Several times on these broadcasts I have mentioned that remarkable man:<\/p>\n
Robie Frye, who has missed scarcely a single Colby commencement since he graduated in 1882,73 years ago. He was here last June, alert and vigorous, although he was 94 years old. On the 29th of this month he wi I I celebrate his 95th birthday. Think of it! Here is a man who was five years old when the Civi I War ended, whose life has encompassed the whole of that war, the SpanishAmerican War, World War I and World War I I.<\/p>\n
Last winter I told you some of Mr. Frye’s interesting anecdotes about the Belfast and Moosehead rai Iroad. Born in Belfast, he knew that road exceedingly well. Tonight I want to tell you how Mr. Frye played a surprising part in the first World War. Some of you older listeners will recall that from 1914 to 1917 the United States operated under the Neutrality Act, the keep-us-out-ofwar po Ii cy of Woodrow Wi I son. Sh ips of a I I nati ons, inc I ud i ng those of Germany.<\/p>\n
were free to enter and leave our ports. Several German and Austrian ships were laid up in the port of Boston. They were free to depart, but dared not do so for their captains knew that the British Navy had warships just outside the three-mi Ie Ii mi t.<\/p>\n
You wi II also recall that it was the deliberate sinking of the Lusitania that so aroused the American people that finally, in Apr; I, <\/em>1917; we were forced to declare war. Now let us have the story in Mr. Frye’s own wordS, in a letter which he wrote me only a few months ago.<\/p>\n HOn Apri 15, 1917 Congress debated all day a resolution declaring a state of war. At that ti me Edmund B i I lings was Co I lector of Cus toms i n Boston. I was Deputy Collector. Instructions had been received from Washington that, if and when the resolution passed, the German and Austrian ships in the harbor should be seized on receipt of a telegram from Washington consisting of the one code word ‘Charlestown’.<\/p>\n “Collector Bi lIings designated one hundred of the younger men as a seizing squad, and to each was issued an army revolver, with belt and cartridges. From time to time during the day we were advised of the progress of the debate. When the usual closing time arrived, al I of us were al lowed to go home except the sei zing squad and the six or eight executi ve off i cers. \\~e took turns going to supper. During the evening we sat around, reading the papers, telling stories and jokes, whi ling away the time as best we could.<\/p>\n fTln the Collector’s office were the Collector, the U. S. Attorney, the U.S. Marshal I, the chief of the Boston police, and a few others. At midnight the Collector had coffee and sandwiches sent in. It was my job to sit by the telephone, and on _ receipt of the telegram phoned in from the Western Union office:<\/p>\n to notify those concerned. The telegram ‘Charlestown’ came at 3:06 A.M. on April 6. I immediately notified the Collector, the men concerned who were on various floors, the Boston Police, the Immigration Service, and the Navy Yard.<\/p>\n “At 3:25 A.M. Collector Billings, with the executive officers and 100 men of the seizing squad marched down State Street to the end of Long Wharf, where they boarded waiting tugs. As they entered the dock in East Boston, around the point came barges from the Navy Yard carrying 100 Blue Jackets and their officers. At the head of the dock were already assembled fifty police from the East Boston station and fifty men from the Immigration Service. The men were divided into squads, one for each ship to be seized, of which I think there were six tied up at the East Boston docks. Estimates were made of the time needed to reach the more distant ships, and that was fixed as the zero hour.<\/p>\n !When the zero hour arrived, each squad, headed by the Blue Jackets with fixed bayonets, rushed each ship. Men seized the engine room to prevent sabo- tage, and the officers and crews, taken by surprise, were hustled out of their bunks and on to the dock, carrying their clothes. No one was given time to dress.<\/p>\n flThe crews were placed under arrest and locked up in the Irrrnigration Station near the Lynn and Revere Narrow Guage Rai I road Station. Later they were transferred to one of the islands in the harbor, where they stayed ti I I The end of the war.<\/p>\n “I was not allowed to take part in the seizure, but stayed in the Custom House TO keep in touch with Washington. I got the secret code book OUT of the CollecTor’s safe and composed a telegram in cipher, reporting the facts on the case before they took place. At 5:25 A.M. the Col lector telephoned me from East Boston, saying that the ships had been seized and the crews arrested. I at once sent my telegram to the Western Union office close by, and the war was on. learned afterward that Boston was the first port to make and report the seizures. ~’So you see t1, says r”‘r. Frye, Hthat’s why I like to c I aim that I started the war wi th Germany.”<\/p>\n On another occasion Mr. Frye told me that this episode of seizing the German ships had an amusing sequel. A friend of his was traveling in Russia after the war. A group of Americans were being escorted by a Russian greeting party, one of whom sidled up to Frye’s friend and asked him for a little money to help him escape from Russia by way of Finland. The Russian said he was one of the eng i neers of the German sh i p Kronpri ncess i n Ceci lie, se i zed in the fi rst Worl d War, and that he spent three years under arrest in Boston Harbor and during that internment he played 599 games of pinochle.<\/p>\n Now I want to te II you about the first tri p that Dr. Thomas FI i nt of Anson made to California in 1851. After his testimony in the Coolidge murder trial, FI int had gone TO Phi ladelphia, where he took his medical degree in 1849. In the spring of 1851 he was back in Anson and in May of that year he made this initial entry in the diary which he kept regularly thereafter for several years: “Left my chi Idhood home for California, in company with my cousins .L\u00b7lewellyn and Amasa Bixby of Norridgewock. Arrived in New York by rai I from Boston even i ng of May 22, s topp i ng at the Judson Hote I .<\/p>\n When he boarded the steamer Crescent bound for the Isthmus of Panama, Flint found on board 45 other passengers from Mai ne. The same kind of situation was repeated again and again through the years of the gold rush. Maine population was seriously depleted during those years by almost wholesale exodus to California.<\/p>\n Arri ved at the trop i ca I town of Chagres, the passengers were taken off sh i P in sma II boats hand led by nati ves of the Ii tt Ie vi II age. FI i nt sa i d the whole place consisted of some thirty thatched huts of the natives and a dozen board shanties sheltering the adventurous white popUlation.<\/p>\n In the early afternoon they started up the river on a small stern-wheeled steamer owned by Capta in Jewett, a man from Bangor, Ma i ne. Ni ght comi ng on. the boat was made fast to a stump at a place cal led Los Hermanos — a landing point near the line of the Panama Rai Iroad. There they found a man from Indiana keeping what he called the U. S. Hotel. Since the fellow was sick with what Flint calls cholera morbus, Flint and three others stayed and nursed him for several days. They lost no travel time, because for some reason their steamer also was held up. Being Maine Yankees, they mixed thrift with benevolence, because they charged the innkeeper $15 for the i r nurs i ng servi ces. When they resumed the river journey, they found the boat more cr~wded than before, because additional passengers had arrived. Flint says he managed somehow to get into a recumbent position on the deck and so passed the night.<\/p>\n Early the next morning trouble loomed on the scene. The captain said there was not enough water for his boat to get through and that al I the passengers must disembark and take to sma I I boats. The passengers rebel led and harsh language was exchanged. As FI int puts it: Hfv1atters looked a little warlike when Gen. Hitchcock took a hand so effectually as to convince <\/em>Captain Jewett that his agreement with the passengers must be carried out, at least unti I-his steamer actually ran aground. It was clear that the Captain was exaggerating the shallowness of the stream and what he really wanted was to return to Chagres for another load of passengers.?! Flint attributes Gen. Hitchcock’s success with Capta in Jewett to the former’s mi Ii tary promi nence. ‘\u00b7The Genera I was on his way to Ca I i forni af’, says F lint, t7to take command of the Pac; fi c Oi vi s i on of the U. S. Army.”<\/p>\n In due time the steamer arrived at the agreed destination, Gozona, where the passengers transferred to boats propel led by six natives with long poles.<\/p>\n Twelve passengers were assigned to each boat. Sometimes the passengers had to get into the water and help push the boat against the current. Soon they arrived at the limit of water navigation from the Atlantic side; the town of Cruces.<\/p>\n There they hired drivers and pack mules to transport their baggage to the town of Panama on the Pacific side. ‘!Then”, wrote Flint, nwe started on foot to cross the dividing ridges between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.fT<\/p>\n After a long trek, Flint and his companions reached Panama, where there was nothing to do but wait, with hundreds of others bound for the same destination; unti I they cou Id get passage to Ca Ii forni a. HWe fi na Ily got tickets for the steamsh i p Northerner”, sa i d F lint, Hwh i ch we were to I d wou I d come in with ina week. So we engaged board for $10 a week at the Western Hotel, kept by a man named A lien from Lowe II, Mass. f! Six days later F lint was on the Northerner bound for San Franc i sco \u2022 F lint te I I s us: “The sh i p was crowded to the utmost:<\/p>\n and we found the food question absorbing. luckily made the acquaintance of a baker and got a pie now and then~ and occasionally rol Is and butter. We slept under an awning over the quarterdeck in Handee berths, when we could get them, but I got more accustomed to sleeping on the deck floor. We soon found ourselves infested with vermin, and we settled down to lively slaughter of the pests. ”<\/p>\n It took Flint’s party ten days to get to Acapulco, where they took a walk into the country along the banks of the Rio Grande. Flint records their encounter with Mexican women washing clothes. “They were standing in the water”, he says, “using the rocks as washboards. They seemed to be washing all their clothes, for they did not have a stitch on their bodies. The idea of being immodest did not impress them in the least. In fact they acted much more like bathers at 0 ur fas hi onab I e seas i de resorts.”<\/p>\n After another ten days they put into the Bay of San Diego, to leave mai I. Flint tells us how they loaded two steers. HThe band of cattle was driven to the water’s edge, two were selected and lassoed~ dragged into the water, turned out to the side of the sh i p, and hau led aboard by a rope around. the horns.”<\/p>\n When the passengers tried to hold a Fourth of July celebration on the ship, as it approached San Pedro, Flint was disgusted that the reading of the Declaration of Independence had to be omitted because no copy of it could be found.<\/p>\n On July 7 Thomas Flint landed at San Francisco and immediately took a smal f steamer for Sacramento, where he arrived early the next morning. He says, rtl took lodging at the Lady Adams Hotel, where I got rid of the pests picked up on the Northerner.fl The trip from Panama had taken 22 days, a journey now covered by airplane in a few hours.<\/p>\n On July 10 Flint got a ride on a freight wagon bound for Volcano, where his brother Benjamin had located. When they came to a camp for the night, Flint says he preferred r odgi ng on a hay stack rather than contend with fleas indoors.<\/p>\n Fifty-three days after he left Maine, Thomas Flint joined his brother at the mining vii lage of Volcano.<\/p>\n On a future program I’ll tell you about a much more adventurous trip to California, when the two Flints and llewellyn Bixby drove across the plains and mounta i ns the first sheep for what became the tremendous flocks wh i ch crea’ted the fami Iy wea I th.<\/p>\n last winter I talked now and then about strange epitaphs on tombstones. let me add another ton i ght, found at an Army post in the west: III n memory of Magg i e :<\/p>\n a mule, who in her I ifetime kicked one colonel, one major, three lieutenants, 11 sergeants, 27 privates and one bomb.!!<\/p>\n Year: 1955<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #283, broadcast on December 11, 1955<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[755,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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