Flying Santa's Annual Christmas Airdrop

Every once in awhile, a historian comes along whose wonder at the mysteries of the past is so contagious that it creates new history buffs, young and old. Edward Rowe Snow was one such New England time traveler. From 1936-1981 he wasalso known as The Flying Santa.

Snow was a high school history teacher in Winthrop, MA when one of his students, Bill Wincapaw, Jr., introduced him to the original Flying Santa, his father Captain William Wincapaw. When Capt. Wincapaw was called away for business and unable to complete his Flying Santa duties, Bill Jr. recommended his history teacher as a substitute Santa.

A Friendship, Maine native, pilot Bill Wincapaw had started the program unceremoniously in 1929 as a way to thank the lighthouse keepers whose tireless efforts kept him safe. He was flying seaplanes in Penobscot Bay, transporting people to and from the islands in all kinds of conditions.  Local lighthouse keepers knew him well and kept an eye out for his plane, relaying word of his whereabouts during heavy weather. The events of that first Christmas flight were recounted in an article written by Brian Tague, photographer and historian for the Flying Santa Organization.

“So it began on December 25, 1929, he loaded his plane with a dozen packages containing newspapers, magazines, coffee, candy and other items. They were small luxuries and common staples that could make living on an isolated island a little more bearable. Some of these same items continue to be a part of the tradition today. He flew to lights around the Rockland area and dropped these modest gifts to the lighthouse families. Never realizing just how well his gesture of Christmas goodwill would be received, he flew home to spend the rest of the day with his family.”

That first Christmas delivery spread such joy that Capt Wincapaw decided to make it an annual event. His delivery team was expanded to include Bill Wincapaw, Jr. and the flight plan was expanded to include lighthouses all along the northeast coast. Bill Sr. donned the fur-trimmed Santa suit only after grateful recipients of his annual gifts nicknamed him The Flying Santa. In 1933 Wincapaw moved his family to Winthrop, MA. where he met Snow, his Flying Santa successor.

Edward Rowe Snow performed substitute Santa duties starting in 1936. Already a published author, he kept his eyes peeled for story ideas while he was up in the air. During his 1940 Christmas flight over Massachusetts Bay, Snow spotted the hulk of the British Frigate Somerset wrecked off Cape Cod in 1778. It had been temporarily exposed by a rough winter storm a few days before Christmas.

Wartime security restrictions almost canceled the 1941 present drop but with some alteration to the flight plan and a conspicuous red Christmas banner affixed to the side of their hired plane, Snow and his wife were given the go-ahead for their Christmas flight at the 11th hour. All available Flying Santas, including Snow, served in World War II so Christmas flights were cancelled for a few years but were back in full swing by 1945.

Captain Bill Wincapaw, the original Flying Santa, suffered a heart attack while flying his plane over Rockland Harbor in July 1947. He and his passenger were killed. That Christmas, Edward Rowe Snow carried on his legacy as The Flying Santa, dropping a memorial wreath for his old friend over Rockland Harbor. Snow expanded the program to include U.S. Coastguard Stations and lighthouses all along the eastern seaboard. He continued the Christmas flights, often accompanied by his wife and daughter, until 1981 when his health failed. Mr. Snow’s Santa suit was presented to EdMcCabe of Hull Massachusetts and thanks to support from the Hull Lifesaving Museum and later the Friends of Flying Santa, the tradition continues.

Aside from his dedicated service as The Flying Santa, Edward Rowe Snow left a legacy of more than 40 books on the history of coastal New England. His interests ranged from pirate’s treasure to unidentified shipwrecks to women at sea. As a daily columnist for the Quincy, Massachusetts newspaper, The Patriot Ledger from 1957 until his death in 1982, and writer for various other publications throughout his adult life, he kept a rapt readership informed of his historical adventures.

In 1945, he found a treasure chest buried at Cape Cod’s Nauset Beach after decoding a message he found pinpricked on the pages of an ancient book. Also in 1945, Snow claimed to have identified a treasure-laden pirate ship 45 miles off Provincetown, MA.

1952 found the historian on the Canadian island of Isle Haut. By following an ancient chart he had located the buried treasure of pirate Edward Lowe. The Isle Haut lighthouse keeper watched his every move as he dug up a mysterious skeleton and a cache of Spanish Doubloons. Snow was then delivered directly to a Canadian Customs Agent who impounded his treasure.

Edward Rowe Snow came to Kennebunk in 1960 to investigate the shipwreck of the sloop Industry that was briefly uncovered that spring on Kennebunk Beach. A year later he wrote in his column that he believed he had found the long lost airplane of French pilot, Charles Nungesser in Casco Bay. Nungesser disappeared in 1927 on an attempted transatlantic flight from Paris to New  York.

Though he has been gone now for 30 years, Edward Rowe Snow is still as fondly remembered for his inspiring books and his thrilling real life history adventures as he is for his longtime role as The Flying Santa.

Marauding under an alledged foreign flag

Mainers have heard stories about pirates Dixie Bull, Captain Kidd and Samuel Bellamy cruising the coast in the 17th and early 18th centuries, but little has been written about the pirates caught trying to smuggle stolen Spanish cargo into Portland, Maine in September 1817.

During the War of 1812, patriotic privateering was a lucrative business for American mariners. The United States Congress issued Letters of Marque and Reprisal authorizing designated ships to attack and pillage enemy vessels. The law required that prize ships be condemned and that booty proceeds be divided between the privateer owners and crew. Goods seized were often delivered to reputable merchants at a lower than usual cost in exchange for financial backing for the privateer. No matter how temptingly profitable it may have been, it was never legal to plunder vessels from countries the United States was not at war with.

When U.S. peace was restored in 1815 some of the privateers and their U.S. merchant partners could not bring themselves to give up the huge profits of privateering. They set up dummy registrations and residencies in South America to subvert U.S. piracy laws.

Buenos Aires was fighting for independence from Spain after the War of 1812 and it proved a convenient location for Baltimore, Maryland pirate, Joseph Almeida, to set up a second home. Whenever necessary to avoid conviction for looting Spanish ships, Almeida would claim citizenship in Buenos Aires even though his family still lived handsomely in Maryland and his 10-gun Privateer El Congresso, was built and armed by Baltimore merchants.

Five American sailors, who had all arrived in Portsmouth, N.H. on the sloop Aurora, out of Portland, aroused suspicion on Sept. 7, 1817 when they each tried to exchange $1,000 in Spanish gold and silver coins at a Portsmouth bank. The purchasing power of $1,000 in 1817 would equate to about $170,000 today; an unusual sum for low-level seamen to receive in payment for a voyage.

The Portsmouth Customs collector was alerted to the suspicious circumstances and he immediately seized the Aurora under the command of a Capt. White from Portland. All her passengers and crew were rounded up for interrogation. As a result of the investigation, three of the crewmembers, John Palmer, Thomas Wilson and Barney Colloghan, all of Massachusetts, were indicted for piracy. The following details of the case were revealed in newspaper reports and court transcripts.

The three accused pirates had sailed the previous May from Baltimore, in the ship El Congresso, under the command of Capt. Joseph Almeida. During the cruise, the Congresso captured several Spanish vessels and after having taken valuables out of them, sank, burned or destroyed them.

On July 4, 1817, the Congresso captured a most valuable Spanish ship, the Industria Raffaelli, as she sailed from Havana to Cardiz. Her cargo included 500 boxes of sugar valued at $20,000; 60 pipes of rum worth $6,000; honey, coffee and hides that together were valued at $6,000; and $60,000 in gold and silver specie.

The Industria’s Spanish crew was replaced by a prize crew under the command of Capt. Diggs. According to the prisoners’ testimony, Capt. Almeida ordered the prize to sail for Buenos Aires, but four or five days later, a Portland man named Davis took control of the Industria and sailed for the coast of Maine. She came to an anchor in Hussy Sound, between Peaks Island and Long Island in Casco Bay. There, a fishing boat met them and carried Capt. Davis ashore. The next morning the captain returned with three sloops. Cargo, sails, rigging and iron salvaged from the Industria was loaded onto the Betsy and the Abby and brought quietly into port without attracting the attention of the customs collector.

The whole crew except for Capt. Davis was put on board the sloop Aurora, with their cut of the Spanish gold and silver. What was left of the Industria Raffaelli was disguised and abandoned. When she was recovered some time later near Cape Elizabeth, it took a while before she was identified. Her name had been blacked out and a piece of canvas with the name John of Norfolk painted on it, had been nailed to her stern.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that an act of piracy had been committed, but the United States piracy laws in force at the time only applied to acts of piracy against the United States. Because El Congresso sailed under the Buenos Aries flag and attacked a Spanish vessel, the American pirates were acquitted. The only action that could be taken was to condemn the sloops Betsy and Abby for knowingly subverting U.S. Customs collection. As a result of the impotence exposed in U.S. Piracy Law by this case, an expanded legal definition of piracy was adopted by U.S. Congress on March 3, 1819.

Joseph Almeida, also known as Don Jose Almeida, plundered hundreds of Spanish vessels before he was captured in 1827. He was imprisoned at El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and was finally executed for piracy against Spain on St. Valentine’s Day 1832.

Mr. Labbe finds a cache of Spanish coins

When the Labbe family unearthed a box of Spanish gold and silver coins at their Biddeford floral establishment in 1931, many speculated that a West Indies pirate had buried it there.

Lots of gold and silver coins have been dug up — mostly by gardeners — along the coast of southern Maine. In June of 1849, William P. Fessenden’s gardener dug up a silver sixpence dated 1579 at his employer’s State Street, Portland property. Two months later another rare old coin was discovered on a vacant lot at the corner of Brackett and Vaughan streets in Portland. It proved to be a 1655 “leg dollar,” so-called for the military figure depicted with only one leg showing on the face of the coin.

A stone pot full of gold and silver coins, all dated before 1630, were dug up with a plow near the center of Richmond Island on May 11, 1855. The amazing discovery was chronicled in the Eastern Argus on May 24, 1855. “Mr. Hanscom, the tenant of Dr. Cummings, was holding the plow, and his son, twelve years old, was driving. When the boy came to the place, he observed the pot, bottom up, and picking it up, said to his father, ‘I have found it!’” Rumors of buried pirate’s treasure on the little island off the southern shore of Cape Elizabeth had not escaped the Hanscom boy. After careful scholarly study by chronicler, Hon. Wm Willis, the treasure was thought more likely to belong to Walter Bagnell, an early settler on Richmond Island who was killed by Indians in 1631.

William Edgecomb was working in his garden on the Ferry Road in Saco during the spring of 1931 when a gold coin bearing the date 1723 was turned over in the soil before him.

Later that summer, on July 22, 1931, Elie T. Labbe was transplanting flowers with employees Ralph Labbe and Ovila Bouthot — to make way for a new greenhouse at the florist shop he co-owned with his brother Joseph. The men uncovered a rotted wooden box that had once contained the 63 Spanish gold and silver coins scattered around it in the dirt. One of the coins was described in the Biddeford Journal the following day. “Elie T. Labbe took one of the coins in a splendid state of preservation bearing the date 1805 to a local bank this morning where he was told that it was a $1 Spanish coin of the reign of Charles IV of Spain. He was also informed that the value of the coin at this time is $65.”

Labbe told the Journal reporter that he intended to do some more digging before totaling up his buried treasure, but he didn’t believe it would ever amount to enough for him to be able to retire from the florist business. He also made a plea for help from local historians in solving the mystery of how Spanish coins might have come to be buried on his land at 200 Pool St.

Though a little late to be of benefit to Elie Labbe, your Old News columnist will explore some of the possibilities.

Spanish coins were the most common currency in Colonial America and they remained in circulation in the United States until 1857. Spanish coins dated 1800-1805 did not necessarily belong to a Spanish pirate. For the most part, piracy on the coast of Maine had long ceased by the time these coins were minted. There was one incident with a Spanish ship in 1817, but that is a story for another day.

According to an article in the Lewiston Eve Journal on June 4, 1872, a wooden box of gold and silver coins was stolen during the previous week from the Hubbard residence on Oak Street in Biddeford. The thief was later apprehended with jewelry taken from the same house but the box of coins was never recovered. Perhaps he buried the box on the 200 Pool Street property that Thomas Potts had acquired a few weeks earlier.

Another possibility is that the coins were buried for safe-keeping when Biddeford Pool was attacked by the British man-of-war Bulwark on June 16, 1814. John Staples Locke wrote of the incident in his 1880 book, “Shores of Saco Bay.”

“Messengers were dispatched through the country on horseback, to alarm the inhabitants. All the men capable of bearing arms left their fields and hastened towards the Pool. Women and children fled to the woods with their valuables. One aged lady tells of taking the silver of a wealthy Saco family and burying it in the woods near where is now the Eastern Depot.”

In all the confusion of the day, some residents of the Pool buried their money hastily and later forgot at what exact location. Through the years a few other gold and silver pieces have been unearthed in gardens along Pool Street.

In 1814, Joseph Morrill and his wife Mary Jordan owned the lot at 200 Pool St. that would later become the Biddeford Floral Company. They had inherited it from Mary’s father, Judge Rishworth Jordan, when he died in 1808. Perhaps the coins belonged to members of the Jordan family or of the Morrill family.

It cannot be stated with certainty exactly how the Spanish treasure ended up in Labbe’s garden, but one thing seems certain, gardening in southern Maine can be very rewarding.

AG Prentiss - A Nautical Workhorse

Paul Larivierre, owner of Southern Maine Marine in Arundel, believes he has recovered the huge propeller of the tugboat A. G. Prentiss — from the Saco River where, according to local tradition, she grounded and burned.

In a recent conversation Larivierre said “The A.G. Prentiss towed derelict vessels back and forth in front of the Biddeford Pool Gun Battery for target practice.” Biddeford Pool was under the umbrella of the Portland Harbor Defense Command in World War II. A temporary battery of four 155mm guns was emplaced at East Point from 1942-1945.

Tugboats played an integral role in the history of the Saco River. Biddeford’s manufacturing industry was heavily dependant upon coal — the Pepperell Company alone using 22,000 tons a year during its heyday. Coal arrived on schooners and later on barges carrying up to 850 tons of coal per trip. All were towed up the Saco River to Factory Island by tugboats.

Some of the tugboats that berthed at Biddeford Pool over the years were The Ellen, The Joseph Baker, The Hersey, The Cumberland, The Bailey, The Castor, The Morrison, The Express,and The Willard & Clapp, to name just a few. At least two of the Saco River tugboats were built on the Kennebunk River. The Robert L. Darragh was launched in 1879 from the Crawford and Ward shipyard in Kennebunkport.

The 46-ton tugboat A. G. Prentiss was built by the next generation of the same family of shipbuilders. She was launched from the Charles Ward Shipyard in Kennebunk Lower Village on Feb. 6, 1912. Her first pilot was Captain Clarence Goldthwait of Biddeford Pool and Captain Tristram N. Goldthwaite took over as her pilot during the ’20s.

The A. G. Prentiss, named for her original owner, was well known on the Saco River for many years. She towed coal barges from Biddeford Pool and from Portland to the factories upriver along with an occasional lumber barge for the Deering Lumber company. She was also employed to break the ice in the river, keeping a shipping channel open as long into the winter as possible. In 1918, the Prentiss towed the newly built schooner Jere G. Shaw out of the river for her maiden voyage.

Before the United States got involved in World War I, The Pepperell Company’s shrewd treasurer foresaw the effect the war would have on coal supplies and used the A.G. Prentiss to help stockpile fuel. His anticipation of the Coal Shortage of 1918 was for naught, however.

In February 1918, the National Fuel Administrator ordered a five-day shutdown and a shortened workweek for every manufacturing plant east of the Mississippi.

These measures caused financial strain on the Saco River Mills and on the population of Biddeford. A frustrated reporter for the Biddeford newspaper wrote “Nearly 3500 Pepperell workers are to lose some $30,000 in wages in order to save $3,600 worth of coal.”

The tug A. G. Prentiss was commissioned by the Navy on March 28, 1918 and renamed the U.S.S. A.G. Prentiss. According to U.S. Navy records she served in the 3rd Naval District and was decommissioned and returned to owners, The Crescent Towing Line Company, on Dec. 2, 1918.

When the Crescent Co. went bankrupt in 1921, a new company, The Saco River Towing Company was organized with capital stock of $25,000, to take over towing on the Saco River. The A. G. Prentiss, reportedly worth $52,000 in 1920, was sold to the new towing company on July 28, 1921 for $25,000.

Tugboats were often used by the Biddeford Pool Lifesaving Station to prevent shipwrecks. A severe snowstorm on April 15, 1923 blew the steamer Annahuac onto the ledges of Fortunes Rocks. The storm continued through the next morning. The tugboat A.G. Prentiss was the first vessel on the scene to help pull her off. The Annahuac was so seriously damaged that she listed 45 degrees to the starboard. It took The Prentiss, another Biddeford tug, the Cumberland, and the United States Coast Guard cutter Ossipee to tow her to Portland for repairs.

The 13-year-old tug A. G. Prentiss needed a complete overhaul in spring 1925. She was hauled out of the water in Portland and was shipshape before the 1925 shipping season began.

An article in the Biddeford Journal on Oct. 14, 1954 reveals that the A.G. Prentiss was still afloat in 1954 and had found her way back to Kennebunk.

“The Kennebunk River breakwater at Kennebunkport is being repaired. The tugboat which is servicing it is the AG Prentiss which worked on the Saco River for many years.”

Wyoming Construction Company of East Boston had presented the lowest bid on the breakwater repairs and was awarded the contract in July of 1954 by Colonel R.W. Pearson of the New England Division, Army Corps of Engineers.

Details about the demise of the Kennebunk-built tugboat A.G. Prentiss have not yet been found in old news, but her contribution to shipping on the Saco River will long be remembered.

A Case of Nautical Clevage

Wells Beach cottagers were befuddled one morning in August 1892 by the appearance of one half of a large wooden sailing ship, rocking upright and surprisingly intact in the surf in front of Pine Island cottage.

The rear end of the Nova Scotia ship, the Fred B. Taylor, had traveled more than 400 miles after being separated from her other half 44 days earlier.

The whole 9-year-old ship had left Havre for New York on May 12, 1892. At a 1,789-ton capacity, she was one of the largest and finest wooden ships on the Yarmouth, NS list. Capt. E. F. Hurlburt was proud to command her, but he was a little tense on the morning of June 22. It was 6:30 a.m. and he had been on deck for hours navigating through a blinding fog. To make matters worse, the Taylor’s mechanical foghorn had stopped working during the night. All that was available for a substitute was an ordinary mouth horn.

Capt. Reimkasten, meanwhile, was sailing the 4,969 ton German steamer, Trave, at top speed from New York to Breman, when he encountered the same fog bank about 100 miles southeast of Sandy Hook. He saw the Fred B. Taylor only seven seconds before slicing her in two — as easily as a knife slices through a block of soft cheese. Two fatalities resulted. Charles Woodley, first mate on the Taylor, was crushed to death in his berth, and the ship’s carpenter, a Russian Finn by the name of Careston, was knocked overboard and drowned.

Before the 1,500 steamer passengers could make it on deck to see what had jarred them awake, the Trave had passed between the two halves of the wooden vessel and disappeared again into the fog.

Later, in an interview with a reporter from the New York Times, the Taylor’s steward said, ” … it was fortunate the ship was made of wood because when the vessel was cut in half, the two parts stood upright in the water as the ballast in the holds emptied itself into the sea. This gave the rescuers from the Trave time to reach the wreck.”

Nineteen of the 21 crewmen aboard the Fred B. Taylor were rescued with only the clothes on their backs. The only woman on board, a stewardess, was knocked into the sea from the impact but was pulled into one of the steamer’s boats just as she was about to go under for the third time.

When the fog finally lifted, the bow of the Fred B. Taylor was still in sight, but her back half had disappeared. The shape of the stern portion of the wrecked vessel presented a much larger surface area for the northeast wind to affect. The bow, which rode much lower in the water after the accident, obeyed the drift of the cold ocean water flowing south between the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic coast.

In the weeks that followed, both halves of the derelict ship were tracked by passing vessels as they bobbed along in opposite directions. The stern started off toward the east, turned northward, passed Boston 100 miles off the coast on July 9, and having approached within a few miles of Matinicus Island, turned west again and went ashore on Wells Beach on Aug. 6 or 7. The following report appeared in the Biddeford Daily Journal a few days later:

“Cottagers residing at Wells Beach in the vicinity of Pine Island were much surprised to see landed in front of their cottages in the early morning a large mass of something on the beach which as the tide  receded was inspected and found to be a wreck or part of a large vessel. At low water it was found to be the larboard quarter of the ship Fred B. Taylor, the chain plates and dead eyes of the mizzen mast remaining. The stern post remained but the rudder was gone. The deck from stern to forward part of house still remaining, also. The railing around the stern, the timbers and flooring and in fact all the vessel being of soft wood. The deck showed that either by accident or otherwise, she had been on fire. Wreckers were at work upon the wreck securing the iron and copper. The yellow metal was strewn around the beach. On Sunday quite a large number of people were around viewing the remains from far and near, and for some a great curiosity. Since the wreck came ashore a steamer has been seen between Boon Island and the beach, evidently sailing around in search of something, which no doubt was the very wreck, either to destroy it or tow it out of the way, being very dangerous to navigation.”

The bow of the derelict was last spotted at the end of August 1892, off the coast of North Carolina with bits of her tattered sails still visible after also having traveled more than 400 miles. The ultimate separation of the two floating halves of the Fred B. Taylor by more than 600 miles was reported for many years as a unique occurrence in maritime history.

A lightning strike for the annals

A bolt of lightning nearly destroyed the home of Thomas Wiswall in 1786, knocking his family temporarily insensible.

Thomas Wiswall had arrived in Cape Porpoise from Newton, Mass. in 1752. Two years later he purchased a blockhouse that was built by Rowlandson Bond in 1743 and moved his family to the banks of the Kennebunk River. There were only nine buildings in the Kennebunkport Village area between Lock Street and South Street in 1786. Wiswall’s blockhouse stood at what is now the corner of Union Street and Ocean Avenue.

His wharf was the first one built on the eastern side of the Kennebunk River and from it he engaged in fishing, coasting and lumbering. Wiswall’s sloop was the first from Arundel to sail to the West Indies, though that first voyage was a financial failure. Most of the cattle that was on deck as cargo fell into the ocean within hours of being loaded onto the vessel. Wiswall persevered with West Indies trade and by 1764 he was one of the wealthiest citizens of Arundel.

Slavery was tolerated in Massachusetts until the Revolutionary War. One of the five slaves listed in the 1764 census of Arundel, a West Indiesman, belonged to the Wiswall family. Though Bradbury writes in his “History of Kennebunkport” that the last two slaves in Arundel died in the poorhouse shortly before 1837, there were West Indiesmen listed as servants in Kennebunkport households as late as 1860.

During the American Revolution, Wiswall was an inspector for the war effort in Arundel. His two cannons were the ones used in the Battle of Cape Porpoise in 1782. (See Cape Porpoise in the American Revolution at www.someoldnews.com.)

Reports of the lightning strike in Arundel appeared for months in newspapers from South Carolina to Boston and New York. The home of Thomas Wiswall, who had previously been referred to in Boston papers as “Innholder of Arundel,” was struck on the evening of June 8, 1786.

His 20 x 25 foot main house had two stories and a garret. An attached one-story el contained the kitchen and a dairy or milk-room. The only chimney passed through the roof at the end of the house nearest the kitchen.

Lighting struck the chimney, de-nailing all the roof boards around it. Iron curtain rods sitting on the attic floor near the chimney directed electricity into the closet of a bedchamber directly below. Wiswall’s gun was leaning in the corner of that closet wrapped in woolen cloth. The stock of the gun broke away from the barrel and the muzzle was instantly melted, setting the woolen cloth case on fire.

Five people were in the house at the time. All of them were in the kitchen except one daughter who was working in the milk-room. All were knocked insensible. When they came around a few minutes later, none could recall the shocking event, though its results were immediately evident.

Every room was affected. The breastwork over every fireplace in the house was torn apart and every window in the house was broken except one that had been left open. Details of the damages were conveyed in an article in the Massachusetts Gazette on July 10, 1786.

“The frame and sashes of one of the kitchen windows, against which a young man was leaning his arm, together with 4 feet of the plate above, were thrown into the yard before the house. In the milk-room, all the shelves were removed from their supporters, and every earthen milk-vessel broken to pieces, out of one of which a daughter was lading milk into a pewter vessel in her hand. In the same room a cheese-tub was overset, and the cheese in a pickle thrown to the other side of the room. The glass bottles, in several cases in the chamber were broken. Four doors in the house were unhinged. The cellar door was burst open, and a dog was found dead in the cellar.”

The Wiswall family regained their senses just in time to extinguish the fire in the bedchamber closet, which had by then, communicated from the gun case to the light clothing hanging above it.

The incident is probably what inspired Thomas Wiswall to start building a new home for his family next door in 1786. The elegant new house, which still stands on Union Street and now houses Ben & Jerry’s, was finished in 1789.

The old blockhouse, a little worse for the wear, was sold to Nathan Morse but was torn down in about 1807. Its cellar hole was still visible across from Silas Perkins’ store in 1837 when Bradbury wrote his “History of Kennebunkport.”

Kennebunkport's Tourism Umbilical Cord

Despite gloomy predictions by new-enterprise naysayers, the Kennebunk and Kennebunkport Railroad became one of the most profitable branches on the Boston & Maine line. It was constructed by local men in 1883 and ran from the Kennebunk Depot off Summer Street, down along the eastern side of the Mousam River to Parsons Station, then to Kennebunk Beach Station, diagonally across the Sea Road from the Wentworth Hotel and to the little Grove Hill Station just off Boothby Road. The branch terminated at the Kennebunkport Depot, which was actually in Lower Village just before the bridge to Kennebunkport.

The first railroad company to run tracks through Kennebunk was the Portsmouth, Saco and Portland Line. The company opened a depot in West Kennebunk in August of 1842 that was the only depot in town for 30 years. Competitors, the Eastern Railroad Company and later the Boston & Maine Railroad Company, leased rights to run their trains on this line until the early 1870s when PS&P tried to renegotiate the 6% B&M lease at a higher rate.

Rather than pay the increase, B&M Railroad laid their own tracks from South Berwick, through Kennebunk to Portalnd. The new station off Summer Street in Kennebunk served tourists visiting the elegant hotels and cottages being developed by the Boston and Kennebunkport Seashore Company.

In 1881, local capitalists, many of them Seashore Company stockholders, devised a plan to deliver the tourists even closer to seaside businesses by building a 4.5-mile railroad branch along Kennebunk Beach. Maine State Railroad Law required that $5,000 per mile be represented by stock, but the rest could be mortgaged. So many investors stepped forward to purchase stock in the new railroad that they decided to finance the entire capitalization of $65,000 with shares bearing 4.5 percent interest per annum. All shares were quickly sold and the directors had to refuse in excess of $35,000 from hopeful stock buyers.

One of the initial shareholders was George C. Lord, native of Kennebunk, who just happened to also be the president of the Boston & Maine Railroad. Joseph Dane, president of the Ocean Bank, was elected president of the railroad, as well. Some of the other early investors were Hartley Lord, James Cousens, Moses Maling Charles C. Perkins, Charles E. Perkins, and Joseph Titcomb.

Work began on the track bed in December 1882 on land purchased from old Kennebunk families. Kennebunkport Seashore Company lots were also extensively used. The road construction contract for $25,500 promised that all the work including grading, laying sleepers and rails, building wire fences four feet high, and filling in a dock at Lower Village, would be completed by the beginning of the 1883 summer hotel season.

A lot in Lower Village owned by shipbuilder David Clark was purchased for the Kennebunkport station. Joseph Day of Kennebunk won the contract to build a 48- by 20-foot depot with an attached 40-foot platform.

In June of 1883, the Boston & Maine Railroad signed a lease for the fledgling railroad, agreeing to handle all management and pay the 4.5 percent per annum interest due to the Kennebunk & Kennebunkport Railroad stockholders.

On June 18, 1883, Kennebunk Town Clerk Andrew Walker recorded the first passenger run to the Port. Two regular trips were planned for each day that week at 25 cents per passage. Within a few weeks, nine regular trips or 18 passages a day were scheduled. By the end of the first summer season the Kennebunk & Kennebunkport Railroad had averaged 1,200 passengers per week. Trains ran year-round but during the winter months the schedule was reduced to four trips a day.

B&M reported in 1887 that the 4.5-mile railroad was already one of their most profitable branches per mile. Many new hotels had been built at Kennebunk Beach and Cape Arundel to take advantage of the improved access. The Grove Hill Hotel was built near the Boothby Road stop and a depot was constructed for Parsons Station diagonally across the Mousam River from George Parsons’ farm, Riverhust.

“The Conductor is Mr. F. K. Webster and the Engineer is Mr. E. Stromach,” wrote a reporter for the Biddeford Journal in July 1887. “Although the locomotives employed upon the road have been constantly changing,” he continued, “Mr. Stromach has wielded the throttle for the whole four years of the branch road’s existence. His portly form and genial countenance are familiar to summer travelers here. The locomotives employed upon the branch road have been, in turn, named: Strafford, Camilla, Exeter, and Newburyport.”

F. W. Strout, the station agent at Kennebunkport, had also been there since the beginning. His station was by far the busiest on the line. “The amount of money taken in one day at Kennebunkport has often been very much larger than at some city stations,” wrote the journalist. “One day last season Kennebunkport took $500, this sum including freight bills and tickets.”

As automobiles became more common, ridership on the line declined. When the Federal Income Tax Law regarding leased railroads changed in 1919, the Kennebunk & Kennebunkport Railroad officially became a subsidiary of the Boston & Maine Railroad Company. Against the wishes of local businessmen, the branch was abandoned on Sept. 8, 1926.

The youthful absconder

Within his first few months of employment as assistant bank clerk at the Saco and Biddeford Savings Institution in 1887, young Frank McNeally was given a raise to $6 a week and assigned the task of assisting the treasurer with monthly bond reconciliations in the inner vault.

Frank was the picture of disarming innocence. At 19-years-old, his complexion was as smooth as a little girl’s. He carried his tall, handsome, impeccably-dressed frame with excellent posture, as if he had nothing in the world to hide. Bank treasurer Melville H. Kelly never wondered how this young man was able to afford such an expensive wardrobe. He had apparently not been made aware of some messy business in Old Orchard Beach the previous summer when someone else’s wallet had been found in McNeally’s possession.

On Monday afternoon, Aug. 28, 1887, Mr. Kelly was called to Biddeford a few minutes before closing time. He left instructions with McNeally to settle up the day’s business and close the bank. No one but the treasurer and the bank president were supposed to know the combination of the inner vault, but when the bank opened on Tuesday morning, $3,500 in gold, $285,500 in government, railroad and municipal bonds and Frank C. McNeally were missing.

Detective True, of Saco, rushed to the home of James and Frances McNeally on the New County Road. Mrs. NcNeally said she hadn’t seen her son since Monday afternoon. Harry McNeally, Frank’s respectable older brother, offered to assist the detective in tracking the boy down. They traced him to the Eastern Railway Station in Biddeford and then on to Portland, but from there the trail went cold. True left for Montreal on a hunch and Harry headed for Nova Scotia to search for his brother.

Management at the Saco bank made every effort to keep the heist quiet but by Thursday morning it made headlines in local papers as well as The Boston Daily Globe and The New York Times. Rumors were rampant. A reporter for the Globe wrote that probably Frank had, with the help of his good friend, the local dressmaker, disguised himself in fine women’s wear and sauntered onto the afternoon train to Boston. Someone in Buffalo, N.Y. became suspicious when a tall woman at the train station there smoked a pipe through her veil.

Depositors rushed the bank fearing their money was in jeopardy but Maine State Bank Commissioner F.E. Richards gave assurances that the bank had a healthy surplus even after the robbery. As the facts were disseminated, depositors calmed down and from all outward appearances, bank business returned to normal.

Kelly was determined to recover the stolen bonds. He believed the naive young criminal would soon learn that Registered Government Securities would be of no use to him and that the stolen negotiable bonds would not be so easy to dispose of once bankers were alerted to the robbery. But Frank McNeally had vanished without a trace.

On All Hallows Eve, almost two months after the heist, Kelly received his first proposal from Frank. It was postmarked Cairo, Egypt. In it the boy expressed remorse for having betrayed his trust and offered to send back all the bonds in exchange for $20,000 cash and a commitment that he would not be prosecuted. Kelly wanted to accept the offer but both the bank’s lawyer and Commissioner Richards strongly objected. A non-committal response was drafted by counsel and mailed to McNeally. The Commissioner publicly made the point that Kelly did not have any authority to negotiate with the thief. Kelly, meanwhile, had announced a reward of  $7,500 for the return of the bonds.

On Dec. 22, 1887, the reporter from the Globe who had been following the case, recognized  Harry McNeally in the lobby of the Halifax Hotel in Nova Scotia. Further investigation revealed that he had checked in under an assumed name with a younger man who turned out to be his brother, the bank robber. Frank McNeally was arrested by the Halifax Police and taken to a cell at the marshall’s office.

The Globe reporter was present when the police and the American Consul General searched McNeally’s hotel room. Contents of a heavy English leather portmanteau were catalogued in the Globe. It contained several silk-lined suits made of the world’s finest materials, silk underwear, 10 pair of variously colored kid gloves, and an assortment of merino socks. In a hidden compartment was an impressive array of jewelry. Not a single bond was found anywhere among Frank’s belongings.

Much to the surprise of the Halifax Police, Harry McNeally was carrying a dispatch from the Saco bank treasurer, requesting that the prisoner be set free.

Young McNeally had travelled all over the world for two months and when his negotiable currency ran out he made Kelly another offer that he could not refuse. Against the warnings of the Maine State Bank Commissioner and the Trustees of the Bank, a deal was struck.

Harry McNeally travelled to England to retrieve the bonds that had been stashed there and for his assistance, received the $7,500 reward from the bank. Reportedly, he turned the reward directly over to his younger brother.

No further record can be found of Frank C. McNeally in Saco or in any of the other United States, for that matter. The well-dressed absconder disappeared again under an assumed name and was lost to history.

The troublesome Mr. Baker

Baker’s Spring, that bubbles out of the earth near the boundary between Wells and what used to be York, was, according to Wells historians Hubbard and Greenleaf, named for a person who had participated in bringing King Charles I to the block for beheading. When King Charles II ascended the throne in 1660, Baker supposedly concealed himself under a rock near the spring for two years.

Like most historical legends, this one is probably based on a distortion of actual facts. E.E. Bourne wrote in his “History of Wells and Kennebunk,” that there were indeed three men who signed the death warrant of King Charles I and fled to New England when Charles II succeeded his father to the throne, but each has been accounted for and none were named Baker.

There was a John Baker who might well have been hiding in the woods from the law, but he was living in New England in 1649 during the trial of King Charles I. He was, however, later accused and convicted for conspiring to kill King Charles II.

John Baker had a colonial rap sheet as long as your arm. Most of his offenses were violent arguments that followed alcoholic over-indulgence or “haranguing and prophesying” in his own form of fanatical religion. John Winthrop described John Baker in his journal as an unprincipled drunk whose professed faith was of the opportunistic variety.

Winthrop wrote, “One John Baker, a member of the church of Boston, removing from thence to Newbury for enlargement of his outward accommodation, being grown wealthy from nothing, grew there very disordered, fell into drunkenness and such violent contention with another brother, maintaining the same by lying, and other evil courses, that the magistrates sent to have him apprehended. But he rescued himself out of the officer’s hands and removed to Agamenticus (York).”

In 1653, Baker was living in Cape Porpoise when, according to historian Charles Bradbury, he was again admonished for “abusive and approbrious speeches uttered by him against the minister and ministry and for upholding private meetings and prophecying to the hindrance and disturbance of publick assemblings.”

John wandered from town to town in New England attempting to stay two steps ahead of the law from 1639 – 1653. After a third attempt to establish himself in Boston, Baker was finally banished from the colonies as a “blasphemer, atheist and a liar.”

Meanwhile in England, Parliamentary Representative Oliver Cromwell had long been an outspoken critic of royal policies. With little military experience he convinced Parliament to establish an army to protect their interests against the King. While John Baker was hiding from colonial law in New England, Cromwell was effectively leading Parliament’s military forces.

King Charles I was defeated by Cromwell’s army in two civil wars and was subsequently dethroned,  tried and beheaded in 1649 for his efforts to negate Parliamentary power. Oliver Cromwell, who sought to make England a republic and abolish the religious intolerance promoted by Charles I, signed his death warrant.

Parliament’s enemies were defeated and the war ended, but in 1653, just as the banished John Baker was arriving from the colonies, Cromwell dissolved the Parliament with military force and appointed himself Lord Protector, the equivalent of a military dictator.

Baker became a guardsman for Oliver Cromwell. He grew accustomed to his new financial comfort and religious freedom. After Cromwell died in 1658, his circumstances changed once again. He was reduced to grinding knives for a meager living and according to later trial testimony, he often expressed a certain bitterness about his poverty.

The republic could not be sustained without Oliver Cromwell. The monarchy was restored and the beheaded King’s son was invited to take the throne. Several former New Englanders actively opposed King Charles II. Thomas Venner, another religious radical who had been an early resident of York, led an uprising against the monarchy in January 1661. Chaos reigned in the streets of London for several days. Although Venner was captured and immediately executed, King Charles II became acutely aware of the number of radical Protestants that opposed the monarchy.

In October of the same year, John Baker was approached by fellow Cromwell soldier, John Bradley, who inquired how he had been reduced to such lowly employment. Baker scoffed and told him he had to be willing to do whatever he could to make a living. Bradley offered to pay Baker to recruit Cromwell’s former soldiers and “Fifth Monarchy Men, Anabaptists, Fighting Quakers, Levellers” and other religious radicals to participate in a plot to kill King Charles II. He showed Baker huge ammunition stores at his disposal and convinced him that victory was theirs for the taking.

Baker was a most enthusiastic henchman. He spent many an evening drinking and boasting in London pubs and eventually recruited a crowd of eager malcontents. Before anything but barroom conspiring had been accomplished they were all arrested and tried for participating in a grandiose plot to kill King Charles II.

The would-be assassins had been duped. Bradley was working for the King. There never had been a viable plot to overthrow the government but unknowingly they had rounded up most of the King’s enemies.

Baker was quick to turn against his partners in crime but that wasn’t enough to save his life. He was hanged for being willing to “wash his hands in the blood of the King.”

The Rob Roy on her beam ends.

Captain Christopher Bassett sailed the 53-ton schooner, Rob Roy, out of Newburyport harbor, with a fair wind, on the morning of June 28, 1832. Nine passengers headed to Portland, Maine were his only cargo. He was sailing the vessel pretty light, as there were no dark clouds that morning to foretell the destined consequences of a “swept hold.”

Fifty-five year old Capt. Bassett was a seasoned master, having followed the sea since his ninth birthday. Had he been sailing to Cuba without a cargo, as he sometimes did during his otherwise estimable career, he would have gone to the trouble to load ballast for the vessel’s stability, but it was typical in the 1830s for the hold of New England coasting schooners to be left empty or “swept,” unless a storm seemed imminent.

At about 2 p.m. a white squall came out of nowhere. According to later coverage in the Boston Courier, “The ‘Rob Roy’ was under a fore-sail, double reefed main-sail and jib, with her fore-top gallant-sail handed.” She had Boon Island E SE 5 miles and Nubble Point N NW 4 miles when a sudden, violent gust of wind took hold of her sails and flipped her on her beam ends.

Five passengers were trapped inside the cabin as it filled with sea water in an instant.

Mr. Samuel Cutler, the 80-year-old former Town Clerk of Newburyport and his wife, Lydia, tragically succumbed at once, as did Mrs. Hall. She was the sister of Capt. Stallard of Portland, who had recently lost the brig Hariet — in nearby Wells bay. The two other passengers trapped in the cabin were the widow of Newburyport grocer Moses Bailey and her 5-year-old son.

Capt. Bassett struggled unsuccessfully to pull the Bailey child up the companionway, but sinking twice, he almost lost his own life in the process. The passengers who had been above deck when the squall struck were Moses Clough of Portland, and George Roaf, Joseph L. Huse, and George Rogers of Newburyport. They, and an exhausted Bassett, clung for their lives to the side of the capsized schooner. The mate and two of the crew were able to get the schooner’s boat afloat and attempted to go for help.

Meanwhile, Capt. Littlefield had just left Wells harbor for Boston with the sails set on his year-old, Wells-built schooner Miriam. She was about the same size as the Rob Roy, but with a full load she was far more stable and maneuverable. The wind was unusually high on shore from the northwest. Nevertheless, Littlefield and his crew managed to rescue Bassett and the four surviving passengers and put them ashore at Wells. The next day, the survivors of the sudden calamity made their way to their respective home towns.

The Rob Roy and Capt. Bassett’s trunk, which had been onboard, were thought at first to be lost. The trunk contained $102 in money (a significant sum in 1832) and some copper currency plates for a new bank in Portland.

Several days after the accident it was reported in the Newburyport Advertiser, “It is thought that the accident having happened so near the land, the schooner, which is a good vessel, will be saved.”

And in the Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics on July 7, “The schooner ‘Rob Roy’ has been towed to Portsmouth and the bodies of those that perished were found and interred in that place on Sunday.”

The people of Newburyport mourned the death of Mr. Samuel Cutler with formal ceremony and his life was honored in the Newburyport paper. “Mr. Cutler was for many years a merchant, President of an Insurance Company and a vestryman and warden of the Episcopal Church of Newburyport.” He and his wife were removed to Newburyport and buried in the Episcopal churchyard.

Capt. Christopher Bassett went right back to work as soon as repairs to the Rob Roy were completed. Within the month he was delivering a cargo of molasses to J.B. & T Hall of Boston on the schooner Rob Roy.

Death at sea was still a fairly common occurrence for seamen and their passengers in the 1830s and 1840s, but a large percentage of the casualties that occurred on New England coasting schooners were blamed on instability caused by a “swept hold.”