On the waterfront: Charles J. Leanman

Some of the most colorful characters on the Press Register’s staff were the reporters who covered the Mobile waterfront.

One such was Charles J. Leanman, who began reporting with the newly established Mobile Press in 1929. His early life was filled with tragedy. An infant brother died at home in January 1914 and his mother Catherine died a week later.

A year later in 1915, his city policeman father, Charles E. Leanman, fell ill for five weeks before dying at age 33. His death left three orphaned children, a 9-year-old Charles, his 6-year-old sister Catherine, and 3-year-old brother Bernardine. Their widowed grandfather lived in Mobile, but he died in 1920. The young Catherine wound up at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, but it’s not clear how her two brothers were cared for. Both attended Catholic Schools and Bernadine graduated from Spring Hill College.

Leanman’s interest in the waterfront came naturally. His grandfather, Captain Charles A. Leanman, was a well-known submarine diver and ship carpenter in Mobile. Charles’ two uncles, C. Leanman and Victor Bernard Leanman, served in the U.S. Navy.

On the newspaper, Leanman preferred writing features, but besides covering the waterfront he also reported on the courts and meetings of Mobile’s civic groups. He covered the luncheon meeting at the Battle House of the Lions Club on Tuesdays, Kiwanis Club on Wednesdays, and the Rotary Club on Thursdays. He also covered the luncheon meetings of the Real Estate Club and the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

The community groups had a practice of providing a free meal to reporters who covered their luncheon meetings, a practice that lasted well into the 1980s. This allowed Leanman to eat well during the hard times of the 1930s.

“I had kingly meals during the Depression,” Leanman recalled. “The Battle House served excellent meals, each beginning with a shrimp cocktail. It didn’t cost me a cent because I covered their meetings.” 

The civic clubs Leanman covered may have
held their luncheons in this dining room.

The Battle House was Mobile’s premiere hotel where many famous personalities often stayed when visiting the Port City. Leanman interviewed Richmond Pearson Hobson while the Spanish-American War naval hero sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel room. After retiring from the Navy, Hobson, an Alabama native, traveled the country campaigning against the use of alcohol and drugs.

At the Bienville Hotel on the northwest corner of St. Joseph and St. Francis streets, Leanman interviewed famed swimmer Fred P. Newton in 1931. In one of the many stunts that typified the period, Newton had recently completed swimming more than half the length of the Mississippi River. He swam the

Bienville Hotel

 more than 1,826 miles from Ford Dam, Minnesota, to New Orleans from July 6 to December 29, 1930.

Leanman also interviewed Great War flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, who had flown in his private plane from New York to Mobile for one of his airline industry ventures. Rickenbacker gave Leanman his first air flight, “Tearing through the air at 90 per—nothing but blue, concave skies above and desperately thin air below,” Leanman wrote.

An opportunity for Leanman to have his own adventure presented itself in 1932. Leanman’s regular rounds of waterfront sources included Norman Nicholson, port captain of the Waterman Steamship Co. On one visit with the captain, Nicholson invited Leanman to take a trip on one of the company’s ships, which would make a stop at London. Leanman was a great admirer of Charles Dickens and jumped at the chance to see something of the author’s homeland.

“I wanted to see the world,” Leanman said, but he also needed to make sure he had a job when he got back to Mobile. Leanman explained what he wanted to do to Press Register publisher Ralph B. Chandler and Chandler promised to rehire Leanman on his return.

The Waterman ship was a freighter and there were no passenger quarters, which meant Leanman would have to be a working crew member. As the ship prepared to sail, Captain Nicholson brought Leanman’s sister to the ship at the Alabama State Docks to deliver a typewriter. But they didn’t recognize him. “I was covered with soot, face and all.” He had been shoveling coal.

West Zeda

“I left on July 15 as the lowest form of human fungus aboard ship—a steamship wiper on the steamer West Zeda.” A wiper is mainly responsible for ship maintenance such as cleaning the engine room and work areas, and assisting other crew members with their work.

The West Zeda, “the slowest waterwagon on the Gulf,” was Leanman’s home for 95 days. From Mobile the ship sailed to Galveston before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean to London, a trip taking 22 days. In London, Leanman visited the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is buried, and the author’s home at 48 Doughty St., where he wrote Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and other works.

From London, the West Zeda sailed to West Hartlepool, located near Bowes, Yorkshire and places mentioned in Nicholas Nickleby like Dotheboys Hall and Smike’s grave. “From there the West Zeda steamed to Antwerp where I viewed the Waterloo battlefield and entrained later for Paris to see the Louvre, Place De La Concorde, Les Invaides, and other landmarks.”

When the West Zeda returned to Mobile, Chandler kept his word and rehired Leanman. Soon after, Leanman learned of Mary Ellen Caver, an Alabama Baptist missionary who had returned from Africa. She was in Mobile to conduct missionary training. Some the Port City’s black citizens had asked her to meet with Cudjo Lewis, born Oluale Kossola in the Yoruba kingdom of Takkoi in the Dahomey region of West Africa.

Kossola was one of the last surviving Africans among 130 men and women smuggled illegally into the United States as slaves aboard the Clotilda in 1860, 52 years after the United States abolished the African slave trade. Kossola had been captured and sold into slavery by a rival tribe.

Oluale Kossola
Courtesy of Doy Leale McCall Rare
Book and Manuscript Library,
University of South Alabama

As luck would have it, Caver had worked among the people of Dahomey and spoke their language. Leanman decided to go with Caver to interview Kossola, who was in his 90s, at his home in Plateau north of Mobile.

The old man “bombarded his missionary visitor with questions of home, of methods and modes of living, the changes that time has brought, and of his people,” Leanman wrote. Kossola told Leanman of his capture by an enemy tribe, his trip across the ocean in what would be the last slave ship to land in Mobile and his eventual sale to a plantation owner in Alabama before being freed.

Kossola died two years later. Kossola and the other former Africans who settled the Plateau community have since become a matter of intense focus to commemorate their lives.

Leanman had a banner year in 1933.

In the spring, harbor tugboats nudged the British freighter Cingalese Prince against the dock on the Mobile River. On board were the New York Times’ influential drama critic Justin Brooks Atkinson and his wife Oriana.

The couple were making a trip similar to what Leanman had made on the West Zeda, only bigger and more comfortably. The Cingalese Prince carried a few passengers, though it was no luxury cruise ship. The Atkinsons also were taking the freighter around the world from New York and back again over four months. Mobile was the ship’s first port of call. 

Brooks Atkinson

Leanman went on board to interview Atkinson, but the critic also spent some time in Mobile. He wrote, “Mobile has an idyllic appearance in the warm sunlight. Spring was rhapsodically balmy in Mobile…Late in the morning I sat in Bienville Square reading the local newspaper and listening to the migrant warblers murmuring in the treetops and watching citizens of Mobile sauntering by and it was difficult to remember that we were not acquainted.” Atkinson collected his observations of Mobile, other ports, and fellow passengers along with his philosophical musings into the book Cingalese Prince, published in 1934.

In the summer 1933, Leanman won national recognition for his coverage of the Mobile waterfront. He took a third-place award in a nationwide writing contest, “I Cover the Waterfront.” Interestingly enough, his colleague on the Mobile Press Register, Frances R. Durham, won the second-place award.

Judges selected the winners based on human interest, novelty of theme, and style. Each article had to be based on actual events and had to be part of the reporters personal experiences, either as a participant or observer. Leanman’s story concerned a frustrated romance along the waterfront during the Spanish-American War.

The third-place prize money of $25 (about $500 today) probably came in handy in August 1933. That’s when he married Mary Elizabeth Bell. The couple settled in Mobile and Leanman continued to cover the waterfront for the Press Register for the next four years.

In 1937, Charles and Mary moved with his sister Catherine and her husband Roy Lamas and their children to Memphis. The Lamases had been living in Biloxi, Mississippi. In Memphis, Charles reported for one of the city’s newspapers and Roy worked as a printer in a print shop.

Tragedy struck Charles again when Mary died sometime not long after the move. In 1940, Leanman and his kin climbed into a Ford car and drove to Burbank, California. Leanman again found a job as a reporter and his brother worked as a printer. Leanman spent the rest of his life in Burbank. He returned to Mobile in 1987 for a nostalgic visit. He died at age 96 on December 11, 2001, in North Hollywood, four months after his brother Bernadine.

Sources

Charles Leanman, “Veteran journalist recalls life in Mobile decades ago,” Mobile Press Register July 26, 1987; B 1:1; Charles Leanman, “News writer recalls memorable interviews,” Mobile Press July 27, 1987 A, 2; Charles Leanman, “Journalist relives trip across the Gulf,” Mobile Press July 28, 1987 A, 2; John (should be Charles) Leanman, “Journalist remembers top lawyers of his era,” Mobile Press July 29, 1987 A, 2; Amber Willard, “Pieces of the past,” Burbank Leader February. 26, 2000. Online: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jgnMD4iEdvoJ:https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-xpm-2000-02-26-export17950-story.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us; “Obituaries,” Burbank Leader December 15, 2001. Online: https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-xpm-2001-12-15-export11661-story.html; “Death of Infant,” Montgomery Advertiser January 16, 1914; Catherine Mary Harrison Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503858/catherine-mary-leanman#; Charles Ernest Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503801/charles-ernest-leanman#; Charles E. Leanman obituary, Montgomery Advertiser February 10, 1915; Capt. Charles A Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503621/charles-a-leanman#; Charles A. Leanman, Charles E. Leanman, U.S. Census 1910, Mobile, Alabama E.D. 96, Sheet 17 A; Catherine Leanman, U.S. Census 1920, Mobile, Alabama E.D. 99, Sheet 19 B; Bernard V. Leanman U.S. Census 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania E.D. No. 51-194, Sheet 24 B; Charles Leanman, U.S. Census 1940, Los Angeles, California E.D. No. 60-512, Sheet 11 A; “Shipping News,” Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Landmark March 20, 1933 6:2; “Two of Press Register Staff Winners in National Contest,” Mobile Register, July 24, 1933 A, 5:3; “Francis Kester Wins Prize for Sea Story,” New York Times, July 25, 1933 Books, 22:4; Boston Herald, May 17, 1933 16:6; Grace Thornton, “Former slave sees God’s answer to his prayers, Biblical Recorder. August 24, 2018; Online: https://www.brnow.org/news/Former-slave-sees-God-s-answer-to-his-prayers; Sylviane A. Diouf, “The last slave ship survivor and her descendants identified, National Geographic. March 27, 2020. Online: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/last-slave-ship-survivor-descendants-identified.html; Afua Hirsch, “Why the extraordinary story of the last slave in America has finally come to light,” The Guardian, May 26, 2018. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/26/why-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-last-slave-in-america-has-finally-come-to-light?fbclid=IwAR3Mr9; Richard F. Shepard, “Brooks Atkinson, 89, Dead; Times Drama Critic 31 Years,” New York Times January 14, 1984. Online: https://nyti.ms/29DyGFI; Charles Leanman, White Marriage License Index, April 19, 1823 through December 31, 1967, p. 1434. Probate Court, Mobile County, Alabama; “Brother Bernardine Leanman, St. Joseph's educator, 90,” Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger, August 19, 2001.