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Kittery

How Scottish POWS Were Sold as Slave Labor in New England

As many as 400 Scottish POWS captured in the Battles of Worcester and Dunbar were shipped to New England in the 1650s as temporary slaves to work in iron mills, saw mills and farms.

The Great Migration of Puritans had ended, and the colonists badly needed workers. Across the sea, Oliver Cromwell’s new government had the costly and vexing task of managing thousands of Scottish POWs. One solution: deport them to New England, Virginia and Barbados.

Some of the Scottish POWs sent to New England were sold as a group to work in the Saugus Iron Works or the saw mills of Berwick Maine. Others went to York as servants. Still others were sold individually.

The Puritan minister John Cotton defended the practice. He wrote, “The Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 yeares, as we do our owne [indentured servants] …”

As one historian noted drily, “Cotton’s sanction deadened the New England conscience.”

Cromwell Captures Scottish POWs

Cromwell and his Puritan followers executed King Charles I in January 1649. The Scottish people had largely sided with Cromwell, but they turned on Cromwell and declared Charles’ son king.

In the summer of 1650, Cromwell and his forces invaded Scotland. The Scottish Parliament, in response, conscripted thousands of young Scottish men between the ages of 19 and 25, though some were as young as 12. They clashed at the short, brutal Battle of Dunbar. Within an hour, 12,000 Parliamentarians defeated 11,000 Scots, killing as many as 2,000 while losing only 20 men.

scottish-pows-cromwell-dunbar-andrew-carrick-gow

Cromwell at Dunbar by Andrew Carrick Dow

Cromwell’s army released thousands of sick and wounded Scotts, but marched the Scottish POWs like cattle to Durham, 100 miles away. Many perished of hunger or disease on the march, though some escaped. Some were executed.

In Durham, the English imprisoned the Scottish POWs in the castle and cathedral. About 1600 died of dysentery, disease or starvation. The English had them buried in mass graves, only recently discovered.

The Unity

Two months after the battle, 150 Scottish POWs boarded the Unity and sailed to London, then to Charlestown, Mass. The shipmaster, Augustine Walker, paid five pounds for each man and sold them for 20 to 30 pounds.

Technically they signed contracts agreeing to ‘indentured servitude,’ but in reality most spoke Gaelic and many couldn’t read or write.

About 50 went to the Saugus Iron Works, the first successful iron works in the colonies. It produced much-needed iron bars for tools, building materials and cooking implements. The Scottish POWs worked 12-hour days at hard, dangerous labor. They worked as woodcutters to supply the wood to make charcoal, or as forge hands, as blacksmiths, as miners and farmhands.

Saugus Iron Works

Another 25 Scottish POWs were taken to the Newichwannock River, now the Salmon Falls River in Berwick, Maine. They went with an Englishman named Richard Leader, who got hold of an abandoned mill. Leader put the Scottish laborers to work sawing Maine white pine trees, needed for the British Navy.

Valentine Hill also bought some of the Scottish POWs from the Battle of Dunbar, and worked them in his sawmills at Durham Falls and the Lamprey River in New Hampshire.

Battle of Worcester

Exactly one year after the Battle of Dunbar, Cromwell’s much larger force defeated 16,000 mostly Scottish army at Worcester, England.

It was the last battle of the English Civil War. Three thousand men died in battle, and 10,000 taken prisoner.

The Battle of Worcester.

According to tradition, the English lined up the Scottish POWs in order to shoot every tenth man. A Highlander named Micum McIntyre saw his number would soon be up, broke rank and ran for his life. A horseman chased after him and wounded him, but spared his life.

The English then drove the Scottish POWs like cattle to London.

A witness described them.

…all of them [were] stript, many of them cutt, some without stockings or shoes and scarce so much left upon them as to cover their nakedness, eating peas and handfuls of straw in their hands which they had pulled upon the fields as they passed.

In London, the English confined them outdoors on artillery fields. Again, many died of disease, starvation and exposure while the government debated what to do with them.

John and Sara

About 275 Scottish POWs were sent to Boston about the John and Sara, where Thomas Kemble, a Charlestown merchant, took them on consignment.

Kemble found a ready market among planters and mill owners for the human cargo, as the news spread about the first shipment of Scottish POWs. So when the second shipment arrived, Kemble easily sold the Scottish POWs in the Massachusetts towns of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Dedham, Concord, Hingham, Ipswich, Reading and Salem.

Kemble sold others in Exeter, N.H., and in Durham, where he partnered with Valentine Hill. So many ended up in York, Maine, that for years the town had the nickname ‘Scotland.’

Servitude

Some of the Scottish POWs were sold individually as servants. Alexander Gordon, for example, ‘agreed’ to seven years of slavery under Samuel Stratton of Watertown. Under his contract, he could never leave his master’s premises without his permission and he couldn’t marry. He had to do everything Stratton told him to do, so long as it was legal.

Gordon complained to the court of ill-treatment and petitioned for his freedom, apparently without success. A sawmill owner in Exeter, N.H., named Nicholas Lissen bought him and six other Scottish POWs. His slavery did end, however, and he married the boss’s daughter, Mary Lissen. Alexander Gordon died in Exeter in 1697, and his children had many descendants.

Daniel Blacke, who came over on the John and Sara, probably got sold to the son of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, one of Charlestown’s most prominent citizens. In 1654, Blacke assaulted and beat up his master, and a court sent him to prison in 1654. Blacke apparently left prison, married and had children. New York Gov. Frank S. Black traced his ancestry to the Scottish POW.

Freedom for Scottish POWs

The Scottish POWs were all still of marriageable age when freed from bondage, and many did marry. Some married Irish housemaids, also brought to the colonies as slaves. Few ever returned home to Scotland.

The lucky ones married the bosses’ daughters, won land grants and appeared on tax rolls.

Seven of Valentine Hill’s Scottish POWs, for example, were listed as taxpayers in Dover, N.H., after their slavery ended.

David Hume, who came over on the John and Sara, settled in Dedham, Mass., where his name morphed into Holmes. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, was sixth in descent from him.

William Furbish (probably Farrabas, which became Forbes in Massachusetts) bought land in Kittery sometime before 1664, but was punished in 1681 for calling the King’s officials, ‘Divills and hell bound.’ Furbish apparently had not forgiven the English for the Battle of Dunbar. He had seven children and many descendants. Micum McIntyre, the Scottish POW who ran for his life, worked in Cocheco Mills and then got a land grant in Kittery, Maine.

2nd Class Citizens

The less lucky Scottish POWs drifted to Boston when their slavery ended, destitute and without jobs. Bostonians viewed them with scorn and classed them with African-Americans and Indians. On Jan. 6, 1657, several Scottish POWs formed the Scots’ Charitable Society for the relief of Scotsmen, the oldest charity in the Western Hemisphere.

By the 19th century, the Scots’ Charitable Society maintained the Scots Temporary Home in Boston and a burial plot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

Scots’ Charitable Society burial plot at Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Some of the Scottish POWs like David Hamilton survived Cromwell’s forces only to die at the hands of Indians. Hamilton came over on the John and Sara and got sold to a saw mill owner in Southern New Hampshire. Then he was moved to York, Maine, where he was killed on Sept. 28, 1691.

In 1656, Thomas Kemble spent two hours in the stocks for kissing his wife on Sunday. His daughter, Fanny Kemble Knight, took a famous horseback ride alone along the Boston Post Road.

End Notes

Note: We deliberately chose the words ‘slave,’ ‘slavery’ and ‘slave labor’ because we view any kind of forced labor as slavery. That includes sex trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, domestic servitude or unlawful recruitment. There are tens of millions of slaves in the world today. If you want to comment that it’s racist to call white indentured servants slaves, we suggest a better use of your time would be to help one of the many anti-slavery organizations in the world today. A list of them can be found here.

Descendants of the Scottish POWs from the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester have a web site. The Saugus Iron Works is now a national historic site.

Images: Saugus Iron Works By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16192079; Mt. Auburn burial plot, By Bill Ilott from Boston, USA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/bostonphotosphere/4185723469/ Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10902508. Battle of Worcester By Published by Machell Stace – http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/civilwar/g5/cs2/s5/, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1943037. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Courageous Heroes From New England

Not all courageous heroes receive their due on Veterans or any other day. So many sacrifices have gone unheralded, so many men and women who risked their lives for their country were all but forgotten.

For all of New England’s courageous heroes and veterans, we mention these six on Veterans Day. One comes from each state. If you know of another courageous hero who deserves accolades, please share it in the comments section.

Henry Mucci, Bridgeport, Conn.

Henry Mucci, one of many courageous heroes who rescued POWs.

One of the most courageous heroes of World War II, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci led a daring rescue mission in the South Pacific.

Stationed in New Guinea during World War II, he created a new Army Ranger unit, the 6^th Ranger Battalion.

In October 1944, the Japanese held more than 500 mostly American survivors of the Bataan Death March in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the 6th Army was marching 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.

Mucci received orders to save them.

On Jan. 28, 1945, Mucci led a march 30 miles through Japanese territory and rendezvoused with Filipino guerillas near the POW camp. A total of 378 rangers and guerillas faced 3,000 Japanese. Some of the guerillas didn’t even have weapons.

At dusk on January 30, the guerrillas set up ambushes along the highway. Mucci led the Rangers on a half-mile crawl across an open field to a ditch outside the POW camp. An Army Air Force fighter buzzed the Japanese to distract them.

The surprise attack lasted but half an hour. None of the Japanese troops or tanks got past the guerrillas along the highway. Many didn’t survive the strafing by the 547th Night Fighter Squadron. The Rangers liberated all but one of the 513 prisoners.

Cabanatuan POWs celebrate their liberation.

More than 500 Japanese troops were killed or wounded. Only two Rangers died and 21 Filipino guerillas suffered wounds.

Some prisoners, weakened from disease and starvation, couldn’t walk, so the Rangers carried them, sometimes two at a time.

More…

Henry Mucci came home to Bridgeport, welcomed as one of the war’s most courageous heroes. He received the Distinguished Service Cross.

A section of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown was named the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway. Additionally, a film, The Great Raid, was released in 2005.

To see a videos and photos of the liberation of Cabanatuan, click here, here and here.

Donald Skidgel, Bangor, Maine

Sgt. Donald Skidgel

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

He joined the Army in 1968 and soon rose to sergeant. On Sept. 14, 1969, his unit guarded a convoy near Song Be. The enemy began firing from hiding places in tall grass and bunkers.

Skidgel maneuvered off the road and started shooting, silencing one enemy position. Then he ran across 60 meters of bullet-raked ground and fired at other enemy positions.

Suddenly Skidgel saw the convoy’s command group coming under intense attack. He tried to draw the enemy’s attention by manning a machine gun while his driver steered through the hostile fire.

An exploding grenade knocked him onto the rear fender, but he staggered to his feet and continued firing. Finally, small arms fire killed him.

He saved the convoy command and inspired his fellow soldiers to defeat the enemy.

Donald Skidgel received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

On Oct. 15, 2011, the bridge on Route 2 over the Sebasticook River in Newport Maine was dedicated as ‘The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge.’

John Mihalowski, Worcester, Mass.

John Mihalowski

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

Mihalowski trained as a Navy diver and rose to chief torpedoman. As the U.S. entry into World War II loomed, he joined the crew of the U.S.S. Falcon.

On May 23, 1939, the Falcon raced from New London, Conn., to rescue the U.S.S. Squalus. The submarine sank during a test dive from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

Some of the men survived, but they probably wouldn’t last long because they had so little air. Besides, no one had ever survived a submarine sinking.

Once the Falcon reached the Squalus, Mihalowski and several other divers managed to make four dangerous, difficult trips to the sub in an experimental diving ball. At great risk, 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 of the dramatic story of the greatest submarine rescue ever here.

The Kittery Historical and Naval Museum in Kittery has an exhibit dedicated to the Squalus rescue.

Alexander Scammell, Durham, N.H.

Alexander Scammell

George Washington thought Alexander Scammell one of the funniest men in the Continental Army. Washington enjoyed the company of the tall, handsome and charming soldier.

Scammell was born in Mendon (now Milford), Mass., but spent most of his adult career in New Hampshire after graduating from Harvard. He studied law in Durham, N.H., with John Sullivan, who became a general and a governor.

Alexander Scammell saw action even before the Revolution began. He seized the British flag during a raid on Fort William and Mary in New Castle, N.H., in December 1774.

He joined the 2^nd New Hampshire Regiment during the Siege of Boston and eventually joined Washington’s Army. Scammell remained with Washington as the British chased the shrinking American army through New Jersey. On Christmas night 1776, Alexander Scammell crossed the Delaware in Washington’s boat before the morale-boosting victory of the Battle of Trenton.

A week later, he distinguished himself at the Battle of Princeton.

Alexander Scammell saw the American forces being badly beaten and, in a daring move, rode to the fore to lead a charge against the enemy. Washington rode up moments later. They rallied the troops, turning a defeat into victory and putting the British on the defensive.

Scammell didn’t survive the war. He died from his wounds during a skirmish before the Battle of Yorktown.

Alexander Scammell’s portrait hangs at the New Hampshire Statehouse, along with dozens of other portraits of military heroes. They belong to the Collections of the New Hampshire Statehouse & State Library. Scammell’s likeness may be viewed in the Visitor’s Center, Rooms 118 and 119. Fort Scammell in Casco Bay, Maine, and the Alexander Scammell Bridge over the Bellamy River near Durham were named after him.

Esek Hopkins, Scituate, R.I.

Esek Hopkins

Esek Hopkins, born in 1718 in Scituate, R.I., had sailed to nearly every part of the globe by the time the American Revolution broke out.

On Dec. 22, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed him to head America’s infant navy. He ignored his orders to head to the Chesapeake Bay, and took eight merchant ships outfitted for war to the Caribbean.

He defied orders because he risked annihilation of his small fleet in the Chesapeake. Hopkins decided instead to divert the British Navy from the American coast and capture a prize.

On March 3, 1776 Esek Hopkins 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 received praise by some, condemnation by others for the bold stroke.

Esek Hopkins got no medals during the war. He had a hot temper and criticized Congress, which did not view him as one of the war’s courageous heroes. Finally, Congress relieved him of his command in July 1778.

Esek Hopkins’ home in Providence is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Willie Johnston, Derby, Vt.

Willie Johnston

Willie Johnston of Salem (now Derby), Vt., received the Medal of Honor as the youngest and one of the most courageous heroes of the Civil War.

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

During the Seven Days Battles near Richmond, Va., the Confederate Army drove the Union Army down the Virginia peninsula. Many 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.

As 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 receive 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.

Willie Johnston mustered out of the army on Dec. 30, 1864, the second-ever recipient of the Medal of Honor.

You can see Willie Johnston’s drumsticks and a photograph of him at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. A statue of him stands in Santa Clarita, Calif., and a book, Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer, came out in 1995.

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Puritans Name, Shame and Take Over Anglican Maine

In 1652, Massachusetts Puritans decided to bring the English Civil War to North America by taking over Anglican Maine.

The year before, Puritans in England had won the final battle of the English Civil War. They had abolished the bishops, beheaded Charles I, exiled Charles II and put Parliament in control of the government. They also did away with High Anglican practices that smacked of Roman Catholicism.

The Massachusetts Puritans, emboldened by their success in England, sent negotiators to the scattered settlements along Maine’s west coast. One by one, the Maine communities agreed to the Puritan ‘suggestion’ that they join the Bay Colony. The Massachusetts militia may have helped them make up their minds.

The Puritans then gave new names to some of the Anglican Maine communities – names some of the Mainers didn’t like one bit.

Early map of eastern New Hampshire and the western Maine coast.

East vs. West

Take a look at the place names along the southern Maine coast: Kittery, Wells, Biddeford, Dartmouth and Falmouth. They mirror place names in Southwest England, known as the West Country.

Map of the West Country

Historians compare the region to the American South. In the 17^th century, it had large plantations and a rural population. Its people were more likely to support the Anglican Church than were the Puritans in eastern England.

Now take a look at Massachusetts place names: Boston, Lynn, Ipswich, Yarmouth, Cambridge, Essex. They come from eastern England, or East Anglia.

East Anglia gave names to 63 percent of Massachusetts towns founded before 1660. Most of those had names from towns within 60 miles of Haverhill in the East Anglian county of Suffolk.

That’s because the Puritan elite of Massachusetts came from East Anglia.

Unlike the West Country, East Anglia in the early 17^th century was urban, entrepreneurial and a hotbed of Puritan opposition to the monarchy and its High Anglican practices.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, born around 1565, came from an Anglican family that claimed royal descent. A military man loyal to King James I, for a time he served as governor of Plymouth in the West Country.

Gorges decided to colonize the New World after receiving three captured North American Indians from an English ship captain.

King James I

In 1607 Gorges helped finance the failed Popham Colony in present-day Phippsburg, Maine. The Popham settlers brought with them an Anglican priest, Richard Seymour, brother to Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour. Richard Seymour conducted the first Anglican service in America.

In 1620, King James I granted Gorges a patent for ‘planting, ruling, ordering and governing’ the territory between Virginia and New France.

Gorges, as head of the Council for New England, gave himself and his partner John Mason a grant for all lands between the Merrimac and Kennebec rivers.

Mason took New Hampshire, and Gorges took the territory north of the Piscataqua River. He called it New Somersetshire after his own home in England.

Anglican Maine

While Gorges was off fighting the French in 1627, the Massachusetts Bay Company got a royal charter for Massachusetts. Gorges thought Massachusetts belonged to him.

To add insult to injury, the Massachusetts Puritans believed in self-rule. Gorges wanted his territory run by Anglican feudal lords and their deputies.

Gorges tried maneuvering in Parliament to get Massachusetts back. His efforts sparked antagonism between the Anglican, Royalist Gorges and the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, a trickle of Anglicans from the West Country came to fish, farm and trade along the southern Maine coast in places they called Black Point, Blue Point, Stratton’s Island, Spurwink and Casco.

Gorges tried to establish another colony between the Saco and Kennebec Rivers, which he called the province of Lygonia after his mother, Cecily Lygon. Another settlement took Gorges’ own name — Gorgeana.

The settlers in Anglican Maine and Lygonia squabbled over who owned what land. Their disunity didn’t help them when the Massachusetts Puritans came calling.

What’s In A Name?

Since the arrival of the Winthrop fleet in 1630, Massachusetts had steadily grown in size and in wealth. With an organized government, its citizens had the rights of trial by jury and the freehold tenure of land. Freemen elected councils to write bylaws and deputies to attend the General Court, observed historian Hannah Farber.

By 1650, Massachusetts’ rapidly growing population reached 14,000. In contrast, only about a thousand English colonists lived in Maine, and most of them barely scratched out a living.

John Endecott

Massachusetts Gov. John Endecott sent commissioners to their eastern neighbor, where they went from town to town. They suggested to the people of Maine and Lygonia they might have more legal rights and more prosperity if they joined Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans also may have mentioned the size of their militia.

Town by town the Maine settlements voted to join Massachusetts. In 1652, Kittery came to Massachusetts, and the next year Wells, Cape Porpoise and Saco followed. Lygonia caved in 1658 and the Puritans changed its name to Maine.

Names carried great importance to the early New England Puritans. And so when Gorgeana agreed to join Massachusetts, the Puritans renamed it York. Gorges had died by then, but the Puritans undoubtedly didn’t want to honor the Royalist who tried to take away their charter. The name York carried a special sting as it was shared by the Royalist city that fell to Parliament during the just-ended English Civil War.

New Overlords in Anglican Maine

The Massachusetts Puritans also renamed two towns after the last Royalist strongholds to fall to the Puritans in England.

Black Point, Blue Point and Stratton’s Island became Scarborough, which in England had surrendered only a month before the execution of Charles I.

Maine coast in 1623-4

Spurwink and the Casco Bay settlements would be called Falmouth, later renamed Portland. Queen Henrietta and the Prince of Wales (the future Charles II) found safety in Pendennis Castle in Falmouth for five months before it surrendered to the Puritans.

“The Puritans of Massachusetts imposed the names Falmouth and Scarborough in conquest, a reminder to the population of their fate and of their new overlords,” wrote historian Emerson W. Baker in an essay, Formerly Machegonne, Dartmouth, York, Stogummor, Casco and Falmouth: Portland as a Contested Frontier in the Seventeenth Century.

After the monarchy was restored in England, a royal commission came to Maine in 1665 and put the province under royal authority. But it took only three years for the Massachusetts Puritans to retake control of Anglican Maine.

Not until March 15, 1820 would Maine separate from Massachusetts as a result of the Missouri Compromise.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: West Country England, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2530598.

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Six Loyalist Houses

A Loyalist House was likely to be seized and sold when the American Revolution broke out. Many colonies passed laws that let them confiscate the property of known Loyalists, criminalizing dissent against the war and raising revenue for the war effort.

Many Loyalists fled to Canada or England. The British government compensated some for their loss, but tried to pressure the United States into giving restitution. Under the Jay Treaty of 1794, the U.S. agreed to ‘advise’ the states to return Loyalist property. Some families are still trying to get their property back.

Connecticut took a more lenient approach than the other New England states in confiscating Loyalist houses. It waited until four other states had passed confiscation laws. Local officials also dragged their feet in identifying Loyalist properties.

Vermont, on the other hand, eagerly seized Loyalist property in order to pay for the Green Mountain Boys.

Here, then, are stories of six Loyalist houses and their fate during the American Revolution.

Henry Whitfield House

A Loyalist house in Connecticut, owned by Joseph Pynchon on the eve of the Revolution.

When Joseph Pynchon purchased the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford, Conn., he was supposedly seeking a relaxing summer retreat. His timing was not good.

The Whitfield House, built in 1639, has the distinction of being the oldest house still standing in Connecticut.

The structure was built by Henry Whitfield, one of Guilford’s founders, before there was even a town in Guilford. Its stone walls helped it serve as a garrison for townspeople. It would later become an investment property for a wealthy English landlord who rented it to tenant farmers. Pynchon bought the house in November of 1772.

Originally from Springfield, Mass., Pynchon inherited substantial wealth. He had Loyalist political sympathies. He also joined the Sandimonians in New Haven, an obscure religious group that originated in Scotland. Not only was he a Loyalist, the Sandimonians were pacifists, giving Pynchon’s Patriot-leaning neighbors two reasons to be suspicious of him.

Fearing persecution, Pynchon sold the Guilford house just a week before the Declaration of Independence was signed, and he spent much of the war in exile under British protection. He returned to Connecticut when the danger cleared and Loyalists were allowed to reestablish ties to their homeland. Among Pynchon’s descendants was Thomas Pynchon, one-time president of Trinity College, and novelist Thomas Pynchon.

As for his summer house, today it has left the family that bought it from Pynchon and is now a museum.

248 Old Whitfield St, Guilford, CT 06437

William Pepperrell House

The William Pepperrell House, Maine’s most prominent Loyalist house.

William Pepperrell led the Siege of Louisbourg during King George’s War in 1745, but his house in Kittery, Maine, predates that heroic maneuver by 63 years.

Pepperrell was the son of William Pepperrell, a fisherman who had lived and prospered on the Isles of Shoals before moving to the mainland in 1680. The senior Pepperrell married the daughter of John Bray, a wealthy shipwright, and went into business with his father-in-law. Soon Pepperrell was one of the richest men in New England and owned most of Kittery Point.

The junior William Pepperrell was born in the house in 1696. He joined his father in business and continued the family’s rise by marrying the granddaughter of Samuel Sewall, one of the Salem witch trials judges.

Pepperrell joined the Massachusetts militia and rose to colonel. It was he who assembled volunteer soldiers for capturing the Fortress at Louisbourg, trained them and financed the expedition. After the fortress fell, King George II awarded him a baronetcy.

Pepperrell served as acting governor of Massachusetts in 1757 and died two years later. His grandson, born William Pepperrell Sparhawk, inherited the house after agreeing to change his name to William Pepperrell. The third William Pepperrell remained loyal to the English king on the eve of the American Revolution. He fled to England with his wife, who died of smallpox on the way in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Pepperrell died in London.

Massachusetts deemed the house Loyalist property and put it up for auction. In 1790 the house was purchased by Col. Samuel Smallcorn, and Daniel Frisbee bought some of the property. In 1973 the Pepperrell House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is privately owned.

94 Pepperrell Rd. (Rte. 103), Kittery, Maine

Isaac Royall House

Isaac Royall House.

The Isaac Royall House in Medford, Mass., is one of the few houses in New England that still has slave quarters. The Royalls had the largest number of enslaved people in New England during the 18^th century.

Inside the house is a tea box, said to be among the batch thrown into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.

Puritan leader John Winthrop built the first house on the property along the Mystic River in 1637. It became Charlestown and later Medford. A second house on the property was purchased with 504 acres in 1732 by Isaac Royall, a rum distiller and slave trader from Antigua. He brought 27 slaves with him to Massachusetts. Royall enlarged and remodeled the house between 1733 and 1737, then died in 1739.

Isaac Royall, Jr., inherited the house on his father’s death. He and his family were Loyalists who boarded a ship in Boston as British soldiers marched to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. They sailed to Nova Scotia and then to England, never returning.

Gen. John Stark then made the house his headquarters. His wife Molly supposedly watched British troop movements from the roof, and George Washington interrogated British soldiers inside.

In 1806, the estate was returned to Isaac Royall’s heirs. They then sold it and gave part of the proceeds to Harvard, which used it to found Harvard Law School. The Daughters of the American Revolution bought the house in 1908 and turned it into a Loyalist house museum.

The Isaac Royall House opens for tours on summer weekends.

In Stratford, Conn., the Judson House, home to the local historical society, also has former slave quarters. They’re in the basement and part of tours through the home.

15 George St., Medford, Mass.

Mark Wentworth House

The Mark Wentworth House.

Henry Appleton, a merchant, built the Mark Wentworth House in Portsmouth, N.H., in 1763. He sold it the next year to Mark Hunking Wentworth, brother of Royal Gov. Benning Wentworth.

Mark Wentworth’s son John was born in 1737 and attended Harvard with John Adams, with whom he formed a close friendship. John Wentworth II, however, remained loyal to the king.

In 1763, John Wentworth went to London on family business. Uncle Benning had been busy selling land grants in Vermont, but the Lords of Trade awarded the province to New York. They were on the verge of recalling Benning Wentworth when John II intervened, so they gave him the governorship.

John Wentworth returned to New Hampshire amidst pomp and ceremony in 1767. Then he moved into his father’s house, where he complained about its small rooms.

Wentworth served as a popular and able governor until resistance hardened to King George III. When a mob pointed a cannon at his front door in June 1775, John Wentworth and his family fled to the safety of Fort William and Mary. He sailed to Boston about a month later and sent his family on to England. On Evacuation Day he left for Halifax.

The New Hampshire government seized the Loyalist house, but saved the furniture and portraits for the family. In 1797 the house was sold, but 13 years later Ebenezer Wentworth bought it back. In 1911 Dr. Charles Wentworth and his sister Susan converted the house into a nursing home. It now houses Wentworth Senior Living.

346 Pleasant St., Portsmouth, N.H.

Lucas-Johnston House

The Lucas-Johnston Loyalist house.

Tucked among Newport, R.I.’s many historic homes is the Lucas-Johnston house. Augustus Lucas originally owned it. He arrived in Newport from France around 1700 and grew wealthy trading in slaves. Lucas’ grandson Augustus Johnston gave the house greater renown when he lived in it. Johnston , a British official, accepted a position as Newport’s stamp agent – in charge of administering the Stamp Act.

As in Massachusetts, Rhode Island agitators protested vehemently against the Stamp Act. Johnston was hanged in effigy, and a mob drove him from his home into hiding until he agreed not to serve as stamp agent. In July of 1776 Johnston again ran into difficulty when he refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary cause. For that, he was imprisoned for a time.

When the British held Newport during the early days of the war, Johnston served in various capacities in the city. When the British left, Johnston left with them. His house was confiscated. He spent a good part of his life arguing for compensation for his losses due to both the Stamp Act riot and the American Revolution.

Today the Lucas-Johnston House is privately owned.

40 Division St., Newport, R.I.

Marsh Tavern

The Equinox Hotel.

In July 1777 Vermont’s Col. William Marsh made a difficult decision. When the American Revolution broke out, Marsh had joined forces with the Green Mountain Boys. But he decided to switch sides and support the Loyalist cause.

Marsh came to Vermont from Connecticut via New York and settled in Manchester around 1765.

When war broke out he joined the Green Mountain Boys with the rank of colonel. But by 1777 he had grown uneasy by the way the Patriots harassed Loyalist Vermonters, and that prompted him to join forces with British General John Burgoyne.

Following Burgoyne’s defeat in Saratoga, the American military let Marsh return to visit family in Dorset, Vt. before his exile to Canada. During the war he acted as a diplomatic adviser and spy handler for the British. He actively lobbied to have Vermont switch sides and join with Britain.

The Vermont government confiscated and sold Marsh’s Manchester property. Marsh always retained hope that he could recover some of his property, but it did not happen. His name lives on, however, at the Equinox Golf Resort and Spa in Manchester where visitors can dine in the historic Marsh Tavern.

3567 Main St, Manchester, Vt.

Images: Lucas Johnston House By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434670; Equinox Hotel By Rolf Müller (User:Rolfmueller) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1352242. This story was updated in 2022.

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USS Squalus Rescue: World Awaits News of Sailors’ Fate

In 1939, the greatest submarine rescue in history was undertaken off the coast of Portsmouth, N.H. This is the second part of a two-part series about the heroic efforts to rescue the trapped crew of the USS Squalus as millions around the world followed their race against time. View part one here.

The rescue chamber. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The rescue chamber that would be used to save Squalus survivors. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

On May 24, 1939, 33 men had only hours to live aboard the downed submarine USS Squalus. The sub had sunk under the waters off the New Hampshire and Maine coast during a test run.

But in 21 years, 825 men had died in submarine accidents. Rescuers had never succeeded in saving any of them.

So when a team of rescuers rushed to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, radio broadcasts closely followed their progress. People around the world listened anxiously.

‘Somebody is Alive’

When Dorothy Emery arrived home from school, she found her mother and grandfather listening to news of the Squalus on the radio. Undoubtedly they listened to the Boston station WBZ, which boasts to this day it was the first on the scene.

“Somebody is alive down there,” Dorothy’s mother shouted.

She then told her daughter that the trapped men were hammering messages in Morse code on the side of the Squalus. The rescuers had difficulty making out the message from the faint sounds. And they didn’t know how many men were alive, or who they were.

The Diving Bell

The family grabbed sandwiches and sat around the radio as the news about the Squalus rescue preempted all other programs.

They could hear the airplanes overhead flying in from Washington, and they heard about the divers racing up the coast. Then they followed the agonizingly slow progress of the Falcon as it cruised down the Thames River in Connecticut, past Block Island, up Buzzard’s Bay, through the Cape Cod Canal and up the Massachusetts coast.

“Nobody at our house thought of going to bed,” Emery later wrote. “We were too busy listening to the radio, hoping and praying.”

The Squalus Rescue Begins

At the crack of dawn, the Falcon arrived with the rescue bell lashed to her fantail. Foggy weather delayed the former minesweeper, and heavy seas made it hard to position her over the submarine. Not until 9:45 a.m. was the rescue ship pointed into the wind and stationary. Perversely, the weather started to clear just when the Falcon moored properly. The sun came out, the wind died and the seas abated.

The rescuers took it as a good omen.

At 10:15 a.m., Boatswain’s Mate Martin Sibitsky donned 200 pounds of diving gear, including 40 pounds of ballast around his waist. Air hoses and a telephone line were connected to his metal helmet. He would spend minutes, not hours, underwater, because the pressure of the ocean would force nitrogen into his bloodstream. And that could cause all kinds of strange behavior: blindness, symptoms of drunkenness, euphoria, unconsciousness.

A diver suits up on the deck of the USS Falcon. Photo courtesy US Navy.

Sibitsky was to attach a half-inch steel wire to the escape hatch of the Squalus. The diving bell would travel down that cable to the wreck. No one was sure, though, where the submarine actually was because the line to the rescue buoy had snapped.

The day before, an old harbor tug, the Penacook, cruised back and forth for hours over the spot where the buoy was found, trying to snag the Squalus with a grapnel. Finally, the Penacook caught onto something. No one was sure if it was actually attached to the wreck, or to a boulder, or to something else.

An Inside Straight

It was extremely unlikely that the grapnel was exactly where it needed to be – by the escape hatch of the Squalus. Lt. Cdr. Charles Momsen, who directed the rescue effort, said the odds of the grapnel being attached to the Squalus were poor. The odds of it being near the escape hatch were worse – like drawing to an inside straight.

Momsen (against the rail) watches two divers suiting up aboard the USS Falcon.

Sibitsky climbed onto a small wooden diving platform that lowered him into the Atlantic, guiding himself down by the cable from the Penacook. Every move required tremendous exertion. Dr. Charles Wesley Shilling, senior medical officer for the rescue operation, stood on the Falcon’s deck and held his breath as Sibitsky descended. He knew what Sibitsky would go through. He’d be weak and awkward and his mind would function slowly.

“No one who has not been in a diving suit at sea … has any idea how hard it is to do the simplest task,” Shilling later wrote.

A diver from the Falcon prepares to enter the water to help guide the rescue chamber (right) to the USS Squalus. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

A diver from the Falcon prepares to enter the water to help guide the rescue pod (right) to the USS Squalus. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Sibitsky landed on the deck of the Squalus. “You’re not going to believe this,” he told the crew topside through the phone line. The grapnel hook had caught a railing three to four feet from the escape hatch.

Momsen believed him. They’d drawn to an inside straight.

Lead Boots

Sibitsky spotted the broken cable from the rescue buoy and moved it so it wouldn’t interfere with the diving bell. Then he stomped on the hatch to let the crew know of his presence. The elated submariners banged on the side of the boat in response. They’d heard his lead boots on the hull – and his communication with the Falcon. Every other word was a cuss word, remembered one of the survivors.

Sibitsky waited for the downhaul cable to come down from the diving bell fastened to the Falcon’s deck. He reached for the shackle at the end of the cable with his heavy glove and missed it.

“Jesus Christ!” he said. Momsen calmed him over the telephone. The cable came down again. Sibitsky then managed to attach it to a ring in the middle of the escape hatch.

It took him 22 minutes to perform that simple task. It took 40 minutes to return him gradually to the surface, where Dr. Shilling accompanied him to the recompression chamber. “He felt fine, exhilarated by the knowledge that he had accomplished one of the really remarkable diving feats of all time,” Shilling said.

Pea Soup

The rescuers had picked up some of the Morse code messages hammered on the side of the Squalus. They knew 33 men were alive in the forward compartments. Momsen planned to bring them up in four trips of seven, eight, nine and nine. He hoped the diving bell could hold nine. Otherwise, they’d have to make a fifth trip, and every additional trip increased the odds of a change in the weather or a fatal breakdown.

Cutaway of the rescue chamber used to save Squalus survivors.

The diving bell stood 10 feet high and seven feet wide. It had an upper chamber and a lower chamber, which could be attached with a rubber seal to the hatch of the sub. A ballast tank outside the lower chamber controlled its buoyancy. The rescuers aboard the Falcon could listen to what went on inside the bell by telephone.

Torpedoman’s Mate John Mihalowski and Gunner’s Mate Walter Harman were loaded into the upper chamber with extra blankets, flashlights, a milk can full of hot pea soup, sandwiches and soda lime powder.

At 11:30 a.m., men lowered the diving bell into the depths, slowly to make sure the cable wound correctly on the winch.

Where Are the Napkins?

About a half hour later the divers saw the gray shape of the Squalus. Mihalowski maneuvered the rescue chamber over the escape hatch, and the tremendous pressure of the sea formed a watertight seal. They bolted the diving bell to the hatch during a moment of great danger. If the two men became incapacitated from the ocean’s pressure before opening the hatch, they would be entombed in the diving bell.

Mihalowski opened the hatch.

“The dull thud of the hatch falling open was a thrill I cannot describe,” Momsen recollected. “Not a shout or cheer came over the phone.”

Instead, the first words that greeted the rescuers as they handed down the can of hot soup: “Where in the hell are the napkins?” Then, “Why the delay?”

The first seven survivors clilmbed into the bell. Lt. Oliver Naquin, the Squalus’ commanding officer, had chosen the men who seemed the weakest. The hatch was unbolted, the lower compartment flooded, and the ballast tank blown.

Watching and Cheering

On the farm in Greenland, Emery and her family had studied diagrams of the diving bell in the newspapers. They followed the rescue in their imaginations as they listened to the radio.

“At around 2:00 pm, an excited announcer told us the first seven men were climbing out of the diving bell and boarding the Falcon,” she wrote. “Newsreel cameras were grinding, on-the-spot broadcasts were taking place, and sailors were lined up at ships’ rails, watching and cheering.”

“The survivors have brought a list with them which contains the names of the rest of the crew known to be alive, and which we will broadcast as soon as possible,” said the announcer. “There are 33 known survivors, according to the Navy Department, and little hope is held for the survival of the 26 others from whom no sign of life has ever been heard.”

Still the Emerys had no word of their tenant, Harold Preble, the naval architect aboard te sub.

Disobeying Orders

William Badders

For the diving bell’s second trip, Momsen ordered eight survivors taken up. But Chief Machinist’s Mate William Badders had another idea. He knew how quickly the weather could change on the New England coast, and he knew the danger of a bulkhead giving way and drowning the survivors.

“I got to thinking that I had operated this chamber probably more than anyone else in the Navy, and I knew it could handle more than seven passengers and two operators,” he said. “I decided I was going to bring more men up.”

Only later would they learn what a fortuitous decision he made.

The rescue chamber came up a second time at 4:11 p.m. It looked so heavy to Momsen that he decided it was too risky to bring up nine. That meant five trips, instead of four.

Nine survivors, however, emerged from the bell. The two operators pretended surprise and then concern. They didn’t fool Momsen. He told Badders, “You brought out too many men on this trip, but do it again.”

Sailors haul the rescue chamber aboard the Falcon after its final trip to the sub. Photo: USN" width="300" height="247" /> Sailors haul the rescue chamber aboard the Falcon after its final trip to the sub. Photo courtesy U.S. Navy.

Sailors haul the rescue chamber aboard the Falcon after its final trip to the Squalus. Photo courtesy U.S. Navy.

Both Kinds of Tears

The third trip went off without a hitch. Nine men staggered out of the bell at 6:27 p.m. Like the others, they got blankets, hot towels and coffee, then went ashore to the hospital. Lt. Nichols helped Admiral Cole prepare a list of the Squalus survivors. Radio announcers broadcast the names to the public. Upon learning the news, the wives broke into tears of joy – or anguish.

Dorothy Emery remembers hearing Harold Preble’s name on the list. Elated, she and her family hugged each other and yelled, “He made it!”

“Our mood quickly changed from elation to sadness when two of our schoolmates’ fathers were named among the presumed dead,” she wrote.

In nearby Dover, reporters tracked down Sherman Shirley’s fiancée, a 20-year-old mill girl named Ruth DeSautel. Newspapers dubbed her the “bride of death.”

“Her eyes are red-rimmed from constant weeping,” reported the Hearst news service. “You can’t blame Lloyd Maness,” she said, referring to the sailor who had closed the compartment that trapped his friend Shirley. “Lloyd did the right thing.”

Ruth’s seven brothers and sisters tried to comfort her as she clung to the hope that Shirley would somehow be alive.

Foul

The fourth, and riskiest, rescue began at 6:41 that evening. The diving bell made the trip to the Squalus and the divers loaded the last eight men, including Naquin, into it.

At 8:14, the diving bell started to creep upward. But at 160 feet, it suddenly stopped.

“Something’s wrong,” said the operator, Chief Metalsmith James McDonald. The steel wire jammed on the reel. Momsen stayed calm–they’d anticipated that emergency.

They would heave on the wire to help clear it. But that didn’t work. As the men hauled on the wire, the strands started to part – “like firecrackers,” recalled Momsen.

They gently lowered the diving bell to the bottom. A diver, Chief Torpedoman Walter Squire, went down to free the troublesome downhaul wire, a difficult and dangerous maneuver. The wire was too taut to unshackle, so Squire cut it. The freed diving bell bounced off the Squalus.

Torpedoman’s Mate Jesse Duncan went down to try again. His diving suit caught on the frayed wire and he struggled to free himself, landing on the diving bell and entangling himself in the wires attached to it. He nearly fell off the bell, which would have killed him. Practically incoherent, Duncan was hoisted up and Metalsmith Edward Clayton sent down. Clayton got fouled as well.

‘Make Mine a Blonde’

“We found ourselves in a serious situation with a diver fouled in the wire, the most dangerous kind of fouling in the diving business,” recalled Momsen. “We finally managed to get Clayton up.”

Inside the crowded bell the two operators, Mihalowski and McDonald, acted unconcerned. They chatted, joked about juicy steaks and commented cheerfully that they’d rather be in the warmth and light of the bell than making the dive to rescue them. Mihalowski passed around some chocolate bars.

Radios broadcast the communication between the men inside the diving bell and the Falcon. On the farm in Greenland, Dorothy Emery heard the radio report their words – possibly their last.

“Say, Mac, tell them to send us down a quart and we don’t care whether it’s a quart of soup, ice cream, coffee or whisky!” said one. “Make mine a blonde!” said another.

Plan B

Momsen decided it was too difficult to attach a new wire to the rescue chamber. He figured with only eight passengers, they could be bring it up by hand. The Falcon crew would gently haul the rescue chamber up with the frayed wire as McDonald controlled the ballast so it would have just enough buoyancy to rise slowly.

Momsen told McDonald to blow the ballast tank for three seconds every time he gave the word. On the Falcon’s deck, six men hauled on the wire to lift the 21,600-pound diving bell. They hoped the strand would hold.

On the Falcon the men took a cautious hold on the half-broken wire, recalled Dr. Shilling. They pulled gently, then they pulled again. It was too heavy. McDonald blew the water out of the ballast tanks for 15 seconds. The six men on deck pulled cautiously on the frayed wire. Still too heavy. Another order came down to blow the ballast tanks for another 15 seconds.

“By this time all hands on the Falcon were quiet — not a sound as the 15 second blow was repeated,” wrote Shilling. “The order came again: “Give it another try, boys. Easy now. Take a strain on that cable and see if you can lift the bell.”

Surfacing

This time, it worked. The men pulled lightly again, hardly believing the rescue chamber was moving. Slowly they heaved on the nearly broken wire. Soon the frayed part of the cable was on deck. All they had to do then was pull hand-over-hand on the undamaged section of wire. Inside the bell, the nine men cheerfully read off the depth gauge.

After 4-1/2 trying hours, the diving bell made it to the surface. With the final eight rescued, all 33 Squalus survivors reached safety.

Millions of listeners rejoiced. Then they turned off their radios and went to bed.

USS Squalus survivors aboard the USS Falcon. Photo: U.S. Navy.

What About the Others?

But the Squalus rescue wasn’t over yet. A last effort had to be made to find out if anyone else was alive in the wreck of the Squalus. Unlikely, but possible. The submariners just might have managed to close the door to the torpedo room to hold back the flood in the engine rooms.

Finding out would be the most perilous operation yet.

The next day, Lt. J.K. Morrison made the long hard dive back to the Squalus, where he tried to move the downhaul cable from the forward hatch to the after hatch. The pressure almost got to him and he was hoisted back up.

Another diver went down and attached the haul down wire to the aft hatch. He too lost the wire once before he made it fast.

Black Water

Badders and Mihalowski climbed into the diving bell again, aware of the danger they faced. They would have to equalize the pressure in the lower compartment with the pressure of the sea in order to open the Squalus’ hatch without getting flooded.

John Mihalowski

The diving bell lowered into place over the hatch and Badders climbed down into the lower compartment. He attached the chamber to the wreck with four bolts. Then he cracked open the Squalus’ hatch. Air rushed into the bell and a torrent of water spurted into the lower chamber, rising to Badders’ waist. Above him, Mihalowski quickly blasted compressed air into the lower chamber, forcing the sea back into the submarine.

Orders came from topside to look inside the Squalus. Badders then opened the hatch and looked down. He saw nothing but black water – the torpedo room had completely flooded. No one could be alive in there.

The Squalus Rescue Ends

Badders and Mihalowski had a hard time unbolting the diving bell from the Squalus, and they were getting groggy. Both men were tired and carbon dioxide was building up, so they quickly released oxygen into the chamber. They realized if they didn’t work fast there would be 28 men left down there instead of 26.

It took an almost superhuman effort to finish the task of removing the four bolts from the Squalus, but finally they closed the hatch from the upper chamber of the bell to the lower chamber, sighing with relief.

Sadly and slowly, the diving bell returned to the Falcon. The epic rescue of the Squalus crew had ended.

A day or two later, Preble’s convertible zipped down the lane to Dorothy Emery’s family farm. Preble waved nonchalantly and drove down to his cottage on the bay.

“Later, we asked him about the experience,” she wrote. “He wouldn’t say much.”

Newspapers had reported his hair had turned white overnight. That wasn’t true – he looked the same as ever. Several weeks later he started making test dives on another submarine from the Navy yard. Every survivor of the Squalus asked to for reassignment to submarines.

What Happened Next

On July 30, 1939, the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler performed a memorial concert for the Squalus victims at Little Boar’s Head in North Hampton, N.H. It was broadcast nationally.

The Navy wanted to find out what happened to the Squalus and began a salvage operation immediately. But salvagers couldn’t raise the sub until September 13 that year. They found only 25 bodies inside the vessel. One seaman had apparently gotten out of the hatch. They never found his body.

The Navy cleaned out the Squalus, repaired and recommissioned as the Sailfish in February 1940 She sank seven ships during World War II. Her conning tower now serves as a memorial to those who died at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Conning tower of SS-192 on display at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, during a 2013 visit by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Divers William Badders, James McDonald and John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor.

Lloyd Maness was lost at sea during combat patrol on a submarine in 1944.

Lawrence Gainor died in 1989 at the age of 89.

Medal of Honor recipients, honored for their courage in rescuing the Squalus survivors.

Medal of Honor recipients, honored for their courage during the Squalus rescue.

Ruth Desautel married twice, both times to submariners, and died of a brain tumor in 1965.

Charles Wesley Shilling went on to have an illustrious medical career, retiring from the Navy in 1955 and starting what is now The Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society Charles W. Shilling Library at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

‘Shipmate’

Charles Momsen received many decorations during World War II. He was also the driving force behind the design of the Albacore nuclear submarine, now a museum in Portsmouth. Momsen retired in 1955 and died of cancer in 1967.

Oliver Naquin saw action in World War II, played a role in the sinking of the USS Indiana and rose to the rank of rear admiral. He died in 1989. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. On his tombstone he is identified as ‘O. F. Naquin, CO, USS Squalus 1939’ under an inscription about the Squalus rescue.

My Officers And Men Acted Instinctively And Calmly. There Were No Expressions Of Fear And No Complaints Of The Bitter Cold. Never In My Remaining Life Do I Expect To Witness So True An Exemplification Of Comradeship And Brotherly Love. No Fuller Meaning Could Possibly Be Given The Word ‘Shipmate’ Than Was Reflected By Their Acts.

The USS Squalus resurfaces after being pulled from the bottom of the ocean. Photo Courtesy Boston Public LIbrary Leslie Jones Collection.

This story about the Squalus rescue was updated in 2022.

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The Great Throat Distemper of 1735

In 1735, a young child in Kingston, N.H., came down with a cold and all of New England got sick. The Great Throat Distemper of 1735 to 1740 was one of the greatest epidemics ever to terrify New England.

Satirical painting by James Gillray mocking quack medicine.

The disease, which 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.

The Throat Distemper

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 “Throat Distemper” of 1735-1740.

Most of the old towns between Casco Bay and Boston were connected by a road which ran roughly parallel to the coast and far enough inland to avoid the many small inlets, marsh lands, and sandy dunes. A few weeks after the Kingston outbreak the disease invaded Kittery and Hampton Falls, two important trading centers along this road. From Kittery the infection was carried northward into Maine and from Hampton Falls southward across disputed territory into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Amesbury and Salisbury were soon involved, and by September the epidemic had crossed the Merrimac River and like an invading army concentrated its forces at Newbury before it started down the old Bay Path towards Boston.

The throat distemper – which mostly affected children and killed often within three days – sparked fear as it spread.

In Ipswich, all eight children in the household of Mark and Hephzibah How died during the month of November 1735. A neighbor family also reported losing all eight children. As many as four children were buried in a single grave, a fact that was noted in newspapers as far away as New York.

Early Baptism

Church records showed parents pressed ministers into performing many early baptisms. They did it “By Reason of Dangerous Sickness” to stay ahead of the undertakers.

Rowley, Mass., would lose one-eighth of its population to the throat distemper. Nearby Byfield would lose one-seventh.

In Newbury, Dr. John Fitch actively tried to stop the disease. He contracted it and died. The march of the throat distemper continued through Beverly, Marblehead, Lynn and into Boston as doctors and towns searched for cures.

They also quarantined victims of the throat distemper. The town of Exeter, N.H., seized the house where a young man had died of the disease and quarantined his brother until he, too, died.

No Diagnosis

Physicians had trouble agreeing on a diagnosis for the disease, calling it cynanche, angina, canker, bladders, rattles or throat distemper. Scarlet fever was also present during 1735, and children were dying of both. More commonly the illness was called “the strangling angel of children.”

In 1735, a vaccine for diphtheria was more than a hundred years in the future. Treatment of the disease was crude and painful. When the throat distemper raged in Boston, a notice in the Boston Gazette offered treatment advice:

First be sure that a vein be opened under the tongue, and if that can’t be done, open a vein in the arm, which must be first done, as all other means will be ineffectual. Then take borax or honey to bathe or annoint the mouth and throat, and lay on the Throat a plaister Vngiuntum Dialthae. To drink a decoction of Devil’s bitt or Robbin’s Plantain, with some Sal Prunelle dissolved therein, as often as the patient will drink. If the body be costive use a clyster agreeable to the nature of the Distemper. … But be sure and let blood, and that under the tongue. We have many times made Blisters under the arms, but that has proved sometimes dangerous.

Boston vs. New Hampshire

In Boston, it seemed, patients responded better to treatment. In other towns, treatment rarely succeeded. Whole families of children – six and seven or more at a time – died. Caulfield suggests that Boston, in fact, first experienced a rarely mild epidemic of scarlet fever, which was susceptible to treatment. Other towns, however, were experiencing the diphtheria invading from New Hampshire.

In Newbury, Mass., people theorized that the disease was connected to an explosion in the population of caterpillars in the summer of 1735. The noxious caterpillars covered the roads and houses. They could even float across streams. They crackled when carriage wheels crushed them and caused the wheels to grow slippery.

A prayer and sermon seemed to extinguish the caterpillars, but doubts persisted that they also caused the throat distemper.

In Haverhill, Mass., a pamphlet explained that children’s wailing and coughing showed God or supernatural beings spoke through them. In 1738 the throat distemper epidemic entered its third year and a 17-page poem about it appeared in pamphlet form. AWAKENING CALLS TO EARLY PIETY suggested the disease resulted from impious behavior.

Carved cherub from The Burying Point, Salem

Piety and Throat Distemper

A second pamphlet, Early Piety Encouraged, tried to tamp down fears of catching the disease from sick neighbors or friends: Let me tell you, it is an inordinate and sinful Fear that you have of the Distemper, if it keep you from going nigh your Neighbors, to tend up them, to watch with them, or in any other Respect to be helpful to them.

Gradually the disease progressed into Connecticut and sporadically to Western Massachusetts. Death counts were not as well documented, but throat distemper is noted in some towns. Coventry, Conn., then with 800 people, lost 54 to the disease in 1737. East Haven, Conn., lost 26 from a population of 200.

The outbreak of 1735, which lasted until 1740, was probably not the first case of diphtheria in the New England colonies. But it was the most contagious. Residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the throat distemper was known to exist earlier, suffered lower mortality rates as they had some resistance to the disease.

Maine and New Hampshire, on the other hand, were easier targets. The outbreak coincided with outbreaks of diphtheria across the world.

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.

Thanks to the wonderfully thorough The “Throat Distemper” of 1735-1740 by Ernest Caulfield, Parts one and two. Well worth a read. This story about the Great Throat Distemper was updated in 2022.

Image: Carved cherub By Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada – File:The Burying Point, Salem (493768) (11362885626).jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89213439.

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