Transcript

Intro

Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[0:05] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 231: POWs in the Boston Harbor Islands. Hi, I’m jake.
This week I’m going to share two stories about POWs who are held in the boston harbor islands that previously aired in past episodes of the show.
One of them is about the confederate prisoners who arrived at Fort Warren on George’s island in the fall of 1861.
Fresh from the field of battle in North Carolina, they’d eventually be joined by Maryland politicians who supported secession,
the supposed diplomats, mason and slidell and eventually even confederate vice president alexander stephens who didn’t seem too much appreciate boston hospitality,
81 years later and a mile away on peddocks island, a group of unruly Italian prisoners were confined at Fort Andrews after starting what may have been the only soccer riot in Boston history at a South Boston prison camp.

[1:10] But before we talk about prisoners of war in the boston harbor Islands. I just want to pause and thank everyone who supports hub history on Patreon I don’t really like to air these classic episodes too often.
You know, the previously aired material reruns to be frank when I do wear them though. It gives me a chance to hear what the show used to be.
One of the clips that you’ll hear in a few minutes dates back to October 2017, just before our first anniversary, four years later.
Now I’m proud of the research we did back then, but I can hear the immense difference in our delivery and sound quality and that’s due in no small part to our sponsors by paying for our podcast, media hosting and web presence.
They’ve allowed us to stay on the air long enough to get better at it And by paying for additional audio processing tools, they allow us to sound a lot better than we did in 2017.
So thanks to all the sponsors who make the show possible and if you’re not yet a sponsor and you’d like to become one, just go to patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support us link,
and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors,
and now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

This Week’S Main Topic

[2:28] You may remember that a few weeks ago we ran episode 228 about the British prisoners who staged an uprising on the ship where they’re being held on Boston Harbor.

[2:39] Those red coats were locked up on the harbor in 1779 because it was convenient,
and that wasn’t the first time that boston harbor served as a convenient prison and it wouldn’t be the last from the very earliest days of the massachusetts bay colony.
The harbour island served as a prison, especially in times of war.
The first time that I’m aware of was that the outbreak of king Philip’s war Deer Island would serve as an internment camp for the so called praying indians of natick, who are supposed to be the closest indigenous allies of the massachusetts puritans.
Starting in 1651, John Elliott converted some of the Massachusetts and villages surrounding the English town of Boston.
Within 20 years, there were 14 praying towns around Boston, and some estimates say that 20% of the native population of Massachusetts had converted to Christianity.
The praying indians lived with one ft in each world, an arrangement that turned out to be unsustainable.
When King Philip’s war broke out, the government of Massachusetts Bay took action on October 13, 1675.

[3:50] It has ordered that all the native indians be forthwith sent for and disposed of two Deer Island as the place appointed for their present abode On November three, they took it one step further ordering.
Whereas this court have for weighty reasons. Place, sundry indians that have subjected to our government upon some islands for their and our security.
It is ordered that none of the set indians shall presume to go off the set islands voluntarily upon pain of death and it shall be lawful for the english to destroy those that they shall find straggling off.
And they said places of their confinement and less taken off by order from authority and under an english guard.

[4:34] Mid october is not a pleasant time to be dropped onto an exposed boston harbor island and the native indians were left with little food, no shelter and a few supplies to sustain themselves.
Disease, starvation and winter’s cold took their toll Of over 500 who went into the camps.
Only 167 survived to be released the following spring.
While they were gone, 10 of the praying towns were dissolved and their homes were destroyed.
Smallment communities survived into the 18th and even the 19th century though their numbers dwindled and their languages were nearly driven extinct.
The native indians weren’t the only supposed allies to be confined on a boston harbor island. Over the years.
Last July Episode 194 told the story of a group of Italian prisoners who started out as prisoners of war in World War II Became our allies.
When Italy switched sides and then turned back into prisoners after an incident on July 16, 1944 and it all started with a soccer riot in south boston.

Italians On Peddocks Island

Peddocks:
[5:41] Our story this week begins with as far as I can tell, the only soccer riot in Boston history which took place at Carson Beach in Southie in the summer of 1944.
An ap report from July 1944 says the first Service command reported that the trouble started when a member of the Italian service unit climbed a low fence surrounding the camp to retrieve a soccer ball.
One of the boston police detail, keeping civilians away from the area apprehended the italian and the other prisoners inside the compound started throwing lumber and stones at the policeman.

[6:16] Italian service units were a newly organized form of labor unit and used in the latter years of World War Two.
While they are fighting with the Axis, hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers were captured by allied units in North Africa and europe.
Many were kept in prison camps near where they had been captured but tens of thousands were shipped to the soviet union, great Britain and the US for imprisonment.

[6:40] After Mussolini was driven from power in the summer of 1943, his successor signed an armistice with the allies on September three one month later, the new government declared war on Germany meaning it was no longer an enemy of the United States.

[6:56] The US government from then on would refer to Italy as a co belligerent.
This change of allegiance has called into question the status of the prisoners of war who were held in Allied nations At the time. There were 50,000 Italian POWs in the US.
Army intelligence officers screen them for fascist sympathies and prior disciplinary problems.
Then offered them the option of joining italian service units which would provide labor in support of the american war effort.
Some 70% of Italian POWs chose to join these units.
Taking this following oath, I promise that I will work in behalf of the United States of America at any place on any duty accepting actual combat,
and that I will assist the United States to the best of my ability in the prosecution of its cause against the common enemy Germany.
I promise not to abuse the confidence and trust placed in me by the violation of any of the conditions governing any special privileges extended to me.
As a result of this promise, I promise to obey all orders or regulations issued by the american military authorities,
and I understand that if I do not do so, my privileges may be withdrawn and I’ll be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with the articles of war of the United States of America which have been read to me.

[8:18] The italian service units were issued american fatigues with a white patch bearing the word italy stitched on the shoulder with the american flag was usually found.
They were given jobs at military bases and war industry facilities where they earned $24 a month.
Government documents indicate that they were not supposed to be kept infants prison camps, but instead we’re meant to be housed in the same types of barracks as american soldiers with the same rations and opportunities for recreation.
In reality, however, they were kept behind barbed wire and guarded by military police and compounds Near where they worked.
One of these fenced compounds was Camp McKay, an italian service unit, camp on Columbia Point in Dorchester, about where the southern end of moakley Park and the Bayside expo center are today.

[9:09] The residents of this compound work during the day at the boston port of embarkation and at the quartermasters depot at the south boston army base.
Pictures from the time show long rows of neat wooden barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences.
A report for the House Military Affairs Committee describes the crescent shaped sweep of Carson beach then says,
Can’t McKay parallels the southern tip of this crescent running east and west and was formerly separated from it by a single fence about seven or eight ft high,
on warm days when the beach was crowded with weekend bathers, large numbers of people would line up along the fence to look at the Italians inside.
Some motivated by idle curiosity and others of italian descent apparently regarding the prisoners more or less as heroes.
The mesh and the wire fencing was sufficiently open to permit the prisoners to put their hands through it.
A circumstance which enabled them to engage in moderate intimacies with bathing suited girls outside,
this continued until the boston city police took charge of the situation in order to keep the public at a distance from the compound.
Patrolmen were stationed at intervals outside the enclosing fence.

[10:24] I’ve heard anecdotal accounts saying that along with petting with the bathing suited girls outside the wire as the Washington D. C. Evening star called it.
There was also a healthy exchange between the prisoners and their neighbors.
Italian american residents of boston would bring cigarettes, fresh bread, cured meats and other treats to pass into the compound while members of the service units would pass out tomatoes and other produce. They grew inside the wire.
All that changed with one Errant Soccer Ball on July 16, 1944.
The House Military Affairs Committee report describes the incident in more detail,
the italian prisoners of war who often played the game of soccer conceived the idea of kicking the ball over the fence under the beach, apparently for the purpose of having it returned by some civilian, thus continuing friendly interchanges in contempt of the police and their regulations.
The police then took steps to restrain civilians from returning the ball On July 16 1 of the prisoners scaled the fence as an apparent gesture of defiance to retrieve the ball and was thereupon apprehended by the nearest policemen.
Immediately, several other italian prisoners climbed the fence and attacked the policemen and others of his fellows, who came to his aid in force and with such violence that four of them required hospital attention.

[11:47] The men involved in the afraid were deprived of their statuses service unit co belligerence and transferred to prison camps as prisoners of war with the loss of all privileges.

[11:59] The Riot on July 16 was the culmination of a week of escalating friction between the Italian prisoners and their hosts in South Boston On July nine and 10, six Italians were arrested after breaking out of the camp.
On July 13, the lopsided fight broke out as described in the globe,
a brief free for all involving an italian service unit member, scores of bathers at Carson beach and guards at camp McKay resulted last night when an american sailor threw a stone into the prisoner of war compounds, knocking a prisoner unconscious.
The malay gathered force when a prisoner leaped over the fence to attack the sailor, bother sided with the semen.
While guards sought to protect the prisoner and keep others from joining them.
The trouble was quelled in four minutes.

[12:50] After another stone was thrown at someone in the camp on the evening of July 15, police were called in time to prevent a repeat performance,
By the time a full scale riot broke out on July 16, military authorities were sick of these discipline problems.
About 50 Italians were stripped of their status as members of the italian service unit and were sent to harsher imprisonment at POW camps.
Most were likely sent to fort Devens in Central Mass, which already housed german POWs though some were sent to camp Myles standish in taunton and sources say that some were sent to camps in the midwest.

[13:29] Can’t McKay was surrounded by a second eight ft high fence constructed about 75 ft outside the original fence to help keep the remaining italian prisoners separate from beachgoers.
That arrangement didn’t last long. On July 28, the rest of the ISU. was pulled out of Camp McKay and sent to Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island.
Can’t McKay would then be used to house segregated units of african american soldiers.
Another group that officials wanted to keep separate from the rest of boston.
But what was this island for the italian service units were taken by the time of World War two. Fort andrews was past its prime.
An aging outpost on Peddocks island in boston harbor.
Peddocks is one of the largest of the 34 Boston Harbor Islands with the longest shoreline.
The island is naturally both close to land and isolated, lying just a few 100 yards from Pemberton pointing.
Hull it’s close enough that if you stand on the bluffs on Peddocks island, you can hear classes change at whole high, but it’s separated from Hull by the rushing tides and narrow, dangerous Hull gut.

[14:44] An archaeological survey revealed a number of Native American burial sites on the island, including the oldest human remains ever found in Massachusetts dated to 4100 years ago,
all the evidence indicates that it’s been inhabited for thousands of years.

[15:02] The earliest record we can find from european sources comes from thomas morton whose freewheeling anything goes 16 24 settlement at Mt Wollaston and today’s Quincy predated puritan boston and annoyed as pilgrim neighbors in Plymouth,
in His 16 37 book, a new english, Canaan morton describes the fate of a french trading voyage to boston harbor that took place in roughly 16 16.

[15:29] It Fortune, and some few years before the english came to inhabit at New Plymouth in New England.
That upon some distaste given in the massachusetts Bay by the Frenchman, then training there with the natives for beaver, they set upon the minute such advantage they killed many of them burn their ship, then riding at anchor by an island. They’re now called Peddocks island.
In memory of Leonard Peddocks that landed there where many wild anckies haunted that time, which he thought had been tamed Distributing them unto five systems which were lords of the several territories adjoining.
They did keep them so long as they lived only the sport themselves at them, and made these five Frenchmen fetch them wood and water, which is the general work that they require of a servant in the earliest record of Europeans. At Peddocks island.
The french traders gave the locals enough of an offense that they killed most of the party burned the ship and then enslave the few survivors,
Leonard Peddocks would come later in about 1622 as part of the failed Wessaugussett colony in today’s Weymouth.

[16:35] Reading that account, I wondered what anckies were perhaps another name for Turkey’s or deer or another local game animal.
After searching around, the only reference beyond Morton’s book seems to be of all things.
In 1813, letter from our boy John Adams to Thomas, Jefferson,
Adams repeats thomas morton’s account of the attack at Peddocks island and about anckies He says,
your research is in natural history may enable you to say what r anckies unless they be wild geese, I know no more about them than I do about Yankees.

[17:13] So I don’t feel too bad about not knowing what anckies are.
We’re in the company of two presidents.

[17:20] After a disease. In a series of 17th century, wars with the English decimated local Native American communities.
Peddocks Island and most of the Boston Harbor Islands was used mostly for agriculture until the late 18th century,
Though, peddocks was spared the 1775 skirmishes seen on other Harbour Islands, between British foraging parties and provincial militias, that we described an episode 186, it did briefly see action during our revolution.
In april of 17 76 the massachusetts council was annoyed that even after british troops had evacuated boston, their navy still controlled our harbor.

[17:58] The council questioned Whether 1000 men might not be employed to the best advantage by taking post at Long Island.
Peddocks Island and Nantasket they’re being furnished with suitable cannon, ammunition, tensor barracks, provisions, boats, etcetera.
In June of 1776, a version of that plan was put into action to drive the British Navy out.
A contemporary news report says that a large detachment of colonial troops were embarked on boats at the long wharf together with cannon ammunition, provisions, entrenching tools and every necessary implement, and proceeded for Peddocks Island and Hull,
Where they were joined by some continental troops and seacoast companies so as to make near 600 men at each place.

[18:46] Though the artillery meant for Peddocks island wasn’t put into place fast enough.
The cannons on Long Island and at Hull soon drove the british ships out of boston harbor never to return.

[18:58] A little bit over a century later, the military turns its eyes toward Peddocks island again.
This time, it wasn’t the british fleet that they were worried about. It was the spanish.
As tensions escalated, that would lead to the outbreak of the spanish american war.
A few months later, military planners moved ahead with plans to modernize the defenses around many american harbors, including here in boston,
Spain was a major naval power, and boston’s harbor defenses hadn’t been upgraded to keep up with advances and armored ships and naval guns since before the Civil War.

[19:34] A January 1898 Wire Service Story Related the Plans for the Defense of Boston Harbor.
The United States government has brought about 63 acres of land in hull on the summit of cushing hill and battery heights.
It is the intention to erect there. A battery of heavy guns for coast defense.
Peddocks Island nearby has also been purchased for the same purpose, and when these three points are fully fortified, the guns will command every approach to boston harbor and most of Massachusetts Bay from Point Allerton to keep an.

[20:09] Another wire service story, in March, 1898 reported The rumor that hull is to be fortified immediately seems to be well founded.
It being the intention of Mount Guns on Telegraph Hill next week in place, a number of mortars on peddocks island. Within the next 10 days, it is said that troops are to be placed at Long Island and Fort Winthrop within the next week.

[20:32] These rumors would turn out to be mostly true. Fort Strong would be built on Long Island.
Fort Andrews on Peddocks and Fort Revere would be built on Hulls Telegraph Hill For it. Winthrop on Governors Island was not modernized and it was abandoned by 1905.
All these new and renovated harbor forts were built according to a standardized plan recommended by the war Department’s indicate board.
They incorporated reinforced concrete construction, large bore mortars and breech loading cannons that were mounted on retractable disappearing carriages.

[21:11] On peddocks island. The first guns of Fort Andrews were ready for service. In 1901, With the base complete and commissioned by 1904 houses for officers and barracks for enlisted soldiers flanked at grassy central parade ground.
Large bore mortars were mounted in concrete bunkers that were hidden behind and nearly buried under the island’s hills.
These monster guns could fire £1000 armor piercing shell eight miles out into the harbor at the top of the island’s hills. The disappearing guns were mounted in more bunkers with a direct view of the sea.

[21:47] During World War One. Field artillery units trained on the island before deploying to europe and the coastal defense artillery remained on high alert for german U boats.
However, by World War Two, the island’s defenses were quickly becoming obsolete.
Air power and submarines were more than a match for stationary coastal guns and the guns on Peddocks Island were proving themselves to be something of a laughing stock After live fire exercises in 1913 didn’t go as planned.
The Essex county herald trumpeted shot falls near cottages, £15 Ball from Mortar dropped on Nantasket Avenue.
Dateline whole mass following a mile away from the target, a solid shot weighing from 15 to £20 landed in the center of Nantasket Avenue near the Wind mir station.
The shot was fired by the detachment of Coast Artillery Corps at Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island, and came from one of the mortars of battery cushing.
It was intended for the targets in the main ship channel, it was deflected far to the east, passing over Pemberton and the village of Hull and coming to ground on Allerton Hill.

[23:00] Well, they may have been censored in reporting like this after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Just over a week later, the Associated Press reported on another live fire exercise on November 28, 1941 for the first time in 20 years.
The big 12 inch coast defense mortars at Fort Andrews roared out yesterday and all but wrecked the fort,
four times £1046 projectiles thundered out of the mortar pit and as each shot was fired, another bit of a wooden barracks, approximately 100 ft away fluttered to the ground.
First, some windows rattled out at the second row row window casing or two was shattered the third time a door flop down and on the final boom the walls shed some of their class birds.
The firing was from two weapons at towed targets, and the success of the Coast Artillery man was not revealed.
Oh, yes, one of the fort andrews cooks had trouble, too, the first gun barked, the cook jumped, and dinner was scattered in the winds.

[24:11] The giant mortars and batteries. Whitman and cushing were all but abandoned during the course of World War two.
The cannons and batteries. Macbook and Bumpus stood ready to fire on any invaders and lookouts in the watchtower scanned the waves for enemy periscopes.
The forts most valuable contribution to the war effort may have come as an anchor point for two giant submarine nets.
These steel cable meshes were stretched from Peddocks island. Across Hull got to Pemberton Point and across a stretch of water called west gut from the southern tip of the island to Nut Island in Quincy.
When they were closed, these nets prevented german u boats from creeping into the valuable shipyards at hang them and Quincy, they were building the vast allied fleets that would eventually help win the war.

[24:58] It was into this remote, sleepy man, largely obsolete army outpost that 31 Italian officers 1,153 enlisted prisoners were incarcerated in the summer of 1944.

[25:12] Matilda Silvia grew up on Peddocks island and in her book Once upon an island describes her first experience with their new italian neighbors.
We meaning V perry Matilda Silvia climbed the hill near the radio shack to our favorite blackberry patch where the bushes were loaded with fruit absorbed in picking and chatting.
We were oblivious to the fact that we were almost imperceptibly being surrounded by men.
We realized that we were meeting head on with the italian prisoners of war, which scalable had told us would be arriving any day.
We’ve been asked by the commandant to remain aloof unless we are with GIS,
rumor had it that these particular prisoners have been troublesome in the south boston pOW compound, they were being sent to the island, where they would not have easy contact with civilians, particularly women.
We found them to be gentlemen. But after a very brief communication, V and I, following orders, decided to say goodbye and hustle home.

[26:12] Of course the very fact that Matilda Silvia was there on the island to witness the prisoners arrival, there is evidence that the U. S. Military and its italian prisoners were not the only residents on Peddocks island.
There was also a thriving community of fishermen living just outside the wire.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were three distinct fishing fleets plying their trade on boston harbor, the italian fishing fleet, the Portuguese fishing fleet and the so called american fishing fleet.
Though of course both the Portuguese and the italian fleets were mostly crude by american citizens.

[26:49] In the middle of the 19th century, many members of the Portuguese fleet lived on Boston’s Long Island,
When the city began expanding its hospitals, schools and alms houses on Long Island, they eventually evicted the Portuguese fishing families who lived there in 1887,
some relocated to great brewster and middle brewster islands.
While many came to Peddocks floating their cottages across Nantasket road from island to island on barges, They settled at first on east head, the easternmost of three landmasses that make up peddocks island.
Just over a decade later as fort andrews was under construction, they were evicted again this time most chose to relocate to the middle head of Peddocks island, just across the shallow bay that’s been known as Portuguese cove ever since.
A 1909 Boston globe article describes the settlement that resulted.

[27:46] Snuggled down in a sort of little valley on the westerly side of Peddocks island is a small fishing village of which comparatively few boston people know and which fewer have visited.
As a matter of fact, not many of those who travel what the yachtsman called the west Way towards Quantum have ever noticed.
The little village of 12 houses tucked away there in the back of Prince’s Head, but the villages picturesque and worth a visit by seekers after the novel.
The houses are all small frame structures, 10anted by families whose heads make a living by catching fish and lobsters.
The houses are all neat and well kept, and back of each is a tiny garden, in which vegetables are raised, while some of the women have even cultivated flowers and made their tiny homes quite attractive at nearly every house.
The cooking is done in a stove, which sets out in front and is buttressed by empty dry goods boxes and packing cases, which doesn’t detract at all from the tooth sameness of the food prepared.
Children are quite numerous in the village and a hearty, wholesome looking lot. They are too.
There is no style put on in the Peddocks Island fishing village, but the folks who live there appear to enjoy themselves and abide in comfort.

[29:00] The prevalence of the fishing industry and the need to support three separate fishing fleets may go some way toward explaining the presence of another seasonal community that called peddocks island home during the first few years of the 20th century.
A 1906 article notes on the beach on the north westerly side of Peddocks Island can be seen.
A small indian wigwam in which live the indian seal hunters of boston harbor who are capturing seals every day and who are making money at the business.
There are six of them, all members of the Passamaquoddy Bay tribe from near Eastport Maine.
They were here because the town of Quincy offered a $3 bounty for every seal killed as every fish that the seals got was considered stolen from a fisherman.
An article about the 1907 ceiling season says many people have wondered why the state encourages the killing of the seals.
The answer is to be found in the seal’s stomach last year.
A fish and game warden found in the stomach of one seal, 11 eels, several lobsters, a few flounders and a general assortment of smelt another small fish to the amount of one peck by actual measurement,
multiply several meals per diem of this sort, even by the number of seals that have already been killed in Quincy Bay this season, that is 181 and you get some idea of the competition which seals afford the local fishermen.

[30:29] The 1906 article goes on to say that it’s their second summer on the island.
They came with four heavy main type canoes, which they packed full of camping and hunting gear, and then loaded onto a steamer in Portland, arriving at Atlantic Worf in boston.
They began off loading, and the article describes the scene.
They started from the wharf on Atlantic Avenue and paddled down among the deep sea craft, whose sailors looked down on the small flotilla from their floating fortresses of iron and wood.
In astonishment, They selected Peddocks Island is the base of their operations, and commenced a remarkable campaign against the seal.

[31:09] The article describes how they hunted, with one man paddling in the start of the canoe and the other holding a shotgun at the ready in the bow.
After taking a shot, the gun would quickly pick up a Gaff, hook the seal and bring it on board.
They ate a lot of seal meat in the summer as a way of keeping costs down, and the seal skins were tanned for later sale.
The tales were taken as evidence of the kill and turned in for the $3 bounty.
The article, published near the end of the season in 19 oh seven, quotes the Quincy town clerk is saying that the town has already paid out $543 in seal bounties to the six Passamaquoddy hunters that year.
Not a bad haul.

[31:51] One of the hunters told reporters that his group made a living by fishing and main in the spring hunting seals on boston harbor in the summer, guiding white hunters in the fall and making baskets in the winter.
And boston seals were their most lucrative pursuit.

[32:08] The Passamaquoddy made their camp along the beach between the East Head where Fort Andrews was located and Middle Head, which was home to the growing cottage community,
At the turn of the century, there are about 30 cottages on the island, some owned by Italian, Americans others by the families of soldiers at the fort,
but most by members of the Portuguese fishing fleet.
In the book east of boston, this week’s boston Book club pick Stephanie, Schorow describes some of the businesses that grew up at about the same time.

[32:41] Two ends were established on the island, the Ohio West End house owned by William drake and the island hotel run by john Irwin.
A surviving menu from the island hotels showed that it offered a full range of food and drink.
A sarsaparilla was 10 cents a Budweiser was 25 cents, and a gin fizz was 20 Boiled Lobster was set you back a whole 75 cents and boiled tripe would take $0.40 out of your pocket.
The island hotel, however, often served more than food to those willing to pay the price.
A small cottage near the hotel provided female companionship for a price.
The money was slipped into a slot under a window.

[33:29] In 1909, the Boston newspapers were filled with stories about so called Chinese picnics and subsequent police raids on peddocks island chinese picnic was a euphemism for a gathering where people used opium.

[33:44] Even after the hotel proprietors were arrested and the island hotel eventually burned.
Peddocks island was mostly free from prying eyes.
During prohibition, Islanders found a reliable way to make a few extra dollars as Matilda Silvia recounted,
During the 1920s, the civilian into the island had quite a flourishing, bootlegging business going soldiers, it seemed would drink anything from blistering to rot gut.
I’m not suggesting the Peddocks Islanders sold inferior booze, I think most of it was pure, even though flavored and watered down as far as it could be and still be alcoholic.
It was apparently good enough for some of them into risk court martial and to engage in any ploy to get by the guards at the outpost.
In order to find this ill fated hooch. The soldiers would hide on the beach and wait until the guards met each other halfway on their walking post, then sneak by the barbed wire fence which extended to the tide line.
In summer they would take the civilian ferry from Pemberton or sometimes a friend on guard would allow them to pass and pretend not to see them come hell or high water where there was a will, there was always a way to get what you wanted.
Enough of the fellows found their way over to the other side to make it profitable for the purveyors.

[35:00] Silvia was born in 1917 and her memories of growing up in the island before and during World War II sound pretty idyllic.
She describes the gardens, the cottage community planted, gathering and splitting driftwood to stay warm through the winter, and taking a boat to school, first in Hull and then in South boston.

[35:21] Though she sees it through rose tinted lenses. Her memoir makes it clear that those years were not without hardships, mostly due to weather and isolation.

[35:31] Every week most of the housewives took the long boat trip into boston to buy meat, fruit, and particularly in winter any fresh vegetables the market had to offer,
most supplies were purchased at the commissary, which is around the hill, and the huge quartermaster warehouse.
Once or twice a week in the morning, mother would walk to the commissary to place your order a teamster in a Canastota type wagon would deliver it sometime that afternoon.

[35:59] 1941, interview with the Boston Post, another longtime resident, described what it was like on the island during the 1898 Portland Gail, Which we talked about when discussing the whole life saving station. An episode 88.

[36:15] You remember when the steamer Portland went down? There was a big storm here.
I was about nine at the time so I don’t remember much about it, but it was a big storm.
A snowstorm to it blew the house all the way over the hill from the flats over there.
He pointed to the ocean end, all the way over the hill, there was a house down here at this side, he pointed at the Quincy end and that got blown away altogether.
My father saved the whole family just in time. He carried the twins back in his arms and froze one hand.
I remember the family stayed with us for a couple of days till they built a new house.
That isolation is what made peddocks island seemed like the perfect destination for a troublesome group of Italian prisoners in 1944.
The Military Affairs Committee report we quoted from before makes a brief mention of the conditions.
The italian service units were held in at fort andrews at their compounds, Their ability to part from american personnel have their own missiles. Post exchanges, theaters, entertainment, recreation and chapel.

[37:23] They lived in tents and roughly built barracks within the perimeter of the fort where the american soldiers could keep an eye on them,
though, the report says they have their own separate facilities for recreation, entertainment and worship and reality, they shared these facilities with the american Gis who guarded them.
They used the combined post exchange and gymnasium building alongside the soldiers enjoyed movie nights with them and attended church at the small whitewashed wooden chapel beside the forts parade ground,
there was one popular entertainment among the american soldiers that the Italians never adopted.
Matilda Silvia expresses are surprised that the prisoners play to support other than baseball.

[38:07] The first time I saw a soccer game was when I watched the prisoners play, it was fast and rough.
Once in a while one of the prisoners will be carried off to the hospital as far as I could gather. There were never any serious injuries.
They were completely devoted to this game.
America’s favorite pastime of baseball seemed not to be a much interest to them.
How is a bit surprised because they seem to readily adopt american customs habits and actions.

[38:36] Even after they were removed from camp McKay to fort andrews. The issue was employed at the port of embarkation and quartermaster depot in South boston now, instead of walking to work with the U.
S. Army escort, they commuted daily by boat though there were still prisoners and considered enemies by many Bostonians.
They had considerable liberties as described in an article from National Geographic magazine.
Among the prisoners, around 50 lucky ones were recognized as trustees.
Trustee status was earned by those who demonstrated good behavior, kept themselves tidy and followed orders.
Being a trustee allowed those prisoners to go places in the prison off limits to others, but the most coveted privilege for trustees was the sunday ferry ride to boston’s North end.
A military ferry would take them to visit the italian american families who sponsored them and return them to Peddocks before dark.
These trips gave the trustees an opportunity to go to sunday mass, eat a home cooked italian meal and talk about their life back in the homeland.

[39:46] Matilda Silvia recalled those weekend passes as well and added those remaining on the island were allowed to have friends and relatives visit them on either day of the weekend.
The guests were not allowed to stay overnight in his book, discovering the harbor Islands Christopher klein quotes longtime island resident Claire hale during the war.
The italian prisoner started coming to the cottages on sunday when they didn’t have to work, they had a grand old time.
I remember all these soldiers with Italy written on their uniforms just before they were sent back.
My grandmother had them visit our house in Somerville.
Our house was surrounded by mps with guns, we were the only Italians on the street now mostly irish neighborhood. So you can imagine all the neighbors were on their porches.

[40:35] Not everyone looked fondly at how these prisoners seem to be pampered.
American veterans who remembered fighting italian forces at monte cassino or Sicily or Tunisia were offended by news stories about italian prisoners being wined and dined in the north end In July of 1944 Thomas Barry.
The Massachusetts Chair of a group called the Allied Veterans of World War II wrote an open letter to the army saying prisoners should receive only such rights and courtesies as are provided under international law,
some of them killed and maimed our soldiers.
Their access partners have murdered and tortured their prisoners of war.
They’ve received courtesies almost equal to those rendered dignitaries of friendly nations.
Could these conditions exist in Germany or italy they have been coddled and pampered by citizens as well as army authorities.
The Associated Press article about this letter notes with irony that while the letter was being prepared, a group of italian war prisoners from camp McKay in the Dorchester district of boston were guests of a club in suburban Somerville,
which entertained them with a picnic and a ball game.

[41:48] An editorial in the boston herald complained that if italian prisoners were supposed to be our allies. Now they should be shipped back to europe to fight our common enemies.

[41:58] Somebody dreamed up a new name for the status of a licked outfit and decided to call them co belligerence.
And this country co belligerency has been extended to the former millions of el douche, all of whom were captured in the process of shooting and killing american boys.
Have these fellows requested guns and the privilege of going back to help free their native land.
If they even asked to go back and help move the gear of war, I’d stand it full salute.
But does co belligerency mean that only american kids are fit to fight and die for Italy?

[42:32] Perhaps everything wasn’t sunshine and puppy dogs on the side of the italian prisoners either.
A brief wire story on the day after Christmas 1944 noted that the issues on peddocks island were being disciplined for a strike on their refusal to go to work today at the boston port of embarkation.
The members of two new italian service units which arrived at fort andrews boston harbor last week, were confined to the fort under disciplinary conditions on orders of Major General Sherman Miles.

[43:04] This seems to have been part of a pattern of strikes among the italian service units around the country.
From news reporting on the other strikes, we can infer what the disciplinary conditions at fort andrews likely were,
When Italian prisoners into England went on strike in May 1944, they were confined to camp and given a punishment diet meaning meals of bread and water.
Three days a week After a strike at a camp near Toledo in March 1945, the prisoners were placed on a bread and water diet and confined to barracks.
Their canteen was closed and post privileges were withdrawn and for prisoners who went on strike in Utah, that june a bread and water diet and outdoor quarters were imposed.

[43:50] The italian service units were caught in no man’s land where there were no longer considered enemies, but still treated as prisoners.
The series of strikes, including at least one earlier strike in Boston, an early summer 1944 seems to have been aimed at improving their working and living conditions and demanding that they not be treated as prisoners.

[44:14] These italian service units were on Peddocks island because some of them had rioted and attacked boston police officers.
Many Bostonians still saw them as enemy prisoners, even though their status had officially changed after Italy switched sides in the war and now they’ve gone on strike and likely been put on a bread and water diet as punishment,
and yet throughout their confinement, even after the riot in the strikes, they were consistently given passes to visit italian american neighborhoods in the north end in east boston,
where many residents who weren’t naturalized citizens have been forced to register as enemy aliens,
though the Geneva convention required all former prisoners of war to be repatriated after the conflict.
Local legend says that dozens of former prisoners, married local girls and stayed in this country.
It’s truly remarkable to consider the liberties given to these italian soldiers who were captured on the battlefield while fighting against american soldiers,
And compare them to the plate of over 120,000 American citizens who are placed in the desert camps under armed guard for the duration of the war,
simply because their ancestors had come from Japan.

[45:28] When the war was over, the military saw very little utility in Fort andrews.
It was mothballed in 1946 when the island was sold to a private developer in 1958.

[45:40] In 1970, the Metropolitan District Commission, precursor to the Department of Conservation and Recreation, bought the island as a step in creating what’s now the Boston Harbor Islands State National Park.
This move put the future of the cottage community on Middle Head in question.
The Islanders had never owned the land. Their cottages were built on, They owned the structures, but not the land they were built on.
Most. It started out as squatters then paid a small annual fee, first to the U. S. Army, then to the private landowner, bought the property as part of the development of the park. The MDC announced a plan that would have evicted the owners of the cottages.
By the time this plan was announced in the early 90s, there are only about three year round residents left on the island, but many of the cottages were still used seasonally.

[46:32] A 1991 New York Times article reported on the impending evictions.
Now, plans call for further development of the island’s fort as a public park.
After years of living in obscurity owners of the 47 cottages have been ordered to leave the island by October 1, 1992,
The Metropolitan District Commission, the state agency that oversees public parks and beaches or did the eviction as part of a campaign to reclaim public lands from private users,
After they evict the cottagers commission officials hope to restore and redevelop the 27 buildings that are part of Fort Andrews the Army Post and make room for a wildlife sanctuary.
But cottagers are refusing to give up their homes or their rustic traditions.
None of us are going to go willingly, said Matilda Silvia a 74 year old native.
This island is part of us. Our feet are tied to the ground.

[47:31] Richard Murphy who lives on the island year round promises a fight over my dead body, he said, vowing not to leave his home.

[47:41] The Islanders were sympathetic figures and public outcry soon brought the eviction plan to a halt.
Stephanie Schorow describes its replacement In 1992, a compromise was worked out.
The current owners would be allowed to remain in their cottages until they died.
They would not be allowed to pass on the cottages to their Children or sell them to anyone else on their death. The cottages would become the property of the MDCC.

[48:10] Anecdotally, it seems that many of the island families due to their cottages to the youngest member of the family in 1991 or 1992.

[48:20] By the time the compromise went into effect, many burbling infants found themselves the happy owners of cottages on Peddocks island.
Nevertheless, as you walk the trails of Middle Head today, it’s easy to see the remains of a dozen or so cottages that have been ravaged by nature after falling vacant when their last owners passed away.

[48:41] By 2010, Fort Andrews was overgrown and decrepit enough to serve as an appropriately creepy filming location for the demented asylum portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film Shutter Island.
The following year, the DCR began a concerted cleanup effort to try to make the fort safe and inviting for visitors.
Some of the most decayed buildings were demolished, debris was cleared where other buildings had earlier burned down and the remaining structures were boarded up and stabilized.

[49:11] When we’re not in a global pandemic varies from boston’s long wharf in the Hammam shipyard now serve the island In the summertime, visitors can explore the fort, strolling across the parade ground and passed the empty barracks.
They can enter the crumbling mortar pits whose guns cause more damage to the fort itself than to any enemy ship and they can hike the length of the island through the cottage community on Middle Head and passed Matilda Sylvia’s old home,
if you visit, keep your eyes open for the many deer in Turkey’s that roam the island.
Now that forests have grown up around the barracks and cottages comb the beach for shells, sea glass and perhaps the remains of the submarine net at the far end of West Head and take in one of the best views of the boston skyline that you can find anywhere,
while you enjoy.
The history, serenity and natural beauty of Peddocks Island.
Keep in mind that the D. C. R. In boston Harbor now or in the planning phase of a redevelopment project for the island, plans call for historic fort andrews to be bulldozed and replaced by a luxury hotel and spa.
So the next time you visit may be your last chance.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[50:23] Peddocks island has been closed to the public since the beginning of the pandemic, but you should go and visit when it opens up again when you go.
You’ll almost certainly change ferries at George’s Island, just about a mile away from Peddocks across the water, like Peddocks George’s island was home to an aging fort that was used to house prisoners from an earlier war.
Unlike on Peddocks they weren’t reclassified as allies and there was no riot,
but these prisoners did try to escape from time to time During the civil war, the fort on George’s Island Fort Warren was used as a prison for enemy soldiers, secessionist politicians and confederate, so called diplomats.
And the first batch arrived on Boston Harbor almost exactly 160 years ago, as we discussed all the way back in October of 2017.

Confederates On Georges Island

Georges:
[51:16] On the evening of October 31, 1861, the steamer state of Maine made its way slowly across Boston Harbor.
The ship was barely seaworthy to begin with, and now it was carrying over twice its normal capacity.
There were almost 800 people on board of whom over 600 were confederate prisoners of war recently captured on the battlefield near Hatteras inlet north Carolina.
155 more were political prisoners, mostly politicians from the border states of Kentucky and Maryland, who were suspected of sympathizing with the secessionist cause.
As they came into the narrows, George’s island rose up on the port side on its shores.
The tall granite walls of fort Warren stared back at them impassively, the site of the fort and possibly the sensation of a brisk new England breeze on a fall night left these southerners un enthused.

[52:09] One of them would later describe Fort Warren in a letter home saying a more desolate place could not be imagined anywhere This side of the arctic regions as impressive as it may have looked from the water. Fort Warren was not ready to receive this massive influx of prisoners.
The commandant at the Fort Col Justin Dimock had been told to expect 100 political prisoners, So we didn’t have sufficient beds or supplies for an initial arrival of 800 men.
Beyond that, the fort itself wasn’t even finished yet. A massachusetts general would describe the state of our coastal defenses at the outbreak of the war.
The case mates were unfit for human occupation. The grounds inside the forts were covered with workshops and wooden shanties and instead of being a defense to the city and harbour, the fortifications of boston were a standing menace to them and invited seizure by the enemy.
The entire coast of massachusetts was open to attack from the sea. Not a fort or an earthwork or a gun was in proper condition.

[53:06] Fort Warren had been under construction since 1833. After the war of 1812, Congress realized that the nation’s coastal defenses were in need of a serious upgrade.
They appropriated funds for a series of coastal forts that reached from the Penobscot bay in maine to the Mississippi Delta near New Orleans and eventually up the pacific coast to san Francisco.
It wasn’t the first time George’s island had been fortified As early as March 1776, just weeks after the British evacuated Boston John Adams wrote to abigail saying, I can think of nothing but fortifying boston harbor.
I want more cannon that are to be had. I want a fortification upon point Alderton, one upon levels island, one upon George’s island, several upon Long Island, one upon the moon, one upon squat.
Um I want to hear about half dozen fire ships and two or 300 fire rafts prepared.
I want to hear of row galleys, floating batteries built and booms laid across the channel in the narrows, no efforts, no expense, are too extravagant for me to wish for to fortify that harbor so as to make it impregnable.
I hope everybody will join and work until it is done.

[54:16] Fortifications were thrown up on Long Island and on Governors Island and the 40 Castle Island was taken over by the Patriots.
In 1778. Our French allies constructed and garrisoned in Earth in Fort on George’s Island.
Their artillery helped to protect our harbor and the french ships that often moored there.
Beginning in 1833, Fort Warren was designed and the construction was overseen by Col Sylvanus Thayer who was known as the father of West Point.
It was designed as an irregular pentagon using most of the surface area of George’s island and named after joseph Warren, hero of bunker hill.
The original construction could mount 200 guns dominating the narrows between georges and levels island, which at that time was the main shipping channel into and out of boston harbor,
There were 42 similar forts along the nation’s coasts, and it’s perhaps a good thing that the civil war combat never came to Boston Harbor.
Fort Warren’s sister fortifications in the theater of war, saw their masonry walls smashed to gravel by the newly invented rifled cannons in use by both sides during the war.

[55:27] The fact that confederate soldiers were held as prisoners of war in the Northern States won’t come as a shock to anyone but the idea of imprisoning civilian politicians, especially those from states that still belong to the Union might be a surprise.

[55:43] The political prisoners who arrived in that first batch were mostly from Maryland.
George Proctor cane had been chief of the Baltimore police force and Baltimore was a hotbed of southern sympathizers when the sixth massachusetts militia, the first from our state to answer Lincoln’s call to arms passed through Baltimore.
They were attacked by a mob as the troops attempted to change trains, they were met with rocks, bricks and pistol shots.
It was 19 April 1861 anniversary of the battles at Lexington and concord four Massachusetts men were killed and 36 were wounded.
Marshal cain led a group of his city police officers to form a buffer between the mob and the soldiers, arguably preventing worse violence.
However, his fate was sealed by a telegram. He sent that night to secessionists outside the city streets red with Maryland blood, send expresses over the mountains of Maryland and Virginia for the riflemen to come without delay.

[56:46] Fresh hordes will be down on us tomorrow. We will fight them and whip them or die since he was already known to support secession.
This was the last straw, he was arrested by federal troops and initially taken to Fort Mchenry in Fort Mchenry.
He was joined by a rogue’s gallery of Maryland’s secessionists among them was Francis key Howard who published a Baltimore newspaper that was strongly in favour of secession.

[57:15] He was also the grandson of Francis scott Key, who wrote the star spangled banner.
While watching the british bombardment of the fort. The younger Francis was now locked up in,
George, morgan clark, Durant and other state legislators were also there after their plan to set up a secret legislative session outside the capital city of Annapolis in order to pass the session was discovered,
By the time they removed to Fort Warren, half the state Senate and over half the House of Representatives was behind bars.
They would jokingly refer to themselves as Maryland’s government in exile.

[57:52] On George’s island. They were met by prisoners from Kentucky who were in a similar situation.
Among them was Charles Morehead, the former governor of Kentucky, who had tried to negotiate neutrality for the state during the Civil war.
Later that year, the notorious mason and Slidell would be brought to fort warren.
James, Murray mason and john Slidell were so called diplomats dispatched by the confederacy who were sent to Britain and France to seek military support for the rebellion.
In order to stop them, the captain of a union Steam forget intercepted the british male ship RMS Trent that they were traveling on near the Bahamas.
He fired a shot across her bow, boarded her and seized mason and Slidell as prisoners.
They were locked up at fort warren by mid november.
The Trent affair caused an international incident and nearly brought Britain into the war on the side of the confederacy.

[58:50] To avoid this outcome, President Lincoln ordered the two men to be set free and on new year’s day, 1862, they continued their voyage toward Europe.
At the tail end of the war. A month after robert e lee surrendered at appomattox Union troops arrested the vice president of the confederacy at his home in Crawfordville Georgia.
On May 11th 18 65 alexander Stephens was an unlikely choice for vice president.
He had spent the decade before the war in Congress fighting to keep the union together and prevent the south from seceding.
He had even endorsed the Missouri compromise of 1854, calling it the greatest glory of my life.
Even at Georgia’s secession convention. He urged his fellow delegates to stay loyal to the union.

[59:36] Once the die was cast, his state, sent him to the confederate Congress and he was selected as their vice president.
In March of 1861, he gave a speech on the nature of the Confederacy that puts to rest the idea that it stood for states, rights, or nobility, or anything other than slavery.
Our new government is founded upon exactly this idea.
Its foundations are laid. Its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This our new government is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical philosophical and moral truth.
After this, Cornerstone was undermined and ultimately destroyed by federal troops.
Vice President Stevens arrived in Boston Harbor on May 25.

[1:00:31] He kept a detailed diary of the 22 weeks he spent as a guest on our harbour.
Upon arrival, he was insulted that he was met by a junior officer and not the commanding general of the fort.
I expected we would go to General Dix, but was disappointed. Lieutenant Woodman of the fort met us at the landing to him. I was turned over Lieutenant. Woman brought me immediately inside the fort.
After going through the sally port. In descending some steps, he stopped at the first room to the left saying, this is your room, I asked if I could not see General Dix.
I wished very much to see him about sending word to linton and about my diet and conditions of prison life.
He said, No, I’m left.
I surveyed the room. Coal fire was burning, A table and chair were in the center.
A narrow iron bunk like bedstead, with mattress and covering was in a corner.
The floor was stone large square blocks. The door was locked for the first time in my life I had the full realization of being a prisoner. I was alone.

[1:01:37] In 1865, things had improved enough that Stevens could only complain about the insult of not meeting General Dix.
However, when the first shipload of prisoners arrived in 1861, there was still construction equipment and debris on the parade ground, and none of the 200 guns were mounted on the battlements.
Before long, the garrison would be whipped into shape and the fort would be an important training ground for union units, especially artilleryman on their way to the battlefields in the south.
That first night, none of that had been accomplished yet.
Most of the prisoners were forced to spend that first night aboard the State of Maine sleeping in three hour shifts because there wasn’t enough room for all of the men to lie down at once.
Still sounds like better conditions than the amistad in the morning, the prisoners were taken into the fort.
The political prisoners were ushered into cells to the left of the main gates and the prisoners of war to the right.

[1:02:37] The political prisoners tended to have more spacious quarters, but even among the soldiers, officers and others who could afford to pay were given cells in the officer’s quarters.
The rest were quartered in barracks rooms measuring 17 ft by 50.
Most of the cells were unfinished at first, with no accommodation, but the bare granite floors.
DMX order said that the confederates were to be treated with all kindness, but it would be weeks before adequate beds and bedding could be obtained to say nothing of sufficient food for the unexpected number of prisoners.
The plate of these prisoners on our harbor was carried in many boston newspapers.
The boston post would say our citizens should contribute liberally with things as are needed, and soon donations were rolling in.

[1:03:29] Bostonians donated food bedsteads, mattresses, blankets, medicine, clothing, and books to the enemies on their doorstep.
Some of this generosity was driven by the spirit of charity.
While some was an attempt to inspire similar kindness toward union prisoners being held in the south.
As the boston Daily Journal said, the friends of our prisoners now languishing in the south, will reach them by the shortest method.
If they set an example of magnanimity toward these rebels,
the fact will soon become known at the south, and their hardships will be lessened along with the charitable donations the prisoners were receiving those with the means to do so could purchase the comforts of home.

[1:04:15] They soon established trade with the merchants of boston, and they had sumptuous meals, alcohol, and cigars shipped in.
The officers and political prisoners were given broad freedom to roam the island as long as they promised not to attempt to escape.
After the initial shortages abated life among the prisoners on George’s island became relatively comfortable.
One of the Maryland legislators would describe their conditions.
Within a few months we have had during the day the free run of the island some 40 acres,
and at all times in a walk, there is some moving thing to be seen on the waters, and still more lately we have been allowed to fish and to trap for lobsters.
We have from May to november a steamer twice a day from boston with the papers.
The friends and families of several of the prisoners have had permission to visit them mrs frank.
Howard has been for three months to visit her husband every day if she likes, she did come for about a week and she may return again, even the most lowly private, with no money to buy himself.
The luxuries of life would enjoy the same food and the same barracks conditions as a union private stationed on the same fort.
Of course, for some, that was little comfort as letters home would complain of the stench of codfish and onions coming from the Union mess.

[1:05:40] Conditions. At Fort Warren may have been pretty cushy by prison standards, but it was still a prison and men still attempted to escape.
One confederate captain named J. W. Alexander would later account how he and an accomplice escaped from Fort Warren in 1863 and almost made it to freedom in Canada.

[1:06:00] Four of us determined to escape. Many plans were suggested and discussed, but none seemed feasible,
indeed, situated as we were on an island strictly guarded day and night, with sentinel stationed in front of our doors confined within solid masonry constructed to resist the shot from the heaviest guns.
It seemed impossible to escape, and yet the escape was easily accomplished in the basement, under the room in which we were confined was a pump where we obtained our water.
And in the outer wall of this basement where two openings called musket tree loopholes.
These were something over six ft high, two or three ft wide at the inside of the wall and gradually sloping to appoint so at the outer side of the wall there were only a little over seven inches wide.
One day while bathing. The thought struck me that I could get through this whole captain alexander found that if he stripped naked, then turned his head as if he was looking over his own shoulder, he could squeeze through the gap.
It took three attempts from to get off the island outside the walls of the fort, the conspirators discovered that it was easy to evade the Union sentinels.
As the sentinels walked toward one another, they would lie still in the island’s tall grass.
When the sentinels met and turned to walk away from one another they would crawl forward until they were over the seawall.
They would then lie still in the water with their heads propped up on the base of the seawall and their bodies hidden underwater.

[1:07:26] The first time out, they realized that there were no boats that they could easily steal, and they ended up sneaking back into their cells.
The second time they took along to confederate sailors who were strong swimmers.
They repeated the process, and the two sailors swam to another island to find a boat and they never came back.

[1:07:45] The 3rd time proved to be a charm for Captain Alexander. This time he and one accomplice went into the water themselves.
They found a wooden target used for riflery practice and used it as a float to help them swim across the narrows and then out to boston light.
There they stole a small boat, but by the time they made it back to George’s island, the sun had come up and they’re remaining.
Two accomplices had been captured turning north. They sailed their small craft toward the maine coast, hoping to eventually make it to neutral New Brunswick.
Along the way they went ashore at an isolated house near Rye beach, New Hampshire, the Laconic, New Englander, they found, listened calmly as two naked men with southern accents explained how they came to be in a small boat with cut anchor lines off the coast of New Hampshire.

[1:08:35] We told him that we had sailed out from Portsmouth for a lark and had gone in bathing and that while in the water are close, had blown overboard and we asked him to get us some clothes if he could, and bring us some water and something to eat.
He went on shore and soon returned with some old clothes, a good supply of plain food, some tobacco and a small bottle of cherry brandy.
I am satisfied he knew what we were, but we said nothing except to thank him for his kindness.
On the third day a revenue cutter found them. They were taken to Portland and soon found themselves back at Fort Warren.

[1:09:12] This story of escape seems to have inspired the persistent legend of the Lady in Black.
According to this tale, a Lieutenant Andrew Lanier of Georgia was imprisoned at Fort warren in 18 62.
Learning of his fate, his wife Melanie made her way to boston, cut her hair short, and don men’s clothing and infiltrated George’s island.
She signaled her husband and he lowered a rope to allow her to climb in through one of the loopholes.

[1:09:41] She had brought a pistol and a pickaxe and the plan was to tunnel into the forts.
Arsenal armed the prisoners and overpower the garrison.
Unfortunately for them, the noise of the digging alerted the guards when they rushed into arrest the conspirators, Melanie sprang out with her pistol drawn in the confusion. There was a misfire or perhaps a ricochet or some other accident.
Her bullet struck her own husband and he fell dead.
She was sentenced to hang as a confederate spy and in her grief, her only request was that she be allowed to dress in mourning for her husband.
Accordingly, a long black gown and veil were procured and she wore them to the gallows on George’s island for her execution.
Well into the 20th century soldiers and visitors at the fort would claim to see the apparition of a woman in black roaming the parapets are stalking through the basements under the case mates.
This story is of course, complete hogwash.
There are no recorded escape attempts from Fort Warren prior to 1863 and importantly, no prisoner male or female was ever executed at Fort Warren.
In fact, the only woman executed as a spy during the Civil War was Mary Surratt, who was hanged for her role in the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln.

[1:11:06] The story of the Lady in Black maybe an invention, but that doesn’t mean that the prisoners at Fort Warren were immune from death.
When the first prisoners arrived in 1861, dozens of them brought typhoid fever with them based, doctors immediately went to work trying to contain it.
But typhoid dysentery and the other diseases of soldiers in close quarters would plague the fort on and off throughout the war.

[1:11:30] Letter from a Union doctor records that the disease is most prevalent for warren are typhoid fever, mumps, pneumonia, bronchitis, rheumatism, scabs and debility, the result of previous sickness.
After several cases of smallpox were discovered, among the prisoners based, doctors realized that most of the Southerners had never been vaccinated.
They scoured up a sufficient quantity of the vaccine and had it administered to the prisoners.
In all, 13 prisoners died at Fort Warren out of a total of about 2200 who were held there during the course of the war.
That’s about one half of 1% as compared to about 12% who died at the average northern prison camp and 15% who died at the average confederate prison,
Up to 35% of Union prisoners died at the notorious Andersonville Prison camp in Georgia, where they were held without adequate food, access to fresh water or appropriate sanitation.

[1:12:28] In comparison, the prisoners held at Fort Warren suffered a lower casualty rate from disease than the average unit of soldiers on either side of the war.
In 1963, the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a small stone monument on the parade ground inside the walls of Fort Warren,
the UdC were enjoying their heyday during the centennial of the Civil war, erecting monuments around the country.
Even in former Union States, their ideology treated the cause of the confederacy as right and just,
minimized or ignored the role of slavery in the Civil war and promoted the idea that the confederacy was a heroic, lost cause to defend the southern way of life in the face of northern aggression.
Their special brand of memorialization enjoyed a boom in the south in the early 19 sixties.
As monuments to confederate glory were seen as a way to push back against the growing success of a civil rights movement here in boston.
The monument they erected seems relatively benign.
It lists the names of 13 Confederate prisoners who died at the Fort Beneath a seal and inscription upon closer inspection. However, a few things stand out.

[1:13:41] The great seal of the confederate states of America tops the granite slab, complete with the latin motto.
Diovan ditch, which translates to Under God are vindicator,
Below that the inscription reads during the war between the states 1861-1865, more than 1000 confederates were imprisoned here, of whom 13 died.
This is a commemoration of 13 specific men at the prison camp in which they died.
Among them is a private lanier supposed husband of the lady in black, who died of typhoid in January 1862.
As such, it’s a more fitting memorial than many of the martial statues of confederate soldiers and generals sprinkled around the south.
However, that use of the confederate seal and the reference to the war between the States, a phrase used by confederate apologists to imply that the civil war was a quarrel between a collection of autonomous states,
rather than an attempt to preserve the american union,
turns even this simple marker into a piece of propaganda.

[1:14:51] After the Charleston church shootings by Dylann roof in 2015, communities around the country considered removing or reinterpreting their confederate monuments.
As the movement gained momentum, city crews in new Orleans wearing bullet proof vests, helmets and masks to hide their identities removed. That cities confederate monuments in May.
Mayor mitch Landrieu delivered an eloquent touching address in defense of the decision.
So before we part, let us again state clearly for all to hear the confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow americans to slavery.
This is a history we should never forget and one that we should never, ever again put on a pedestal to be revered as a community. We must recognize the significance of removing new Orleans, confederate monuments.
It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of and then move past a painful part of our history. Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul searching a truly lost cause.

[1:16:01] In june massachusetts, governor charlie baker issued a statement through a spokesperson indicating that he would support removing the memorial at Fort Warren, our commonwealth’s only confederate monument.
We should refrain from the display of symbols, especially in our public parks that do not support liberty and equality for the people of massachusetts.

[1:16:22] In august the nation was shocked as a demonstration that had been advertised as opposing the removal of a statue of robert E lee turned into one of the largest, most publicized and well organized white supremacist rallies in living history.
The shocking images of neo nazis marching by torchlight and heavily armed right wing militias, menacing synagogues in Charlottesville lead to a national reckoning with the subject of confederate monuments.
Just days after a counter protester was killed in Charlottesville when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people.
A descendant of one of the Fort Warren prisoners described as a coal shoveler on a confederate steamboat wrote Well, if the input of a descendant of one of the 13 Confederate dead has any weight Massachusetts, I say take it down why?
For starters, it was put up under the auspices of the daughters of the confederacy and the less you have to do with those mythmaking coots the better.
But more importantly, the monument is injected with the same poison that blights our fate as a country.
The conceit that God had any part of the foul business of the confederacy and the insinuation that there was anything remotely honorable or noble about the cause it represented.

[1:17:35] So take it down massachusetts, you have the blessing and encouragement of this descendant of the dead.
But more importantly, you have the moral imperative of the living and a responsibility to those yet to be born within days of the violence in Charlottesville.
The monument at Fort Warren had been encased in a wooden crate out of view. While the state and federal agencies administering the boston harbor Islands decided what to do next.
Finally, on October two, the secretary of State’s office announced that the monument will be removed from Fort Warren and transferred to the commonwealth Museum in Dorchester,
saying when the marker is removed, DCR will transfer it to the State Archives for storage until it can be returned to the people who placed it on the island.
It will remain in storage until then and will not be on display.
There’s no word on the final disposition of the marker if you’d like to visit Fort Warren, there is regular ferry service to George’s island from mid May to early october.
With departures from Long Wharf in boston and the Hangem shipyard,
be sure to allow for enough time to explore the extensive public areas of the fort with history from not only the Civil War, but also our coastal defenses during both world wars.
Bring a picnic to enjoy on the island or pick up lunch from the snack bar on site.
Be sure to bring a flashlight to explore the forts, underground tunnels and hidden chambers. And don’t forget your sunscreen.

Outro

Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:19:04] Just a few days after that story originally aired as episode 51, the Confederate Monument was officially removed from Georgia’s island.
Last I heard anything about it. The slab was stored at the State archives, out of view of the public to learn more about how the boston harbor islands have been used to house prisoners for nearly 400 years.
Check out this week’s show notes at Hull mystery dot com slash 231.
I’ll have links to maps, photos and primary sources for both of our harbour island tales.
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Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[1:20:08] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.