The Unlikely Record · Episode 07 · Twelve stories
Twelve departures built from work, trust and familiar things
A box, a boat, a change of clothes or a piece of exercise equipment could acquire another purpose when someone needed to leave. These stories follow people escaping slavery, persecution and wartime captivity, alongside a king seeking refuge and a prisoner who made his escape into literature. Their circumstances differ, and their departures should not be made morally interchangeable. What connects them is the practical work of turning a possibility into a route, usually with help from others.
Story 01
The Freight Had a Destination of His Own
Henry Brown wanted to leave slavery, and the transport system carried parcels where he could not travel openly. In Richmond, he arranged with helpers to be enclosed in a wooden crate and sent to Philadelphia. His plan turned the machinery of commerce toward a freedom that commerce in human beings had denied him.
His 1851 narrative describes the reason for that decision as well as the journey. His wife and children had been sold away. He consulted people he trusted, helped arrange the shipment, and accepted an extraordinary physical risk. Brown was the person directing this attempt, even when handlers could see only a box.
Inside, he endured being turned head downward and transferred between vehicles. Instructions on the outside did not ensure careful handling. He later described distress so severe that he feared dying before arrival. The journey lasted about twenty-seven hours; on reaching his destination, he was too weak to stand unaided.
Brown went on to speak publicly against slavery. An 1850 lithograph presents his emergence as a resurrection, making the delivery into an abolitionist image. It is a historical representation, rather than a camera’s record of the room. The man who had survived as concealed freight could now insist that audiences recognize the person within.
Evidence and sources
Brown described the journey in his 1851 narrative. Its dangers and his agency are retained; conflicting precise departure dates are not resolved by choosing one.
- Narrative of the life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself (1851) — University of Pennsylvania: primary edition mirror
Printed pp. 49–57 - Henry Box Brown — National Park Service
- The resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia — Library of Congress
Story 02
The Passenger Everyone Misread
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Ellen and William Craft left Macon using public transport. Other passengers had to misread them: Ellen would appear to be a young white enslaver, while William would appear to be the man she held in slavery. The couple traveled in roles that concealed their relationship.
Ellen’s disguise included a sling. Because she could not write, an apparently injured arm provided an explanation when a signature was demanded. It did not make every encounter simple. At Charleston, a ticket clerk refused to sign for her; a fellow passenger intervened. Each helpful assumption could be followed by another dangerous request.
In Baltimore, an official wanted security to establish William’s supposed owner’s right to take him farther north. A conductor recognized the travelers from the previous train, and they were finally allowed to continue. They reached Philadelphia on Christmas Day, where Ellen could remove the disguise.
The couple later settled in Boston, but the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 brought renewed danger and eventually another departure, to England. Their first journey had exposed how readily strangers would honor the authority of an apparent enslaver. The same social order that made their escape possible also made freedom in the North insecure.
Evidence and sources
The journey is documented in the Crafts’ published account and institutional research. No invented conversation is supplied.
- A Desperate Leap for Liberty: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft — National Park Service
Story 03
Exercise Above the Exit
A vaulting horse belonged in an exercise yard. At Stalag Luft III, that ordinary appearance concealed an extraordinary use. Prisoners built a hollow horse from Red Cross boxes and used it to hide access to a tunnel. The work continued for months beneath an activity that guards could watch in plain sight.
On October 29, 1943, Oliver Philpot, Eric Williams and Michael Codner were concealed inside the horse when fellow prisoners carried it outside. The National Archives’ account records 114 days of digging. At the end of that work, a familiar piece of equipment brought the three men to the beginning of their route out.
Philpot later recalled emerging near a guard who was looking into the camp. The men reached the cover of pine trees. They then separated; Philpot traveled onward under a civilian identity. The recollection preserves how little distance initially lay between leaving the tunnel and being discovered.
A surviving photograph of Philpot demonstrating a replica horse in 1950 belongs to the story’s later life. It can illustrate how the escape was explained after the war, but it cannot show the original breakout. The distinction matters: the escape happened once, while its telling could be rehearsed again and again.
Evidence and sources
The National Archives preserves the escape narrative and Philpot’s recollection. A later demonstration is identified as a reconstruction, not wartime photography.
- Great Escapes exhibition — The National Archives
- Iconic escape stories — The National Archives
Section3:Oliver Philpot - Demonstration of the wooden horse prison escape — International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive, University of Lincoln
Story 04
The Boat Left the Prison Island
Lochleven Castle put water between Mary, Queen of Scots, and the people who might help her. During her imprisonment in 1567, she was compelled to abdicate in favor of her young son. A small island had become the boundary of a political life that had once extended across kingdoms.
On May 2, 1568, help came from within her captors’ household. Historic Environment Scotland describes the assistance of Douglas supporters, including the young Willie Douglas, who obtained a key. Mary reached a boat and crossed the loch. On the shore, supporters and horses made it possible for the departure to continue.
Escape did not restore her throne. She gathered supporters, but her forces were defeated at Langside on May 13. She then went to England seeking Elizabeth’s support. Leaving one place of confinement had opened a brief military opportunity, rather than a secure return to power.
The National Museums Scotland collection includes sixteenth-century iron keys found in the loch. They have been linked to Mary’s departure, yet the museum considers it unlikely that they came from the castle. An object can suit a famous story without proving that it belonged to it. The crossing is established more securely than the identity of those tempting relics.
Evidence and sources
The escape and ensuing campaign are documented. Museum keys associated with it are not authenticated as the castle’s keys.
- A Taste of Freedom for Mary Queen of Scots — Historic Environment Scotland
- True or False: Objects associated with Mary, Queen of Scots — National Museums Scotland
Story 05
The Exit Returned Through the Palace
Casanova’s route out of prison led back into the palace. Confined in the Piombi at Venice’s Doge’s Palace in 1755, he first tried to work through the floor. When that effort failed, the direction of escape changed. The ceiling and roof offered a different possibility.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France’s account follows him out onto the roof on the night of October 31, 1756. He then descended through an opening into the palace. Reaching another interior did not immediately solve the problem: a locked door still separated him from departure.
At that point appearance became useful. Wearing good clothes, he could be taken for someone who belonged in the building, rather than someone escaping its prison. In the account, a servant opened the way. The passage between prisoner and apparent visitor depended on a stranger recognizing the wrong social role.
Casanova later made this adventure into a work of literature. His separate escape narrative appeared in Prague in 1788, long after the event it described. That interval does not erase the documented escape, but it matters when reading its polished incidents. The story lets us follow a physical departure and the creation of a public identity: the former prisoner became the celebrated teller of his own deliverance.
Evidence and sources
The escape is documented; its detailed sequence comes through Casanova’s later account and institutional interpretation. The escape memoir was published in 1788.
- Casanova, la passion de la liberté — Bibliothèque nationale de France
Section on imprisonment and escape - Casanova 1725–2025 — Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
Story 06
The Rope Needed People at Both Ends
John Gerard could not simply climb away from what had happened to him. The Jesuit priest had been moved to the Tower of London in April 1597 and tortured during questioning about Catholic contacts. In his account, the injuries to his hands and arms were severe enough to prevent him holding a knife for weeks.
Later that year, Gerard and another Catholic prisoner, John Arden, escaped with help from outside. A rope connected their departure to friends waiting in a boat on the Thames. Their release required more than a resourceful prisoner: other people had to be present, prepared and willing to share the danger.
The escape took place years before the Gunpowder Plot. Gerard continued his religious work in England before returning to the Continent in 1606. Asked by his superiors to write about his life, he compiled an account in 1609. The surviving text therefore belongs to a participant recalling a dangerous period after he had left it.
Historic Royal Palaces places his physical ordeal beside the institutional machinery of interrogation. The Jesuit archive preserves the later history of his manuscript. Together, those records give the rope a wider context. It crossed a barrier, but its meaning depended on persecution, endurance and a network of people who refused to leave one another isolated.
Evidence and sources
Gerard’s escape is supported by his autobiography and institutional histories. The narration does not transplant it into the later Gunpowder Plot.
- Torture at the Tower: The Case of John Gerard — Historic Royal Palaces
- Gunpowder, Treason and Plot — British Jesuit Archives
Story 07
The King Borrowed a Countryman’s Clothes
After defeat at Worcester in September 1651, Charles needed to stop looking like a king. At White Ladies, his clothes were exchanged for a countryman’s outfit and his hair was cut. Richard Penderel helped him move through a landscape where recognition could end the attempt to get away.
An intended route across the Severn proved too dangerous because the river was guarded. Charles returned toward Boscobel, where another fugitive, William Careless, proposed hiding in an oak. In the account Charles dictated to Samuel Pepys decades later, the two watched soldiers searching the surrounding woodland while remaining concealed among the branches.
They returned to the house after dark. Boscobel provided further shelter, including a hiding place associated with the protection of Catholic priests. The famous tree was one temporary refuge within a longer escape, dependent on local knowledge and households prepared to receive a wanted man.
The oak now shown at Boscobel is a descendant of that tree. English Heritage’s work to restore nearby oak pasture also helps explain the setting: the isolated tree of a modern visit can give a misleading impression of the wooded landscape in which the fugitives hid. The surviving place preserves the memory, while careful interpretation keeps the present scenery from standing in unchanged for 1651.
Evidence and sources
The hiding episode is documented, including Charles’s later account to Pepys. The present Royal Oak is a descendant, not the tree in which he hid.
- Charles II and the Royal Oak — English Heritage
- Shropshire woodland that hid Charles II to be restored — English Heritage
Story 08
The Journey After the Network
Virginia Hall had helped other people escape from France. By November 1942, she needed to leave herself. Her work for Britain’s Special Operations Executive had supported agents, provided contacts and assisted people in hiding. As German forces entered the previously unoccupied zone, remaining in place became more dangerous.
Hall crossed the Pyrenees into Spain using a prosthetic leg. The physical fact is well established; a later writer’s attempt to retrace a possible path is a different kind of evidence. Craig Gralley’s account carefully begins from his own search for the route. His modern observations cannot supply an exact record of each step Hall took.
Reaching Spain did not bring immediate freedom of movement. She was arrested there before eventually being released. The CIA’s history describes her subsequent request to return to France, which the British considered too dangerous. She later returned with the American Office of Strategic Services.
The crossing is often told as an isolated feat of endurance. Its place in Hall’s work makes it more complex. She had been part of a network that arranged shelter and movement for others; escape allowed her to survive and continue that work. Her agency remains clear without inventing thoughts on a mountain path or making a prosthetic limb the whole explanation of her life.
Evidence and sources
Hall’s crossing and subsequent Spanish detention are documented. A modern researcher’s proposed trail and imagined sensations are not treated as her recorded experience.
- A Climb to Freedom: A Personal Journey in Virginia Hall’s Steps — CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
- Virginia Hall: The Courage and Daring of The Limping Lady — Central Intelligence Agency
Story 09
A Journey Became a Line
Before the Comet Line became a name in wartime records, people tested the journey. Andrée de Jongh helped guide Allied personnel out of occupied territory. A report preserved by The National Archives places the beginning of her work for the Allies in early 1941.
The report describes a July journey in which she and another Belgian guided eleven Belgian officers as far as the Pyrenees. On a subsequent journey, it records an Englishman and two Belgians reaching Spain with her. The account presents this experience as a turning point toward sustained work helping British and American escapees.
What followed depended on many helpers, often known imperfectly to the people they assisted. The surviving report says its list is incomplete. Some men mentioned de Jongh by name in their accounts; others did not know her name. A document created to recognize assistance therefore also records the limits of recognition.
De Jongh was arrested in 1943 and remained imprisoned for the rest of the war. Her early crossings did not make every later success her achievement alone. Repeated journeys and human commitments made the route usable. The archive also shows how some of its helpers remain harder to identify.
Evidence and sources
A preserved Allied report describes early journeys and warns that its list of people helped is incomplete. Its estimates are not converted into exact totals.
- Indexing WO 208: Helpers of Allied prisoners of war — The National Archives
WO208/5452:Evaders assisted by Mlle Andree De Jongh
Story 10
The Crew Took the Ship
The Planter’s white captain was ashore when its enslaved crew took the vessel out of Charleston Harbor. Robert Smalls knew the boat and the waters around it. On the morning of May 13, 1862, that working knowledge became a means of liberation for people whom the Confederacy treated as property.
The ship passed the forts using the expected signals. Once beyond the Confederate guns, a white flag announced a different intention. A contemporary dispatch describes the Union vessel Onward preparing to fire before its commander recognized the flag. Reaching the blockade was another dangerous encounter, not an automatic welcome from a distance.
The escape was a collective action. Engineer John Small was aboard with his wife Susan and infant son Phillip. The National Park Service’s research distinguishes his documented identity from Robert Smalls’s; a similar surname does not establish that the two were relatives. Remembering the engineer also restores the work below the level of the familiar captain’s portrait.
Union officers valued the steamer and the information brought with it. Their correspondence records those military advantages alongside an extraordinary departure from enslavement. The vessel carried people making a decision about their own lives. Its arrival transformed a Confederate transport into evidence that the people operating it had ambitions far beyond the duties imposed on them.
Evidence and sources
Contemporary naval correspondence and individual records establish the escape. Crew and family numbers vary in later summaries; no unsupported family relationship is assumed between John Small and Robert Smalls.
- Robert Smalls: This Bold Feat So Skillfully — American Battlefield Trust
- John Small — National Park Service
- Robert Smalls and the gun-boat Planter,1862 — Library of Congress
Harper’s Weekly,June 14, 1862, p. 372
Story 11
The Whaler Was Waiting Offshore
The Catalpa reached Western Australia as a whaling ship with another task. Six Fenian prisoners were to leave their work parties near Fremantle and reach the vessel offshore. The plan joined people inside the penal system to organizers, drivers and sailors operating beyond it.
On April 17, 1876, the men traveled south in horse-drawn vehicles to Rockingham. A whaleboat then carried them toward the Catalpa. The sea interrupted the timetable: failing light and a squall prevented the small boat from reaching the ship that evening. They spent the night exposed offshore.
They reached the Catalpa the following day, but pursuit continued. On April 19, the armed Georgette overtook the whaler. Captain George Anthony claimed the protection of the American flag in international waters. The colonial officer faced the possibility of a diplomatic incident and allowed the vessel to leave.
Fremantle Prison’s account makes the distance between land and ship central to the story. Getting away from a work party, reaching the beach, finding the whaler and surviving official pursuit were separate problems. The rescue succeeded when its parts connected. A boat visible on the horizon was a destination, but until the small craft reached it, it could not yet be safety.
Evidence and sources
The rescue is documented by institutional research. Territorial-water claims are reported as claims made during the confrontation, not a new legal ruling.
- The Fenians — Fremantle Prison
Story 12
The Escape Machine That Stayed Behind
At Colditz, prisoners looked above the walls as well as beneath them. A glider offered a route no tunnel could provide: departure from the castle roof. Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best became central to turning the idea into drawings and components, using knowledge they had and a textbook found in the prison library.
A concealed attic workshop made the work possible. The team improvised tools and obtained wood from the castle’s surroundings and fittings. In later interviews, participants described the repeated tasks of shaping pieces, fitting them and keeping the activity hidden. A spectacular proposal became months of ordinary making.
The aircraft did not carry prisoners away. American forces reached the castle in April 1945 before a launch was attempted. Best later recalled bringing the parts down and assembling them after liberation. The assembled glider demonstrated what the builders had accomplished, while the arrival of the liberators removed the immediate reason to risk the flight.
Decades later, a replica flew with former prisoners watching. That result belongs to the history of reconstruction. It cannot turn a planned wartime escape into an event that occurred. The original project remains remarkable for the labor, cooperation and technical imagination invested in it, even though the men eventually left Colditz by a different route.
Evidence and sources
Prisoners built the glider, but it was not flown for an escape. Later replica flights test later reconstructions and do not change the wartime outcome.
- Great Escapes exhibition — The National Archives
- Nazi Prison Escape transcript — PBS NOVA
The familiar object is often what makes an escape memorable. The fuller record brings back the people around it: those who carried, guided, waited, concealed and received. It also preserves the difference between an escape that happened, a later version of the story and a machine whose intended journey never began.
About the evidence labels
Documented identifies a supported historical event. Disputed marks an account whose explanation or details remain contested. Folklore identifies a recorded tradition; its inclusion does not establish that a supernatural event occurred.
