Exploration of East Africa, military exploits in Cuba, Libya, and Somalia
William Astor "Willie" Chanler (June 11, 1867 – March 4, 1934) was an American soldier, explorer, and politician who served as U.S. Representative from New York.[1] He was a son of John Winthrop Chanler. After spending several years exploring East Africa, he embarked on a brief political career. Chanler regarded it as an American obligation to be on the side of the people who fought for their independence, and during his life he participated in rebellions and independence struggles in Cuba, Libya, and Somalia. He provided support for insurgents in Venezuela, Turkey, and China. He maintained an active lifestyle even after losing his right leg in 1915. Late in life, he became a novelist and an outspoken antisemite.
Chanler and his siblings became orphans after the death of their mother in December 1875 and their father in October 1877, both to pneumonia. The children were raised at their parents' Rokeby Estate in Barrytown, New York.[11] John Winthrop Chanler's will provided $20,000 a year for each child for life (equivalent to $470,563 in 2018 dollars), enough to live comfortably by the standards of the time.[3]
After returning to the US, Chanler visited Wyoming in 1890 and became friends with Butch Cassidy, who escorted him to the Hole-in-the-Wall bandit hideout.[3]
In early February the expedition was stranded in what is now the Meru North District of Kenya because of the death of all of its 165 pack animals (probably due to trypanosomiasis) and the desertion of many of the 160 porters.[46] On August 24, 1893, von Höhnel was gored by a rhinoceros in the groin and lower abdomen and was forced to return to Austria. Chanler himself came close to death from malaria before he finally succeeded in reaching Mombasa in February 1894.[47] Out of about five hundred photos taken during the journey, 155 photographs taken by von Höhnel have survived.[48]
As part of the scientific contribution of the journey, Chanler collected numerous specimens of plants, animals and insects, including several new species of butterflies (Charaxes chanleri, Planema chanleri, Ypthima chanleri, and Cypholoba chanleri)[49][50] and a small crocodile.[51] Many of the African animals in the American Museum of Natural History were donated by him after being collected on this expedition.[52] Chanler's Falls on the Ewaso Ng'iro River[53] and Chanler's Mountain Reedbuck (Redunca fulvorufula chanleri) were named for him.[54] In 1896, Chanler published the first ethnographic description of the CushiticRendille, a community he would describe as "the most original and interesting of all the strange and different peoples met in East Africa".[55]
In the course of his African explorations Chanler became fluent in the Swahili language.[56]
Although von Höhnel and Chanler remained lifelong friends, von Höhnel considered Chanler to be reckless:
It did not take me long to find out what an enterprising, high-spirited American Mr. Chanler was, and I realized that on this expedition I would have to be the mother of wisdom. Later on it was indeed a sight to watch my young traveling companion running risks that were not always commensurate with the object to be achieved. He often needed to be cautioned.[56]
During this expedition, Chanler and von Höhnel explored over 2,500 square miles (6,500 km2) of previously unmapped territory, fixed the exact position of Mount Kenya, he was the first White man to view the Nyambeni hills, Chanler's Falls, and the Lorian Swamp, and mapped the course of the Ewaso Ng'iro River. Five specimens donated to the Smithsonian were previously unknown species, including two species of butterflies, two species of reptiles, and Chanler's Mountain Reedbuck.[41]: 100
I sympathize with the Cubans in their gallant efforts on behalf of liberty and I, being an American, feel it necessary to do what I can to separate entirely this continent from Europe."[3]
In February 1898 he took a leave of absence in order to accompany a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the Caribbean together with Emilio Núñez.[59] Among the guns were two M1895 Colt-Browning machine guns that Chanler had donated[60] (Rubens states that they were Maxim-Nordenfelt guns).[61] After the sinking of the USS Maine, when it appeared certain that war would break out, Chanler offered to resign from the assembly and was granted an indefinite leave of absence.[62]
In May 1898 Chanler was elected a sachem of the Tammany Society.[63][64]
Participation in the Spanish–American War
In April 1898, at the outset of the Spanish–American War, Chanler responded to President William McKinley's call for volunteers by forming a New York regiment,[65][66] with the encouragement of Theodore Roosevelt, who was hoping to lead it as lieutenant colonel.[67] Known as the "Tammany Regiment," it was to be equipped at Chanler's expense. In early May, Governor Frank S. Black informed Chanler that the volunteer quota had already been reached by the 1st U. S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment[68] and that the army was unwilling to accept volunteer infantry, although Chanler speculated that it was in fact a politically motivated move.[3] Most of these men went on to serve in "Chanler's Rough Riders," led by Chanler's older brother Winthrop.[69]
Chanler immediately volunteered his services to General Máximo Gómez and was given the rank of colonel in the nascent indigenous Cuban Army.[70][71] Chanler selected ten men skilled in scouting[72] and took them to Tampa, Florida in preparation for transport to Cuba.[73] The group included Chanler's brother Winthrop Astor Chanler, his brother-in-law C. Temple Emmet, his friend George Galvin, fellow explorer Dr. William Louis Abbott,[74]war correspondent (later Lieutenant) Grover Flint,[75][76] and the German surgeon Dr. Maximilian Lund,[77][78] as well as a grandson of General Hood, a great-grandson of Daniel Boone, and two former members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.[3]
In 1903, he purchased two stone quarries and an ochre mine in Southern France and became president of the French firm Carrières Réunies de la Nièvre, which quarried Malvaux and Verger stone for the American Church in Paris.[31]
In 1913, he invested in and became co-owner, together with Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, of the Vanderbilt Hotel at 4 Park Avenue in New York City.[118][119] After Vanderbilt died in 1915 in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, Chanler became full owner. For several years the hotel was managed by Chanler's friend, George Galvin.[3] Chanler's ex-wife Beatrice Ashley Chanler executed a 400-foot-long frieze for the hotel's ground floor.[120][121]
Chanler's investments in real estate and foreign mining operations largely insulated him from the Wall Street Crash of 1929, although towards the end of his life he began hoarding gold coins in his Paris home as insurance against currency fluctuations.[3]
Hearst lawsuit
In 1907, Chanler filed a lawsuit for criminal libel against newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst for printing a story in The New York American on October 21 which implied that Chanler had engaged in the sexual abuse of girls together with actor and comedian Raymond Hitchcock.[122] On October 23, Chanler filed suit and Hearst was arrested, then released on $1000 bail.[123] As Hitchcock's trial progressed, it was revealed that the charges of sexual abuse were fabricated as part of a blackmail scheme.[124][125] Hearst printed a full retraction and an apology on December 21, saying:
We have found that the story was absolutely without the slightest foundation in fact, and The American and Mr. Hearst now frankly and unreservedly state that the publication was without any justification whatever, and desire to express to Mr. Chanler our extreme regret.[126]
Hitchcock was acquitted by a jury on June 11, 1908.[127]
Insurrection in Venezuela, 1902
In 1902, Chanler was approached by a group of Dutch investors, who were afraid that the Venezuelan President Cipriano Castro was about to default on a massive loan. They asked Chanler to stage a rebellion, which he did by raising a small army of "desperadoes, soldiers of fortune, cattle rustlers, bank robbers, gamblers, Indian scouts and fugitives," recruiting some through his acquaintance Butch Cassidy and others from Quantrill's Raiders.[128] The mercenary army landed on the Venezuelan coast, marched inland and threatened to seize power, but the insurrection was called off when the president agreed to comply with the terms of his loans. In return for his help, Chanler was able to borrow funds for a project to provide a new sewage and water supply system to the city of Tampico, Mexico.[3]: 169–171 In 1921 he published a fictionalized account of the insurrection in his first novel, A Man's Game, under the pseudonym John Brent.[128]
Support for foreign freedom fighters
The Sanibel
In 1904, Chanler purchased the yacht Sanibel on which he spent his honeymoon in the Caribbean.[129] He is known to have invited Sun Yat-sen aboard to discuss his plans for overthrowing the Qing dynasty, as well as members of the Young Turk Movement who were organizing opposition to the Ottoman Empire.[3]
Libya
In 1910, Chanler went to Libya to fight for the Senussi against Italy in the Italo-Turkish War.[130] In August 1911, he wrote to von Höhnel to ask him to order 15 Mauser pistols and 5,000 rounds of ammunition through arms dealer Basil Zaharoff. He then visited Constantinople where he was granted a Turkish commission as colonel of auxiliaries and a gift of 500,000 Turkish lira. Chanler arranged for weapons and supplies to be landed at isolated spots along the Libyan coast. Returning to Libya, Chanler wandered the desert in disguise, exhorting the Tuaregs and Tebou to resist Italian rule. Eventually he was granted a rare audience with Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi who permitted him to recruit and train a unit of horsemen. On October 23, 1911, Arab cavalry commanded by Chanler ambushed and nearly destroyed the IV Battalion of the 11th Bersaglieri Regiment at Shar al-Shatt, killing over 500 Italian troops.[131]: 86 Chanler was forced to leave the country a few days later after drinking poisoned camel's milk.[3]
On December 8, 1913, Chanler was involved in a mysterious accident in France, during which he injured his right leg.[3] Various reports suggested that Chanler had been in a car accident,[133][134] or that he had been dueling with boxer Frank Moran and was shot[135] (Chanler was backing Jack Johnson against Moran in the 1914 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Paris).[136] Chanler was taken to the American Hospital of Paris where he underwent several surgeries, but the injury never healed and his right leg was amputated above the knee in late September 1915.[137]
Chanler managed to overcome morphine addiction several years after the amputation. He tried dozens of different articulated prosthetic limbs before settling on a single unjointed pylon, "a plain pegleg, like that of [my] ancestor Peter Stuyvesant."[3]
He moved to Paris in 1920 and, encouraged by the success of his 1896 travelogueThrough Jungle and Desert,[42] he published his first novel, A Man's Game, under the pseudonym John Brent.[128] The book was based on Chanler's involvement in a plot to overthrow President Cipriano Castro during the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–03.
Throughout the 1920s Chanler corresponded frequently with his old friend Ludwig von Höhnel, then living in retirement in Vienna, on the "Jewish world conspiracy" and the degree to which von Höhnel shared Chanler's antisemitic ideology, writing on March 22, 1923: "You don't seem disturbed by the fact that your town is overrun by Jews."[56] Chanler accepted as authentic the widely recognized forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he employed agents to compile dossiers on Jewish public figures in the US and other countries.[3]
In 1925 he published his second novel, The Sacrifice, under the pseudonym Robert Hart, in which Jewish conspirators were planning to take over Western culture and government.[144] Chanler's sister in law, Margaret Terry, married to his brother Winthrop Astor Chanler, remarked in a memoir that late in life Chanler was "an ardent anti-Semite ... . [who] holds the Jews responsible for the World War" and that he "believes the Pope to be somehow run by the Jews, and many other things that cannot all be true."[145] Chanler once wrote to Margaret:
Although [I am] as you know, a devout Christian, I have been helped a great deal by the Islamic faith, and lately I have been massaged by a HinduYoghi much to my benefit. I am so open-minded that I would, once at least, even listen to a ... . voodoo worshipper, a Mormon, or even a Holy Roller—but one religion I do bar, and that is the Hebrew.[3]
In 1928 Chanler wrote to then-governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on his preoccupation with Jewish conspiracy, and stated that he was in confidential communication with anti-Jewish Arab leaders including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. In 1933 he wrote to his sister Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler on the "centralized Jewish control of world affairs," stating his belief that the British cabinet was under the control of the Fabian Society and Baron Israel Moses Sieff, who were enacting a secret plan to "Bolshevize" Great Britain and the United States, "which will result in the absolute loss of individual independence."[3]
^Chanler's grandfather John White Chanler married Elizabeth Shirreff Winthrop, daughter of Benjamin Winthrop and Judith Stuyvesant (Peter's great-great-granddaughter)
^"Personalities." The Independent: Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, November 7, 1889; 41:2136; p. 8.
^Chanler, William A., "Hunting in East Africa," in Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnel, eds, Hunting in Many Lands: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 1895.
^Battes, C. G., "A Plucky Young Explorer: William Astor Chanler, His Travels and His Photograph Camera," Idaho Daily Statesman, Mar 24, 1894, p. 5.
^ abcVon Höhnel, Ludwig. Over Land and Sea: Memoir of an Austrian Rear Admiral's Life in Europe and Africa, 1857–1909, ed. Ronald E. Coons and Pascal James Imperato; New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 2000; ISBN0-8419-1390-0.
^"Captain William Astor Chanler: His Active Career as Explorer, Soldier and Politician." New York Tribune, Illustrated Supplement, November 6, 1898, Page 9.
^"Tammany Sachems Installed," New York Tribune, May 13, 1898; p. 21.
^"Chanler Installed As Sachem," New York Tribune, October 1, 1899; p. 2.
^"THE CENTAURS OF OUR ARMY: What was Seen in a Day's Visit to the Quarters of the Rough Riders in Camp at Tampa." Boston Sunday Journal, June 5, 1898, Vol. V, Issue 245; p. 9.
^"Millionaires in Army Uniform: Men of Fortune Who have Enlisted in Actual Service against the Spanish Forces." Boston Sunday Journal, May 29, 1898; p. 10.
^Fitzhugh Lee, Joseph Wheeler, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Wainwright, Cuba's struggle against Spain with the causes of American intervention and a full account of the Spanish–American War: including final peace negotiations, The American Historical Press, 1899, pp. 533, 538–540.
^"WARRANT ISSUED FOR W.R. HEARST: William Astor Chanler Accuses the Editor of Criminal Libel," October 23, 1907; The New York Times, p. 7.
^"WARRANT SERVED ON HEARST: He Is Arraigned on Chanler's Libel charge and Paroled." New York Times, October 24, 1907.
^"Pleaded Guilty When Charged with Blackmail – Tried to Extort $1,500 from Raymond Hitchcock – Vindication for Noted Actor;" Wilkes-Barre Times Leader; Dec 23, 1907; p. 1; Wilkes-barre, Pennsylvania.
^"Americans Aid War Refugees in Paris Mrs. William Astor Chanler Tells of Work Done Through Lafayette Fund;" The Philadelphia Inquirer; April 8, 1918; Vol. 179, Issue: 35; p. 11, Philadelphia, PA.