FIFTEEN

TWO IF BY SEA

Walter and Aloha chose Cuba as their next destination. Since the late 1700s Cuba had been a sugar-producing concern with modest sidelines in tobacco, coffee, slaving, and piracy. Vast plantations circled the island, but almost all were owned by American creditors whose grip on the Cuban economy was backed by the US military. The average Cuban made little, owned little, and in the eyes of foreign investors, mattered little. As one Cuban historian observed, “The bank that underwrites the cutting of the cane is foreign, the cutting of the cane is foreign, the consumers’ market is foreign, the administrative staff set up in Cuba, the machinery that is installed, the capital that is invested, the very land of Cuba is held by foreign ownership.”¹

But the collapse of sugar prices in 1920, followed by the failure of many of the nation’s banks, underscored for Cubans the dangers of relying on a single crop and stoked their resentment of foreign owners.

From the Cuban perspective, it was obvious that the ways of the past could not carry them forward. If Cuba was to prosper, it needed an economy that could ride out the bumps. Two key industries became the focus: cigar making and tourism. Despite being overrun with mills and plantations, Cuba retained its pristine white beaches, its swaying palms, and its soft air scented with ginger lily, guava, and cigar smoke. There was also the unique Afro-Cuban culture, whose music and artistic style were ready to be celebrated by a decade in the mood for a party. Before long, Cuba was drawing tourists from across the United States: men and women who, back home, were respectable bank managers, civil servants, and school teachers, were, with increasing frequency, tumbling off packed steamships with expressions like children on Christmas morning. Only 224 miles from Miami, Florida, yet free of prohibition and social inhibitions, they thronged to Havana’s bars and clubs, ready to sample the strong rum, the colourful dances, and the delicious anonymity of a foreign paradise. By the mid-1920s, Cuba had earned the nickname “Pleasure Island.”2

Cuba’s tourist boom was not lost on Walter Wanderwell. With so many people interested in visiting the country, WAWEC, he thought, would be an easy sell; and given Cuba’s suffering at the hand of foreign powers, he believed that the idea of an international police would appeal to Cubans. Most importantly, though, Walter saw Cuba as testing ground for how he and Aloha might proceed with the next phase of their lives. The couple who began as slapdash travellers out to set records and raise eyebrows now found themselves married with a child to raise. Cuba was their chance to see how the Wanderwell travelling spectacle would sell without the allure of bets and races.

An ad was placed in the Miami Daily News:

 

Work-Way Trip to Cuba. Expenses Paid.

Apply Schooner Ainsley Morning Only.3

 

Two hundred people applied for a position with WAWEC, and seven were selected. Among the new crew was a man named H.A. Larralde, whom Aloha described as an “affable linguist with heired [sic] manners.”4 The names of the other new crew members were not recorded — indeed, the further Aloha progressed in her career, the less she recorded the names of her supporting crew, with some notable exceptions. In addition to the seven fresh faces, there were several returning members of expedition, including Eric Owen, who was appointed second in command. Following a week of preparations, they set sail for Havana aboard their chartered schooner.

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The Ainsley was a three-masted schooner built in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, in 1911. The ship registry listed the boat as Ainslie while the name splashed across its stern was Ainsley.5 Also, although owned by a consortium of Canadians, it had Cuban registry and was based out of Havana.

The crossing to Havana was stormy and the Ainsley was forced to wait within sight of the crenelated walls of Morro Castle, the city’s famous sixteenth-century fortress. When a tugboat finally chugged aport, the crew happily paid a fifty-dollar towing fee and supplied the tug operators with international police brochures. They were suitably impressed and docked the ship at Cuba’s official guest wharf. The surprise arrival of an “official” vessel sent the Havana newspaper presses whirling. “Mystery vessel in harbour may be ammunition runner for Mexico,” claimed one headline.6

Cuban customs officials were concerned. After a day of embargo, the crew was cleared to land. Aloha enjoyed the novelty of not needing to look for accommodations in town — the ship remained their headquarters — and immediately set about haranguing the masses with postcards and international police petition ledgers.

The Cuban people were welcoming and seemed to support the idea of an international police, but as Walter had predicted, it was Cuban business that was most enthusiastic about the expedition, making gifts and inquiring about sponsorship agreements. “Bacardi delivered two cases of rum with an invitation to their premises — likewise the Havana Cigar combine. The list was long. Many improbable gifts found their way quietly to the Salvation Army.”7 Cuba’s warm reception translated into financial success, though some people felt the expedition was earning money the wrong way.

They spent two months touring Cuba before returning to Florida on May 11 aboard the SS Cuba and landing at Tampa. The Ainsley was left in Cuba and records show that a Captain E. Wilkie took the wheel until the vessel was sold to new owners on the island.8

However, there was some suspicion that the Ainsley and perhaps the Wanderwells were using the Cuba venture as a cover for rum-running. Prohibition was in full swing in America. On June 8, 1926, Felix S.S. Johnson, the American consul in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, wrote to the US secretary of state describing his interview with one Reverend Burgess. According to the reverend, his stepson, Hugh Leonard Douse, had served on the schooner Ainsley while under charter by the Wanderwell International Police Expedition and had written letters describing his experiences. “From what the Reverend Burgess gathers from his step-son’s letters, cargoes of liquor are taken on board for the purpose of replenishing the vessels that are known as the rum row of New York City.” The consul wrote that he was “fully convinced that the schooner is being used for other than legitimate purposes,” and believed that, “If the Government would go carefully into this expedition they will find that it is a fake concern in order to hide what is really taking place.”9 The consul concluded by requesting that an investigation into the Wanderwell International Police Expedition be conducted.

US authorities had been monitoring the Ainsley for a long time, as early as May 1924, when Walter and Aloha were still in India. According to another letter addressed to the US Secretary of State from the American consul in Nassau, Bahamas, the Ainsley was known to have transferred some twelve thousand cases of liquor and large quantities of cocaine.10 Such a cargo would fetch in excess of a million dollars (in 1926 dollars!) — a sum more than sufficient to retire for life.¹¹ Despite the ship’s reputation, however, there was little that American authorities could do; the ship had foreign registry, and there were simply too many ships in operation and too much coastline to patrol.

One other curiosity surrounds the consul’s report on Wanderwell and the Ainsley: his informant was a Reverend named Burgess. The registered captain of the ship was also named Burgess and the ship’s majority shareholder was a Nova Scotian named Roland H. Burgess. Coincidence or deflection?

*

By the end of May, Aloha was in Jacksonville, Florida, preparing for a visit to Canada. The trip was an easy way to add another country to the Wanderwell list and, of course, to add some weight to the coffers. Walter was still wedded to his international police ideal and wanted to introduce the idea to another country. Among the cars was Unit N^o XI (“the Tank”), which had become the mobile headquarters of WAWEC, its side emblazoned with calls to “Outlaw War” and “Sign the Petition for International Police.” Photographs show hundreds of people crowding the vehicle or standing in a line fifty people deep to scrawl their names on petition forms. In Florida, police officials seemed uniformly unenthused when a parade of battered cars bearing WAWEC licence plates rolled into their town in the company of an armoured vehicle and, usually, numerous young women in military uniform.

To sidestep those challenges, Walter booked passage for his crew and cars aboard a ramshackle, lumber-hauling Paraguayan steamer called the Itororo. Knowing they would be gone awhile, Walter and Aloha had spent a week in late May visiting little Valri in Miami. Now six months old, she was beginning to pull herself to standing and had the florid cheeks and wet chin of a teething child. Aloha was eager to resume her life on the road and to make a triumphant return to Canada but also hated to leave her daughter behind again.

The Wanderwell Expedition left Jacksonville on June 1, 1926, and chugged north aboard the Itororo. On June 17 they reached Quebec City, where the Itororo was boarded by Canadian officials who demanded the ship’s captain explain the presence of what looked like a tank and an anti-aircraft gun. Walter intervened, explaining that he was responsible for the cars and gun. According to Aloha, intense questioning followed, during which Walter reassured officials that they posed no threat to Canada.

 

“Why do you carry guns? Your mission is peace propaganda?”

Cap, “People are attracted by guns and think of war. We want to distinguish our peace effort from pussyfoot pacifists. We represent youth demanding laws not war; advocating a new active force to complete the power of the League of Nations of which your Senator Dandurand is President of the Council. We advocate the actual establishment of a mobile International Police Force as differentiated from articles ten to sixteen of League Covenant. We’re here to canvass Canadian opinion.”12

 

Ultimately, officials shrugged their shoulders. This was an expedition of lunatics to be sure, but harmless lunatics. They could see no reason to prevent their landing in Canada but they ordered the expedition to register with police in every town they stayed.¹³

*

An official PR letter from Montreal’s chief of police extending good wishes and the co-operation of the city’s police force to the expedition during its stay, Montreal, July 1926.

In Ottawa, Aloha stayed behind while Walter paid a visit to Parliament Hill to inquire about arranging an interview with Senator Raoul Dandurand. The senator’s secretary, who seemed confused by the Wanderwell uniform, suggested that Walter leave some literature behind. He handed her several international police pamphlets and explained that they would be in town for a few days collecting signatures regarding the need for arms control. The secretary scanned the pamphlets and asked Walter to wait a moment. Five minutes later he was ushered into the senator’s office.

 

He recalled the details vividly: Large mahogany desk, (and a) small Frenchman with white beard, furiously scribbling. Dandurand rose and came forward with the literature. They clasped hands. The Senator apologized for his hurry but explained that the House was currently in session and he was about to make a speech concerning his recent visit with the Crown Prince of Sweden. Before Walter could launch into an explanation of his International Police idea, the Senator declared that arms control was a matter “close to his heart” but that politicians had already taken the issue as far as they could. The next step, he said, was for the people to raise their voices. He encouraged Walter and Aloha to redouble their efforts, to make people see that there were better tools than guns to secure international peace. But this was not something a politician could single-handedly impose. “Yes, it is up to youth . . . youth must fire the engine.”14

 

Walter left Dandurand’s office, as he had Henry Ford’s, empty-handed but not discouraged. One day his idea for an international police force would become a reality — how, exactly, was not clear but he was certain that publicity was his greatest weapon.

*

The expedition crossed back into the United States just a month after they had arrived, but Canada had made a lasting impression on Walter. He rewrote the expedition’s pamphlets to include an account of his visit to Senator Dandurand, quoting the “Genial Old Fighter” as saying, “If you want to do any good Wanderwell, go to England, go to the United States, those are the principal countries opposed to it. [It’s] up to the people, up to the people.”15 The same pamphlet urged people to join WAWEC and proposed a platform of articles for the establishment of an international police, including bold type emphasizing that WAWEC was not advocating a Superstate “but an Intergovernmental Fire Department in the Service of Mankind.”16

An article that ran in the Christian Science Monitor in August carried much the same message and was a snapshot of Walter’s ideals. It also demonstrates his grasp of how new technologies could be used to influence opinion around the world. “The motion picture is the ideal means of solving the difficulties encountered through language barriers. I cannot speak Chinese but my pictures are my contact. I can find a theatre and a screen in the smallest town in China. I can get an interpreter at the corner and go ahead, certain that my audience will not only be interested but will be able to discern, through the pictures, what our motive is.” The article’s close describes how a new caravan will be organized in New York to “traverse the Southern Hemisphere.”17

The southern hemisphere was an amorphous idea: perhaps the South Pacific, or South America, or Africa. To Walter, it made little difference, so long as they were adding new countries to the record, filming new vistas, and recruiting new members to the WAWEC and the international police (IP) causes. For Aloha, however, exhausted and missing her little girl, the idea of vanishing for another year or two or three was more than she could stand. In response, she resorted to one of her oldest tricks.

An article in the Hartford Courant on September 3, 1926, announced “Husband Reports Woman World Tourist Missing.” According to the article, Aloha had vanished the previous evening in Springfield while en route to the town of Adams, Massachusetts. She and Walter were parking their cars when they became separated. He later informed police that he “feared she had met with foul play because she had with her at the time $600.”18

Aloha would later claim there had been a quick note to the captain: “Dear: Gone to Florida to see Valri. Love.”19 According to her reminiscences, she boarded a train south to Newark from where she hitchhiked the remaining 1,367 miles to Miami. There may have been another reason for her sudden need to vanish. She was pregnant again.

By mid-September, Aloha was back with little Valri at the Wanderwells’ Miami property at 214 N.W. North River Drive, Spring Gardens. Nestled beside the Miami River, the isolated property was heavily treed with oaks and palms. It was a home that Aloha was happy to come back to: peaceful and beautiful and, she could still hardly believe, hers.

When the WAWEC units reached New York, Walter left Eric Owen in charge and sped to Florida where he and Aloha took time to try and sort out their differences, recharge their batteries, and see their wary daughter. “She had eyed us a little coolly after the first ‘Hello, stranger’ smile . . . [but soon] decided Cap’s knee might be a jolly place for a ride . . . . Enrapt hours sped.”20

On September 15, Aloha noted that the weather had become “suffocatingly muggy.” Reynolds and Valri took refuge at the nearby Seybold mansion. The owners were away “but their staff, housekeeper, skipper, enjoyed company and gladly shared their fan-cooled quarters.”21 By evening the heat had lessened and Reynolds and Valri returned to the houseboat for the night.

The following morning one of the Seybold staff suggested the Wanderwells double up on their moorings. There had been no official warning, but the old-timers down at the pier said that something was on its way. The temperature drop, sudden winds, and an ominous increase in ocean chop suggested it could be a heavy storm. Walter had a deep respect for the opinions of old sailors, so he and Aloha set about tightening and reinforcing the lines anchoring their houseboat to some pilings and “a pair of ancient oaks of immense dimension rooted beyond the banks . . . . We cleared the decks, battened windows, filled thermoses in case the power went off.”22 They also tightened the lines on the five canvas tents they had installed on the property as rental holiday homes. The income they generated was more than enough to support Reynolds and Valri while Walter and Aloha were away.23

By late Thursday rainsqualls were pummelling the area. The canvas tents billowed and snapped loudly, but held. The houseboat bobbed in drunken circles but also held fast. By morning the winds had eased although heavy rains continued, swelling the river until it began flooding the property, pooling among the oak roots and threatening the raised floors of the canvas tents. Friday brought more rain, creating new streams along the property and further glutting the river. Its normally placid and shimmering surface was frothed and carried a whirling parade of debris from upstream. “Dinghies, life belts and hatches from boathouses spun by,” but Walter and Aloha were not unnerved. They were inland and the many trees along the canal acted as a windbreak. “The houseboat was sturdily constructed, a strong cypress pontoon, it rode well. If necessary we’d ride it right up onto the property.” Shortly past lunchtime a small sailboat swept past them, “its foremast crushing against the Fifth Street Bridge (while) the hull clung to the south abutment.”

Walter fetched his oilskin jacket and wrapped his daughter in it. It was possible that the brunt of the storm had not yet arrived and there was no sense leaving Valri in harm’s way. The Seybold mansion was on higher ground and was made of brick and concrete — a much safer place to wait until the rain and flooding subsided. Aloha and Walter trudged through the soggy ground, carrying Valri back to the mansion where Reynolds and the Seybold staff had gathered in the kitchen to fill oil lamps and stockpile matches and candles. The icebox was out of ice but they had bread and crackers and a block of cheese in reserve. A metal tub had been set outside to collect rainwater. When Walter set off for the houseboat again, Aloha experienced a perplexing flicker of fear. “I was torn between being with the baby and (going) to help Cap.”24

In the late afternoon the rain tapered to a drizzle, though the river continued to rise. Walter had managed to winch the houseboat up onto the property, away from the stream of wreckage now rushing on the river’s surge. Towards evening, Aloha came wading through the property. If a storm did come, Aloha wanted to help Walter protect their little patch of paradise.

With blankets and oil lamps at the ready they settled in for a long night. Through the waving canopy of treetops, Aloha could see the sunset and was unsettled by its gangrenous green hue. Then, almost as soon as the sun had gone, the rain and wind returned. Walter shook his head, “‘Babe, we have to go’ is all he said . . . . When we stepped off the pontoon we were up to our armpits in humid water.” The river had burst its banks completely. Safely back at the mansion, they rocked Valri and sipped the last of their hot chocolate as they waited for the heavy rain to pour itself out. It had been bucketing for two days, so perhaps this was the storm’s final hurrah.

It was not.

At 3:00 a.m. the wind exploded in an apocalyptic hurricane. Air roared through the trees and snaked through the seam of every door and window, creating a choir of ear-splitting howls, punctuated by the explosive bangs of snapping trees and the sound of debris slamming against the house. The noise was so intense it sent tears of pain streaming down their faces. “At the height of the destruction I wondered about [our] chance of survival. Could this be the end of the universe? . . . If we were going to go, it was better to go together.”²⁵

By 6:30 a.m. the storm had eased. The house was still standing and the sky was lightening. Aloha wanted to go outside and check on the houseboat, but Walter warned her to stay put. There was every chance that they were now in the eye of the hurricane and that the rear wall would soon be upon them. Unfortunately, several hundred of Miami’s citizens did not share Walter’s experience with tropical storms. Most of the hurricane’s deaths occurred when people left their sheltering spots, believing the tempest past, only to be mowed down when it returned thirty-five minutes later.26 Walter and Aloha ventured to the upper floor to see if there was much damage. What they saw left them speechless. Everywhere they looked were scenes of destruction: “Roofs on Fifth Street taken off like kites, empty autos rammed into walls, at moments debris of all dimensions filled the air. Cinderblock buildings [had] disintegrated like mounds of kicked sugar cubes.”²⁷

When the storm returned barely a half-hour later, the winds were even more powerful, recorded at over 150 miles per hour. The storm’s tidal surge swelled inland waterways by twelve feet, swamping vast areas. According to Red Cross figures, more than 350 people were killed in the Miami area, while as many as 60,000 were left homeless. Adjusted for wealth normal-ization, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 is considered the costliest hurricane in US history, estimated to have caused $165 billion in damage.28 Large portions of Miami were wiped out, the damage ruined an already tottering Florida economy, and sent the state into depression three years before the stock market crash. By noon of September 19, the skies had finally cleared. Walter and Aloha donned their rain boots and put on all the clothes they could find — not to keep warm or dry, but to guard against the snakes that floated through the waters. They wanted to know what had become of their home. Perhaps by some miracle the plucky houseboat had made it through the cyclone. The trip was slow and they were cautious to stay clear of strong currents or deep water. The heat brought out the smell of decay and created a low-lying fog that made breathing difficult. “Pushing flotsam aside, we advanced among total desolation. The oaks lay in deathblow, exposed branches cluttered with planks . . . rags and canvas. (Then we saw) our home, lifted and turned upside down, the weight of the huge cypress pontoon had come down on the houseboat, crushing it like a matchbox.”29

Aloha stood in shock amidst the derelict wreckage of their little paradise: shattered furniture, torn strands of clothing, the torso of a doll. Nothing remained of the canvas tents. They spent the morning hunting for items that might be retrieved but found almost nothing. Aloha’s childhood journals, photographs of Herbert and Margaret and Miki, and most of her mementoes from their trip around the world had been lost. “Irredeemably submerged, my small exquisite objects . . . Priceless because they were artistic, or rare in handiwork, tint, native: clay madonna, Brussels lace, the jade Kwan Yin, Rubaiyat, a Haiku . . .” Gone too were Valri’s baby things, her “handmade Lafayette, christening robe, treasures from Mum.”30

Sixty years later, when Aloha was asked about her experience of the Miami Hurricane, she lost her usual reserve and began sobbing. “We almost lost Valri,” was all she could say.