June 12, 2024: Ocean State Histories: Beavertail Lighthouse

[250years ago this week, Rhode Island bannedthe slave trade. That significant moment was just one of many in this littleststate’s story, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Ocean Statehistories, leading up to a special post on works through which you can learnmore about Rhode Island!]

Three tellingmoments in the historyof the third oldest American lighthouse.

1)     Revolutionary shifts: After years of petitionsand plans, a lighthouse was finally built on BeavertailPoint, at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, in 1749. Less than thirty yearslater, in December 1776, the Britishoccupied nearby Newport, controlling the city and its region and waterwaysfor nearly three years. When the Continental Army forced the British to retreatin October 1779, they burned the lighthouse nearly to the ground on their wayout and took the light with them. In the years after the Revolution the lightwas rebuilt and –assembled, but this wasn’t the only Revolutionary change, asthe 1789Congressional Lighthouse Act took over federal control of all the nation’slighthouses and made Newport’scustoms collector (and a Signer of the Declaration of Independence), WilliamEllery, Beavertail’s first superintendent. Each of these shifts reflectshow much the Revolution and its military and political aftermaths affectedevery place and part of the American landscape.

2)     Industrialization’s influences: An 1851report described the original wooden lighthouse as the “worst built toweryet seen,” and by 1856 a new, granite lighthouse with all new illuminatingequipment and a fog signal (utilizing compressed air, invented by Connecticut’s CelabonLeeds Daboll, and known as the Daboll trumpet), had been completed (andremains in operation to this day). That process and its details alone suggeststhe impact of industrialization and its effects on American society andculture. Yet the next few years saw even more innovations, including the 1857installation of the nation’s first steam whistle and in 1866 another new fog signal,this one based on a hot air process developed by Swedish American engineer andinventor John Ericsson(designer of the famous Civil War ironclad the Monitor). It’s easy to think of lighthouses as relativelyunchanging parts of a nation’s landscape, but Beavertail reflects just how muchinvention and industrialization impacted the light and helped revolutionize thesociety around it at the same time.

3)     The Hurricane of 1938: It certainlyhas competition, but by most accounts the Great New England Hurricaneof 1938 remains the worst storm ever recorded in New England. Whilelighthouses are of course intended to aid in such conditions, it’s also fair tosay that they—and their keepers and inhabitants—are among the most vulnerableand threatened spots in any storm. CarlChellis, who had been Beavertail keeper for less than a year when thehurricane hit in late September, survived the storm, but his young daughterdied when her school bus was thrown by the wind; assistant keeper EdwardDonahue leapt into the water to survive a collapsing engine room and wasrescued when his son dove in after him. Further out in Narragansett Bay thestorm produced an even more tragic result, as WhaleRock Lighthouse was entirely destroyed and its assistant keeper WalterEberle (a Navy veteran determined to keep the lighthouse working during thestorm) killed. I’d like to think that with today’s technologies such tragediescould be averted, and of course lighthousesare now automated rather than kept by hand; but hurricanes, whether inthese Beavertail histories or in our own era, remain primal reminders of thosethings no human advances can control.

Next RhodeIsland history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Ocean State stories you’d highlight?