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Maritime

Coast Guard Machine-Guns Monolola and Other Rumrunners in Narragansett Bay
7 years ago

Coast Guard Machine-Guns Monolola and Other Rumrunners in Narragansett Bay

[Note from the editor:  An updated version of this article is in a chapter of my book Machine Guns in Narragansett Bay: The Coast Guard’s War on Rumrunners (History Press, 2023).  The …
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Caleb Eddy and an African Slave Voyage Gone Awry
7 years ago

Caleb Eddy and an African Slave Voyage Gone Awry

After the French Revolution, while tensions between Great Britain and the new French revolutionary government were growing, the disruption with trade to the West Indies was acute, especially for Rhode …
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The Life Savers: Rhode Island’s Forgotten Service, 1872-1914
8 years ago

The Life Savers: Rhode Island’s Forgotten Service, 1872-1914

[Editor’s note: This article is a synopsis of the book by Varoujan Karentz, The Life Savers, Rhode Island’s Forgotten Service (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012), ISBN-13-978-1463791025, and also contains excerpts from …
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Twenty-Six Pirates Hanged at Newport in 1723
8 years ago

Twenty-Six Pirates Hanged at Newport in 1723

[From the Editor:  In the late 17th and early 18h centuries, Rhode Island was a haven for pirates.  That changed in 1723 when Charles Harris and twenty-five other pirates …
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Captain Daniel Fones, Colonial Naval Hero
9 years ago

Captain Daniel Fones, Colonial Naval Hero

The name of North Kingstown’s own Captain Daniel Fones might be spoken in the same breath with as Thomas Tew, William Kidd, and Blackbeard. Fones’s skills as a sailor, his …
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Dirty Work, Clean Money: The Life of Whaling Ship Captain John Deblois and his Wife Henrietta
9 years ago

Dirty Work, Clean Money: The Life of Whaling Ship Captain John Deblois and his Wife Henrietta

Whaling “is a wretched life [of] privations and hardship deprived of friends and society,” John Scott Deblois (1816-1885) wrote in an 1844 letter to his family in Newport. [1] Voyages …
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