Boat Builders

MISSING

BOAT BUILDERS By: Melissa B. Carrasco

Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis, P.C.

Odds are good that, by now, you know more about 1918 than you ever cared to know. You now know that it was the year of the most recent, and possibly the most severe, world-wide pandemic since the Black Plague. You know that the H1N1 virus infected over one third of the world’s population and killed nearly 700,000 in the U.S. alone. You know that, in 1918, people were wearing face masks and quarantining and avoiding social gatherings, and you are probably exhausted with people trying to make comparisons between 1918 and the past two years.1

But, something else was going on in 1918. On a brisk day in November, a group of people started to assemble on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville. Despite the virus that was wreaking havoc and that had driven everyone into isolation, this gathering started to grow. Quickly dozens turned into hundreds and then thousands, standing in front of Hope Brothers Jewelers located at 428 South Gay Street.2 They were all staring at the tall, iron clock on the sidewalk in front of the building.3

In case you are wondering, the building that housed Hope Brother Jewelers is still there, once occupied by the Sapphire restaurant, and soon to be the boutique Hotel Cleo once the renovations are complete.4 Unfortunately, the iron clock was removed in 1933, and then replaced in 2008 by a group of downtown boosters.5 But, I digress.

Everyone stared at the clock as the minute hand slowly approached noon: 11:57, 11:58, 11:59, 12:00 . . . and the crowd began to cheer. It was Armistice Day, and on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at 11 a.m. local time, Germany officially surrendered to the Allies in a train car in the Forest of Compiegne France. World War I was over.6

Barely a month earlier, on October 8, 1918, Sgt. Alvin Cullium York of Fentress County, Tennessee led the assault which earned him a Medal of Honor--taking charge of his platoon’s seven surviving members and leading an assault upon the deadly nest of machine guns that had decimated his platoon. Sgt. York and his brave soldiers captured over 130 enemy officers and soldiers and saved the lives of countless other Allied troops7

That same day, Knoxville native Sergeant James Ernest “Buck” Karnes and his Morristown counterpart, Calvin Ward, also found their platoon pinned down by machine gun fire. They had “had all they could take,” and so they fixed their bayonets, charged the machine gun nest, and killed or captured 10 enemy soldiers. They then led the 117th Infantry in a charge that broke through the Hindenburg line and led to the last major offensive of World War I.8

By November 11, 1918, the tide had turned, and the crowds on Gay Street had much to celebrate—pandemic or no pandemic—as they looked forward to seeing their loved ones again. The troops were coming home.

But, across the Atlantic, things were not so positive. An estimated 9.7 million soldiers had died of injuries or illness in just four years.9 Historians estimate that another 10 million civilians were killed during the war, leaving countless parents, spouses, children, and families to pick up the pieces.10 And while the surviving U.S., Canadian, and Australian troops were able to return to homes and families who were protected by oceans, the European landscape was ravaged by war.11 Soldiers from Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Serbia, Romania, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and many other European nations returned to cities that had been reduced to rubble and a countryside scarred by the tracks of tanks and troops, forever embedded with the memories of the dead.

In Germany alone, there were 525,000 widows and 2,040,000 military men killed or missing.12 Countless children had lost at least one parent. But, for the citizens of Germany and the other Central Powers, the situation was even more dire. For years, a maritime blockade overseen by the Inter-Allied Blockade Council had prevented food, medicine, farming supplies, and other supplies from reaching Germany, AustriaHungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.13

Although most historians view the blockade as instrumental in bringing WWI to an end, its toll on civilians was harsh. In December 2018, Germany’s Board of Public Health estimated that 763,000 civilians died from starvation and disease due to the blockade. A later study put the death toll at around 424,000. Either way, a lot of people were sick, starving, and dying.14

Therefore, it was no surprise that, when Germany signed the Armistice documents, they asked the Allies to lift the blockade.15 The Allies were noncommittal. By December 1918, the blockade was still in place. After all, there were plenty of other people who were suffering in Europe—suffering that had been caused by Germany’s aggression.16

Eglantyne Jebb, a wealthy young British woman was appalled. She began lobbying Parliament to lift the blockade, passing out pamphlets with pictures of starving children.17 She was arrested, and then released.18 On December 15, U.S. President Woodrow sent a letter to the Allied leaders asking them to begin winding down the blockade so that countries could resume trade with Germany.19

In the meantime, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was working on a plan for the U.S. to ship pork and other food supplies to Scandinavia and then ship it to Germany without navigating the blockage.20 On Christmas Eve, the blockade counsel approved Wilson’s request, and it looked like help was on its way.21 However, one week later, before any of the pork or other supplies could get through, the counsel reversed itself, and the food and supplies were halted.22 Historians estimated another 100,000 people died of starvation and sickness before the blockade was lifted in July 1919.23

This year we have looked at some of the boat builders of the world— ordinary people who saved lives, won wars, preserved perspective, freed enslaved people, and restyled the legal profession simply by doing their jobs. But, this story illustrates what happens when the boat builders give up too quickly. So, don’t go missing. Keep on building those boats. You don’t know who needs one to stay afloat.

1 If, by some strange happenstance, you are blissfully unaware of the 1918 influenza pandemic OR you really do enjoy timelines and semi-morbid photographs, the CDC has compiled a fascinating history of the 1918 influenza pandemic complete with detailed timelines, lots of photographs, and an even more disturbing chart of “Influenza Milestones” charting the history of the influenza virus as it first landed in the U.S. in 1917 and then morphed over the years to become such a normal part of life that we now think of the flu as a “season” that we all experience in the fall and winter . . . like football season or basketball season. See Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Influenza, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemicresources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm (last visited Nov. 10, 2021). 2 Knoxville History Project, Veterans Day in Knoxville (Nov. 9, 2015) https:// knoxvillehistoryproject.org/2015/11/09/veterans-day-in-knoxville/ (last visited Nov. 10, 2021). 3 Id. 4 See Knox Heritage, Hope Brothers Building, https://knoxheritage.org/our-work/ neighborhood-tours/historic-downtown-knoxville-walking-tour/hope-brothersbuilding/ (last visited Nov. 10, 2021); see also Sapphire Knoxville, www. sapphireknoxville.com (last visited Nov. 10, 2021); Ryan Wilusz, Sip and Stay on Gay Street: Hotel Cleo set to Transform Historic Downtown Building, Knox News Sentinel (Oct. 15, 2021), available at https://www.knoxnews.com/story/ news/2021/10/15/hotel-cleo-knoxville-tennessee-bar-sapphire-owners-hopebrothers-building/8469895002/. 5 Knox Heritage, supra n.4.