“CAPTAIN”

By James Harvey Sanborn

In “Captain”, the author has written of his personal life voyage which he addresses directly to his six grandchildren. He begins the story with a brief synopsis of his ancestry followed with stories from his growing up, his family, education and ventures at sea. All followed with commentary on his shoreside career as an executive in Americas’ tug and barge industry in very different times, culminating with his retirement at age 76.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369419687

James Harvey Sanborn

Jim Sanborn is a native son of Massachusetts, growing up in Worcester. Following service as an officer in the US Navy and later as a deck officer in the Merchant Marine he embarked on a career as an executive in the maritime business with firms in New York, Tampa, and Philadelphia. He is retired, living with his wife Nancy in Philadelphia’s Main Line. The couple have three grown daughters. “Captain” is his first book.

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Copyright © 2024 by James Harvey Sanborn.

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Rev. date: 05/15/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Arrival

Parents And Forebears

Growing Up

Leaving Home

United States Merchant Marine Academy

Plebe Year

Sea Year

Second Class Year

Back At The Academy

First Class Year

Navy

Merchant Marine

A Career In The Maritime Business

Pittston Marine Company

Saint Philip Towing & Transportation Company

Interstate Oil Transport Company

Polaris Associates And Sanborn Yearwood Associates

Sanborn Yearwood & Associates

Appendices

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Captain, USNR (Ret.)

James Harvey Sanborn

Written for and

dedicated to:

Jack (John James)

Anna Elizabeth

(David) Slade

Mary Elizabeth

Margaret Ann

&

Kate (Katherine) Grace

2024

PREFACE

There is a good reason that I write this for and to you, my beloved grandchildren. Your parents know much of this stuff, having heard bits and pieces over the years, but I wanted you six to get this from the horse’s mouth; all of it and in one place. I have had a pretty interesting life voyage from humble beginnings and want to share it with you. I have broken the contents into several periods starting with my earliest ancestors and predecessors, my origins, my family, growing up and all aspects of my life up to my retirement at age 76.

INTRODUCTION

Shortly after I turned 50, I decided that I should learn more about my natural father than just his full name and the town he came from in Newfoundland. The practical reason being that I was coming into an age where family health issues of my predecessors were important to know about, especially those that might be hereditary. Based on why and how my father left my mother as recited by her, I had little interest in looking him up otherwise. My mother had been hospitalized with what was most likely Alzheimer’s Disease for about 12 years in Greenfield, Massachusetts and later in Milford, MA where she died at the age of 90, just a month or so after my stepfather died in the same facility. I assume I was like most young boys who had little interest in family history growing up, and little time to spare for the effort in college, armed forces service and helping raise a family. I envy those with more curiosity. So, this effort you are about to read (or put under a pillow and get by osmosis) began with a Roots trip in 1991. It morphed into a full-blown genealogical expedition, which to this day is a favorite avocation. It is not only about me, but about those near and dear as well, as those known only by name, friends, colleagues, relatives, and ancestors. The old saw, The apple does not fall from the tree you will find as I have remains true.

ARRIVAL

James Harvey Bennett was born at Cooley-Dickenson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts on 14 March 1937, a Pi, and a day shy of the Ides. In April of that year, I was baptized in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in the center of town, across the street from the entrance to Smith College. My God Parents were Edward J. Harvey and Alice Ahearn, both younger first cousins of my mother. Several decades later my mother told me that I was born during a snowstorm. I have no proof of that, but it makes for a nice touch, and winter snow storms in western Massachusetts were common. At the time my mother was living with her dad, Charles James Harvey at 10 Revel Avenue. My mother was a single mom and worked in the Hotel Northampton as an accountant.

PARENTS AND FOREBEARS

This is where things get interesting. My mother was also born in Northampton on 28 July 1906, and she was baptized at St. Mary’s shortly thereafter. Her name was Mary Madeline Harvey. There is more about her middle name later; stay tuned. Her parents were Charles James Harvey and Mary Theresa Murphy. My mother had an older brother, Charles James Herbert Harvey born 3 years earlier. The Harvey’s are traced back to the Norman Invasion of Britain by William the Conqueror where the family name was the French, Hervre. The name was anglicized to Hervey, and later to Harvey. Genealogical research traces the Harvey’s back to 1215, with the birth of Henry De Hervey. The Harvey Book by Oscar Jewell Harvey, (1899) starts with Nicholas at 1425 in Somersetshire, England. The tome is what I have used in much of my family research. The most interesting character in our line was clearly Turner Long Bow Harvey of 1485. Turner was a favorite warrior in King Henry VIII service, to whom Henry awarded a shield (Like a coat of arms, but not quite) in recognition of his particular bravery in a skirmish. Turner was a remarkable brave soldier and reputed to be England’s greatest archer. The first of our Harvey’s to land in America were brothers William and Thomas, both of Ashil, Somersetshire. The little village is just south of Taunton which is in southwestern England. William was 21, and brother Thomas was 18 when they arrived in Dorchester of Plymouth Colony in 1636. We are descended from Thomas, who died young at 34. They both settled in Taunton, MA. A couple of generations later, Samuel, born in 1674 moved from Taunton to Hatfield in 1709, where he married and was shortly later one of the first settlers of Sunderland and later Montague, MA. Samuel’s son Moses, born in 1723 became a leader in Montague’s administration and member of the Massachusetts General Court as the representative of Montague and a member of the militia. He was quite a character and had notable service in the American Revolution, including service in Boston and at Saratoga. Moses while a member of the Massachusetts General Court representing Montague toward the end of the war, gave a blistering speech condemning the General Court for ignoring the fate of the States’ rural communities. He supported Captain Danial Shays in his rebellion. He was subsequently tossed out of the state legislature, cashiered from his captaincy, and tried at court in Northampton. Because of his service in the revolution his punishment was reduced to standing on the gallows for an hour and fined $50.00. His descendants settled in Hampshire County, and that part which became Franklin County. Later, his descendent, Stephen R. Harvey served in the Union Army in the Civil War, as did others in our ancestry. He and those before him were farmers. His father, Elihu, was a manufacturer of wooden farming implements in Whately. The stone remnants of the building still exist; I have seen them. Elihu was known as Lawyer Harvey because of his representing townspeople in the town. The original Harvey homestead in West Whately was taken among others to build the Northampton Reservoir. Stephen’s son Albert, my great grandfather worked in the brass mill in Williamsburg, until it was carried away in a flood. His wife was Margaret Fitzpatrick, who was born in Ireland, we think in county Clare. My grandfather, Charles James Harvey was born in Williamsburg on 3 June 1872. His wife, Mary Theresa Murphy was born in Hatfield 4 May 1880. Jeremiah and Johanna Murphy, the first of our Murphy’s to come to America were from Castletown, Beara, County Cork which is on Bantry Bay in southwestern Ireland. Mary Theresa’s family were farmers. My grandfather, Charles was something of a renaissance man. He painted autos, did striping on fire engines, served as a butcher and as an auto mechanic. My grandmother, Mary, known as Tet, was one of the first graduates of Bay Path Academy in Springfield, after which she became an accountant. Unfortunately, she died of diabetes in Springfield, MA, in 1921 at the young age of 40, before Insulin had been invented. My uncle Charles James Herbert Harvey, born in Northampton, attended Villanova for two years and became a Railway Mail Clerk. He married Margaret O’Neal, settled in Northampton and had a daughter, Margaret (Peg) who never married. My mother, known forever as Sis was a bit of a free spirit, which was enabled by her brother to some extent. She was 15 when her mother died, so I believe some of her rebellion resulted from that loss. She quit Northampton High School. She subsequently attended art school for a while, attended nursing school on Welfare Island in New York (In the middle of the East River), but quit after a year, when her roommate died unexpectedly. At some point she married a man named Quimby. I was never able to learn his first name. According to her, Quimby’s mother was an ardent Baptist and forced her son to divorce. I’m unsure of the veracity of the story, but the divorce was true. My mom was very close to her brother, and a bit of a daredevil, as was her brother. He had an old model A Ford that had no body, just a frame, with a wood box for a seat and engine. On this contraption she learned to drive on the rural dirt roads of the foothills of the Berkshires. During prohibition Sis and her brother made bathtub gin. In the same time frame, Charles (Known to me as Uncle Chauch) was a rum runner, bringing whiskey from Canada. He got caught and had to hock his watch to get out of jail. Now, as to her middle name. My mother, beginning at a young age used the middle name of Frances all her life, even after her mother, on her dying bed told Sis that her real middle name was Madeline.

My father was John Franklin (Frank) Lake Bennett, born on 22 August 1908 in Fortune, on the Burin Peninsular in Newfoundland, United Kingdom’s oldest Crown Colony. He was not present at my birth. Frank and my mother were not married. His parents were Thomas Fox Bennett and Elizabeth Jane Noseworthy. Frank had 7 siblings and 5 half-siblings. Grandfather Bennett and his father, William were Newfoundland schooner masters and owners, living in Fortune on the Burin Peninsular. Their trade was bringing salt fish from Newfoundland to the Caribbean, where it was bartered for sugar, where it was bartered for home goods in Boston, which were sold in Newfoundland out-ports. My great grandfather, William Bennett and grandfather were successful as merchant traders. However, William’s career was cut short when he was driven by a storm into Canore Bay on the fjord-like south coast of Newfoundland, and subsequently set upon and murdered along with his son and a deckhand by rogue inhabitants of that remote bay. There is an account of this story written by my cousin Eleanor Guy Vardy when she was in her 20’s. It is titled Saga of the South Coast. Grandfather Bennett had 5 children by his first wife, Harriet Squires, who died young, and 7 children by his second wife Elizabeth Noseworthy. Frank was the 2nd from the youngest. He finished high school and then set off in the 1920’s to work in the wheat farms of Saskatchewan. From there he travelled to the US, where he got his first hotel job in Maine. He became a US Citizen in 1942. Frank worked for Ford in Detroit as a seaman in the engine room gang of one of Ford’s Great Lakes ships, but only for one trip. This despite having made many trips with his father on his schooner, coasting the Newfoundland waters. Frank tried to enlist in the US Navy along with his brother Bill at the outbreak of WW II but was not taken due to something wrong with his knees. He spent WW II as a shipyard worker in Mare Island Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay repairing damaged US submarines. After the war he returned to Ford, where he worked in the heating and air-conditioning unit. He married Greta, who died a nasty death of cancer. Much later he married a secretary at Ford, and after retirement from Ford they eventually moved to Pinellas Park, Florida. They cruised and organized groups to cruise. His wife developed Alzheimer’s (like my mother). She died in a nursing home in Pinellas Park in 1994. Frank died in 2011 at Pinellas Park, where he and his wife are interred in a columbarium. My mother and Frank met in Miami Beach while both were working in a hotel that Mr. Wiggins owned. In the winter Wiggins would send Hotel Northampton staff to his Miami Beach property via ships of Clyde Mallory Steamship Lines. My mother was invited to the captain’s table on the trip, but she managed to decline. She and Frank later worked in New York at a hotel in Manhattan. I believe it was called American .....something or other. They lived in an apartment in Astoria, Queens where I was conceived. There are two versions of their separation five months before I was born. My mother’s version is that Frank borrowed her last $20.00 to get cigarettes and did not come back. Frank’s version according to his niece, Jean Guy is that he gave my mother $20.00 to get an abortion and left. In any event, he subsequently went to Detroit with his older brother Bill. I did not meet my natural father until 1994. In December of 1936 my mother’s brother Charles called on her when he was in NY. Finding her alone, pregnant, and distraught, he brought her home to Northampton. Three months later I was born at Cooley-Dickinson Hospital.

On 20 May 1940 my mother married Harold Everett Sanborn, who was born 26 February 1912 in West Upton, MA. They had met while both were working at Lewis Wiggins’ Hotel Northampton. They were wed by a Justice of the Peace in Middletown CT following her divorce from Mr. Quimby. Harold’s parents were Davis Sanborn, born in Sabattus, Maine and Sadie Caroline Morse. Harold had five younger sisters: Dorothy, Beatrice, Isabel, Charlotte, and Gladys. During this writing Gladys the last remaining of her siblings died in Worcester on 27 April 2024. Harold, known variously to friends as Sandy or Chase was known to me to this day as Dad.

GROWING UP

In Northampton:

My mother and I lived with my widower grandfather until May 1940. Since my mother was working as an accountant at Hotel Northampton, my widowered Grandfather Harvey took care of me. He pushed me in my carriage all over the streets of Northampton. My 1st cousin once removed Betty Murphy told me of seeing us on parade often. I had a lot of Harvey and Murphy family around town. My first recollections were of Revel Avenue. One was seeing the moon in my grandfather’s cup of tea, which was really just a reflection of the porch overhead light. The other was driving a neighbor kid’s peddle car on the sidewalk. I also know that we often visited the Smith College campus and Look Park. Uncle, Charles James Herbert Harvey, Chauch or Chacha, aunt Mary (we called her Monnie) and (my only) cousin Peg lived nearby, walking distance to Smith College. Chauch was over the moon when I was born. A boy at last. He had visions of teaching me to hunt and fish, which he ultimately did. He gave me a cocker spaniel dog whom we named Foo Foo. There is a portrait photo of me with the dog. Foo Foo did not make it to Worcester

In Worcester:

My dad moved us to Worcester when I was about four. We lived for a short time on the top (3rd) floor of what we called a Triple-Decker wood frame apartment on King Terrace. With the arrival of my sister Carol Lee in the summer of 1941 we moved to another triple-decker at 530 Park Avenue, where a trolley ran in front of our house. Both homes were in South Worcester. We lived there until the end of my junior year of High