MAJOR Francis L. Dade accepted an urgent salute, and was handed his orders. The six weeks they had needed to travel from St. Augustine to Key West, and Dade’s own month-long leave of absence, meant the orders were no longer new. Poor communications between the mainland and the Keys plagued the military as much as … More Most painful intelligence
AMID a hoisting of the American ensign, a salute of thirteen guns and a greater number of champagne toasts, Lieutenant Matthew C. Perry in March 1822 extended the dominion of the United States to a desolate coral cay that he named Thompson’s Island, better known before and ever since as the island of Key West.1 … More Light duties
CITY fathers in 1876 planned a Fourth of July more memorable than any Key West had yet seen. They would not only mark the centennial of American independence, but use the occasion to dedicate a new city hall. Walter C. Maloney was commissioned to deliver an address on Key West’s history, but with scant forethought … More Together apart
JOHN James Audubon, always lavish in his prose, bestowed on the fabled sunsets of the Florida Keys a description as rapturous as any ever written.1 After he’d beheld such a spectacle from the deck of the revenue cutter Marion, now resting at anchor in “the beautiful harbour of Key West,” the tireless naturalist briefly savored … More The collectors (part 1)
SEA DRIFT, Blakely, Majestic, Pizarro, lost. Gil Blas, Mary Ann, Miami, also lost. Hero, Noble, La Fayette, all lost. The fishing vessels Felix and Eden, not heard from. The roll call was numbing. The Pizarro’s crew were at work on the wreck of the Sea Drift, when the storm surge swept both onto land. The … More No enemy but winter and rough weather
AS the Evan T. Ellicott, beating the final agonizing mile of its course against a sharp northerly wind, headed for the harbor of Key West, William A. Whitehead would have been forgiven for thinking the reception more than a little discourteous. But the auspices on this voyage had never been good. The Ellicott set out … More Fishermen’s friend
NEARLY ten times its breadth from stem to stern, powered by a compound engine that rendered the ride both swift and smooth, the John Potter offered as elegant and efficient a link as could be had between Manhattan and the railhead of the Camden and Amboy. Its passengers continued their trip from wharves on the … More Fathers of invention
LIEUTENANT Matthew C. Perry guided the Shark, battered by a spell of “boisterous weather,” into Havana harbor for repairs. The damage to the schooner, though slight, signified that its next assignment, to police the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, was to be no easy affair. Of late the Shark and its steely skipper had helped deter … More Rough seas
GULLS danced a ballet around the spars of the Mary Lord with a semblance of exultation at her journey’s end. Laborers and clerks, meanwhile, joined in their own peculiar revels, hefting wooden crates from the hold, inspecting and recording the cargo dockside, wheeling it away to a waiting storehouse. Chests of exotic shape and design … More The entrepôt
THERE are two ways to sail from Newark to Perth Amboy. A boat leaving Newark Bay may head east through the Kill Van Kull, south through The Narrows and then southwest, skirting the seaward coast of Staten Island. A shorter but more sinuous course threads its way southward along the meandering Arthur Kill. The Whitehead family took one of these routes, both … More Birth of a bank
An attractive presence 