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Welcome aboard the pride
of the Cunard line,

2
00:00:23,516 --> 00:00:25,507
the magnificent "QE2",

3
00:00:25,652 --> 00:00:30,385
for a cruise through history
I think you'll find surprising.

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They say over the years,
the "QE2" has seen everything:

5
00:01:03,690 --> 00:01:09,925
good-lookers, millionaires,
fancy dressers, con men,

6
00:01:10,063 --> 00:01:14,397
French engineers, war, treason,

7
00:01:14,534 --> 00:01:18,436
Scottish dancing, and deliverance,

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which, funnily enough,
is what this show is about.

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I suppose, to continue
the nautical metaphor,

10
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the general theme
of this particular program

11
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is the way, throughout history,

12
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people keep on
stirring things up...

13
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"making waves."

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What's it going to be today?

15
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Curly.

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The permanent wave
is just one of the many ways

17
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in which the modern woman of today
gets to mix and match, image-wise.

18
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I mean, all you need
is a beauty salon and money,

19
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and you, too, can be different
every time you look in the mirror.

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Thanks to mud packs and seaweed baths
and hydrotherapy and collagen

21
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and the rest of the $20 billion
spent on cosmetics every year,

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nobody has to look
themselves anymore.

23
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And to think, the whole mega-business
was started in 1904

24
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by a German called Nessler,
whose sister hated curlers.

25
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Nessler's secret lay in the goo
he covered your hair with

26
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under these cardboard rollers.

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Then he plugged you
into his electric machine--

28
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well, a set of heaters that
gradually dried out the goo.

29
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12 minutes later,

30
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you'd come out looking like
a million dollars.

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In a flash of advertising genius,

32
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Nessler called these temporary curls
a permanent wave,

33
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all thanks to the mystery goo,

34
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which would keep your hairdo in shape
for long enough to matter,

35
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a godsend for desperate women,

36
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thanks to a godsend
for desperate men.

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The desperate men in question
were California miners

38
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who'd run out of pickings

39
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and were desperate to find
another grubstake.

40
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Well, in the 1880s
in Death Valley, they did,

41
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and started hauling out wagonloads
of it to the nearest railroad.

42
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It was where Nessler's goo
would come from,

43
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a mineral ore they'd found

44
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that you could extract
a magic ingredient from called borax.

45
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Actually, "extract" makes it
sound harder than it really was

46
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because all you did was crush, boil,

47
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filter, boil,
crystallize out, and grind,

48
00:04:03,603 --> 00:04:04,968
and you got yourself a fine powder

49
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you could use for hairdressing

50
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and glassmaking, plastering,
table linen, starch,

51
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electric light fittings, pottery glaze,

52
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enamel, mouthwash,
eyewash, antiseptic,

53
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and water softening.

54
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You might say with a sense of irony

55
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that borax
was worth its weight in gold.

56
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And speaking of gold,

57
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these miners were only
in California at all

58
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because of something
that happened earlier

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in the place most people think of
when they talk about wealth:

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Switzerland.

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I know the Swiss
have a bit of a stuffy image--

62
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cuckoo clocks,
yodeling, you know--

63
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but not all Swiss are that dull.

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One of them
dug up half of California,

65
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which is why they found
the borax in the first place,

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thanks to one of the greater
con men in the early West.

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The chap in question
also sounds like a real creep.

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He starts life here
as a grocery assistant in Switzerland.

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Then he leaves his wife
and five kids destitute

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and sets out for pastures greener,

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passing himself off variously as
a member of the Pope's Swiss guard,

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a classmate of the French emperor,

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a Swiss Army captain,

74
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and a French officer,

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none of which, of course, he is.

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Name of Johann Sutter.

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His greatest scams
really persuade some people

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to give him a lot of land

79
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so that he can set up
a kind of commune,

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which he names modestly
New Switzerland,

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here, outside Sacramento, California.

82
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He then buys
reject Russian Army uniforms

83
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with which he dresses his people up

84
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to run a trading post
he names modestly Sutter's Fort.

85
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Then in 1847, he starts
a new moneymaking venture

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50 miles up the American river
from his fort.

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The plan is to sell timber

88
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to the settlers coming out West
in dribs and drabs

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cut and dressed
at Sutter's new sawmill.

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Well, that's the plan.

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But this is where friend Sutter's life
starts to go very slightly haywire.

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On January the 28th, 1848, evening,

93
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Sutter is passing the time
fiddling the books or something typical.

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Outside, it's chucking it down,
blinding rainstorm,

95
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when suddenly,
in through the door rushes

96
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the carpenter who's been building
Sutter's sawmill for him

97
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and who says, "Pant, pant,
psst, holy schmoley.

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" Bolt the door.

99
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"Don't breathe a word.

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Top-secret, look at this."

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And he gives Sutter a rag
containing a small rock.

102
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They look it up
in Sutter's encyclopedia.

103
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I kid you not.

104
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And when they do
what it says they should do,

105
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they know what the rock is
and what to do next,

106
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which is to put
Sutter's sawmill here--

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in what is now
Coloma, California--

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firmly on the map,

109
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and then to change
the course of history

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for the state of California,
the United States, the world,

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and this program,

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because they're about to kick off
the 1848 California gold rush.

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It's well-known that the people

114
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who make the real fortunes
out of the California gold rush

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were the people who got there first.

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It's less well-known
that they got there first

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thanks to something that had
been brewing for some time

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back in England...

119
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because the English had spent
the previous 200 years

120
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becoming totally addicted to teatime.

121
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And the real connoisseur
of a good brew--

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that is, any English person--

123
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will for the very best tea leaves--

124
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that is, the first crop
of the season--

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sell their grandmother.

126
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So you got the stuff from China
to London ahead of anybody else,

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you could name your price,

128
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so the Americans did...

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charged double.

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Why?

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Well, they've always been go-getters,
so they went and got.

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Of course, the English
didn't like that one little bit,

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took the wind
right out of their sails...

134
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because the Americans pulled the trick
with an amazing new ship

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with more sails
than anybody had ever seen

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and a new, low, slimline hull,

137
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a ship designed
to take a cargo of tea

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at incredible speed
from China around the Horn

139
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and up the Atlantic to London,

140
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a ship known as
the Yankee clipper...

141
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in 1851,
the fastest ship in the world.

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Small wonder
gold rush people in a hurry

143
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took a clipper
from New York to San Francisco

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and got there first.

145
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You know,
history's full of irony

146
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because the reason the
American clippers were able to take tea

147
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and then anything else
to Britain--

148
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and I mean, legally able--

149
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was because the Brits
changed their laws.

150
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And they did so partly because
of something else American,

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something that starved
over 2 million people to death.

152
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It was an American fungus,

153
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and in 1845, it arrived in Ireland
and destroyed the potato crop,

154
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leaving the Irish nothing to eat,

155
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not almost nothing,

156
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nothing.

157
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There were too many corpses
that winter to bury.

158
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When the sheer scale
of the human tragedy

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and devastation
finally dawned on the British,

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they changed their
very restrictive import laws

161
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so as to let American ships
bring in extra corn to feed the Irish.

162
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But the gesture was too little
and too late.

163
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The American corn shipments
convinced British industrialists

164
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that all anti-import laws
should be abolished,

165
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and they used
the latest means available

166
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to get that free trade message out
to rally all their supporters.

167
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It was a simple enough message,

168
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because free trade

169
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would mean cheaper imports
like American corn,

170
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and that would mean cheaper bread,

171
00:11:23,743 --> 00:11:26,337
and that would mean
lower wages and jobs

172
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and economic expansion
and more money all around.

173
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But the major political row
created by the potato famine

174
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that let the American clippers
bring their corn to Britain

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strengthened the hand
of the free trade lobby in Parliament.

176
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Although, they'd never have got
the bill through the House

177
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if it hadn't been
for some crooked politicians

178
00:11:45,865 --> 00:11:48,527
and some rather frank behavior...

179
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thanks to which
the free trade lobby

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would be able to spread the word.

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The frank behavior
involved a number

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of definitely strange
brown paper parcels,

183
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among other things, a dog,

184
00:12:11,457 --> 00:12:15,723
a bed, and a housemaid,

185
00:12:15,861 --> 00:12:19,592
all sent through the mail free.

186
00:12:19,732 --> 00:12:22,064
This was a kind
of weird shenanigans

187
00:12:22,201 --> 00:12:25,932
a reformer called Rowland Hill
exposed in 1836,

188
00:12:26,071 --> 00:12:28,198
when he started looking
into the murky workings

189
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of the British post office.

190
00:12:30,209 --> 00:12:34,339
It was all to do
with fraudulent franking.

191
00:12:34,480 --> 00:12:39,008
See, members of Parliament
had free franking privileges,

192
00:12:39,151 --> 00:12:41,244
and they were using them
to mail this kind of stuff

193
00:12:41,387 --> 00:12:43,480
to their pals all over the country,

194
00:12:43,622 --> 00:12:46,591
losing the government
millions in revenue.

195
00:12:48,861 --> 00:12:51,853
Not to mention the time wasted
by postmen collecting money

196
00:12:51,997 --> 00:12:55,694
because you paid to receive
a letter, not to send one.

197
00:12:55,835 --> 00:12:57,735
And in any case,
you couldn't read half of them

198
00:12:57,870 --> 00:12:59,394
because you paid by the page,

199
00:12:59,538 --> 00:13:01,699
so people wrote
up, down, and sideways.

200
00:13:01,841 --> 00:13:02,830
"What we need,"

201
00:13:02,975 --> 00:13:05,000
said Hill to the people
here in Parliament,

202
00:13:05,144 --> 00:13:06,873
"is post boxes

203
00:13:07,012 --> 00:13:09,640
"and a standard postage rate
payable in advance

204
00:13:09,782 --> 00:13:11,909
with a stamp on an envelope."

205
00:13:12,051 --> 00:13:14,110
In 1839, Parliament agreed...

206
00:13:14,253 --> 00:13:15,777
to this stamp,

207
00:13:15,921 --> 00:13:16,945
the penny black,

208
00:13:17,089 --> 00:13:18,249
and if you ever see one,

209
00:13:18,390 --> 00:13:21,086
grab it because it's worth
a fortune today.

210
00:13:21,227 --> 00:13:23,127
And once again, thanks to America.

211
00:13:23,262 --> 00:13:27,164
That's who did the penny black:
a printer from Massachusetts.

212
00:13:28,534 --> 00:13:31,367
His main aim in life had been
just to make good money,

213
00:13:31,503 --> 00:13:33,403
but I mean literally good money,

214
00:13:33,539 --> 00:13:35,871
on account of all the bad money
floating around.

215
00:13:36,008 --> 00:13:38,306
So this American printer
solved that problem

216
00:13:38,444 --> 00:13:41,470
by making paper money designs
so complex

217
00:13:41,614 --> 00:13:42,945
it was too difficult to fake.

218
00:13:43,382 --> 00:13:45,009
His name was Jacob Perkin,

219
00:13:45,150 --> 00:13:49,450
and in 1804, he developed
a printing technique that was so good,

220
00:13:49,588 --> 00:13:52,751
by 1818, he was over here
trying it on the Bank of England.

221
00:13:52,892 --> 00:13:54,052
No luck.

222
00:13:54,193 --> 00:13:57,026
Then he bumped into Rowland Hill,
got the stamp deal,

223
00:13:57,162 --> 00:13:58,720
and you know the rest.

224
00:13:58,864 --> 00:14:00,593
Well, not quite.

225
00:14:07,006 --> 00:14:09,406
Jacob Perkin had picked up
his printing techniques

226
00:14:09,541 --> 00:14:11,338
from an earlier idea by an Irishman

227
00:14:11,477 --> 00:14:13,206
who developed
copperplate printing

228
00:14:13,345 --> 00:14:15,779
to churn out this stuff by the ton:

229
00:14:15,915 --> 00:14:17,212
printed chintz,

230
00:14:17,349 --> 00:14:20,409
by 1790, all the rage
in America and Europe,

231
00:14:20,552 --> 00:14:23,043
when all that matching covers
and curtains business

232
00:14:23,188 --> 00:14:24,849
started in a big way.

233
00:14:24,990 --> 00:14:26,787
People put chintz on everything,

234
00:14:26,926 --> 00:14:28,757
and the brighter, the better.

235
00:14:28,894 --> 00:14:33,263
Speaking of which,
notice how crisp the colors are?

236
00:14:33,399 --> 00:14:34,491
This was the first time

237
00:14:34,633 --> 00:14:36,863
they could put a whole mix
of colors together,

238
00:14:37,002 --> 00:14:38,230
even on top of each other,

239
00:14:38,370 --> 00:14:41,362
that wouldn't run
when you washed the material.

240
00:14:41,507 --> 00:14:46,604
And all thanks to a new color paste
that used a new thickening agent.

241
00:14:50,349 --> 00:14:54,752
Well, thanks, really,
to a worm-ridden heap of junk

242
00:14:54,887 --> 00:14:57,583
known back then as the French navy.

243
00:14:57,723 --> 00:15:01,784
See, mid-17th century,
they were down to 22 ships,

244
00:15:01,927 --> 00:15:03,758
and every one of them full of holes.

245
00:15:03,896 --> 00:15:06,956
And then this guy called Colbert
takes over,

246
00:15:07,099 --> 00:15:09,363
decides to get a total grip
on the country,

247
00:15:09,501 --> 00:15:12,493
and turn it into
an economic superpower.

248
00:15:14,907 --> 00:15:18,343
Colbert commissions
new fortresses all around France,

249
00:15:18,477 --> 00:15:19,944
builds a new navy,

250
00:15:20,079 --> 00:15:21,239
and offers tax breaks

251
00:15:21,380 --> 00:15:24,872
to anybody who'll go looking
for foreign trade,

252
00:15:25,017 --> 00:15:28,316
one lot of which
whizzes down Africa to Senegal

253
00:15:28,454 --> 00:15:30,945
and starts sending back
everything from slaves

254
00:15:31,090 --> 00:15:33,183
to tobacco to sugar cane

255
00:15:33,325 --> 00:15:34,587
and a lot of this:

256
00:15:34,727 --> 00:15:37,161
gum from Senegal trees,

257
00:15:37,296 --> 00:15:39,924
which the cotton printers
would use as a thickener

258
00:15:40,065 --> 00:15:41,089
in their color paste.

259
00:15:41,233 --> 00:15:42,825
Remember?

260
00:15:42,968 --> 00:15:46,096
But Colbert would have felt
really fulfilled

261
00:15:46,238 --> 00:15:47,933
if he could've seen
all this garbage--

262
00:15:48,073 --> 00:15:49,700
sorry, tourist income--

263
00:15:49,842 --> 00:15:51,639
that one of his
economic recovery ideas

264
00:15:51,777 --> 00:15:54,644
helped to generate
to improve transportation,

265
00:15:54,780 --> 00:15:58,216
this:
the Canal du Midi.

266
00:15:58,350 --> 00:16:02,719
Colbert's Canal du Midi went
from Bordeaux on the Atlantic

267
00:16:02,855 --> 00:16:04,447
to Marseilles
on the Mediterranean.

268
00:16:04,590 --> 00:16:06,785
So you didn't have to sail
around Spain anymore.

269
00:16:06,925 --> 00:16:11,692
In 1681, it was the hottest thing
in commercial transportation

270
00:16:11,830 --> 00:16:13,923
the Western world had ever seen

271
00:16:14,066 --> 00:16:17,263
and became the model
for every canal that followed it.

272
00:16:20,005 --> 00:16:22,235
One of the engineers
who designed the canal

273
00:16:22,374 --> 00:16:23,841
was a fellow called Vauban,

274
00:16:23,976 --> 00:16:26,843
and he became a very big wheel:
marshal of France.

275
00:16:26,979 --> 00:16:28,810
Designed this bridge,
as a matter of fact,

276
00:16:28,947 --> 00:16:31,507
to carry the canal over a river.

277
00:16:31,650 --> 00:16:34,414
Vauban's second greatest claim to fame

278
00:16:34,553 --> 00:16:37,954
was building all those French
border fortresses I mentioned.

279
00:16:40,225 --> 00:16:44,662
His first claim to fame was inventing
a new way of using trenches

280
00:16:44,797 --> 00:16:48,028
to dig your way close enough
to a fortress' walls to blow it up,

281
00:16:48,167 --> 00:16:51,568
about which we Brits
could've cared less

282
00:16:51,703 --> 00:16:54,672
until certain rebels
tried the technique on us

283
00:16:54,807 --> 00:16:56,172
at the siege of Yorktown

284
00:16:56,308 --> 00:16:59,300
during that unfortunate matter
Americans insist on calling

285
00:16:59,445 --> 00:17:00,810
The War of Independence,

286
00:17:00,946 --> 00:17:03,346
which we, uh, lost

287
00:17:03,482 --> 00:17:05,541
and all went home.

288
00:17:15,360 --> 00:17:17,089
Well, not quite all.

289
00:17:17,229 --> 00:17:19,891
There was one bunch of people--
100,000 of them--

290
00:17:20,032 --> 00:17:23,763
who stayed on until the Americans
started hanging them.

291
00:17:23,902 --> 00:17:26,063
I mean, of course,
all the American loyalists,

292
00:17:26,205 --> 00:17:29,971
the one in five of the population
who'd supported the British

293
00:17:30,109 --> 00:17:33,806
and who would now suffer
for having backed the wrong side.

294
00:17:38,484 --> 00:17:40,315
As far as the Americans
were concerned,

295
00:17:40,452 --> 00:17:41,714
they were all traitors.

296
00:17:41,854 --> 00:17:44,948
And a certain Judge Lynch
strung them up so fast,

297
00:17:45,090 --> 00:17:47,650
he gave the English language
a new word.

298
00:17:47,793 --> 00:17:51,991
So by about 1789,
most of the ones left

299
00:17:52,131 --> 00:17:54,622
lit out for a new life
in a new country

300
00:17:54,766 --> 00:17:56,631
with another bunch of unfortunates

301
00:17:56,768 --> 00:18:01,228
who had also lost everything
here in Scotland.

302
00:18:12,985 --> 00:18:15,283
This was the time
of the clearances,

303
00:18:15,420 --> 00:18:17,888
the fancy name
for the eviction and starvation

304
00:18:18,023 --> 00:18:21,083
and brutality and death
happening in the Scottish highlands

305
00:18:21,226 --> 00:18:24,662
as the people were forced out
to make way for moneymaking sheep.

306
00:18:24,796 --> 00:18:28,061
And once the absentee landlords,
many of whom lived in London,

307
00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:31,397
had got rid
of their inconvenient tenants,

308
00:18:31,537 --> 00:18:36,338
a new genteel Scotland was born
with bagpipes and fake tartans

309
00:18:36,475 --> 00:18:39,638
and Celt revival poetry
and baronial halls,

310
00:18:39,778 --> 00:18:43,874
a kind of 19th-century Disney version
of the highlands.

311
00:19:07,372 --> 00:19:09,602
This image of Scotland
we all have today

312
00:19:09,741 --> 00:19:11,368
was invented by the Victorians.

313
00:19:11,510 --> 00:19:15,571
These ancient highland games
only started in 1832,

314
00:19:15,714 --> 00:19:19,241
and Scottish dancing
is really half-French.

315
00:19:19,384 --> 00:19:22,114
Even the short kilt was designed
by an English industrialist

316
00:19:22,254 --> 00:19:23,414
to stop the long ones

317
00:19:23,555 --> 00:19:27,548
Scottish factory workers usually wore
getting caught in the machine.

318
00:19:33,198 --> 00:19:36,099
Meanwhile, the real highlanders
were long gone

319
00:19:36,235 --> 00:19:38,294
across the sea to join
those American loyalists

320
00:19:38,437 --> 00:19:41,338
in a new Scotland
called Nova Scotia.

321
00:19:41,473 --> 00:19:44,374
By the early 19th century,
thousands of them were arriving

322
00:19:44,509 --> 00:19:46,909
in any ship they
could get passage on...

323
00:19:49,147 --> 00:19:52,981
a fact not unnoticed
by one particular ex-Loyalist

324
00:19:53,118 --> 00:19:54,585
from Philadelphia.

325
00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:56,449
His name was Abraham Kunders,

326
00:19:56,588 --> 00:20:01,457
and he had "lost" a small merchant fleet
he'd operated down there

327
00:20:01,593 --> 00:20:04,528
till the time of independence
and his hasty departure.

328
00:20:04,663 --> 00:20:05,857
Good evening.

329
00:20:05,998 --> 00:20:08,489
Mrs. Newby and Mr. Burke.

330
00:20:08,634 --> 00:20:10,192
Nice to meet you, Captain.

331
00:20:10,335 --> 00:20:12,735
Captain.

332
00:20:12,871 --> 00:20:14,930
So he started again...

333
00:20:17,609 --> 00:20:19,236
in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

334
00:20:23,548 --> 00:20:25,038
Did remarkably well.

335
00:20:27,919 --> 00:20:32,219
By 1833, his son Samuel Kunders
had a small fleet

336
00:20:32,357 --> 00:20:35,690
and was running the first regular
transatlantic passenger line

337
00:20:35,827 --> 00:20:38,261
once he got the contract
to carry the British Royal Mail,

338
00:20:38,397 --> 00:20:40,262
which was going to be
a real moneymaker

339
00:20:40,399 --> 00:20:41,388
because of the penny post.

340
00:20:41,533 --> 00:20:42,659
Remember?

341
00:20:42,801 --> 00:20:44,496
So the company never looked back.

342
00:20:55,881 --> 00:20:58,042
And if you're wondering
why I got the name wrong,

343
00:20:58,183 --> 00:20:59,207
I didn't.

344
00:20:59,351 --> 00:21:02,320
At some point
in the Kunders' life in America,

345
00:21:02,454 --> 00:21:07,551
some official made a misprint
and changed the family name to Cunard.

346
00:21:07,693 --> 00:21:09,388
Well, that's it.

347
00:21:09,528 --> 00:21:12,429
I hope this one
hasn't left you all at sea.