Feature Article Archives - Page 4 of 11

[FEATURE ARTICLE] Young Charley Baker of Wickford: North Kingstown’s First American Civil War Killed in Action

February 3, 2019 By Brian Wallin

Young Charley Baker of Wickford: Rhode Island’s First Civil War KIA

In August 2015, we shared the story of the first North Kingstowner to fall in combat in the American Civil War during the March 14, 1862 Battle of New Bern (also spelled as New Berne) in North Carolina. With the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum’s recent acquisition of artifacts relating to that battle, it seems like a good time to retell the story of young Charley Baker and include a little about another North Kingstown man who died in that same encounter with North Carolina Confederate forces.

In a quiet corner of North Kingstown’s Elm Grove Cemetery is the Baker family plot. Among those buried under a simple, moss-encrusted marker is Charles Cahoon Baker, who is said to be the first North Kingstown resident to die in battle during the U.S. Civil War. Charley was a member of Company H, 4th Rhode Island Infantry Regiment part of the forces under command of then Col. Ambrose Burnside sent to capture the important fortifications that guarded key transportation lines used by Confederate forces. While Charley was not the first Rhode Islander to die in the war, his story is eminently representative of the horror of battle and the sadness of its aftermath.

Charley Baker was born in Wickford in 1845, the third of nine children of David Sherman Baker and Mary Cahoon Waite Baker. He grew up in the family homestead at 50 Pleasant Street (the house, still standing, was built in 1785 by Benjamin Lawton Packer and sold to Charley’s grandfather in the 1830s). When Charley’s mother and father started growing their large family, the house quickly was expanded and took on its present appearance around the time of the American Civil War.

Charlie Baker's Grave in North Kingstown’s Elm Grove Cemetery — Charlie Baker’s Grave in North Kingstown’s Elm Grove Cemetery

The Bakers were prominent local residents, members of the First Baptist Church and a family of strong patriotic principles. No one was surprised when Charley, who had just turned 17, was among those young men who rushed to Providence, RI, to volunteer as a private in the Grand Army of the Republic in September of 1861. Charley and his fellow volunteers left Rhode Island for Washington, DC on October 2. After training, they were attached to the Army of the Potomac and in early January of 1862, under the command of General Ambrose Burnside, they were sent to North Carolina, seeing service at the Battle of Roanoke Island before being sent on to New Bern.

Let’s go back to that cold, damp and dark morning on the last day of young Charley’s life. He woke from a likely fitful sleep after having landed with his comrades and marching through rain and mud to a campsite outside the Confederate-held Fort Thompson outside the city of New Bern. Shortly after dawn, gunfire broke out. Colonel Isaac Rodman, a well-known Rhode Island banker and politician who later died at the Battle of Antietam, ordered his 4^th Regiment, including Charley’s Company H, into a breech in the Rebel lines.

Corporal George Allen, in a privately published 1887 book “Forty-six Months with the Fourth Rhode Island Volunteers”, recounts the action that took young Charley’s life on the morning of March 14. Union troops had launched an unsuccessful assault on Fort Thompson. Colonel Rodman, seeing the troops fall back, took it on himself to rally the 4^th Rhode Island to charge again. In Allen’s words:

Our colonel immediately decided to advance the regiment without orders, taking the responsibility of the movement on his own shoulders; and dispatching an aide to General Parke to inform him of what he was about to do, gave the order, ‘Fourth Rhode Island fall in’. The boys were ready for the work. Moving by the right flank for a short distance to a slight rise of ground, and then right by files into line, they advanced at a quick step on the rebel line. Shot and shell, grape and minie-balls greeted their approach, and the men began to drop before the murderous fire; yet never swerving from their onward course, they steadily advanced, loading and firing as fast as possible, till within a hundred yards of the works, when with a cheer, they charged home, and planting their colors on the ramparts, swarmed over the breast-works. A short, fierce struggle, and the first was ours.

Battle of New Bern in Harper's Weekly (5 April 1862) — Battle of New Bern in Harper’s Weekly (5 April 1862)

Sadly, Charley Baker was not among those who made it to the fort. As he ran through the breech in the line, his last experience was likely a blinding flash and his war was over. He became the first of some 90 Rhode Islanders to die in that battle. Union losses also included 380 wounded and 1 missing. Confederate losses: 64 killed, 101 wounded, 413 captured or missing.

As was the custom whenever possible, Charley’s remains were recovered and his body was brought back to Rhode Island 6 weeks after the battle. On April 26^th, many in the town of Wickford gathered at the First Baptist Church to mourn with the Baker family and also with members of the family of 32-year old Sgt. George H. Church, Jr., another North Kingstown man who died during at New Bern. His body was returned for burial along with that of Private Baker. George was the only surviving child of Dr. George Church and his and his wife Maria Burnham Church. A son named Samuel had died just short of one year of age in 1828.

The Church family grave obelisk has these words in tribute beneath George Junior’s name:

Rebellion raged throughout the land. Our son went forth with sword in hand. He nobly fought. He nobly fell. And yet we hope with weeping eyes, this body glorious will arise. Then safe in heaven we’ll meet our son in robes of white, and armor on.

The funeral service for the two men was described as the largest of its kind in the town’s memory. The procession from the church to the Oak Grove Cemetery on Tower Hill Road was nearly a mile in length. The caskets were carried on carriages from the Narragansett (Fire) Engine Company, of which both men had been volunteer members. The two soldiers were laid to rest in their respective family burial sites.

In her book, “Wickford Memories”, author Anita S. Hinkley writes:

“Charles Baker was one of my father’s older brothers and he was the first casualty of the Civil War from Rhode Island. Every Decoration Day we go to the Cemetery and put flowers on his grave. My grandmother never went. She and her only daughter, Abby, sat at home and look at Charlie’s few possessions and grieved as only women can who have lost their best.”

(Author’s Note: Actually, the first Rhode Islander to die in the U.S. Civil War was Pvt. Henry C. Davis of Woonsocket, RI. A member of Co K, 1st Rhode Island Detached Militia, he died of typhoid at Camp Sprague in Washington on June 16, 1861, 5 weeks before the First Battle of Bull Run. He was buried in St. James Cemetery in Woonsocket, RI).

One hundred and fifty seven years ago in March of 1863, a young man from North Kingstown, RI, along with a fellow soldier from the same town, gave his life in a brief and violent moment in the honorable service of his country. They were among more than two thousand Rhode Islanders to die in the Civil War. The motto of the Varnums, “To Encourage Patriotism”, reflects their memory and all who have gallantly served our nation through the years.

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[FEATURE ARTICLE] Samuel Colt and His Legendary Model 1860 Army Revolver

January 1, 2019 By Brian Wallin

Until the 19th century was well along, handguns were limited to single-shot weapons. In 1836, a 22-year old Hartford, Connecticut man, Samuel Colt, came up with a concept for controlled rotation of a firearm that would allow multiple rounds to be fired without reloading. Colt, the son of a textile manufacturer, developed a fascination for mechanical devices while visiting his father’s mill. After being expelled from Amherst Academy for high-jinx involving a fire at the school, Colt went to sea to study navigation.

It was during his time on the water that he had an epiphany watching the helmsman spin the ship’s wheel. He made a wooden cylinder, locking pin, and hammer and determined that this could be rotated to allow a pistol to fire multiple times. On return from his ocean adventures, Samuel’s father financed his initial business ventures, but pulled the plug after his son’s initial failures. Colt then traveled around the U.S. and Canada demonstrating the use of nitrous oxide and providing fireworks shows. Eventually, he earned enough money as a showman to hire some experienced gunsmiths and to put his innovative ideas into a finished product. On February 25, 1836, he received a patent for a revolving cylinder pistol that, according to the documentation, enabled improved “facility in loading”, gave more stability to the user through “the weight and location of the cylinder,” and enhanced “rapidity in the succession of discharges.”

With that, Samuel Colt was on his way to lasting fame. But, the journey would take a few twists along the way. In 1836, with more financial help from his father, Colt opened Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Company in Paterson, New Jersey and began turning out handguns and rifles, all incorporating the revolving cylinder concept. He failed at gaining a government contract for his weapons, deemed too advanced for the time. Although he did manage some sales, Colt was forced to give up control of the company when it went into financial distress.

The Mexican-American War proved to be Colt’s turning point. He was awarded a government contract for 1,000 revolvers and 200 thousand rounds of a tinfoil ammunition cartridge he had perfected. He had returned to his native Hartford, CT, and by 1855 built a new factory on the banks of the Connecticut River. The building still stands as a national historic landmark.

Under the management of an exceptionally talented engineer, Elisha K. Root, Colt’s company developed a means to produce interchangeable parts for its weapons, greatly increasing their attractiveness to buyers here and overseas. Soon, the Hartford plant was turning out 150 weapons a day. Around this time, the winds of war were blowing stronger by the day. Colt had been doing business south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but when war broke out in April of 1861, he immediately turned his attention to the needs of the Union forces. One of the wealthiest men in America by that time, Colt outfitted an entire volunteer regiment from his home state, the 1^St Regiment Colt’s Revolving Rifles of Connecticut (and along the way was commissioned a colonel, a rank that he greatly prized).

Two Colt Percussion Revolvers: (top) Colt Model 1860 Army Percussion Revolver, and (bottom) Colt Model 1851 Navy

Among the most popular of his revolvers were two mainstays of the Union military, the .36 caliber Model 1851 Navy revolver with its familiar octagonal barrel (replaced by a round barrel version in 1861) and the famed .44 caliber Model 1860 Army revolver. The Varnum Memorial Armory Museum has a fine example of the latter weapon. The Model 1851 was used by both the Army and Navy and a fair number wound up in the hands of the Confederacy, either purchased before the war, carried by men who took their weapons with them when they switched their allegiance from North to South or captured during battle. Incidentally, according to American Civil War historian and author Rob Grandchamp, Rhode Island’s Governor William Sprague gave Col. Zenas Bliss of the 7^th Rhode Island Volunteers a Colt Navy pistol, but it was lost during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

For this article, the writer will devote attention to the Model 1860 as it not only played a major role in the American Civil War, but it would eventually evolve into the famed Model 1873 Peacemaker, “the gun that won the West”. The Model 1860 was carried by army infantry, cavalry, and artillerymen as well as by navy men, although officers in both services usually carried smaller sidearms.

Its single-action requires the hammer to be cocked for each firing. The .44 caliber Model 1860 uses the same size frame as the lighter .36 caliber Navy Model 1851. The Model 1860 also has a longer cylinder and a distinctive “creeping” loading lever, using pins that engage notches in the barrel to provide added strength. Colt first introduced this feature in an1855 side hammer revolver.

.44 caliber Model 1860 Army revolver at the Varnum Armory

More than 200-thousand Model 1860s were built between 1860 and 1873, making it the most widely used revolver of the Civil War (a major fire in 1864 put the Hartford factory out of business for the duration although it was returned to service later). The Union Army purchased the bulk of the factory’s output (some 129,730 pieces). The Varnum Continental’s Model 1860 carries the serial number 111432, indicating that it was made in 1863. Armory Vice President and Museum Curator Patrick Donovan obtained the Colt through Skinner Auctions along with a holster in excellent condition.

The weapon accommodates a 0.454-inch diameter round, spherical lead ball or conical-tipped bullet propelled by a 30-grain black powder charge in a paper cylinder. Soldiers preferred the latter as it could be loaded more rapidly. The paper cartridge and bullet were placed in the front of each chamber and seated with a loading lever ram. A percussion cap was placed onto a raised aperture, a nipple, at the back end of the chamber. Repeat the process five more times and the gun was fully armed.

The small copper percussion cap, when struck by the hammer, ignites the charge. The projectile, depending on the load, has a muzzle velocity of about 900 feet per second with an effective range of 75 to 100 yards. The Varnum’s Model 1860 has walnut grips, although there some were produced with more ornate grips, including ivory. Colt employed talented engravers who would also produce ornate designs on the gun’s metal finish. The standard model was unadorned.

The Model 1860’s frame did not have a top strap (a strengthening feature placed above the cylinder). Instead, its lower frame and a massive fixed cylinder pin provided the necessary strength. This feature required that the barrel be removed to also remove the cylinder. This concept made the Model 1860 slimmer and lighter than its closest competitor, the Remington Model 1858. Colt’s pistol could also be used with a detachable shoulder stock.

When originally produced, the Model 1860 cost approximately $20 per revolver, or in today’s valuation, more than $600. This was rather expensive during the 1860s, both for the United States Army and private citizens. Colt was criticized for the price, and by 1865 the revolver was reduced to $14.50. Throughout his life, Colt assertively protected his patents and business interests and was often unfavorably noted for his excessive promotional activities.

Colt's Hartford mansion known as Armsmear — Colt’s Hartford mansion known as Armsmear

Although he was widely recognized as a highly successful industrialist and inventor, Colt would see neither the full fruits of his labors nor the end of the Civil War. On January 10, 1862, at the age of 47, he died of chronic rheumatism (gout) at his Hartford mansion known as Armsmear. He is buried under a massive memorial in Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery (also the final resting place of famed Rhode Island aviation pioneer Edson Gallaudet). During Colt’s lifetime, his company had turned out more than 400-thousand firearms in a wide variety of styles. His company went public in 1901 and it gained further worldwide fame with its Model 1911 .45 caliber automatic pistol. The company remains in business today, having produced more than 30 million firearms since it was founded.

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[FEATURE ARTICLE] Stiletto — Born in Rhode Island: First of the Mosquito Fleet

December 2, 2018 By Brian Wallin

Recently, the Naval War College temporarily made available to another facility its handsome model of a highly significant war craft, the USS Stiletto. The loan prompted this writer to share the story of its influence on modern naval warfare.

The Herreshoff brothers had already earned a reputation for small boat design and construction as well as integrating their exceptionally well-designed steam engines. When launched as a private yacht in 1885 by John and Nathaniel Herreshoff at their Bristol yard, it was clear Stiletto was built for both beauty and speed. To prove the point, the Herreshoffs brought her to New York Harbor to race the Hudson River’s fastest steamship, the 300-foot long Mary Powell.

On June 10, 1885, the little Stiletto (at 94 feet) handily beat the much larger steamer in a 30-mile run finishing two miles ahead of her competitor and averaging a speed of15 knots. She went on to repeat a similar performance the very next day in the American Yacht Club Regatta, between Larchmont, NY and New London, CT. She beat the large schooner yacht Atalanta by 40 minutes. Unfortunately, Stiletto failed to properly round the finish line buoy and was not awarded the regatta prize. But, she had gotten the attention of the U.S. Navy.

Howell torpedo on the USS Stilleto — Howell torpedo on the USS Stiletto

Around the same time, the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, RI, established in 1869 on Goat Island, had begun to engage in the development of self-propelled torpedoes. Already in use in Europe, the Navy had dragged its heels on importation of the so-called automobile torpedo. It preferred to develop a homegrown weapon. Initial experiments were not successful. However, the Navy found a winner in the Howell torpedo, the brainchild of Navy Lieutenant John Howell, who had perfected his design in 1870. The Navy now needed a vehicle to launch this new weapon and that was the Stiletto.

In 1887, the US Navy purchased Stiletto from the Herreshoffs for $25,000 and converted her to use in Newport, RI, as an experimental torpedo boat. She was officially commissioned in July of 1888 as Wooden Torpedo Boat 1 and continued in that role for nearly 25 years. She spent her entire service life at the Naval Torpedo Station. During that time, she was outfitted with bow and deck launch tubes.

She was the first vessel to launch the self-propelled Howell torpedo. Stiletto began her life as a coal-burner and was converted to oil in 1897 (but that experiment proved to be disappointing). Nevertheless, Stiletto continued to serve and was joined in 1890 by the 138-foot USS Cushing (TB-1), the first purpose-built torpedo boat (and also a Herreshoff product), quickly followed by several more such craft, each a little more sophisticated in design and performance. The Cushing was named for Civil War Lieutenant William Cushing, who sank the Confederate ironclad Albermarle using a crude spar torpedo and proving the value of such weaponry.

Stiletto was a familiar sight on Narragansett Bay. She augmented a barge-mounted test launcher used at the Torpedo Station and in the Sakonnet River. She was a tough little craft, sustaining repeated damage from storms over the years and was even sunk by accident in 1897 when her boiler was accidentally dropped through her hull during maintenance. She was raised and put back in service. In 1900, she successfully participated in major naval maneuvers simulating an attack on Newport Harbor.

Moments after firing a dummy torpedo at the “enemy” battleship Massachusetts, Stiletto’s pilot was blinded by the warship’s searchlight and the little torpedo boat rammed the pier at Fort Adams,Newport, RI. In 1908, she suffered another major accident when the Navy’s oldest serving torpedo boat was rammed by the torpedo station’s steam launch near the north end of Goat Island. Stiletto managed to make the Newport shoreline and was beached near Walnut Street before she could sink.

Stiletto never saw active duty, although her successors were involved in the Spanish-American War with the Atlantic Fleet. She was finally struck from the Navy list on January 27, 1911 and sold in July of that year to James Nolan of East Boston for scrapping. As though she hated to leave the familiar waters of Newport, Stiletto gave up the ghost on October 23, 1912 and sank at her mooring at the Newport Foundry and Machine Works.

By then, the Navy had perfected the role of the torpedo boat destroyer, making further major strides during World War I. The Howell torpedo was superseded around the turn of the century by an American licensed version of the European Whitehead device (manufactured in New York and here in Rhode Island). The little Stiletto and the early torpedo boat destroyers were quickly eclipsed by initial incarnations of what would evolve into the famed four-stackers of World War I.

The legacy of the Stiletto, however, eventually emerged in the famed PT boats of WW II. A little smaller than Stiletto (at 78 and 80 feet), they were familiar sights as their crews trained on the Bay from their base in Melville). Considerably faster and better armed than their ancestor, they carried on her tradition as fast attack torpedo boats. The many classes of Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts ably demonstrated the effectiveness of the technology pioneered before the turn of the 20^th century by the speedy little Stiletto.

Fish torpedo at the Naval War College Museum

At the Naval War College Museum, the only surviving example of the Navy’s original and unsuccessful automobile torpedo, known as the Fish, sits beside one of only three existing examples of the Howell. The handsome model of the Stiletto is displayed with other examples of torpedo delivery vessels as part of the overall story of the evolution of undersea weaponry that began here in 1869. Although the Torpedo Station ceased operations in 1950, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Newport, RI, adjacent to Naval Station Newport continues to advance underwater weaponry and technology.

If you visit the Naval War College Museum (and it is well worth the trip), my fellow docents and I will gladly share in greater detail the development of undersea warfare pioneered right here in Narragansett Bay.

[FEATURE ARTICLE] 11-11-11: One Hundred Years Ago in Providence, RI

November 4, 2018 By Brian Wallin

The Great War had raged in Europe since 1914. President Woodrow Wilson, following the will of the majority of Americans, had valiantly sought to keep the United States neutral. But, Great Britain was a staunch ally of this country and there was a desire to help but not to become embroiled in the bitter battles themselves. However, the German blockade and unrestricted submarine warfare (declared by the Germans in February of 1915) continued to erode America’s fragile neutrality. During that year, the Germans sank a U.S. flagged ship. Without warning, they torpedoed the liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 including 128 Americans. The Kaiser ordered a cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare, but in January of 1917, it resumed. The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Germany. Following the sinking of another American ship, on April 2, 1917, and the appearance of the Zimmerman telegram (in which the German government purportedly tried to get Mexico on its side with the promise of regaining territory lost to the U.S.), Wilson reluctantly asked for a declaration of war. Congress did so on April 6. And so, America stepped into the conflict, in Wilson’s words, “to make the world safe for democracy”.

The American Army numbered about 100,000 (with another 112,000 National Guardsmen) and was not ready for combat. When the first 14,000 troops arrived in Europe, they were initially placed under Allied command. But, the involvement of this country bolstered the Allied cause and the bloody stalemate of nearly four years began to turn against the Germans. American troops, under the leadership of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing soon proved themselves on the battlefield, well supported by their country’s massive manufacturing might.

Finally, on November 11, 1918, an armistice was declared and the war was over. By then, more than two million American soldiers had served in Western Europe. Fifty thousand of them would never return home.

Rhode Island had begun to feel the effect of the conflict in Europe even before America entered the war. In March of 1917, military guards manned all the state’s principal bridges. Four divisions of Naval Reserves had left for training in Boston. Activities at the state’s coast defense forts and at the Navy base at Newport, RI, intensified and a small naval patrol station on Block Island. A full year prior, in 1916, Providence was the scene of a massive Preparedness Day parade with more than 54,000 people marching through the capitol city. Even cut short by rain, the parade outdid one held earlier in Boston that drew only 38,000. The Ocean State was ever patriotic.

War fever even infected the local news media. In 1915, the then editor of the Providence Journal, John R. Rathom, began to publish outrageous stories suggesting German sabotage (the source of his information later turned out to be a British propaganda effort). Rathom went so far as to say that his newspaper’s own sources were unearthing sabotage plans. Eventually, the U.S. Justice Department cracked down and called a halt to Rathom’s fanciful reports.

The state’s factories also geared up for war, as they would again just two decades later. Rhode Island began turning out everything from uniforms to horseshoes, small warships, aircraft, rubber products, and bayonets. By June of 1917, just two months after war was declared, more than 53,000 patriotic Rhode Islanders had enlisted in the military with more to come. War bond sales skyrocketed. Volunteers enrolled in the Red Cross and the state militia for homeland duty. Victory gardens appeared everywhere and supplemented an anticipated national food shortage.

Gertrude Bray of Providence had gone overseas as a YMCA volunteer to support the troops. She left her factory job in Pawtucket, RI, to serve as a canteen worker in France. According to one news story, Bray and two other YMCA workers were cited for bravery during the Battle of St. Mihiel in September of 1918, when they cooked 10,000 donuts a day while the fighting went on close to their encampment. Women were chaperoned when they went to the front lines, which Bray did, to deliver food to the troops. At one point her chaperone, a Mr. Haley, told a reporter, “nothing raised the morale of the men to see that one of their own girls wasn’t afraid to come to their position”. Haley then hustled the donut girls back to their camp since an artillery barrage was expected momentarily.

Among the young men who enthusiastically responded to the call to service was a Brown University student, Wheaton Vaughn. While overseas, he corresponded with one of his professors, H.E. Walters, and the letters have been preserved in the Brown University Library. In one dated February 15, 1918, he enclosed a picture and told his teacher that he expected to be at the front shortly. “I’ll do my best to send some part of the Kaiser back to you for use in the (biology) lab”, he quipped. On June 16, he apologized for a delay in writing as “I have been so busy tending to such business as dodging shells and putting on gas masks…We have been lucky so far that’s all, I guess, but probably someday we will get ours, but here’s hoping.” Vaughn went on to tell his professor that so far only one man in his unit had been killed and another slightly wounded. Sadly, Vaughn’s own luck ran out in the last moments of the war. He died of wounds on November 18, 1918, two hours after the armistice was signed. The Armistice had actually been announced at 5:00 am Paris time, but military commanders on both sides, at a loss as to exactly when to cease firing, continued to fight until the “eleventh hour”. More men on both sides died needlessly in those six hours.

And so, the war officially ended at 11:00am, Paris time, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was 3:00am in Providence and church bells rang and whistles began to blow. Students from the schools on the East Side gathered and marched down College Hill to join the cheering crowds in Exchange Place (now Kennedy Plaza). Bunting bedecked automobiles sped through downtown. Brown’s military and naval units, joined civilians in celebrating. Brown Professor Walters, in notes preserved in the University Library recalled, “Westminster was no longer a one-way street. It was an every which way….I remember finding myself downtown with a cowbell in the midst of the downtown mob…all insane”. The celebrations continued. The war was over!

The troops would make their way home in the coming months. But 612 Rhode Islanders would not. Their sacrifices would be honored as years passed by town memorials, at Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion posts bearing their names and in stories handed down through the generations. In Providence, a handsome memorial honors lost in the war. The monument was moved in 1984 from its original location during the city’s Renaissance. It was reassembled and installed in 1996 in Memorial Park at College and South Main Streets. It includes the words, “By this memorial, the City of Providence commemorates the loyal courage and fidelity of all her citizens who served in the World War whose high example still summons us to love and serve our country.”

Armistice Day, of course, is now known as Veterans Day (and in England, as Remembrance Day). It is a time to pause and remember those who responded to the call, not just in World War I, but also in all wars. Joining the rest of the nation, the Rhode Island World War One Centennial Commission, ably led by North Kingstown’s Matthew McCoy, has coordinated a yearlong observance around the state.

On November 11, Rhode Islanders will join in a nationwide observance “Bells of Peace”. At exactly 11:00 am, bells will toll in churches and other sites. They will ring 21 times at five-second internals as a traditional symbol honoring those fallen in the war. No bell? You can download a smartphone app to be used privately or with a public address system. Visit www.ww1cc.org/bells for details. East Greenwich, RI, will join towns across the state and country in holding parades and laying wreaths at their respective World War I memorials. The East Greenwich event will be held Sunday, November 11, at 1:00pm (in event of rain a memorial will be observed in the Swift Gym).

World War I Memorial in front of Town Hall in East Greenwich, RI.

Eight and a half million died fighting the war. As many as 12 or 13 million civilians perished. In his classic 1929 novel recounting the horrors of World War One, Erich Maria Remarque cites the impact of the war from the German perspective, “The war has ruined us for everything.” Sadly, the “war to end all wars” was not. Almost as soon as the guns fell silent in Europe, the seeds of a new conflict were sown. Just twenty-one years later, in September of 1939, war broke out again.

The Varnum Memorial Armory Museum contains a growing collection of artifacts from the Great War. Take an opportunity to view them and to recall those who served and those impacted by the conflict. Our mission as Varnum Continentals is keep the flame of patriotism brightly lit and to ensure that future generations remember the sacrifices of those who have passed before us to preserve and protect our treasured freedoms.

[FEATURE ARTICLE] Revisiting Rhode Island’s Top-Secret Ear on the World

October 1, 2018 By Brian Wallin

The story of one of Rhode Island’s best-kept World War II wartime secrets is briefly recounted in our book “World War Two Rhode Island” (The History Press; 2017). The material was drawn from a story written for these pages back in 2016. Now and then, I’ve been asked for more details about this tale, so here they are.

FCC's Radio Intelligence Division top secret radio monitoring facility in Scituate, RI. — ***FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division top secret radio monitoring facility in Scituate, RI.***

On Darby Road in Scituate, RI, near the top of the seventh highest point in the state (732 feet above sea level) is the site of what was once one of the nation’s best kept secrets during World War II: the Chopmist Hill Monitoring Station. In March of 1941, the Federal Communications Commission’s Radio Intelligence Division (RID) set up a network of thirteen top-secret radio monitoring facilities designed to eavesdrop on German and Japanese radio traffic.

A top agent in the RID was a Bostonian by the name of Thomas B. Cave. He not only discovered the Rhode Island site. He went on to command the monitoring station right through the end of the war. His initial assignment had been to set up a connection with an existing direction-finding facility in Bar Harbor, Maine (similar sites were being established along the Eastern seaboard prior to America’s entry into the war). While traveling around New England, Cave came upon a 183-acre farm atop Chopmist Hill owned by William Suddard. It didn’t take him long to figure out that the location could do a lot more than help triangulate a radio signal.

By an odd coincidence of terrain and atmospheric conditions, this particular property turned out to be the most effective of the RID’s national network of stations. A team of 40 radio operator technicians quickly arrived to set up shop in the 14-room farmhouse atop Chopmist Hill (Suddard and his family obligingly leased their home and property to the government and moved out for the duration).

Narragansett Electric Company linemen were called in to set up scores of utility poles and string some 85,000 feet of antenna wire (about 16 miles worth). Periodically over the next few years, they would be recalled to move some of the poles, sometimes by only a few feet. This wasn’t easy since the poles were sunk deep into the ground to keep them below the tree line for security purposes. The linesmen were never told why they were performing the tasks. Narragansett Electric crewman Charlie Weinert said after the war,

“If I had known what was going on I would have dug the poles all the way to Cairo!”

The long wire antennas and other types of receiving antennae were connected to the farmhouse where technicians set up six rooms full of sensitive radio receivers and transmitters. A pair of outbuildings housed two sensitive direction finders. Chopmist Hill was in business.

The farmland and buildings were surrounded by barbed wire and powerful security lights. An emergency generator provided backup power. Staff lived in bunkhouses on site. Armed guards patrolled the area. A warning sign on the approach road read, “ In the event of an enemy attack on Rhode Island, this highway will be closed to all save military vehicles”. Local residents figured something was up, but they had no idea what. Actually, the technicians themselves were not fully aware of the ultimate use of their activities and the material they collected (although they probably had a good idea once America entered the war and the scope and amount of information steadily grew).

Working in shifts 24/7, the technicians monitored signals broadcast in the clear and also copied down encrypted messages. All information was relayed by Teletype to Washington DC for appropriate action, often immediately on receipt.

As soon as the equipment was tuned up, operators were able to listen in on transmissions by German spies in North Africa and South America and exchanges between German headquarters and military units in Europe and North Africa. Once the location of the spies’ signals was identified, they would be rounded up and, in many cases, turned to counterespionage purposes. American intelligence agents’ transmissions were also monitored and, if it was discovered the enemy was on to them, they could be warned.

The Chopmist Hill equipment was so sensitive and the location so ideally situated that the technicians could pick up low-power radio signals between General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps tanks and relay critical troop movement information to the British. The Rhode Island station personnel also monitored weather reports that were key to enemy activities. Access to local weather information assisted the British and later, U.S. Army Air Forces in setting up bombing missions. German strategic and diplomatic transmissions were broadcast on frequencies that could not be picked up by the British, but did bounce through the atmosphere across the Atlantic to Scituate. These were also relayed to the British before and then after the U.S. entered the war.

***Map noting the location of the secret radio monitoring station.***

Unexpected signal anomalies also enabled the Chopmist Hill technicians to pick up Japanese transmissions from the Pacific. Then FCC Commissioner George Sterling, in an interview conducted long after the war was over, said he was surprised that the US was caught unaware by the Attack at Pearl Harbor. He told a reporter that for several months before December 7, 1941, the Scituate monitoring station was routinely intercepting Japanese military transmissions that indicated some action was pending (U.S. cryptanalysts had already broken key Japanese codes). In 1944 and into the following year, the Chopmist Hill station helped defeat Japanese attempts to bomb the U.S. mainland with TNT-laden hot-air balloons. The devices, called Fu-Go (or “fire balloon” in Japanese), were equipped with small radio transmitters to help the Japanese keep track of their progress. Scituate picked up these low-power signals thousands of miles away, relayed the information to Washington DC and U.S. fighter planes were dispatched to shoot the balloons down (a few managed to reach the US but their existence was kept a deep secret by the government).

At one time, Chopmist Hill even helped save the famed Queen Mary from being sunk with more than 10,000 troops aboard. The ship was in Brazil, about to sail for Australia. German spies in Rio de Janeiro had discovered the ship’s sailing schedule and route around Cape Horn and radioed the information to Nazi headquarters. German U-boats were ordered to sink the liner at all costs. But, thanks to the Scituate monitoring station, the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy sent last minute secret course changes to the Queen Mary and she arrived safely in the Pacific with her precious cargo of fighting men.

The head of the German Navy’s U-boat service, Admiral Karl Doenitz, thinking his transmissions were secure, kept up continuous radio contact with his submarines throughout the war, unaware that even with the sophisticated Enigma encryption machines, his electronic mail was being read.

In yet another incident that demonstrated the unusual sensitivity of the monitoring facilities, receivers picked up a signal from a remote transmitter near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. It turned out to be a nearby Russian station and the location, at first thought to be a Japanese facility, was saved from a U.S. air attack.

***Topographic map of Chopmist Hill site***

Chopmist Hill technicians also assisted in air-sea rescue missions, using direction finders to zero in on downed aircraft around the world. Among those saved were 22 wounded soldiers whose plane went down in Labrador, as well as popular entertainer Kay Francis whose plane crashed in Florida while returning from a USO tour in Europe.

It does seem a little hard to believe that a spot in Rhode Island could play such a vital role. Army officials were especially skeptical and so FCC Commissioner Sterling guaranteed them his technicians could pinpoint the location of any transmission within 15 minutes. The Army set up a test, sending a signal from inside the Pentagon. Seven minutes after their message was sent, Scituate reported receipt and location.

In November of 1945, after the existence of the station had been revealed, the government allowed Thomas Cave to be interviewed by the Providence Journal. He told the reporter “virtually all the wartime messages sent by German spies in the U.S. were intercepted in Scituate”. After the war, Cave and a few other technicians stayed on to continue monitoring activities, this time focusing on illegal domestic radio transmissions.

There’s one more twist to this story. And that revolves around the interesting fact that Chopmist Hill was briefly considered for the site of the headquarters of the United Nations. In January of 1946, a team of inspectors visited Scituate, RI. The UN had agreed to set up shop in the United States. Scituate town councilman and local forest ranger George Matteson convinced the UN inspectors to pay a visit. They were especially impressed with the fact that Scituate could serve as a unique worldwide communications hub. There was enough available land to build the anticipated facilities for the headquarters. It was within easy access to air transportation and a relatively small number of people would have to be relocated. Governor (later Senator) John O. Pastore met with the inspection team and pressed the case for Rhode Island. But, alas, the state didn’t stay long in the running. New York City was chosen after John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave the UN $8.5 million to enable them to purchase their ultimate location along Manhattan’s East River.

So, Chopmist Hill quietly returned to its pre-war bucolic existence. The FCC stayed until 1950. The State of Rhode Island then took over the property and used it as the state’s Civil Defense headquarters for the next fifteen years or so. Eventually, the property reverted to private ownership. Small traces of the station remain to this day, with stumps of the utility poles still visible. The former Suddard farmhouse on Darby Road is an attractive private residence behind its original stone wall. There are few, if any, visible clues to the secrets that it once held. The area is surrounded by new homes, equipped with modern electronic devices that were only imagined when those World War II radio technicians conducted their clandestine activities.

There could still be a few more secrets yet to be revealed. As it happens, not all of the activities of Chopmist Hill have been made public. Some classified documents about the FCC monitoring station program will not be released until 2049.

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