Portsmouth Naval Prison is a former U.S. Navy and Marine Corps prison on the grounds of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNS) in Kittery, Maine. The building has the appearance of a castle. The reinforced concrete naval prison was occupied from 1908 until 1974.
The island site was first used in 1775 during the Revolution when the New Hampshire militia, commanded by General John Sullivan, constructed an earthwork defense called Fort Sullivan atop the bluff. In conjunction with Fort Washington across the Piscataqua River on Peirce Island, it guarded the channel to Portsmouth. Eliphalet Daniels served as a commander in 1776. [1] The militia withdrew about three years later.
The fort was reactivated for the War of 1812 in 1814. In 1861, it was rebuilt with eleven 8-inch Rodman guns to protect Portsmouth against attacks by the Confederate navy. [2] After 1866, Fort Sullivan was dismantled. Camp Long, named for Secretary of the Navy John Long, was erected nearby during the Spanish–American War. From 11 July to mid-September in 1898, the stockade housed 1,612 Spanish prisoners, including Admiral Pascual Cervera, until returned to Spain. [3]
When Camp Long was dismantled in 1901, the site became available for a naval prison. Constructed between 1905 and 1908, the brig was modeled after the Fort Alcatraz military prison on Alcatraz Island with tidal currents to deter escape. Colonel Allan C. Kelton of the Marine Corps was in command when the first Navy prisoners arrived in 1908. It would eventually house Marine inmates as well. The central crenellated tower, roofed in copper, was erected in 1912. Lieutenant Commander Thomas Mott Osborne assumed command in 1917. Called "the Father of Naval Corrections," Osborne and two others went undercover in the prison to see what changes needed to be made, including living conditions. During World War I, the prison housed wartime convicts—among them Victor Folke Nelson [4] —reaching a maximum of 2,295 in 1918. By 1921 President Warren G. Harding had appointed a new Secretary of the Navy, who promptly ended Osborne's Mutual Welfare League program for prisoners at Portsmouth. [4]
Two wings were eventually added to the prison—in 1942 the northeast wing, and in 1943 the unornamented southwest wing, dubbed "the Fortress," which rises sheer beside the rocky shore. Maximum occupancy reached 3,088 in 1945. [3] In the decade before the United States' entry into World War II, around 40% of all new prisoners arriving at Portsmouth were there on charges related to sodomy or other similar crimes of a sexual nature not relating to women. The overabundance of prisoners convicted of homosexual activity at Portsmouth contributed to changes in policy towards homosexual sailors during World War II. [5]
After the German surrender ended World War II fighting in Europe on 5 May 1945, U-boats surrendering to United States naval forces were escorted to Portsmouth so engineers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard might study their design features. U-805, U-873, U-1228 and U-234 were towed to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard between 15 and 19 May. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had interrogators available to question the submarine crewmen at the prison. The interrogations were classified at the time because of potential military value of information collected about German submarine, jet aircraft, ballistic missile, guided bomb, and nuclear weapons technology. U-234 had been bound for Japan carrying 1,232 lb (559 kg) of uranium oxide, a disassembled Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, tons of prototypes and technical documents relating to new weapons, and several senior weapons technicians. [6] The commanding officer of U-873 had conducted submarine-launched ballistic missile experiments with his brother Ernst Steinhoff, who was Director for Flight Mechanics, Ballistics, Guidance Control, and Instrumentation at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. Kapitänleutnant Friedrich Steinhoff was slapped by a large, husky Marine guard until his face was swollen and bleeding, and died in a Charles Street Jail cell after two days of interrogation. [7] Despite subsequent declassification of documents, it is unclear if ONI realized Steinhoff's ballistic missile connections. Similar uncertainty remains about disposal of the uranium oxide aboard U-234. [8]
There was inadequate preparation to deal with the arriving U-boats. United States Navy prize crews scattered possessions of the U-boat crewmen as they searched for potential sabotage and intelligence information while the U-boats were en route to Portsmouth. Scattered documents and clothing were perceived as fire and access hazards while the U-boats awaited inspection by shipyard engineers. Material scattered aboard the U-boats was stockpiled in the prison entrance lobby where it was looted by prison guards. Decorations and personal possessions taken from U-boat crewmen were retained as souvenirs rather than returned to prisoners of war as required by the Geneva Conventions. [9]
The brig was used throughout the Korean War and almost to the end of the Vietnam War. During warmer months, it was not uncommon for boats navigating the river to hear shouts and whistles coming from within barred windows of "the Fortress." In 1974 the Department of Defense developed a three-tiered, regional correctional facility plan. Inmates would be placed depending on the service, sentence length, geographical location, and treatment programs. First-tier offenders are those with sentences less than a year, second-tier up to seven years. Male convicts from all the services sentenced to punitive discharge and incarceration longer than seven years are confined at the third tier—the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Portsmouth Naval Prison, built to be a modern correctional facility for a navy which had once disciplined by flogging and capital punishment, was rendered obsolete. After containing about 86,000 military inmates over its 66-year operation, the brig closed in 1974, its maintenance thereafter contributing to shipyard overhead. The Navy briefly used the prison in the early 1980s to train military corrections officers. Volunteer Inmates from the Rockingham County Jail were sometimes used.
In the 1973 movie The Last Detail , seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) is escorted by petty officers Billy "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Mule Mulhall (Otis Young) to the Portsmouth Naval Prison. Meadows has been sentenced to eight years' confinement for trying to steal $40 from a charity box. But because of his harsh sentence, the guards feel sorry for Meadows. They decide to show the naive sailor the time of his life before arriving on Seavey's Island (where another location substitutes for the actual brig).
In W. E. B. Griffin's novel Semper Fi , Corporal Kenneth "Killer" McCoy is assigned to transport prisoners from San Diego to the Portsmouth Naval Prison.
In an episode of the WWII flying drama TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep entitled The 200 Pound Gorilla, the character of Master Gunnery Sergeant Andrew "Andy" Micklin played by Red West is promoted to Warrant Officer. In order to show his opposition to the promotion, he fights with all of the officers and is thrown in the brig, a Marine Corps jail. He thinks he will just be demoted. But, in fact, they start talking about the fact that he will be "sent to Portsmouth."
The prison is referred to in Stephen King's 1982 novella The Body , later filmed as Stand by Me .
The prison and shipyard locations were used to depict a Russian shipyard in the 1978 television film The Defection of Simas Kudirka starring Alan Arkin. [10]
Protagonist character Joker refers to the shipyard in the 1979 novel The Short-Timers , which was later adapted as the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket , but without the reference.
The building was previously one of 14 structures the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had considered for outleasing and renovation. Local developer Joseph Sawtelle estimated the cost to renovate the immense edifice into civilian office space, including removing lead paint and asbestos, would cost more than $10 million. But plans to adapt the prison were halted a month after Sawtelle's death in 2000, and abandoned altogether after military base security was tightened following the September 11 attacks. [11]
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The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, often called the Portsmouth Navy Yard, is a United States Navy shipyard on Seavey's Island in Kittery, Maine, bordering Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The naval yard lies along the southern boundary of Maine on the Piscataqua River.
Kittery is a town in York County, Maine, United States, and the oldest incorporated town in Maine. Home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on Seavey's Island, Kittery includes Badger's Island, the seaside district of Kittery Point, and part of the Isles of Shoals. The southernmost town in the state, it is a tourist destination known for its many outlet stores.
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USS Growler (SSG-577) was an early attempt by the U.S. Navy to field a cruise missile submarine that would provide a nuclear deterrent using its second series of cruise missiles. Built to deliver the Regulus I cruise missile, Growler was the second and final submarine of the Grayback class, fourth ship of the United States Navy to be named after the growler. Since Regulus I and Regulus II programs had problems, Growler and Grayback were the only two submarines built in this class as instead, the U.S. Navy veered its nuclear deterrence efforts into submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)—the Polaris missile program.
The United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), colloquially known as Leavenworth, is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas. It is one of two major prisons built on Fort Leavenworth property, the other is the military Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, which opened on 5 October 2010. It reports to the United States Army Corrections Command and its commandant usually holds the rank of colonel.
The Piscataqua River is a 12-mile-long (19 km) tidal river forming the boundary of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine from its origin at the confluence of the Salmon Falls River and Cochecho River to the Atlantic Ocean. The drainage basin of the river is approximately 1,495 square miles (3,870 km2), including the subwatersheds of the Great Works River and the five rivers flowing into Great Bay: the Bellamy, Oyster, Lamprey, Squamscott, and Winnicut.
USS Betelgeuse (AK-260) was the last of the cargo ships in service in the United States Navy. On 10 April 1944, it was renamed the SS Colombia Victory after being launched as a Victory ship to carry cargo during World War II. She was transferred to the US Navy in 1951.
USS John Adams (SSBN-620), a Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Founding Father John Adams (1735–1826), the second President of the United States (1797–1801), and his son John Quincy Adams (1767–1848), the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829). Both names were used with the captains of the Blue and Gold crews alternately using the names John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN-631), a James Madison-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), American Civil War general and the 18th President of the United States (1869-1877).
USS Miami (SSN-755) was a Los Angeles-class submarine of the United States Navy. She was the third vessel of the U.S. Navy to be named after Miami, Florida. Miami was the forty-fourth Los Angeles-class (688) submarine and the fifth Improved Los Angeles-class (688I) submarine to be built and commissioned. The contract to build her was awarded to the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics Corporation in Groton, Connecticut, on 28 November 1983, and her keel was laid down on 24 October 1986. She was launched on 12 November 1988 and commissioned on 30 June 1990 with Commander Thomas W. Mader in command.
USS S-48 (SS-159) was the first submarine in the fourth group of S-class submarines of the United States Navy.
A military prison is a prison operated by a military. Military prisons are used variously to house prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by the military or national authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime. There are two types: penal and confinement-oriented, where captured enemy combatants are confined for military reasons until hostilities cease. Most militaries have some sort of military police unit operating at the divisional level or below to perform many of the same functions as civilian police, from traffic-control to the arrest of violent offenders and the supervision of detainees and prisoners of war.
A prison ship, often more accurately described as a prison hulk, is a current or former seagoing vessel that has been modified to become a place of substantive detention for convicts, prisoners of war or civilian internees. While many nations have deployed prison ships over time, the practice was most widespread in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, as the government sought to address the issues of overcrowded civilian jails on land and an influx of enemy detainees from the War of Jenkins' Ear, the Seven Years' War and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar (NAVCONBRIG) is a military prison operated by the U.S. Navy at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in Miramar, San Diego, California, just under 10 miles (16 km) north of downtown San Diego. It is one of three Navy consolidated brigs and is the Pacific area regional confinement facility for the United States Department of Defense. It is also known as the Joint Regional Correctional Facility Southwest. The 208,000-square-foot (19,300 m2) facility has a capacity of up to 400 male and/or female prisoners and is staffed with 31 civilian and 173 military personnel. It is about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the MCAS Miramar East Gate Entrance.
Seavey's Island, site of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, is located in the Piscataqua River in Kittery, Maine, United States, opposite Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It encompasses 278 acres (1.13 km2).
SM U-86 was a Type U 81 submarine manufactured in the Germaniawerft, Kiel shipyard for the German Empire during World War I.
Operation Teardrop was a United States Navy operation during World War II, conducted between April and May 1945, to sink German U-boats approaching the Eastern Seaboard that were believed to be armed with V-1 flying bombs. Germany had threatened to attack New York with V-1 flying bombs and rocket U-boats. After the war, it was determined the submarines had not been carrying either.
German submarine U-873 was a German long-range Type IXD2 U-boat of World War II. Following the surrender of Germany, the United States Navy studied U-873 to improve United States submarine designs. U-873 is remembered for the controversial treatment of its crew as prisoners of war and the death of commanding officer Kapitänleutnant Friedrich Steinhoff in a Boston jail cell. Six months after Steinhoff's death, his brother was one of the Operation Paperclip rocket scientists from Peenemünde arriving in the United States to work at White Sands Missile Range.
The Harbor Defenses of Portsmouth was a United States Army Coast Artillery Corps harbor defense command. It coordinated the coast defenses of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the nearby Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine from 1900 to 1950, both on the Piscataqua River, beginning with the Endicott program. These included both coast artillery forts and underwater minefields. The command originated circa 1900 as the Portsmouth Artillery District, was renamed Coast Defenses of Portsmouth in 1913, and again renamed Harbor Defenses of Portsmouth in 1925.
