By JON H. HOUGH
Fog lingered into the morning hours of April 6, 1923, cloaking Vineyard Sound in the threadbare garb of a pauper, full of holes-veiled spaces. Captain Roland Snow, a veteran Coast Guardsman of the Cuttyhunk station, had spent some time stationed on the island, his family having set down roots in the tiny community. Today he stood in the watch tower, binoculars in hand. Peering over the gray morning water into the intermittent clearings, a solitary pogy steamer materialized. Halfway up its mast flew what looked to be a woolen blanket or oilskin, a distress signal fashioned in haste. The ship’s lifeboat davits swung outward, the boats gone and not a soul to be seen onboard.
Capitan Snow handed off the binoculars to the station’s second in command and turned for the stairs to ready the boats. He barely made it to the first step when the station’s No. 2 two shouted after him, “Captain, she’s sinking.”
The Coast Guardsmen rushed for the motor launch positioned on the opposite side of the island, settled languorously by the stern, issuing steam from her starboard side. The swift current flowing between Cuttyhunk and Nashawena, a channel known as the Canapitsit, forced the crew of the small lifeboat to motor up Buzzards Bay to Robinsons Hole, adding about 10 miles to their trek.
Across the sound at Aquinnah, the captain of the Gay Head Coast Guard Station could see nothing of the drama playing just offshore. A long blast of a ship’s whistle broke the preternatural silence imbued by fog ringing across the sea before slowly dying, the sound emanating from the direction of Cuttyhunk. Not the four short blasts of distress, but enough out of the ordinary to man the boats.
The Coast Guardsmen didn’t get far before the engine on their motor launch gave out, forcing them to row into Vineyard Sound.
Neither the Gay Head crew pulling slowly toward the mystery noise nor the men from Cuttyhunk steaming around Nashawena Island moved with anything resembling haste. The Vineyard Coast Guardsmen arrived at the site of the sinking ship first. Barrels bobbing in the stilled water marked where the steamer had been. No other evidence of the ship’s presence lingered.
When a ship goes down, it leaves a mess of flotsam behind. Sinking with so little wreckage floating about is unusual. Even with the fog abating over the islands allowing for a mile’s visibility, the Coast Guardsmen could find little else save a suitcase, ice chest and a life preserver stenciled with “John Dwight, New York.”
The Coast Guardsmen, with the help of local fisherman, eventually pulled 11 barrels from Vineyard sound, each stuffed with half-pint bottles of Montreal brewed Frontenac Ale packed in straw. The nature of the ship’s business was immediately evident.
Three years into the national prohibition declared under the 18th Amendment and enforced by the Volstead Act, the East Coast had become a hotbed for maritime smuggling. Ships laden with illicit spirits, hailing from foreign ports, often Canada, dropped anchor just outside American territorial waters, which in 1923 extended three miles offshore. A year later it was extended to 12 miles. Smaller craft rendezvoused with liquor-laden vessels, unburdened them of their cargo, and sailed off toward innumerable deserted coves and bays. From there men on the beach whisked the bottles off to speakeasies and private liquor cabinets.
Around 7:30 the following morning fishermen plucked the first of seven bodies out of the sound. Each wore a life preserver and bore signs of what Dukes County Sheriff Walter H. Renear would later describe as “evidence of a wicked, free-for-all fight. There was lacerations and bruises about their faces that came from contact with some solid blunt instrument.”
In Robinsons Hole, the narrow channel between Pasque and Naushon Island that the Cuttyhunk Coast Guardsmen were forced to traverse the previous day, there bobbed a small boat containing an eighth body, face down with the back of the skull caved in. Lying alongside on the crimson-stained deck was a cheese knife.
Ashore on Naushon, Forbes estate caretaker John Olson discovered a 16-foot steel boat containing the quarter boards, large plaques painted black with white lettering that spelled out John Dwight. Neither of the two bore any signs of damage, indicating that they were deliberately removed and placed into the boat.
A report from the steamer Dorchester deepened the mystery. Three men were seen in a small boat not far from the John Dwight shortly before the old pogy steamer began to settle. Who they were and why three men were in the midst of a morning fog pulling at oars on Vineyard Sound may forever be relegated to conjecture.
The case came under the auspices of Massachusetts Attorney General Jay R. Benton and the head of the Public Safety Commission Alfred F. Foote, who with minimal digging unearthed the John Dwight’s past.
She had slid down the rails at Tomkins Cove, New York, in 1896. She sailed in near anonymity, working the Atlantic Menhaden fishery before being acquired by the Navy for service in World War I as the USS Pawnee. By 1923 she had returned to her original name, the John Dwight, but her age and rough handling were evident when a pair of men using false identities purchased and overhauled her in Newport, Rhode Island.
Investigators found that days prior to the sinking, the John Dwight left Newport to anchor in Buzzards Bay where passing fisherman reported seeing only one or two men on deck, but no other activity.
Stories surfaced that the crew received $125,000 in cash at the dock and that a day later a New Jersey man came out to the anchored vessel with an additional $100,000.
What was known to the Coast Guard at the time, though imprecisely, was her complement of 15 men included two captains. Captain Malcolm J. Carmichael took overall command, while the diminutive John F. King played the role of working skipper. King’s son Harry was later identified as the man lying in the boat, the only body to identified. Neither King nor Carmichael were seen again.
A light southwest wind rippled the sound on May 8, 1923, when diver David J. Carney, a square-jawed Vineyard Haven resident, descended from his tender to the John Dwight’s wreck. Lying at a depth of 85 feet, the ship’s hull showed no signs of impact or other ship-ending trauma. The engine room, however, was a mass of wreckage and held the only clue, a cutlass resting of the floor. No bodies lay entombed, no money was hidden within and the barrels of ale and spirits, though still in their containers, had spoiled from salt water intrusion.
The early May air curling around the men on the tender hovered around 60 degrees, but the water temperature retained the late winter chill. As Carney descended to the bottom, the chill became even more pronounced, limiting him to just 20 minutes of investigation, by which time he was so benumbed he could hardly pull the signal line to get pulled to the surface.
In June Navy divers aboard the minesweeper USS Falcon visited the wreck. They found the seacocks, valves that allow sea water in to cool the engine, open, which was evidence of scuttling. Following their investigation, the Navy ended the matter with four depth charges, explosives designed to detonate a preassigned depth.
A dive in 1935 found the charges had missed their mark, leaving the John Dwight remarkably intact.
The sea didn’t subsume all of the illicit cargo. Locals handed the floating barrels stuffed with ale over to the Coast Guard, which stored it in a warehouse on Martha’s Vineyard. It didn’t take more than 48 hours before barrels started to go missing, thought to have found their way into local liquor cabinets.
No arrests came out of the incident, and the island found itself left with only rumor. Piracy seemed to many the logical conclusion. The John Dwight no doubt carried a large sum of cash on board. Local fisherman told tales of speedboats running off shortly before the sinking or that the ship herself was the pirate, plundering two schooners before vengeance found her at the opening to Vineyard sound. Others postulated that Captains Carmichael and King sold their cargo twice, the first time for $125,000 at Newport and again for $100,000 while at anchor in Buzzards Bay.
Whatever the truth, the facts remain that eight men died, large quantities of liquor remained entombed and the John Dwight would forever rest at the bottom.