Recently I came across the term “mosquito swarm.” I pictured a high-pitched whining mob of vicious mosquitos looking for blood in swamps, but I searched the term anyway to see what the machine would try to feed me. In most cases the first several results had paid to be on page one. Actual numbers vary widely, but it is generally agreed that the majority of searchers never go beyond the first page.*
What In the World Is a Mosquito Fleet?
The first site to pop up was a purported review of commercial mosquito zappers with recommendations and links to Amazon pags. Right behind were do-it-yourself (DIY) mosquito control products, mosquito removal services (we’ll be gentle and find them a good home), and devices that say they’ll keep mosquitos away.
But all of these sites are sales pitches created by salespeople and marketers, so none told me what a mosquito swarm was.
When I’d had enough of products and services for sale, I went over to the science side.
At entomologist.net, they use this definition: A mosquito swarm is a coordinated group of mosquitos large enough to form a visual cloud while flying together to migrate, look for food, or have sex.
Deeper in I found more cool things I didn’t know, such as swarming mosquitos don’t collide with each other because they’re all tuned in to each other acoustically and visually.
This instantly brought forth images of all the films I’ve seen of those amazing schools of fish that somehow dart around packed closely together and the flocks of birds able to change direction instantly, all synchronized as one. I’d hazard a guess that their synchronizers are a lot like mosquito synchronizers, but being higher forms of life, probably work even better. Sounds interesting, but maybe another time.
I knew the term mosquito netting, but didn’t know mosquito fleets.
The fleets I know are groups of taxis, trucks, and ships. And the U.S. Navy, which has lots of fleets. It turns out that mosquito fleet means different things to different people in different places. Anyone can skim the surface (heh-heh) of a subject but only sensible people know the interesting bits are usually not lying about in the open or on page one.
By far the most popular mosquito fleet story is about boats on Puget Sound.
This deep water Pacific Ocean inlet is in northwest Washington State. Puget Sound is 12,000 square miles of interconnected waterways, channels, canals, rivers, and bays. Puget Sound is also an estuary, a word than means plants and animals live in areas of mixed saltwater from the ocean and freshwater from the streams, creeks, and rivers that flow in the low marshland. Only the estuary at Chesapeake Bay is larger.
Because there was so much water, traveling by boat had long been the most common method of getting around Puget Sound.
There were so many landing areas that swarms of boats were always headed every which way. There were hundreds of such boats, and maybe even thousands if you count the smallest ones, too.
When enough of them were zigzagging back and forth across the water, it would have been easy to imagine that they looked something like mosquitos skimming across a pond.
As a matter of fact, that’s one of the popular explanations for the origin of the term mosquito fleet.
The Kitsap Museum in Bremerton, Washington has it that a Seattle newsman (period-correct), amazed by how many small boats were criss-crossing the Sound, said that they looked like “a fleet of mosquitos.” He may have said that, but he was a reporter and it never appeared in print? Hmm. In all likelihood, with so many boats scooting around at once, day after day, year after year, the mental image was likely to have been apparent to more than just a few.
David B. Williams, author of Puget Sound: A Maritime Highway, described mosquito fleets as an armada of steamships that were more functional than fashionable.
“By sailing nearly anywhere there was water, the Mosquito Fleet was essential to the growth of Puget Sound by allowing people to live anywhere along its 1,332-mile shoreline and still stay connected to the world around them.” Local historians say the Puget Sound mosquito fleet lasted from 1889 to the 1920s.
With so many easily-found references to mosquito fleets well before 1889, the first mention could not have been at Puget Sound.
But it has long been a part of Washington and Puget Sound lore, so I say let ‘em have it. We know better.
NCpedia.org says, “The Mosquito Fleet was the whimsical nickname for the four small steamers that comprised the North Carolina Navy at the beginning of the Civil War.”
The year was 1861 and Abraham Lincoln was president.
Charleston, South Carolina, mid 1800s.
The Mosquito Fleet was the name given to the flotilla of small wooden boats that left downtown Charleston together each morning. Each afternoon they returned with shrimp and fresh fish to sell in the open markets. This alliance of fishermen (period-correct) with mutual interests traveled together out to deep waters in small boats that departed, fished, and returned together, believing there was safety in numbers.
General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was one of the signers of the Constitution of the United States and a resident of Charlestown.
Legend has it that the local fishing fleet got its name from one of his three daughters from his second marriage. As the young Pinckney child sat on the porch of her home on the Battery, she saw the wooden boats with their colorful patchwork sails coming in from a day of fishing. “Look father, a giant swarm of mosquitos is coming up the river!” she exclaimed. When the girl married, the General gave her 50 of his 250 slaves.
The Charleston Grit says men too old to fish would hang out at the dock and knit nets for the fishermen. When I was barely in my teens, Lum Gaskill taught me how to knit fishing nets outside his shack on his pier. A lifetime Ocracoke Island salt, he looked like a bigger Captain Quint from Jaws and spoke like Wallace Beery with that curious Outer Banks version of an Elizabethan accent.
Oi, mate!
South Australians say they’ve been using the term “Mosquito Fleet” since 1836. To them, it refers to the groups of small shallow-draft ketches and schooners that supplied isolated settlements with goods in South Australia’s coastal and gulf waters.
One year earlier,
The U.S. Navy established patrols in South Florida to interdict Cuban and Bahamian pirates smuggling goods during the Second Seminole War. They patrolled the shores, the rivers, and the Everglades and were referred to as the Mosquito Fleet. This was in 1835.
James Monroe, the United States President, sent [David] Porter to Key West off the southern tip of Florida to establish an anti-piracy base.
A skilled strategist with an uncanny ability to outguess his opponents, Porter proved to be the ideal man for the job. The keywesthistorialmarkertour.org says “Porter’s West Indian Squadron was fast, lethal, and efficient. Like a mosquito in a room, you knew it is somewhere but you never knew when or where it will bite.” And thus the West Indian Squadron was nicknamed the Mosquito Fleet. The year was 1823.
Within two years Porter’s “Mosquito Fleet” had cleared the pirates and Johnny Depp out of the Caribbean.
Next time you’re in Key West, swing by Mallory Square and see the plaque marking his success (Porter’s, not Depp’s). Q: If Porter’s fleet was the West Indian Squadron, shouldn’t it have been the “Mosquito Squadron?” Just askin.
The U.S. Navy used a fleet of small gunships in and around New Orleans during the War of 1812.
Some say this was the first Mosquito Fleet. Being a Navy with all those ships, the word fleet was common to all, and I didn’t find anything reliable before this. I’m figuring it’s more of a naval term than one a civilian would use.
More U.S. Navy Mosquito Fleets.
In 1941 the U.S. was at war with Japan in the Pacific Ocean and Germany on the Atlantic side. All along the southern U.S. coastal states, civilian volunteers patrolled in airplanes, yachts, pleasure boats, and fishing boats. Their job was to keep an eye out for German ships and U-boats. Their nickname was the Mosquito Fleet.
The U.S. Navy had thousands of PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats in the Pacific Islands, divided into what they called Mosquito Fleets. One of them was skippered by a young LT JG who later became President of the United States, the last war hero to do so.
So what is a mosquito fleet?
I’ll say it’s a group of small, fast, and agile boats built to operate easily in shallow waters and capable of transporting passengers and goods to isolated settlements. Whaddya think?
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*In the days of landlines and Yellow Pages directories, placement was determined alphabetically, which spawned such nonsense listings as AAAAA Painting etc.
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