Local History: Portsmouth Naval Prison

The Castle: Stories of the Portsmouth Naval Prison

The Naval prison has been a fixture on a bluff overlooking the Piscataqua River adjacent to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, ME for 114 years. Award-winning Lecturer/Filmmaker, Neil Novello, presents The Castle: Stories of the Portsmouth Naval Prison, a combination of historic photos and video clips from his documentary video anthology of the same name. The anthology chronicles the 66-year history of the Navy’s only maximum-security prison in the world, which hosted as many as 50,000 sailors and Marines.

The extended video clips cover three different time periods of the Naval prison's history: the end of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War era, featuring interviews with Marines and Navy personnel who served at the Naval Prison. Watch rarely seen footage from a 1971 Navy film about the prison, and footage from the National Archive, showing captured German U-Boat crews escorted to the Naval prison. There are also scenes from a 1919 silent movie feature where Naval prisoners and the prison were used as extras! The writer and producer of this silent movie was the Naval prison's only civilian commander, Thomas Mott Osborne, a former prison warden from New York.

Registration is required. This event is free and open to all.

Since 1985, Neil Novello's award- winning career has covered nearly every type of video production - documentaries, television news, Family Biographies, Educational & Web videos for non-profits and businesses. His well-received documentary about the Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine has been featured at the New Hampshire and Portland Maine Film Festivals and is available on DVD. Find out more at novellospeaks.com.