Remembering Hurricane Carol
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Your view?
Did you witness Hurricane Carol in 1954? Tell me about it! And if you have a picture you're willing to share, that's all the better. I'd love to hear from you and I'll add what you have to say to our "Your Views" page. So if you have something to share, please:
Send me email, Greg Stone 
This was a real nice shock - the Providence Journal called for what I assumed was a few paragraphs in a general story about Hurricane Carol. Instead it turned out to be a story devoted to this Web site and it ran on Page 1 on the 50th anniversary of the Hurricane. They did an excellent job and the result was a real surge of hits on the Web site and many new stories from people about their own experiences. (What I like most about this was I didn't promote the Web site to them - they discovered the web site on their own and contacted me. ) You can read the Journal story here. or if you have a problem getting to it, try here.In 1954 I was 13 and the most exciting thing to happen was Hurricane Carol. My blogs
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No sales today at the Ships Store
This was a sad sight for me, for the Ships Store was where I went to dream about what I would some day - buy all sorts of neat things relating to boating. I once did convince my father that I deserved a tiny little row boat they were selling. It was only six feet long and had a narrow seat that ran up the middle from the stern to about mid-ships. Knowing nothing about waterline length and how it relates to speed of a hull, I thought I would be able to row this real fast because it was so small. Wrong! I got out in the river and started pulling hard. The oar locks were those open types and as I pulled hard, the bow dug in, the oars popped out of the oar locks and I slid forward on my backside. Of course with all that weight in the bow the skiff promptly swamped. What an embarrassment! Once I understood it I still loved the little skiff for its light weight and it was just the sort of thing you would expect Dave Atwater, the owner of the Ships Store, to find and sell. Dave eventually became the owner of George Gale's Sharpshooter and under Dave it got new sails and a very tiny, for decoration only, dingy on davits at its stern. It was also very clean, which was different from the way I remember it when George Gale owned it. For George it was a working sailboat, and he frequently fished from it and at times it took on the smell and look of a fishing boat. Ship shape in the essentials, but dirty. OK, so that has little to do with this picture. It also has nothing to do with the picture that's missing from my collection which, were it here, would show the 37-foot Auxiliary Cutter "Tango" parked under a corner of the Ships Store. At first that picture puzzled me because I didn't see how the Tango could get in that position without its mast being knocked down. But then I realised it must have grounded beside the Ships Store, then been pushed into it sideways. In the end it looked like the Tango was all that was holding up one corner of the building. You can just glimpse it if you look real hard at the background of the right-hand edge of this picture. |
I took pictures during the storm and after the storm, made them into sets, and sold them to neighbors. Here are the pictures and my memories along with those of family and friends. Greg Stone 
