“Long Island Naval History in Wartime” was the title of a presentation by Bill Bleyer last week. Bleyer is the author of Long Island and the Sea, from which much of his talk was drawn. It is among seven books written by Bleyer and published by The History Press.
Previously, for 33 years, Bleyer was an award-winning reporter at Newsday with a specialty in history and maritime issues. He has a deep personal involvement in the marine world, literally—as a diver. Indeed, in his talk last Sunday, he related diving to and exploring several boats sunk in waters off Long Island. Also, on the surface of area waters, he has long operated a sailboat.
Bleyer, of Bayville, is a former president of the Press Club of Long Island. His talk was given at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum.
It came as the museum features a number of events involving the 250th commemoration on July 4 of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence. Bleyer will be back at the museum on June 28 speaking on “Long Island in the American Revolution.” Other events include “Meigs Raid Weekend: Colonial Village History Festival,” “Meigs Reenactment Weekend,” and “Revolutionary Tea Party.”
In his introduction to Long Island and the Sea, Bleyer writes: “From its first Native American inhabitants to the tens of thousands of current-day commercial mariners and recreational boaters, those living and working near the shores of Long Island have always had a strong connection to the sea. And with its nearly 120-mile-long fish shape and 1,100 miles of shoreline, no one on the island is ever more than 10 miles from the water.”
Billy Joel wrote the foreword and speaks of how it is “important” for people “to understand the region’s maritime history. It lets people realize how precious the resources that they have are, that they might lose them.”
Bleyer started his talk by relating the “first naval battle in Long Island history,” which also was the “first amphibious landing of troops” in United States history. The British, he said, were using Gardiners Bay as a rendezvous point and taking provisions from lands around it. So, he said, George Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, ordered a landing of troops on Plum Island to remove livestock that otherwise would be taken by the British.
He detailed the subsequent Meigs Raid, also called the Battle of Sag Harbor, in which, in 1777, Continental soldiers in whaleboats, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Meigs, “a veteran of Battle of Bunker Hill,” after journeying from Connecticut, landed on Long Beach west of Sag Harbor and marched on to the village. They attacked a British outpost there, taking prisoners and destroying British ships. They didn’t suffer a single loss.
During the American Civil War, the Confederacy deployed “commerce raiders” to prey on Union shipping—including off Long Island. Bleyer spoke of the Confederate ship Jefferson Davis snaring the schooner S.J. Waring in 1861, southeast of Long Island. He said the Southerners put a five-man crew of their own on the schooner, removing most of those on board but leaving four, including a free African American, William Tillman, the steward. They told Tillman they would sell him as a slave for $1,000 or more when they reached Charleston.
Tillman subsequently, related Bleyer, led the recapture of the vessel, grabbing a hatchet on the boat and using it to kill the Confederate captain and two officers. The ship then went on to New York City and, said Bleyer, Tillman’s actions and the recapture were celebrated throughout the North at a time when the Union had few victories to celebrate.
In the War of 1812, British warships attacked Wading River, burning small American vessels before being driven off.
It was in Suffolk County, Bleyer said, in the late nineteenth century that submarines and torpedoes that could be fired from them were developed. He told of how submarine builder John P. Holland worked in New Suffolk, which became “America’s first submarine base.” Meanwhile, to the south, the E.W. Bliss Company was experimenting with torpedoes in Noyac Bay off Sag Harbor.
During World War I, the sinking of the only capital, or main, U.S. warship by the enemy happened off Long Island, he said. The vessel was the USS San Diego, a cruiser that sank in 1918 eight miles off Fire Island after running into a mine laid by a German U-boat.
Bleyer highlighted how in World War II there was an “unorthodox” U.S. wartime move: the formation of the Picket Patrol. With the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard short on warships and German U-boat activities yet more intense off Long Island, a fleet of civilian sailboats longer than 50 feet was used. Their lack of engines allowed them to patrol silently without detection by U-boats. They were painted battleship gray and crewed by Coast Guard Reserve members who were connected by radio to military forces. Meanwhile, Long Island became a major area for the building of landing craft, minesweepers and rescue boats. This included boat construction in Greenport, Huntington, Freeport, Port Washington and Oyster Bay.
The book Long Island and the Sea goes way beyond the island’s wartime history with chapters including: “Native Americans,” “The Whalers,” “The Fishermen,” “Shellfishing,” “Pirates,” “Lighthouses,” “Steamboats and Ferries,” “Shipwrecks in Peacetime,” “Slave Ships,” “The U.S. Life-Saving Service,” “Developing Technology,” “Theodore Roosevelt,” “Landing on Water,” “Rumrunning” and “Long Island Maritime History Preserved.”
“Bill Bleyer’s book is a riveting journey through centuries of Long Island’s maritime history,” wrote Marilyn Weigold in a review of the book in the Long Island History Journal upon its publication in 2019. “The end result is a comprehensive volume that integrates various strands of the island’s maritime history into a seamless account.”
It’s a great read—and full of photographs, like his excellent talk. Bleyer is on the lecture circuit—he told me he has 68 bookings ahead on the topics he has written about in his books. Catch a talk and his books.