The MV Cougar Ace and Other Large-scale Car Disasters

The Cougar Ace sailed out of Hiroshima in July 2006 with a cargo of 4,703 brand-new Mazdas, all 2007 model-year vehicles, plus 109 small commercial trucks strapped to its 14 decks. On July 23, things went wrong in a hurry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I'm welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott. Oh boy, I'm I'm kidding. Hi,
I'm dead. Oh boy. I didn't expect that at all.
Oh man. Yeah, we're gonna have a lot of unexpected
stuff in this episode. As of course. You know, we

(00:26):
are accompanied by our super producer, Dylan Fagan. We'll see
which name he ends up with today, and as well
as Noel the Madman Brown. I don't know if Noel
approves of me insisting on calling him the Madman, but
it feels cool. He hasn't never really like voice any objection,
you know, I don't think so. I guess then he consents.

(00:49):
I guess then. Yeah, well we'll have to we'll have
to follow up on that. Uh. If Scott, you don't
see me for like four days or something, just put
out some feelers. I know you've got uh, I know
you've got a detective souls. Just make a few connections
around town and make sure no disaster occurred to disaster. Okay,

(01:11):
well that leads into today's topic. How fortuitous over here? Yeah,
nice work, nice work. This one is a listener suggestion,
and it's a good one. I really uh, I you know,
I know it's a disaster. A lot of these are
are relative. I don't know if I should say that
relatively benign? Is that a good way to say it?
I mean, they could have been much worse. Could that's

(01:32):
a better way to say it could have been much worse.
And and so they were interesting to read about. So
I really appreciated this one. Uh, something that I hadn't
really investigated too much prior to this, But this was
a suggestion from a listener. His name is Sean F.
And Sean wrote in a couple of times. In fact,
this is kind of a rarity here, Sean wrote in
once back in July of sixteen. Rather, um, I wanted

(01:57):
to hear the tale of the remember the buried for
already Dino when they turned up in that Los Angeles backyard.
He wrote in and suggested that, And then also wrote
in and suggested today's topic, which is um the m
V Cougar Ace, And he says, if you're not familiar,
it's a gigantic auto carrier ship that lost stability and
rolled over in the Pacific. With um, he listened number

(02:18):
of cars here, but will surprise you with that in
a moment, a lot of cars on board all Mazda's
back in two thousand and six. The crew rescue and
salvage of the ship is a great story and and
Sean is exactly right that it's an incredible story. And
there's so many levels to this that you can dig into.
You can dig into just the salvage operation. You can
dig into uh Mazda's version of this, you know what happened,

(02:41):
um all maritime disasters, because there's more than um more
than just this one. Of course, you know with with
automobiles featured I Guess or lost at Sea in a
way you could also you could also look at some
of the maritime aspects of it. When an earlier episode
we did on Could I Travel the World by Cargo Ship,

(03:01):
which looked at this vast invisible to most people, this
vast network that's invisible to most people, which is absolutely
the backbone of the global economy, and it's happening all
the time all around us, and we just don't get
to see what really happens here. We don't get to
see the nuts and bolts of the whole thing. So
um one one quick thing that I want to mention
here and I don't. We'll spend a little bit of
time on this, not not a lot, but we'll get

(03:23):
into the cougar ace in detail. In a moment, um,
I started looking back at some of these, these other
large scale car disasters at sea, you know, to see what,
see what will come up, and some of these go
all the way back. There's there's probably more than this.
These are the ones that come up in a quick search. Um.
If you go back to you know, right right at

(03:43):
the beginning of World War two, you'll find that, you know,
there was a ship that sunk in the Red Sea
and it was down there. It would spend down there
for seventy six years now still down there, but it's
loaded with this huge array of of old military vehicles,
you know, like Bedford trucks and armored vehicles and Norton
and B s A motorcycles and of course guns and
ammunition and all that. Um. It was sunk during World

(04:04):
War two right at the right at the very beginning
of World War two. Really um, but it sunk well
was still anchored and kiss who discovered this thing back
in nineteen fifty six or rediscovered it. Who is this?
Jacques Coustillac Jacu Coustile rediscovered this wreck and and again
it has like I think it's like a hundred and
twenty vehicles on board or something like that. It's a huge,
a huge old cargo ship that was carrying materials or

(04:27):
military vehicles, you know, a transport vehicle from Glasgow to Alexandria, Egypt,
and it was sunk in port on the way. This
is the s S. Thistle Gorm. That's the one, yeah, exactly.
So that's one example. And you know, you can still
dive on this on this today. And if you want
to read about you know, the thistle Gorm, uh, you
can read about it in Jacques Cousti's book because he describes,
you know, again rediscovering this in ninety six in his

(04:49):
book called The Living Sea. Um. So that's just one example,
and that's again a hundred and twenty vehicles. That's not
a huge scale disaster like what we're talking about today.
But there's other as let's see, in nineteen eighty there
was a car ferry both the song. So this isn't
a manufacturer um disaster. This is one that happened to
you know, just private citizens that were on a car ferry.

(05:10):
Uh there's something like, oh, this is the one that
has a hundred twenty vehicles, maybe the maybe the thistle
Gorm doesn't have a hundred and twenty, but um, this
is the one. It's called the the Zenobia, and it's
in Cyprus, and this one sunk during her maiden voyage
back in June of nineteen eighty. And this is of course,
what three four decades later. At this point, Um, all

(05:30):
of those cars are still down there. You can still
go down and uh, you know, dive on this rack
if you wanted to and see who you know, exactly
what's happened there. They didn't recover any of those vehicles.
They left them there. Um in two thousands, I'm just
skipping around all over the place. But in two thousand
twelve there's the Baltic Ace disaster, and this is a
big one. These were all Mitsubishi cars that were on board.
So again you know, for more than fourteen hundred vehicles

(05:52):
were lost, eleven sailors. Again in fifteen minutes. This is
happening in the in the North Sea, so really cool
December five in the North Sea. And in two thousand twelve,
you can imagine, you know that you couldn't last too
long in the water in that situation. So UM, the
the rescue effort, the the salvage effort for this whole
thing costs something like seventy three million dollars to bring

(06:15):
this ship back up in all of its contents because
they were worried about um um oil spilling into the
ocean and it was of course you know at this point.
So unfortunately, this boat was only ensured for fifty five
million dollars. In the operation to retrieve it costs seventy
three millions, so huge loss for the company UM in
that in that situation money wise. And there's UM so

(06:35):
many more of these, let's see, so this is really recent.
There was a fifty three million dollar accident that happened
to see where there were again all these luxury cars
that were UM scrap because they were on a cargo
ship that simply tipped over to one side. It was
tilted to one side. And this happens a lot. We'll
we'll find out, you know, what happens when that when

(06:56):
that situation occurs. But fifty three million U S dollars
of the vehicles, this is BMW's minis um. There was
some construction equipment on board. Even there was one single
rolls Royce Wraith on board that you know has its
own huge estimate of amstets worth, like twelve hundred Jaguar
sports cars. Again, there was something like hundred vehicles on

(07:18):
board the ship when it when it tipped over, destroying
everything on board. So um. Again this this happens all
over the place, more than you think. Yeah, more than
you would think. So um. Anyways, and oh, you know what,
there's one other one that we should mention that's not
a maritime disaster. There was one just last summer in
or at the end of the year, I guess was
in December. And there were BMW's that were on a

(07:40):
train that were they were coming out of where was it.
It was Spartansburg in South Carolina and they were headed
to the port I believe in I would say was Charlotte,
I think that they were headed to. And I'm sorry,
not Charlotte. Is Charleston that headed too? And uh the
train derail there were like twelve cars that had ten

(08:00):
cars on each and uh, somewhere I think it was
somewhere in Blair, South Carolinas, where this thing derailed all
the vehicles on board. Of course we're destroyed these these BMW's,
there's there's something like a hundred and twenty cars. Um,
just a huge accident that included mostly the BMW X
line of vehicles, so all versions that the X three,
x four, x five, x six, and I think there

(08:23):
might even have been some X seven's on board, but
that would have been early, early on in production, so
maybe not left to you know, dig into it further
and see what was on board there. But um, nobody
on the train was hurt. You know, there's only two
man crew and they got off without injury, so that
was good. Um. But yeah, these types of things are happening.
Every few years. You'll hear about these major disasters that
occur where they're hundreds, if not thousands of vehicles lost.

(08:46):
And the top one of these, the biggest one that
we were able to find, and that that Sean pointed out,
is a vehicle called or a cargo ship called the
cougar Ace. Yeah, built in Japan. Three this monstrous cargo ship. Uh.
It's fifty five thousand, three and twenty eight tons, six

(09:09):
hundred and fifty four point six ft long. Uh, this
massive ship is one of the biggest car carriers in
the world. It can took more than five thousand cars
and one go five thousand vehicles. There are a possibility
on this ship now. It's got fourteen decks, that's how
it carries that many vehicles. And I think at the
time that we're gonna be talking about here, there was

(09:29):
a crew of about twenty three crew members and this
would have been back around what day. This is a
long time ago, relatively speaking, in two thousand six, I believe,
is when the accident happened. And this article that we're
going to kind of follow through here, it's from Car
and Driver and it's from two thousand eight, so they
kind of already know the aftermath of what had happened,
and you know what's going on. But this is an
interesting tale about the the accident itself, the salvage of

(09:53):
the vehicles and and the and the ship itself, and
then what kind of the the what happens after that, really,
because there's a there's a lot of ways that Mazda
could have handled this, right, So where do you want
to begin? Maybe we should start, you know, when it launched.
How about that sounds good. Alright. The Cougar Ace sailed
out of Hiroshima in the middle of July in two

(10:14):
thousand six. They had their cargo very near capacity, right,
and four thousand, seven hundred and three Mazda's there were
all two thousand seven model your vehicles. Here's a little
side note though, there were one hundred and nine other
vehicles on board that hardly ever get mentioned. Yeah, and
and we don't even know what they are. It's just

(10:35):
the focus is always on these miles of vehicles. So
four thousand, seven hundred three brand new miles of vehicles
plus one hundred and nine other vehicles. That's a huge number.
By the way, Yes they say they're small commercial trucks.
But let me let me just add something here, Scott.
Do you think that someone really doesn't know I'm doing

(10:55):
air quotes here, folks, doesn't know that what what the
manufacturer of those trucks would be or was it something
that they didn't want to have in the news. No,
I don't know. Maybe, I mean it could be that
you know, they were like not gray market cars, but
maybe cars that were well, you know, we can probably
speculate about the military applications could be I don't know.

(11:18):
I kind of doubt anything that Nefarius is good. I
think it's probably just, you know that they were shipping
some cargo trucks or something. Maybe that's it. Well, here's
what happened. Whatever the identity of those uh small commercial
truck manufacturers may have been h On July, the ship
was near the Allusians, heading toward the Alaskan coast and

(11:40):
then down towards these ports on the west coast of
North America. There were three that Mazda had. C was
relatively calm, you know, weather was good. Yeah. The engine,
by the way, huge beasts. Did we talk about cargo
ship engines in a previous podcast maybe, but we probably

(12:01):
didn't give them enough to really we talked about some
of the world's largest engines, I know for sure, enormous
diesel engines. Yeah, diesel engines. Yeah, this this thing has
uh Scott, do you want to give them the horse power? Well,
it's it's just under sixteen thousand horse power. So it's massive,
massive engines. I mean, you can imagine what it takes
to push you know, a ship like this, that's what

(12:22):
six hundred and sixty ft long and and ways, what
was it five hundred and some odd tons through the
water plus plus you know the five, Well the five
when almost five thousand cars, right, alright, so enormous engines.
But so what went wrong here? What happened? You think
it would have run aground or something like that, that's
not the case. What happened was and I'm going to
read most of this here, but here's what happened before

(12:45):
sailing into American waters. The US has a law that
requires a ship's ballast tanks to be purged of sea
water that's taken on in foreign lands to avoid fouling
local marine environments with non native species. So you don't
want to introduce the species that is not normally in
those waters to that water because you never know the consequences,
right yeah, And that makes I know that might sound
a little bit crazy for people, but if you live

(13:07):
in an area with invasive species, then you know how
problematic they can be. Like Scott used to live a
lot closer to the Great Lakes, and Asian carp is
a huge problem there, and zebra muscles and you know
there's there's just this this huge, uh a lot of concerns,
I guess, So, yeah, this isn't some namby pamby feel

(13:27):
good thing. There's a real reason to have this purge,
so it has to happen. But that is where the
story takes a turn. Where does it lead We'll find
out right after award from our sponsor. And we're back

(13:47):
and Ben, we were just leaving off where they were
dumping some of this this ballast water, right, and this
thing has eleven stabilization tanks on board, just so you
understand that. You know, there's these different compartments that can
be loaded and unloaded with water so they can take
on the right amount of water to keep it level.
And you know, um, I guess everything on keel maybe
is that the right way to say that? Even keel

(14:08):
on an even keel, that's probably the better way to
say it. So whether it was a human you know,
air like, you know, a human error, mechanical failure, they're
not say, they haven't said yet. But that afternoon, the
water from the starboard ballast tanks was drained without being
refilled simultaneously with fresh seawater. So the top heavy ships
started to keel over onto its port side. Now the
port side, of course, it is the left side of

(14:28):
the ship. If you're looking from the you know, across
the bow. I guess at the bowl, the right side
would be the starboard side. So if we throw these
terms in there, that's that's what they mean. I think
most everybody gets there. If you're facing if you're sitting
there at the center ship, you're facing the front, then
the port is the left side, correct, That's right. So, um,
it starts to instantly keel over onto its port side,

(14:49):
and it's not good for a cargo ship that's carrying
you know, a load like this, a very heavy load.
It gets very top heavy. Um. So everything that wasn't
strapped down now the cars were strapped down. That's the
that's sort of the good part at this point that
that's important right now, you're right, Um, but all the
crew members started, I mean, this is it's tipping to
the point where they're starting to slide along the decks

(15:10):
and you know, for fear of of going off the edge. Um. Again,
twenty three crew members were aboard. Lucky for them, however,
there was just one person that broke the had a
broken leg. The steward I think broke his leg. But
the crew put was able to put on survival gear
and and you know, get to the top on the
starboard side, so they're again they're at the very top
of the ship. And then they had to wait twenty

(15:31):
three hours until the U. S. Coast Guard and Alaska
Air National Guard helicopters could then lift them to safety.
Now that seems like a long time, but you've got
to remember how desolate this area is. Well, yeah, it's
it's way out there, and for the Coast Guard to
reach them, it probably took that long. I mean the
call went out immediately, you know, they act immediately. It
takes them that long to coordinate and figure out where
they are and you know, how to get to them.
And if the you know, if the vehicle so okay,

(15:54):
the ship is listing close to a right angle, so
they are hanging out on the side of the whole,
you know what I mean, Yeah, out in the elements,
like you just exposed to everything out and and this
is this interesting if we could take a quick diversion,
if you're okay with it. There's a great article on

(16:15):
our parent website, How Stuff Works, which answers the question
about how long can you about how long somebody can
survive a drift in the ocean? Man, Yeah, it's depressing
because really the biggest factor is going to be whether
you are on something, you know, even if it's just

(16:36):
whatever that lady was clinging to in the Titanic, or
if you are the Titanic the film, or if you
are just to drift by yourself, you know, with some
light with a life vest or some I guess a
fun doodle or some water wings or something. Hopefully that
won't happen. But but the the thing is that these
guys were very, very fortunate because they have been just adrift,

(17:02):
even with the survival suits that they put on. It's
a very very dangerous situation, especially even if the weather
is good. We have to consider how far north they are.
You know, you mentioned when when those wreck, that reck
occurred in the North Sea. That water at that stage
makes hyperthermia hypothermia one of the primary concerns. You know,

(17:27):
in the movies, it's always about starvation or dehydration. But
if you sink there and you're adrift somewhere, uh, there's
a very real chance that you won't be alive long
enough to have those problems. Depends where you are on
the globe, right, I mean, that's the that's the whole thing,
like what latitude are you at? That's that's that's what
it comes down. So yeah, so they were they were

(17:47):
pretty fortunate actually to to get there. And you know,
I'm also wondering how they put the call out, Yeah,
because you would have to climb back down to or
up to the captain area or you know, somewhere where
there had emergency radio on the suit or something. But
possibly yeah, but well, I wouldn't think it'd be something
strong enough to send out a distress signal though that's

(18:09):
mostly you know, you know, ship to ship or our
person to person communication on the ship, probably, I would think.
But anyways, we can we can guess about that all day.
But the reality here was that it wasn't leaking anything
into the ocean. You know, it wasn't dumping fuel or
anything like they had the cars weren't leaking, and it
was slowly taking on water. That's why it hadn't. Just
so it's drifting, right, it's drifting at this point, and

(18:30):
they decided that you know that the coast Guard is
going to just monitor this. They're gonna leave a cutter nearby.
They're gonna monitor this ship because it is drifting and
after five days, the ship had drifted about one hundred
miles closer to the illusions, So it's getting closer and closer.
They know they have to do something with it. You know,
you can't just leave it like this. But here's the problem.
There's still Mazda's dangling by ropes and straps inside this vehicle.

(18:54):
And you know, Monster doesn't know a whole lot about this.
In fact, they don't. They hardly know what's going on
at all. I mean, they did say that the coast
Guard had a pretty good website that had a lot
of updated information that they could access. But you know,
the the ship owner, which is a company called OSK
which I believe is that of japan UM, the O
s K Lines had contacted Masda in Japan, and then
Mazda japan UM had called uh, you know, the Masda

(19:17):
U s a uh you know branch, I guess, and
and try to let them know what's going on because
they're the ones that are gonna be receiving these vehicles
and they're wondering where the ship is and you know,
what's going on. So again, really really early on in
the in the process here, but um, almost immediately they
get Um, a guy named Robert Davis involved with this.
And this is MASDA North America's senior vice president and

(19:38):
product in product development and quality. And this guy will
come up later on in the story as well. So
so Robert Davis is a main character at this point.
But almost immediately they're they're talking about salvaging this thing.
You like, what are we gonna do to salvage this thing?
Because the ship isn't sunk, it's still usable. Um, but
they've got all these cars on board. Where they gonna
do with them? And of course that sends their mind reeling,

(20:00):
like what what what's going to be the condition of
these vehicles when we find them? They are strapped down? Well,
they didn't come tumbling out, but still he's still you know,
think of it the same way as flood damage, right,
and you know that flood damage will ruin a vehicle,
even if it's Brandon. Oh. Absolutely. And and well we'll
get into this in just a moment here, I think soon,

(20:22):
I hope, but well, actually, you know, there's still some
more information to cover here, but we'll talk about what
happens to these cars that that um, they're not supposed
to be at that angle. For that long. That's let's
put it. That's another one yet. So okay, this is
this is something that's fascinating because it gets into the
little known but immensely risky and possibly uh profoundly profitable

(20:44):
business of salvage. Let's see. So, uh there's a company
out of Florida. They're called Titan Salvage. They were called
in yeah, and they were gonna be paid. The deal
was and it went through Lloyd's Insurance of London, a
k a. The Eyes, who will ensure anything including the
posteriors of celebrities and stuff, legs of people on on

(21:07):
famous talk shows, right right, hands, a pianist, whatever, they're
they're down for it. Um. They had this agreement for
the insurance that said, okay, Titan Salvage, if you are
able to save this cargo ship, you will have more
than ten million dollars in your pocket. Ten million dollars.
And you know what, there's something that was said just

(21:28):
a moment ago that I can't let slip in. Oh man,
I have to say it. I'm like, I'm like a
ten year old you said, and I'll get this right.
You said, pianist. Is it that how you're supposed to
pronounce it. I say it pianist. I say it penist.
I know it's like a kid when I said, but
it's funny, I always chuckle when I say that. That's like, uh,

(21:50):
did you say, did you say crayon or crayon? Growing up,
I guess I said cran No way. Yeah, oh man,
you know that's funny. When we moved here to the South,
we have a friend that said the word crown and
I thought she was saying cram because she's saying crayon.
And I couldn't quite. I couldn't pick it up. I
couldn't pick up what she was saying. Like her kid

(22:11):
had to wear it was her birthday at school or something.
She was wearing like this golden crayon, and I was
like a golden craw How she wearing a golden cran. Yeah,
it's uh, it's strange. We got we got some pronunciation
guides from some other people. Uh, not just in Australia,
of course, but in in different parts of the world.

(22:33):
And one of the ones that I always remember is
when I went to Massachusetts for the first time as
a kid. There's a town in Massachusetts called Worcester. It
is not spelled like the the spelling is, you know
how like Chinese characters don't have anything to do with
the pronunciation of the word in Mandarin or Cantonese or

(22:56):
That's how Worcester is. And no offense to anybody who
lives there. It's a great town own. But this one
guy pretty much called me an idiot. And I was
a child at the time, mind you, when when he
he said, well, that's not the name of this, you know,
it's like, hey, can you tell me how to get
the war sister or something? And he looked at me

(23:18):
like I had just you know, grown a pair of
horns or something, and then uh or like just loudly
hearted or something, and then essentially said, you know, you knucklehead,
but a much meaner version of that word. Uh, knucklehead.
You're never gonna get there because that's not a real place. Kid,

(23:41):
he says this, but pronunciations are for it. And honestly,
I can't believe you said pianza poenist, right, I can
say that. That's a all right, let's move on. Let's
see if we keep that whole bit. I don't know
Lloyd's will and you're anything pretty much and the thing

(24:03):
is that, yes, Titan salvage does get more than ten
million dollars if they pull off this rescue mission. But
what happens if they fail, Well they get nothing, I
mean nothing at all, not even not even a well
you tried, no, nothing like that. So it's big, big

(24:23):
stakes for these guys. Right. So there they have to
go in on board, and it's really dangerous what they
have to do. They have to you know, check out everything,
and um, there's a lot of men. I'll tell you.
There's an article that that goes in depth into the
salvage effort and everything involved with it. It's really really um,
really well done, really well written. It's it's from a
block site called Wired dot com. I bet a lot

(24:43):
of people know of the Wired site. Um, if you
search for a story called high Tech Cowboys of the
Deep Seas the Race to Save the Cougar Ace, and
if you look up that that article, you will find
a lengthy description of the salvage effort and everything that
went on there. Um. But just to a general version
of it is that you know, they had to go
on board, they had to repel down through the vehicles

(25:06):
on you know, using climbing gear. They had to do
a lot of really intense math calculations, yeah, for people
to figure out, um, you know, how much water it
had taken on how much they had to pump out,
how much they had to add to certain parts of
the tanks order to write this thing again, because the
fear was that it was going to go the opposite direction,

(25:26):
like the swing would be too great. Once they righted
the ship, they know they could do that get it
back up to you know, on level. The problem was
if they go a little bit too far, then that
whole load shifts again the other direction, and with the
water that they've just added, it could make it completely capsized,
so it could go complete swing the up its opposite direction. Yeah.
I like to think of it, Yeah, similar to a kayak,

(25:48):
you know, with shifting load. Like one of the first
things to teach you with when you're in a kayak
is what to do if you end up upside down, Yeah,
how to right yourself. That can't happen in this case.
And so it's really like one shot that's it, and
it's really really dangerous. Now I know what happens all
kind of slow, but um, once it starts to right itself.
There's a point where it would tip over fast and

(26:10):
that's the that's the danger. So again that article that
I just mentioned is something that will if that type
of thing intrigues you, you'll like that. So, uh, here's
you mentioned it earlier, Scott. And this is something I
want to emphasize because this could be an action movie.
There's four guys have to repel in there. They have
no light, but the light they bring right repelling is

(26:31):
already repelling down in darkness like this is already going
to be tricky business. But the thing is, as you said,
they have to go past the vehicles that have been
hanging in these straps. This is on June, so this
has been a while, and we don't know what the
condition of those that those straps are because you know
they're built to last, but this is an unusual circumstance.

(26:54):
And the worst part is that one strap screws up
and if one car falls, depending on its position, it's
unless it's at like the very furthest side closest to
the port, it could trigger a domino effect. All these
other males is falling and death by Mazda avalanche is

(27:16):
not the way most people want to go. Can you
imagine that would be awful? I mean it would be
like a pinball effect. I guess you know it would
or if that's right, what would say? Maybe? Not? Maybe? Uh?
You can you avalanche is probably the best way to
say it. But can you imagine if you were down
there and they started to collapse on top of you?
I mean, you wouldn't have more than a second even
think about it. Yeah, you wouldn't even be able to say, like, well,
at least they're not used cars. Well, there were a

(27:38):
couple of times in that article that I mentioned that
um that they did accidentally step on a strap and
it caused you know, a creaking noise and a car
to swing a little bit, and they were nervous, and
you know, some some tense situations. But there was one
There was one death that occurred and it wasn't exactly
what you would expect. It was a guy by the
name of Marty Johnson. He was forty years old. He

(27:58):
was a naval architect and he was down there to
try to figure out how much water needed to come
in and out of those tanks. And I guess he
wasn't an experienced climber and when they were departing the
cougar ace for the tugboat that was over there to
you know, bring them back to the main ship. Um. Again,
this is about a year after the initial accidents, So
this is like July thirty one of the following year
of two thousand seven. Um. He fell when he was

(28:21):
trying to walk across the top of the ship to
starboard side of the ship, and he felt eighty feet
along the ship's stern. He hit his head on a
stanchion of bullard on his way down. It's like a
big post, and so he had this you know, major
head trauma and then he fell all the way down.
He landed on one of the ship's winches that you know,
brings in the the the lines, and I guess he
lived a short time, but he died about an hour later.

(28:42):
And again that article that I mentioned is about how
they recovered him and and you know, tried to save
his life. They tried CPR, etcetera. But it's a really
interesting story, tragic but interesting. And another, of course, you know,
of course it's tragic. Another even more unfortunate aspect of
him being one of the of him being the casualty

(29:03):
is that as you said, he was responsible for the model,
which you know them the math that you talked about,
the equations they had to make in order to know
how much water goes off and how much goes on
and where and how and when. He was pretty accurate too,
And he was accurate. So they they as senior naval

(29:24):
architect a phone named Phil Reid, also working at Titan Um. Well,
he stepped in. He stepped in and he looked at
Johnson's original model and calculations, and then they prepped and
they began actually pumping water in, water out. And here's
something we should mention right now is that this would

(29:46):
have been far better off from Mazda had the ship
just gone to the bottom of the sea. He really
would have. Now, I mean, I know that the people involved.
Of course, we want the people to get off, and
normally they do in these situations. There's enough time for
them to you know, hit the lifeboats and get out
to escape. But what I'm saying is money wise, I
guess if let's say that everybody evacuated, it was all safe,
and then the ship you know, was slandering out there. Yeah,

(30:08):
suddenly like just a little bit too much water came
on board and it just went to the bottom. It
would be far better off for Masda because now they're
stuck with again all these cars. There's there's four thousand,
seven hundred cars that are dangling by by straps in
the middle of the ocean um and there's a rundown
of exactly what was on board. They were all two
thousand seven model year vehicles. If you want to get
an idea of what was there, there were there were

(30:29):
two thousand, eight hundred and four Mazda threes, one thousand
three twenty nine c X seven's, two hundred nine m
X five, two hundred fourteen r X eights, which, oh man,
a lot of people love to hear those fifty six
Masda fives and five Mazda Speeds sixes. So that's the
kind of the rundown, plus the other one hundred nine
that we didn't know what, you know, that makes and

(30:49):
models were you know, yeah, they kind of were, I
guess right. But but so Mazda already is thinking about
what's going to happen here because a lot of people
are calling Mazda saying, well, I wonder I'm waiting for
my new Mazda it's not on that ship, is it.
And they said, well, we can't answer five thousand or
let's say twenty people because you know a lot of

(31:10):
them weren't on this ship, right, you know the only
were on here. But um that So what we're gonna
do is we're gonna post all of the vins on
our website, you know, MASA USA dot com. And if
that vin appears on your bill of sale, then you
know that's one of the vehicles, and uh, you know,
we'll have another vehicle. We'll have another plan in place,
I guess. But a lot of people are really concerned
that they were going to end up with a car

(31:31):
that had been in the shipwreck and not been told
that it was in the shipwreck. So here's you know,
I I know, folks that what Scott just said at
the beginning might sound kind of counterintuitive. That would have
maybe been better for MASTA if the ship had sank
uh And because here's why, and it makes sense, Mazda

(31:51):
has insurance. Mazda would be able to say, well, that's
a total loss, Thank goodness, we have ensure. It's but
now a lot of it, by the way, a lot
of it. Yeah, how much one and three million dollars,
So they would have had a nice fat check for
one three million dollars. Instead, they're gonna have to front
the bill for doing something with these vehicles and these Okay,

(32:16):
we have more information about the straps. These were nylon
deck straps, right, and when this v when this cargo
ship is listing at that almost ninety degree angle, what's
happening is they're not just hanging there statically. They're moving
with the current as the ship is drifting, continually stretching
those straps. Yes, so sixty eight had already uh been

(32:41):
damaged somehow. They all between breaking free, getting banged up
by cars that broke free and fell down, or suffering
you know, massive water damage. Sixty eight cars already were
in a bad way. Yeah, exactly right. So you know,
they know that they've got this situation where they've got
sixty eight that they're gonna at least have to cover.

(33:02):
They don't know the condition of the others. Um, So
what they start doing is they um they start testing
back at the Mazda R and D department. They put
uh some of these vehicles on jigs at that level
at that seventy degree angle to find out what the
what the effects are going to be. So they're most
concerned about this point was the electrolyte and the batteries.
They thought on the sides, you know, it's not all

(33:23):
that bad. But with the added motion of the sea
as you mentioned that kind of they say, salt shaker motion.
I guess that up and down motion. Um, that can
add a lot of damage to these vehicles. So they're
concerned about the durability of everything from the seals and
the powertrains that that didn't have the lubricants that they're
supposed to have to keep them you know soft. Uh,
they're worried about you know, electronic sensors and all kinds

(33:44):
of stuff. The lubricants that you know, are getting into
places and the vehicles that they're not supposed to be
and again they're escaping areas that they should be in.
So so many concerns really, and not just that, I
mean all the stresses that could be caused on the
cars and the bodies I guess themselves because a lot
of them are the unibody design, so you know they're
not going to or actually all of them are unibody design. UM,

(34:05):
So a lot of the damage that you couldn't see.
I guess what's happening there as well, or at least
they thought it was happening, because these straps are are
in um you know that they have tied down hooks
that they attached to the vehicles when they're shipping them,
and so they're pulling on the cars with this immense force.
You know, they're stretching, they're they're tugging there, twisting. It's
just it's a really really bad situation. So when you

(34:27):
start to think about, well, they can't just test on
this angle, that seventy degree angle. They also have to
consider that the cars were all parked at different angles
on the deck, so some are gonna be tilted to
the side, some are gonna be tilted backwards, some're gonna
be tilted forwards. Uh. It's it's this huge jumble of situations.
Not only that it's not the same making model. It's
I'm sorry, it's not the same model. So you know

(34:50):
it would make a difference, you know, whether there's a
maz of Speed six there versus a um, you know,
a c X seven or something. It's it's all different,
you know, between the different our trains and the different uh,
positioning of them. There's so many different varieties of problems
that can arise on this that it's just it just
totally confuses you when you think about it. So they

(35:12):
take the ACE to Portland, Oregon in September. They toe
it there. Uh that is the closest place that has
repair facilities to get the ship up and running and
also has enough room to park all of these poor
unfortunate muss It's fifty acres of property. So they've got

(35:32):
fifty acres of property they're gonna park all these cars
that look like they're brand new on this on this
proper except for the sixty of course that tumbled free
or whatever. Um. But here's the weird thing that's happened.
So so customers are calling not only to check to
see if you know, their vehicle was on board already,
you know, the one that they already purchased, but they're
also calling to say, hey, I heard you might have
some some cheap muscles for sale. Yeah, I want a deal, right,

(35:55):
but not just them, And this is maybe one of
the more interesting angles. Filmmakers want to buy them to
wreck them in movies. There were people that wanted them
for trade schools, you know, for service training, which makes
perfect sense, right. Fire departments wanted them to practice extractions
in um people thought, you know, the m X fives
and r X eights could go racing, maybe you know,
they could be tracked day cars only that never see

(36:16):
the you know, the roads legal exactly and you know
they're gonna gut them any ways and put in whatever
they wanted. So but the problem with that was that, um,
you know, eventually some of those cars there's a chance
that they could make their way back out to public roads,
if not the whole vehicle parts of the vehicle and
Mazda UM almost immediately well that that Davis guy he remembered,
you know we mentioned umh is his name, his first name, Davis,

(36:40):
Robert Davis. Um. He's coming back into the story because
he said there was like a ten minute meeting that
they had about this, and they almost immediately, unanimously decided
that there's no way any of these vehicles could ever
uh make it out onto the highways any in any
acceptable way for Masda to be covered, just because of
the very as possible risks exactly right. They had to

(37:02):
completely destroy them so that not a single part of
these things is ever going to exist now, there were
there were a couple of exceptions. I think there were
a few components that were sent to UM trade schools,
I believe, and I think I've got a note on
that in just a moment. But they essentially decided to
recycle all of them. Yeah, yeah, there were a few
dozen drive train components that went to trade schools. But

(37:23):
other every other part was completely destroyed. So this is
again an unbelievably difficult decision for them to make, I'm sure,
and in ways, you know, of course, they knew in
their heart what was right. You know, they knew, they
knew they had to destroy these so it didn't end
up in somebody's hands and it's become a lemon, right,
But they also knew that UM, instead of getting that

(37:43):
one hundred and three million dollar insurance check, that they
were going to be paying for the destruction of all
these cars and it was going to take years to
do and they were taking a bath. Yet. So the
ace arrives at Portland's right, we said in September. It
was almost two years later, a year and seven months later,
when they had about a thousand mastas that looked like

(38:05):
they were ready to sell. Uh. And then you know, uh,
in these neat rows of four in one of these
gigantic empty lots, they realized that they were recycling every
single thing. And as Davis said, there's there's something you
alluded to about the position of the vehicles just being
on their side in addition to everything else we talked about. Well,

(38:29):
it's that the reason they had to recycle everything, including
the cars that were untouched and survived in their straps
didn't even taste the water, right, it's because their concern
was that the salt shaker motion of the that's the phrases, Yeah,

(38:49):
salt salt shaker motion of the ocean. That's a tough one,
the salt shaker motion of the ocean. All right, took
a few tries, but we got it anyway, that that
unique motion was messing with the electrolyte and the batteries
and causing damage. And that's that's one thing they say

(39:11):
worried them the most. So they had to recycle all
of these, even the ones that look showroom ready, because
as you had mentioned earlier, Scott, and as we had
talked about earlier, when it comes down to it, there
are certain things they would need to test that. They
just couldn't test. And you know, you can't risk when
you're already in damage control mode. You can't. You can't

(39:32):
risk being the company that's that gets pinned with something
like my family of four dies and fiery auto wreck
after Mazda cells shipwrecked cars. Oh yeah, because that would
happen eventually, right, and they would never do that. No, no, exactly,
but they had they had concerns, like all the air
bags in these vehicles. They couldn't even crush them until
they had deployed all the air bags. And you wouldn't

(39:54):
think that's a huge deal. You know, they could you know,
tear them out or whatever, but it's time consume me
to tear them all out. So they found it better
solution to UM simply activate all the air bags at
one time in any given vehicles. So they figured out
these ways to do this. Now, they had UM a
system set up where these guys would go around and
they did this for months on end. Yeah, they would

(40:14):
go from vehicle to vehicle and they would trigger all
these bes. Now some of these remember you have six
air bags, so UM a couple of guys would walk
around with like a you know, the this little trolley system.
They had a car battery UM, a modified version of
the electronic control module for each type of car that
they encountered, and then a trigger box that was built
by Mazda engineers in Japan. And this trigger mechanism could

(40:35):
be plugged into UM just one main wiring harness and
it was it varied per you know, by vehicle, but
UM just for example, in a maz To three, the
guys would pull out the center cup console you know
where the cup holders are, and they would access to
this connector they would hook up the car contraction that
they're carrying around, and then they would yell out fire
in the hole, and then they would ignite this air

(40:57):
push the switch and I ignite all of the air bags.
All six of the airbags would go off all at
once and blow the windows out of the car and
then they're onto the next vehicle. And that was it.
And one after the other, day after day, for months
on end, these guys would do nothing but that, and
that was like stage one of this whole process. The
next thing that they would do then Stage two, I guess,
would be when it was time for each of these

(41:18):
vehicles to be crushed because that was the not the
end goal, because there's more to it than that. But
the stage two would be where they would bring each
of these vehicles. They would kind of use this this
great big John Deer tractor to just really hastily pulled
them around the lot or lift them and place them
wherever they needed them. Um, you know, not much care
given there because why why bother they're gonna be crush

(41:38):
It's like a junk yard car at this point. Um.
So they would put these up on a rack, and
then they would drill holes in the fuel tank, the
transmission pan, the breaker res of ore, and then drain
each of those fluids so that you know those are
those are completely removed. And then the wheels and tires
were then removed and each tire an alloy wheel, got
a half inch hole drilled in them to prevent the
reuse so they would never be reconditioned in any way.
You can't patch these these holes. They would put it.

(42:00):
This is like the automotive version of sowing the ground
with salt. Yeah, it's exactly right. It's like there's no
way there's coming back from there, coming back from this.
And so then these steel wheels were then mangled in
what they called it's almost like a log splitter, I
guess for metal. And of course the lug knots went
into this big plastic bucket that would itself wind up
in the trunk of a car that was headed for recycling.
So those will be crushed and and just absolutely no

(42:22):
part was to be taken off of these cars at all.
But that's not the final step. There's still more to
it than this, and you know what, we should take
another break from our sponsor before we talk about that,
and we're back. So these cars are crushed, components are

(42:47):
purposefully mangled, brought beyond the point of any use ever,
and one by one they're loaded into that overbuilt portable crusher. Yep,
exactly right. Well there's an okay, there's a couple of
steps here. Okay. So there's one thing that they would
do is they from the from you know, the area
where they were draining all the fluids and mangling them. Really,

(43:09):
they would then stack them in this truck that took
four at a time, you know, because they were just
stacked one on top of the other. He would take
them about a mile down the road to a place
that was uh, this this big crusher I guess, and
the crusher was like another step in the whole the
whole process. The crusher then would use something like i
hydraulic pressure to to destroy or flatten the cars rather.
And then those were stacked five high and um, I

(43:32):
think what the five ft tall or something like that.
It's so it's a really short They compacked them very
very small operation called PCC Pacific Car crushing. But that's
still not the final step because down the road there
was loaded onto a truck and then down the road
they went to a place called Schnitzer Steel And this
is where we find out how much these vehicles ended
up being worth. Yeah, that's right, and these are all

(43:53):
maybe based on speculation. I see these these accounts, right, Yeah,
this is what a normal vehicle, like a husk of
a vehicle would be worth. About two and fifty dollars.
That's what the scrap value of the cars you know
that they're going to load into. Um, this device, this
thing that this really cool thing. Uh, that's just down
the road from where there. Have you ever have you're

(44:14):
aware of that show Pin Stars? Have you ever seen it? Yes?
This to me seems to be one of those. The
best I can do is two fifty moments. I feel
like that too. They're making a pile of money on
this because the scrap value has got to be worth
more than two or fifty dollars, but that's what they're
getting paid, or or ballpark in that in that range.
They won't say exactly what it was worth. But just
down the road on the Willamette River is something called

(44:37):
the Texas Shredder, and the Texas Shredder was the final
destination for every single one of these vehicles. And again
you said, it was like, it's an almost two year
process to get all the vehicles into this Texas Shredder.
But um, this thing is incredible to watch. I've seen
it in action, you know, on video. There's an online
site that shows shredders in action. This one in particular

(44:57):
is pretty bad. It's really really cool. It's um blue
and yellow. They call it blue and Yellow Monster. That's
so violent that Dante might have created a tense circle
of Hell just for this device. It is powered by
a seven thousand horsepower electric motor housed in a get
this constantly vibrating cinder blocked building. It said, it said

(45:19):
that this thing has twenty six one thousand pound hammers
that they're made of manganese, by the way, that spent
it four fifty rpm and just shatter everything and anything,
and the pieces no bigger than a clinched fist. And
I've seen it working. I completely believe that, you know,
no piece gets out of their But but that's how
Mazda assured that none of these vehicles are going to

(45:41):
escape any of any of this, and none of them
were going to end up on the road and you know,
become a liability for them, I guess. And this just
the I highly recommend I think I can speak for
both of us here, Scott, we highly recommend that you
check this out on the video. This thing, this monster
is fed by three cranes. Yeah, it's constantly being fed material.

(46:03):
I think it's one of those things where if it's running,
it better be operated, better be shredding something, right, I mean,
because I bet it's so expensive to operate this thing
that that that it probably is not worth it to
have it on even for a minute if it's not
if it's not really shredding something doing some work. Here's
a weird thing though, that I think gets gets a
little philosophical, which is all right. So after after shredded, right, Uh,

(46:28):
you said there are pieces that are about the size
of a fist at most. Then they're separated into fairest
non fairest material, as you said, So eighty percent of
the fairest stuff goes to a steel plant in McMinnville
and it's recycled into rebar stuff like that. But that
other twenty percent, it's really interesting. It goes overseas, which

(46:53):
means it is not likely, it is not plausible, but
it is possible that same material could be reincarnated in
a way into another Mazda. I feel very circle of
life right now. Yeah, that's a that's a possibility. You're right,
it's not a probability. It's not a plausibility. It's just

(47:14):
like a lottery ticket. Yeah, it could. It could happen,
I guess, and it would just be part of some
component that you have in your vehicle. But it's an
interesting thought still, I mean, really it could. Um So
finally we were talking about you know, May sixth of
what two thousand two eight is when the final vehicle
is going through this Texas shredder, and um, I don't

(47:34):
know it's just this is a long tale to tell.
I understand that. I mean, it's a long story, but
there's a there's more to it than we're talking about.
You know, the salvage effort alone is twice as long
as what we've described here today. I mean, there's a
there's a lot to that, and I really do encourage
you to go check out that article on where dot com. Um.
But I was thinking about this afterwards, after reading this
whole story of how long it took, and you know

(47:56):
what it took. Well, one quick note before we even
talk about this, um, the cougar ace is back on
the water again and it's still shipping cars, even for Mazda.
It's still operational. They got it seaworthy again and it's
it's back functional and um, you know, so far, so good,
no problems since you know, it's been recommissioned, so you know,
we haven't heard it in the newspaper recently, so that's

(48:17):
good news, I guess. Um. But I was thinking about this,
and I was wondering if if this is maybe not
the cheapest solution for MASTA. You know, they could have
taken a different way out. They could have um, you know,
sold the ones that weren't damaged as you know, um
uh well, you know, I guess maybe could you still
call it, Could they be salvage titles. I don't know.
In a way, they could have sold a lot of

(48:38):
those as brand new vehicles. Still, I think they could
have gotten away with They could have said, we've inspected them,
everything seems to work out fine. But it wouldn't have
been the best thing to do. It wasn't the honorable
thing to do. And they did the honorable thing. They
they you know, they paid the whole bill for crushing
and destroyers cars. It was years long in in the making,
but they did the honorable thing here. They they made

(49:00):
the right decision in my opinion. You know, I feel
like they invested in their reputation. So I don't I
don't see that kind of thing so and maybe that's
why I'm not in charge of Monster, But I don't
see that kind of thing as losing money as much
as I see it that that lost money as an
investment in saying, you know, two consumers, two peers in

(49:26):
the marketplace. This is saying if something like this happens,
which is by the way, totally not our fault, we
will do the right thing, you know, and I I
think that, um, it's admirable. Yeah, yeah, that's a good word.
I think it speaks very highly to the character of
the company. Uh. There is one other thing though that
I want to it's it's barely related. I also have

(49:50):
something that's also barely related. Okay, um, all right, I'll
go first. The idea of derelict or sinking or abandoned
ships is fascinating to me, and it's been, you know,
for a long time. Braving the open ocean has been

(50:12):
one of the most rewarding, dangerous, and strangest of human endeavor.
Treasure hunters, yeah, yeah, yeah, treasure hunters, explorers, criminals, you
name it. The I used to really as a kid
be fascinated by stories of like the Mary Celeste right
or the legend of the Flying Dutchman. But what we

(50:35):
forget is the ocean is this is a family show.
So I'll say it this way. The ocean is so
freaking large that things still get lost very easily. You
want to disappear, go to the ocean and it happens.

(50:56):
In the modern day, there was a Russian vest all
or built in Yugoslavia. It's called the m V Lubov Orlova,
And apologies to all our Russian listeners for my butchering
of that. Have you heard of this one? Was built
in ninety six, It was taken out a service in

(51:19):
and sat in Newfoundland for two years. They were trying
to decommission it, but eventually somehow it broke free and
it just roamed North Atlantic as a ghost ship. And
no one's really sure what happened to it. I think
as of today it's believed to have been sunk because

(51:42):
people haven't seen it. But again, the ocean so big, uh,
the ship has you know, become kind of this modern legend.
And you know, we talked about the idea of expenses
here on February of two house and thirteen, like they

(52:02):
just put out a warning people, and just put out
warning for smaller vessels to say, like, hey watch out
for this Russian ghost ship just floating around. And when
when I had heard about this, you know, one of
the things I want was thinking about immediately was like
somebody should go get it and hop on it. But

(52:22):
what they're doing if they get that, unless it's legally salvage,
is it? Is it stealing government property? I don't know.
I don't know. Is it um is it legally taking
on the responsibility for the expensive decommissioning process a pirate?
At that point, do you just live on it till

(52:42):
it sinks? I mean that seems kind of cool. But
the reason people feel that it may have sank it
is because it has a automatic kind of a dead
hand system called an emergency position indicating radio beacon or
with the tremendously smooth acronym of an eap here uh.

(53:08):
The Irish Irish media said that they received a notice
from this it's still in the international waters. That's very important.
But these kind of beacons turn on when the device
is exposed to water, and this makes experts think it
may have sunk, which I really hope didn't happen, because

(53:30):
maybe like the thought of it just kind of floating
around out there like a ghost ship because of the
stories that you write when you're a kid, right, and
so there are rumors that go around, but they're from
less and less reputable places. So I don't know, but
if you were out there and you have seen this
ghost ship, please join me for a life on the
high seas. I like the thought that it's still out
there too. That's an interesting thought. I enjoy mysteries like that.

(53:54):
So what's what's what's yours? Man? Mine is not as
exciting as yours. So I was reading bunch of stuff,
you know, and of course, one thing that I was
reading was about, um, all the cars that had you know,
gone off the side of the road into you know,
like these muddy creeks and stuff, and you know, turned
up bodies that had been missing for you know, decades
that only not all of those can be accident. Yeah,
it seems like that, doesn't it. But there are you know,

(54:15):
numerous news stories of that, and so I read that.
But that's not the only thing. I was also reading about,
um cars that were in the Katrina hurricane here in
the United States and then they were bought by salvage
companies and then not scrapped, but then they were sold
to Latin America. So a lot of Katrina cars ended
up in Latin America. I know it is, but but

(54:37):
it happened, and they were there were tales of people
that had purchased you know, specific vehicles that they knew
came from the Katrina regions and um, you know, they
had been flooded over the roofline, and you know, they
would pay Let's say they paid seven thousand dollars for
a new Mini that was, you know, a decent price.
They knew that there was something wrong with it. They
knew that was coming from a salvage company, so they
didn't know exactly what had happened. And I think it

(54:58):
said something like the one example I read said something
like there was water flow damage and that's this car
was submerged for maybe a week, you know, our two
weeks or more. Um. You know, well, well this, uh,
the floodwater was receded. Um. So that's an outright lie there.
But let's say the guy bought it for seven thousand dollars,
he would pay an additional you know, five or six

(55:18):
or seven thousand dollars to ship it down to Bolivia.
And then in Bolivia they find out, well, there's some
problems with it here. Uh, we're gonna have to clean
this out. It's gonna bet dollars in damages that we
have to cover here. And then not only that, once
you get that going, then there's more things that show
up later on, you know, from the rust issues and um,
it just was ongoing. And they said that you know,

(55:39):
even so this this buyer in Bolivia of this one
particular red Mini that I read about, uh, said that,
you know, to purchase a brand new BMW Mini from
from BMW and have it shipped to Bolivia was still
so expensive that this was still worth it to him
to have to deal with all the headaches. Now headaches
were you know, that's something additionally would have to deal
with with the new car. But costwise, who still costwise

(56:01):
effective for him to buy a salvage vehicle and have
it shipped there. So again, I was just surprised to
hear that any of the Katrina cars made it outside
the United States. And we know we can we can
track where they were or where they are rather and
uh and some of the problems that are that are
rising from this, even even now with more than a
decade later. Yeah, it's just an interesting thought. I thought

(56:21):
all those had just been done away with. I thought that,
you know, the word was out and everybody knew to
watch for them. Yeah, and we can't this. Look, this
is another excellent opportunity for us to emphasize that you
should never ever, ever, ever by a flood damaged car. No, no, no,
it's a terrible I never never do it, and this,

(56:42):
you know, this is this is from a guy who's
injured himself doing his own stunt work. So if I'm
not even gonna do it, then you certainly should shouldn't
do it. Sage advice man. Well, uh, speaking of sage stuff, Sean,
thank you so much for this excellent recommendation. Now, I
know we I feel like there's so much more that

(57:03):
we could explore related to this. Ghost ships. Uh, the
weird international unethical trade of flood cars. I mean that
would be like we're like inner Pool, but you know
for flood cars. Hey, we haven't given Dylan his nickname yet.
We haven't. We have it. We'll see. Let's see. There's

(57:23):
the Baltic Ace and the Cougar Ace. So how about Ace. Yeah,
that's a good one, Dulton Ace Fagan Yeah, and uh
nol Mas Mazda Brown. That one still needs work. Uh yeah,
no the ghost ship, bro, that's not bad. That's weird though.
How do you how would how would you pull that?
I think he's got the swagger to pull it off.

(57:43):
They called me the ghost ship. That's how you'd say it.
You wouldn't say no, the ghost ship Brian say they
call me the ghost ship, Like why, I hope you
never have to find out anyway, take a closer look
at this lake. Don't get out of the car. I'm
I'm I'm kidding. Thank you guys so much for listening.
We'd like to hear from you, what what stories. I

(58:07):
want to hear it from anybody who has experience on
the high seas, you know, naval experience, merchant marine experience,
um salvage experience, salvage experience, that would be amazing. And
then also you know, if you've just taken some weird cruises.
I've never been on a cruise. I'm very curious about those.
Uh So you can check us out on Facebook and Twitter,

(58:29):
stay tuned for next week when we have a brand
new episode coming out. And as always, our best ideas
come from you. So if you feel so inclined, you
can drop us a line where we are car stuff
hs W at the various social media's and if you
think that social media stuff is for the birds, for
the sinking Mazda's, then cut it out and tired inclined,

(58:53):
I'm just not getting your joke. Oh I guess that
I did not get that way I act No, I'm
just probably making it up. I can't hearing things where
there aren't things. Well, uh, this this thing is. This
thing is not a rumor. This is a fact. You
can email us directly. We are car stuff at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands

(59:20):
of other topics, this at how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
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