fuck you, dude. That's insane. So yeah, sail for four days, all or nothing. Just hope this fucking works. But apparently it did. They made it. So the aid of them made it to, yeah, Nagasaki Harbor. Digima is in fact an artificial island at the time. The Dutch had a little trade thing set up there.

And this is where the Japanese, you know, once they confirmed who these people were and kind of, well, they didn't, you know, they roughly confirmed. And they're like, okay, your story seems to check out. And they were like, yeah, why wouldn't they let you leave even to Japan? This seemed fucking very weird. But they were still in Nagasaki for like the next year because the Japanese still wanted to confirm that this whole story was true. 40:00 So they started writing to the government in, in Josian in Korea. Just be like, is this true or these people who they say they are? But then, but they, you know, things were going pretty well like their relationship with the Dutch guys between the Dutch and the Japanese was pretty good. So they wanted to make sure it was all on the level, but they were basically, you know, cool with them. And the Dutch guys were like, hey, by the way, we still have other countrymen there. Can you do something about this? So the Japanese wrote and I guess they claimed that, that Holland was like part of the Japanese Empire or like a part of a, you know, basically owned by the Japanese is what the Japanese claimed. And I don't know if they really thought that or they were just saying that to sound official to, to Korea. But they were like, hey, we have jurisdiction over Holland. So those are kind of our people. So send them over and Korea did. So two years later, the remaining Dutchmen in Korea got released as well. So that's nice. And then it was during that year while, uh, Hamel was just in Nagasaki. That's when he wrote his book. He wrote his book about this whole fucking thing. And yeah, it was published when he got back in 1668. The earliest first-hand account of a Westerner in Korea titled, Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea. 1653 to 1666.

So was he calling it Korea at the time? Is that why it's called Korea now? Like, God, I don't know. So many details I don't know.

So from here, Hamel and his crew left to Batavia, which is the modern day Jakarta, in the Dutch East Indies. Oh, I guess the book got published in 1668, but Hamel didn't return yet. He stayed in Batavia till 1670. He was trying to secure his 14 years of back pay, his back salary from the Dutch East India Company, but he was unable to. I mean, that's a bold attempt, but I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think I would worm my way out of that, too. I just be like, you're just lucky you're alive, man. We're not paying you to be trapped in Korea.

But then he returned to the Netherlands, and much as his life, you know, before this was not especially well-documented, nor was his life after. There's a handwritten document dated around 1734, stating that Hamel settled back in Goranchem around 1670. He may have made another trip to the Indies, and then back to the Netherlands by 1690.

1692 seems to be the last time anybody specifically mentions him. So anyway, he died at some point. Somewhere in there, he died.

But yeah, his book, I presume he must have done okay, because his book was translated into French in 1670, German in 1672. Oh, and translated into English in 1705. Of course, silly me. For some reason, I thought it would be in English to begin with. Of course, it wasn't. He's fucking Dutch. Silly me. Maybe that helps explain why it's still a little hard to find to this day.