NARRAGANSETT – The Hurricane of 1938, with whipping winds and thunderous waves, blew and washed away the top of a lighthouse here, killing Walter B. Eberle , an assistant keeper.
His body was never found, and the lighthouse, on an island called Whale Rock , was never rebuilt.
I had spotted the tiny island from the tip of Beavertail State Park in Jamestown during an earlier hike and wanted a closer look. I found a short trail on the opposite side of the West Passage from Beavertail and walked to an isolated, rocky shoreline. Whale Rock, which looks a bit like the top deck of a submarine with a truncated turret just above the ocean’s surface, is visible less than a half mile offshore…