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Gloucester Mass.

U-boat Victims of World War II: New England’s Secret Rescues

Late in the afternoon of June 5, 1942, a Coast Guard lookout spotted a wooden motorboat puttering up Nauset Inlet with 20 windburned, exhausted men aboard. He’d expected them — U-boat victims. They had radioed for help to navigate to Cape Cod from the spot where their freighter sank 200 miles off Nantucket.

The lookout notified the Nauset Coast Guard Station, which sent three trucks carrying blankets, medical supplies and a surfboat to the survivors. By dinnertime they reached the station, where they had hot coffee and sandwiches. Four local doctors examined them. One survivor suffered from exposure after three days in an open boat and one had a broken eardrum, hit by a boom in the torpedo explosion. The other U-boat victims were fine. They took showers and slept, unbothered by curious civilians or prying reporters. The Coast Guard posted guards around the station, and the Red Cross volunteers kept their mouths shut.

First Encounter Beach in Eastham

The 20 men belonged to the hundreds of traumatized U-boat victims rescued along the New England coast during World War II. The U.S. government did its best to keep their existence secret. It had to because it didn’t want the public to know about the Battle of the Atlantic off the U.S. East Coast. Over and over, the government and the military lied about the casualties inflicted by German U-boats sometimes just a few miles offshore.

U-boat Victims

Eight days earlier in New York City, the men in the lifeboat had boarded the Mattawin, a British freighter carrying 8.6 tons of military trucks, airplanes, guns and ammunition. The vessel had instructions to deliver the materiel to Alexandria, Egypt, for the Allied invasion of Africa.

Delayed a day by engine trouble, the Mattawin left Long Island Sound on May 31 with 71 souls aboard. Twelve passengers belonged to the American Field Service, a volunteer ambulance corps. Three gunners from the British military guarded the freighter with machine guns and a four-inch anti-aircraft gun.

At night the Mattawin passengers and crew slept in their clothes because of the German U-boats prowling the Atlantic. In the first five months of 1942, U-boats sank nearly 500 ships, three a day. They had left the sea littered with lifeboats, debris, loose cargo and oil slicks.

Attack

The Mattawin passed Nantucket Shoal Lightship at 6 a.m. on June 1, then headed east-southeast toward Capetown. When night fell, eight men aboard the ship stood watch, the three gunners at the ready, according to Capt. Charles Sweeny. They couldn’t see much, though, because clouds obscured the full moon.

U-505 captured off the coast of West Africa in 1944.

AFS volunteer Nicholas Madeira stood watch in the gun turret. “I’m pretty sure I saw the wake of the torpedo just before it hit,” he later wrote, according to historian Eric Wiberg in his book, U-boats in New England.

At 1:19 a.m., a torpedo exploded in the Mattawin’s hull, sending up a huge column of water from one of the hatches, Sweeny recalled.

Sweeny realized the Mattawin would sink fast. He ordered an SOS signal sent, the engines shut off and the lifeboats launched. The radioman then threw secret codes overboard. AFS volunteer Harry Blackwell pointed out a submarine 200 yards off the starboard side of the ship. “No time to look at the sub much,” wrote another volunteer, Marshall Phelps.

Phelps, Blackwell, the other AFS volunteers and most of the crew quickly filed into four lifeboats without confusion. Three lifeboats pushed off. Minutes later, another torpedo struck. Captain Sweeny, still on board the sinking vessel, yelled to the others, “Every man for himself.” The last lifeboat remained in the davits, and Sweeny and four others hopped in. The Mattewin sank almost immediately, a mere 11 minutes after the first torpedo struck. Everyone had gotten off safely.

U-boats

Typically, the U-boat, U-553, waited for the crew and passengers to get into the lifeboats before firing the second torpedo. The Germans wanted to sink ships, not kill civilians. It wasn’t unusual for a U-boat to surface next to survivors in a lifeboat just after it had torpedoed their ship. The Germans would ask for the ship’s name, tonnage and destination. They’d then offer their victims water, cigarettes, bread and directions to the nearest land.

To win the war, Germany knew it had to delay the buildup of America’s war machine and interrupt supply lines to the Allies in Europe and Africa. Germany sent its fleet of U-boats — 159 at peak strength — to sink merchants ships and oil tankers. The goal was to starve the Allies of industrial as well as military supplies.

U-Boat Victims on Lifeboats

The four Mattawin lifeboats had pemmican, cigarettes, chocolate, salted peanuts, 36 gallons of water and red sails. In the first boat, Sweeny had a sextant and chronometer. The fourth had a motor and a radio. For four hours they stuck together, rowing toward Cape Cod in the dark. Sweeny figured they’d reach Cape Cod in seven days.

A crowded World War II-era lifeboat

At dawn they raised their sails. AFS volunteer Edward Fenton, Amherst Class of ’37, wrote he’d never forget how beautiful it was — “the great red sail unfurling, and the sun upon it, and the men in their yellow suits against it. We sailed on all day, the other three boats following. We had an extremely good time in our boat, laughing, telling jokes; and the British engineers taught us a number of songs to which we have words.” Fenton would survive the war and write children’s books.

The four boats kept together until 2 p.m., when the third boat disappeared from sight. Sweeny told the motor launch to go ahead and find a rescue ship.

That night it rained, making for uncomfortable slumber. As June 3 dawned, the third lifeboat remained out of sight.

Early that morning the launch spotted a Norwegian freighter, the Torvanger, which paused to let it come aside. Capt. Leif Danielsen offered to take them aboard. When the men learned she was bound for Capetown, they said they’d prefer to try for Cape Cod. Danielsen gave them some fuel. He then looked for the other lifeboats and steered toward them. They both declined to come aboard and continued sailing.

A motorized World War II-era lifeboat

Fenton, in the second lifeboat, recalled they had gone half an hour when they noticed the Torvanger was steaming toward them.

The Torvanger Turns Back

What happened aboard the Torvanger was this:

Rescues at sea, which sometimes took a long time, exposed the rescuer to U-boat attacks. The Torvanger had risked U-boat attacks at least seven times in the past 48 hours. When she stopped for the Mattawin victims, she had already rescued two sets of U-boat victims. Some of them had been torpedoed on two consecutive vessels in the space of a week.

After she left the last Mattawin lifeboat, the Torvanger’s crew confronted Captain Danielsen. They were fed up risking torpedo strikes. After all, three lifeboats full of shipwreck survivors told them they’d rather spend a week eating salted peanuts in an open boat than board a 7,000-ton freighter sailing unescorted across the Atlantic.

They demanded an armed escort before heading to Africa.

The Torvanger turned around and found two of the Mattawin lifeboats again. Captain Danielsen told the survivors he’d decided to head back, and they agreed to come on board . But fog had drifted in and they couldn’t spot the other two Mattawin boats.

Survivors brought aboard a cutter

On board the Torvanger, Fenton recalled coffee and cheese in the salon, and a general reunion. “For the first time since the torpedoing, I found myself trembling,” he wrote. “The coffee slopped all over from my shaking hand.” That night Fenton bunked with the crew, along with another AFS volunteer, Richard Edwards, nephew of future U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

The next day, June 4, the Torvanger encountered a convoy bound for Halifax, which welcomed the vessel to join them. By that evening they landed in Canada.

Halifax

Just as the U.S. Coast Guard did on Cape Cod, the Canadians kept the U-boat survivors under wraps. After they landed in Halifax, Fenton wrote, “We were rushed in a bus to the Allied Seaman’s Institute, where tables had been roped off, with signs on them that read “Reserved – For Survivors Only.”

When the Mattawin’s launch landed in Eastham, the Coast Guard refused access to curious civilians, friends and newspaper reporters. The U-boat victims were whisked to an undisclosed location and interviewed by the U.S. Navy.

USCGC General Greene

On June 8, the third lifeboat was picked up by the Coast Guard cutter General Greene and taken to Nantucket. The island that month had taken in nearly 100 U-boat victims from four separate sinkings. Again, the Red Cross and the Coast Guard kept them sequestered. The survivors were taken to the Bennett Theater, where they slept on cots. Townspeople who brought clothes and bedding couldn’t get past the door. The General Greene then took the survivors to Newport for questioning by the Navy.

Throughout New England, 649 survivors of Uboats landed in a dozen ports, according to Wiberg. Some got counted twice, like the Mattawin survivors who landed at Nantucket and then Newport.

Nearly 300 landed in Boston and 160 in Newport. Nantucket hosted 133, Provincetown 62, and New Bedford 36. Portland, Maine, saw 50 U-boat victims. Other ports included New London, Conn., Falmouth, Mass., Eastham, Mass., Point Judith, R.I., Gloucester, Mass., Southwest Harbor, Maine, Rockland, Maine, and Brighton, Mass.

Southwest Harbor

The Navy had a harder time keeping a lid on the news that U-boats had attacked fishing vessels. The Germans targeted fishermen because the Navy used them as observers. They had radio transmitters and “confidential fishermen observer kits.” They even got carrier pigeons to carry messages to shore.

On the same day the Torvanger picked up two U-boat victims from the Mattawin, U-432 shelled two Gloucester fishing vessels. The Ben and Josephine and the Aeolus were fishing southeast of Thacher Island. The Germans let the captains and crew escape in dories before delivering the coup de grace.

Mount Desert Rock, off Mount Desert Island

The survivors rowed for 14 hours, finally landing on Mount Desert Rock. They were interviewed at the Coast Guard station, then taken to the high school gym in Southwest Harbor, Maine. Local residents brought cots and bedding, baskets of food, fish chowder, hot coffee and dessert. The survivors then took a bus home, and their story appeared in the Gloucester Daily Times.

“When the full news became known, enthusiasm for the offshore fisheries declined sharply,” wrote Charles Dana Gibson, a relative of the Ben and Josephine’s captain, Guiseppe Ciaramitaro.

The Lark

Just before dawn on June 13, 1944, U-107 fired two torpedoes and missed the 148-ton fishing vessel Lark, sailing off Cape Sable. The U-boat then fired a warning shot, and 25 of the 27 men aboard jumped into lifeboats. The U-107 then strafed the rigging, the pilot house and the hulls, damaging the boat and destroying two sails. When dawn broke, U-107 slipped away. The captain, who’d stayed with the vessel, started the engine, picked up the men and made it back to his home port of Boston. There it tied up at a public pier on the morning of June 15.

The Navy decided to use the U-boat attacks as a publicity stunt, inviting the press to cover the story. The Navy pointed out it was the first time in two years anyone had seen enemy U-boats on the northeast fishing banks. That was a lie.

Why Lie?

Few today know that more than 5,000 people died in the Battle of the Atlantic — more than twice as many as at Pearl Harbor. The government did its best to cover it up. The Navy blamed torpedo attacks on boiler explosions or simply issued cryptic statements that a boat sank. During the early part of the battle, the Navy falsely claimed it had sunk far more U-boats than it actually did.

The news media also agreed to government censorship, which helped to hide the military’s incompetence in protecting shipping and the lives of merchant seamen.

Not until the spring of 1943 did the United States build enough oceangoing military strength to destroy U-boats faster than the Germans could build them.

Thanks to Eric Wiberg, author of U-Boats in New England, and uboat.net, on both of which this story relied heavily.

Images: First Encounter Beach By ToddC4176 at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16093177. Mount Desert light-station, looking N. Maine, 1894. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005688368/. Lifeboat, survivors rescued and General Greene, The Coast Guard at War: Assistance XIV, prepared in Public Relations Division Historical Section, Oct. 30, 1944.

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Eight Fun Facts About the Insanely Talented John Singer Sargent

How did the paintings of John Singer Sargent ever fall out of favor? He created stunning watercolor landscapes and oil portraits that reveal a virtuosity described as “insolent.” Sargent, it was said, could quickly sketch a likeness the way most people sign their names.

John Singer Sargent

As a boy, all he ever wanted to be was an artist. His parents, Americans who roamed around Europe, encouraged him. He showed up at the Carolus Duran studio in Paris and presented his work, hoping for acceptance as a student. He astonished his future classmates, who viewed him as a prodigy.

During his lifetime he created about 3,000 paintings, including 900 in oil and 2,000 in watercolor. They made him rich and they made him famous. But by the time he died in 1925, critics didn’t consider him “modern” enough. He went from prodigy to Gilded Age antique.

Here, then, are eight fun facts about the flamboyantly talented John Singer Sargent.

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts Boston

1. Roger Fry was his bete noire.

Art critic Roger Fry had no use for John Singer Sargent. That mattered – a lot. Fry had enormous influence over popular taste in art during the early 20^th century. “In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry,” wrote art historian Kenneth Clark. Fry promoted the Parisian avant-garde, painters like Cezanne, Matisse and Van Gogh.

Roger Fry Self Portrait

In 1910, Fry organized an exhibit in London called Manet and the Post-Impressionists. Critics savaged the show, and so Fry responded by listing artists who supported that school of painting. He included John Singer Sargent, whose work he had already criticized. Sargent replied with two letters to the editor of The Nation making it clear he had no use for post-Impressionism. From then on, the two men feuded.

Unfortunately for Sargent, Fry outlived him. The year after Sargent died, the Royal Academy in London held a memorial retrospective of his work. Fry viciously criticized the show, destroying Sargent’s reputation for a good 50 years.

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent. Maybe Fry was just jealous.

2. Sargent was not born in the USA.

He considered himself an American, though he didn’t set foot in America until his 20^th year. His parents wandered around Europe for decades. They always sought a better climate or cheaper places to live.

Sargent was born in Florence on Jan. 12, 1856, to Fitzwilliam Sargent, a Philadelphia physician, and Mary Newbold Singer, an heiress. By the time he turned 18 he had lived in London, Paris, Pau, Biarritz, Salzburg, Nice, St. Moritz, Venice, Lake Maggiore, Dresden and various cities in Spain. He spoke English, French, German and Italian, all fluently.

His mother loved Europe and the nomadic life. His father hated it. But she had the money, and they could live inexpensively in Europe. So they did.

El Jaleo, courtesy Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Sargent considered Boston his American home. He had his first solo show at the St. Botolph Club in 1888, and won several major mural commissions in the city. Isabella Stewart Gardner, a friend, collected his work (you can see El Jaleo at the Gardner Museum). The Museum of Fine Arts Boston claims to hold the most complete collection of Sargent’s work, as well as his archives. When he died, the Boston Globe ran a front page story, Boston Claims Sargent, Great Master, As Her Own.

3. He preferred painting landscapes.

Sargent painted and drew landscapes since childhood. But making a living as an artist required critical acclaim for work shown at the Paris Salon, then the most important art event in the western world.

An Out of Doors Study, watercolor, by John Singer Sargent

Thousands of people visited the exhibition, and the international press covered it. But the French Academie, which ran the Salon, held landscape painting in low regard. And so portrait paintings defined Sargent from the days of his early success.

He began to exhibit his bold and experimental watercolor landscapes after the turn of the century. They “caused a sensation in Britain and great excitement in America,” according to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. His watercolors still draw a crowd.

4. He had an illustrious family.

He came from an elite New England family. His ancestor Epes Sargent was one of the largest landowners in Gloucester, Mass., before the American Revolution.

Epes Sargent by John Singleton Copley

His well-known relatives include the “merchant prince” Daniel Sargent, author Lucius Manley Sargent, artist Henry Sargent, horticulturist Henry Winthrop Sargent and Mississippi Territory Governor Winthrop Sargent.

The Gloucester home of another ancestor, essayist and women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray, is now a house museum.

5. Was Sargent gay or straight?

No one knows for sure. He had several romances with women, though he never married. And his many sketches of male nudes suggest he was gay. In London, he was friends with his neighbor Oscar Wilde.

But he kept his sexuality to himself. However, one of his clients said that when in Venice, he was only interested in the gondoliers. After he died, one of his former sitters said, “Sargent’s sex life was notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger.”

Gondoliers’ Siesta by John Singer Sargent

Richard Ormond, Sargent scholar and the painter’s great-grandnephew, argued that no one would ever know. “If [Sargent] had sexual relationships they must have been of a brief and transient nature and they have left no trace,” he wrote. “We simply do not know, and decoding messages from his work is no substitute for evidence.”

6. Sargent was Mr. Popularity.

Everybody liked him (except maybe Roger Fry). He was handsome, well mannered, well dressed and good at conversation, music and dancing. People sought him out to paint their portraits partly because sitting for him was so enjoyable.

He would visit the sitter’s home to see where the portrait would hang, and often went through the subject’s closet to pick out the right outfit. The frame he picked out himself. He earned about $5,000 per painting, or about $130,000. He used no assistants. In the 1890s he averaged about 14 portrait commissions a year.

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

While painting, he would stand back from the canvas, look at his subject, walk to the canvas, paint a few strokes, and then walk back, talking all the while. He estimated he covered four miles a day while painting portraits.

Sometimes he played the piano for his sitter. Eventually, he got tired of shucking and jiving for his wealthy patrons. “Painting a portrait would be quite amusing if one were not forced to talk while working…What a nuisance having to entertain the sitter and to look happy when one feels wretched,” he wrote.

In 1907, he vowed not to do any more portraits. “It is to me positive bliss to think that I shall soon be a free man,” he wrote, describing life after portrait painting. He closed his studio, but he did make a few exceptions for friends like Henry James.

7. Madame X was lazy and unpaintable.

His portrait of Mme. Emilie Gautreau, or Madame X, was the talk of the 1884 Paris Salon and not in a good way. A mob of Parisians flocked to the painting to make fun of it. The New York Times called it “absurd and atrocious.” Mme. Gautreau’s mother begged him to take the painting down, something Sargent couldn’t do. “All Paris mocks my daughter,” she cried.

The ridicule came as a shock. For a decade, nobody had said anything bad about Sargent’s work. But Madame X was different.

Madame X

Sargent, usually so deft with the brush, struggled with Virginie Amelie Gautreau. An American married to a French banker, she had a reputation for taking on lovers. Sargent had a hard time getting her just right, and she didn’t like to sit still for long. In a letter, Sargent complained to a friend about “the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau.” When he finished it, he exhibited it only reluctantly at the Salon.

What was so odd, so shocking about a painting of a woman with a heavily powdered face in a low-cut gown? After all, Parisians were used to seeing paintings of nudes.

It was her arrogance, her theatricality, her “come hither” look – something well-bred women did not do. Madame X (for X-rated?) seems about to pop out of her gown into the arms of a man not her husband.

Some people liked it. A French critic, Louis de Fourcaud, called it a masterpiece, as it eventually came to be recognized. Sargent later called it the best thing he’d ever done.

John Singer Sargent in his London studio.

8. His Boston Public Library Murals caused trouble.

He painted many Jewish people, but his mural The Church and the Synagogue got him into trouble with them. In the 1890s, he had a reputation as “the painter of the Jews.” He painted a number of upper-class Jewish subjects, including the family of Asher Wertheimer, the magisterial Mrs. Carl Meyer and her Children and Joseph Pulitzer.

Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children

He started working on one of his masterpieces, the Boston Public Library murals, in 1890. He didn’t finish them by the time of his death in 1925. (See them here.) The Church and the Synagogue belong to The Triumph of Religion series on the third floor of the McKim Building in Copley Square. Sargent portrayed Judaism and the synagogue as a grim, austere hag and Christianity and the church as a lovely young woman.

Dr. Israel Abraham wrote that “no Jewish artist would do the Church the artistic wrong which Sargent has done to the Synagogue.” Sargent was hurt and confused by charges of anti-Semitism. He explained that he drew on medieval iconography for his inspiration.

This story last updated in 2022.

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The 1790 Census: New England by the Numbers

Just after the American Revolution, Gilmanton, N.H., ranked as the 30^th biggest municipality in the United States. The Lakes Region town was bigger than Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Trenton, Louisville, Cincinnati and Savannah, according to the 1790 census.

New Hampshire, in fact, had four towns among the 30 largest in the country, including Londonderry, Portsmouth and Rochester. Only four New England states belonged to the union then, but they were home to 19 of the 30 biggest cities and towns in the country. Back then, one in four U.S. citizens lived in New England.

The region’s power and influence in the early Republic can be inferred from the 1790 census, the first taken in the United States. It didn’t last long. The westward migration had already begun in 1787, from a minister’s house in Ipswich, Mass. As people migrated west for land and opportunity, new cities and towns began to eclipse those of New England.

Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn served as U.S. Marshal for Maine during the 1790 census. Painting by Gilbert Stuart.

The 1790 Census

In 1790, there were 93,000 people living in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, including the District of Maine. A year after the federal government took the 1790 census, 86,000 Vermonters officially joined New England.

Massachusetts alone held nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population, and Boston ranked as the third biggest municipality. Only New York and Philadelphia had more people. Census takers counted Boston’s population at 18,320 — about the size of contemporary Hopkinton, Mass.

Jonathan Jackson served as U.S. Marshal for Massachusetts during the 1790 census.

Today, only 2.1 percent of the U.S. population lives in Massachusetts, and Boston has slipped to the 24th biggest city.

Census taking in 1790 was an inexact science. Congress ordered U.S. marshals to take it. Each state had only one marshal, so the marshal appointed assistants to count people. The 650 enumerators had nine months to collect the data and post the results in two public places. Then they stored the results in the federal courthouse.

The U.S. marshals in New England included Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn for Maine, Jonathan Jackson for Massachusetts, John Parker for New Hampshire, William Peck for Rhode Island and Philip Bradley for Connecticut.

Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both questioned whether the census could count everyone. During a time of difficult travel and communication, the enumerators probably missed some people. And they deliberately missed all Indians not taxed, for example.

In the end, the census takers managed to count just under 4 million people.

A pitcher commemorating the 1790 census

Urban vs. Rural

The vast majority of Americans lived in the country in 1790. New Hampshire was one of the more urban states, with more towns in the Top 30 rankings than Connecticut, which only had New Haven and Hartford. New Hampshire, in fact, had more municipalities in the Top 30 than Pennsylvania, which had almost three times the population.

Today, New Hampshire’s biggest city – Manchester – ranks 259^th, the only New Hampshire municipality among the top 300 U.S. cities.

Massachusetts was similarly urban, though some towns had not yet started to grow into cities – Worcester, Springfield and Fall River, for example, were all smaller than Gilmanton, N.H. Lowell didn’t even exist.

But the towns in Massachusetts that ranked in the top 30 might surprise you. In ascending order, they were Plymouth, Beverly, New Bedford, Taunton, Middleborough, Sherburne, Newburyport, Gloucester, Marblehead and Salem. Salem was bigger than Richmond, Va., and Albany, N.Y. Middleborough, Mass., was also bigger than Albany.

New England, in fact, had five of the 10 largest urban places in the United States: Boston, Salem, Mass.; Newport, R.I.; Providence, R.I., and Marblehead, Mass.

Connecticut had a significantly more rural character then than it does now. New Hampshire’s population was denser, especially along the southern border. The Connecticut towns of Stamford, Waterbury and Danbury had fewer people than Gilmanton. Bridgeport, now Connecticut’s biggest city, wouldn’t incorporate for another 30 years.

Westward Ho!

The center of the U.S. population has steadily moved west and slightly south, as people migrated and new states joined the union. New England’s presence steadily declined.

Ten years after the 1790 census, only 15 New England cities ranked in the top 30, despite having added Vermont. And in 1820, New England had just 13 of the biggest cities and towns.

In 1790, Massachusetts had 9.7 percent of the U.S. population. Twenty years later it had only 6.5 percent, as four states had joined the union. And in 229 years, the Bay State has slipped from fourth to 15^th place.

Gilmanton has grown a little from its base of 2,613 in 1790, when it had an ironworks and a half-dozen villages and parishes. In 2017, 3,734 lived in the town. But Gilmanton never again appeared on the list of the top 30 cities and towns in the United States.

For a list of the Top 30 cities, click here.

This story was updated in 2021.

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Maurice Lerner, the Brookline Mobster Hired To Kill Fidel Castro

Maurice Lerner grew up in Brookline, Mass., and as a young man he was astute, polite and athletic. His athletic prowess landed him a baseball career that spanned 10 years playing second and third base and outfield. But it peaked at double-A ball, played out in tiny stadiums across the country.

Lerner had earned the nickname “Pro” – supposedly short for little professor – because of his studious nature as a kid. And in baseball he had a reputation as an early advocate of diet and fitness training in an era when most ballplayers relied purely on talent and genetics to keep them in the game.

But by the time his career wound down in 1962 and 1963, Lerner was moving into a life of crime. He knew how to induce fear in people, first with a baseball bat and later with a gun.

Maurice Lerner built a “shooting gallery” in his basement to practice his marksmanship. His demeanor and efficiency soon brought him to the attention of the New England Mafia, led by Providence’s Raymond Patriarca. In 1962, Lerner got his first taste of big-time crime.

The Plymouth Postal Robbery

As of Aug. 14, 1962, when it happened, the Great Plymouth Mail Robbery was the largest robbery ever. Though all the details aren’t known (nor will they ever be), it played out roughly as follows: George “Aggie” Agisotelis got the idea of robbing a mail truck. One specific mail truck.

Aggie had watched the truck perform its routine run from Cape Cod up to Boston. On certain days it was loaded with cash traveling from the banks on the Massachusetts South Shore to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. He knew just the spot to hijack the truck (which had no security) and just the guys to help him do it.

He reached out to John “Red” Kelley, a bank robber known for his precision bank jobs. They assembled a team of at least six men. Knocking off the mail truck was a breeze. One gangster, posing as a cop, flagged down the truck. The other cars then surrounded it. Gunmen held two postal employees at bay with machine guns, and the crew scooped the bags of cash – more than $1.5 million – into the waiting cars.

Maurice “Pro” Lerner probably belonged to the gang, though he was never charged. Aggie and Red were, and they got off, but only after one member of the gang disappeared – Thomas Richards. The gang didn’t think he would stand up under questioning and Lerner shot him.

Patriarca Affiliation

For several years Pro Lerner and Red Kelley formed a formidable team. Red was precise and disciplined. Pro was calm and smart. Police suspected that Red Kelley took part in planning for the Brink’s Job, but backed out when he didn’t like the way the plan shaped up.

Pro was getting more work and attention from the Patriarca crime family as his reputation for violence grew. Vincent Teresa became his contact with the family. Lerner was asked to kill two men – Rudolph Marfeo and Anthony Melei – who were interfering with Patriarca gambling operations.

Lerner recruited Red Kelley to help with the getaway planning. Raymond Patriarca was growing frustrated at the pace Kelley’s careful planning required. “I don’t want to hear any stories, I just want him [Marfeo] killed,” Patriarca said, ignoring his usual dislike for public spectacle.

Murder in Broad Daylight

So on April 20, 1968 Lerner and another gunman murdered the two bookmakers in the middle of the afternoon in Pannone’s supermarket on Pocasset Avenue in Providence. The public nature of the shooting put intense pressure on police to make arrests, and luckily they now had an edge.

Red Kelley, at age 55 and with a long criminal history, had been implicated in another robbery. Facing the prospect of a long prison term, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. And at the top of his list of people to give up was Pro Lerner.

Maurice Lerner frightened Red Kelley. The younger Lerner, 34, was too violent. Kelley laid out exactly what happened in the shooting, right down to the route they planned for their getaway, and he was convincing. His testimony not only put away Lerner and the rest of those directly involved, it also put Raymond Patriarca behind bars.

Patriarca would be out of prison after serving a few scant years for his conspiracy conviction. But Lerner faced two life sentences for the murders. He would serve 20 years before he was even eligible for parole.

Maurice Lerner, Hit Man

About the same time that Red Kelley put Pro Lerner in prison, another member of the Patriarca crime family left the fold. Vincent Teresa, 325-pound “Fat Vinnie,” was a lieutenant in the organization. The Revere, Mass., boy rose up in the ranks of the Mafia and ran a number of operations for the mob, though he claimed he never killed anyone.

In 1966, one of Patriarca’s hit men, Joseph Barboza, had started cooperating with the federal prosecutors. Federal marshals decided to stash Barboza on Thacher Island off the coast of Gloucester. The small island with distinctive twin lighthouses is actually part of Rockport, Mass. With Barboza out of reach, Patriarca ordered Teresa to find a way to get him.

1928 police photo of Raymond Patriarca (Providence Library)

Teresa took Pro Lerner out on his yacht, The Living End, and they circled the island while marshals stood their ground on the shore armed with shotguns. Teresa and Lerner realized they had lost any element of surprise. Outnumbered, they had no chance of successfully getting a shot at Barboza. Lerner and Teresa discussed a sneak attack. Lerner could swim to the island in scuba gear and try to catch Barboza off guard, but they quickly discarded that plan as impractical.

Soon, with Lerner and Patriarcia battling murder charges, Teresa was having his own troubles. By 1969 he was making most of his money by leading gambling trips. Casinos paid him a share of the money lost by the high rollers he brought in. But Teresa also had come in contact with a man who could steal securities. Teresa helped sell the stolen stocks and bonds for a share of the profit.

Joey Barboza

Vincent Teresa Turns

When the stolen securities racket was broken up, Teresa initially kept quiet and went to prison peacefully. He began living the luxurious life in federal prison afforded to Mafiosi, rubbing shoulders with the likes of future New York Mafia don John Gotti. But soon Teresa learned some news that irritated him.

While he had done his duty and headed off to prison, he learned that other members of the Patriarca family were not playing by the rules. They had taken money (he claimed $4 million) that Teresa had stashed away for his family’s use while in prison. With that, Fat Vinnie became a government witness. And what stories he told. Fat Vinnie testified at more than a dozen trials that convicted his fellow mobsters.

Fifty-one indictments were tied to him, though he didn’t always succeed as a witness. Occasionally, his testimony didn’t add up. In 1978, he finally told his biggest shocker.

The Castro Contract

Rolling Stone Magazine got tangled up in a libel case in 1978 over an article that identified a casino as being connected to the Mafia. Teresa had to testify in the case. In a 300-page deposition, Teresa answered a question about Mafia involvement with the CIA, specifically the idea of assassinating Castro.

“I was there when the information came in for Henry (Tamaleo) and Raymond (Patriarca) and they picked Maurice (Pro) Lerner to do the work. This is the story that was told to Henry and Raymond, to whack out Fidel Castro and the man that was picked was . . . Lerner.”

Fidel Castro

Tamaleo and Patriarca were indeed mafia leaders. But was the story true? Patriarca was blunt in his denial to the Boston Herald American: “If you believe anything Teresa says you have to be crazier than he is. He hustled his mother for $2 and if you believe him, then you are crazy . . . I never knew Pro Lerner until they framed him like they framed me.”

Maurice Lerner, still serving time in jail, gave a simpler response: “The accusation isn’t true.”

So where is the truth? It’s well documented that the CIA, in the overheated days of the 60s, did reach out to the Mafia to discuss assassinating Castro. The agency hatched many plans (some of them comically absurd) to go after the Cuban dictator.

As for the CIA negotiations with the Mafia, the discussions were between Robert Maheu – the Waterville, Maine, boy who rose up to be a CIA operative and Howard Hughes’ right hand man – and Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia boss. And the Mafia, ousted from Cuba by Castro’s coup, certainly had no love for the dictator.

Model Prisoner

Red Kelley told one of his protectors, former U.S. Marshal John Partington, that he knew of the plan to assassinate Castro and had been approached about participating along with Maurice Lerner. But did Giancana reach out to Rhode Island and Lerner? Lerner was a significant enough underworld figure that a congressional committee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy subpoenaed and reviewed his CIA files. Still, the trail of evidence grows cold, and there were never many reliable sources in the matter to begin with.

All the parties to the story died long ago. Maurice Lerner got out of prison and led a crime-free life, detailed in a New York Times profile. The story portrayed a model prisoner who spent his final days reliving memories of his baseball career. Teresa would write three books about his Mafia life. By the end he was angry at his treatment by the government. Still, much of his insider information was valid and useful.

This story about Maurice Lerner was updated in 2023.

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The 1965 Drought, New England’s Worst Ever

It will probably be several centuries before the Northeast United States again suffers anything like the 1965 drought. It was the driest year of a 10-year dry spell that devastated farms and sent municipal leaders into a panic over the drinking supply.

There were actually two droughts: The agricultural drought, and the water-supply drought. Farmers tried to save their crops and fed their livestock in barns, while suburbanites were told not to wash their cars or take long showers.

There was a high pollen count, high fire danger and high prices for produce. Wells dried up. Rivers, ponds and reservoirs became stinking mud holes. The air was so dry foggy mornings disappeared along the coast.

According to climatologist W.C. Palmer, the 1965 drought was “such a rare event that we should ordinarily expect it to occur in this region only about once in a couple of centuries.”

The 1965 Drought

The 1965 drought actually occurred during 1961-69, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It began in 1960 in western Massachusetts, where precipitation was below average. Then in 1962 eastern Massachusetts dried up. The rest of the Northeast got little rain or snow.

From 1962 to 1966, 34 out of 46 months had below-average precipitation. The summer of 1964 was very dry. Overdrawn reservoirs weren’t replenished.

Then 1965 was the driest year on record since the late 19th century. The 1965 drought was most severe in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York. That year, Connecticut got only 29.45 inches of precipitation, far below the average of 46.15 inches. Maine was drier than in 1947, when fires destroyed nine communities and a quarter-million parched acres.

By July, communities were declaring water emergencies. Towns banned water use outside, but police and water departments were besieged by people calling to report neighbors who watered their lawns or washed their cars.

Sahara

Golf courses dug wells and dredged ponds. Fairways burnt up as watering was restricted to greens and tees. Brae Burn in Newton, Mass., “may as well be on the Sahara,” reported the Boston Globe. Brae Burn dug 20 test holes to find water. All were dry.

Part of the reservoir in Cambridge, Mass., oozed muck. In Norfolk, Mass., the 20-acre Kingsbury Pond was a stinking sea of mud. Commuters from the western suburbs in Boston rolled up their windows in summer to avoid smelling the stench of the Charles River. Usually water was discharged into the river to dampen the smell of the raw sewage that flowed into it. Not during the drought.

Herring couldn’t swim from the sea to fresh water to spawn. The Town of Pembroke, Mass., banned herring fishing and helped the fish upstream by carrying them in barrels. By fall, millions of herring spawned in fresh water couldn’t make it back to the sea in the dried-up streams. Trapped in ponds, the seagulls feasted on them.

Pastures, hayfields and cornfields were burned out by the 1965 drought. Dairy farms in Fairfield County, Conn., lost most of their pasture grass, and wells went dry for a third of them.

The honey crop in Vermont was smaller than usual. So was the blueberry crop in Maine. Shade trees, such as the Norway and sugar maple, were damaged. Along Rte. 2 between Concord and Cambridge, Mass., Red Pine needles turned brown.

Emergency

In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a study to find out what the federal government could do to help New England. Cities and towns got loans of pumps and pipes to access the deepest arts of reservoirs. Some Massachusetts towns borrowed vintage World War II pipes from Fort Devens and Romulus Air Force Base to reach water beyond normal sources. It didn’t work. The pipe was too expensive to transport.

President Johnson

Rockport, Mass., got approval to use water from a quarry, so long as it was treated twice with chlorine. Also in Massachusetts, Randolph, Holbrook and Braintree banded together to get water from a gravel pit. Fitchburg hired a rainmaker.

The next month, 11 Massachusetts counties were declared drought disaster areas. More than a hundred Massachusetts towns restricted water. Hanover considered a moratorium on building permits. Sandy Pond beach was closed in Ayer after hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface, deprived of oxygen.

Scattered Relief

By September, some parts of New England got rain. In western Massachusetts, rain changed brown pastures to green and grass and alfalfa returning to some farms. Cranberry growers were skating by. Some reservoirs filled to capacity.

The 1965 drought eased in Northern New England except for coastal Maine. In Grand Isle County, Vermont, too much rain left standing water in fields.

Then temperatures dropped.

The water problem worsened in November because the cold locked precipitation above ground. In southeastern Massachusetts, a cold snap destroyed a quarter of the cranberry crop. Cranberry growers didn’t have enough water to flood their bogs and prevent the berries from freezing.

Test wells throughout New England reached record lows and nearly a dozen towns along the coast had to draw down their emergency supplies. On Nov. 1, 1965, the Quabbin Reservoir fell to 59 percent of capacity, a drop of 17 percent in 12 months.

Car washes, service stations and ski areas couldn’t get water.

The 1965 Drought Continues

Quabbin Reservoir after the 1965 drought

By April 1966, the rainfall shortage increased to nearly 37 inches since the drought started in 1963, reported the Boston Globe. That almost equaled a year’s supply of rain.

People thought the drought ended with heavy rain in July and persistent fog along the coast. A dry August ended that hope.

A Boston College scientist suggested detonating dynamite, creating tiny earthquakes, could end the 1965 drought. The disturbed soils would the presence of water and suggest areas for drilling, he said.

By October 1966, farmers said the drought had ended. But the water-supply drought had not. There wasn’t enough water in wells, water tables and reservoirs.

A wet spring in 1967 ended the drought. Above normal rain and snow from February to May filled the reservoirs. On April 25, 1967, Malcolm E. Graf, Massachusetts Water Resources Commissioner, stated the four-year drought, worst in New England history, was over.

Photo: Quabbin Reservoir By Solarapex at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11535183. Cracked mud By Rosser1954 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90076337. This story about the 1965 drought was updated in 2022.

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6 Historic Boat Rides

Early American history is inextricably linked with maritime history, and there’s no better way to get a feel for it than to take a summer cruise on one of New England’s many waterways.

The islands off New England were the site of some of the first settlements and fortifications. Wars were fought and commerce flourished along the region’s rivers, lakes and harbors. Lighthouses alone have a rich history, as do the fishing villages that became thriving cities and summer resorts.

We offer suggestions for 6 historic boat rides, one for each state, from Lake Champlain to the Long Island Sound.

Schooner Mystic Whaler

New London waterfront

Visitors to the 107-ton schooner Mystic Whaler will get a look at what a 19^th Century coastal cargo schooner was all about.

Coastal schooners were extremely profitable investments for their owners during the age of sail, supplying the cities up and down the eastern seaboard with cargo and passenger service.

The schooner Mystic Whaler is a reproduction built in 1967 and refitted in the 90s. And for comfort it has some modern amenities, including showers and comfortable cabins for overnight trips.

Each cruise offers a tour of the Thames River’s historic waterfront, including its famous forts and lighthouses, and passengers are invited to help raise sails, sing along with an old sea chantey and even take a turn steering the boat.

The ship offers regular 3-hour sailing trips in Fishers Island Sound as well as longer multi-day excursions.

All cruises sail from City Pier in New London, Conn. For more information, click here.

Maine Maritime Museum

A trip to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, offers a fascinating look at what the Percy & Small (P&S) Shipyard was like during the heyday of the coastal schooner era.

From 1894 to 1920, the yard built 45 vessels; 42 were four-, five- or six-masted schooners, including Wyoming, the largest wooden sailing vessel ever built.

For a water’s-eye view of the scene, the museum offers regular cruises that explore the lighthouses of Merrymeeting Bay, complete with some history about the lighthouses that guided the vessels coming in and out of the Kennebec to Bath.

For more information, click here.

Schooner Adventure

Annisquam Light, Gloucester

For a taste of what fishing the Grand Banks was like in the age of sail, you can book a trip on the schooner Adventure out of Gloucester, Mass.

The Adventure measures 121.6 feet and was built at the John F. James and Son Shipyard in Essex, Mass. She was a fishing vessel from 1926 to 1953 hauling in more than $4 million worth of fish in her day before she retired as the last American dory fishing trawler in the Atlantic.

Following a refit as a windjammer operating in Maine, the Adventure returned to Gloucester to be restored. With the restoration almost complete, the ship hosts regular sails and visitors will learn about life aboard a Gloucester fishing vessel as well as the history of the ship and her restoration.

For more information, click here.

Star Island Walking Tour

Gosport Chapel on Star Island

The remote and beautiful Isles of Shoals are barely inhabited today, but they have a long and fascinating history. They are an archipelago of nine islands, eight miles off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire.

In the early 16^th century, Basque, French, English and Portuguese fishermen fished the waters off the North American coast. So did Native Americans. By 1623, French and English fisherman lived on the islands seasonally to take advantage of the teeming schools of cod. It was fully incorporated as the town of Appledore in 1661. By the mid-19^th century, the fisheries had fallen off, but a new hotel built by Thomas Laighton attracted tourists and 19^th century celebrities. His daughter, Celia Thaxter, was the most popular female poet of the era, hosted an arts community that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Childe Hassam.

Now, the islands are privately owned. UNH and Cornell have a marine lab on Appledore, and Star Island is home to a religious and educational conference center. It’s owned by the Star Island Corporation, affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ.

The Isles of Shoals Steamship Company, operating out of Portsmouth, N.H., offers day trips and walking tours to Star Island. The islands’ history is narrated on the cruise and by a guide on the island. For more information, click here.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises

Newport, R.I.

In 1776, the guns of Fort Adams drove British warships from Narragansett Bay. By the 19^th century, Newport became an ostentations summer resort for America’s super rich.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises takes passengers past some of the most beautiful and historic coastline of Narragansett Bay on a state-of-the-art catamaran.

The sightseeing cruise of Narragansett Bay features 10 historic lighthouses, 10 islands, Fort Adams and Hammersmith Farm, where John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. The rich history and folklore of Narragansett Bay will be narrated by local historian Arthur Strauss.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises leaves from North Kingstown, R.I. For more information, click here.

Spirit of Ethan Allen

Lake Champlain lighthouse

Spirit Of Ethan Allen, a 363-passenger cruise ship, cruises Lake Champlain past historic sites among the Adirondack and Green Mountain ranges. The ship sails along water highways used by Native Americans and unique geographic formations such as the Champlain Thrust Fault and Rock Dunder.

The captain will tell the story of Ethan Allen’s adventures, recount Indian lore, point out sights of historic shipwrecks and describe famous battles fought on the lake during the American Revolution. Passengers may also get a glimpse of Champ, the lake’s elusive monster.

The Spirit Of Ethan Allen leaves from the Burlington Boathouse in Downtown Burlington, Vt. For more information, click here.

Photos: New London from the waterfront, by By Iracaz at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17470662; Maine Maritime Museum, By Maine Maritime Museum CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21493216;; Annisquam Harbor Light by By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23028235; Gosport Chapel, By The original uploader was Shoaler at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Howcheng using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11338999; Newport, R.I., By MVASCO – Aerial Photo From Robinson R44 Helicopter by Michael Kagdis, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28626105; Lake Champlain lighthouse By Nagaraju.ramanna – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728487.

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