Keelhauling: Barnacles Are Sharp

What if your punishment for breaking the rules on a ship was being dragged underneath it?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan head out onto the high seas to explore keelhauling, a brutal naval punishment that involved dragging a person beneath the hull of a ship. Despite its reputation as a pirate punishment, the practice was more commonly associated with the British, French, and Dutch navies.

We look at how keelhauling was carried out, the role of barnacles, what happened when captains decided to make the punishment even worse, and some of the documented cases that show just how horrific it could be—including the 1882 keelhauling of two Egyptian men near Alexandria.

We also get into the incredible story of Pedro Ramón y Cajal, who reportedly survived keelhauling as a teenager before eventually returning to Spain and becoming a pioneering figure in modern neuroscience.

Ropes, ships, barnacles, drowning, and one hell of a bad day at sea. Kevin and Dan bring their usual gallows humor to the story, because apparently there is no historical torture device so horrifying that they can't find something wildly inappropriate to say about it.

If you love dark history, torture history, true crime, executions, weird history, and the horrifying things humans have actually done, climb aboard.

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