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Theodore Safford Peck, Civil War Hero Who Left No Comrade Behind

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If you ever visit Burlington, Vt.,  and find yourself wandering around the Lakeview Cemetery, you might chance upon what otherwise at first is an unremarkable grave site. You have to walk directly upon it to notice the government-issued bronze plaque placed flat into the ground. It reads:” THEODORE SAFFORD PECK – MEDAL OF HONOR – BVT MAJ GEN CO H 9 VT INF – CIVIL WAR – MAR 22 1843 – MAR 15 1918.”

Theodore Safford Peck as adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard

Those few words sum up the man’s life. They don’t tell the story of his struggles — rejection by the Army four times, surrender, a coward’s label. And they certainly don’t describe the astounding feat of heroism that earned him the Medal of Honor.

Theodore Safford Peck Enlists, Finally

Peck was born in Burlington on March 22, 1843, the son of Theodore Augustus Peck and Delia Horton Safford. The oldest of the five Peck children, he had two brothers and two sisters. A brother and sister died young.

The 1860 Census lists Theodore’s occupation as a clerk. He probably worked for his father, a druggist in Burlington.

The first shots of the American Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter, S.C. Just under six months later, Theodore Safford Peck enlisted successfully — on his fifth try — in the 1st Vermont Cavalry Regiment, Company K. His rank, quartermaster sergeant, most likely reflected his civilian occupation.

The Battle of Winchester

During his short time with the 1st Vermont Cavalry, the regiment saw action at the Battle of Winchester on May 25, 1862. The battle was a major victory for the Confederates during Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley campaign.

Peck won promotion to full quartermaster sergeant on June 27, 1862, and mustered out of the 1st Vermont Cavalry on the same day. He then joined Company S, 9th Vermont Volunteer Infantry Regiment, presumably as a quartermaster sergeant, on July 9, 1862. It’s not clear why he made the change.

‘Almost Imbecility’

The regiment was organized at Brattleboro, Vt. The army then sent it to Washington without any  real formal training, like most newly formed regiments. From there the regiment went to Virginia. Less than a month after its formation, the 9th Vermont retreated from the Shenandoah Valley to Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (West Virginia in 1863).

Dixon Miles at Harpers Ferry

Unluckily  for the regiment, it had a commander who ranked as one of the most useless and incompetent Union Army  officers: Col. Dixon S. Miles. The army had court-martialed him for drunkenness during the First Battle of Bull Run. For some now unfathomable and unfortunate reason, he had orders to defend the vital Harpers Ferry arsenal.

Confronted by Confederate forces under Stonewall Jackson, Miles surrendered his entire force on Sept. 15, 1862. He offered only token resistance. Among those captured: the 9th Vermont and Sgt. Theodore Safford Peck.

A later board of inquiry described Miles’ character:  “incapacity, amounting to almost imbecility [for] the shameful surrender of this important post.”

Labeled Cowards

The Confederates had  marched through Harpers Ferry to Maryland and their ultimate defeat at Antietam. But Jackson had no time to detach troops to guard the huge hoard of Union prisoners. So he paroled them. Parole meant they could return to the Union Army. However, they couldn’t participate in active operations until exchanged for a like number of Confederate prisoners.

Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, around 1863

Unfortunately for the regiments that surrender under Miles’ command, people labeled them cowards. Though unfair, as they had no say in Miles’ actions, they nonetheless had to live with the fact.

Unable to take part in active combat, the 9th Vermont and Peck were sent to Chicago as guards for Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas. Theodore Safford Peck won promotion to full second lieutenant on Jan. 8, 1863. Two days later, the regiment was finally exchanged.

Still not fully trusted, the regiment went to guard Confederate prisoners at City Point, Va. That assignment lasted only a couple of weeks before the necessities of war sent them south to the garrison at Suffolk, Va. There they joined Wardrop’s Reserve Brigade, 7th Army Corps, Department of Virginia.

As soon as the 9th Vermont arrived in the spring of 1863, Gen. James Longstreet’s Confederate forces embroiled them in the Siege of Suffolk, Va. It lasted from April 13 to May 4. The Union Army held the garrison, but Longstreet’s troops had managed to forage for supplies during the standoff.

James Longstreet

After helping raise the siege, the 9th Vermont took part in several small actions.  It then went to New Bern, N.C., remaining in the area for several months and taking part in small actions.

Newport Barracks, N.C.

Near Newport, N.C., the Union Army held a small outpost that guarded a railroad trestle bridge, a key link in the supply routes between East Coast ports and New Bern, N.C. The Union had won the Battle of New Bern in 1862, which enabled it to control the North Carolina coast.

The advance of the Gunboats up the river to New Berne, N. Carolina.

On Feb. 2, 1864, Confederate forces overran the Newport Barracks. Two thousand Confederate infantry, 400 cavalry and 14 artillery pieces outnumbered the 750 Union troops at the barracks. The Union soldiers retreated. Company B and Company H, commanded by 2nd Lt. Theodore Safford Peck, had orders to guard the rear of the retreating forces.

Two bridges over the Newport River formed the only line of retreat for the Union soldiers. They also formed the only line of advance for the Confederates. Lt. Peck had orders to hold the bridges until the Union forces had crossed and then fire them. The Roster of Vermont Volunteers During the War of the Rebellion…Deeds of Valor, describes what happened.

“The left of the Union line lay near the river, while the right was in the woods, and commended (sic) by First Lieutenant Theodore S. Peck Company H, Ninth Vermont Infantry. The line was continually pressed back by the enemy, and made eleven different stands before reaching the Newport River, over which there were two bridges, one a railroad bridge and the other a county bridge…”

No Turpentine, No Cavalry

Peck had been promised turpentine and tar, along with a cavalry contingent to support him, would be waiting at the bridges. They must destroy the bridge at all cost.

“Lieutenant Peck made a desperate fight all afternoon, and had been the farthest out toward the enemy the entire time, holding them in check until they had broken through the line on his left. At this time the Union troops had mostly crossed the railroad and county bridges…while Lieutenant Peck’s rear guard was hotly engaged with the Confederates, who were close at his heels.”

When Peck sent a man to check the bridge, he reported back that he found no supplies to burn the bridge and no cavalry anywhere.

Medal of Honor

“Lieutenant Peck, leaving one-half of his men with their officers, fighting the enemy, ran with the other half down the hill to the bridge, determined to destroy the same, if possible. Finding that some of the planks were not spiked down, he had these torn up, and being fortunate in finding plenty of dry grass…he had the same placed in readiness for burning the bridge, then ordered his men, who were fighting, to stop firing and rush across.

His men instantly obeyed the order, though the enemy came forward on the run, killing and wounding some of them. As soon as the men crossed the bridge they started firing on the enemy, while others ignited the dead grass.

“The Confederates brought up a battery, and poured in grape and canister. In the rush, Sergeant Charles F. Branch was wounded and left behind, a fact which, instantly it became known to Peck, caused him to rush back across the now burning bridge, to the sergeant, and half carrying him in his arms, succeeded, in spite of a shower of bullets and shell and in momentary danger of death…”

They succeeded in destroying both bridges in the face of overwhelming enemy fire. While the river was narrow, it had high bluffs and was deep, and the Confederates could not ford it in time to halt the Union retreat. Then-2nd Lt. Theodore Safford Peck won the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. Peck was promoted to first lieutenant on June 10, 1864, and to  captain on March 11, 1865.

More Fighting

The 9th Vermont remained in the New Bern area until September 1864, when it went north to join Ulysses S. Grant’s army at the protracted siege of Petersburg and Richmond, Va. The siege actions included a formal siege and a series of individual battles. The 9th Vermont fought in several of them. Peck was wounded in action during one battle, the Battle of Fort Harrison.

Fort Burnham, Virginia, the former Confederate Fort Harrison. Federal soldiers in front of bomb-proof headquarters.

The wound must not have been too serious since he remained with the regiment, which then fought in the Battle of Fair Oaks.

Immediately after the battle, it was sent to New York City to guard against possible rioting during the upcoming presidential election. It then returned to the Richmond siege lines and took part in the final assault on the city on April 2, 1865.

Battle of Fair Oaks, by Currier & Ives

Captain Peck marched with the 9th Vermont as one of the first to enter and occupy Richmond.

After performing various occupation duties around Virginia, he mustered out with the rest of the regiment on Dec. 1, 1865.

Marriage and Money

Returning to Burlington, Theodore Peck began a career in insurance, and in 1869 he founded T.S. Peck Insurance. In time, it would grow into one of the largest insurance companies in Vermont. It is still in existence in 2023.

T.S. Peck

Peck was also involved in local businesses and served on the board of directors of several Burlington manufacturing companies.

In 1879, he married Agnes Louise Lesslie from Toronto, Canada, in Manhattan, New York at her uncle’s residence. They had one daughter, Theodora Agnes Peck.

Grand Army of the Republic program for an encampment in 1900

Like most Union Civil War veterans, Theodore Peck remained active in the Grand Army of the Republic. He served as president of the Society of the Army of the Potomac at the time of his death. He belonged to many civic organizations. They included  the Society of Colonial Wars, General Society of the War of 1812, Military Order of Foreign Wars, the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Ethan Allen Club, Algonquin Club and the Lake Champlain Yacht Club. A Freemason, he served as grandmaster of the Vermont Lodge for 10 years.

Later Life of Theodore Safford Peck

Unlike most Civil War veterans, however, Theodore Peck remained a part of the military. From 1881 to 1900 he served as its adjutant general in the Vermont National Guard as a brigadier.

His relationship with the military remained firm. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to the West Point Board of Visitors. He also commanded the Medal of Honor Legion (now the Legion of Valor). And he received an honorary degree  in 1896 from Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., then a military school second only to West Point.

Grave marker of Theodore Safford Peck

After a full and active life, Brevet Maj. Gen. Theodore Safford Peck, Medal of Honor, died on March 15, 1918 in Burlington from heart complications.

William E. Utley has an M.A. in Military HIstory from Norwich University. Theodore Safford Peck is his 3rd cousin, three times removed.

 

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The Irish-American Army That Attacked Canada from a Vermont Farm

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Alvah Richard couldn’t believe that fanatical Irish-American army was back. For the second time in four years, the self-proclaimed Irish Republican Army had come tramping through his Franklin, Vt., dairy farm.

They were intent on undertaking one of the most fantastical missions in military history—to hold Canada hostage and ransom it for Ireland’s independence.

On a May morning in 1870, Richard watched as Gen. John O’Neill rode at the head of the army. It marched with disciplined precision in columns of four past his two-story brick farmhouse just south of the international border with Canada.

irish-american-army-richards-farm

The Richard farm, from whence the Irish-American army made its foray into Canada.

John O’Neill

The Irish-born O’Neill had spent his childhood at his grandfather’s knee listening to the tales of heroic ancestors who stood up and fought the English colonizers who had occupied Ireland since the 1100s. The young boy learned that the English had tried for 700 years to extinguish Ireland’s religion, culture and language. And when one million people died after the potato crop failed in the 1840s, some Irish believed the English were trying to exterminate them altogether.

O’Neill fled to the United States during the Great Hunger. He then joined approximately 200,000 Irish natives who fought on both sides of the Civil War.

Many Irish-Americans saw their military service as training for the real war they wanted to wage. They aimed to liberate their homeland from the British Empire’s shackles.

The Fenian Brotherhood Returns to Vermont

Radicalized by his boyhood experiences, O’Neill joined an Irish-American revolutionary organization known as the Fenian Brotherhood. It advocated striking the British Empire at its closest point—Canada. In 1866, O’Neill led an 800-man Irish-American army across the Niagara River. At the Battle of Ridgeway they scored the first Irish army victory over British Empire forces since 1745.

irish-american-army-battle-ridgeway

The Irish-American army, victorious at the Battle of Ridgeway.

Before his forced retreat to the United States, O’Neill lined up his Canadian prisoners and shook their hands one by one. He promised that he would return to Canada once again.

If nothing else, O’Neill was a man of his word. Having assumed the presidency of the Fenian Brotherhood, he procured weapons and supplies. He then secretly stashed them in the countryside surrounding Richard’s farm. From there the Fenians had launched an attack on Quebec in the days following O’Neill’s triumph at Ridgeway. That incursion, however, fizzled. The Fenians returned to American soil with nothing more than a British flag swiped from a Canadian custom house.

He could have selected any route along the 4,000-mile border. But O’Neill chose the very same road through Richard’s farm to mount his latest attack on Canada on May 25, 1870. When the Fenian general asked the Vermont farmer if he could survey the battlefield from his north-facing bedroom, Richard refused. He didn’t want “them ruffians up in the best chamber puttin’ their dirty boots on Grandma’s handmade quilts,” he said.

Outside Richard’s farmhouse, O’Neill ordered his Irish-American army to attack. “For your own country you now enter that of the enemy,” he shouted. “The eyes of your countrymen are upon you. Forward, MARCH!”

The Irish-American Army Crosses the Canadian Border

O’Neill’s force, which included many men from the mill cities of New England, cheered as it charged past the iron post marking the border. A green silk battle flag waved in the breeze as 25-year-old Private John Rowe, sparked by adrenaline and Irish pride, sprinted to the front of the pack. As he approached the short wooden bridge spanning Chickabiddy Creek, a sharp crack reverberated around the dale. The soldier collapsed to his knees, his hands still clutching his rifle. The gunshot pierced an artery on the Fenian’s left arm and tore through his lungs, leaving him to suffocate in his own blood on the bridge.

Hiding behind bushes and in rifle pits concealed by time-scarred boulders atop Eccles Hill—which rose steeply on the west side of the road between Franklin and Frelighsburg, Quebec—approximately 50 Canadian militiamen and farmers rained down bullets upon the invaders.

The panicked Fenians scrambled for cover behind stone walls, outhouses and chicken coops. William O’Brien was shot dead. Others fell wounded while seeking shelter.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/irish-american-army-canadian-militia.jpg

Canadian militiamen, wearing red sashes, with a cannon captured from the Irish-American army.

Ashamed

Richard grew furious as dozens of Fenians sought protection inside his farmhouse and stomped through his kitchen in their muddy boots. Unbeknownst to the house’s owner, O’Neill dashed up the stairs to survey the battlefield from an attic window.

The Richard farmhouse found itself pockmarked with bullets as Canadians took aim at O’Neill’s perch. When Richard heard a noise in his attic, the indignant farmer stormed up his stairs and forcibly evicted the Fenian general.

The frustrated O’Neill gathered those troops within shouting distance in a protected area behind Richard’s house and castigated his men in green for their timidity.

“Men of Ireland, I am ashamed of you! You have acted disgracefully today; but you will have another chance of showing whether you are cravens or not. Comrades, we must not, we dare not go back with the stain of cowardice on us. Comrades, I will lead you again, and if you will not follow me, I will go with my officers and die in your front!”

irish-american-army-eccles-hill

The Irish-American army repulsed at Eccles Hill.

John O’Neill’s Ignominious Ending

O’Neill would never get the chance to sacrifice himself for Ireland, however. Moments later a U.S. marshal suddenly appeared at his side. The marshal declared that he was under arrest by order of President Ulysses S. Grant. Thrown into the backseat of a waiting carriage, O’Neill was whisked away from the battlefield. The marshal kept his hand close to O’Neill’s mouth to prevent any shouts for assistance, but the cocked Colt revolver pressed against the general’s temple proved the more effective silencer.

Although outnumbered nearly six to one, the Canadians atop Eccles Hill had the advantage of a nearly impregnable position. Thousands of years earlier, the retreating glaciers had sculpted the perfect fortress. “Behind which twenty men could have defied a thousand,” one newspaperman reported.

Given the arrest of their commander and the increasing desertion of soldiers, Fenian officers were left with no choice. They had to abandon their attack and hold their position until they could escape under the cover of darkness.

Once the Canadians began a counterattack, however, the demoralized Fenians fled into the woods back to their camp. In their haste to escape, they tossed their ammunition pouches and knapsacks to the side of the road in order to lighten their loads. One soldier whipped off his green jacket and turned it inside out because he felt betrayed by the Fenian leaders.

irish-american-army-john-oneill-arrest

Canadian Illustrated News cartoon depicting the arrest of John O’Neill.

‘I Ran Away’

“It’s all up; and damn the men that got us up here,” the retreating soldier told a Burlington Free Press reporter.

“I come from Massachusetts. They told us it’d be a glorious business, and a good job, and all that; and then got us into Canada and sent us down there to be shot at for two hours,” he said. “I’ve got enough of this Fenian business; and I’m going home.”

This latest in the series of Fenian Raids ended with two Irish-Americans dead and nine injured. For their part, the Canadians suffered not a single casualty. After the Irish-American army departed the battleground, curiosity seekers harvested Richard’s farm for souvenirs such as bayonets, swords, powder horns, belts, water bottles and coat jacket buttons emblazoned with the initials “I.R.A.” Newspapers now joked it stood for “I Ran Away.”

O’Neill, meanwhile, stewed in a jail cell in Burlington, Vt. “I never was in a battle before that I was so utterly ashamed of,” he confided to a Rutland Herald reporter. Anyone who thought that the utter humiliation of the Battle of Eccles Hill would dissuade O’Neill from ever attempting to attack Canada again, however, would eventually be proven wrong.

About the author: Christopher Klein is the author of When the Irish Invaded Canada: The Incredible True Story of the Civil War Veterans Who Fought for Ireland’s Freedom. The book about the Irish-American army was published by Doubleday in March 2019 and can be found here. Christopher’s upcoming speaking dates around New England can be found here.

Images: Battle of Ridgeway By The Sage, Sons & Co. Lithographer – Library and Archives Canada, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68164955. This story was updated in 2023.

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

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

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

Birth of the PT Boat

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

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

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

This is their story.

Devil Boats

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

PT boat logo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mount Hope Bridge

Specht Tech

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

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

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

Lt. jg. John F. Kennedy in PT 109

Plenty Tough

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

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

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

PT_boat_underway_near_Midway_c1942

A PT boat underway near Midway

Accidents Happen

Occasionally, things went wrong.

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

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

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

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

Melville Today

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

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

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

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

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

pt-boat-battleship-cove

The PT boat in Battleship Cove

Melville Alumni

Here is an incomplete listing:

Anthony Akers, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand

Paul Austin, Chairman of the Board, Coca Cola

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

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

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

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

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

John Clagett, author of 19 books

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

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

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

John Harllee, Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission

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

John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

Joe Kuharich, college football coach and head coach NFL teams

Elgar Laux, Vice Chairman, Chrysler Corp.

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

Henry Loeb, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn.

Carl Maddox, Athletic Director, Louisiana State University

Clinton McClain, player, New York Giants

Torbert MacDonald, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts

John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General

Robert Montgomery, actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild

James Madden Newberry, founder of PT Boats, Inc.

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

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

Don Rickles, actor and comedian

Raymond P. Shafer, Governor of Pennsylvania

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

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

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

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, millionaire

George Vanderbilt, millionaire

Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

End Notes

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

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

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Maine’s Unluckiest Man: ‘The Luck of Hiram Smith’

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An old expression in New England says that if nothing seems to go right for you, you have the luck of Hiram Smith.

And Hiram Smith definitely had bad luck, though no one knows exactly how the expression got started.

Landing and scaling logs, Aroostook Woods, Maine. (Library of Congress)

Landing and scaling logs, Aroostook Woods, Maine. (Library of Congress)

Hiram Smith at War

Legend had it that Hiram was the only casualty of the war that no one ever fought.

In the winter of 1838-39, the country did seem destined for war. A decades-long dispute simmering between the U.S. and Canada (then under British rule) had broken open. Both the U.S. and Britain claimed possession of the northern tip of what is now Maine. Timber men had come south and forced the Maine state land agent into retreat.

Traditional English-French rivalries helped escalate the tension. Maine raised a militia of 10,000 men, so the U.S. Congress authorized raising a 50,000-man army. It also set a budget of $10 million to fight.

Gen. Winfield Scott went north to take charge of the fighting. But once there, he reached an agreement with the Canadians: the border dispute was better settled through negotiation. Both sides accepted that the 1783 treaty that ended the American Revolution had made an oversight. It had failed to set a border.

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton, set the border that we have today.

Aroostook War

Thus, the Aroostook War went into history as the “bloodless” war. What fighting there resembled a barroom brawl more than a military engagement. But it wasn’t really bloodless at all. More than 30 men died of disease or accidents in the run-up to the fighting that never happened as they built a long military road through the northern tip of Maine and suffered through a difficult winter. One of the dead was Hiram T. Smith.

hence his unlucky status, though others died as well. Perhaps the expression got started because Smith is said to have died in so many different ways.

Some said he drowned (in both a lake and pond), that he was injured during construction, that an army supply wagon ran him down, that he was trampled while feeding horses, that he froze to death after deserting (though many say he died in July.)

Either way, there is a grave marker on Route 2A in Haynesville in far northern Maine to commemorate his sacrifice. And his status as the unluckiest man in Maine has kept his memory alive.


This story last updated in 2023.

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Dorence Atwater Records the Atrocities of Andersonville Prison

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Dorence Atwater of Terryville, Conn., enlisted in the Union Army expecting to see first-hand the glory of war. Instead he saw its worst horrors.

Dorence Atwater

Dorence Atwater

Dorence joined the 2nd New York Cavalry, but he was captured shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg. The Confederates sent him south to a prison camp.

First he went to Virginia. Then in March of 1864 he went to the Andersonville prison camp in Georgia. For more than a year, Dorence managed to survive the horrors of the camp, which included disease, starvation and death. Roughly 13,000 of the 45,000 prisoners sent to the 26-acre prison would die there.

Dorence Atwater, POW

Dorence was 19 at the time of his stay at Andersonville. Though sick upon arrival, he recovered and was assigned to work in the prison’s medical office. He had to maintain the list of every prisoner who died and prepare summaries of the death totals.

Dorence was told his records would be shared with Federal authorities, but he suspected they would never reach government eyes. They  documented what Dorence believed was a systematic effort by the Rebel army to mistreat Union soldiers.

“The appalling mortality was such that I suspected that it was the design of the Rebel government to kill and maim our prisoners by exposure and starvation so that they would forever be totally unfit for military service, and that they withheld these facts,” he wrote.

Union soldier who survived Andersonville

Atwater’s List

Working alongside the camp superintendent, Henry Wirz, Dorence undertook the job of creating a second list of the dead. He would make sure that secret list reached the North. He began copying the entire list in August, and after months of work he completed his task.

All along, he knew he’d hang if Wirz discovered his secret list.

The conditions inside Andersonville were abysmal. Guards stole mail and gifts sent to prisoners. Among the prisoners, a gang emerged that terrorized and robbed incoming prisoners of their blankets and belongings. The gang then traded them with the guards for better food and privileges. Atwater saw one Confederate officer with $50,000 he stole from packages that families had sent to prisoners.

Unable to control the mayhem, Superintendent Wirz would eventually authorize prisoners to organize their own justice system within Andersonville. Wirz was a complicated figure. He presided over the horrors of Andersonville, but some evidence suggests that he did seek better conditions and food for his inmates. However, his requests were rejected.

After the war, a military tribunal convicted Wirz of war crimes and sentenced him to death, due to the testimony of many Andersonville prisoners, including Dorence Atwater. He was hanged in front of the U.S. Capitol.

The hanging of Henry Wirz, one of only two war criminals executed after the Civil War.

Release From Prison

Before all that transpired, Dorence Atwater had to gain his freedom.  With the rebel effort collapsing, he won a parole in February 1865. He smuggled his list out of camp.

He first faced the chaos that enveloped Washington following the assassination of President Lincoln. Atwater, sick and weak, traveled through the city and told the War Department about his massive list. Then he went home to Connecticut to recuperate.

In April of 1865 the War Department sent a telegram to Atwater asking him to return to Washington with his list. The government would pay him $300 for it.

Andersonville National Cemetery

For Dorence, the payment wasn’t enough. He didn’t want more money for the list, but he wanted to see it published. His goal throughout his ordeal was to be sure that the families of his fellow prisoners knew the fate of their loved ones.

Dorence negotiated with the War Department. He would let them have the list, but they must either give him a copy or let him copy it himself so that it could be published. The War Department agreed. But in the weeks that followed, the department reneged on the promise.

Clara Barton

As Dorence was arguing with the War Department, Clara Barton would learn of the list. The Civil War nurse and activist ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, which was attempting to locate the whereabouts of all the soldiers who died in the war.

Barton summoned Dorence to help her. Armed with his list, they accompanied the Army to Andersonville to begin marking the graves of the dead. The thoroughness of Dorence’s list resulted in the identification of about 95 percent of all the Andersonville graves.

But frustrated by the lack of any effort to publish the list, Dorence took matters into his own hands. He stole a copy of his list from the Army and refused to give it back.

Dorence quickly found himself arrested, court martialed and sentenced to prison. Clara Barton intervened. She reached out to President Andrew Johnson and arranged a pardon for Dorence. Finally, in 1866, he submitted his list to the New York Tribune for publication in 1866.

Clara Barton

Clara Barton’s introduction noted: “For the record of your dead, you are indebted to the forethought, courage, and perseverance of Dorence Atwater, a young man not yet twenty-one years of age; an orphan; four years a soldier; one tenth part of his whole life a prisoner, with broken health and ruined hopes, he seeks to present to your acceptance the sad gift he has in store for you.”

Dorence and Clara Barton would tour the country, delivering lectures about Andersonville to raise money for the Office of Missing Soldiers.

Diplomat

In the 1870s, Dorence Atwater finished his work with his list and he joined the State Department. He served first in the consulate in the Seychelle Islands and later in Tahiti. There he married into the royal family in 1875 and established several successful businesses.

Moetia Salmon Atwater

In 1908, Dorence and his wife Princess Moetia Salmon Atwater returned to Connecticut to see old friends and family. The couple maintained homes in San Francisco and Tahiti. In 1910, Dorence died. He was beloved by Tahitians for his and his wife’s work with the poor. He received the first state funeral ever conducted for a non-native Tahitian.

This story about Dorence Atwater was updated in 2022. Images: Andersonville National Cemetery By Bubba73 (talk), Jud McCranie, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20587782

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Boston Corbett – The Mad Hatter who Killed John Wilkes Booth

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Thomas Corbett was born in London in 1832, but he gained his fame as Boston Corbett, the man who killed John Wilkes Booth.

As a young man, Corbett drank heavily. He then moved from New York to Boston and encountered Methodist reformers. They persuaded him to swear off alcohol and join the Methodist Church. He embraced the church as he did everything else in life – with great gusto, changing his name to Boston Corbett and growing his hair long to imitate Christ.

Street Preacher

Corbett became a street preacher, condemning sinners around the city. He would set up an impromptu pulpit on a street corner and offer his sermons to the passing parade. And when criticized or confronted, he put his brawling skills to use and took on all comers.

Boston Corbett

Mathew Brady portrait of Boston Corbett

Historians suspect Boston Corbett had mental problems to begin with, but they were probably exacerbated by his exposure to mercury while pursuing his trade as a hatter. In one of the odder incidents in his life, two prostitutes propositioned Corbett. He condemned them and continued home, but the temptation he felt troubled him.

Seeking answers in the Bible, he turned to the Book of Matthew, which instructs: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee….and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” Corbett chose a literal interpretation of the book and castrated himself.

Civil War

In 1861, Corbett needed to decide his fate. Would he become a pacifist or a soldier? After prayerful consideration, he chose soldier and enlisted in a regiment from New York to join the Union Army in the Civil War. Before firing a shot he would utter the phrase, “May God have mercy on your souls.”

Corbett was not an ideal soldier. He carried his Bible with him and never missed an opportunity to scold his fellow soldiers – including superiors – for profanity or other sinful behaviors. He was court martialed for his conduct and expelled from military service, but rejoined in 1863.

andersonville

Andersonville Prison

Corbett would serve time in the Andersonville Prison in Georgia – the Confederate-run prisoner of war camp. Nearly one-third of the 45,000 Union soldiers sent to Andersonville died there. Corbett was fortunate. He survived.

Assassination

After John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln on April 15, 1865, he fled to the Town of Port Royal in the northern end of Virginia’s Tidewater Region.

Currier and Ives print o the Lincoln assassination

Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sent 26 Union soldiers from the 16th New York Cavalry Regiment in pursuit. Boston Corbett was in the regiment, which had orders to bring Booth and his accomplices back to Washington – preferably alive.

When the Union soldiers found Booth holed up in a barn, they flushed him out by setting it on fire. Boston Corbett shot the fleeing Booth in the neck. The shot paralyzed Booth, and he died within two hours.

As Corbett explained it: “I aimed at his body. I did not want to kill him….I think he stooped to pick up something just as I fired. That may probably account for his receiving the ball in the head. When the assassin lay at my feet, a wounded man, and I saw the bullet had taken effect about an inch back of the ear, and I remembered that Mr. Lincoln was wounded about the same part of the head, I said: “What a God we have…God avenged Abraham Lincoln.”

Discharge the Patriot

Corbett became widely known as “Lincoln’s Avenger.” Stanton questioned him about the shooting, but concluded Corbett acted reasonably.

booth

John Wilkes Booth

“The rebel is dead. The patriot lives . . . he has spared the country expense, continued excitement and trouble. Discharge the patriot,” Stanton reportedly said.

Boston Corbett did not live happily ever after. Following the war he returned to Boston, and to hat making. He became even more erratic, launching into prayer and waving his pistol when agitated. He took to giving speeches about killing Booth, but his increasing incoherence prevented him from furthering that career.

Chased out of job after job, he went from Boston to Danbury, Conn., to New Jersey and finally to Kansas as a homesteader. Moved by his role in killing Booth, the Kansas Legislature appointed him assistant doorkeeper in 1887.

By then, however, delusions and paranoia dogged Boston Corbett. He feared irate former Confederates would assassinate him.  At one point, convinced his fellow court officers conspired against him, Corbett brandished his pistol and cleared them from the Statehouse. For that, he was sent to an insane asylum in Topeka. He then escaped and with the aid of a friend slipped away.

Kansas Statehouse

Today, no one knows what happened to him.  He said he planned to go to Mexico. Some theorize he perished in the Great Hinckley Fire in Minnesota in 1894.

The search for his final history is clouded, however, because many imposters claimed to be “Lincoln’s Avenger” after Boston Corbett disappeared.

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about John Wilkes Booth’s New Hampshire fiance here. This story was updated in 2022.

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