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Chopmist Hill, Rhode Island’s Secret Listening Post in WWII

Just before Pearl Harbor, Chopmist Hill in Scituate, R.I., was the center of the world. That’s what the Federal Communications Commission discovered in 1941. The hill’s geographic and atmospheric conditions were extremely favorable for radio reception, and its receivers could grab wireless signals from much of the globe.

With America on the verge of joining a global war, this was good news, especially for the FCC’s hardworking Radio Intelligence Division (RID). Chopmist Hill would become the most productive listening post for the men of this little-known civilian agency. Their work helped clinch victory for the United States and her allies.

The Radio Intelligence Division worked out of large, but hidden, radio listening posts – not only on Chopmist Hill but along the east and west coasts. These patrolmen of the ether prevented German intelligence from establishing a single wireless connection in the United States. They also discouraged Japanese agents from setting up U.S. radio links. They knew the FCC would nab them as soon as they went on the air, according to the Radio Intelligence Division’s director, George Sterling.

The Radio Intelligence Division also guided more than 600 lost airplanes to safety. They intercepted enemy agents’ secret transmissions to their bases and submarines. They even discovered a secret German weather station in Greenland, enabling the US Coast Guard to destroy it. Amazingly, from stateside, RID aided Philippine guerrilla operations.

And in the end, a Radio Intelligence Division outpost spent 37 hours establishing communications between the Japanese command and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. That set the stage for the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

A listening post with equipment similar to that used on Chopmist HIll.

Chopmist Hill Gets Ears

Chopmist Hill first came to the FCC’s attention before the United State entered the war. Thomas B. Cave, an RID technician, had to find the best spot for a listening post to detect illegal private and commercial radio transmissions.

Cave had already settled on a spot in Greenville, R.I., when he discovered Chopmist Hill in Scituate. He found conditions there strangely ideal for receiving radio traffic from a large portion of the globe. Beyond its value for simple rule enforcement, Chopmist Hill served as the perfect global listening post as war loomed. Cave moved his operations there in March 1941.

Cave had discovered a quirk of nature up on 731-foot-tall Chopmist Hill. Line-of-sight mobile communications and low-frequency signals meant to travel just a few hundred miles bounced off the atmosphere and straight down to Chopmist Hill.

But setting up a top-secret listening post was no small matter.

Cave leased a 14-room farmhouse surrounded by 183 acres for his 40-member team. Fences and armed guards bordered the complex, which had its own blockhouse, barracks and generator. No one could approach or enter without a state police escort.

Like the 11 other primary listening posts, Chopmist Hill had state-of-the-art receiving and recording equipment manned by highly trained operators.

Outdoors, the station bristled with poles and wires, more than 16 miles of them. It had rhombic antennas, wires strung on poles in the shape of a rhombus, or diamond. And it had four-pronged Adcock radio direction finders, which rotated to get a geographical fix on the source of a shortwave signal.

A satellite view of the Chopmist HIll area today, image courtesy Google Maps.

Nine Feet Under

The poles, set nine feet in the ground, didn’t poke up above the tree line and attract attention.

To improve reception, Cave called the local utility company, Narragansett Electric, to send out foreman Charlie Weinert to move the antenna poles. Sometimes a pole had to move just a few feet. Cave later said, “Weinert thought I was clean crazy.”

So effective was the secrecy on Chopmist Hill that the listening post’s very existence was revealed to the public only after the end of hostilities.

But when the government finally declassified the station, Cave told Weinert, “Every time you moved those poles you were following Rommel as he was backing up across North Africa.”

Weinert reportedly shot back, “Why, if I had known that, I’d have dug poles all the way to Cairo.”

Chopmist, Up and Running

Cave claimed Chopmist Hill could zero in on the location of any radio transmission within 15 minutes. Skeptical army brass tested Cave’s assertions, secretly setting up an impromptu station and transmitting a signal. It took Cave and his crew seven minutes to notice the signal and identify its source as the Pentagon.

The Chopmist Hill post could receive radio transmissions from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Cave later said it could even pick up tank-to-tank transmissions from German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in North Africa. Chopmist Hill forwarded those messages to the British commander in the area, Gen. Bernard Montgomery.

RID chief George Sterling later said he often wondered if everyone at Chopmist Hill would get home safely.

“If the enemy had known how we were recording messages sent between agents right in Germany, they would have eliminated the Scituate Station and everyone in it, provided they could.”

Chopmist Hill could listen in on General Rommel’s Panzer Division.

The Airwave Harvest

At Chopmist and elsewhere, much of what the RID intercepted was encrypted or in non-English languages. These messages were recorded and forwarded to the Signal Security Agency in Washington, D.C., for deciphering or translation. How some transmissions got deciphered—specifically, messages encrypted with Nazi Germany’s top-secret Enigma code—remains a mystery.

“Was there a twin Ultra machine [British military intelligence’s ultra-secret decryption computer] in Washington to which Scituate fed…?” asks Paul Eno, author of the 2005 book Rhode Island: A Genial History. “If not, how were secret interceptions in the secret German code translated?” The answer may have to wait until declassification of the RID’s wartime files in 2049.

One of the seemingly mundane tasks assigned to the Chopmist Hill unit was to home in on German weather reports from Central Europe. Chopmist forwarded them to the British bomber command. Once the United States joined the war, it sent them to U.S. Army Air Forces commands based in England. The reports were essential for planning air raids over Axis targets.

Ferreting Out Spies

One of Chopmist Hill’s tasks was to find radio spies. The problem of espionage had become apparent in Central and Latin America as early as 1940. That October, the RID station in Tampa, Florida, picked up maritime radio signals and narrowed them down to small vessels of the Gough Brothers line, operating out of British Honduras. Further investigation suggested these vessels were carrying fuel to German U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico and passing information to them.

A sting operation snared a total of 20 men, including principal owner George Gough. But the persistent problem of Axis espionage in Latin America led the FCC to help ferret out radio spies.

The FCC then sent some of its top monitoring officers south of the border. They succeeded everywhere except Argentina, officially neutral in the war. Spies pushed out of other South American countries found a safe base in Argentina, where even commercial radio transmitters were sending vital information to Axis Japan, Italy and Germany. The RID men tried to shut down enemy radio transmissions there, but the Argentine government became so hostile that the FCC withdrew the agents for their own safety.

Chopmist Hill To The Rescue

In addition to spying and counterspying, Chopmist Hill saved Allied lives.

Once, when a USO plane carrying American actress Kay Francis got lost, the Chopmist Hill listening post came to the rescue. It picked up the pilot’s radio transmissions, pinpointed his location and guided him to safety.

Chopmist Hill saved the life of Kay Francis, pictured here with Mitzi Mayfair.

The station also saved many American lives aboard the British ocean liner Queen Mary. She then ferried U.S. troops to fight in Europe. While the ship docked in Rio de Janeiro for fuel and supplies in March 1942, local German spies somehow learned her future course and alerted their superiors. Fortunately, operators on Chopmist Hill intercepted the message. The Queen Mary’s captain changed course, avoiding the wolf pack of German U-boats lying in wait and saving the lives of some 14,000 GIs on board.

On yet another occasion, a place carrying wounded men home to the States from Europe crash-landed in Canada’s far-northern Labrador province, so close to the magnetic North Pole that getting an accurate fix on the plane’s exact location was difficult. But the Chopmist Hill team did it, and rescue operations got underway. Even then it took three months to get all the plane’s passengers to safety.

Listening to Japan

Chopmist managed to pick up Japanese radio traffic before the December 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor, according to RID chief George Sterling.

The Rhode Island site also detected signals from radio transmitters on incendiary balloon bombs the Japanese had launched into the jet stream to float across the Pacific and explode in America and Canada.

Each bomb-laden, hydrogen-filled balloon emitted a tracking signal so the Japanese could follow its progress. The Chopmist Hill listeners forwarded balloons’ locations to West Coast fighter squadrons, which attempted to intercept and shoot down the floating bombs before they did any harm.

Most of the fighters’ efforts were in vain. They managed to shoot down less than 20 of the more than 9,000 launched. Fortunately, few of the balloons that reached inland North America exploded. One did kill a pregnant woman and five children on a Sunday school outing in Oregon.

The Queen Mary as she looked in World War II.

Chopmist Hill Revealed

Soon after the war, the FCC gave Thomas Cave permission to grant an interview to the Providence Journal. He could reveal the Chopmist Hill station’s existence, its purpose and some of its wartime successes.

The FCC maintained a station there until 1950 with a skeleton crew to fulfill the original purpose of catching unlicensed radio transmitters. Rhode Island’s Civil Preparedness Division then took over the facility as its headquarters.

In 1965 the hilltop site reverted into private hands. One Frederick Leeder purchased it at auction in 1968; by then, a scant five acres of the original 183 remained. As Leeder learned about the property’s history, he and others tried in vain to get the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. However, the FCC equipment had been removed, so the site did not meet the criterion of substantial conformity to how it looked during its period of historic activity.

Why isn’t Chopmist Hill spiked with surveillance antennas today? The answer is simple: change. The rural, backcountry location has grown immensely since 1945. Houses, factories and other buildings interfere with radio reception. The feats performed there in the past cannot be replicated.

In an interview shortly before his death, Cave told Eno, “It was not the receptivity of the location, but the advanced secret radio equipment used there that made Chopmist Hill’s place in history.” He added, “Though reception was remarkably good, it was 99 percent knowhow that created such a success between 1941 and 1945.”

Maybe. In 2049, perhaps we’ll know the whole story of Chopmist Hill, the FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division and their role in winning World War II.

The Radio Intelligence Division by the Numbers

To intercept enemy transmissions and prevent America’s airwaves from leaking secrets to the enemy, the agency eventually established 12 primary monitoring stations, 60 substations, and 90 mobile units in the U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. At its peak, the Radio Intelligence Division employed 893 people.

The RID had mobile units, too—automobiles crammed with radio equipment,. Each had a surveillance man at its controls. These could follow up on a received signal, getting closer to pinpoint its source. The units relied on single-loop antennas, simple receivers based on a circle of wire or other conductive material.

For even closer investigation, the agency developed a handheld unit called the Snifter. This device was so sensitive that a radioman could detect not just the building but the room from which a signal was emanating.

On average, the radio intelligence men pinpointed, or fixed, more than 800 locations each month. It was quite an accomplishment, considering that each fix required operators to collect 6,000 bearings. But the intensive effort paid off.

Images: Queen Mary By derivative work: Altair78 (talk)Queen Mary forecastle.jpg: :Altair78 – Queen Mary forecastle.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5144133.

This story was updated in 2022.

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

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How the Wild Turkey Vanished, Then Returned, to New England

For many years the only place you could find something called Wild Turkey in New England was on a liquor store shelf. New England hunters, lumbermen and farmers had driven the wild Meleagris gallopavo to near extinction.

Since the 19^th century, the bird that appeared on the Thanksgiving table was the weaker, smaller and milder-tasting domestic Meleagris gallopavo.

Today, however, the wild turkey has made a comeback – with a vengeance. Suburbanites fed up with wild turkeys chasing their kids and pets view them as ugly hooligan nuisances. Newspapers are filled with stories of wild turkey aggression in the New England suburbs. State governments even offer tips on how to avoid conflict with a wild turkey. (Hint: spray them with a garden hose if you find them in your garden.)

But just how did the wild turkey disappear – and then return – to New England?

A wild turkey tom

Good Huntin’, Good Eatin’

Ben Franklin famously praised the wild turkey as a better national symbol than the bald eagle. Franklin viewed the eagle as a coward, especially compared with the wild turkey, which would,

…not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

But by the time Franklin defended the noble turkey, it was vanishing from the New England countryside.

The wild turkey started to disappear from New England as early as 1672. That year travel writer John Josslyn wrote that the English and Indians ‘had destroyed the breed [in New England], so that ’tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the Woods.’

Benjamin Franklin, defender of the wild turkey

Sixty years later, almost no wild turkeys could be found east of the Connecticut River. Connecticut saw its last wild turkey in 1813. Vermont had none by 1842, and they disappeared from Massachusetts in 1851. Three years later, New Hampshire’s last wild turkey was spotted in Weare.

Wild turkeys had a fatal vulnerability: They don’t migrate. So they made an especially welcome meal during the cold months when game is scarce.

Not only that, but the tasty wild fowl was too easy to kill. The wild turkey roosts in a flock in the same tree night after night. Once a hunter discovered a turkey roost, it was curtains for the birds. Hunters would shoot as many as a dozen at a time.

Sometimes hunters drove whole flocks into log traps. And sometimes hunters organized circular turkey hunts, in which people formed a circle around several square miles and drove flocks of wild turkeys toward the center. Then hunters would slaughter them.

The Dodo’s Fate?

In 1884 a Harper’s Weekly writer argued the wild turkey would soon go the way of the dodo.

The wild turkey didn’t just disappear from New England. By the 1920s, wild turkeys had vanished from 20 of the 39 states in which they ranged. By the late 1930s, as few as 30,000 wild turkeys remained in the United States.

Other North American birds took it in the neck as well, including the crane, the swan, the brant, the Canada goose and the canvasback duck. The passenger pigeon didn’t make it, extinct by 1914.

The wild turkey began to make its comeback during the Great Depression. The Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 put a tax on sporting arms and ammunition, and it paid to bring back wildlife. In 1940 the federal Wildlife Restoration program began to return the wild turkey back to its old habitat. The failure of many farms during the Depression helped, because the forests that reclaimed them made good habitats for reintroduced wild turkeys.

1956 stamp promoting wildlife conservation

Return of the Wild Turkey

Capturing the elusive fowl wasn’t easy. After many failures, wildlife officials found they could shoot a large net from a cannon over a flock of wild turkeys. Later in the 1960s, sleep-inducing drugs lulled the birds for easy capture.

Efforts to bring back the wild turkey to Maine began in 1942, when Fish and Game officials released 24 birds on Swan’s Island in Penobscot Bay. They didn’t take to the island. Then in the 1960s, fish and game clubs tried to transplant birds to Bangor and Windham. That didn’t work either. The wild turkey just didn’t seem to thrive in Maine’s deep snow.

But it worked in Vermont, where wildlife officials brought 31 wild turkeys from upstate New York during the winters of 1969-70 and 1970-71. They released the birds in Rutland County, and within a year Vermont had 150 wild turkeys. Today, the state has about 50,000 of them.

Massachusetts had similar luck transplanting wild turkeys from New York. In the 1970s, Massachusetts biologists trapped 37 turkeys in New York and released them in the Berkshires. By 1978, Massachusetts had a thousand wild turkeys. Wildlife officials continued to transplant the birds eastward, until the flocks grew so big that suburbanites started to call the police about them. They blocked traffic, dug up gardens and attacked old ladies. One Brookline mom had to whack a tom with her shovel after it launched itself at her and her infant daughter.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/wild-turkey-audubon.jpg

Female wild turkey and young by John James Audubon.

Try, Try Again

New Hampshire began to try and transplant wild turkeys in the winter of 1969-70, but the flock didn’t take. In 1975, fish and game officials tried again, bringing 25 turkeys from New York and Pennsylvania into the Connecticut River Valley. They figured the wild turkeys could get through the winters by feeding off the corn waste and manure from the valley’s dairy farms. They were right. New Hampshire had enough wild turkeys that it could open a hunting season on them in 1985.

Maine tried again in 1978, when state biologists brought 41 wild turkeys from Vermont and released them in the southernmost towns of York and Eliot. Then they began transplanting them eastward. Today, Maine has as many as 60,00 turkeys, to the delight of hunters and the dismay of farmers who say they peck their tomatoes, eat their blueberries and knock down their plants.

Rhode Island, somewhat late to the party, reintroduced the wild turkey in 1980 when wildlife officials released 29 birds in Exeter. Then for about 15 years the state did nothing. By the mid-1990s, there weren’t enough wild turkeys in Rhode Island to vex a golfer. Wildlife officials then released 137 birds into Scituate, West Greenwich, Burrillville, Tiverton and Little Compton. Today the state’s Department of Environmental Management thinks the flock is growing.

Open an Umbrella

Connecticut tried to reintroduce the wild turkey in the 1950s and continued through the early 1970s, but had no success. Then between 1975 and 1992, 356 turkeys were released at 18 sites throughout the state.’ Now, every one of Connecticut’s 169 towns has a flock of wild turkeys.

In 1975, the reintroduction of the wild turkey to Connecticut was named one of the Top 40 Environmental Accomplishments of the Past 40 Years. But tell that to the suburbanites in the Stamford area, who claim to fear rampaging flocks of wild turkeys.

“Senior citizens afraid to leave the house,” reported the Stamford Advocate. “Joggers and mail carriers chased. Children feeling threatened on their way to school.”

And then the newspaper offered a piece of advice that might have gotten Ben Franklin’s back up: ““Open an umbrella and walk toward the turkey; it will run away.”

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to Wild Food: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2004 edited by Richard Hosking.

Images: Wild turkey tom by By Checkingfax – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70398966. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Portland Gale of 1898, and the Cat that Saved a Life

Of all the storms that struck New England over the centuries, only one was named after its victim: The Portland Gale of Nov. 26, 1898.

The monumental double storm killed more than 400 people and sank 150 vessels, including the steamship Portland in the worst marine tragedy of the 19^th century.

It created a storm surge of 10 feet in Cohasset Harbor, blocked a harbor for months on Martha’s Vineyard and changed the course of the North River in Scituate. It deposited so much water in Boston that people rowed dories on Atlantic Avenue.

Sailing master Joseph Kemp compared the Portland Gale to the Great Hurricane of 1938.

Lt. Worth G. Ross, a life-saving station inspector, also witnessed the storm. “The wild fury of the wind and driving snow continued without abatement until late in the afternoon,” he wrote. “At times the force and roar of the tempest were so appalling as to be indescribable.”

The last photo of the SS Portland before she sank in the Portland Gale.

The Portland Gale

Two low pressure masses headed toward New England on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. One came from the Great Lakes, the other from the Gulf of Mexico. The weather service only predicted the storm from the Midwest would strike New England. Had it noticed the two would merge, hundreds of lives might have been saved.

The S.S. Portland, a 280-foot wooden sidewheeler, was moored at Indian Wharf in Boston on Nov. 26, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Many passengers were returning home after visiting family from as far away as Philadelphia and New York.

Though the skies were clear that afternoon in Boston, they developed an ominous yellow light late in the day. “It was the greasiest evening you ever saw,” Kemp remembered.

Capt. Hollis Blanchard, the Portland’s skipper, went ashore as freight was loaded aboard the steamship. He called the captain of the Portland’s sister ship, the Bay State. Knowing only of the one storm headed his way, he said he would beat it before it reached Portland.

At 5:30 pm, the general manager ordered the steamship line’s vessels held until 9 pm, when the weather situation clear. Blanchard either didn’t get the message or ignored it.

A man from Brooklin, Maine, named Gott saw a cat leaving the steamer, taking her kittens down the gangway one by one. He decided the cat knew something he didn’t and got off the boat.

Sightings

At 7 pm the Portland cast off, before the sudden violent outburst of wind and snow. A number of other vessels, scurrying toward safe harbors, later reported seeing the steamship.

The Portland saluted the Kennebec and then the Mount Desert as she steamed out of Boston Harbor.

Several schooners caught sight of the Portland near Thacher’s Island off Gloucester. By then, the fierce storm had begun. At 11:45 pm, the schooner Edgar Randall nearly collided with a badly damaged steamship running without lights.

During a lull in the storm Sunday morning, the schooner Ruth M. Martin spotted the Portland off Highland Light in North Truro.

Blanchard may have headed into the storm toward open water. Over the years, fishermen recovered wreckage from her path. At some point on Sunday morning, the hull of the Portland opened up to the sea.

No one really knows what exactly happened. Some think she rammed another vessel. Some think the Portland Gale swept off her superstructure and she sunk like a stone.

Recovery

Around 7 pm on Sunday, bodies started washing up on shore halfway between the Race Point and Peaked Bars lifesaving stations. Watches on the bodies had all stopped between 9 and 10. The Portland Gale had cut off all communication between Boston and Cape Cod, and relatives began besieging the steamship line with telephone calls.

A Boston Herald reporter in Hyannis got part of a telegram from Truro, which convinced him the Portland had sunk. He left Hyannis by train and went as far as he could, but the storm had washed out coastal railroad tracks. He continued on foot, horseback and then train to Boston, where he filed the story on Tuesday and alerted the world to the Portland disaster.

The passenger list went down with the ship, so no one really knows how many died. Estimates range from 176 to 192 passengers and crew. Searchers found only 36 bodies.

Aftermath of the Portland Gale

The three-masted schooner Newburgh slammed into Union Wharf on Martha’s Vineyard and went completely through. The bow and stern stuck out of the sides, which blocked shipping to the wharves. The Bertha Glover, which carried lime, caught fire and burned in Vineyard Haven Harbor for a week. Wrecked ships littered the coast after the Portland Gale. Among those that sank were the Calvin F. Baker, the Meris H. Perry, the Albert L. Butler, the Pentagoet and the Columbia.

The Portland Gale destroyed dozens of piers and houses along the South Shore of Massachusetts. It damaged coastal railroads, severed telegraph and electric lines and destroyed the ferris wheel and roller coaster in Hull.

Provincetown got hit especially hard. It destroyed half of the town’s wharves and businesses along the shore. Afterward, lumber, wharf pilings and planks from the wharves filled the west side of the harbor. The whole mass writhed like snakes as if the surf tossed them, according to an account in the Provincetown Advocate.

The newspaper also reported that Mrs. Henry Spears “watched from her windows while men cut frozen bodies out of the Jordan L. Mott’s rigging.

“From that time on, she kept the shades drawn on every window facing the harbor.”

The Portland disaster accelerated the shift from wood to steel-hulled ships, and from sidewheels to propellers.

In 2002, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the National Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut, located the Portland. They used data from American Underwater Search and Survey to identify her image in the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay between Cape Cod and Cape Ann.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Remembering the 1978 Blizzard

In Connecticut they called it ‘Storm Larry.’ But to anyone old enough to remember, the words ‘1978 blizzard’ conjure up some very snowy memories.

The 1978 blizzard started with snow during the morning of February 6. It didn’t stop for 33 hours, dumping two feet of snow on New England. Sometimes it fell as fast as four inches an hour. Parts of Boston’s South Shore and Woonsocket, R.I., got hit with the most: 54 inches.

Two feet of snow had already fallen in previous storms, causing the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center the month before.

A residential street after the 1978 blizzard in Woonsocket, R.I.

The 1978 blizzard killed about 100 people and injured about 4,500. In central and southern New England, the snowfall turned to ice at night, leaving everything covered with ice. The snow turned to rain on Cape Cod, but the wind wreaked plenty of havoc.

Wind speeds reached 79 mph at Logan Airport, 92 mph at Chatham Weather Station on Cape Cod, and unofficial reports said wind gusts exceeded 100 mph. From Provincetown to Eastern Maine, the northeasterly winds flooded the coast. Ten thousand people evacuated.

In Connecticut, 547 National Guardsmen cleared roads and returned people to their homes – if they still had homes. In Massachusetts, a massive effort to clear Logan’s runway allowed 200 troops from Ft. Bragg and Ft. Devens to manage the emergency response.

1978 Blizzard

The snow took New England by surprise. No one advised people to stay home. Weather forecasters knew something was coming, they just didn’t know what. Only CBS’s Harvey Leonard seemed to have a clue: “We are going to get hit hard.”

Boston City Hall

The sun and moon aligned to cause spring high tides that produced record floods. In Massachusetts, the flood destroyed 2,000 homes between Marblehead and Plymouth and damaged another 10,000. One flood tide ran into the next; with four successive flood tides, it seemed the tide never went out. The South Shore and Revere, Mass., took the hardest hits from the flood tides and towering waves.

When Mrs. Joseph Conley returned to her home in Scituate after the storm, the tide surge demolished everything but the toilet. She was lucky. A giant wave ripped five-year-old Amy Lanzikas from her mother’s arms while they were being rescued in a firefighters’ skiff. Amy and a Scituate neighbor, Edward Hart, drowned during the rescue attempt.

Some Snow Day

People left school and work early so they could get home, but the snow fell so fast that staying put would have been safer. Thousands of cars had to be abandoned on the highways. Snowdrifts trapped 3,000 cars and 500 trucks along eight miles of Rte. 128 alone. Fourteen people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in their snowbound vehicles.

In New England’s cities, the 1978 blizzard stranded thousands more cars that took days to dig out. Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso abandoned her car on the highway and walked to the Hartford Armory.

Women standing on top of a snowbank in Boston.

Boston Mayor Kevin White could only make his way home slowly from Palm Beach. He won little sympathy by complaining about the cold weather in Florida and that he ‘didn’t even swim in the pool.’

Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, on the other hand, was everywhere during the 1978 blizzard — in his cardigan sweater. He happened to be on a radio call-in show with David Brudnoy on the evening of February 6. He heard from Revere residents on the second-floor of their houses wondering whether they’d survive. As panic set in, Dukakis began to direct the emergency response on the Brudnoy show. “I am pleading with Winthrop Shore Drive residents to evacuate their homes!” he said, between calls from constituents complaining about discrimination enforcement and civil service exams.

Trapped

Many people ended up trapped in their workplaces, living off vending machine food during the 1978 blizzard. People slept in pews at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Needham, Mass., which sheltered 2,000.

In Dedham, Mass., 300 stranded motorists ate popcorn and watched movies at the Showcase Cinema just off the highway.

Hockey fans in Boston who came to watch the Beanpot college tournament got stranded at Boston Garden. For several days they ate hot dogs, slept in the bleachers and, as Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessey pointed out, used ‘combs and deodorant left behind by Terry O’Reilly and Wayne Cashman.’

National Guardsmen and Boston residents during the cleanup after the 1978 blizzard.

In Massachusetts, the flood tides and giant waves dragged Motif No. 1, Rockport’s famous fishing shack, into the harbor. The high tides wiped out the Outermost House on Cape Cod and submerged the Peter Stuyvesaant, a restored riverboat outside of Anthony’s Pier 4 in Boston. Motif No. 1 was restored, but the Peter Stuyvesant was not.

One of many homes damaged by the 1978 blizzard.

Disaster Area

The postal service couldn’t deliver the mail for the first time since the Great 1938 Hurricane. One letter carrier got stranded in Providence, so he slept on sacks at the post office for two nights. He had to field a phone call from a woman complaining she didn’t get her mail.

In Massachusetts, the MBTA actually performed well. On the Monday after the storm, the driving ban was still in effect. The MBTA carried 50 percent more riders than it did on an ordinary day. The load strained the equipment so that the MBTA had to curtail commuter rail service by 25 percent for two months.

In Montville, Conn., someone wrote a plea to the governor — ‘ELLA HELP’ — in the snow on a lake. Grasso saw the message from a helicopter. She then transmitted a communique through the National Weather Service asking anyone with a four-wheel-drive vehicle to volunteer. Many did. Grasso ordered all roads and highways closed to everything but emergency vehicles, and asked schools and businesses to shut down. So did Gov. Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts and Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy in Rhode Island.

President Carter declared Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut federal disaster areas.

Community

Many remember the storm fondly because it built a sense of community. In Cumberland, R.I., for example, it took 10 days to plow out the roads. People gave a neighbor money to go shopping. He hauled a sled two miles to the IGA and back with food. Cross-country skiers and snowmobilers evacuated people from cars stranded on I-95. Snowmobiles and sleds took people to hospitals.

In Hull, Mass., Lillian Willis and Joanne Fallon prepared meals in a local middle school for 1,400 people in 36-hour shifts over 10 days. On the fourth day, Willis’ shoes fell apart.

Cars stranded on Rte. 128 after the 1978 blizzard.

The storm suspended work and school, so people played in the snow. UConn students made Star Wars sculptures. Brown students jumped out of dorm windows into the snow and made an eight-foot-high snowball. But according to one report, 4 percent of the Brown students and employees needed medical attention during the 1978 blizzard. Peter Gosselin, 10, jumped off his porch roof into the deep snow, hit his head and died in a snowbank. He wasn’t found for three weeks.

Cashing In

After the 1978 blizzard ended, entrepreneurs quickly capitalized on it. One company made a board game called the Great Blizzard Travel Game, which at one point you could buy for $59 on eBay. Others made T-shirts that said, “I Survived the Blizzard of 1978.” And “We Survived the Blizzard of ‘78” bumper stickers were as ubiquitous as Michael Dukakis’ cardigan sweater.

Dukakis actually had four or five cardigans. After the 1978 blizzard, people gave him a sweater when he appeared at a speaking event. He eventually gave 40 cardigans to the Goodwill. (Rhode Islanders, by the way, were treated to the sight of Gov. Joseph Garrihy in a flannel shirt.)

To see a video of the 1978 storm, click here. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Boston City Hall By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Snow near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65429193; Boston during cleanup By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Workers and residents during blizzard cleanup, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420068. Women on top of snowbank, By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Women on top of snow drift near City Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65420027

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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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How Providence’s Federal Hill Got Its Name

When a makeshift army in 1788 busted up a Fourth of July oxen roast at the base of a hill in Providence, R.I., Federal Hill got its name.

Originally, Native people called it Nocabulabet, meaning “land above the river” or “land between the ancient waters.”

Providence grew up around the hill. Irish immigrants crowded into the neighborhood in the mid-19th century, followed by a wave of newcomers from Italy. Beginning in 1956, mob boss Ray Patriarca ran his empire from the nondescript Coin-O-Matic building on Federal Hill’s main thoroughfare, Atwells Avenue.

Friday night crowd at the outdoor cafes in Providence, Rhode Island’s, Little Italy section, part of the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood.

Today, Federal Hill makes up Providence’s Little Italy, known for its variety of restaurants and vibrant street life.

But things were very different in 1788.

Federal Hill

In June of 1788, New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution, the ninth state to do so. That effectively established a framework for a government in the newly liberated country. Virginia followed, days later.

The Constitution, as created by the representatives from the 13 colonies, stipulated that nine colonies must approve it before it would be considered enacted.

As news spread that 10 colonies had signed off on the document, Federalists everywhere celebrated the news. In Rhode Island, July 4th seemed the perfect time to mark the new Constitution.

A map of Providence, 1775, by Charles Blaskowitz

Rhode Island, however, along with North Carolina, declined to ratify the Constitution. Rhode Island would not approve it until 1790, when the adoption of the document was virtually a foregone conclusion.

Within the state, Anti-Federalists held power through the dominant Country Party. Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution for a variety of reasons, including loss of independence to a strong central government. The party’s leader, Arthur Fenner, won election as governor from 1790 to 1805.

Arthur Fenner

As plans for the July 4, 1788 celebration took shape, Rhode Island revolutionary war general William West would have none of it. West, a prosperous Scituate farmer, businessman and judge in the state’s Supreme Court, gathered an army of 1,000 farmers and stormed Providence.

Federalists planned to read the Constitution during an ox roast celebration at the base of Nocabulabet . But West and his army showed up in protest and stopped the festivities.

Rhode Island Caves

Parties from West’s army and the Constitution-celebrating Federalists met to resolve the standoff. They reached a compromise to prevent fighting from breaking out: Federalists agreed that the celebration would only mark the Fourth of July. They would not read aloud the Constitution as planned. But Federal Hill got its name because of the incident.

For more than two years the Country Party held the Federalists at bay. The Country Party allied with many of Rhode Island’s Quakers, who opposed the federal Constitution’s allowance of slavery.

Signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. No one from Rhode Island there.

But the rest of the country pushed on, dragging Rhode Island inexorably toward ratification. Businesses could not seek payment for war losses, and other privileges were denied to states that did not ratify. And as a final carrot, the federal government agreed to assume state debts if they ratified.

In May of 1790, Rhode Island’s constitutional convention convened. Leaders in Providence threatened to secede from Rhode Island if the convention failed to ratify the Constitution. The Federalists then won and Rhode Island approved the Constitution.

For West and other Anti-Federalists, opposition to the new Constitution would prove costly. The new government devalued state-issued Continental currency. The bills could be exchanged for new government treasury bonds at an exchange rate of one percent of face value.

West then attempted to pay off mortgages on his Scituate farm in Continental dollars, but he failed. The first decision ever made by the U.S. Supreme Court denied his attempts to use Continental currency. It doomed West to bankruptcy and a stay in debtor’s prison. He died in 1816.

This story last updated in 2022.

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