June 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. Eno Completes Book on Naval Visits to MDI
HULL’S COVE – Many times people begin projects and they think this will not take much time to complete. Well, what they thought might be completed in weeks turns into months and then years. Fortunately most people do not look at the time factor as I would guess a lot of projects would never even get started. Jonathan Eno of Hulls Cove began such a project when he started putting together material for a book dedicated to all the naval vessels that visited Mount Desert Island and Frenchman’s Bay. The book became a tome. It is 12 x 15 inches, 693 pages of text with over 500 photographs and weighs in at 12 pounds. The project began innocently when he
visited an antique show. He explained, “I accompanied my wife to an antique show about 10 years ago in Ellsworth. In the pro- cess of trying to entertain myself I went to a gentleman’s booth who was selling prints, photographs and antique charts. Just going through his selection of things I came upon a booklet entitled “Naval Visits to Bar Har- bor,” dated 1952 by Leonard Opdycke. Mr. Opdycke was a noted historian and a long time summer family that lived in Bar Harbor. I had never seen this booklet and I quickly bought it. I brought it home and I read it. It was fascinating because Mr. Opdycke had done very extensive historical research of naval ships coming to Bar Harbor, Maine. He used what was available at the time to him, largely newspaper articles and ship’s logs. In the process of reading this it dawned on me that several of the sources I use for model building might have photographs of some of the ships going back as far as 1878 when Mr. Opdycke started. Lo and behold, many of these sites did have photographs of the ships. Somewhere along the way a light bulb went off in my head that I could do a companion volume to Mr. Opdycke’s pamphlet. I thought I could do this and it wouldn’t take me too long. I will have this done in six months. Eight and half years later I fi nished it “What I did was use Mr. Opdycke’s
work as the basis of my research,” continued Jonathan. “Almost all of these visitations were during the summer months. He would refer to the summer of such and such a year the following ships came in. I decided I was going to actually try to document the indi- vidual dates of each visit. That meant I had to go back and read the newspapers that he got his information from and try to actually determine the dates of visit. In the process of doing that, I also uncovered more entries and more information. I don’t want to detract by any means what Mr. Opdycke did, because he did an amazing job.” Jonathan spent hours and hours going through microfi lm of the local papers veri-
fying each and every vessel that came to Bar Harbor or Frenchman’s Bay. Then he wrote a summary of each vessel as to where built, dimensions, armament, brief history and dates of visit. At times he would run into an issue.
One in particular was regarding a visit to Bar Harbor by a destroyer under the command of ‘Bull’ Halsey with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Some of the research I did was tied to just my own interest as an amateur historian and reading biographies of mostly naval fi gures,” said Jonathan. “In ‘Bull’ Halsey’s autobiogra- phy, and in multiple biographies of him, he recites a story of coming to Bar Harbor in 1913 and doing so as captain of his destroyer. The problem was I could fi nd no documenta- tion whatsoever that his destroyer ever came to Bar Harbor. I couldn’t fi nd any mention of him picking up at the time Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt at Campobello Island and bringing him to Bar Harbor either in down east newspapers or the Roosevelt Library. His ship’s name was the FLUSSER and originally he was the captain of the ship and the ship was in reserve in Charleston, South Carolina along with three other ships in the division. At the same time that he was captain of the ship he was also the commander of that particular di- vision. In the spring of 1913 he was ordered to bring two ships to Newport, Rhode Island to replace two of the new steam turbine destroyers that were going in for repairs. After getting to Newport he was ordered to go to Campobello to pick up the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt and bring him to Bar Harbor to inspect naval facilities and at this time that was the Lamoine Fuel Depot or what is locally known as the Lam- oine Coaling Station. When I couldn’t fi nd the log I put everything on the back burner. Eventually I went to the Virginia Historical Society and found that they had the original typed manuscript of Admiral Halsey’s auto- biography. I look in that and the story was essentially the same. It did add a couple of points: one was that after visiting Bar Harbor they went to Seal Harbor, spent the night and then went back to Campobello. I went back to the National Archives several times and they were able to fi nd the FLUSSER’s log and what the FLUSSER’s log showed was that she remained in Charleston throughout 1913 in reserve. The question became ‘what ship did Admiral Halsey come up on?’ About a year later I stumbled upon a little tiny blurb about three lines in the Bar Harbor Times, in the about town section, and it said that the USS PRESTON spent the night in Somes Sound. I thought bingo; this has to be it, because the USS PRESTON was in the same division as the USS FLUSSER.
USS VESUVIUS off Bar Harbor.
I went back to the National Archives and I asked them whether or not the log of the PRESTON indicated that Admiral Halsey or Franklin Roosevelt were on board at the time of the visit. The reply was no, they weren’t. I wrote them again and they actually sent me a copy of the log two weeks either side of this visit. The log indicates that the PRESTON had left Newport, Rhode Island, gone to Campobello Island, where it had embarked the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, no name given, sailed to Bar Harbor, then around to Somes Sound where it spent the night, then
returning to Campobello Island, and went back to Newport. On the last page of the log that they sent me it indicated that upon arrival at Newport the Commodore of Tor- pedo Boat Division 1, Commodore Halsey, departed the vessel. That answered the entire question and it took about three years to fi nd that answer.” There were other interesting issues.
“Growing up as a kid here and going around the island for picnics I can always remember
Continued on Page 8. SHEEPSCOT BAY BOAT COMPANY
Boat Storage - Inside & Outdoor · Boat Repair Moorings - seasonal & transient · Gas & Diesel Sales
Distributor of Tohatsu Outboards & Duras Infl atables Five Islands Harbor, Georgetown, Maine
207-371-2442
www.sheepscotbayboatcompany.com
Bring your boat to New England’s most capable yacht yard for the care she deserves. Repairs, refi ts, storage and dockage available for vessels up to 200 feet and 480 tons.
Belfast,Maine 207-930-3740
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32