A man is looking for the friends who shipped him overseas in a crate in 1965

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.5978289/this-man-is-looking-for-the-friends-who-shipped-him-overseas-in-a-crate-in-1965-1.5978296

by colinprince • 5 years ago

400 183 5 years ago

cbc.ca

hirundo• 5 years ago

That £700 from 1965 is now worth £13,600. He should pay it back if he can, even if any legal obligation has expired. But not the first class return ticket, that seems to have been freely given.

grammarprofess• 5 years ago

Maybe you could start a gofundme

dougmwne• 5 years ago

Perhaps it was an unjust contract in the first place that trapped a 19 year old thousands of miles away from home and with an unpayable debt over their heads.

andrewfromx• 5 years ago

yeah what if that was an etherum or cardano smart contract?

quickthrowman• 5 years ago

I wonder if this event was the inspiration for “The Gift” by The Velvet Underground. That song ends a bit different from this guys experience tho.

hluska• 5 years ago

According to Lester Bangs, Lou Reed wrote that story when he was in college.

(https://www.creemmag.com/blogs/journal/dead-lie-the-velvets-...)

Lou Reed went to Syracuse University starting in 1960. While Lou Reed was likely writing the great American novel, he didn’t tell many people the truth so who knows for sure?? My gut feeling is that you’re likely right.

kazinator• 5 years ago

"The Americans, the FBI, the CIA and everything else, they were brilliant. I mean, I fell in love with America, because I've never been treated so well," he said. "Everybody there really looked after me. And they just thought, oh, it's this silly kid getting himself into trouble."

Haha, try that today.

sbr464• 5 years ago

Different times for sure. My mother’s family immigrated from Mexico during the 1970s. There was an article in a local Louisiana newspaper welcoming and introducing the family to town. How times change.

—edit

Searching for orig. article but quote from mom re:

“Yes, the Ruston Daily Leader came to the house and interviewed mom and took our picture for the paper, we were famous.”

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

In the mid 80s when my dad married a Pakistani bride and brought her home to Ohio the local newspaper did a write up on it.

watermelon592• 5 years ago

My own anecdote as an immigrant is that I've always felt welcome here and have always been well treated, respected, and valued.

Totally different route of course, but same deal in terms of falling in love with the country. This is really home for me. America has given me much more than my birth country ever did, and my birth country was on multiple occasions a lot of more hostile to me, a citizen, than America has ever been to me as a non-citizen.

I'm currently seeking citizenship and have no qualms about swearing to uphold the Constitution and to defend the country if called to it.

aduitsis• 5 years ago

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

nhnhhnl• 5 years ago

What is your country of origin? Seems relevant.

da39a3ee2• 5 years ago

If you find US border guards welcoming to foreigners then that doesn't speak highly about the standards of friendliness in your country of origin.

FpUser• 5 years ago

I was about to post just that. That bearded guy must be celebrating in whatever goes for their afterlife place.

rootusrootus2• 5 years ago

Probably would be similar, aside from more regulations to follow. It's hard to remember sometimes that the assholes make the news, but most regular people are pretty friendly. Even police.

chrisco2555• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's just post-9/11, the attitude towards these sort of escapades has been dramatically different. Everyone in an airport today is treated as a terrorist first and a normal human second.

mabbo• 5 years ago

I'm shocked he even survived. Aren't airplane holds unpressurized? Perhaps airplanes simply flew at lower altitudes in those days. Still, it would have gotten pretty darned cold.

marcinzm• 5 years ago

I believe the whole plane is pressurized, after all animals survive flights in the hold all the time.

bri3d2• 5 years ago

No, this is a long-standing myth which is entirely false. It wouldn't make sense from an engineering standpoint as it would move the pressure differential to the flat (and thus weak) floor of the airplane, rather than the round (and thus strong) outer hull.

However, the hold is not climate controlled to the same degree as the cabin, so he may have gotten cold-ish. But even then, the cargo hold is not a particularly inhospitable place. Living things (animals) are for better or for worse shipped that way all the time.

Judgmentality• 5 years ago

Living things (animals) are for better or for worse shipped that way all the time.

They also die a lot this way.

https://www.treehugger.com/as-pet-deaths-continue-airlines-p...

Syonyk4• 5 years ago

No, cargo holds are generally pressurized and have been, as far as I know, since the beginning of pressurized aviation (late 40s to early 50s - there were a few test airframes earlier).

It doesn't mean cargo compartments are not cold, dark, loud, and unpleasant places to be, but they're pressurized.

If you pressurize a cylinder (say, a more or less round airplane fuselage), the stresses become tension stresses around the perimeter - it's trying to inflate the balloon, but the perimeter is designed to handle these stresses. The floor only has to support the weight of passengers.

If you had an unpressurized cargo hold, the floor would now need to not only support the weight of passengers, it would have to support the entire pressurization weight - which is far harder, because floors are typically flat. It would have to be far stronger and heavier.

There have been several aviation incidents from the cargo doors opening in flight - the DC-10 was particularly prone to the problem, because instead of an inward-opening, "plug" type door (where the pressure holds it in place), it had an outward opening door - more cargo space because the door doesn't swing in, but if the latching mechanism fails (which it did), the pressurization tries to push the door open, and it occasionally succeeded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Cargo_...

Sebb767• 5 years ago

If you had an unpressurized cargo hold, the floor would now need to not only support the weight of passengers, it would have to support the entire pressurization weight

Only if the plane is partly a passenger plane. If it would be a pure cargo plane, the whole back could be unpressurized, or am I missing something?

Safety1stClyde• 5 years ago

Here are some recent interesting videos by "Mentour Pilot" about the DC10 plane accidents caused by a cargo door coming off and depressurising the cargo hold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv5EQlzM1B8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7rF0wCSpE0

What happened, if you don't want to watch all the video, is that the aeroplane actually collapsed internally. In the second case, some of the passengers were sucked out of the plane.

hcrisp2• 5 years ago

See my comment elsewhere on the story called Stowaway in which someone climbed into a wheel well and survived a trip from Cuba to Madrid.

I just found a long list [0] of people who have done this, sadly only 24% of people who attempt such a thing survive.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wheel-well_stowaway_...

beforeolives• 5 years ago

Reminds me of Reg Spiers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Spiers

He is best known for successfully posting himself in a box from England to Australia to avoid paying for a plane ticket

I first heard of him on this episode of The Dollop podcast - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcast/the-dollop/113---reg-spi...

hcrisp2• 5 years ago

Reminds me of Stowaway [0], the incredible story of a teenage boy who escaped from his native Cuba by flying the Atlantic Ocean stowed away in the wheel well of a DC-8 airliner. Not as far as in the OP (he made it to Madrid), but he did not have access to a pressurized hold so he lacked oxygen, nearly froze, and barely escaped being crushed to death. But he did survive.

[0] https://www.rd.com/article/escape-from-cuba-dc-8/

saalweachter• 5 years ago

There is a wide gap between "survivable" and "safe".

bin_bash• 5 years ago

Happened more recently than that too https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/us/teen-plane-stowaway/index....

hashhar• 5 years ago

I so distinctly remember reading this in a second-hand paperback copy of Reader's Digest back when I was a teenager. I was so fascinated by this story - thanks for reminding me of it and helping me re-read it to relive some of it.

sebastien_b• 5 years ago

That story is nuts - and he obviously would have been treated much differently when they found him in the U.S. if the climate at the time would've been like it is now (thankfully it wasn't).

ketamine__3• 5 years ago

How did he forget their names? It just seems unbelievable.

glenmorangie_14• 5 years ago

Do you remember the names of the people you worked with during a summer job while you were in school? I sure don't.

ketamine__3• 5 years ago

If you did something incredibly illegal would you forget the names of the accomplices? Apparently many do ;)

kvm• 5 years ago

I don't remember the last names of my best friends from elementary school who moved to different states, and have started blanking on names of a few folks from middle school. This was about 20 years ago, so I find it perfectly plausible to forget the last names of folks who you 1. knew only for 3 months, 2. have not talked to for 56 years

cortesoft3• 5 years ago

Curious how old you are... there are so many things that seemed impossible to forget when I was younger that I have now forgotten.

11235813212• 5 years ago

If you feel this way, you must be young. I really encourage you to keep a brief chronology of names and events that are important to you. You will forget them decades from now and wish you’d written them somewhere.

ketamine__3• 5 years ago

This is some ageist nonsense. I feel this way because doing something illegal is different than a walk in the park with a friend.

7357• 5 years ago

he only knew them for 3 months

dkersten• 5 years ago

He only knew them for three months and it was a long time ago. I can't remember the names of some people I knew for much longer than that, 30 years ago, nevermind in the 60's!

Hell, I can't even remember names of some people I worked with and saw every day for about a year and a half, 6 years ago.

jareklupinski• 5 years ago

So Robson and his two closest work buddies devised the scheme to mail him home. Robson believes their names were Paul and John, but after all these years, he can't remember their surnames.

Ringo might be able to help :P

ping_pong• 5 years ago

For an entire summer, I worked with 2 people in a factory 30 years ago. I couldn't tell you what their names were either. I don't find it very shocking. When you turn 45, let us know how good your memory is as well :)

astrange2• 5 years ago

He forgot to add them on Facebook.

gweinberg2• 5 years ago

"The three young men had no idea whether their antics were against the law, he said."

That's not even remotely plausible.

Syonyk4• 5 years ago

How isn't it remotely plausible?

Shipping regulations were an awful lot more lax 55 years ago, and I wouldn't expect more than a handful of teenagers today to be able to give you details on shipping regulations related to shipping live animals (which, absent specific regulations on shipping humans that may or may not have been in place, seem the most relevant).

I would expect some specific regulations on shipping humans today, based on cases like this, but that's a case of "... OK, this is pretty vague in the regulations, let's make it exceedingly clear."

Stratoscope• 5 years ago

Indeed, when I was a kid around 1960, it was perfectly normal to see someone off on a flight by getting on the plane with them and looking around, then going to the cockpit to sit in the pilot's seat and "fly" the airplane for a minute before climbing back down the stairs to watch it take off.

cortesoft3• 5 years ago

What laws did they break?

They probably broke some, but I don't know which ones they would be, so it seems plausible to not be sure they broke any laws.

chris_wot• 5 years ago

I'm certain there are human trafficking laws that it would have violated.

jdavis703• 5 years ago

It’s illegal to cross the border outside of official border crossings, see 8 U.S. Code § 1325 - Improper entry by alien. Of course in this case it seems like the crossing was unintentional, and I’m unsure if the UK has similar laws.

gweinberg2• 5 years ago

That's absurd logic. You don't need to know the specific laws to know there are laws. Sneaking into a country is clearly illegal. Sneaking out of a country to break your contract has to be illegal. Sending a person by freight is pretty definitely specifically illegal, and even if it isn't nailing someone up and mailing him has to be breaking some sort of reckless endangerment law.

adrianmonk• 5 years ago

I suppose the charitable interpretation is that it's a short way of saying, "We figured it was probably against some kind of law, but we didn't know enough to understand what specifically or how bad the consequences would be."

herodoturtle2• 5 years ago

From the article:

They covered the crate with labels that read "Fragile," "Handle with care" and "This side up." It was scheduled to fly from Melbourne to London within 36 hours. Robson ended up being inside that crate for five days. "It was terrifying," he said. "I was passing in and out of consciousness. I had a lack of oxygen. Oh, it was bad." There seemed to be an endless number of stopovers, and the airport crews didn't pay much attention to the crate's labels. At one point, Robson says he was left upside down on a tarmac, literally sitting on his head for 24 hours because there wasn't enough room in the crate to turn around.

The rest of the article is great (in particular the way it ends), but reading the above excerpt made me shudder.

The will power of this man is unbelievable.

I hope he finds his friends.

hk1337• 5 years ago

This side up

and he still ended up upside down for 24 hours.

panzagl• 5 years ago

They put the sticker on in Australia.

chrisco2555• 5 years ago

Isn't it kinda crazy how we take for granted how easily it is to find people nowadays via social media or your stored phone book entry on your cell phone? I guess they didn't think to exchange phone numbers or addresses before the scheme was hatched? And then, how would you lookup a phone number in Australia from LA or London in 1963? You'd have to really work at it to find it.

13of40• 5 years ago

Back in the deep mists of time you used to be able to call a special operator who would look up the number in a phone book for you. They called it "information".

yosito2• 5 years ago

The will power of this man is unbelievable.

He couldn't stand being away from home for more than 3 months. I'm not sure if it was really will power. More like sunk cost fallacy.

xeromal• 5 years ago

lol, always a pessimist.

cbsks• 5 years ago

11 months: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/offbeat/the-crate-escape-two...

Ericson2314• 5 years ago

But strong lack of sunk cost fallacy leaving Australia so soon.

trothamel• 5 years ago

Here's a brief history of children being sent via the mail:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil...

ars• 5 years ago

To save people click: Children were not actually placed in boxes and mailed. Rather they accompanied a postman as he traveled to a different location.

Also usually the postman was a friend or relative, not a stranger.

So not as exciting as it sounds.

modernerd• 5 years ago

A photo of the actual crate he stowed away in (his rescuer is in the crate):

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/media/images/82156000/jpg/...

From this 2015 article: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32151053

It really helps to picture being stuck upside down in the thing. I thought, “surely you could gradually rotate yourself the right way up” before I saw the photo.

kevinyun• 5 years ago

Those photos do a great job illustrating what his situation looked like.

Here's to hoping he finds his two friends after all these years!

dageshi• 5 years ago

I look at that and think "I would get cramp immediately and be in absolute agony".

_Microft• 5 years ago

Developing blood clots in the legs because of insufficient circulation is what I was afraid of when seeing the image.

m463• 5 years ago

When I was a kid we were playing around and I got zipped into a suitcase. I had to really "get small".

I was completely fine for a while, until a little while in it was like a switch was flipped and I was "let me out omg let me out". I freaked out. then I was out and was fine. But I remember that extreme claustrophobia moment.

tyingq• 5 years ago

Bad idea all around. Could have easily been frozen or asphyxiated even if the trip was on a quick single flight. Nobody looks at a crate if there's a decompression event. Not even an emergency escape in the crate. Oof.

Syonyk4• 5 years ago

Robson was 19...

"Thinking things all the way through" isn't a common trait in any 19 year old men I've known over the years, to include myself a few decades ago.

"Oh, man, that sounds like it should work!" is a lot more likely. And, you know, it usually does!

marshmallow_12• 5 years ago

-And, you know, it usually does!

Technically, his scheme did "work". Though it wasn't what we might call an unqualified success...

ben509• 5 years ago

Seemed like a crate idea at the time.

danso• 5 years ago

At one point, Robson says he was left upside down on a tarmac, literally sitting on his head for 24 hours because there wasn't enough room in the crate to turn around.

I'm surprised he survived this. I remember when David Blaine hung upside down in Central Park for 3 days – but every few hours he had to take a break: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1060038/Cheati...

cgijoe• 5 years ago

Agree, and I just saw that caving docu-movie (The Last Descent) about that poor guy who got stuck upside down deep in the cave and couldn't move. He died in under 24 hours I believe.

TedDoesntTalk• 5 years ago

Why would hanging upside down for 24 hours kill you (serious question)? Doesn't the heart pump blood with the same efficiency regardless of its orientation?

starkd2• 5 years ago

And they actually thought slapping a "fragile" and a "this side up" stickers on the crate would help. It shows a naivete. It's sort of like the "do not copy" prohibitions embedded on a set of keys.

luxuryballs2• 5 years ago

Yeah I wonder if there is a better build so that it could only sit properly with one side down.

mc32• 5 years ago

When shipping sensitive equipment, you can use these tilt and tip indicators: https://spotsee.io/tilt

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

Back in the day when labor was cheap and they didn't have to be stingy it was not uncommon to honor these sorts of things. Nowadays the employee would be yelled at for wasting time.

cromka• 5 years ago

I went to ~6 different hardware stores in NYC before I found one in LES that did not bat an eye on the "do not copy". So, I guess, YMMV.

amelius2• 5 years ago

Perhaps his legs were folded down in that crate, so blood pressure wouldn't increase that much.

baby• 5 years ago

He might not have been completely upside down, although I’m not sure if there’s a difference.

andi999• 5 years ago

Also it might not have been 24 hours

xchaotic• 5 years ago

Nice try FBI

asimjalis• 5 years ago

How did he deal with going to the bathroom in the crate? A topic the article does not touch upon.

flatline• 5 years ago

They mentioned the empty bottle. I'm sure he didn't have to poop living in a crate for five days with only water to drink.

_whiteCaps_• 5 years ago

Even if you aren't eating, the bacteria in your digestive system are producing waste.

shoo• 5 years ago

"Australia was a complete shock to my system," says Brian Robson. "I found it very difficult, and thought from the moment I got there I wanted to get out as quickly as possible."

a desperate situation calls for desperate measures

astrange2• 5 years ago

That's funny, that's what I thought about Melbourne last time I went. Only because the city seems to be entirely made out of fancy interior design indie coffee shops though.

It also somehow has all four seasons every day.

metanonsense• 5 years ago

Being trapped in economy class for 16 hours usually breaks me mentally and physically. But imagining this torture leaves me in complete horror.

rootusrootus2• 5 years ago

That was my thought, too. I'm usually ready to kiss the Earth after a 16+ hour flight. I can't imagine 5 days, and not even in the luxury of a coach class airline seat.

Aeolun• 5 years ago

I’m not sure if 16 hours in coach is too different from 16 hours in a box. Except for the heat, I suppose.

pvarangot• 5 years ago

Cargo areas in planes are usually heated and pressurized like the cabin.

dvirsky• 5 years ago

I've done many 15+ hour flights in coach. You get used to it, plus there's sleeping pills.

nullserver• 5 years ago

Did 13 hours with a 2 year old. Who thought kicking the seat in front of her was great fun.

First 3 hours of the flight was me bent over holding her legs still.

Turns out 5% of the population have a reverse reaction to Benadryl. They become absurdly hyper on it.

Stevvo• 5 years ago

You gave Benadryl to a two year old? That's insane. Dangerous and irresponsible.

dylan604• 5 years ago

At least he wasn't in the middle seat in that crate

khalilravanna• 5 years ago

This reminds me of the time I was riding my motorcycle in the cold at night on the highway from Vermont to Massachusetts for 3 hours. I wore a bunch of layers but with highway speeds the wind chill cut away heat incredibly quickly. Creeping cold gave way to mad shivering which gave way to a general numbness and fatigue. But I refused to give in and stop and eventually made it home. I spent a nontrivial portion of that ride saying “Fuck” over and over to myself.

This sounds like that experience times 10. The will of the human spirit is truly extraordinary.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

My mom's bff's husband was originally South African but his family moved to East Germany in the 60's. His mother, his sister, and him escaped in the back of an industrial box truck. Specifically, he was stowed in a toolbox and was frightened of being caught or killed the entire way. To this day, he has extreme claustrophobia as a result.

herodoturtle2• 5 years ago

Curious why they needed to "escape" - South Africa's border control has always been pretty reasonable, so this piqued my interest.

Were they criminals on the run? Or was it an illegal citizenship / passport issue?

Sounds like an incredible story either way.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

No, of course not. This was a long time ago when things were much different. They are normal, good people who tried to do their best to have a safe and comfortable life.

CRConrad• 5 years ago

Escaped from East Germany.

AuthorizedCust• 5 years ago

Moved to East Germany? In the era of the Berlin Wall, which was built to prevent people from fleeing that country?

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

Yeap. There were bad conditions at the time in apartheid SA: violence and crime. (It's still pretty bad considering most middle-class homes have security guards and enormous gates, similar to Brazil.) I don't remember the precise specifics. IIRC, it was okay at the time of relocating but it deteriorated.

mlindner• 5 years ago

Why in the world would they move from South Africa to East Germany? People leave East Germany, they don't move there.

failwhaleshark4• 5 years ago

See other comment where it's answered.

KorematsuFred• 5 years ago

"The Americans, the FBI, the CIA and everything else, they were brilliant. I mean, I fell in love with America, because I've never been treated so well," he said. "Everybody there really looked after me. And they just thought, oh, it's this silly kid getting himself into trouble."

Hell ya. Imagine that happening in 2020.

munificent• 5 years ago

American culture changed so so much on 2001/09/11. It's like the attack (and the government's response) snuffed out our optimism, spirit, and humor.

mberning• 5 years ago

There was an interesting reality show called “Airport” I think. 9/11 put an end to that.

geocrasher• 5 years ago

I was in high school in the early to mid 90's and actually went up into the Air Traffic Control Tower at an airport, once a week, for class. Now, everyone involved would go to prison. Times have changed. A lot. 9/11 ruined things.

3r3rni9• 5 years ago

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit.

peter303• 5 years ago

For a while parents shipped their children USPS Parcel Post because it was cheaper than train fare.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil...

Gustomaximus• 5 years ago

Another Australian guy did similar: Reg Speirs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Spiers

a0-prw• 5 years ago

I bet the Irish guys had a damn good laugh in the pub after posting him off. What a spectacularly stupid thing to do.

INTPenis• 5 years ago

I wish I could do something like this for my mother. She came to a strange country as a 14 year old girl in the 60s. Just happened upon some young men that spoke her language.

She had missed her connecting train so they took her home, 3-4 young men. They fed her, gave her a couch to sleep on without taking advantage of her. She wanted to give them a bottle of alcohol she had brought as thanks but they refused.

The next day they put her on the right train.

Only 2 years later she was married to my father, yes at 16. Times were different.

Ever since she had hoped to find these guys who helped her to thank them. She has facebook connections in both countries but it's not helping. I think she needs it to show up on the news somewhere, in both countries most likely.

FredPret• 5 years ago

What a touching story INTPenis

A man is looking for the friends who shipped him overseas in a crate in 1965

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