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The passage of a half century has done little to dull Bill and Carol Mack’s recollections of the Watch Hill Light Station in the southwestern corner of Rhode Island. They moved into the station shortly after their first child was born, and while there, they weathered one of the worst storms of the 20th century in southern New England. This past July, the Macks made a pilgrimage from their Georgia home to Rhode Island, and a host of memories was rekindled.
Coast Guardsman Bill Mack, previously assigned to the Point Judith Lifeboat Station, was transferred to Watch Hill in March 1953. The Macks, Ohio natives who were then in their early twenties, had been married 13 months when they moved to Watch Hill, part of the town of Westerly. Their daughter, Kathy, had been born just five weeks earlier.
The Macks moved into the assistant keeper’s quarters on the second floor of the keeper’s house. Jules Serpa, a Massachusetts native of Portuguese descent who had been a surfman in the old Lifesaving Service, was the head keeper. Serpa lived in the first floor of the keeper’s house with his wife and three children.
On September 21, 1938, the Watch Hill Light Station had been battered by the worst hurricane in New England history. Keeper Lawrence Congdon and Assistant Richard Frick battled 125-mph winds and waves that crashed over the top of the lighthouse, breaking the glass and damaging the lens. History practically repeated itself a mere 16 years later.
A hurricane named Carol barreled up the coast and struck Rhode Island on August 31, 1954. To date, the destruction in the state wreaked by Carol has only been topped by the hurricane of 1938. More than 5,000 buildings were destroyed from Westerly to Newport, and the summer colonies at Watch Hill and Misquamicut were devastated once again, as they had been in 1938.
Bill Mack recalls that when the hurricane hit in the morning of August 31, he went to the fog signal building to get the foghorn going. Waves were throwing stones “the size of baseballs” into the building, breaking the windows. Mack retreated to the keeper’s house and remained there for the duration of the storm.
The waves were so high that virtually nothing could be seen from the house’s east facing windows. When the eye of the hurricane passed over, says Carol Mack, it looked like there was a riptide in the middle of the backyard.
As had happened in the hurricane of 1938, Watch Hill Point had become an island through much of Hurricane Carol. The road to the Point was badly torn up and the east bank near the lighthouse was eaten away, practically undermining the fog signal building. All in all, about $125,000 worth of damage was sustained at the light station. The Macks left Watch Hill shortly after the hurricane, in October 1954.
During their return visit, the Macks, along with their daughter, Kathy, and friend, Pat Van Voorhis, were greeted at the lighthouse by Michael Dush of the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association. They toured the museum the association has established in the station’s oil house and visited the second floor of the house. Their former home is now rented to individuals who also keep an eye on the station and help care for the grounds.
The museum at Watch Hill Lighthouse is open to the public in July and August, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 1 to 3 p.m.
This story is taken, in part, from the upcoming book by Jeremy D’Entremont, Lighthouses of Rhode Island, to be published in spring 2006 by Commonwealth Editions.
This story appeared in the September 2005 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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