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Rhode Island’s Little Annapolis: The PT Boat Training Center at Melville

During World War II, Rhode Island residents could hear the roar of PT boat engines from Narragansett Bay all day and see tracer bullets fired over the ocean at night.

They could watch the PT boats racing around either in formation or practicing maneuvers. Perhaps Richard Nixon saw them from the Quonset Point Naval air station while he trained there in 1942. Perhaps George H.W. Bush had an aerial view of the little boats while training at the Charlestown Naval Air Station. And maybe they caught a glimpse of John F. Kennedy racing around the bay, leaving a rooster tail in his wake.

Birth of the PT Boat

The Navy had recognized early in the war that it needed small, high-speed, heavily armed gunboats to use among the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific. From that insight came the Patrol Torpedo boat, known as the PT boat. You may have seen PT boats in motion pictures such as They Were Expendable and PT 109 or the comedy TV show, McHale’s Navy.

Nearly all of the 14,000 PT boat officers and men trained at the small navy base on Narragansett Bay in the village of Melville, a part of Portsmouth, R.I. The Navy didn’t just train its men there, but developed PT boat policies and tactics as well.

Not many histories of these small bases have been written. Melville, however, graduated a disproportionate number of extremely successful men. In addition to a president of the Unite States, Melville graduated a U.S. Supreme Court justice, three movie stars, five U.S. ambassadors, four NFL coaches, six top corporate executives and a U.S. attorney general – to name a few.

This is their story.

Devil Boats

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, has published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He has a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lives in East Providence, R.I.

PT boat logo

The base was formally known as the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center (MTBSTC). The Japanese called them Devil Boats, and the Navy fondly called them the Mosquito Fleet, after their logo. The Secretary of the Navy signed an order establishing the PT boat fleet on Feb. 17, 1942.

In the beginning, a Massachusetts firm began construction on the small base. But then the Navy largely turned it over to the Rhode Island companies of Gilbane, Coleman and Collins. When all was said and done, there would be 59 buildings and 150 Quonset Huts (a Rhode Island invention). These buildings and huts would house classrooms, mess halls, warehouses, machine shops, living quarters and more — everything you’d find in a large Navy base.

The builders literally built a boat basin for the PT boats out of a swamp. It was staffed full time by 57 officers and 280 enlisted men. Motorists could see it from the Mt. Hope Bridge, which connects Bristol and Portsmouth.

Alongside the PT boat training unit was the Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit (MTBRTU). This unit had a staff of 30 officers and 950 enlisted men. Here they trained on maintaining the three 1500-horsepower Packard engines on a PT boat either in dock or the field. On the other side of the base was the Naval Fuel and Net Depot – a good location because those Packard engines gobbled up huge amounts of high-octane fuel.

Melville also had the advantage of having the Navy’s Newport Torpedo Station on Goat Island down the road from it. The torpedo station could provide training duds, sometimes live, for the torpedo boats to practice with. It also supplied experimental torpedoes to try out and a seven-mile torpedo range running north from the torpedo station up Narragansett Bay toward Prudence Island.

Mount Hope Bridge

Specht Tech

The Navy organized the PT boats into 44 squadrons, generally comprised of 12 boats. All told, the Navy commissioned over 650 PT boats by the end of the war.

The men nicknamed the squadrons ‘RON’, from the last three letters of ‘squadron,’ and added their number. RON 4 began operations at the Newport Navy Base on Jan. 13, 1942. It later moved to the crowded Melville base and remained in operation for the duration of the war. RON 4 patrolled the Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts coastline. Thus Narragansett Bay provided a safe haven for training and experimentation.

Lt. William C. Specht, soon promoted to lieutenant commander, was tapped to serve as Melville’s first commander in March 1942. He also ran the repair and fuel depots. Specht oversaw the construction of the base as well as the development of its curriculum. Navy men assigned to the course at Melville joked they attended “Specht Tech.”

Lt. jg. John F. Kennedy in PT 109

Plenty Tough

The PT boats were built mostly by the Higgins Company in New Orleans and the ELCO Company, a division of Electric Boat, the submarine builder. They had to measure at least 77 feet long in order to carry and launch Mark 8 torpedoes. They also carried twin 50-caliber machine guns. Some of the PT boats had 20 mm cannons.

The crewmen did their gunnery training at the Anti-Aircraft Center at Price’s Neck on Newport’s Ocean Drive. George Donovan, now 92, remembers them practicing at night. Along with his brother and cousins, he watched from his grandmother’s bedroom window, which faced Ocean Drive. They were fascinated and mesmerized watching countless tracer bullets fired out over the ocean at practice targets towed by small airplanes. These trainees used live ammunition, and occasionally they strayed off target and accidently shot down the tow plane.

The men trained in their PT boats on Narragansett Bay and in the ocean between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard, 10 miles south of Newport. People said the rooster tail and the roar of the engines was most impressive the first time you heard and saw them. These boats could travel between 40-45 miles an hour at full throttle and were physically demanding to operate. So demanding they sometimes said that “PT” meant the men had to be ‘plenty tough.’

A PT boat underway near Midway

Accidents Happen

Occasionally, things went wrong.

Whenever the torpedo station was going to launch a test torpedo along its seven-mile range off Gould Island, it blew a very loud warning whistle. But one day in 1942 the commander of PT 122 did not hear the whistle, understandable over the roar of three Packard engines. He strayed into the test range and was nearly sunk by a test torpedo.

On another occasion that same year, PT 59 launched a torpedo in error. It traveled an estimated seven miles and struck the cargo ship USS Capella, anchored off Jamestown, and it began to sink. The quick-thinking skipper used his powerful engines to push the Capella to shallow water and thus save her from sinking. She was later repaired and put back into service. However, the entire incident was kept secret until the 1970’s.

Then in 1943, another PT boat launched a torpedo that went off course and sank a freighter anchored off the Quonset Point Naval Air Station.

And while patrolling Rhode Island coastal waters, PT 200 struck an unknown submerged object and sank.

Melville Today

Soon after the end of World War II, the Navy decommissioned the Melville Training Center and dismantled it. All that remains today are a couple of buildings and a plaque to commemorate what once was there. A busy marina operates in the PT boat cove.

When I was a youngster in the early 1960s, my friends and I used to play on an abandoned PT boat, which had been stripped of its armament and beached on the shore of what is now Hanley’s Beach, on Jacobs Point along the river in Warren, R.I. It had apparently crashed into something submerged because it had a large hole in its hull. We could enter the PT boat through the hole and play around, imagining what once might have taken place aboard her.

According to the Warren Preservation Society, what remained of the PT boat burned to the ground about 1970. All that’s left is some iron from what once must have been her engines.

Today there are precious few PT boats remaining, perhaps 10 in the world. Two fully restored boats can be seen on display at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass. If you want to experience what they were really like, take a trip to New Orleans and the National WW II Museum where they have fully restored the PT 305 to fully operating condition. You can even take a 45-minute ride on it in Lake Ponchartrain.

As noted previously, about 14,000 people went through the Melville Training Station out of about 12 million men and women who served in the armed forces during the war. What seems to me remarkable, and far out of proportion to its size, is the number notable men who served there.

The PT boat in Battleship Cove

Melville Alumni

Here is an incomplete listing:

Anthony Akers, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand

Paul Austin, Chairman of the Board, Coca Cola

Howard Baker, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, chief of staff to President Reagan, U.S. Ambassador to Japan

William C. Battle, President of Field Crest Mills, U.S. Ambassador to Australia

Charles A. Black, husband of Shirley Temple and aquaculture pioneer

John D. Bulkeley, Navy Vice Admiral and one of the most decorated men in military history, including the Medal of Honor; skippered PT boat that took Gen. Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines

Michael Burke, CBS Sports executive and President of the New York Yankees

John Clagett, author of 19 books

Bernard A. Crimmins, All-American football player, Notre Dame 1941; college football coach`

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., part of the invasion of Southern France, organized the Beach Jumpers, movie actor

Paul B. (Red) Fay, Undersecretary of the Navy, author

John Harllee, Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission

Michael J. Holovak, All-American football player, Boston College, 1942; college football coach and NFL team executive

John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

Joe Kuharich, college football coach and head coach NFL teams

Elgar Laux, Vice Chairman, Chrysler Corp.

Walter Lemm, head coach Houston Oilers and St. Louis Cardinals

Henry Loeb, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn.

Carl Maddox, Athletic Director, Louisiana State University

Clinton McClain, player, New York Giants

Torbert MacDonald, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts

John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General

Robert Montgomery, actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild

James Madden Newberry, founder of PT Boats, Inc.

Jack B. Olson, Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas

Paul T. Rennell, Vice President, Pan American World Airways

Don Rickles, actor and comedian

Raymond P. Shafer, Governor of Pennsylvania

Preston L. Sutphen, Sr., President of Electric Boat, builder of PT boats

Harold Thorkilsen, President and CEO, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.

Malcolm Troon, U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Israel and the Soviet Union

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, millionaire

George Vanderbilt, millionaire

Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

End Notes

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, passed away in 2020. He published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

Images: PT Boat at Battleship Cove By Wikimaster97commons – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3846572; John F. Kennedy in PT 109 courtesy the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Civilian Conservation Corps, a Young Man’s Adventure

During the depths of the Great Depression, a 17-year-old boy from Warren, R.I., enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

He did it to help support his family, but his time in the Civilian Conservation Corps turned into the adventure of a lifetime.

The CCC started when President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Emergency Conservation Act on March 31, 1933. His goal: to generate jobs for young men suffering from an almost 25 percent unemployment rate.

The Warren boy at first was too young to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. You had to be 18 to enlist. But in October 1935, the government lowered the age requirement to 17, and he signed up. The teenager met all the other requirements. He was unemployed, unmarried, physically fit and his family was on relief — like tens of millions of other American families.

He earned $30 per month {about $570 today), but he had to send $25 home. That beat the $21 per month that regular U. S. Army soldiers made at the time. The money the CCC boys sent home supported an estimated 12 to 15 million family members.

The Civilian Conservation Corps 141st Company. Leo Caisse is in the middle row, second from right.

Go West, Young Men

The Warren boy was sent to Fort Adams in Newport for physical conditioning and evaluation, just as all other enrollees in the nation did at their local Army depot. At the end of their two weeks of training and evaluation, he received his final physical and inoculations. For some of the boys it was the first time they saw a doctor.

The Civilian Conservation Corps assigned the Warren boy to the 141^st company posted at Burlingame in Charlestown, R.I. He was issued a blue denim work suit and a renovated Army olive drab uniform with CCC patches. (Roosevelt thought the uniforms looked shoddy and in 1938 ordered the Navy to design a spruce-green uniform.)Then he took the CCC oath.

civilian-conservation-corps-burlingame-beach-house

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this beach pavilion at Burlingame State Park.

His company, like several others, was transferred out West, which had more forest work and fewer unemployed young men than in the East. He had to get his parents’ permission because of his age.

He took a train cross country from Fort Adams to a campsite at Triangle Lake near the Town of Junction City, Ore. There they became the 2108 Company of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

In Oregon, the teenager and his company built fire guard service stations, fire lookout towers, trails and shelters. They fought forest fires when needed, a hallmark of the CCC wherever they were.

Cowboys and Mountain Lions

The young man earned a truck driving license issued by the Department of the Interior. He learned to operate a bulldozer, tractor and a jackhammer. He also learned welding, a skill he would later use in helping to build the USS Massachusetts at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass.

In Oregon, he served a maximum of four six-month enlistments, all that the CCC allowed and was honorably discharged on June 23, 1936.

Leo Caisse

He returned to Warren, but after a little more than a year he re-enlisted in 1937. This time was assigned to the 2130^th company in Casper, Wyo.

In Wyoming, his Civilian Conservation Corps company built bridges, roads and a dike, according to National Archives records. He fought fires, of course, and some members of his company fought coal fires. While in Wyoming, he also learned another skill: how to evade a mountain lion in the wild.

Later in the 1950s he told stories to his son about how he knew real cowboys and Indians out West. That was really intriguing because it was the heyday of cowboy shows on TV and Cowboy Town in Plainville, Mass. His name was Leo Caisse. He was my father and he passed away when I was very young.

It has been a revelation researching his adventures and it has given me a sense of pride that he and so many others benefitted from this program, which began the green movement.

Roosevelt’s Tree Army

Roosevelt’s Tree Army developed many public parks that still stand today as a living legacy to their work.

Less obvious today was the improved health and well-being of the boys who joined.

Enlistees were so undernourished due to the Depression that they gained an average of 12 pounds each. When issued their uniforms, it was the first time most of them got new shoes.

Many camps had two movies a week with state-of-the-art equipment, chaplain services, lending libraries, organized sports and vocational education. President Roosevelt mandated that all enrollees learn to read and write in the service if they hadn’t achieved literacy yet.

The Civilian Conservation Corps offered 603 different courses nationwide. They often had camp newspapers, wrote poetry, composed songs and put on plays, as well as engaged in organized sports with other camps and local teams.

A Civilian Conservation Corps pillow

The men celebrated holidays in camp, including Mother’s Day. In one instance, they invited their mothers to camp for a dinner and the boys put on a skit for them. In another, the commanding officer collected 25 cents from each man to send home a special pillow to their mothers.

The Army ran the CCC, but the state or national park service would select the projects. Since fascism was on the rise overseas, the Army was careful not to drill the Tree Army. Nor did it allow saluting or weapons training.

Still, many Civilian Conservation Corpsmen who joined the Army were automatically inducted as corporals or sergeants, depending on their leadership experience in the Corps.

Following are summaries of the Civilian Conservation Corps in each New England state.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island had eight camps, but they did not all operate continuously or simultaneously. Fort Adams served as their state headquarters.

In the very beginning at least two Rhode Island companies were sent to other states: one to Rangeley, Maine and another company (about 200 men) to Vermont. Later they went to Oregon and Wyoming.

Rhode Island eventually enrolled 15,900 men out of 2.5 million men who served nationally.

civilian-conservation corps-goddard-state park

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this structure and many fireplaces at Goddard State Park in Rhode Island.

Massachusetts

Over 100,000 men served in the Massachusetts Civilian Conservation Corps, which brought together two wasted resources: young men and the land.

When the CCC began, Massachusetts had accumulated 100,000 acres, mostly inaccessible to the public. When the Emergency Conservation Act passed, Chief Forester Harold Cook immediately prepared applications for seven camps. He would eventually have 31 camps.

The first enrollees arrived at Fort Devens for medical exams and some basic training and testing to acclimate them to a military routine.

They built roads and trails, overlooks, picnic shelters and log cabins. And they engaged in timber improvement, pest control and forest fire fighting. In the end they planted 12 million trees and improved 170,000 acres of state land. The Massachusetts enrollees collectively sent an estimated $20 million home to their families.

Friends of the Upton State Forest are restoring a former CCC administration building and cottage. At least one former member – and probably many others — was so desperate for work he forged his birth certificate and joined at age 15. He learned construction skills that served him the rest of his working life.

They built the access road to the top of Mount Greylock as well as the Thunderbolt Trail. The CCC created the Savoy State Park, too, and the Elliot Tower in Milton’s Blue Hills Reservation. It still stands today and offers a panoramic view from Boston Harbor to Mount Wachusett. The Blue Hills reception center has a small CCC exhibit that includes memorabilia.

New Hampshire

Bear Brook State Park is one of the few surviving CCC camps that now serve as museums.

Over 37,000 young men served in the CCC in New Hampshire. They built state parks such as Moore Brook and Bear Brook, and ski facilities such as Waterville Valley, Cannon Mountain and the Wildcat Trail at Pinkham Notch. They also fought forest fires, planted trees and built dams, bridges, roads, camp grounds and hiking and bridle trails.

At the Bear Brook exhibit stands a statue of a shirtless Corpsman with an ax. Identical statues stand at the Freetown State Forest, a former camp, and at the Maine State Library in Augusta.

civilian-conservation-corps-acadia-shelter

The Civilian Conservation Corps built many park shelters, like this one at Arcadia State Park in Rhode Island.

Connecticut

Connecticut had a total of 17 camps, and over 30,000 men served in the CCC. Some hadn’t enlisted, but were LEMs – locally enlisted men, such as carpenters and stone masons. Along with their traditional work, the CCC also built nine lookout towers, constructed 123 bridges and developed over 1000 acres of public camping and picnic grounds.

As in all other camps, the Connecticut CCC couldn’t build roads. They did, however, build many truck roads for fighting forest fires.

When a dam broke above Hartford in 1936, it devastated the area. The CCC lent a hand by clearing out 2,950 buildings and 800 other structures.

A CCC Museum in Stafford Springs, Conn., once the administration building for Camp Conner, contains photos, displays, information and artifacts.

Maine

CCC statue in Augusta

Fort Williams in Portland Harbor administered and trained Civilian Conservation Corpsmen for both Maine and New Hampshire. At its height, Maine had 16,686 men, 1,612 supervisors and 1,136 out-of-state enrollees in 19 camps. Additionally, Rhode Island sent 144 to the Rangeley area. The camps closed by 1942, but in their heyday the CCC’s emphasis evolved from emergency relief to job training. The Maine and New Hampshire Tree Army sent home an estimated $4 million.

Their assigned work came from the Maine Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and the National Park Service. It included, much like all the other CCC work roads, trails, recreation areas, erecting buildings, and pest control.

George Dorr, superintendent of Acadia National Park, saw his chance to improve the park in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He asked Roosevelt for a camp at Acadia. Eventually some 3,000 poor boys, mostly from Maine, came to three CCC camps in Acadia. They opened new trails and improved old ones, planted thousands of trees, made fire roads, fought fires, built footbridges and constructed two campgrounds, Blackwoods and Seawall. They built Ocean Drive, which loops around the park with stunning views of the coast and opened hiking trails to Echo Lake, Long Pond and Beech Cliff.

There is a memorial dedicated to the CCC and their work in Maine in Augusta.

Vermont

Vermont was originally allocated four camps but got 30, more than any other state of its size. The reason? The highly motivated State Forester Perry Merrill, a man with great foresight who saw the potential for CCC work.

Some 40,000 men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Vermont. However, only about 11,000 came from Vermont. The other companies transferred from other states such as Rhode Island because Merrill found so much work for them to do.

A massive flood in 1927 had devastated much of the state, and the Vermont CCC boys gained recognition for their flood control activities and dam building. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the 2,000-foot Waterbury Dam along with the Wrightsville and East Barre dams.

They also built many ski slopes, including the Stowe Ski Resort and the Mount Mansfield State Park. They also built 105 miles of truck roads for forest fire fighting and 10 lookout towers.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He has also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College. Leo passed away in 2020, and we miss him very much. This story updated in 2022.

Photos, except for the Civilian Conservation Corps pillow and statue, courtesy Leo Caisse. CCC statue by By DrStew82 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59856211. This story was updated in 2021.

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