World War I had been going on for only three months when this startling headline appeared in the Bangor Daily News: “GERMAN WIRELESS IN MAINE WOODS? Berlin May Be Getting News Via Meddybemps or Seeboomook.”
The lead on the wire story that followed made it clear this was something more than the latest crazy rumor circulating in the Queen City of the East.
“The British foreign office, through its secret agents, is attempting to locate a wireless station which the German government is supposed to have established somewhere in the wilds of Maine for use by the German embassy in communicating with the government in Berlin,” the story said on Nov. 3, 1914. British and American agents, as well as “operatives of an American detective agency” were hot on the trail.
The United States was neutral territory. The country would not declare war for another three years. Maine, however, could be a handy place for sending messages secretly to German ships or other outposts. Confusing and jumbled newspaper stories based on distorted news leaks over the next few weeks tried to explain what was happening.
A story in the Lewiston Journal, which was reprinted in the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 6, stirred the pot further. The German ambassador in Washington had been getting information from Berlin “in some strange way,” it said.
A reporter based in Bar Harbor working for a large New York newspaper was sending stories about the German army before anyone else had the information. Then he began sending them from Eastport, Ellsworth, Bangor and Lewiston in what could be interpreted as an attempt to elude official notice. He always returned to Bar Harbor. Hence the headline: “GERMAN WIRELESS AT MOUNT DESERT?”
The next day a new set of suspects were uncovered in a Bangor Daily News story reprinted from the Portland Press Herald. A “wealthy man who has a summer home in Somerset county and whom is said to be a German sympathizer” had taken ”a powerful wireless apparatus into the woods with him this summer, together with an expert operator.” Messages, it was “hinted,” were being transported in the man’s automobile to neighboring towns for transmission “in cipher.”
The same story also identified rumors of wireless stations on Bald Mountain and at a sporting camp at Moosehead Lake, as well as Eagle Lake at Bar Harbor. The word was, however, that all these devices belonged to “wealthy gentlemen” seeking information from the outside world for their own ends that had nothing to do with spying.
On Nov. 9, the Bangor Daily News reported that a Canadian “secret service agent” was at Jackman about to go into the woods to investigate a report that a secret German wireless station was operating on “a large private estate” at Parlin Pond.
That same day another story reported that the Navy was joining the state department in the search, which now included reports of both German and Japanese concealed wireless stations in the woods along the Maine coast, in Florida and at locations in the Northwest. Information was being sent to “belligerent cruisers at sea.” Merchant ships were picking up these coded messages.
“Naval experts say it would be a comparatively simple matter to rig up antennae for a sending wireless outfit between a couple of tall forest trees…while the necessary power might be derived from some innocent looking sawmill,” the story reported.
On Nov. 17, the Bangor newspaper reported — based on information from other newspapers — that “secret service men” were investigating what appeared to be a wireless station discovered by hunters in the woods 20 miles north of Biddeford.
Meanwhile, the “German wireless station” at Parlin Pond, reported earlier, was “only a plaything” on property owned by German immigrant Michael Piel, a founder of the famous New York beer company — remember Bert and Harry? It had been set up by his son and was no longer in use, authorities were told.
Then, on Nov. 23, the New York Times broke a major story implicating Bar Harbor summer residents Alessandro and Ernesto Fabbri. The story is a masterpiece of innuendo and distortions, but the Fabbri brothers were easy targets in the newspaper hysteria that now surrounded the search for German spies in the Maine woods.
The Fabbris were “prominent in New York society.” Their father had been a partner of J.P. Morgan. Ernesto’s wife was a granddaughter of William H. Vanderbilt. Both Morgan and Vanderbilt had Bar Harbor ties.
More importantly, the brothers were friends with Capt. Charles Polack of the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, the German “treasure ship” that had steamed into Bar Harbor in August allegedly because of fears it was being pursued by British warships. The brothers entertained the captain and his crew generously during their stay.
The Bangor Daily Commercial reprinted the New York Times article, which said the Fabbri brothers were under investigation by U.S. Secret Service agents to see if they had supplied German agents information, such as the movements of British warships, obtained by wireless at their Bar Harbor estate “where the most powerful and fully equipped wireless plant in New England is situated.”
The theory was, said the Times story, that the information was being gleaned from a wireless by an amateur, put into code and then transmitted by telegraph over land wires to German officials. Such activity would be in violation of the neutral status of the U.S. Government investigators had discovered there were 21 amateur wireless outfits licensed in Maine, including five at Bar Harbor.
The Fabbri’s connection to Capt. Polack placed them under immediate suspicion in some quarters.
It was said that for three days after the Cecilie’s arrival, the brothers had “locked themselves up in their wireless room” apparently transmitting messages, sleeping and working in relays.
The entertainments provided to the captain and his crew included lavish dinners, late-night motor boat rides to and from the passenger liner, boat races in Frenchman Bay and free movies at the Star Theater.
When contacted by the reporter at his townhouse in Manhattan, Ernesto treated the idea that he and his brother were aiding German spies “as a joke.” Alessandro had built the wireless “for his own amusement.”
He said he and his brother “took kindly to the German people as individuals, but was strongly against their system of militarism.”
“I guess we were too kind to the poor fellows,” he said of their hospitality to Capt. Polack and his crew.
Nearly a month later, the Commercial reprinted a letter to the New York Times from Ernesto attacking its story. In it were reprinted letters from several top British and U.S. officials denying that the Fabbris had been singled out for an investigation by a specific complaint. The New York Times expressed its regret that readers might have inferred this from its article.
Nearly three years later, Alessandro Fabbri’s patriotic efforts were recognized when the U.S. Naval Radio Station Otter Cliffs located in what is today Acadia National Park was commissioned on Aug. 28, 1917, under his command. A government press release said he “had personally cleared the land, built and equipped the station, and offered it to the government in exchange for a commission in the Naval Reserve and assignment as Officer-in-Charge.”
At the end of World War I, Fabbri was awarded the Navy Cross. His citation stated that under his direction the station became “the most important and the most efficient station in the world,” according to a memorial erected in the park in 1939 by his friends and fellow townsmen “in testimony to his patriotic service, high character and endearing qualities.”
Meanwhile, the German spies in the Maine woods, if indeed there ever were any, were still on the loose, although the issue dropped from newspaper columns for awhile.
Wayne E. Reilly’s column on Bangor a century ago appears in the newspaper every other Monday. His latest book, Hidden History of Bangor: From Lumbering Days to the Progressive Era, is available where books are sold. Comments can be sent to him at wreilly.bdn@gmail.com.