Veteranscribe's Blog

Today we celebrate Evacuation Day in Boston. School is closed because yesterday was a Sunday and the actual anniversary of March 17, 1776 when the British military fled Boston. The fleet of the mightiest navy in the world departed Boston Harbor under heavy cannonading by George Washington’s forces. The colonial army was using guns that had been dragged to Boston from Fort Ticonderoga by a contingent led by Henry Knox.

Abigail Adams saw the fleet departing and described the ships’ masts as a “forest” in the harbor. On board the British ships were 11,000 soldiers and 1,019 citizens who remained loyal to King George and wanted to return to England.

Two of these Loyalists were newlyweds William and Mary Burton. Their hoped-for married life in Britain was not to be, however. Mary was struck in the head by a cannonball fired from Long Island as their ship made its way seaward. She was not killed immediately but lingered on for several days in great pain. As she lay dying, Mary pleaded with her husband not to bury her at sea. After her death on board the ship, the British and the colonial forces on Long Island struck a truce, and William Burton was allowed to come ashore to bury his love.

Burton sewed his wife’s body into a red blanket that Mary had brought aboard to keep warm on the long journey home. He laid her to rest on the East End of Long Island and made a grave marker from a piece of driftwood. He vowed to return to Boston some day and give her a proper head stone, but he never did come back.

The British fleet did not depart immediately. The ships stayed at anchor in Boston’s outer harbor and blockaded the port for another three months, exchanging gunfire with shore batteries. They finally left on June 13, 1776 when a barrage of cannon fire from the East End hit the British flagship Milford. British Commodore Banks ordered his ships to put to sea. On July 17, 1776, that same Long Island Battery on East Head fired a thirteen-gun salute to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.

But Mary Burton refused to be forgotten. Her wooden grave marker soon disappeared. But in 1804, fishermen shipwrecked on Long Island encountered her ghost, wrapped in a red cloak and sighing mournfully. With blood pouring from her head wound, she floated over a hill and disappeared. The Lady in Red was also seen and heard in 1891 by a soldier at Fort Strong, which was built on the island shortly after the Civil War.

March 17 is better known around here as Saint Patrick’s Day. But Evacuation Day was one of the turning points in America’s war for independence. Had it not taken place in 1776, we might not today enjoy the religious freedom that allows us to honor Boston’s patron saint.

But also, had Evacuation Day not taken place, William and Mary Burton would likely have spent many happy years together and given the world their children whose descendants may have been our friends, neighbors and relatives.

Let us today remember Mary Burton, the Lady in Red, and pray that she rest in peace at last.

She was the Queen of England, but she never even saw her realm. Nonetheless, she is the first queen who had a British ocean liner named for her, a ship that had been built for Imperial Germany by Kaiser Wilhelm. She was Berengaria, wife of King Richard I, “The Lionheart.”

The year was 1190. Richard had succeeded his father, Henry II, on the throne of England. Henry’s wife was the imperious, scheming Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor had once been married to King Louis VII of France. She had that one annulled, got her real estate back, then went out and snagged Henry. Eleanor knew a few things about arranging marriages for political gain.

Mommy the Matchmaker

When Eleanor’s son Richard inherited the throne, he’d already been betrothed to Princess Alys, daughter of King Philip of France. But Eleanor wanted to look after her homeland, the French duchy of Aquitaine. She saw that a friendly neighboring realm was the way to go. That realm was Navarre. So Eleanor connected up with King Sancho of Navarre at a banquet in Spain, and she fixed up her son with Sancho’s oldest daughter, Berengaria.

One problem: Richard had already been packed off from England to run the disastrous Third Crusade. With him out of the way, of course, Eleanor could rule in his stead, as regent. Richard was at Messina, in Sicily, when the 70-year old Eleanor and Berengaria caught up with him. He officially terminated his betrothal to Alys – a good move, because she had been sleeping with his father Henry, and probably had borne Henry at least one illegitimate child.

So Richard and Berengaria got engaged. Another problem: It was Lent, so they couldn’t get married. Richard’s sister Joan, the widowed Queen of Sicily, was there too. The happy couple, now engaged, set off for the Holy Land in different ships. Joan was assigned to keep an eye on Berengaria, and traveled with her. A storm hit, the fleet got scattered –Richard’s treasure ship sunk too – and Berengaria ended up aground off the island of Cyprus.

An Island Wedding, at Last

The nasty Isaac Comnenus ruled Cyprus. He threatened Berengaria and her entourage with all sorts of bad things. Richard’s fleet finally arrived and came to her rescue. He conquered the island and married Berengaria there, at the Chapel of St. George at Limassol. A couple of A-List church men were on hand, and so that same day, Berengaria was crowned Queen of England by the Archbishop of Bordeaux and the bishops of Évreux and Bayonne.

Berengaria and Richard went to Acre in Palestine. She soon left, and went back to Poitou, France. Things didn’t go well for Richard, though. On his return trip to Europe, he was captured and held prisoner in Germany until 1194. Eleanor finally arranged for his ransom – by plundering the riches of the church, primarily – and got him freed.

The marriage of Berengaria and Richard was not a happy one. They had no children, and he is widely believed to have been gay even though he did father at least one illegitimate child. Richard was more interested in his military campaigns than in his marriage after he returned from captivity. The marriage was seen as so rocky that Pope Celestine ordered the pair to reconcile. Richard obeyed and took Berengaria to church every week after that.

Richard died in 1199 and was succeeded as King of England by his brother John. Berengaria, distressed at being overlooked as queen of England, retired to Le Mans in France. She lived in poverty because John seized her property and never paid most of her pension, which amounted to 4,000 pounds. Later on, though, John’s son Henry III came across with the funds.

Berengaria may have actually come to England at one point to complain about the money. But she was never there during Richard’s lifetime, and therefore is the only queen of England who never set foot in her realm. She died in 1230 and was buried at a convent in Le Mans.

The Berengaria – Once the World’s Largest Ship

In May 1912, a month after the Titanic went down, Vulcan Shipyards of Hamburg, Germany launched the Imperator, a luxurious ocean liner that was then the world’s largest ship. Its maiden voyage from Hamburg to New York was in June of 1913. But in July 1914, with World War I breaking out, the German navy ordered that the Imperator remain in port, lest it be seized as a war prize.

The Imperator remained there until 1919 when the Americans made it into a troop transporter for returning soldiers. In August of that year, they gave the ship to the Brits as reparation for the Lusitania.

The Imperator became the flagship and pride of the Cunard Line. The British rechristened her the Berengaria, in honor of the queen who never made it to her country. It was the first time that a ship was named for a queen of England. Along with the Mauretania and the Aquitania, the Berengaria was a mainstay of the Cunard Line’s express routes between Southampton and New York in the 1920s.

The Berengaria was taken from service after the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were launched in 1936. The Berengaria was sold for scrap in 1938, but it took until the end of World War II to dismantle her completely.

The Berengarias – Queen of England who lived in France, and luxury British ocean liner built for Imperial Germany by the man most responsible for the Great War that nearly destroyed England and the rest of Europe. And now you know their stories.

She lived in Asia Minor in the third century, legend has it, the daughter of Dioscorus, a strict pagan father who locked her up in a tower to shield her from the world. She secretly converted to Christianity and wouldn’t agree to an arranged marriage. Her father had her condemned to death. She escaped several times through divine intervention, and finally Dioscorus took it upon himself to behead her.

God got even with the old man, however. On his way home from killing his daughter, the father was blown to smithereens by a bolt of lightning.

So Saint Barbara became the patron saint of artillerymen, armorers, military engineers, gunsmiths, miners, bomb squads, and anyone else who works with cannon and explosives. She is invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising from explosions of gunpowder. She is venerated by every Catholic who faces the danger of sudden and violent death in work.

Pope Paul VI removed Barbara from the calendar of saints in 1969, citing the improbability that she actually lived. No matter. Her feast day, December 4, is still celebrated in many countries of the world.

The US Army Field Artillery Association and Army Air Defense Artillery Association maintain the Order of Saint Barbara as an honorary military society. Its most distinguished level is the Ancient Order of Saint Barbara for those who have achieved long-term, exceptional service to the field artillery. Membership at that level must be approved of by the Commanding General, United States Army Fires Center of Excellence and Fort Sill.

The Spanish and Italian word “santabarbara” and the obsolete French “sainte-barbe” signify the powder magazine of a ship or fortress. It was customary to have a statue of Saint Barbara at the magazine to protect the ship or fortress from suddenly exploding. She is also the patron of the Italian Navy.

Who needs Barbie dolls when you’ve got Saint Barbara on your side?

It was nearly a century before Abraham Lincoln. And it was one of the “bad guys,” John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, who issued it. Lord Dunmore freed the slaves of the Royal Colony of Virginia on November 7, 1775.

That date is tucked away in the chronicles of American history like a guilty secret. Maybe it’s because we really don’t want to acknowledge what motivated many American colonists to take up arms against England. It was the need to preserve slavery. It was the wealth of the plantations, wealth only made possible by slave labor. It was all about the money.

Dunmore’s Proclamation was issued from a British warship in Yorktown harbor. He had fled there in April after the colonists surrounded his royal palace in Williamsburg, the colonial capital. They were furious that he had effectively disarmed them by removing the colony’s supply of gunpowder from the public magazine and storing it in another British ship. It was the day after the Lexington and Concord clashes in Massachusetts. The Virginians didn’t buy Dunmore’s initial excuse that he was safeguarding the powder from potential seizure by rebellious black slaves.

The November proclamation by Dunmore offered freedom to slaves who would rebel and take up arms against their masters. Some 800 to 2,000 did so, becoming his “Ethiopian Regiment” in the early stages of the war. They had some initial success in the Chesapeake area, but later on were evacuated to New York to fight there.

At the time of the April rebellion, and as he was fleeing to the safety of the moored warship. Dunmore had announced that “by the living God, he would declare freedom to the slaves, and reduce the city of Williamsburg to ashes.”

Like Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Dunmore’s move was just a war measure, intended to incite rebellion and bring disorder to the enemy. But it backfired, with disastrous results. Virginia and the rest of its Southern brethren were now in the rebellion to stay. Hundreds, if not thousands, who had been undecided enlisted in the Continental Army. Nothing did more to turn the South against the Crown than the Dunmore Proclamation.

All of the colonies chafed under the thumb of the British – the endless taxes, harassment, and disdain. Not all colonists supported slavery, of course, and many were ardent abolitionists whose time had not yet come. But the prospect of liberated slaves was the final provocation, the tipping point. As one Virginian wrote to a friend overseas, “Hell itself could not have vomited anything more black than his design of emancipating our slaves.”

Virginia in the Forefront of the Revolution

The Revolution needed the Southerners. It especially needed Virginia, the largest and wealthiest of all the colonies. That is the main reason that Thomas Jefferson was picked to write the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, for one, insisted on it.

Back in 1774, Adams, Jefferson, and Benjamin Rush had discussed the political situation at a tavern in Frankford, Pennsylvania. At that time, Adams acknowledged and wrote that “Virginia is the most Populous State of the Union. They are very proud of their ancient dominion, they call it; they think they have the right to take the lead…”

Two years later, when asked why Jefferson, still such a young man, would draft the Declaration of Independence, Adams replied, “It was the Frankford advice, to place Virginia at the head of everything.”

And so it was. But Virginia would most likely never have been there, had Lord Dunmore not attempted to free the slaves first.

Britain in the Forefront of Abolition

British authorities never repudiated Dunmore, even though they must have realized that his declaration did not have the intended effect. In 1779, British General Sir Henry Clinton’s Philipsburg Proclamation freed slaves owned by Patriots throughout the rebel states, even if they did not enlist in the British Army.

That second Emancipation Proclamation prompted about 100,000 slaves to try to leave their masters and join the Brits over the course of the entire war. And at the end of the war, the British relocated about 3,000 former slaves to Nova Scotia. This wasn’t much, compared to the total slave population, but more American slaves were freed by the British than in any other way until the Civil War.

Britain also had an admirable conversion to the cause of abolition in the ensuing decades, again well before the days of Abraham Lincoln. The plight of the slaves became better known to people in the mother country as a result of the Revolutionary War, and public sentiment turned against it.

The conversion took a few years, and not before British Colonel Banastre Tarleton made himself a fortune in the slave trade after the war was over. Boomers who were fans of Leslie Neilsen, “The Swamp Fox” of Walt Disney’s shows about guerrilla fighter Francis Marion, will remember Colonel Tarleton as Marion’s primary military foe in the Carolinas.

Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807, and the Royal Navy began an anti-slavery patrol of West Africa in 1808. Between then and 1860, the West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1600 ships involved in the slave trade. They freed 150,000 Africans, almost all of whom had been destined for plantations in the American South.

So, taking the long view, the First Emancipation Proclamation by Lord Dunmore was a short-term failure. But it set in motion a chain of events that were ultimately beneficial, even though there was much suffering along the way.

The Emancipation Proclamations. More than one of them. And now you know the rest of the story.

There have been many articles and more than a few jokes about the end of the world that the ancient Mayans of Mexico supposedly predicted.

Don’t laugh. It’s not going to happen. But the Maya never predicted it anyway. What they prophesied, long ago, has just been misinterpreted.

Click on this YouTube link and check out the short (about 4 minutes) clip from NASA. It gives a concise and plausible explanation of the Mayan prophecy.

Essentially, this December 21 is a day on which the ancient Mayan calendar “re-sets” to the same reading as on the day of creation, many thousands of years ago. Reminds me of the Y2K non-event – remember that one?

The Maya believed that the world will be renewed, not destroyed. Sounds good to me. Let us embrace that renewal!

It is Veterans’ Day Weekend in America. This national holiday was known as Armistice Day from 1926 until 1954, when an Act of Congress changed the name to Veterans’ Day. It is now known as Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth of Nations. In France and Belgium, however, the name of Armistice Day has remained.

I agree with the thought behind that change, which came in the aftermath of World War II. We should remember and honor those who served in all conflicts that imperiled our nation and the free world. Thank you once again to all American veterans, and to your comrades in arms from Britain and Canada, for going into harm’s way for the sake of my freedom.

However, perhaps because I am old enough to remember Armistice Day, I think that it is unfortunate that the name of that day, and what it meant, is fading into the background of history. Armistice Day commemorated the cessation of hostilities on the Western front in World War One. It took effect at “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” The document was signed in the private railway car of French army general Ferdinand Foch in the forest at Compiegne, France.

Armistice Day, to me, is a sobering and necessary reminder that World War I, the “War to End All Wars,” was anything but that.

War is hell, as the Union’s William Tecumseh Sherman said. The Civil War saw more than its share of carnage – Antietam, Gettysburg and other battles – but World War I was especially brutal and gruesome. The best way to honor our all of our veterans is to learn, and to belatedly apply, the lessons of Armistice Day.

Perhaps we should adopt, or return to, a practice first suggested by Australian writer Edward George Honey. That is, we observe two consecutive minutes of silence at 11:00 a.m. local time on November 11. The first of those minutes is dedicated to the approximately 20 million people who died in World War I. The second is dedicated to the living who remained behind – mainly the widows, children, and families.

That second minute is especially fitting. Why? Because it reminds us, the living, that we have a duty to fashion a better world, so that our children and those who come after us might be spared the horrors of war. We remember those who died but, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, we highly resolve that these honored dead shall not have died in vain.

And how shall we fashion that better world? How shall we ensure that our veterans’ sacrifices have not been in vain? Let us ponder the words of American General Omar Bradley, who learned well the lessons of war.

Bradley graduated West Point in 1915 but did not end up in Europe before the Armistice. He first saw duty on the Mexican border, then commanded a unit that guarded the copper mines in Butte, Montana. But in World War II, he was an especially able commander under Dwight Eisenhower. At one point, he commanded 900,000 soldiers, the largest force ever to serve under a single field general.

Like Sherman, Bradley knew war in all its fury. When he took up arms, he was good at it. He saw war for what it was, as only someone who has been there is able to do.

Here is a link to Bradley’s 1948 Armistice Day speech .

His words are still relevant today, especially the following:

“It is no longer possible to shield ourselves with arms alone against the ordeal of attack. For modern war visits destruction on the victor and the vanquished alike. Our only complete assurance of surviving World War III is to halt it before it starts….”

“For that reason we clearly have no choice but to face the challenge of these strained times. To ignore the danger of aggression is simply to invite it. It must never again be said of the American people: Once more we won a war; once more we lost a peace. If we do we shall doom our children to a struggle that may take their lives…”

“With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it. We have many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

I don’t think all that much has changed in the 64 years since Armistice Day, 1948. Perhaps Armistice Day, 2012, can be a new beginning. We can highly resolve to heed the words of General Bradley. And after that second minute of silence, we can strive for wisdom to guide that brilliance, for conscience to guide that power – and make sure that hereafter, those we elect to lead our nation are not ethical infants, and will do likewise.

As I write, The Republican National Convention winds down in Tampa, and the Democrat hoedown begins soon in Charlotte.  Believe it or not, the political “preseason” is just ending and the campaigning starts in earnest.

Did you know that in addition to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, there are 19 people are running for president as nominees of their respective parties, and five more are running as independents?  That’s what I got from a Web search. Some of the candidates will actually get votes. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson is on the ballot in 40 states thus far. The Green Party’s Jill Stein, a Massachusetts physician, has ballot access in 32 states.

There are many other parties that have nominated candidates – household names like the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Reform party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and of course the old reliable Prohibition Party.  I don’t know anything about their candidates, and I’m not going to seek them out.   Which might mean I’ll be missing out on some of the fun of politics, America’s favorite spectator sport.

Here are some of the “colorful” characters who have run for president in campaigns gone by:

GENE AMONDSON (Prohibition Party) – He ran against Obama in 2008 and received 643 votes. He liked to dress as the Grim Reaper. He was a landscape painter, woodcarver, Christian minister and prohibition activist who preached like the legendary Billy Sunday.  Some of his talking points from press conferences: “Prohibition was America’s greatest 13 years.” “Drinking responsibly is like teaching a pig to eat with a spoon. Can’t happen.”

Amondson died of a stroke shortly after the last election, but the Prohibition Party has contested every election since 1872. Its candidate this year is Jack Fellure of West Virginia.

HOMER TOMLINSON (Theocratic Party) Ran against Nixon in 1968, as well as in 1952, 1960, and 1964, when he got 24 votes. His platform included replacing taxes with tithes and

establishing a cabinet post of “Secretary of Righteousness.” His day job was “King of the World.” He crowned himself king in 100 countries and ruled the world from a hotel room in Jerusalem, wearing a gold-painted crown and sitting on a folding chair.

LAR “AMERICA FIRST” DALY (Tax Cut Party)  Ran against Kennedy in 1960, campaigning in an Uncle Sam costume.  He also ran for many other offices during his lifetime. He wanted to legalize gambling and shoot drug dealers on sight. He once told Harry Truman that he wanted to drop the first atomic bomb on Moscow.

Daly also was a big fan of Douglas MacArthur, and he filed MacArthur’s name for President in every election from 1936 onwards. In the 1950s he announced that he was “100 per cent behind” Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations into domestic Communist activities.

Daly’s day job was operating a chair and stool company out of his garage. But his incessant demands to be given equal time whenever a mainstream candidate appeared on air, citing Section 315 (the “equal time” provision) of the Communications Act, caused Congress to amend the law so that broadcasters didn’t always have to give equal time. Daly died in 1978.

JOHN MAXWELL (Vegetarian Party) – He was an 85-year old vegetarian restaurant owner who founded the party and ran with running mate Symon Gould against Truman in 1948.

He pledged to abolish medicine, and he wanted to pass a law prohibiting farmers from spending more than 20% of their time raising cattle or poultry. He also wanted government ownership of all natural resources and a $100 per month government pension for everyone over the age of 65. His favorite vegetable was any one, except okra.

GEORGE TRAIN (Independent) – Ran against Ulysses Grant in 1872.  After his unsuccessful presidential bid, he campaigned to be America’s first dictator. He charged admission fees to his campaign rallies, and drew record crowds. Instead of shaking hands with other people, he shook hands with himself. That was a type of greeting he had seen in China. He spent his final days on park benches in New York City’s Madison Square Park, handing out dimes and refusing to speak to anyone but children and animals.

But before his sad ending, the Boston-born Train had a most interesting life. He started in the mercantile business and at age 31, in 1860, he went to England to found horse tramway companies in Birkenhead and London.  His trams were popular with passengers, but his designs had rails that stood above the road surface and obstructed other traffic. In 1861 Train was arrested and tried for “breaking and injuring” a London street.

Train was involved in the formation of the Union Pacific Railroad during the Civil War, but left for England in 1864 after having helped set up the infamous Crédit Mobilier of America.  That company had been formed to sell construction supplies for the Union Pacific, and its attendant payoffs and scandals rocked the nation.

In 1870 Train made a trip around the globe which was covered by many newspapers. It likely inspired Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days.  Phileas Fogg is believed to be modeled on Train. In 1890, he made his third circumnavigation of the earth in 67 days.  A plaque in Tacoma, Washington commemorates the point at which the 1890 trip began and ended.

While in Europe after his 1870 trip, Train met with the Grand Duke Constantine and persuaded the Queen of Spain to back the construction of a railway in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. That was the funding for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. Back in America he promoted the Union Pacific Railroad. His company, Credit Foncier of America, earned Train a fortune from real estate.  He was in on the action when the transcontinental railway opened up settlement and development of huge swathes of western America, including large amounts of land in Omaha, Council Bluffs, Iowa and Columbus, Nebraska.

In 1872 he ran for President of the United States as an independent candidate. He supported the temperance movement and that year he was jailed on obscenity charges while defending Victoria Woodhull.  Her newspaper had published an issue reporting the alleged affair of Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, each married to other people.

Train was the primary financier of the newspaper The Revolution, which was dedicated to women’s rights, and published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.