Each suspecting the other of being a rum running craft, one Coast Guard boat fired on another with its machine gun in Ipswich bay on the night of August 6, 1930, killing Boatswain’s Mate Louis A. Pratt.
Pratt, with Surfman Cleo Faulking, were in a motor surfboat from the Plum Island Coast Guard station, making a search for an abandoned power cruiser.
The other craft was an outboard motorboat on special rum patrol from Base 7, Gloucester, manned by Chief Machinist’s Mate Hugh Olmstead and Fireman Clifford Hudder.
Conflicting versions of the shooting were told, but Capt. William Munter, eastern division Coast Guard commaner here, fixed responsibility on the Gloucester boat, and announced that an immediate inquiry and inquest had been ordered by Washington, and that District Commander L. S. Sands of Portsmouth, NH, would open the inquiry.
At first it was thought that Pratt had been slain by rum runners. The encounter occurred a mile and a half off Essex. Pratt, second in command at the Plum Island station, and Surfman Faulkingham had been ordered to patrol duty in the surfboat. They landed at Ipswlch Neck, where Special Officer Charles McKenzie of the Winthrop police force asked them to make a search for his motorboat, which had caught fire and was abandoned off that shore yesterday.
They set out in the hunt and about 10 o clock sighted what Faulkingham described as “a white boat” lying to without lights off the Essex shore.
Both men thought the craft was the one they were seeking. Faulkingham said they approached within 75 yards of it when it suddenly opened fire with a machine gun.
The surfboat Was riddled by twenty bullets, and Pratt, lying in the bow seeking cover from what he believed was a rum runner’s fire, was struck three times by slugs piercing the craft. Two bullets passed through his abdomen and out the side of the boat.
Faulkinkham, miraculously, was untouched. According to his story the surfboat was not hailed by the patrol boat and no warning was given.
Both Pratt and Faulkingharn wore regulation Coast Guard sea duty clothes. The surfboat is painted white and lettered “U. S. C. G., Plum Island Station.”
Faulkingham said two flares were lit aboard the other boat after the first burst of fire and that a second burst was fired in the flares.
From Gloucester, however, the patrol boat commander reported he signaled the other boat to heave to and flashed his searchlight on his own Coast Guard ensign.
One of the amazing parts of the story was that the patrol boat, after the shooting, made no attempt to overtake the other craft. Faulkingham, with Pratt lying fatally wounded in the bow, turned his boat toward Little Neck, a 45 minute run, where he turned his comrade over to a summer resident, who rushed Pratt to a hospital. He died there at 2 o’clock this morning. At his bedside was his wife, who motored from their home at Kittery, Maine on being notified.
| Name | Rating | Duty Station | Date |
| Pratt, L. E. | BM1 | STA Plum Is, MA | 8/5/1930 |
Source: The Chicago Tribune