Shenandoah Down Under

Shenandoah Down Under Episode 7

As the Shenandoah continues it’s voyage towards the Southern Ocean, Mob and Rob dramatically foreshadow the dangers that await them there, along the great Australian Bight and the Shipwreck Coast. Elsewhere in 1864, the consequences of the Australian drought are laid out. These include an early example of climate scientists being ignored (with unfortunate results).
On the ship, Executive Officer Whittle survives his encounter with a rhubarb pie, and to give thanks to a merciful God decides to give up smoking. This is not good news for the men who he commands. The Shenandoah crosses the equator, and King Neptune comes aboard to extort his traditional tribute.

Shenandoah Down Under Episode 6

With the Shenandoah traversing the Atlantic, Rob and Mob fill in the previous biographies of the junior officers of the Shenandoah. These include Sydney Smith-Lee, nephew of the famous General Robert E Lee, and the splendidly named Debney Minor Scales. There is also Lieutenant Chew, who gave up drugs for the sea (he was a pharmacist, not a addict). On the action front, Executive Officer Whittle has a potentially fatal altercation with a rhubarb pie, and the Shenandoah captures it’s third prize in ten days.

Shenandoah Down Under Episode 3

The English ship the  Sea King, whose captain luckily has a commission to sell his boat to whoever has ready money, meets another ship, the Laurel, possessed of  much money, off the shores of Los Desertos, isolated islands in the Maderias no doubt chosen because both ships have nothing whatever to hide, Officer. After a transaction involving said money, two days later the Sea King becomes the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate warship commissioned to sail the seven seas in search of booty. The previous career of the Shenandoah’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Whittle, is also profiled, but Robert and Michael seem to have run out of fake beard jokes for the time being.

Shenandoah Down Under Episode 2

In the traditional ‘difficult second podcast’, the Sea King (soon to be CSS Shenandoah) and the Laurel (containing the men and munitions) steam towards the Madeira islands (far) off the coast of Africa. This episode discusses the glorious and eventually sad fates of two of the Shenandoah’s predecessors, the Alabama and the Florida, and the career up to the taking up of his command of the soon to be Captain Waddell. In addition to this there is of course further discussion of Civil War movie beards, including the Civil war links between Bruce Boxleitner’s roles in Gods and Generals and Babylon Five.

Shenandoah Down Under Episode 1

Join Robert Love and Michael O’Brien as they Live podcast the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the kinda epic kinda comic voyage of the CSS Shenandoah, the only confederate ship to sail around the world . This first episode introduces the the background to the voyage, and  discusses the prevalence or otherwise of Civil War anniversary commemorations. The badness of civil war movie fake beards, is, of course, a major theme.