A Trophy Gun of Remembrance

Thousands of people wiz by Kennebunk’s War Memorial every day but few are aware of its significance or its origin.  

When the citizens of Kennebunk arrived at Town Meeting, Saturday, August 22, 1908, Saco marble dealer, George E. Morrison had already been commissioned to furnish a 21 foot granite figure of a soldier on a seven by eight foot base. The statue honoring Kennebunk soldiers of the American Civil War was to be paid for by the efforts of the Relief Corps and an appropriation by the town.

A satisfactory location for the monument could not be agreed upon. The vote to place it on Centennial Hill passed by a narrow margin but the meeting was contentious. Disgruntled voters grumbled at their neighbors as they left the meeting.

The following Monday, Henry Parsons stepped forward and offered to purchase the land at the corner of Main and Fletcher Streets for $10,000 and donate it to the town for a war memorial. The lot was the perfect choice. It was right downtown and just across the street from the Kennebunk Free Library, which had been built for the town by Henry Parson’s father, George Parsons. Peace was restored. The $4,000 statue was unveiled on October 24, 1908 amid much prayer and fanfare. All the businesses in town were dressed in their finest patriotic buntings.

In 1911, Kennebunk Legislator, Charles Perkins acquired a battle-worn cannon from the Government to be placed near the statue. After World War One, a plaque listing names of the Kennebunk soldiers who served was added to the park. William Barry donated his grandfather’s old ships cannon that had been fired from Centennial Hill to celebrate Armistice Day. Both of these old guns have since been put in storage.

A June 7, 1924 Act of Congress provided for the distribution of captured enemy artillery as war memorials for American cities and towns. Maine was allotted its share of German WWI field guns and the Harold A. Webber American Legion Post was the first to apply for one. The request was passed over even though Kennebunk had sent more men into the World War per capita then any other town in Maine. 

Henry Parsons, a member of Kennebunk’s American Legion Post, stepped forward again. This time he was determined to acquire a piece of German Artillery. In 1928 he became aware of 20 captured Howitzers that had been placed with the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. They were being stored on the grounds of War College for lack of space at the museum so Parsons went to Washington DC to examine the collection. He picked out his three favorite guns and wrote an appeal to the Smithsonian Institute on behalf of the Kennebunk American Legion. “The cannons are seriously deteriorating through the rusting of the steel and the decaying of the wood-work,” he wrote.  “The Harold A. Webber Post respectfully request that one of these cannon be donated to the Post as a war memorial – all expenses in connection with such donation to be paid by the Post.”

After many letters between the Post, the Smithsonian Institute, The War Department and United States Congressman, Lister Hill, the donation was finally approved. These letters, which have been carefully preserved in scrapbooks kept at the Webber-Lefebvre Post 74, were graciously shared with your columnist by Commander Brian McBride. In one rather terse letter from the Post to Governor Ralph O. Brewster, the Post Commander complained that as deserving as the large voting membership of the Kennebunk Legion was they had been overlooked to receive one of the original allotment of German cannons. He then suggested that the Governor might want to rectify the situation by applying to the War department on their behalf.   

In the early part of August, 1928, the German 150mm sFH13 Lang Howitzer arrived at the depot on a flat bottom car. The 4700 pound field gun was unloaded and hauled behind an auto-truck to Town Hall by Henry Parsons, Elmer M. Roberts and Post Commander A.L. Leach. It was riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes; clear evidence of combat against the allied forces. Mobility and fire power made the sFH13 one of the most important pieces in the arsenal of the German Artillery during WWI.  The Fried. Krupp Steel Company had delivered 3,409 of them to the front lines by 1918 when Kennebunk’s Howitzer was captured off a French battlefield.

At the beginning of WWII the Howitzer was contributed to a war effort scrap drive, to be cut up for bullets. As it turned out, the Biddeford junkman did not own an acetylene torch hot enough to cut the cannon into pieces for smelting. After several years of storage at the junkyard it was hauled back to the American Legion Hall on High Street. There it remained until the new Legion Hall was opened on Water Street.

It was reported in the Star that Kennebunk citizens voted to accept the Howitzer as a donation from the American Legion in 1977 to keep it in town “since other area American Legion Posts wanted it.” It was placed at the War Memorial and there it remains to remind us of the price of war.

White-Flag Ploy Thwarted

Less than 100 families lived in Wells when blacksmith, Louis Allain arrived from France around 1684.  The colonists probably received him with some trepidation, given the alliance between his countrymen in Canada and the Indians that had plagued them, off and on, for a decade.  Little did they know that Allain would one day use their acquaintance to spy for the Governor of l’Acadie.

French Protestants or Huguenots fled religious persecution in France during the reign of King Louis XIV, many of them settling in New England.  Louis Allain’s indentured apprentice, Anthony Coombs, was a Huguenot.  Louis, himself may also have represented himself as such to the people of Wells.  He would later prove his loyalty lay in his pocketbook. 

At thirty years old, Allain was already a man of means.  He purchased ½ of Samuel Storer’s Cape Neddick-built brigantine, Endeavor, in August of 1685.  A month later, he purchased a mill on the western bank of the Little River, lots on both sides of the river and the home of William Frost. 

Territorial tensions grew between the colonists from France and England and between the Indian tribes allied to both monarchies.  Allain decided to move to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, leaving Anthony Coombs behind to protect his Wells property.  In 1687 he obtained permission to build windmills along the river that has since been known as Allain’s River.  He raised a family there and his fortunes grew. 

Within a few years Louis owned a grain mill, a saw mill, a store and several coasting vessels that made regular trading voyages to the English city of Boston.  He and his partner shipped lumber and flour from their mills in Port Royal and brought back Boston goods to sell to their Acadian customers.  Andre Faneuil, the wealthy Boston Huguenot whose fortune financed the building of  Faneuil Hall, traded regularly with the Acadians, even as Governor William Phipps burned Port Royal in 1690.  When the legality of their trading arrangement was questioned, Allain and other Acadian businessmen declared their allegiance to the English King.  At the same time they were supplying the French Navy with mast timbers.   

Indians attacked the villages along the York County coast in 1703.   It was a horrible year for Wells.  Thirty-nine of her inhabitants were either killed or made prisoner.  The following Spring Colonel Benjamin Church led an expedition through Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and the Bay of Fundy, collecting French prisoners and Indian scalps for bounty along the way.  Under orders from Massachusetts Governor Dudley, he left Port Royal unscathed.  Some people of Massachusetts, including Puritan minister Cotton Mather, suspected that Dudley was trying to preserve illegal trade between Boston and Nova Scotia. 

Feeding prisoners of war became expensive for both the French and the English and an agreement was made to exchange prisoners in 1705.  Allain and his business partner, who were fluent in English and familiar with Boston, were sent to seal the deal.  According to the September 10, 1705 issue of the “Boston News-letter”, Allain arrived in Boston on the 20^th of August under a flag of truce, with the signed agreement.  He returned to Port Royal at the end of September carrying a few French prisoners back as a show of good faith.  A January 1706 report in the same paper indicates that he sailed again for Massachusetts a few months later.  “On Thursday last the 26^th day of December there arrived at Nanguncket [Ogunquit] near to Wells in the Province of Maine, A Flag of Truce from Port-Royal with 34 English Prisoners. 

E.E. Bourne writes in his “History of Wells” that Lewis Allen came to Wells under the Flag of Truce and was authorized to trade prisoners.  The people of Wells were immediately suspicious of the Frenchman’s motives and searched his pocketbook.  In it, they found incriminating instructions for Allain to report to the French Governor of Acadia any efforts underway to fortify Wells against the Indians.  “If any enterprise was afoot that he should join L.A. the two first letters of his name, close together.  If it was only in agitation, place them at some distance; but if nothing was in motion, then to sign a cross.” 

Allain was clasped in irons and sent to Boston to be dealt with.  In a surprising twist that Bourne does not reveal, Governor Dudley released Allain.  He made some excuse about owing Louis his life and sent him back to Port Royal to continue his lucrative lumber and flour trade.   

Anthony Coombs, whose indenture expired, had long since deserted Allain’s Wells mill on the Little River.  Louis hired his “trusty and well-beloved friend Lewis Bane of York,” [who had represented the English in treaty negotiations at Port Royal] to recover his title to the Wells property.  Bane eventually bought the property from him in 1720 and Louis boldly appeared at the courthouse in Biddeford to acknowledge the instrument May 9, 1733.  When he died in Port Royal several years later Louis Allain was one of the richest men in town.

Windsor Emissary

Queen Victoria had little inclination to appease her Canadian subjects who, throughout the 1850s, clamored for a royal visit. She was even less inclined to acknowledge the hoodlums that populated “those United States.” But her husband, Prince Albert, believed a royal visit would be politically prudent.

Meanwhile, Victoria’s teenage son Albert, the heir apparent, embraced the frivolity of youth. He exasperated his mother by indulging affections for wine, women and cigars, not necessarily in that order. The Queen once wrote to her eldest daughter, “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder.”

By early 1860, Victoria wanted the boy out of her sight. She killed two birds with one stone by sending her 18-year-old son across the pond for an extended diplomatic tour of North America.

After spending two months in Canada, the Prince of Wales danced with the ladies of Detroit, Chicago, St Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Washington, Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. The average-looking teenager didn’t exactly live up to the American fantasy. Harpers Weekly magazine published an illustration captioned, “The Prince; Ideal & Real.” Albert’s imagined regal visage, slaying a dragon, felling a giant and winning a jousting tournament, appeared on one side of the page. On the other side, the rumpled boy was realistically depicted being carried across a tiny stream on the back of a servant, falling ineptly on the dance floor and sleeping through a public appearance. A reporter for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper wrote that “dressed like a Prince” was a phrase that would never again be used in America to signify anything very significant.

The British Royal Squadron sailed into Portland Harbor on Oct. 16, 1860, to carry the future King Edward VII back to England. Exactly 85 years earlier on Oct. 16, 1775, a British fleet had entered the same harbor and destroyed the city. This coincidence was not lost on local reporters.

Trains were added to the schedule to accommodate the thousands who travelled to Portland to see Albert off. Merchants capitalized on the royal fever, selling hand-held British and American flags. “Two Princes in our City,” one opportunistic Portlander advertised, “The Prince of Wales and the Prince of Peddlers.”

Officials of the Eastern Railway fitted out a special three-car train for the final leg of Albert’s American tour. Its interior walls were draped in red and gold silk. The car ceilings were covered in rich blue silk, pleated and powdered with silver stars. Outside, a platform extended off the back of the train from which His Royal Highness could present himself to the eager citizens gathered at every station along the route to Portland.

The train left Boston shortly after 10 a.m. on Oct. 20, 1860. The prince was accompanied by his entourage, as well as, the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the president of Harvard, the mayor of Boston, Sen. Charles Sumner and a few railroad officials.

In Kennebunk, children were let out of school for the royal visit. Everyone in town showed up at the station expecting a day-long celebration. When the royal train finally pulled into West Kennebunk depot it barely stopped. The prince waved briefly from the platform then hurried back into the car. The people of Kennebunk, who had decorated the station with buntings and dressed in their finest ensembles, were bitterly disappointed.

Back in the car, the defiant teenager plopped down on a velvet sofa. According to a report in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Albert turned to the governor of Massachusetts, “will you take a little wine, or is the Maine Law in force here?” he asked. “I’m out of my own jurisdiction,” the governor replied, “and I’ll take the consequences.” The strict Maine liquor law had also been set aside in Portland the night before at a champagne reception for the officers of the royal squadron.

Albert’s train arrived in Portland at half past one. He toured the crowded streets in an open horse-drawn carriage on his way to the docks, where a barge was waiting to take him out to the screw battleship Hero. Two large steamers, the Lewiston and the Forest City, sold tickets for a voyage to accompany the royal squadron out of the harbor at 4 p.m. The little prince stood on the poop deck waving his hat at the cheering crowds while a 21-gun salute was fired, casting a haze of gun smoke across the harbor. A few minutes later he was gone.

Gun smoke on Goat Island

The people of Arundel were for the most part in support of American independence from Great Britain. King George III had levied taxes that threatened Arundel’s maritime trade economy. When 400 buildings at today’s Portland were burned by Captain Henry Mowat on October 18, 1775, the threat of war was too close to home to be ignored.

More than a month before the declaration of independence was signed Arundel citizens voted to “engage their lives and fortunes” to support independence. And that they did. Arundel boys were lost at Quebec, Halifax, Valley Forge and Lake Champlain as well as in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

Coastal Cape Porpoise residents, who were engaged in seafaring trade with merchants from Essex County Massachusetts, were particularly vulnerable. In October of 1780 three vessels were captured just outside Cape Porpoise Harbor and their captive crews were carried to Penobscot. The following year three more vessels met the same fate just outside the harbor though a few crewman made it to shore.

A bold attack inside Cape Porpoise Harbor was described in a New-England Chronicle article on October 3, 1782. On the morning of August 8, 1782 sheep and cattle were grazing on the islands as usual and two Newbury Massachusetts vessels were safely anchored in the harbor. One was a large sloop loaded with lumber and fitted out with a canon to protect her cargo. The other was a wood schooner that sailed with her.

An enemy brig of 16 guns suddenly appeared outside the harbor. She sent in a boat with 3 dozen men to capture the armed sloop but the men were surprised by the sloop’s American canon and landed the boat on Goat Island instead. The brig then sailed into the harbor and fired upon the Newbury sloop while an enemy top-sail schooner fired at her from just outside the harbor. The sloop’s crew was forced to evacuate and the enemy took possession of the two American vessels, sending the schooner off to Penobscot. The sloop was driven ashore by a sudden breeze as she left the harbor and was burned by the enemy where she lay at the southwesterly point of Goat Island.

James Burnham Jr., Captain of the Arundel militia, called his men to Trotts Island. From there he successfully advanced on the enemy, still at Goat Island, by ordering his men to wade across the channel under a hail of fire from the top-sail schooner. Wind and tide conspired to keep the Brig from escaping the harbor but she managed to get out just before nightfall by towing and warping her way. The Arundel Militia exchanged fire with the enemy for five or six hours and suffered the loss of one life, that of Captain James Burnham who at the close of the engagement took a musket ball to the chest. According to a witness whom the enemy had taken some time before, and who was on board the schooner during the battle, over 25 of the enemy were killed.

When Charles Bradbury wrote about the battle of Cape Porpoise in 1837, he relied heavily on the memories of his older neighbors to piece together the harrowing events of August 8, 1782. Some of his details varied from the contemporary account and he added a personal story. “Samuel Wildes, who was partially deranged” wrote Bradbury “paddled into the harbor in a small canoe and ordered them to give the vessels up and leave the port.” When he refused to board the brig he was fired upon seven times causing him an injury that lamed him for the rest of his life.

Regardless of his mental health, Samuel Wildes, Sr. had a right to be incensed by the enemy. He knew that his 16 year old son, a privateer crewman, had been imprisoned in England for 15 months. What he didn’t know was that Samuel Wildes, Jr. was at that moment two days out of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin had negotiated the release of all American prisoners and they were on their way home.

Most of the British forces had already left Penobscot by August 1782 but the loyalists stationed there were infamous for raiding coastal Maine harbor towns for sheep, cattle and coasting vessels laden with badly needed supplies. Most notable was Loyalist, Richard Pomroy and his 16 gun Brig Meriam.

A few weeks after the attack at Cape Porpoise, the Meriam was cut out of her anchor at Penobscot by Captain George Little in his American Navy sloop Winthrop. The Brig Meriam was triumphantly sailed into Boston Harbor on Sept 16, 1782 along with 3 other prizes. Among them were, privateer schooner Hammond commanded by a Penobscot Loyalist named Doty and an unnamed Newbury wood schooner that was a recent prize of the Brig Meriam.

A letter from the Governor, published in the Massachusetts Archives, relates to the success of Little’s six week cruise. It says “I considered that he had most essentially prevented the depredations on that coast by capturing & sending into this Port near the whole of the armed force they possessed at Penobscot.”

Definitive proof that Cape Porpoise was attacked by loyalist brig Meriam and schooner Hammond, has not been found but if the Governor was correct in his assessment of the remaining Penobscot forces the circumstantial evidence is strong.

For sources see www.mykennebunks.com/revolution.htm

The HMS Bulwark’s raiding party.

The people of Biddeford Pool were alarmed by the sight of a 74-gun ship of the Royal Navy, anchored off Wood Island at 9 o’clock, on the morning of June 16, 1814. The 182 foot HMS Bulwark sent several canon balls over the town. One of them landed in the pasture of Samuel Tarbox.

Jesse Tarbox was dispatched on horseback to alert the militia in Saco, but his progress was greatly impeded. The bridge over the Saco River was out. Maine was recovering from extreme weather conditions, the likes of which no one living at the time could recall. During the first half of May, there had been only two days of fair weather. During the second half of the month, torrential rain fell for four consecutive days. The water level in most Maine Rivers reached record heights, causing a freshet. On May 28, 1814, the American Advocate reported “great losses sustained during the late freshet at Saco-Not a bridge is left standing and the damage on the Saco river in mills, logs, boards, bridges is estimated at half a million dollars.”

There were no fortifications at the Pool. The civilian population hurried to bury their valuables. Captain David Milne of the Bulwark sent five barges with 150 well-armed soldiers, led by the Bulwark’s second in-command, Lieutenant James Symonds, to Stage Island. After a few minutes there, they passed over to Fletcher’s Neck, where Thomas Cutts Jr. met them with a white flag. Cutts owned a great deal of property at Fletcher’s Neck. He asked Lt. Symonds his intentions and the Lieutenant replied, “to destroy the place.” Thomas Cutts tried to buy the town’s safety, but was told that the captain had positive orders to destroy their shipping industry and would accept no terms. Mr. Cutts’ new 265 ton brig, Hermoine, worth $8,000, was burned. A small schooner and a sloop from Cape Cod, loaded with lumber, were also set ablaze. The frame of a 540 ton ship Cutts had on the stocks worth $7,000 was cut up and knocked to pieces.

Next, the British plundered Thomas Cutts’ store. Bill Pitcher, the clerk helped the soldiers to new clothes and all the liquor they could carry. In the end, $2,000 worth of merchandise was taken. On their way back to their frigate, the soldiers took the fine new ship Victory, which also belonged to Mr. Cutts, and brought her alongside the Bulwark. They stripped her of her sails and rigging and then offered her back to her owner for $6,000. The whole affair took 2 1/2 hours. The Saco militia arrived on the opposite bank of the river just in time to watch the marauders sail away.

Master of the HMS Bulwark, Captain David Milne had been promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral just days before the attack on Biddeford Pool. His lieutenant, James Symonds, who had previously commanded a trading vessel, reportedly had a history with Thomas Cutts Jr.. According to local legend, he returned to exact revenge for some offence perpetrated by Cutts before the war. It’s just as likely that Saco Harbor was chosen because the customs house there had seized British goods from Buxton parties. They were to be sold at auction in two weeks time, along with a rich cargo of dry goods taken from a privateer prize, the British brig Belize.

Captain Milne had sailed the Bulwark from England on Feb. 10, 1814 and arrived at Bermuda on the 7th of April. He left for the American coast three days later with orders from Admiral Cochrane to enforce a “strict and rigorous” blockade of the entire American coast from Eastport to New Orleans. Biddeford Pool was but one of many unprotected harbors visited by the Bulwark that summer. Captain Milne published his intentions to destroy American shipping ahead of time in New England newspapers. “No fishing vessels should be injured nor houses destroyed unless individual resistance was made by firing from behind rocks and trees but that he should not complain of honorable resistance from organized troops.”

Mr. Thomas Cutts Jr. seems to have born an unfair share of the damage in the Biddeford Pool attack, but he owned most of the merchant vessels in that harbor. His store was also convenient to the wharf. As they did in many of the other American harbors they attacked, the Bulwark crew collected provisions as the spoils of war. C’est la guerre!

A Home-Water Marauder by Frank Handlen

Five German U-boats cruised the Gulf of Maine during the final months of World War I. The U-156 first appeared in July of 1918. She sank 35 ships before succumbing to a mine off the Norwegian coast. Twenty of those ships were commercial fishing vessels.

The folks at Cape Porpoise had heard rumors that the enemy was near and they were suspicious of every foreigner that came through town that summer. Their apprehensions were validated when a dory carrying three exhausted fishermen from Gloucester, Mass., appeared in the harbor on the evening of July 23, 1918.

Fred Eaton, a gill net fisherman who lived near the waterfront, invited the trio into his home to recuperate. While his wife Nellie prepared them a good hot meal, Fred and his neighbors listened intently to how their fishing party had been attacked by a German submarine.

At 10 o’clock the previous morning the knockabout schooner “Robert & Richard” had been making her way back to port with 90,000 pounds of fresh fish. She was 60 miles off Cape Porpoise when a shell came screaming across her bow. Just able to make out a long gray mass surfacing 200 yards away, Capt. Bob Wharton swung the schooner into the wind and ordered his crew to take to the dories. The 21 crew members quickly readied the boats while Charles Gowen, a quick thinking 13-year-old boy, retrieved a gallon of fresh water and some ships biscuits from the galley.

Everyone piled into six dories. The U-boat commander stood on deck and watched. As the fishermen started to pull away he signaled for Capt. Wharton to bring his dory alongside the undersea craft. He and his second officer climbed into the dory and ordered that it be rowed to the schooner.

The Germans chatted as they searched the cabin of the Robert & Richard. Wharton later recounted the conversation to a reporter for the Boston Daily Globe.

Kapitanleutnant Richard Feldt spoke perfect English as he declared his mission. “I have been sent here to annihilate the American fishing fleet and I am going to do it.” He then picked up a photograph of Wharton’s young sons, Robert and Richard, for whom the boat was named. Commenting on the sturdy appearance of the boys he added, “We got the tug Perth Amboy and four barges off Provincetown yesterday and turned the crews adrift. Among them was a boy just six years old. It was pretty rough last night and I doubt if they got ashore.”

The second officer told Capt. Wharton that he had sailed on American ships for many years before the war and had owned a summer home on the Maine coast since 1896.

Once the ship’s papers were confiscated, the Germans placed a time bomb in her hold and ordered her captain to row them back to the sub. They climbed aboard and then gestured to Capt. Wharton and his men to get out. As the men rowed away they heard an enormous explosion. The Robert & Richard sank at exactly 10:33 a.m.

The weather was mercifully calm. Each of the dories, but one, was equipped with a single small sail. Occasional light puffs of southerly wind helped the little fleet make its way toward the Maine coast. Only one of the dories had two sails. She also carried the water and biscuits that were judiciously doled out to all hands.

All six dories managed to stay together throughout the first day, but when the sun rose on the 23rd, the three men in the fastest dory found themselves alone. They rowed in shifts all day and were nearly exhausted when they finally arrived at Cape Porpoise.

After a good night sleep at Fred Eaton’s house, the Gloucester fishermen were taken to Portland. Eventually all of the schooner’s crew was accounted for and debriefed by authorities. Scores of patrol boats and hydroplanes were sent out in pursuit of the enemy, but the submarine avoided capture.

The U-156 surfaced again in late August. She captured the Canadian steam trawler Triumph and converted her into a surface raider. Her captured steward later told a reporter for the Kennebec Journal, “The Germans were so polite that it started getting on our nerves. They offered us brandy and cigarettes while they used our trawler to blow up fishing boats all around the Bay of Fundy.” When the Triumph’s coal was depleted, she was blown up and her crew was released. On the way home to Germany on Sept. 25, 1918, the submarine U-156 tried unsuccessfully to run through a mine field. All but a few hands perished.

Article by Sharon Cummins originally published in the York County Coast Star