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Kittery Maine

The History of Epidemics in New England

The history of epidemics in New England teaches us that they arrive with terrifying swiftness. They also don’t get less lethal with time, no matter the improvements in medicine, science or public health.

For example, more people died from the flu pandemic in 1918 than from the Black Death in a hundred during the Middle Ages.

Epidemics, it seems, have always come to New England from across the sea. Europeans fishing the Grand Banks brought plague and smallpox to the native population in the 16^th century. Three centuries later, sailors home from World War I brought the Spanish influenza to Boston and then to the rest of the United States.

And then as now, children and the elderly were usually the ones who died during epidemics of smallpox, flu, measles, cholera and diphtheria.

History of Epidemics: Indians

In the history of epidemics, perhaps no people suffered more than the indigenous people of New England.

The first recorded epidemics in New England killed many Indians more than a century before the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Illustration: Indians lament death by disease. In the history of epidemics, the indigenous population suffered greatly.

In what is now Canada and Maine, contact with Europeans began at least in 1504 with the first documented French vessel on the Grand Banks. By 1519, more than 300 European ships made round trips to Newfoundland in the summer. All came to fish.

The European visitors brought with them diseases to which the Indians had no immunity, including smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, cholera and bubonic plague.

In 1586, a typhus epidemic devastated Maine’s Passamaquoddy Indians, among the first to make contact with Europeans.

In 1616, a terrible plaque swept the Massachusetts coast – perhaps smallpox, perhaps yellow fever, perhaps bubonic plague. It killed as many as 90 percent of the Massachusetts people and devastated the Pennacooks in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It also felled the Agawam in Ipswich and the Naumkeag in Salem. And it cleared nearly all the Wampanoag along the coast from Plymouth to Boston.

Then a smallpox epidemic in 1633 killed many more Massachusetts and Narragansetts in Rhode Island.

And after the Pequot War, smallpox, diphtheria, flu and measles killed two-thirds of the Pequot-Mohegans in Connecticut.

Measles

On Oct. 18, 1713, Puritan minister Cotton Mather wrote in his diary that he feared a measles epidemic: “The Measles coming into the Town, it is likely to be a Time of Sickness.”

How right he was. Measles killed five of the 11 people in his household. His son Increase brought the measles home. Then his wife Elizabeth and two newborn twins died from it. So did his two-year-old daughter and a maid.

Cotton Mather

His grief was almost unbearable. “My poor family is now left without any infant in it, or any under seven years of age,” he wrote. “The dying of a child is like the tearing off of a limb,” he later preached.

By the 20^th century, however, people stopped viewing measles as a life-threatening disease, though it killed 20 percent of children under two who got it.

A measles epidemic in 1904 swept through Connecticut. C.A. Lindsley, secretary of the state Board of Health complained that towns weren’t enforcing quarantines, at that time the only way to stop the disease from spreading.

Between 1900 and 1910, measles killed an average of 774 people a year in the United States. But the mortality rate declined slowly, and then in 1963 came the development of the measles vaccine.

There still is no cure.

A quarantine sign

Smallpox

Judge Samuel Sewall went to five funerals in Boston in one day during the horrific smallpox epidemic of 1721. Called ‘the speckled monster, it had no cure. The only recourse was to flee from it.

Samuel Sewall

That year Boston had about 10,600 people, but 900 fled the disease, about 6,000 came down with it and 844 died from it. In the history of epidemics, the 1721 smallpox scourge ranked as the worst.

From 1620 to 1720, New England experienced 12 smallpox epidemics, along with some sporadic cases. During that time smallpox caused one in 10 deaths in Massachusetts—more than war, Indian raids or other illnesses.

In 1706, Cotton Mather’s congregation bought him a gift – a slave named Onesimus. Mather kept a close eye on him, thinking he had a tendency to steal. But he acknowledged that Onesimus was a pretty intelligent fellow. In 1716, Onesimus told Mather how he could prevent smallpox: by rubbing pus from an infected person into an open wound. That caused a mild, but more survivable, case of smallpox.

When the horrific smallpox epidemic of 1721 sickened half of Boston, Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston inoculated 242 people. Of those, six, or one in 40, died. For the rest of the population, smallpox killed one in seven people who had the disease.

It was the first place anyone was inoculated this side of the Atlantic. An English doctor developed a vaccine in 1796. Massachusetts later became the first state to pass a compulsory vaccine law. And by 1932 Massachusetts achieved comparative immunity to the disease, reporting fewer incidences of smallpox per capita than any other state in the Union.

In 1979, public health officials declared smallpox eradicated.

The Throat Distemper of 1735

In 1735, a young child in Kingston, N.H., came down with a cold and all of New England would get sick. The throat distemper of 1735 to 1740 was one of the greatest epidemics ever to terrify New England.

What modern physicians recognize as diphtheria first showed up in in the spring of 1735. The symptoms started out looking like a cold that produced a very sore throat. But they then escalated to lost appetite and fever. The bacteria then attacked the throat, nose and lungs – poisoning the tissue and killing it off. The coating of dead tissue eventually interfered with breathing and killed the sufferer.

Travel patterns in New England made it relatively simple for epidemiologists to track the spread of the throat distemper. Ernest Caulfield described its path in his The A History of the Terrible Epidemic, Vulgarly Called the Throat DistemperDistemper of 1735-1740.

It spread from Kingston to Kittery, Maine, and Hampton Falls, N.H. From Kittery it spread north to Maine and from Hampton Falls south to Massachusetts

Gradually the disease progressed into Connecticut and sporadically to Western Massachusetts.

Across New England some 5,000 people died of diphtheria between 1735 and 1740. More than 75 percent were children. Overall, it killed 22 of every 1,000 people. In New Hampshire, where it struck first and worst, 75 out of every 1,000 people died of it.

Influenza

In the history of epidemics, it’s hard to know just how many times flu sickened New England. People called it different things: ‘uncommon colds,’ ‘very deep colds,’ ‘pleuritic fever’ or ‘malignant pleurisy.’

As Caulfield writes in his essay, The Pursuit of Pestilence, accounts of disease and epidemics in colonial New England amount to ‘a confusing array of dates.’

There was a severe outbreak of flu in 1647. Another influenza pandemic began in 1697, raced through the Americas and ended in 1698. We know about other flu epidemics in the 17th and 18^th centuries, but we don’t know much.

Victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. In the history of epidemics, this one was probably the worst.

Spanish Flu

We know a lot, however, about the 1917-1918 flu pandemic. It killed as many as 100 million people and struck young adults hardest. It could have killed as many as 10 percent of all young adults in the world.

Nicknamed the ‘Spanish flu,’ it came to New England with a couple of sailors on Boston’s Commonwealth Pier on Aug. 27, 1918. The next day, eight more people had it. On the third day, 58.

The close quarters and massive troop movement of World War I quickened the spread of the disease and helped it mutate. The Boston area was especially susceptible because of the soldiers and sailors moving through the city.

“To see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves,” wrote one U.S. Army doctor at Fort Devens, a hellhole of death.

The flu came to Connecticut through New London. It spread to Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island.

The death toll from the flu in Massachusetts was said to be 45,000. An estimated 8,500 died in Connecticut, 1,772 in Vermont, 2,300 in Rhode Island, 5,000 in Maine and 3,000 in New Hampshire. Those numbers may be low, however.

Doctors could do nothing to contain the disease. They desperately searched for a vaccine and treatments, but failed. They could just hope, and keep people away from each other.

On Oct. 2, Boston canceled its Liberty Bond parades and sporting events, closed churches, shut down school and put the stock market on half-day.

The flu epidemic finally ended in the summer of 1919 when people either died from it or developed an immunity. “The virus burned through available fuel,” wrote John Barry in The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. “Then it quickly faded away.”

Barry also argues the virus mutated into a less lethal strain.

This story last updated in 2022.

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6 Places That Used To Be Part of a Different State

For centuries, New England’s borders were anything but stable, and New Englanders didn’t agree on what they were. Maine was once part of Massachusetts, New Haven and Plymouth were separate colonies and Vermont belonged to New Hampshire – or was it New York? At least six places – cities, towns and parts of towns – used to belong to a different state until a border dispute was settled.

Of course all of Maine once belonged to Massachusetts, but that’s a separate story.

Here then, are six places that used to be part of a different state. Or so it was claimed.

Enfield and Suffield, Ct.

The Southwick Jog

Enfield and Suffield — two towns in Connecticut — began their American history as part of Massachusetts.

The two towns’ transition from Massachusetts to Connecticut took 162 years to fully accomplish.

The confusion about which state owned the towns dates back to 1642. With Connecticut seeking a charter from the King of England, Massachusetts officials decided it would be wise to survey the southern border of their territory.

To carry out the assignment, Massachusetts hired two English surveyors — Solomon Saffery and Nathaniel Woodward.

The two men had determined the border’s location by using the most southerly point of the Charles River for reference. From there, they established a point from which they could draw a line directly westward. But when they drew the line, the two surveyors actually placed one end of the line at the wrong location. The result was a diagonal line that extended some seven miles below where Massachusetts’ border was supposed to end.

This mistake set off the 162 years of fighting. Rightly or wrongly, people have pilloried Saffery and Woodward over the years. Some historians had said the pair were drunks, and that explained the mistake. Others have said they were unqualified — that they were sailors, not surveyors (though Woodward, at least, had a track record as a surveyor).

More charitable historians have suggested the instruments available to surveyors at the time were not the most reliable. Further, they note, Saffery and Woodward took a shortcut to their surveying — extrapolating from mathematical calculations rather than walking the land. They had to, in part, because they worked on land the Indians considered to be theirs.

Back and Forth to a Different State

Regardless, at first Massachusetts had the upper hand in the debate (Connecticut didn’t even have a charter). However, Massachusetts had one difficulty in maintaining its claim: it was clearly wrong. Every time surveyors from both Massachusetts and Connecticut investigated, they concurred Saffery and Woodward got it wrong in 1642.

In 1713, the two colonies got together and reached an agreement. Though the 1642 line was wrong, they both agreed to accept it with regard to the towns of Suffield, Enfield and the newer town of Woodstock. The towns would stay in Massachusetts. In return Connecticut would receive unsettled land in Massachusetts as payment.

A stake marks the southernmost point in the “Southwick jog” of the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary. Seen from East Street in Granby, Conn.

The 1713 compromise satisfied everyone but the people who lived in the disputed towns. They still wanted to be part of Connecticut — probably because Connecticut had lower taxes and a more progressive government. In 1749, the disputed towns declared themselves part of Connecticut. This later prompted residents of Southwick, now bounded on three sides by Connecticut, to petition to join Connecticut, too.

This eroding away of Massachusetts was too much for its officials to accept. But negotiations had to be put on hold while the American Revolution was decided. Finally, in 1804 representatives from the two states got together and agreed that Southwick would stay in Massachusetts. The others would stay in Connecticut. The result was a small, square cutout in the border known to this day as the Southwick Jog. In Southwick today you can stand at the corner of Two States Road and Two States Avenue.

Seavey’s Island, Maine

Seavey’s Island

When Maine became a state in 1820, her 95,640 people lived in 232 cities and towns that had already been incorporated by Massachusetts.

Maine’s border disputes with Canada erupted in 1838 with the bloodless and often comical Aroostook War. The boundaries were famously settled by Daniel Webster.

But it was New Hampshire that caused the most recent border dispute.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, created in 1800, lies in the middle of the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine. It was cobbled together over the years from five islands, now called Seavey’s Island.

The federal government owns the island, and for decades the U.S. Navy viewed it as part of New Hampshire – hence the name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Different State

Shipyard workers come from New Hampshire, which doesn’t have an income tax, and from Maine, which does. New Hampshire shipyard workers had to pay Maine income tax because Maine claimed Seavey’s Island.

In 2001, New Hampshire went to the U.S. Supreme Court and tried to get Seavey’s Island back.

New Hampshire claimed it owned the Piscataqua River to the Maine shoreline. Maine claimed the boundary between the two states ran down the middle of the river.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire, it had agreed in a 1977 lawsuit over fishing rights that the border ran between the middle of the river.

Maine got Seavey’s Island.

Fall River, Mass.

Fall River. The pink section at the bottom was once Tiverton.

Fall River started out as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony. In 1694, its southern neighbor Tiverton was incorporated as part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which by then had merged with Plymouth. In 1746, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island colony by Royal Decree. (So were Little Compton, Barrington, Bristol and Cumberland.)

In 1856, Tiverton decided to spin off its northern industrial section. It was called Fall River – Rhode Island. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court moved the state boundary to create one Massachusetts city of Fall River.

Bellows Falls, N.H.

The International Paper Co. in Bellows Falls, Vt., starred in the final chapter of the border wars between New Hampshire and Vermont in 1934. These disputes had gone on for hundreds of years, predating Vermont’s creation as a state.

In the 1600s, governors of both New York and New Hampshire were merrily giving away sections of Vermont to their friends. The King of England intervened in 1624. He established the New Hampshire border as the western edge of the Connecticut River. This border was largely accepted, though a group of dissidents in New Hampshire decided to secede in the 1770s. In 1778, the 22 New Hampshire towns from Chester to Haverhill declared themselves part of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vermont (after toying with and rejecting the idea of creating a new state altogether called New Connecticut).

New Hampshire took the news badly. It threatened to withdraw support for the American Revolution and to send 1,000 troops into Vermont to restore its borders. Even George Washington had to get involved in whipping the towns back into line. Under pressure from the Continental Congress, Vermont announced it was rejecting the towns’ bid to secede and returning them to New Hampshire.

Bellows Falls at high flow.

When Vermont was granted admission to the union as a state, one condition was that it renounce all claims to any lands to the east of the western edge of the Connecticut River as measured at low water. That settled the matter for more than 100 years, but the Vermonters would once again challenge New Hampshire.

Power struggle

From 1909 on, New Hampshire towns tried to assess taxes on power plants, canals and the International Paper Company’s mill at Bellows Falls in Vermont. The logic was this: the mill was powered by water in the river and, to get access to that water, it had to extend part of its plant beyond the low-water mark and into the middle of the river. Hence the subject properties were in New Hampshire. Vermont sued. The correct location of the border, it now asserted, was the center of the river.

As the dispute dragged on, some novel solutions were proposed – including diverting the Connecticut River altogether to move the border with it.

But swift and steady are the wheels of justice. Well, steady at least. In 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter, granting New Hampshire ownership of the entire river to the western low water mark. By that time, International Paper Co. had abandoned its Vermont plant, for unrelated reasons, and the Bellows Falls economy was in a tailspin.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Fall River’s neighbor Pawtucket, R.I., comes from the Algonquin name ‘River Fall.’ And when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861 gave Fall River, R.I., to Massachusetts, it gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island as a consolation prize.

The original Pawtucket actually consisted of several towns. Part of it was known as Rehoboth, east of the Blackstone River. Rehoboth was part of Plymouth Colony. West of the Blackstone River a thriving industrial town (thanks to Sam Slater) was part of North Providence.

In 1828, Massachusetts carved out part of Rehoboth and called it Pawtucket, Mass. Pawtucket, Rhode Islanders were not happy.

After the Supreme Court gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island, the North Providence land west of the Blackstone River went to Pawtucket. The two towns – East Pawtucket and West Pawtucket — then incorporated as the city of Pawtucket.

A Different State 4X

Windham County, Vt. Vernon is circled in red.

Vernon, Vt., received a charter as Northfield in 1672 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth, who grabbed much of Vermont for his own state, gave part of Vernon to another town he chartered, Hinsdale.

By 1779, four states claimed Vernon (then Hinsdale) due to bad surveying and squabbling over ownership: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Vernon has successively had the names Northfield in Hampshire County, Mass.; Hinsdale in Cheshire County, N.H.; Hinsdale in Cumberland County, N.Y.; and Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt.

But the Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt., had a problem On the other side of the Connecticut River sat a Hinsdale, N.H. The Vermonters wanted their own identity and voted in 1802 to change the name to Vernon. They supposedly chose it after President George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon.

This story about places that belonged to a different state was updated in 2022.

Image: Southwick Job By Dynzmoar – This file was derived from: Southwick-stake.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31670390

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6 of the Oldest Houses in New England

To make a claim for the oldest houses in New England inevitably invites controversy. The region has plenty of very old houses, but few of them survive intact. Some took several years to build. How does one date them, then: From the start of construction, or completion?

Some very old houses have been remodeled over the years. One in Rhode Island burned down during King Philip’s War, while a wealthy pop star restored and modernized another. One is the oldest stone house, and one is the oldest timber frame house.

The New England Historical Society has surveyed the field of oldest houses, and we’ve come up with six that have valid claims as the oldest in each state. We realize some may beg to differ….

Henry Whitfield House

People claim the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford as the oldest house in Connecticut and the oldest stone house in New England. You can find it at 248 Old Whitfield Street, down the street from the town green.

Puritans built it in 1639 for their minister, Henry Whitfield, a descendant of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first settlers of Guilford began building the home in September 1639, shortly after they arrived. But they started too late in the year, and they only finished the great hall and north fireplace. They completed the house in the summer of 1640 with the help of the Menunkatuck Indians, who carried stone from nearby quarries on barrows.

The walls measure nearly two feet thick, held together with mortar made of yellow clay and crushed oyster shells.

Henry Whitfield, his wife Dorothy Shaeffe Whitfield and their nine children lived in the house. The Puritans also used it for religious services before they built their church, as a fort and as a meetinghouse for Town Meeting.

In 1660, Roman Catholics used the house as a chapel.

The owner remodeled the house in 1868, and it opened to the public in 1899 as Connecticut’s first museum. It was restored in 1902-04 and in the 1930s.

Today the Henry Whitfield House is a museum. For more information about visiting, click here.

John Bray House

The John Bray House in Kittery qualifies as one of the oldest in Maine because it was built on the site where wealthy shipwright John Bray first built a dwelling in 1662. He also kept a home in England.

The current house, a 2-1/2 story wooden frame building, was probably not built before 1720. Parts of the original house were incorporated into it. It’s set on the south side of Pepperell Road (Maine State Route 103), on a site overlooking the Piscataqua River.

The Bray House is on the far left.

Daryl Hall of the pop duo Hall & Oates bought the house in 2008 and restored it, saving it from destruction. He later sold it for $1.6 million.

Hall saw an ad in the Newtown, Conn., Antiques and Arts Weekly, that said the house was up for auction. He sent his architect to look at it. Then he sent his assistant to buy it. After 15 minutes of bidding, he owned it.

Hall restores antique houses as a hobby. He restored houses in London and Upstate New York.

The Fairbanks House

Fairbanks House, photo courtesy Library of Congress

The Fairbanks House in Dedham, Mass., is said to be the oldest timber-framed house in North America. Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks, Puritans from Yorkshire, England, had the house built for themselves and their six children. Tree ring dating confirms the Fairbanks built the house in the late 1630s and early 1640s. English carpenters from East Anglia built the house, which never had a mortgage on it.

The house passed down to the Fairbanks family through eight generations, and the Fairbanks family still owns the property. One of Jonathan and Grace’s descendants, Charles Warren Fairbanks, served as Teddy Roosevelt’s vice president and had a city in Alaska (Fairbanks) named after him. Another Fairbanks, Jason, was hanged for murder in 1801.

The Fairbanks family frequently holds reunions in which they dress in Puritan costume.

Yale professor Abbott Lowell Cummings wrote “No other house of the mid-17th century in New England has survived in such unbelievable unspoiled condition.”

The Fairbanks House, now a historic house museum, opens May through October. For more information click here.

Richard Jackson House

The Richard Jackson House, New Hampshire’s oldest, sits across the Piscataqua River from the oldest house in Maine. Located at 76 Northwest St. in Portsmouth, Richard Jackson built it in 1664 in the English style, but Americanized with an extravagant use of wood.

Richard Jackson, a mariner, farmer and cooper, outlived his two sons, dying in 1718. The house was divided in 1727 among his daughter-in-law and her children. Five generations of men named Nathaniel Jackson owned and occupied the house from 1727 to 1897.

The fifth Nathaniel Jackson bequeathed the house to his daughter, Mary E. Jackson and her son, also named Nathaniel. They rented the house to an African-American couple, Clarence and Belle Tilley. She was believed to have come to New Hampshire via the Underground Railroad. The house in 1924 was sold to William Sumner Appleton, founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). He allowed Belle to continue living there.

He restored the property, removing modern modification and replacing the windows with leaded diamond paned windows typical of the era. Appleton’s restoration became the basis for Historic New England’s preservation philosophy of keeping generations of changes intact.

The public may now visit the house, a museum. For information about visiting, click here.

Stephen Northup House

In 1645, Stephen Northup came from England at about the age of 15, and in 1660 he started building the house now at 99 Featherbed Lane in North Kingstown, R.I.

He first lived in Providence, where he served as town sergeant in 1660. Five years earlier Providence Town Meeting granted him 25 acres. Since he sold land in Providence in 1662, he probably finished the North Kingstown house that year and moved into it.

Most of the original house probably burned in King Philip’s War (1675-76), along with everything south of Providence. Northup then rebuilt the house, possibly with parts from the 1660 building. Additions were made around 1712 and 1850.

The southwestern portion of the home is original to the 1660 building standards with additions made around 1712 and 1850. The present home may have portions of its current form rooted in the year 1660.

Northup married, had six known children and lived until at least 1687. He built the first dam at the Gilbert Stuart home, according to a family researcher. The Northups owned or operated the gristmill there.

Stephen Northup’s great-grandson, Capt. Henry Northup, who freed his slave Mintus in 1797. Mintus took Northup as his last name, and had a freeborn son, Solomon Northup, the subject of the Academy Award winning film 12 Years a Slave.

Stephen Northup also has a descendant in Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abraham Lincoln and lost to him in the 1860 election for U.S. president.

The Northup House now belongs to a private owner.

Mooar-Wright House

The oldest house in Vermont – or at least the oldest continuously occupied house — is believed to be the enigmatic Mooar-Wright House in Pownal, the far southwestern town in the state. No documentation exists of its early ownership. According to local legend, the house was built as a tavern by Charles Wright in 1762. Others speculate Dutch settlers built the house thinking it belonged to the New York colony.

People sometimes call the house the Defoe-Mooar-Wright House. Some historians believe John Defoe, a Loyalist imprisoned in 1776, built it. He escaped and fought on the side of the British at the Battle of Bennington. Patriots captured him again, but he escaped again to Canada. Other historians believe Charles Wright built the house in 1765.

The house has a Dutch frame around a typically English layout. In 2009, the Rev. Gregory Dickson bought the house intending to renovate it, according to the Bennington Banner. Its previous owner, Margaret Lillie, used part of the house as a law office. Both belong to the Pownal Historical Society.

Members of the Mooar family are the last owners anyone in Pownal can remember. They visited the home in the summer during the 1950s.

Photos: Henry Whitfield House By Dmadeo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6013719; Stephen Northrup House By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434112. Bray House By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37099250. This story about New England’s oldest houses was updated in 2022.

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U-Boat Attacks Of World War II: 6 Months of Secret Terror in the Atlantic

On Jan. 13, 1942, German U-boat attacks officially started against merchant ships along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. From then until early August, German U-boats dominated the waters off the East Coast, sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships with impunity and often within sight of shore.

In less than seven months, U-boat attacks would destroy 22 percent of the tanker fleet and sink 233 ships in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The U-boats killed 5,000 seamen and passengers, more than twice the number of people who perished at Pearl Harbor.

While thousands of New Englanders looked to the sky for enemy airplanes, few had any idea about the carnage wreaked in the waters nearby.

The U.S. Navy lied to the public about the terrifying U-boat attacks. The news media agreed to government censorship, which helped to hide the military’s incompetence in protecting shipping and the lives of merchant seamen.

The Dixie Arrow, an early victim of U-boat attacks.

New London, Conn., native Ralph Sturgis was one of the few who knew about the U-boat attacks. He ran an observation post on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound.

“I would watch boats go out, and probably an hour later get a radio message that the boat had been sunk,” Sturgis remembered. “The Germans use to operate right off of the coast here and they used to sink the ships, it was really something.”

Why U-boat Attacks

When the United States entered World War II, both sides understood the key to Allied victory would be the restoration of America’s industrial might. Germany believed it could win the war by preventing the U.S. from supplying Britain with war materiel and fuel.

Ed Offley, in The Burning Shore, described German reaction to a top-secret war plan that said the United States wouldn’t be able to launch a military offensive against Germany until July 1943.

“American planners also assumed that the Soviet Union would likely collapse militarily before then,” wrote Offley. “This left Germany with an eighteen-month window of opportunity.

“By shifting its military priority from the Soviet invasion to mounting a knockout punch against Great Britain before the United States became strong enough to intervene, Germany could forestall an Allied invasion of the continent and refocus its efforts on beating the Soviets.”

But after the sensational attacks from the air at Pearl Harbor and the German blitzkrieg against London, New Englanders had more concern about bombing raids from Europe than about U-boat attacks.

John R. Newell, assistant manager of Bath Iron Works Corp., believed the enemy would try to destroy the city of Bath, Maine, the way it had Coventry, England.

“If Bath is bombed – and it may come tonight or tomorrow night – there will not be just two or three bombs or two or three fires, for I believe it will be an effort to make Bath another Coventry,” Newell said five days after Pearl Harbor.

Operation Drumbeat

U.S. Navy officials knew something else was coming. British intelligence on Jan. 12 warned U.S. Navy headquarters that a group of U-boats was headed to Newfoundland and another to the American coast between Portland, Maine, and New York. The attacks would begin on Jan. 13, 1942.

Adm. Karl Donitz, mastermind of the U-boat attacks.

Admiral Karl Donitz, the capable commander of Hitler’s U-boat fleet, began planning the U-boat attacks as soon as Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941. He called it Operation Paukenschlag, or Drumbeat.

Donitz thought the U.S. military was ill-prepared and unequipped to fight the well-trained U-boat fleet. He was right.

On the evening of Jan. 11, 1942, Reinhardt Hardegen, the audacious captain of U-boat 123, jumped the gun. He spotted the big British freighter Cyclops, carrying Chinese sailors and cargo to the British Isles, 300 miles east of Cape Cod in Canadian waters. U-123 sent a torpedo into the Cyclops that cut her in two.

First Sinking

The Cyclops lost 87 passengers and crew. The 95 survivors spent 20 hours enduring cold and wind in lifeboats before they were picked up. Two days later, the Navy made a cryptic announcement: An unidentified merchant ship had sunk off Canada.

Hardegen headed south, toward the Rhode Island Sound. He didn’t have good charts, but that didn’t matter. The Montauk Point lighthouse beamed a helpful navigational aid.

Shortly after midnight on Jan. 14, Hardegan’s lookout spotted the Norness silhouetted against the brightly lit coast. The huge tanker carried 12,200 tons of crude oil from New Jersey to Liverpool.

U-123 sunk the Norness with three torpedoes. Hours after the Norness sank, a blimp spotted the hull sticking out of the shallow water. Several hours later, 39 survivors in lifeboats were taken to Newport, R.I.

By the early morning of Jan. 15, U-123 approached New York Harbor. From the bridge, Hardegan could see the lights of Manhattan skyscrapers. “I cannot describe the feeling in words,” he said “but it was unbelievable and beautiful and great. . . We were the first to be here, and for the first time in this war a German soldier looked out on the coast of the USA.”

Tight Lips

Later that night, U-123’s lookout saw the bright lights of the Coimbra bearing down on the submarine. The British tanker, like the Norness, transported oil to Britain. She made an easy target against the brightly lit coast. U-123 torpedoed the tanker, and within minutes the explosion sent a fireball 650 feet into the sky.

Thirty-six crewmen were killed; six survived. People in the Hamptons called to report the fire 27 miles away. The U.S. military did not respond. No airplane, no Coast Guard cutter, nothing. Hardegen didn’t even bother to submerge the U-boat.

Throughout Operation Drumbeat, the military said as little as possible about the U-boat attacks along the East Coast. Only if the enemy knew of sinkings, or if they were witnessed by people along the coast would the Navy disclose successful U-boat attacks.

On Jan. 23, an unnamed Navy spokesman told the press the U.S. had sunk some of the U-boats. It was a lie.

Painting of a burning tanker in the North Atlantic by Lt. Cmdr. Anton Otto Fischer, USCGR

Painting of a burning tanker after in the North Atlantic by Lt. Cmdr. Anton Otto Fischer, USCGR

Hemorrhage

In the first three weeks of January, U-123 would destroy eight ships and damage a ninth. During that time the nine German U-boats in the Atlantic destroyed 35 Allied merchant ships and a British destroyer and killed 1,219 crew and passengers.

In February, the killing continued. Sixteen U-boats destroyed 34 more Allied merchant ships and a warship between Nova Scotia and Venezuela and 15 more vessels, mostly oil tankers, in the Caribbean. The cargo ship Dixie Sword sank on Feb. 12, 1942 near Monomoy Island off Cape Cod.

The United States fired nary a shot in their defense.

But by then, the U.S. military began to take some defensive measures against the U-boat attacks. Mine fields were laid in the harbors and mobile artillery was positioned to protect the harbors. Shore craft and planes were ordered to be ready for combat. It was something, at least.

In March, the U-boats attacked 48 ships, and almost all sank. They were easy prey as the U-boats could spot them easily against the lighted cars, buildings, streetlights and billboards along the coast. Ships continued to operate with all their lights on.

The U-boat attacks were destroying ships faster than the British and Americans could replace them.

Convoy

The British Royal Admiralty, exasperated with U.S. incompetence, sent a commander to Washington to plead with naval officials to start a system of convoys. The British had learned from experience that the most effective tactic against U-boat attacks was to escort groups of merchant ships with warships, luring the submarines into a battle they would probably lose.

Finally, on March 26, the U.S. Navy responded to a U-boat attack. U-71 torpedoed the tanker Dixie Arrow and stayed around to watch it burn. The USS Tarbell dropped depth charges, but the U-71 escaped and the Tarbell picked up the survivors.

It wasn’t until the night of April 13-14 that the first U-boat was sunk. The destroyer USS Roper used its new radar technology to detect U-85 off the North Carolina coast. The Roper sunk the submarine and then dropped depth charges for good measure.

Finally, A Plan

By April, the U.S. finally had a plan and a fleet of 65 antisubmarine vessels. At the end of the month, all tankers were ordered into port. No tankers hauled oil around the Atlantic Ocean until the they had escorts. From then on, most merchant ships traveled in escorted mini-convoys known as bucket brigades along the coast. At night, merchant ships put into sheltered harbors.

Flying Minutemen exercising at Civilian Air Patrol Base # 20 in Trenton, Maine.

The Civil Air Patrol, one-fifth of which were women, began sorties. Pilots in small, privately owned aircraft patrolled the coast from bases stretching from Trenton, Maine, to Lantana, Fla.

Though they weren’t effective at sinking U-boats, the little planes prevented attacks. The U-boats were under orders to submerge at the sight of an aircraft. From March 5, 1942 to August 31, 1943, the Coastal Patrol flew 86,865 missions, sighted 173 U-boats, reported 91 ships in distress and 17 floating mines and rescued 363 survivors of U-boat attacks. Ninety planes were lost on those missions, and 26 people died.

Hooligan Navy

Less effective than the ‘Flying Minutemen’ was the auxiliary patrol comprised of luxury yachts and small fishing boats known as the Hooligan Navy. Some, including Ernest Hemingway, volunteered. Some were requisitioned.

The Hooligan Navy didn’t sink any U-boats. The crew of one cabin cruiser was shocked to see a U-boat coming at them off the Florida coast. A German crewman yelled at them, “Get the hell out of here, you guys! Do you want to get hurt? Now scram.”

The Hooligan Navy, however, did rescue hundreds of survivors of vessels sunk by U-boat attacks.

By the second half of April, Allied shipping losses fell by half. On April 17, a Coast Guard cutter sank U-175 with depth charges while escorting a convoy south of Iceland. On May 9, another Coast Guard vessel sunk U-352 in the North Atlantic.

In May and June, there were only 87 U-boat attacks on U.S. shipping. By July and August, the government finally ordered the coast blacked out, and U-boat attacks fell to 26 on the East Coast.

Military air defenses were getting stronger, and on July 7 the first Army Air Corps bomber sank U-701 with two bombs.

On July 19, German Admiral Donitz ordered the U-boats redeployed. Operation Drumbeat was over.

U-boat Attacks: Epilogue

The U-boat attacks didn’t end completely. The submarines moved to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, attacking fuel tankers and freighters.

On April 16, 1944, USS Joyce sunk U-550 off Nantucket.

Sailors firing on U-853 during the Battle of Point Judith.

U.S. sailors firing after a U-boat attack during the Battle of Point Judith.

The last U-boat was sunk in American waters during the Battle of Point Judith off the Rhode Island coast. U-853 sank a collier ship on May 5, days before Germany surrendered. The U-boat was sunk that evening by four warships, Coast Guard cutters, a destroyer, frigates and two blimps.

During the week of May 15, 1945, thousands witnessed the sensational surrender of four German U-boats at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. (Read the story here.)

Operation Drumbeat counted as a little-known victory for Germany. Not just in battle, but on the home front. The Northeast, which got 95 percent of its oil from the Gulf of Mexico, suffered fuel shortages through 1943 as a result of U-boat attacks in 1942. The fuel shortages slowed wartime production and forced gasoline rationing, one of the most unpopular restrictions of the war.

With thanks to The Burning Shore by Ed Offley. This story was updated in 2023.

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12 New England Military Heroes, Sung and Unsung

New England has given countless military heroes to the United States of America over its history. Their heroism took many different forms. It includes Henry Mucci’s bravery during the great raid on a Japanese POW camp or John Stark’s leadership at the Battle of Bennington. It includes George Luz keeping up the morale of his Band of Brothers during the invasion of Normandy and Red Cross nurse Jane Jeffrey tending the wounded in a hospital tent while injured herself. And it includes such unlikely heroes as an 11-year-old drummer boy from Vermont and a Harvard-trained sculptor who battled off Rhode Island.

Here, then, are just a dozen stories about New England’s military heroes in recognition of all of their service.

Henry Mucci Launches the Most Daring Rescue of Our Time

In October 1944, more than 500 mostly American survivors of the Bataan Death March were held in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines while the 6th Army marched toward Manila to liberate it from the Japanese. The American prisoners were in imminent danger of being massacred by the Japanese before their countrymen could save them.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, commander of the 6th Ranger Battalion, was ordered to infiltrate Japanese-held territory, rescue the POWs at Cabanatuan and bring them back to the American lines. On Jan. 28, 1945, Mucci led a strike force on a march 30 miles through Japanese territory and rendezvoused with two companies of Filipino guerillas near the POW camp. They learned a Japanese column was heading along the main highway away from Cabanatuan, and they decided to wait 24 hours so there would be fewer Japanese to defend the camp. By the next day, there were 3,000 Japanese in the vicinity against Mucci’s 128 Army Rangers and Alamo Scouts and 250 Filipino guerillas, some unarmed.

At dusk on January 30, the guerrillas set up ambushes along the highway. The American strike force crawled nearly a half mile from the woods across an open field to a ditch outside the camp fence. Mucci joined the attack on the ground, unusual for a colonel. An Army Air Force night fighter buzzed the POW camp to distract the Japanese.

Surprise

The attack took the Japanese by such surprise it lasted but half an hour. None of the Japanese troops or tanks got past the guerrillas along the highway or survived the strafing by P-61s from the 547th Night Fighter Squadron. All but one of the 513 prisoners were liberated from the camp. The remaining prisoner, either English or Canadian, had lost his hearing and part of his sight during his imprisonment. He was in a latrine during the fighting and didn’t notice until dawn that he was the only living person left in the camp. The Filipino guerillas found him and took him to safety.

Cabanatuan POWs celebrate their liberation by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

More than 500 Japanese troops were killed or wounded, 21 Filipino guerillas were wounded and only two Rangers were killed in the action. Some of the prisoners were so weak from disease and starvation they couldn’t walk, and the Rangers carried them — sometimes two at a time — out of the camp. They were carried in carts drawn by water buffalos to hospitals behind American lines. (Watch a short video here.)

The mission is considered the largest and most successful rescue mission in the history of the U.S. military. Henry Mucci was treated as a welcoming hero in his hometown of Bridgeport, Conn. He received the Distinguished Service Cross from his friend Gen. Douglas MacArthur. A section of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown, Conn., was named the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway in his honor, and a film called The Great Raid about the rescue was released in 2005.

(To see a short video of the American strike force behind enemy lines on the way to Cabanatuan, click here. For more photos of the liberation of Cabanatuan, click here.)

Willie Johnston Earns Medal of Honor at 11 Years Old

Willie Johnston of Salem (now Derby), Vt., is the youngest person to receive the Medal of Honor.

When his father enlisted in the Union Army in December 1861, 11-year-old Willie begged to go with him. He was mustered into the 3d Vermont Infantry Regiment on May 1, 1862, and soon saw action.

Willie Johnston

During the Seven Days Battles near Richmond, Va., the Confederate Army drove the Union Army into a retreat down the Virginia peninsula. Many of the men threw away their guns to lighten their load while retreating. Willie hung on to his drum and brought it safely to Harrison’s Landing.

Since he was the only drummer boy left with a drum, he was given the honor of drumming for the division parade. President Abraham Lincoln heard the story and recommended the boy be given a medal. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the Medal of Honor on Feb. 15, 1864, when Willie was 13 years old – for something he did when he was 11.

It was the second Medal of Honor ever given. Johnston was mustered out of the army on Dec. 30, 1864. His drumsticks and a photograph of him are on display at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, there is a statue of him in Santa Clarita, Calif., and a book, Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer, was written about him in 1995.

John Stark, Hero and Quote Machine

Gen. John Stark is now best known for coining New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die,” but in his day he was hailed as the Hero of Bennington.

John Stark, one of New England’s revolutionary heroes

As a young man, Stark impressed the Abenaki Indians who had taken him captive. He fought back against the young Indians who forced him to run the gauntlet. Later, he led daring raids as second in command of Roger’s Rangers. And as soon as he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he marched his New Hampshire Militia to Boston. They fought valiantly in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and it may (or may not) have been Stark who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

As a general in the Continental Army he led untrained men into battle at Bennington, where they mauled the British forces. There, Stark ordered the attack, rallying his men with the cry, “We’ll beat them before night or Molly Stark’s a widow.”

The battle boosted American morale, prevented the British from taking supplies and helped make possible the crucial victory of the Battle of Saratoga by thinning British forces.

After the war, Stark spent the rest of his life in Manchester, N.H. (then Derryfield). He declined an invitation to attend a reunion of the Battle of Bennington in 1809. He was 81 and too frail to attend, but he wrote a letter to his comrades that closed with the words, “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

Jane Jeffrey, From the Battle of the Marne to Maine

Jane Jeffrey (also spelled Jeffery), a registered nurse caring for a sick relative in Dorchester, Mass., volunteered for the American Red Cross during World War I. In July 1918 she was serving at a military hospital at Jouy-sur-Marne in France, where the overwhelmed staff treated wounded soldiers in tents with no plumbing. The hospital came under attack during the second battle of the Marne. Jane Jeffrey received the the Distinguished Service Cross for her actions during the air raid. Her citation reads:

Jane Jeffrey

For extraordinary heroism in action at Jouy-sur-Morin (Seine-et-Marne), France, on July 15, 1918. While she was on duty at American Red Cross Hospital No. 107, Miss Jeffrey was severely wounded by an exploding bomb during an air raid. She showed utter disregard for her own safety by refusing to leave her post, thought suffering great pain from her wounds. Her courageous attitude and devotion to the task of helping others was inspiring to all her associates.

While convalescing in America, Jane Jeffrey was offered a job as a nurse at the Poland Spring House in Poland, Maine, by its proprietor, E.P. Ricker. While at Poland Spring, she met and married his brother, Alvan Bolster Ricker. She left in her will a bequest to build the Alvan Bolster Ricker Memorial Library in Poland.

John Mihalowski, an Extraordinary Hero

When Worcester, Mass., native John Mihalowski enlisted in the Navy in 1927, he couldn’t have known he would play a key role in the greatest submarine rescue in history.

John Mihalowski

During his naval career, Mihalowski trained as a diver and rose to the rank of chief torpedoman. As the U.S. entry into World War II loomed, he was assigned to the crew of the U.S.S. Falcon.

On May 23, 1939, the Falcon was urgently summoned from New London, Conn., to rescue of the U.S.S. Squalus. The submarine had sunk during a test dive from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Some of the men had survived, but it was unlikely they would get out alive. There was little time before their air would run out, and no one had ever been rescued from a submarine that sank.

Once they reached the coast of New Hampshire, Mihalowski and several other divers managed to make four trips to the sub in an experimental diving ball. It was with great risk to their own lives that they carried all 33 survivors to the surface.

John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor ‘for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.’ Read more about the dramatic story of the greatest submarine rescue ever here.

Nathan Hale, the Only Volunteer

In September 1776, Gen. George Washington moved his army to New York City to prevent the British from invading. He was desperate to know where the British planned their attack, and he thought the only way to find out was to send a spy behind enemy lines.

Nathan Hale, from statue in City Hall Park, New York

Only one man volunteered: Lt. Nathan Hale. He was a 21-year-old former schoolteacher, born in Coventry, Conn., and trained at Yale College. He moved with the 7th Connecticut Regiment to Manhattan in 1776.

Hale was ferried behind enemy lines and discovered by the British as a spy in Lower Manhattan — how is unclear. He was questioned, found to have incriminating evidence on him and sentenced to hang. His exact last words may or may not have been, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Several witnesses, though, said he behaved with dignity and composure. He was hanged at what is now 66th Street and 3rd Avenue in New York City. Today Nathan Hale is remembered as Connecticut’s state hero.

William Harvey Carney Never Let the Flag Touch the Ground

Sgt. William Harvey Carney was one of the many African-American men who volunteered for the the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. It was a proud African-American unit of the Union Army established during the Civil War in 1863. Col. Robert Gould Shaw and 28 other white officers led the regiment.

William Harvey Carney

So many men volunteered the recruiters could be selective, resulting in what the surgeon general called the most “robust, strong and healthy set of men” ever mustered into service in the United States.

In July 1863 they saw their first action on James Island in South Carolina, where they stopped a Confederate assault. Shortly afterward they led an attack on Fort Wagner near Charleston, S.C. Shaw was killed in the battle; 271 of the 600 who charged the fort were killed, wounded or captured. During the battle, Sgt. Carney grabbed the U.S. flag as the bearer fell, carried it to the ramparts and back, singing, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.”

Union forces couldn’t take and hold the fort, but the 54th was heralded for its bravery. That acclaim encouraged enlistment of African-American troops. Thirty-seven years later, Sgt. William Harvey Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation reads,

When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.

The battle was dramatized in the film Glory, and the 54th is memorialized in a bronze monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens facing the Massachusetts Statehouse.

The Band of Brothers’ Morale Booster

George Luz belonged to the famed Band of Brothers with Easy Company during World War II. Born in Fall River, Mass., he grew up in Warwick, R.I. He had nine biological siblings. Of Portuguese descent, he had a knack for mimicry and an impish sense of humor.

George Luz, one of the more lighthearted heroes

Luz enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1942 and became a technician fourth grade in the 101^st Airborne Division. He jumped into Normandy on D-Day, finding himself alone on the battlefield. Luz later said he ducked behind a hedgerow and watched his fellow paratroopers shot by tracer rounds.

He regrouped with his company, and saw further action in Europe. At the Battle of the Bulge Luz lost several friends. After the war he married and settled down in West Warwick, R.I., where he worked as a maintenance consultant. He died in an accident when an industrial dryer fell on him. During his wake, 1,600 people lined up outside the funeral home to pay their respects.

Actor Rick Gomez portrayed Luz in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He is credited with boosting Easy Company’s morale with his lighthearted wit during difficult times.

Esek Hopkins, Not One To Obey Orders

Hopkins, one of the more controversial heroes

Esek Hopkins was the controversial – and only – commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War. Born in Scituate, R.I., in 1718, he had sailed to nearly every part of the globe by the time war broke out.

On Dec. 22, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed him to head America’s infant navy to protect commerce. Ordered to head to the Chesapeake Bay, he instead took eight merchant ships outfitted for war to the Caribbean. He decided he risked annihilation of his small fleet in the Chesapeake. He wanted to divert the British Navy from the American coast and capture a prize rather than see his small fleet destroyed.

On March 3, 1776 he launched the Battle of Nassau in the first U.S. amphibious landing. Sailors and marines captured munitions and two ships, while severely injuring another. Hopkins was lauded by some, condemned by others for the bold stroke. He was relieved of his command in July 1778. The National Register of Historic Places now lists his home in Providence.

Donald Skidgel Gave His Life for Others in Vietnam

Sgt. Donald Skidgel of Bangor, Maine, gave his life at the age of 20 to save others on a battleground in Vietnam.

Sgt. Donald Skidgel, one of the heroes of the Vietnam war

He joined the Army in 1968 and soon rose to sergeant. On Sept. 14, 1969, his unit was guarding a convoy near Song Be when it came under fire from the enemy concealed in tall grass and bunkers along the road. Skidgel maneuvered off the road and began firing, silencing one enemy position. Then he ran across 60 meters of bullet-raked ground and fired at other enemy positions. He then saw the command group of the convoy coming under intense attack. Skidgel tried to draw the enemy’s attention away from it by manning a machine gun in his vehicle while his driver steered through the hostile fire.

An exploding grenade knocked him onto the rear fender. He staggered to his feet and continued firing until small arms fire killed him. He had saved the convoy command and inspired his fellow soldiers to defeat the enemy.

Donald Skidgel earned the Medal of Honor posthumously. On Oct. 15, 2011, the replacement bridge on Route 2 spanning the Sebasticook River in Newport Maine was dedicated as ‘The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge.’

John Lonergan: “Fall Out, Every Damned One of You!”

Capt. John Lonergan came to Vermont in 1848 as a refugee from famine and political oppression in Ireland. He worked as a cooper with his father in Winooski, but in 1862 formed a company of Vermont Irishmen who volunteered to fight for the Union Army.

Capt. John Lonergan, one of the Civil War’s heroes

Lonergan had ulterior motives: He wanted to develop military skills for the cause of Irish freedom.

He earned the Medal of Honor for his valor at the Battle of Gettysburg. During that battle, his company captured Confederate artillery. As the men moved the gun carriages to a better position, Lonergan realized they took heavy fire from the Codories House in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

After the war, Lonergan headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. He wanted to pressure Britain to leave Ireland.

He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park.

Norman Cota, D-Day’s Overlooked Hero

Norman Cota, a native of Chelsea, Mass., graduated two months early from West Point in April 1917 when America entered World War I. At West Point, Cota and Dwight Eisenhower became good friends playing football.

By D-Day he was a 51-year-old brigadier general, assistant commander of the 29^th division. He was also one of the highest ranking officers on Omaha Beach that day and possibly the oldest person.

Norman Cota, one of D-Day’s heroes

Cota warned his men of the terrible confusion they’d encounter that day. He got it right. Troops landed in the wrong places and the German defenses were stronger than anticipated. The Allies couldn’t get a foothold on the beach under intense enemy fire and around obstacles and mines.

About one hour after the invasion started, Norman Cota rode a landing craft into a crossfire of bullets, artillery and mortar. He strode upright across the beach toward a group of Rangers pinned next to a sand dune by enemy fire. It was then that he may have uttered his most famous words: “Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Let us go inland and be killed.”

Into the Breach

He asked the commander of the unit, “What outfit is this?” When told it was the 5th Ranger Battalion, he replied, “Well, God damn it then, Rangers, lead the way!” That elite unit now uses Cota’s “Rangers lead the way!” as its official motto, but Norman Cota led the way that day.

Wire fences obstructed the soldiers’ path up the cliffs off the beach. A soldier placed a Bangalore torpedo – a tube filled with high explosives – under one fence and blew it away. The first soldier through the breach was killed by sniper fire. The men following him froze.

Cota raced into the breach. He led the soldiers who’d survived the invasion through the gap in the fence and up a steep bluff to overtake a German gun embankment. At one point he got ahead of his men and stood waiting for them, twirling his .45 on his finger.

Opening the gap allowed men and equipment to move off the beach to safer places inland. Norman Cota earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his leadership that day. An effort is underway to upgrade his decoration to the Medal of Honor.

This story about New England heroes updated in 2022.

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Flashback Photo: The Great New England Victory Over the Fortress at Louisbourg

On June 28, 1745, the French military’s Fortress at Louisbourg fell to an audacious volunteer army of New England fishermen, farmers and tradesmen.

Siege of the Fortress at Louisbourg

The expedition ranked as New England’s greatest military victory until the American Revolution. Throughout the 13 colonies and Great Britain, people joyously celebrated news of the French surrender.

King George’s War

The outbreak of King George’s War in 1744 in North America gave New England colonists just the excuse they needed to organize an expedition to capture the French stronghold on Cape Breton Island.

New Englanders had deep suspicions about the Fortress at Louisbourg. French ships threatened their fishing fleet off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Those suspicions had been fueled by years of fighting the French and Indians in such conflicts as Father Rale’s War and King William’s War. Many New Englanders also held a prejudice against Catholics.

The French confirmed New England’s fears over their intentions in 1744. Then, a French fleet burned down a small British fort near Canso, a fishing port used by New England fisherman.

The French took prisoners in the Canso raid and brought them to the Fortress at Louisbourg. Some of the prisoners took careful note of the design and fortifications of the fort. They brought that information back to Boston when the French paroled them.

The Fortress at Louisbourg

Morale at the fort was low, and the soldiers mutinied in December 1744. Word of the unrest also reached Boston.

Province of Massachusetts Bay Gov. William Shirley took action. He persuaded the General Court to narrowly approve a military expedition to attack the fortress. Gov. Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire went along with the plan. The two governors solicited help from the other colonies, and won promises of 500 troops from Connecticut, a ship from Rhode Island, 10 cannons from New York and money from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The combined forces were under the command of William Pepperrell of Kittery in what is now Maine.

Edward Tyng was named commodore of the fleet, which included 13 armed vessels and about 90 transports

The expedition began to leave Boston in March 1745 with 4,200 soldiers and sailors. They were joined at Canso by a British Royal Navy fleet led by Commodore Peter Warren.

Joseph Emerson, Jr., was a naval chaplain for the expedition aboard the frigate Molineux. He was often seasick during the early going. “We live a rolling tumbling life,” he wrote in his diary.

47 Days of Bombardment

The New England colonial forces landed on May 11 and advanced toward the fortress without much opposition from the French and their Indian allies. The French soldiers were outnumbered, poorly trained and poorly provisioned. Their commander wouldn’t let them out of the fortress. For 47 days, the New Englanders and the Royal Navy bombarded the Fortress at Louisbourg.

Finally, on June 28, the French surrendered. The celebrations soon began throughout the colonies.

Emerson, the chaplain, had been aboard a ship when the French surrendered. Days after the siege was over, he visited the fortress. He described the ‘exceeding strong’ fortress walls, 30 feet high and 20 feet think. The wall and the houses inside were shattered. On Monday, July 8, he wrote in his diary,

I went to the Island Battery where are 30 ambizeers (embrasures) & almost as strong as nature & art can make it. It received great damage from the bums (bombs) & shot from the faction battery at the light house. I went on shore every day this week & viewed as much as I could, by the best account we can get we killed during the siege near 400 men, & multitudes of women & children died throe’ the inconvenience of their lodging being obliged to lie underground. The French say God almighty fought for us.

The fortress would become a bargaining chip in the peace negotiations between the French and the British. The British returned the fortress to the French over the fierce objections of the colonists.

Fortress Louisbourg today is a National Historic Site of Canada.