The Nazi Spy Ship (episode 259)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[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 2 59 the Nazi spy ship.
Hi, I’m jake. This is going to be our 2nd episode in a row about World War II and Nazi spies.
This time, I’m talking about a ship named the Buskø when it came steaming into boston harbor 81 years ago. This week, the roughly 100 ft fishing trawler was escorted by a Coast Guard cutter with armed guards watching over the crew.
The next day’s headlines declared that the US had captured a Nazi spy ship manned by Gestapo agents who were setting up secret bases in Greenland.
But the truth turned out to be more complicated.

[0:56] The Buskø was sailing under a Norwegian flag and manned by a Norwegian crew.
Yet their peaceful voyage to deliver supplies to isolated Norwegian hunters in the arctic was used to cover up Nazi intelligence gathering.
So what would the fate of the ship be?
And while war was raging in europe, the United States was technically at peace.
So on what charges were the Norwegian crew held at the east boston immigration station.
Before we answer these questions, I just want to pause and thank everyone who supports the show on Patreon.
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Plus I never thought I’d say this, but I’m being sued over something I included in the show notes for an episode that came out a couple of years ago.
I don’t think I can be very specific, but even if I end up being able to settle the suit, it’s going to cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
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Now, it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:48] On the morning of Tuesday october 14th 1941 Boston was surprised to see the U.
S. Coast Guard polar cutter Bear steam into boston harbor, with prisoners held at gunpoint on her decks escorting a captured foreign ship, which the evening edition of the Globe for that day described for its readers.
The Buskø arrived in the lower harbor at seven this morning, escorted by the patrol boat Bear, a Coast Guard cutter, the 409, and the navy tug pal Hatton.
She had been reported as a vessel of 60 tons, but observers said that she is bigger than that.
She looks a good deal like one of the trawlers operating out of boston, Norwegian flags were painted on both sides of the bus go forward on each side of the hull were painted the symbols M.
17 V. D. Apparently a license number.
Her sales were snug down on the booms. Her buff stack had a wide black band and a wide red band.
The paint was peeling off a metal jacket covered her bow or protection against ice cakes, but the wooden planking of report rail forward was splintered.

[4:00] Two large motor lifeboats hung from the davits. One of the lifeboats bore the name.
Island gets to be the name of some other vessel in which the boat originally belonged on the deck where two other smaller lifeboats, and on the bridge housing was another,
An associated press wire story that went out on the morning of October 15, 1941 added some additional details to the description of the Bosco’s arrival seized off Greenland last month.
The 60 ton Buskø unkempt in C Warne was escorted into boston harbor yesterday by the Bear, one time flagship with a bird, an arctic expedition and now a naval service.
It was understood, however, that another vessel made the seizure catch rigged and equipped with a steam engine.
The Buskø flew the Norwegian flag when she arrived here on her decks were electrical apparatus, skis, dog sleds, a husky and a huge black Newfoundland dog.

[5:02] An article in Time magazine, published about two weeks after the bus goes arrival in boston called it the first Nazi see victim of U. S. Naval might.
In the 1945 article in the Military Engineer Journal called its capture a first blow for national defense.
However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was still two months in the future, and the Roosevelt administration had been studiously maintaining at least a veneer of neutrality for years, not taking any steps that might allow the us to be dragged into a european war.
That much of the nation was ambivalent about it best, and at worst, believe that we should join up with the nazis to fight global communism.

[5:43] So if the United States was a neutral nation, what was one of its warships doing? Capturing a ship belonging to what was on paper, at least a friendly nation?
This was the question that nat a Barrows asked under his byline in the boston globe the next morning, one of the great mystery stories of the entire war landed in boston yesterday and promptly became more of a mystery to the general public than ever.
Out of the storm wracked north atlantic. A United States Navy Prize crew brought in the 105 ft Norwegian trawler, Buskø and a crew of 19 Norwegians, a german gestapo agent and a 33 year old woman.

[6:24] The arrival was loaded with enough diplomatic dynamite to cause a half a dozen Federal Department heads at Washington to drop all their other business and keep the telephone wires wide open to boston.
It was enough to frighten every local spokesman into complete silence about even the merest detail of the incredibly dirty little trawler and her strange company.
For this was the vessel which the Navy Department last sunday revealed had been taken into custody near Greenland in connection with an attempt to set up a secret radio station for broadcasting north atlantic weather reports and movements of convoys.

[7:00] This was the company that had been dispatched to Greenland under the auspices of the Nazi authorities in Norway.
The Navy brought them here aboard the USs Bear. Once Admiral Byrd’s flagship in the antarctic and turned them over to the immigration authorities at East boston.
It kept a strict armed guard over the old trawler at Commonwealth pier number one, where Lieutenant commander, joseph, a gainer of city of flint, famous in command from then on the Navy’s job was over.
But the story and the mystery has only just begun today.
Greenland is an independent country within the kingdom of Denmark, kind of similar to how Canada is an independent nation within the british commonwealth at the time. However, Denmark claimed all of Greenland as an overseas colony.
So how did this Norwegian expedition end up in Greenland in the first place?
Have our div old leader of the 1941 expedition had a long history in Greenland.
A decade earlier, he raised the flag over a new Norwegian settlement on the east coast of Greenland, claiming a short lived territory named Erik the Red’s land after the viking who established the first north settlement on the island roughly 1000 years ago.

[8:20] For about 500 years after that settlement was founded, Norse people shared Greenland with the Indigenous Tuli Dorset and Inuit people who preceded them.
But eventually their settlement failed.
The combined kingdom of Denmark and Norway continued to claim Greenland until Norway became independent with the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars.
In the early 19th century, Denmark maintained only a loose administrative control over the territory, especially the northern section where Norwegian for hunters, fishermen and whalers frequently set up seasonal stations along the coast.
In the 1930s, they attempted to make these seasonal claims permanent by proclaiming the new territory, but their claim was rejected by international courts.

[9:07] Now with Norway under Nazi occupation and war already raging in the north, atlantic Oslo took advantage of the situation and claimed ownership of all of Greenland,
though, the reality on the ground didn’t change much with the only Norwegians on the ground remaining trappers, hunters, and small scientific expeditions.
To this end, in late 1940, geologist Adolphe whole recruited deviled to the Norwegian Svalbard in Arctic Research Institute, a precursor to today’s Norwegian Arctic Institute.
Together they planned a relief mission to take supplies and provisions to the handful of Norwegian trappers in northeast Greenland during the summer of 1941,
allowing any of the trappers who wanted to return home to do so and providing well provisioned replacements were needed.
A declassified FBI memo dated october 23rd 1941 underscores how important it was to Devolder hole to keep a Norwegian footprint in Greenland during the war years.
Over a period of years, the company has set up 15 stations which are considered the main points from which the expeditionary parties work,
and in addition there to between 150 and 160 huts have been established throughout this area in Greenland for utilization by the individuals on the expeditionary parties.
Should they find themselves considerably removed from their hunting station.

[10:31] Dave old stated that the company considered it extremely important to keep men at these stations throughout the war, so that their activities and occupations would continue after the cessation of hostilities.
In other words, the company would be in a position to establish a continuous operation in this area over a period of years in opposition to the claims of the danish or other expeditions.

[10:55] Annual expeditions were sent to Greenland after the first expedition. The succeeding ones were more or less in the nature of relief parties, new individuals relieving those stationed at Greenland so that the latter might return to their homes in Norway.
At the outbreak of the current war, this company had a broadcasting station however, about,
August 1940, during the time of the German occupation of Norway, the fridge off Nansen a British boat destroyed this Norwegian broadcasting station.

[11:27] Even with the approval of Norway’s Nazi collaborating quisling government, there are a number of bureaucratic hurdles to clear before any resupply mission could depart.
First, they had to find the right ship. Devo told the FBI that the Germans had seized every Norwegian ship capable of making nine knots of speed or more.
So they had to seek special dispensation to take the bus go slowing the planning process for the expedition into late summer.
Then there were the weapons. The entire point of the voyage was to resupply hunters and trappers.
But Nazi authorities were wary of their plan to take along. 10 military grade rifles, six shotguns, 10,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and 3000 shotgun shells.
So this to push the departure back.

[12:17] When they finally got approval from the authorities and got all their supplies loaded onto the bus co, they were able to launch the expedition on August 19, 1941, which is already pretty late in the season for a voyage to northern Greenland,
Listeners have been around for a while might remember our episode about Sir William Phipps expedition delay sees to Quebec in 1690.
That voyage left Boston on August 19 and the siege was ultimately broken by the onset of the Canadian Winter granted Phipps is sailing ships are even slower than the Buskø, but winter starts a lot sooner in Greenland,
compounding the seasonal issue, that Buskø still had to visit several Norwegian ports to pick up additional supplies and trappers.
Then at each ports, they had to wait for Nazi officials to clear them to depart again.
Further delaying the departure when they landed at harsh stats on august 27th devote called whole and learned to the dismay of both men,
that they’d be forced to take a german agent named Bradley on board and take him to Greenland, where he’d set up a weather station.
When the ship’s captain and engine operator protested Bradley’s gestapo handler supposedly replied, We have long arms, we have both submarines and planes and you have a family at home,
The Briscoe’s officers didn’t press their lock.

[13:43] This agent turned out to be Jacob Ritter Bradley, a 26 year old Norwegian man from the city of Bergen.
He sold agricultural equipment for about seven years.
He had volunteered as a political organizer for the national sampling the homegrown Norwegian National Socialist Party,
by the time the nazis formally took over Norway, Bradley was also the equivalent of a captain in the herd, which was basically the national samplings equivalent of the Nazi brownshirts, a fascist militia group.

[14:15] According to another declassified FBI file about Bradley.
There were rumors that he was resented for informing on fellow Norwegians who’d been helping the allies.
So he may have already been hoping for a way out of the country when he was approached by a Gestapo agent named Z Boulder, newest fascist loyalties, and offered him the opportunity of joining the Greenland expedition.
The report notes to Bradley’s query as to whether it was a Norwegian or german expedition.
Zibel told him the same was being planned by Adolph Hole.
So I bought, offered to pay 400 kroner per month to the father of Bradley and Bergen Norway. If Bradley would undertake this trip and act as a radio operator from Greenland.
Although Bradley indicated he could have secured more money than this by staying in Norway, he was desirous of getting away from that country and hence accepted Zee bolts proposition.
Having agreed to the mission, Bradley then got a four day crash course in meteorology and radio operation and how to encode his transmissions during his brief training.
He was also ordered to keep an eye out for british and american patrol boats, blimps and airplanes and to notify his german handlers if he saw any,
if he was detected by the americans or british, he was supposed to call for help and the nazis would send a plane to pick him up.
I don’t really think that was that realistic.

[15:38] Within a week, he was on board the Buskø, which steamed out of lock pick on August 29 to make the crossing to Greenland.
Bradley wouldn’t set foot on Norwegian soil again for 40 years.

[15:52] By September three. He and two trappers, cousins named Jacobsen were being dropped off at Yanbu station, an old Norwegian hunting outpost that had been abandoned for several years.

[16:05] A declassified FBI report explains why devoe dropped the three off at Yanbu rather than taking them onto their originally planned destination.

[16:15] And explaining why Bradley and the Jacobsen is together with the radio equipment, had been put off the boat at Yanbu before reaching Macbook.
To the point mentioned by the german agents, Devolder remarked that he was fond of the Norwegian who was stationed at Macbook to did not want to burden him with Bradley.
Furthermore, stating that he desired to get rid of Bradley in this radio equipment.
He added that the masts were still standing at Yanbu, which could be used by Bradley and setting up his radio equipment.
Sufficient provisions to last Bradley for approximately two years were unloaded at Yanbu when he was interrogated by the FBI. Bradley described how he spent the first few days in his new home.
He said they had five dogs at this station. There was only one bunk in the hut at Yanbu. So Bradley slept on the floor in a sleeping bag.
The next few days they spent fixing up the hut and putting away their provisions which should last them for the next two years On September seven Bradley shot his first game a falcon On September eight.
The two Jacobson’s who’ve been away since September six in a row boat returned and asked Bradley if he had seen an American seaplane over their station.
He remarked that he had heard a distant noise at about 12 o’clock that day, but it thought that it was an iceberg out in the fjord.

[17:37] The Jacobsen cousins, indicating that they had seen this plane over the Danish station at Cape Rank, not being able to determine whether it was an english or an american plane.

[17:48] It was not until September 12 that the Bunk was finished for Bradley to sleep in in this hut, and about this date he began unpacking the scientific apparatus he had, bringing the same in under cover of the roof.
On September 13, he finished with the radio transmitter and hooked up the motor with the intention of the following day, September 14, sending out his first report over the radio.

[18:14] The day after dropping off Bradley in the Jacobson’s, the Buskø steamed south, dropping off more parties of trappers and other outposts every couple of days until it reached the hold with Hope Peninsula on september 12th,
despite intelligence that three american ships had recently been seen in the area.
These three ships were Task Group 6.5, the US Navy’s Northeast Greenland Patrol.
As the likelihood of the US entering the war grew, policy shifted to include Greenland in the american sphere of influence.
And military patrols were sent to keep access powers from establishing a foothold on the island in the northeast corner of the island. This military presence was made up of the Coast Guard cutters, Northstar, Northland and Bear.

[19:02] Now, if these three ships were all Coast Guard cutters, why were they being used as a US Navy task group to patrol Northeast Greenland.
A 1945 article in the journal Military Engineer by the Vice Admiral of the Coast Guard, described by the mission was assigned to the Coast Guard rather than the Navy.
There’s another reason for transferring the Coast Guard to the Navy in time of war.
The training and experience acquired by our officers and men and the performance of their civilian duties makes them particularly fitted for certain types of combat duty.
For example, our life saving operations on the high seas and along the coasts have given us a group of men who probably know more about handling small boats and about operations and surf than any other group in the country.
The value of such men as a nucleus or Kadre around which to build a landing core for amphibious operations is of course obvious.
So also the experience gained by the Coast Guard in the Ice Patrol and the Alaska fisheries work has been of great use to the Navy in the cold areas.
He goes on to explain. In the present war, the Coast Guard’s transfer to the Navy was gradual from time to time.
During the summer of 1941, various units and vessels were placed under naval jurisdiction, pursuant to the exercise of the president’s emergency powers, and in November 1941, the president completed the transfer.

[20:29] Thus, on the date of the Pearl Harbor attack. The Coast Guard was already functioning as a service under the Navy Department, and it had already made significant contributions on behalf of the National Defense.
There was, for example, the incident involving the cutter Northland.
He briefly describes this incident and concludes we are naturally proud that the Coast Guard was able to successfully accomplish its mission.
In this first blow for National Defense, All three of these coast guard vessels were wooden cutters of different vintages, with the North Star being newest,
have been constructed in 1932 as an Antarctic exploration vessel and then transferred to the Coast Guard. Earlier in 1941.

[21:16] Built in 1927. The Northland had the distinction of being the last coast guard cutter constructed as a sailing vessel,
though its tall masts were cut down to stubs in 1936 and recognition of the fading usefulness of sale for warships.

[21:33] It too, was an arctic veteran, having patrolled the Bering sea off Alaska for over a decade before being sent to boston, to be refitted for antarctic exploration.

[21:44] That mission was called off when war came to the North Atlantic in 1939, and the ship was ready for service in Greenland, where it was meant to replace the third vessel in the task group.
The bear, The venerable Bear, had the richest history of all.
In fact, the cutter’s so famous inside the Coast Guard that the mascot of the Coast Guard Academy is called the Bears, after the old cutter originally built as an arctic seal hunting vessel.
Her wooden keel was laid down in 1870, for When reporters realized that this antique was escorting the bus go into Boston.
The New York Times exclaimed on October 26.
The bear is built of wood, but she has outlasted many a Steeler iron sailing ship built since she was put overboard in 1870.
For and in her wandering, she has plowed through ice in the arctic and the antarctic, and has sailed the atlantic and the pacific, and has covered more than a million miles in her boisterous and adventurous career.

[22:46] As a matter of fact, the Bear is unique in the United States naval history.
She has been carrying on usefully long after being condemned to the boneyard, she just won’t quit her career as a government vessel started accidentally.
Originally, she was built for the Newfoundland seal trade, her size three ft thick sheath on the outside with iron bark made to crush through the heavy flows that come down from the Greenland coast, carrying the seals and their white coated young.

[23:16] When she was launched in Dundee Scotland, she was an auxiliary steam bar Canteen, ft long, with a 32 ft beam and of about 700 tons, a stout hearted ship.

[23:30] That three ft thick wooden hull was built up of many layers of heavy six inch thick planking.
The Bear was originally topped with tall masts and rig to sail as a bar canteen with a steam engine as backup.
After a decade as a sealer, the US government purchased the Bear and put her into service as an arctic cutter, first for the Revenue Marine, then the revenue cutter service, and eventually the Coast Guard.

[23:58] From 1885 to 1926. Her crews would spend the depths of winter in ports at Oakland California and then head to the Arctic waters of the Bering Sea as soon as the ice started to break up in the spring.
For nine of those arctic years, the bear was under the command of the legendary Captain Hell roaring mike Healy.
He was the first african american commissioned officer in the U.
S. Military and for almost two decades he was the law itself in Alaska, acting as a judge in military court, rescuing shipwrecked sailors and delivering reindeer to Alaska native villages during a famine.

[24:38] The story in the times goes on to relate one of the most famous exploits carried out by the crew of the bear. During those arctic decades.

[24:47] The most famous exploit in which the bear figured off Alaska however, was in 1897 when eight whalers were caught in the ice off point barrow on the Arctic Ocean.
There were 265 men on the ships in a place that had been a graveyard of whalers.
The bear set out from Seattle in November late in the year to tackle the ice, and by December 16 reached Cape Vancouver on the Bering Sea, 1200 miles from point barrow.
Three officers, Lieutenants, David, Jarvis and Ellsworth birkhoff and dr Samuel Call, went ashore.
There they marched across frozen tundra and mountains, stopping at times to buy reindeer, which they drove before them and reached the whalers.
In 100 and 20 days, the reindeer saved the whalers, and then the spring, when the ice opened, the bear went on and picked up the stranded cruise.

[25:45] The famous old ship was decommissioned in 1928 by the Coast Guard is superannuated, and for a time it was used as a marine museum by the city of Oakland California.
Then she was bought by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd renamed the Bear of Oakland, and made a part of a second antarctic expedition,
that she was still seaworthy and capable of smacking the ice mighty blows was proved many times during that expedition.

[26:14] Two years ago she was turned over to the government by Admiral Byrd, and she was once again commissioned as the Bear.
That’s how she got up north again. Not far from the scene of her first triumph, poking into Greenland’s icy waters and picking up a Nazi interloper and as far as those on the Bear concerned, she can go on forever.

[26:37] Of the three cutters on the Northeast Greenland Patrol.
The North Star was the first to get wind. The Norwegian expedition in their sector.
In his article, A cursed affair for the journal Polar Research, showed a scar, steen quotes from an unpublished memoir by Northstar Lieutenant junior Grade David Sinclair, one of the danes stationed at the L.
A. Island weather station, was out working his trap Lynn when he saw a trawler up a narrow fjord.
He hurried back and reported to us.
We immediately went up that fjord and found that the vessel had left.
They had in fact steamed right into the hands of the Coast Guard cutter Northland.
It was a Norwegian trawler named Bosco. There were 27 persons on board, most of them Danish hunters and Norwegian trappers, and one woman who said she was a nurse.
Also found, were up to date radio transmitting equipment, which may have been used for sending weather reports and information on allied shipping to german u boats and access controlled territory.
The same paper and Polar Research quotes a US Navy memo to President Roosevelt about the subsequent capture of the Buskø, the 60 ton Norwegian steamer Buskø, chartered by a Norwegian expedition headed by Harvard Diebold, was boarded by U.
S. Coast Guard cutter Northland at Macbook to on september 12th.

[28:02] There was a crew of 10 with 11 passengers, all of whom were Norwegians and one of whom was a woman.
Personnel carried the usual hunting guns information elicited indicated that three men in a radio transmitter had been left at Peter’s Bay.
The Buskø was held pending further investigation, and the Northland proceeded to Peter’s Bay to remove the radio station before the ice closed in.

[28:28] The task of removing that radio station before the ice closed in was put in the hands of Coast Guard Lieutenant Leroy McCluskey, a Cambridge native, On October 27, 1942.
A story ran in the Boston Globe about his brush with action and with fame, Leaving the Buskø in charge of a prize crew.
The cutter headed back 400 miles and anchored in a fjord about 10 miles from shore.
McCluskey Navigating officer aboard the cutter was given a dozen enlisted men to go ashore on a power surf boat and raid the radio station.
The men beached the boat and headed a mile inland on foot and a foot of snow.
The night was pitch dark and the wind was blowing about 20 mph, but the Coast Guard commandos were thankful for these conditions so that their arrival might be unnoticed.

[29:23] The men with machine guns and other arms surrounded the hunters shack, and Lieutenant McClusky tried the door.
It was unlocked and open to disclose the three men lying in bunks.
They were taken prisoners immediately, radio equipment and secret Nazi instructions seized,
one of the prisoners, tried to set fire to important papers when he offered to cook some coffee for the captors, But the attempt was frustrated by the alert coast guardsmen.
What equipment that was deemed worthless was fired, along with the shack by the Raiders and the prisoners were escorted to the waiting cutter.

[30:02] The equipment that McCluskey found valuable was brought back on board the Northland.
A declassified october 17th 1941. FBI memo to the White House that was signed by J.
Edgar Hoover gives an inventory of the meteorological and radio equipment that the Coast Guard took into evidence.

[30:21] With reference to the scientific equipment that was put on board the steamship Buskø in Norway at the time of Bradley’s arrival and which equipment was unloaded for him. In Greenland.
A document in the german language appearing to be in the form of a requisition was found pertaining to the radio equipment.
It appeared that this equipment had been secured from the german supply stores at Oslo Norway.
The requisition being signed or authorized by a german official, whose title was garage walter, translated, that means equipment manager.
There was also found a paper pertaining to the meteorological equipment bearing the german word Rice veteran denounced meaning Reich weather service.

[31:05] From an examination of the scientific equipment aboard the steamship Buskø, made by a representative of the Technical laboratory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
While the boats in the harbor of boston, it was observed that the Lawrence radio transmitter furnace to Bradley is a 40 watt machine available only for radio telegraphy and not being possible to transmit voice communication over this set.
This transmitter appeared to be brand new, apparently having never been used since. There was no evidence of heating in the tubes, which occurs when the set’s been operating for some period of time.
Numerous accessories and spare parts for this radio transmitter were included in the equipment which Bradley had.
The radio is capable of transmitting over frequencies of 3000 to 16,670 Killer cycle’s broken up into three bands.

[31:57] Included in the radio equipment on the steamship Buskø, there was one radio receiver of a very high grade,
the tuning range of which was broken up into four bands, 25,000 to 12,000 killer cycles, 12,000 to 6000 killer cycles, 6000 to 3000 killer cycles and 3000 to 1500 killer cycles.
Also, this equipment included appropriate receiving antenna and accessories.
There was a one cylinder gasoline motor generator set available for supplying electrical current for the Lawrence transmitter and receiver or for lighting purposes if necessary.
There was also one power control panel used to regulate the amount of current and voltage that was being fed from the motor generator set to the transmitter and receiving sets.

[32:45] In addition, there was found considerable meteorological equipment including cyclorama tres and monitors, barometers,
which are for measuring humidity, wind speed and atmospheric pressure, and similar equipment, including various pamphlets and folders which are published by the german government.
One compass was noted to be identical with a standard German Army marching compass.

[33:11] My friend joe is a ham radio operator. So I emailed him the passage from the FBI memo and I asked him if that equipment would work for transmitting across the north atlantic to Norway and how it stacks up against modern equipment,
He replied, This all sounds reasonable. Certainly for that era.
The transmitter and receiver are both capable of operating in the short wave bands, as was common for long distance communication before satellites, referring to a trip we took to the boston Harbor Islands over Labor Day weekend.
He added A 40 watt transmitter paired with a decent antenna will certainly provide good signals.
When we were camping on pet X. I was using telegraphy at 5-10 watts and a mediocre antenna.
I made over 100 contacts with stations in europe and across the US.
So, Jacob Bradley was pretty well kitted out using less powerful equipment, joe had been able to broadcast and receive over a much longer distance than from Greenland Norway.
Under interrogation, Bradley told the FBI how he was ordered to use all that fancy equipment.

[34:20] Bradley stated that he was only to transmit news over the radio. Not expecting to have regular two way communication.
He explained, however, that the manner in which he would be able to determine whether the information being transmitted by him was received by the Germans in Norway was through listening to the news broadcast from Oslo.
During the first hour of the second day after Bradley had transmitted the information over his set.
After the german news on the broadcast from Oslo, the announcer would then state as follows, to indicate that the information from Bradley had been received.
The gift from Miss B. Has come in hearty thanks.
If the reception by Bradley from the Oslo station was poor, Bradley during his subsequent weather reports was to request that a shift be made to some other station in Norway from which the reception was good.

[35:14] Bradley advised he was instructed to broadcast his information from Greenland at four different frequencies four times a day.
That is at five a.m. Eight a. M. Noon and five p.m.
Z. Bolt advised Bradley that about 8-10 days after Bradley’s arrival in Greenland, the Germans would start to listen for broadcasts from Bradley, and Bradley was expected to start sending information about September 12.

[35:41] Bradley said that there were two masts about 45-55 ft high, some 75 ft apart at a point, approximately 60-70 ft above sea level at Peter’s Bay.
However, there was only a partial antenna leading to one of the masts which Bradley found he could use upon his arrival there.
He said he started the generator operating about September 13, but due to the fact that there was open water nearby, he decided it would be best to wait until the ice had closed in before broadcasting.
Being furthermore, prompted to make this decision, by reason of planes undoubtedly patrol planes which you could hear in the distance.
He stated that no messages were ever sent by him from this radio station in Greenland.
Bradley advised that at the time the representatives of the United States government located them in Greenland.
He had not attempted to destroy the secret codes or equipment, since he realized his presence in Greenland with the radio equipment would cause him considerable trouble, and he felt that by not destroying this material, he would not increase his apparent difficulties.

[36:47] What would those apparent difficulties be for now a free vacation to boston,
the prisoners from the Buskø were moved onto the cutter bear, while a prize crew, meaning a skeleton crew of american sailors from the three Coast Guard cutters Manda Buskø.
The trip back to boston would be about 3200 miles and should have taken a month or less.
However, the Buskø was slow. So after the first few miles, the Coast Guard tied the Norwegian vessel to the Bear and towed the smaller ship all the way to boston, where both ships arrived at seven a.m. On a Tuesday morning.
A U. P. I. Wire story published later that day described how the 21 men, one woman and two dogs who were brought into boston on the Bear were received,
nearly five hours after the two vessels had slipped quietly into boston harbor.
The prisoners, including a representative of the german gestapo, were hustled off to the east boston immigration station under a detail of rifle toting marines.
The prisoners unkempt in their dungarees and Rough seamen’s garb were held incommunicado,
Newsman, who sailed down the harbour, and a police boat were not permitted to approach closer than 25 ft to the bear, on whose deck the prisoners were lined up preparatory to the transfer.

[38:11] The Coast Guard cutter, 409, while speeding ashore with the prisoners, ran aground on a mud shoal 500 ft off the immigration station, but freed itself. Before eight arrived.
It was believed that the prisoners brought here for examination would be interned with several 100 german seamen stranded in this country.

[38:31] When a police boat filled with newsman arrived at the Anchorage of the Bear and the Buskø and President Roads just inside boston harbor, 18 of the prisoners were lined up in the forward deck of the Bear, guarded by a dozen marines,
two marines in front of the group and two behind carried rifles.

[38:49] The next day. A story in the boston globe attributed to not a Barrows acknowledged the brewing international crisis that the capture of the bus go threatened to create.
After all. America had not yet declared war on any nation and yet the U. S. Navy and Coast Guard had boarded the bus, co burned the weather station and taken the entire crew prisoner.
Barrows wrote, What will be done with the 21 persons brought down from Greenland? What is their status?
Will they be held as prisoners under one classification or another?
Just how will the complicated situation be handled facing such questions as these federal agencies last night were having what might conservatively be called a round of headaches?
The problem has no precedent whatsoever. If the United States were formally at war with Germany, it would be simple enough, but there is no formal war.

[39:49] It was obvious that officials were questioning the 21 persons in an effort to piece together the story of their presence in Greenland.
But nothing was revealed publicly as to their findings.
That information went with all haste, to the State Department, to the Department of Justice, to the Labor Department, to the Navy Department, and above all to the White House.
Who was the woman. That to remain part of the mystery.
It can be presumed that she is the wife of one of the Norwegians escorted to boston.
And that presumption is probably correct.
But is she a simple Norwegian fisher wife or a clever agent operating as a quisling that is not being told.
She may be among the 21 who are believed to be more or less innocent dupes of the others aboard the Buskø and in Greenland simply because it meant a job and a chance to eat three times a day.
Some of those brought here yesterday, it is understood, can be so classified.

[40:49] When she was seen crossing the harbor aboard the Coast Guard patrol boat C G 409 on the way from the Bear to the immigration station, she was wearing men’s clothes,
a local Norwegian merchant sailor Asar, and exchanged a few words with one of the men called her very pretty.
She, with all the others from the Gestapo agent down to the lowliest captive disappeared behind the immigration station doors as completely as if she had never arrived here.
The government had a delicate international problem on its hands, and no details were to be released until the diplomatic barriers have been lifted.
That was the way it stood late last night with the questioning and the examination of ship and personal property still underway.

[41:35] There were other sailors from access aligned or occupied nations already interned in Boston and elsewhere in the us.
So 21 more men weren’t especially noteworthy.
However, the other prisoners of the Buskø. The mystery woman and the giant Newfoundland dog generated headlines for days.
On October 16th the globe revealed the supposed mystery woman’s identity.

[42:00] The lone woman aboard the Buskø can no longer be endowed with a romantic spell.
She is not a clever nazi operative for a female gestapo agent.
It would appear instead, this woman of nearly 30 Astrid by name,
seems to be nothing more mysterious and romantic than the wife of one of the bus coz crew members, a simple and plain living Norwegian fisher wife who joined her husband because it was the only thing to do.
Instead of being a 1941 version of Mata Hari, she appears to have gone along with the Buskø merely for the ride,
Astrid and her 20 male companions may have been a great big problem to the various federal agencies yesterday, but among themselves, they found a definite pleasure and being uncle Sam’s non-paying guests.
They actually had butter and milk, real cow’s milk and butter and two. They had meats and vegetables and pastries such as they had not known for many a month.
As the ship’s cook, Astrid knew exactly how to appreciate all this bounty of boston groceries.
She has a rugged north Norway woman, but still not as rugged as her companions on the mysterious expedition to Greenland and so her unbalanced diet and the icy wastes has been upsetting,
outside the locked gates of the immigration station at East boston.
It was rumored yesterday that her poor diet has given her skin trouble, which will require medical attention.

[43:29] The other celebrity prisoner would be quickly interned at the animal rescue league at 68 Carver Street,
which was next door to the Boston Edison Powerhouse that still stands just down from the Charles Playhouse on the renamed Warrenton Street, just south of Stuart Street in the theatre district.

[43:47] The October 16, 1941 edition of the globe reported the status of one of the visitors brought down from Greenland under the escort of the USS Bear, changed yesterday, permitting a full legal entry into the country.
This was the £125 Newfoundland Dog, which the Navy turned over to Archibald Mcdonald of the Animal Rescue League.
The huge black dog had apparently been placed aboard the bus.
Go along with the large husky to drag the sleds, which were to carry the extremely high powered radio equipment from the shore to the base sleds that could have served such a purpose were found aboard the Buskø.
When an unrevealed Navy vessel of the North atlantic patrol caught up with the expedition in september,
Mr Mcdonald went aboard the bus co at the Navy’s commonwealth Pier number one in East boston and got the dog ashore without the slightest difficulty, although the 24 hour guard of blue jackets and marines regarded the animal with fear.
The dog is now at the Animal Rescue League headquarters on Carver Street.
The Navy has not yet decided what to do with the husky now aboard the bear.

[44:58] While our Newfoundland Friend was safe and comfortable. His human crewmates were left in legal and diplomatic limbo,
that they had been charged with entering the country illegally when in fact they have been brought here as military prisoners was both legally dubious and downright laughable.

[45:17] On October 27 time magazine asked what was the status of the captives, were they prisoners of war or since the us is not in the war, prisoners of defense,
under what law could they be held in jail?
The unembarrassed Justice Department, which knows a lot about the law, smoothly ruled that the bosco’s crew could be held because they are not in possession of the proper traveling documents during their interrogations. In boston.
Every member of the Buskø crew except Bradley, expressed sympathy with the Allied cause and wish to contribute to any upcoming efforts to free Norway from the ongoing Nazi occupation.
They quickly went from suspicious possible spies and Nazi collaborators, two sympathetic men without a country, as reflected in a story that ran in the October 16, 1941 evening edition of the globe,
Justice Department officials in Washington today announced that as far as their Department is concerned, the investigation into the case of 20 Norwegian men and one Norwegian woman,
brought here with their trawler Buskø by the United States Navy from Greenland was settled.

[46:30] The Norwegian status clarified by the Justice Department attitude is now that of excludable aliens who have entered this country without proper papers and are subject to deportation,
still to be ironed out or the subject of there being without papers on account of arriving here involuntarily under naval escort and the matter of deportation.
In times like these, when passenger steamers are not running to Norway legally, the Norwegians have two courses open to them to appeal to the Immigration Board of Appeals or to seek a writ of habeas corpus in the federal courts.

[47:09] The FBI memo to the White House, dated october 23rd 1941 reinforces the fact that the bus co crew were in limbo, neither free to leave nor considered a national security threat in any real way,
Hearings by the Immigration and Naturalization Service were completed October 14, 1941.
The 21 individuals who traveled on the steamship Buskø from Norway to Greenland are all in custody of the immigration and naturalization service at the immigration station at East Boston.
To date, these individuals have been denied admission into the United States due to the fact that they are not in possession of unexpired immigration visas and other proper documents.
The SS Buskø is being held in the custody of the United States Navy at boston.

[47:57] As of mid november. The crew, the Buskø are among thousands of foreign nationals and Justice Department camps around the country waiting for safe and legal repatriation to their homelands with the new york Times reporting,
detention camps are operated by the department at fort Lincoln North Dakota, where more than 300 german sailors are held at Missoula Montana for more than 1000 chiefly italian sailors.
And at Fort Stanton New Mexico for 400 german sailors from the scuttled ship columbus.
In addition, the department has in custody 20 members of the crew of the Norwegian vessel, Buskø and one woman who was on board when the craft was taken near Greenland in September,
the crew of the Odin Wall, which the Navy captured while flying the United States flag and several 100 persons held for sabotage.

[48:49] The article notes that these detainees would only be allowed to depart the United States from designated ports.
After obtaining special departure permits from the State Department.
Later that month, the government’s position on the bus go crew softened,
the Norwegian consul would be called into question the Buskø crew and verified that they were above board and luckily that console reported to the Norwegian government in exile in London,
not the quisling collaborators back in Oslo with the globe, reporting on november 19th,
A score of Norwegian fishermen who experienced the hard fate of the proverbial,
innocent bystanders and being seized by the us Navy with their fishing vessel to Buskø and brought from Greenland to Boston October 14 for investigation as suspected Nazis.
Today we’re free but slightly dubious about what to do with their freedom.

[49:44] The one woman wife of one of the crew members and some 20 men who found themselves released from detention by the immigration authorities were turned over to the care of Bjarne Ersin. The Norwegian console.
Their fishing boat is still in the custody of the U. S. Navy. Their pet dog, a magnificent Newfoundland which has been cared for humanely at the Animal rescue League could not join them in the boston hotel where they took up headquarters.
No passenger steamers run to their home in Norway. These days, they have no proper papers permitting them to stay in America or find jobs here.
They have no money and the Navy’s irresistible invitation to them to leave Greenland for America has upset their plans for winners fishing.
At the time the Navy announced that they had seized the suspected Nazis Council.
Ersin stated that it was an old Norwegian custom for fishing expeditions to winter on the Greenland coast, combining trapping for furs with fishing.

[50:42] After the Department of Justice that concluded exhaustive interrogation and investigation of the party here and in Washington.
It was admitted that the woman and men released today were indeed innocent of any charges except the one that could not help coming to the United States without passports.
They had never planned to come until they met up with the United States Navy.
However, investigation of one or two of the men is not yet officially concluded and these men are still in custody of the immigration authorities in boston, pending a ruling on their case.
No details as to these men are as to disposition or return of the seized vessel were available today.

[51:24] These two remaining persons of interest were have our div old and Jacob Bradley.
According to research done by photos, Karsten for his article and polar affairs of old was turned over to the british government and interrogated in the U.
K. For 30 days after that, he was put into an internment camp on the isle of man until the end of the war.

[51:47] His association with Nazi collaborators, whether willing or not, stained his reputation in Norway after the war and he was never able to continue his polar research.
He died in 1957 scar. Steins article also reveals some uncertainty surrounding Bradley’s fate.
He wrote, Jacob Ritter Bradley was according to Bradley’s relatives in Norway, put on trial in the USA but was not convicted because of the nature of the evidence.
He was given a three month temporary visa to the U. S. A. But for obvious reasons, chose not to return to Norway.
He lived underground in the USA for two years until he was employed on a ship bound for Paraguay.
Where he lived for a few years as a sailor.
The family’s version of these events, contrasts with the account given by stored Elmo, who holds that Bradley was in captivity in the USA until 1947.
According to the family. After his release from U. S. Custody, Bradley found work in an Argentine shipping company and captained a vessel conducting petroleum related seismological investigations off the Argentine coast.
He later married and settled in Sweden. He maintained contact with his Norwegian family, but fearing treason charges against him.
He did not set foot on Norwegian soil again until the summer of 1979.

[53:11] The treason charges against Bradley had by then exceeded the statute of limitations.
He passed away in or around 1999, and was buried in Sweden in accordance with Jewish rights, as this was his wife’s religion.
It thus seems that his nationalism did not encompass the antisemitism so characteristic of Nazi ideology.

[53:35] Another main character in this story was buried with less pomp and circumstance.
After the war was over. The retirement that had been planned for the Coast Guard cutter bear in 1939 went forward after 47 years of service in the us armed forces.

[53:52] She had been one of the last american sailing ships to serve in harm’s way and one of just a handful of american ships to serve in the spanish american war and both world wars.
After a few years of an activity where various buyers considered the potential to return her to a career as a sealer or as a museum ship, the Bear was sold to a philadelphia entrepreneur who wanted to make her into a floating restaurant.
On the morning of March 19, a tugboat was towing the bear from Halifax to Philly.
When a gale head, the tow line broke and a gust snapped one of the ship’s masts, which crashed down through the deck and punched a hole in the hole.
The only two crew members on board made it safely onto the tug while the bear slowly slipped beneath the waves Lust forever.
89 years after she was launched, or so it would seem In August 2021, the Coast Guard announced that they had found the bear again about 260 miles due east of Boston.
At the bottom of the Atlantic, an industry publication called Maritime Executive put together this summary.

[55:05] Her location was lost to the world until 2019, when a new Coast Guard vessel of the same name, the medium endurance cutter Bear located two possible targets for the wreck site During a sonar survey, U.
S. Coast Guard and Noah researchers returned to the area in 2021 on the U. S. Coast Guard buoy tender sycamore bringing a remotely operated vehicle equipped with high resolution underwater video cameras.
Despite challenging conditions on site, the team managed to obtain footage that positively identified the wreck as the bear.

[55:40] We’ll have a longer and more detailed article from know about the rediscovery of the bear. In the show notes this week, speaking of the show notes, to learn more about the capture of the so called Nazi spy ship.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 259.
I’ll have that no report on the rediscovery and identification of the bear. Along with a lot of material about the capture of the Buskø.
I have links to the news stories I quoted from in the boston globe new york times and from wire services covering the capture, as well as the excellent journal article,
Accursed affair by photo scar steen and a couple of other journal articles are referred to.
I’ll also link to to declassified FBI files on the Bus go affair that I quoted from pretty liberally,
in the show notes, you’ll also find a couple of photos of the bosco, the Bear in the Northland in the heyday of their sailing era and a picture of that 40 watt Lawrence radio transmitter,
Plus there will be links to many more pictures and even a silent newsreel video of the Buskø coming into boston harbor.

[56:49] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hub history dot com.
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Music

Jake:
[57:24] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.