Pomham Rocks ready for prime time

BY SCOTT PICKERING spickering@eastbaymediagroup.com

A century ago, five lighthouses lined the East Providence shoreline, lighting the way for ships passing from the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay into the Providence River and the busy port of Providence.

Only one remains.

On a scrabble of vertical rock about 800 feet from the Riverside shore sits Pomham Rocks Lighthouse, whose rich history stretches back more than 150 years. It has survived countless storms, brutal winters, several fierce hurricanes and decades of neglect, but the most dramatic chapter in its history book might cover the last 20 years, when a group of local residents decided they should save the thing before it fell into the bay. Literally, that came close to happening.

In most cases, these preservation stories have a familiar arc. A group of folks get together and dream of something that seems unimaginable at the time. They limp along, raising what money they can, making small gains through their own labor and sweat equity, until they finally win big support and big money. Eventually they reach the point when they’re ready for prime time.

The Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse have reached that point.

After two decades of hard work and creativity, the volunteer group has invested about $1.6 million of donations and grants into the preservation and restoration of the lighthouse. Freshly painted on the outside, restored as a gleaming showpiece on the inside, Pomham Rocks is ready for prime time.

The Friends have their own customdesigned boat, Lady Pomham II, and they are running tours multiple times per week, both weekends and weekdays, all summer. Launched from the Edgewood Yacht Club in Cranston, which is directly across the bay from Pomham Rocks, the excursion begins with a 10-minute boat ride to a dock on the north side of the island. From there, visitors get a tour that lasts about an hour and a half, where they can see all three levels of the lighthouse. If they’re willing, they can ascend a vertical ladder to the top of the tower, climb on hands and knees through a hatch, and stand on the metal ring outside the actual light to soak in sweeping views of the bay.

A visit to the rock

On a sunny weekday morning last week, three members of the Friends led a private tour for reporter and photographer. Captain of the launch and lead tour guide was Dennis Tardiff, chairman of the board of Friends of Pomham Rocks Lighthouse and a retired Coast Guardsman.

Tardiff joined the Coast Guard as a young man more than 50 years ago, and his first duty assignment was at the tiny Pomham Rocks Lighthouse off the shore of East Providence. He was 19 years old when he started, and he lived in the lighthouse with one or two other Guardsmen from 1971 to 1974.

“It was set up to have three people stationed here — two people at all times, with the third off for a week. It was called semi-isolated duty. So after being here two weeks, you would have a week off,” Tardiff said. Later, the Coast Guard reduced the staffing to two. “So there were just two of us left. We were doing three days on, three days off, by ourselves.”

Tardiff was the last actual keeper of the light, before the Coast Guard decommissioned the tower on June 5, 1974, and automated a new light built atop a skeleton tower. The magnificent “Fresnel” lens that beamed red light across the bay was carefully packed up and moved to a museum in Newburyport, Mass.

Eventually the Coast Guard had no