Time Machine Terms
September 3, 1943
Now Hospital Ship: Naushon Has Picture in A.E.F. Paper
The whereabouts and occupation of the favorite Island steamer Naushon, long queen of the Island line, has been officially revealed in a story in the Stars and Stripes, newspaper of the American forces overseas. A clipping of the story, with a picture of the Naushon in her new role, has come to Mrs. Joseph De Witt of Edgartown from her brother, Pvt. Morris Shapiro, who is serving somewhere in England.
August 3, 1943
Navy Takes Part of Squibnocket Pond for Duration
The Navy has taken a leasehold right for the duration of the war from the commonwealth of Massachusetts and others on that portion of Squibnocket Pond which lies west of a line drawn north and south through the westerly shore of Beachgrass Island, so called. This line is marked by a series of buoys. The area around the pond has been conspicuously posted, warning people off the waters of the pond.
July 20, 1943
Quietly and Without Any Fanfare, the Old Schooner, Alice S. Wentworth, Sails Away for Last Time
Quietly and without any fanfare or other demonstration, the old schooner Alice S. Wentworth slipped out of Vineyard Haven last weekend, bound on the first leg of her long trip to Sandy Point, Me. Capt. Parker Hall, who purchased the vessel early last spring, had been waiting for a couple of young Quincy yachtsmen who had volunteered some time ago to “ship for the run,” and assist in taking the vessel to her new hailing port.
July 13, 1943
Pearl Harbor Horror as the Wives and Children of the Army Saw it Related by Visitor
As the planes swooped and roared past the windows of his home, the young Army officer, seeing the big red suns which marked them - for the great power which sent them on their errand still thought then that the sun was rising on the land it ruled - cried out: “It’s Japan! It’s war!”
July 2, 1943
4 Men of E.A.C. Lose Lives Off Skiff's
Four men of the Engineer Amphibian Command lost their lives in the boiling and racing currents in back of Skiff's Island, off the South Shore of the Vineyard, before daylight on Wednesday morning. The bodies of three have not been recovered. The tragic accident occurred when a staff boat of the familiar cabin cruiser type, accompanying a number of so-called invasion craft which had been dispatched from the Cape on a maneuver problem, struck a shoal in the heavy seas near Skiff's Island. The accident took place at approximately 2 a.m.
June 18, 1943
Edgartown Is Taken, Not a Shot Is Fired
Edgartown was invaded at about supper time last Friday by a force whose numbers are not accurately known, but which many believe to have been large as the year-round population of the town. No casualties were suffered and the inhabitants, not a Quisling among them though, seemed to enjoy their conquest.
April 16, 1943
Airport Is Carved Out of Wilderness
The airfield on the central plain of Martha’s Vineyard is beginning to shape up as something more than raw earth, mud, and the destination of building materials trucked over the roads from the steamboat landing. The time has arrived, also, when the United States Navy feels that the public may know something of this project which has brought life and a strange new pattern to a domain where only the hawks, rabbits and wildflowers have dwelt for many generations.
August 4, 1942
Government Takes the New Bedford
The steamer New Bedford of the New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamboat Line, is being requisitioned by the government as of noon today. This is the second boat to be taken from the line under the war power of the government, and her departure follows by little more than three weeks the requisitioning of the line’s flagships, the Naushon.
Every assurance has been given, it is learned, that no more steamers will be taken from the Island line.
July 24, 1942
Unexploded Depth Charge Lies in the Edgartown Harbor
One of three PT boat of the United States Navy, leaving Edgartown harbor yesterday afternoon, dropped a live depth charge loaded with TNT in the outer harbor and the charge failed to explode. A radio report to the office of the Coast Guard at Vineyard Haven was made immediately, and two boats turned back, one of them tieing up for a second time at the Edgartown Yacht Club wharf to make a report of the incident.
The charge was still unexploded this morning.
July 10, 1942
Government Takes Steamer Naushon
The Naushon, pride of the Island Fleet of steamers, yesterday took her last look at the Island which she has served since she was built in 1929. For the last time she breasted the Island waters which on countless trips have offered their caress or attacked her with savage force. She has been taken over by the federal government and will play her part in the war effort, in some capacity not divulged.
