The Maritime Society's 21st Century Link with the School
A feature about the school appeared in the Hartford Times on February 21, 1940, after it had been in operation for only a few months. Published nearly two years before the U.S. entered World War II in December, 1941, the school was carrying out its mission as a continuing education center where experienced mariners could learn about ongoing developments in navigation or engineering, one of the objectives of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936.
The story is of particular interest to the Maritime Society and its museum because it pictures faculty member William Lloyd LaRoue (1895-1974), father of the Society's recently retired (2021) head docent, William "Bill" Harvey LaRoue. A retired professor of mathematics, Bill has been a member of the Society from its earliest years, worked closely with founding director Lucille Showalter, and has long been a daily presence at the Custom House Maritime Museum. He has led countless tours, providing visitors with lively accounts of events and personalities in local maritime history.
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The New London Maritime Society is honored to be able to highlight this personal link between our esteemed colleague and the school where his father helped train the thousands of officers commanding merchant ships that served as the lifeline to Allied victory in 1945.
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The caption of the photo below (reproduced from a photocopy) reads: "Experienced engineers learn new wrinkles in machine shop practice from Chief Machinist William L. LaRoue."
Above: This 1939 photo shows the barracks on the grounds of the Fort where students slept and dined.
Right: A candid shot of William LaRoue suggests that the building also provided faculty offices, and perhaps classrooms as well.
Both photos courtesy of Bill LaRoue
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William Lloyd LaRoue was born in 1895 at Grand Marais on the Lake Superior shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The name means "harbor of refuge" and dates back to the era of French exploration. Grand Marais was one of five U.S. Life-Saving Service stations along that shore, and today the Grand Marais Maritime Museum occupies part of the former station.
LaRoue probably began his maritime career in the U.S. Life-Saving Service, which became part of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915 when he was twenty years of age.
Demonstrating a special talent for marine engineering, as a low-ranking seaman he was asked to instruct his peers in certain subjects, an awkward situation that resolved itself once everyone recognized and accepted his abilities.
He became skilled in navigation as well, once carrying out a daring crew rescue at the mouth of the Columbia River when a ship went aground in a storm.
LaRoue's expertise led to assignments testing machinery and propulsion during the trial runs of new cutters. Eventually he was assigned to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, serving as an instructor there and at the Maritime Officers Training School.
William LaRoue served in both world wars. In 1944 he saw duty in the Pacific as second in command of a ship landing troops on the beaches of Kwajalein and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands, and Saipan, Guam and Tinian in the Marianas. He also oversaw landings at Aitape, in New Guinea, and Peleliu in the Palau Islands.
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Below: Fort Trumbull's pre-war faculty posed for this group portrait with the 1849 stonework of the Fort visible behind them. William LaRoue is standing in the back row, second from the right.
The size of the faculty would increase exponentially after December, 1941, when the nation went to war. The purpose of the school was quickly revised to be a training center turning experienced seamen into the thousands of deck and engine officers needed for the fleet of merchant ships under construction or requisitioned from shipping companies.
When the school was closed in 1946 William LaRoue was among those who oversaw transfer of the school's assets to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. He retired from the Coast Guard as a Lieutenant Commander, and at his death in 1974 was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
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Son and Father: In Memoriam William Lloyd LaRoue
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