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Senator Frye (1830-1911) was a Republican in the House of Representatives (Maine and U.S.) and later in the Senate. He was a member of the prominent Frye political family as well as the Peucinian Society. He was born in Lewiston, Maine, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850. He practiced law in Rockland, Maine. Senator Frye is the grandfather of Wallace Humphrey White Jr., another Representative and Senator from Maine 1931-1949.
Along with his other political careers, he served as mayor of Lewiston from 1866-1867, and afterward became the State Attorney General until 1869. Frye was also a part of the committee that met in Paris to sign the Treaty of Paris in 1898 to end the Spanish-American war.
The William P. Frye, built in Bath, Maine, was used as a cargo ship during the first World War. When the ship set sail in 1914 en route to England, America was still neutral and not participating in the war. The ship came across the Imperial German Navy Raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich. The William P. Frye was stopped and boarded, and the German soldiers deemed the ship a target due to the cargo, being wheat, going to England. The German Captain ordered the cargo be thrown overboard, and then took the American men captive and sunk the ship. The William P. Frye was the first American ship to be sunk during the first World War.
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