History Book - Portugal’s day of longing

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, January 31st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming up next: The WORLD History Book.

Today, the first ironclad warships hit the waves and the United States hosts the Winter Olympic Games. But first, a curious Portuguese holiday.

Katie Gaultney has the week off, but Associate Correspondent Harrison Watters is filling in.

HARRISON WATTERS, ASSOCIATION CORRESPONDENT: In the mid 1400s, the Portuguese explored the coast of Africa under King Henry the Navigator. Within 100 years, Portugal established colonies in Africa, India, and Brazil. As an ocean empire, the country was the first European nation to have many families separated by half a globe as the men went to sea—and that separation fanned into flame an emotion that now has its own holiday.

CLIP: “It’s a distinctly Portuguese emotion called saudade - a kind of yearning or nostalgia.”

Saudade is a word that has no easy English translation. It’s a longing for people who are absent and may never return—tinged both with sadness and happy memories. As many Portuguese left their home country in the 19th and 20th centuries, the word came to include longing for home. Today, saudade is commemorated primarily in music, like this 1989 song by Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s former Minister of Culture.

TODA SAUDADE BY GILBERTO GIL: “Toda saudade é a presença, Da ausência de alguém, De algum lugar, De algo enfim…”

While it’s unclear why Brazilians celebrate Saudade Day on January 30th, it’s an opportunity for many to remember loved ones and places with bittersweet longing.

From Portuguese sailors to American shipbuilders, this week marks 160 years since the USS Monitor first set sail—only without the sail.

During the American Civil War, the Union Navy blockaded Southern ports. But rumors came out of Norfolk, Virginia, that the Confederates were building a steam powered ship encased in iron armor—the Merrimack. It could deflect cannonballs and cut through the Hampton Roads blockade.

If an ironclad gunship could defeat the Union frigates, nothing would stop it from sailing on to Washington D.C.—except for maybe another ironclad. So the Union Navy quickly commissioned John Ericson, a Swedish-born engineer, to build an ironclad ship of its own.

One hundred sixty-one days later, the USS Monitor slid into Manhattan's East River and stayed afloat, despite critic’s predictions that “Ericson’s Folly” would sink. Monitor could float, but it barely looked like a ship, as one character noted in the 1936 film Hearts in Bondage:

MOVIE CLIP: What in tarnation is it? I don’t know, but it looks like a cheese box on a raft! [LAUGHTER]

With its flat deck just a couple feet above the waterline and a gun turret toward the back, the ironclad looked more like a modern submarine than a 19th century man-of-war.

Retired Commander Ty Martin, a U.S. Navy Historian, describes genius of Ericson’s design this way in The Great Ships Ironclads Documentary:

CLIP: Erickson’s design was created to carry a weapons system first, and everything else was secondary to that. It was an excellent fighting machine. It had a gun turret. So instead of having a number of guns running down each side of the ship, you had a fewer number of guns in a central position and you could turn that central position to aim the guns.

In March the Monitor arrived at Hampton Roads just in time, coming around the stranded USS Minnesota as the Merrimack was preparing to sink her. The duel of the ironclads lasted four hours while the ships dented each other with cannonballs until Monitor fell back to defend the Minnesota and Merrimack ran aground before returning to Norfolk for repairs.

While the battle was a draw, it demonstrated the power of ironclad ships and changed the priorities of naval warfare forever.

And finally, we end today in Lake Placid for the Winter Olympics

SPORTSCASTER: “Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? YES!!!”

No, no, not that Lake Placid Olympics - THIS Lake Placid Olympics.

NEWSREEL: [FANFARE] The Olympic Games are on!

Ninety years ago this week, the Olympics left Europe for the first time and came to America for the 1932 Winter games.

NEWSREEL: And there’s the U.S. #1 team, Fisk driving. There they go.

While California won the bid for Los Angeles to host the Summer games, Lake Placid, New York, was selected to host the Winter Olympics, thanks in large part to the lobbying efforts of Godfrey Dewey, son of the Dewey Decimal System inventor.

Only 17 countries participated, down from 25 four years earlier—thanks to the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then still the governor of New York, kicked off the ceremonies.

In addition to being the first Olympic games in America, the 1932 Lake Placid games were the first to use a victory podium for the medal ceremonies. It was also the first and only Olympic games to feature a dog sled competition.

Twelve contestants from the United States and Canada ran a 25.1 mile course, and Canadian musher Emile St. Godard came out on top. While there have been several attempts to bring dog sledding back to the Olympics, dog lovers will have to be content with the silent footage from 1932.

Maybe you’ll be feeling some saudade for sled dogs at this year’s winter Olympics.

And that’s this week’s History Book. I’m Harrison Watters.

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