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university of new hampshire

The Miraculous Rescue of Dorothy Sparks in 1942

On July 20, 1942, Dorothy Sparks went for a cookout with friends in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The plan was to grill some steaks and beat the heat with some hiking and some swimming.

As the group walked along the banks of the Swift River, in Albany, near the Kancamagus Highway, one noticed that Dorothy was not with them any longer. After they waited, thinking she was bringing up the rear, the group retraced steps back up the river bank to Rocky Gorge, where they had last seen her.

Not only had they not found Dorothy Sparks, the group quickly began to share a grim hunch. Even in deep summer, water pours over the 15-foot falls at Rocky Gorge with a deafening thunder. Water at the foot of the falls churns ferociously as it sends the Swift River on down its way.

After a couple of probing attempts to see if Dorothy was injured or perhaps washed up on the banks, the group dispatched a party to town to summon help.

Dorothy Sparks Goes to College

Rocky Gorge

In 1942, Dorothy was 24. She had a newly minted degree from the University of New Hampshire. From the suburbs of Philadelphia, Sparks had been active in the Alpha Xi Delta sorority. In college she stood out as an athlete. She swam, skied and was active in the Blue Circle, the university’s outing club. She had joined the club in a hike to the top of Mount Cardigan.

Unfortunately, Dorothy and the outdoors didn’t always get along, and she was a bit of a daredevil. In 1940 she had shattered her leg skiing in the White Mountains, in the women’s slalom race. That accident put her in the hospital for a week and triggered a lengthy recovery. But it looked like her misadventure on the Swift River would be even worse.

Help Arrives

It took nearly two hours to get help to the Rocky Gorge. State Trooper Kenneth Hayward arrived along with the deputy coroner, a group of forest rangers and utility workers who had been in the area. The local undertaker also made the trip.

After quickly scouring the area, the rescue team reached the same conclusion as Dorothy’s friends. She was most likely submerged in the roiling waters at the foot of the falls.

Trooper Hayward probed at the water and struck on something solid. Then a piece of cloth emerged. It was pink, the same color as Dorothy’s bathing suit. Someone else thought they saw a hand in the churning falls.

Certain Death

Now the group of rescuers was certain Dorothy Sparks was dead in the water beneath the falls. And they were just as certain that they weren’t going to leave her there. The river, however, was too strong to let them fish Dorothy out.

To retrieve the body, the rescue party concluded they would have to move the river. And that’s what they did. Working upstream, the rescue team built a makeshift dam and forced the river to overrun its banks and bypass the falls.

With the waterfall held back and reduced to a trickle, Trooper Hayward again went to work with a grappling pole. After some effort, he hooked something. He saw a hand coming to the surface of the pool beneath the falls. Hayward reached into the water and grabbed the hand. To his amazement, the hand grabbed him back.

A Grateful ‘Corpse’

Finally, the rescuers and Dorothy’s friends would find out what had happened. Three hours earlier, Dorothy said, her daredevil nature had gotten the better of her. She had bet herself that if she took off her shoes she could skip across the rocks in the river above the falls and come out on the other side.

Midway across the river, Dorothy slipped and fell in. Before she had any chance to act, the Swift River, true to its name, shot her over the falls. But beneath the falls she managed to position herself at the rear of a cave behind the falls that held a tiny pocket of air. There she waited until rescuers found her.

As she entered the ambulance for a trip to the hospital, Dorothy gave trooper Hayward a thank you hug. It was the only time, he would later recall, he had been hugged by a corpse. After her recovery, Dorothy would go on to become a teacher and then a school principal. She died in 2017.

Thanks to: Readers Digest, The Riddle of Rocky Gorge, UNH The Magazine of the University of New Hampshire and The New Hampshire. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Gardens

Historic gardens have a special appeal to New Englanders if only because of our harsh winters and long dreary springs.

Though they offer the visitor serenity and relaxation, preserving historic gardens usually involves a great deal of hard work and commitment. Stewardship of historic gardens also requires knowledge of horticulture, garden design, landscape design, history and often architecture and architectural history.

Here, then, are six historic gardens, one in each New England state.

Elizabeth Park

The historic gardens at Hartford’s Elizabeth Park

Elizabeth Park in Hartford is the oldest municipal rose garden in the United States with 800 rose varieties.

Charles M. Pond, who financed the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, bequeathed his estate to Hartford — but only if the city named it after his late wife. In 1897, Hartford took possession of the 102-acre site.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth created the 2.5-acre Rose Garden in 1904. The city decided it couldn’t afford the historic garden in the 1970s, so a group of volunteers rescued it.

Today, the park includes the historic gardens, pathways, century-old Lord and Burnham greenhouses, lawns, tennis courts, bowling greens, a picnic grove and a pond. Ironically, the border between Hartford and West Hartford moved, so Hartford’s largest park now sits mostly in the neighboring town.

1561 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, Conn.

Asticou Azalea Garden

Asticou Azalea Garden, one of two historic gardens that came from Reef Point

Think of a Japanese stroll garden in coastal Maine and you’ve pretty much imagined the Asticou Azalea Garden. Though it started in 1957, the garden has a much longer history. It began as Reef Point, a Bar Harbor estate owned by Mary Cadwalder Rawle and Frederic Rhinelander Jones, Edith Wharton’s brother. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were also parents of landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.

Farrand inherited the property in 1935, and she and her husband Max decided to turn Reef Point into a horticultural study center. The venture was less successful than the Farrands hoped, and Bar Harbor refused to grant them a tax exemption after the Maine fires of 1947.

Farrand then broke up her gardens, selling many of her plants to Charles Savage. He moved most of them to Thuya Garden, an English flower garden, but he thought the azaleas would do better next to a pond in Northeast Harbor. And so he created the Asticou Azalea Garden, which features cherry trees that bloom in spring, azaleas and rhododendrons in June, Iris in July, water lilies in August and fall colors in September and October.

Savage designed the historic gardens to inspire feelings of serenity, something you’ll need if you visit nearby Acadia National Park in the summer.

3 Sound Drive, Northeast Harbor, Maine

Arnold Arboretum

Arnold Arboretum includes some of the oldest historic gardens

The Arnold Arboretum certainly counts as historic, as it started in 1872 because of a bequest from a whaling captain named James Arnold. But is an arboretum a garden? Well, yes. The Arnold Arboretum includes an herbarium, the wildflower-filled Cosmopolitan Meadow and the Explorers Garden, with plants from the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium of the early 1900s.

The arboretum began when Arnold bequeathed part of his estate to Harvard, which added it to another country estate given to the college by Benjamin Bussey. In 1872, Harvard named botany professor Charles Sprague Sargent as arboretum director. Sargent worked with Frederick Law Olmsted to design the roads, pathways and gardens.

Harvard gave the Boston the arboretum in 1882, when it joined the city’s Emerald Necklace park system. The college got a 1,000-year lease and the responsibility for running the historic garden, now 281 acres.

The arboretum includes about 15,000 plants, including tiny trees in the Larz Anderson Collection of Japanese Dwarfed Trees, originally imported by Larz Anderson in 1913.

125 Arborway, Boston, Mass.

Prescott Park

Portsmouth’s Prescott Park

Prescott Park provides a waterfront oasis for pedestrians strolling through the historic city of Portsmouth, N.H. Two sisters, Mary and Josie Prescott, inherited a fortune from their brother Charles in 1932. They decided to use the money to replace a seedy, industrial section of town with a public park.

The sisters began to systematically buy up land along the Piscataqua River, deeding the land to Portsmouth in 1940. They also set up a trust to maintain the 10-acre park in 1949.

Today, the University of New Hampshire donates plant material for the park’s flower beds, but the city maintains them. The park, popular among artists and wedding planners, features lawns, gardens, brick walkways, boardwalk piers, public docks, and an island for picknicking. The park stays open year-round, and in summer hosts outdoor Broadway musicals.

1 Water Street, Portsmouth, N.H.

Green Animals

The Green Animals topiary garden in Portsmouth, R.I., dates to 1859, when the Victorian mansion was built on a 7-acre estate overlooking Narragansett Bay.

Thomas E. Brayton, treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Mass., bought the property in 1872. He hired Joseph Carreiro as superintendent of the property in 1905, and Carreiro began to train topiaries. Carreiro also planted and maintained fruit trees, perennial beds, herb and vegetable gardens.

Later joined by his son-in-law, Carreiro created more than 80 topiaries, including a horse and rider, a unicorn, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant and two bears.

In the 1940s, the estate hosted a coming-out party for Jacqueline Bouvier and later a reception for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. In 1972, Brayton’s daughter Alice left the estate to The Preservation Society of Newport County upon her death.

Today, Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. It opens seasonally and includes formal flowerbeds, geometric pathways, rose and grape arbors and fruit trees in addition to the topiaries.

380 Cory’s Lane, Portsmouth, R.I.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller

The formal Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Garden

The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park was the boyhood home of George Perkins Marsh, a founder of both the environmental movement and the Smithsonian Institute. Frederick Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, bought the property. He managed it according to the principles of land conservation put forth by George Perkins Marsh.

Mary and Laurance Rockefeller later bought the property in 1954. A series of prominent landscape architects, including Ellen Shipman and Robert Morris Copeland, created and altered the extensive gardens. Today they include an azalea and rhododendron garden, rock garden, cutting garden, a hemlock hedgerow and a stand of Norway spruce,

The property became a national historic park in 1992, its purpose to interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America. It is open from Memorial Day through October.

54 Elm St, Woodstock, Vt.

Images: Arnold Arboretum By Daderot at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18516058; Asticou Azalea Gardens By Dudesleeper – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17126170; Prescott Park By Bostonian13 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27655804; Green Animals By Brian Feathers, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58062721. This story was updated in 2021.

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Six Epic College Pranks

College pranks have been part of the college experience since at least the 13^th century, when Oxford students sent a prostitute to the cardinal in residence. The tradition of college pranks came to North America with the Puritans.

In the early 1800s, Harvard students thought it amusing to ring the bell in Memorial Hall during the wee hours of the morning. But at Brown, students preferred to muffle the college bell.

Over the years, college pranks have involved putting farm animals in inappropriate places. Pranksters often victimized prominent statues as well. Dartmouth students painted the statue of Harvard’s John Harvard green, Yale students painted him blue and others put him in women’s underwear.

Here we bring you six historic college pranks performed at New England institutions of higher learning. If you know of any other college pranks, please include them in the comments section.

College Pranks, Animal House Style

The Gardner Dow Field at Connecticut State, where students first paraded the ramnapped Ulysses.

There’s nothing like a sports rivalry to inspire college pranks, and the University of Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island, not 60 miles apart, are no exception.

In 1933, Connecticut State Agricultural College changed its name to Connecticut State College, and renamed its football team the Statesman rather than the Aggies.

It didn’t help the team. In 1934, the Connecticut Statesmen lost six out of their first seven games, while their opponents shut them out five times. Their final home game against the Rhode Island State Rams was likely to end badly for Connecticut.

Then Connecticut students learned that Rhode Island students planned to taunt them by bringing Ulysses, their ram mascot, to the game.

The Connecticut students stole Ulysses. During the 1934 game, Connecticut fans paraded Ulysses on the field accompanied by the marching band. As expected, Connecticut lost 18-0, Rhody fans tore down the goal posts and a fight broke out.

The next month, Connecticut chose as its mascot the Husky, a less kidnappable animal than the ram. For years afterward, Connecticut students ramnapped Ulysses and his successors. And for years afterward, the winner of the UConn-Rhode Island football game took home Ramnapping Trophy. When Rhode Island quit using live rams as mascots in 1974, the trophy was moved to the J. Robert Donnelly Husky Heritage Sports Museum on the UConn campus.

Streaking in Winter

University of Maine at Orono

College pranks took the form of streaking on college campuses starting in the early 1970s. Defined as running naked through a public place, streaking started out with solitary males running across campus or at sporting events. Women soon joined in the fun and streakers began running around en masse.

Some historians peg the beginning of the craze after newspapers began reported streakers at Florida State in January 1974. Despite the New England winter, University of Maine students quickly took up the sport at Orono.

The student government in March called a meeting at Memorial Hall to discuss how to handle the streaking epidemic. One streaker couldn’t resist temptation, and he streaked the meeting.

The state of Maine ended up enacting a law against streaking, but it proved ineffective. On Nov. 2, 2002, a police officer arrested two University of Maine undergraduate women for jogging naked through downtown Orono. A prosecutor charged them with indecent conduct. One of the women asked the police officer if he saw her genitals. He said no. The judge ruled a woman naked in the street is not an indecent act under Maine law because a woman’s genitals are primarily internal.

MIT Masters College Pranks

Smoot mark 364.4 on the Cambridge end of the Harvard Bridge. It says “+ 1 ear”, not “± 1 ear”, as it should.

The geeks at MIT have so perfected college pranks over the centuries that the MIT Museum once featured a Hall of Hacks.

The college pranks at MIT often display technical aptitude, something you’d expect at a university that teaches technology. MIT students once put a campus police car on top of the Great Dome, its lights flashing and its dummy inhabitant enjoying coffee and donuts.

Later, they put a subway car on the Great Dome and got it moving.

In the 1930s, Ken Wadleigh and four other MIT students welded a streetcar to its rails. They distracted the motorman and then set off thermite bombs to weld the wheels. Wadleigh became a dean at MIT.

In 1958, MIT students used undergraduate Oliver R. Smoot to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. They marked the bridge at every Smoot, and measured it as 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus an ear. When the bridge was renovated in 1964, the markings were restored, and they remain today.

Not all pranks involve technology. MIT students dressed the John Harvard statue as the Unabomber after the arrest of that Harvard alumni.

Cow-centric College Pranks

Thompson Hall at UNH

University of New Hampshire students have long taken to heart the admonition, “If at all possible, involve a cow.”

Students at UNH, a land-grant college, have access to farm animals for their college pranks. Over the years, students put pigs and sheep in places where pigs and sheep don’t belong.

In the 1930s, Alpha Gamma Rho brothers managed to haul a cow into the Thompson Hall tower. Somehow they got the cow down as well.

In 1951, students replicated the college prank by stashing a cow in the second floor of Ballard Hall. A poem written by the night watchman, Pop Marshall, recounts the episode:

“Now I’m willing to guard your property / And watch your buildings fine, / But teaching music to a cow / Is a little out of my line.”

Years later, UNH would be victimized by a more serious college prank of sorts when popular physics professor Kevin Yates turned out to be a college dropout named Marvin Hewitt. Read Hewitt’s extraordinary story here.

Messing With Messer

In the annals of Brown University, perhaps no administrator was so victimized by college pranks as Asa Messer. He became president in 1804, just when Nicholas Brown gave $5,000 to the College of Rhode Island and renamed it Brown. Under Messer’s tenure, the student body grew, but Brown’s bequest wasn’t quite enough to run the college to the student’s liking.

Asa Messer

Beloved tutors left Brown for other colleges, but Messer couldn’t afford to hire enough replacements to keep class size down.

Early in his presidency, students played harmless college pranks such as painting Messer’s horse or stabling it in his third-floor office.

Then the students’ pranks turned dangerous. They built a hut of kindling and set it on fire next to University Hall, endangering the building’s roof and Messer’s barn. Students damaged dormitories in University Hall and broke windows and doors of Hope College’s new chapel.

University Hall in 1792

Messer didn’t believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the undergraduate. He punished pranksters by rusticating them – sending them off to work on a farm. They called him a tyrant.

Messer believed the students aimed their vandalism at him personally, and he resigned.

Samuel Gridley Howe had attended Brown during those troubled times, and had once led Dr. Messer’s horse into the belfry. He also put hot ashes in his tutor’s bed.

After he founded the Perkins School for the Blind, Howe went to visit Dr. Messer. He apologized for his wayward youthful behavior. Messer replied, “Howe, I am afraid of you now. I am afraid there will be a torpedo under my chair before I know it.”

Panty Raid To End All Panty Raids

Vermont College of Fine Arts today

On the evening of May 24, 1963, carloads of cadets from Norwich University led a panty raid against the women of Vermont College (now the Vermont College of Fine Arts).

Vermont’s faculty and staff had an inkling something would happen that evening. A local store clerk said he’d sold out of women’s underwear that day. Vermont Dean Pauline Collins told her students she’d received a call from Gen. Ernest Harmon, who headed of Norwich Academy, warning about the panty raid. She told them to cancel their dates, return to the dormitory by 7:00 p.m., turn out the lights when the panty raid began and let no one into the building.

At dusk, cars carrying 300 Norwich cadets began to arrive, followed by the police and fire department. A hose truck stopped in front of the dorm, and the firefighters jumped out to hook up the hoses. A Norwich cadet commandeered the fire truck and drove it into a fountain. Girls shouted from the windows, “Come on Norwich! We want Norwich!” Firefighters then turned their hoses on the students in the windows.

Fighting broke out between police and cadets. Police Chief George Connor said, “We were knocked down, kicked, and trampled upon. It’s a miracle that no one was killed.”

In the end, Vermont’s president issued a denial that his students had participated at all in the hijinks.

Images: Smoot, By Denimadept – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6792703; Streaker, By Alex Kehr – originally posted to Flickr as #367, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3953923Thompson Hall at UNH By AcrossTheAtlantic – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63031225. Vermont College By Hannahmorris – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24295961.

This story about college pranks was updated in 2022.

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Bennington’s Trinity University, the Medical School That Didn’t Exist (But Churned Out Doctors Anyway)

In 1889, medical schools popped up all over the country to satisfy the high demand for doctors. Prospective medical students had a host of choices. Did they prefer The University of New Hampshire or University of Cincinnati? Trenton (N.J.) Medical College or the New York State Medical College? Or better yet, how about the prestigious Trinity University of Medicine and Surgery in Bennington, Vt.?

The only problem with all these medical schools was that they were fake. They were a figment of the fertile imagination of Henry Freeland Bradbury (or at least that seems to have been his name). Bradbury practiced medicine in many areas, popping up in Nashua, N.H., Lowell, Mass. and Boston, as well as Bethel and St. Albans in Vermont. And he didn’t always use the name Bradbury. In one city he would morph into Dr. Freeland. In another, Dr. Ripley.

Trinity University

Illustration of a Trinity University diploma

When away from his patients, Bradbury sold diplomas by the score. They certified that the bearer was trained in medicine and surgery. He offered the diplomas for a variety of fees, ranging from $60 to $300.

In the spring of 1889, the medical community first learned of Trinity University. A doctor applied for admission to a medical society at Buffalo, N.Y. He presented himself as a graduate of Trinity University in Bennington, Vt.

A quick inquiry to the town clerk at Bennington would reveal that, in fact, Trinity University had incorporated in the small town. Trinity offered a course of studies in law, dentistry and liberal arts, as well as medicine and surgery. At least that’s what the articles of incorporation stipulated.

The ‘university’ never amounted to anything more than a piece of paper. But it was enough for Bradbury to start churning out diplomas. He printed circulars advertising the college and developed a brisk business selling diplomas.

Unfortunately for Bradbury, one of his advertisements reached Alan Hardwicke, a hardware maker. Hardwicke’s brother was a physician, and the two men suspected something was off about Trinity University.

Busted

The advertisement didn’t explicitly state that the college sold phony degrees. It talked about accepting only students of good moral character and requiring a lengthy course of study. But when Hardwicke began corresponding with Bradbury, the outlines of the operation became clear.

Bradbury wanted Hardwicke to send him a paper addressing a medical condition, such as “Treatment of Bright’s Disease.” And he suggested he meet with Hardwicke to administer an exam. The reason, he said, was so Hardwicke and he could swear under oath, if needed, that Hardwicke had sat for an exam to receive his diploma.

When Hardwicke balked, Bradbury agreed to send the aspiring doctor a diploma for $60 (C.O.D.) to the train station at Buffalo under a false name. Afterwards, Bradbury agreed, he would place Hardwicke’s name in the college records and certify he had graduated in response to any requests to verify his status.

Bennington, Vt., in 1887. No Trinity University here.

Hardwicke promptly forwarded the diploma to the medical society, which began investigating. They soon uncovered how Bradbury operated. Mail for the college went to a Cornhill Street address in Boston. It arrived in a building that housed a waiting room for streetcar passengers. A lawyer collected the mail for Bradbury and forwarded it to him in Nashua, N.H., where he maintained a medical practice.

From that office in New Hampshire, Bradbury supplied the diplomas and managed the business of Trinity University. He imported sheepskin for the diplomas from New York and had them printed in Lowell, Mass.

Though the medical societies forwarded their findings to the police, for a time Bradbury remained at large . Eventually, however, a prosecutor indicted him in federal court for the fraud, and he pleaded guilty. The matter did not, however, end Bradbury’s medical career.

Serial Husband

Bradbury, then but a young man in his early 20s, changed his name to Henry Esmond and returned to Vermont. He set up practice in several towns and enjoyed a strong country practice. While in Vermont, Bradbury/Esmond proved adept at winning the affections of women. But bad at keeping them.

His first marriage to wife Anna ended in divorce in 1907 when he developed an unusually powerful influence over one of his patients, a young girl named Fleda White. Fleda’s father did his best to keep the doctor, now in his late 30s, away from his daughter.

In the end, however, the two married, though Bradbury/Esmond had to bring Fleda and her family to Claremont, N.H., for the wedding. The reason? Bradbury/Edmonds had been divorced form his first wife for less than three years. Vermont law required a three-year cooling off period for divorcees before they could marry again in the state.

The second marriage proved no more successful than the first, and Fleda divorced the doctor in 1914 owing to his abusive behavior.

No Charm

A third trip down the aisle ended acrimoniously, as well. Shortly after his second divorce came through, the doctor married a young woman named Martha. The marriage got off to a bad start when police arrested Henry while the couple honeymooned in Toronto. Things went downhill from there, with Henry returning to his abusive ways.

He admitted to his third wife that he had been convicted of assaulting one of his former wives. But, she revealed to the court during sensational divorce hearings, she never did find out why he was arrested in Toronto. That’s because he used the false name Marcus Eastman.

The judge agreed to grant the divorce and set the former dean of Trinity University at liberty to pursue his happiness.

This story about Trinity University was updated in 2022.

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USS Squalus Rescue: World Awaits News of Sailors’ Fate

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Somebody is Alive’

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

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

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

The Diving Bell

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

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

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

The Squalus Rescue Begins

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

The rescuers took it as a good omen.

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

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

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

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

An Inside Straight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lead Boots

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

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

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

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

Pea Soup

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

Cutaway of the rescue chamber used to save Squalus survivors.

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

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

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

Where Are the Napkins?

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

Mihalowski opened the hatch.

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

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

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

Watching and Cheering

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

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

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

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

Disobeying Orders

William Badders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both Kinds of Tears

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foul

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Make Mine a Blonde’

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

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

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

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

Plan B

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

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

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

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

Surfacing

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

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

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

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

What About the Others?

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

Finding out would be the most perilous operation yet.

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

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

Black Water

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

John Mihalowski

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

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

The Squalus Rescue Ends

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Happened Next

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lawrence Gainor died in 1989 at the age of 89.

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

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

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

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

‘Shipmate’

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

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

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

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

This story about the Squalus rescue was updated in 2022.

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Justin Morrill, Vermonter, Raises U.S. Tariffs in 1861

Justin Morrill for 30 years led the fight to raise tariffs on goods that competed with U.S. products. For that, he took the blame — unjustly — for starting the Civil War.

Charles Dickens was one of the critics who disapproved of Justin Morrill, a Vermont congressman he probably never met.

Charles Dickens

Morrill had shepherded through Congress a tariff protecting U.S. industry and raising workers’ wages. It also punished southern cotton exporters and British textile manufacturers that hungered for raw cotton.

Many, including Dickens, wrongly believed the South seceded from the Union because of the Morrill Tariff.

But historians argue the Morrill Tariff did NOT start the Civil War — and that it helped the United States emerge as a major industrial power.

Justin Morrill

Justin Morrill today is best known for starting land grant schools like the University of Connecticut, University of New Hampshire, MIT and more than 100 others. He was also the single most important Republican in Congress on trade issues from the Civil War to the turn of the 20^th century.

Thompson Hall at the University of New Hampshire, a land grant college.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, Morrill represented the interests of Vermont farmers.

“The farmer of Vermont felt himself robbed by every pound of butter, every cord of wood, and every head of cattle that came across the border to be sold in competition with his own products,” wrote a biographer. The same held true for manufacturers.

Justin Morrill

Morrill fought what was then called “reciprocity treaties” – “you cut my tariff, I’ll cut yours.” Today they’d be called bilateral trade treaties. Morrill fought them all, “tooth and nail,” he told a friend. While Morrill was head of the Senate Finance Committee from 1877 to 1898, no new reciprocity treaty passed the Senate.

“I am for ruling America for the benefit, first, of Americans, and for the ‘rest of mankind’ afterwards,” he said.

“Free trade abjures patriotism and boasts of cosmopolitism. It regards the labor of our own people with no more favor than that of the barbarian on the Danube or the cooly on the Ganges.”

Morrill Tariff

For those who believe globalization is inevitable, the Tariff of 1857 proves otherwise.

Shipping cotton from Savannah

Morrill was a sophomore congressman when the Tariff of 1857 lowered tariffs to about 17 percent. Southerners and farm states supported it, believing U.S. trade partners would lower their tariffs and create more demand for cotton and agricultural exports. Then the Panic of 1857 struck later in the year, and free traders lost the upper hand.

From 1858-98, as a Whig congressman and Republican senator, Morrill pushed for tariffs protecting products made in the United States.

On March 2, 1861, the Morrill Tariff passed. It increased duties in order to raise wages for industrial workers and to protect specific industries such as wool, iron, textiles and other manufactured goods.

Southerners tried to blame the Morrill Tariff for starting the Civil War despite the fact that southerners had already left the Senate. South Carolina had already seceded more than two months earlier.

The British, including Dickens, hated the Morrill Tariff and bought the southerners’ argument.

In 1861, American historian John Motley wrote the Morrill Tariff ‘has done more than any commissioner from the Southern republic could do to alienate the feelings of the English public towards the United States.’

Dickens owned a magazine called All the Year Round. In it, an article attacked the tariff . “…under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle,” it said. “Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils…”

Karl Marx, also writing from London, argued slavery caused the Civil War and the tariff was just a pretext.

Post-War Prosperity

Justin Morrill Homestead in Strafford, Vt.

Historians argue whether the Morrill Tariff did or did not cause the Civil War. Most have less interest in whether protective tariffs helped or hurt the U.S. economy.

One historian notes the Civil War — and the Morrill Tariff — “was the forcing ground…of American industrial development.”

“The increase in manufactured output was phenomenal,” wrote A.J. Youngson Brown in the American Economy 1860-1940. “The value of manufactured products increased from about $2,000 million in 1859 to about $13,000 million in 1899 … This stupendous increase has many significances; most notably, from the international viewport, America by the 1890s had become the premier manufacturing nation of the world.”

Morrill sponsored two higher tariffs during Abraham Lincoln‘s administration to raise money for the Civil War.

Overall, tariffs didn’t fall until the Revenue Act of 1913, known as the Underwood tariff.

From 1860 to World War II, every Republican presidential candidate supported protective tariffs, according to U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO by William A. Lovett, Alfred E. Eckes, Jr. and Richard L. Brinkman.

“They preached class harmony and warned that removal of the protective tariff would ‘bring widespread discontent’,” they wrote.

President William McKinley said, “Free trade results in giving our money, our manufactures, and our markets to other nations.”

Justin Morrill died in office on Dec. 28, 1899, at the age of 88. The Morrill Homestead in Strafford, Vt., is a National Historic Landmark.

This story about Justin Morrill was updated in 2022.

Image: By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50733908

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