Sudden Sea

Back Bay Books

Chapter One

At the tail end of the bleakest summer in memory, weeks as gray as weathered shingles and drenching downpours, September 21 arrived in southern New England like a gift from the gods. The surf was spectacular, the best of the season-long breakers rolling in, crescendos of sparkling foam, the water temperature surprisingly warm, and no pesky seagulls to swoop off with lunch. Silky cirrus threaded across a pastel sky, and the tang of salt was on the hot air, the air itself motionless, as if time had paused to savor the moment. For vacationers lingering after Labor Day, this was the reprise they had hoped for-a last perfect beach day.

The morning began softly on Narragansett Bay-just the first, steady slap of the sea against the wooden hulls of the fishing boats easing out of the harbors of Rhode Island at first light. Through a thin morning fog, the sun was a silver-white dollar, promising a bright day. The beam from the Beavertail lighthouse at the southern tip of Jamestown Island guided the boats out. The gooselike honk of the lighthouse horn and the random shout of one fisherman to another carried across the water. Otherwise, the bay was strangely silent. No gulls trailed the wakes, calling to one another and diving for breakfast. There was no birdsong at all.

Carl Chillicothe lightkeeper, was up with the dawn, watching the boats glide out. There were sword fish boats, forty-or fifty- footers with long pulpits and high lookouts so they could sneak up on their catch, and big trawlers, holds packed with ice, rews curled up in the cabins or sprawled on deck sleeping off the night before. Striped bass and blues, the catch of weekend fishermen, were running off Block Island, so plentiful you could almost lean over the side of the boats and scoop them up. But the big trawlers were in the hard, dirty business of commercial fishing. They bottom fished, dragging for halibut, skate, cod, haddock, flounder, the white fish served at the meatless Friday supper tables of Catholic families throughout the Northeast. The old-guard Yankees were becoming a minority in southern New England. Irish, Italian, and Portuguese immigrants were changing the demographics and politics of the larger cities.

Out on the bay, handliners, two guys in a dory working maybe a dozen lines over the side, slapped the wakes of the big fishing boats, and in his lone rowboat, a single fisherman leaned into the oars, pulled back, leaned in, as rhythmic as the tide.

Chellis recognized the young Greek-Gianitis, his name was. Nobody knew much about him. He had come to Jamestown in early September, against the summer tide. How he had gotten from Ionia to the shores of a small Yankee island in Narragansett Bay was anybody 's guess, but for two weeks he'd been living in a fishing shack a ouple of miles north with his wife and two boys. One of those real estate operators who peddle swampland in Florida as beach estates might describe it as a rustic bungalow. Rudimentary, bordering on squalid, would be a truer description.

The shack had outdoor plumbing, no heat, and walls like cheesecloth, yet in the Great Depression, four flimsy walls and a leaky roof could be a blessing. The Gianitises mostly kept to themselves, although some mornings Chellis would see the young wife out on the rocks with her sons, a pair of sweet, serious-faced little boys who looked like twins. They were five and six years old, with eyes as black as kalamata olives.

Chellis had two boys of his own. Bill, sixteen, was mellow and-even-keeled like his father. In another year he would join the navy and serve for thirty years. Clayton, eleven, was the wild one who would do anything on a dare. He was a seal in the water and a handful anywhere. Then there was seven-year-old Marion, the family sweetheart. Her mother, Ethel, dressed her like a princess and wrapped her blond hair in rags to make banana curls. Everybody said Marion looked like Shirley Temple.

Jamestown is Newport's sister island. The two sit side by side at the entrance to Narragansett Bay, and like many sisters, they share a history and little else. Jamestown is a place to live. Newport, with its fabled estates, is a place to visit. Just nine square miles of rugged beauty, Jamestown is formed by a pair of long ovals. Beavertail to the southwest and a much larger oval to the northeast. A narrow causeway created by a low-lying sandbar links the two. Mackerel Cove, the town beach, is on one side of the causeway; Sheffield Cove, an excellent spot for clamming, is on the other.

Jamestown was founded in 1656 when Benedict Arnold, first governor of Rhode Island and the staunchly upright great-grandfather of the notorious Revolutionary War traitor, led a group of Newport families across the bay. They bought the island from the Narragansett Indians and divided it into twenty-two farms. Arnold chose Fox Hill Farm for himself. It was one of the most beautiful spots on the island, one thousand acres with pastures that slope to the edge of the coves.

Beavertail hadn't changed much since Governor Arnold lived there: open fields as far as the eye can see; sweeping views of the ocean in every direction; and along its rugged banks, glacial outcrops-slate ledges and sea-bleached shelves of rock and shale above the tide line, slimy green slopes below. It is a dangerous spot for swimmers, a paradise for fishermen. The Beavertail light was built at the southern tip in 1753 It is the third-oldest lighthouse in the country.

The village of Jamestown grew up in the larger, northerly section, which looks across the bay passage to Newport. In the Gilded Era, when fortunes were truly fabulous, Newport became the playing field of New York's Four Hundred. They moved from Fifth Avenue to Bellevue Avenue for the season, arriving with steamer trunks and servants by private railcar and yacht. Their favorite sport was one-upmanship, and in the spirit of the game, Vanderbilts and Astors built summer palaces, one more grandiose than the next.

For a brief time, Jamestown basked in the reflected glow. Hotels and guesthouses that could accommodate more than one thousand lined its east harbor, just a short ferry ride from Newport. The poshest spot, the 113-room Thorndike Hotel, boasted hot baths on every floor, electric lights, and a hydraulic lift. Summer rentals on the island soared. Prices ranged from $125 a season for a bungalow to $1 500 for a ten-room house with an ocean view. Some enterprising islanders moved out of their homes to cash in on the summer trade. Such Main Line Philadelphians as Charles and William Wharton, who shunned the gaudy excess of Newport, discovered the harmony of Jamestown and built splendid summer mansions on stony promontories to the north and south of the village.

War and the Depression brought an end to Jamestown's prosperity. By the end of 1938 only two summer hotels remained in service, the Bay View and the Bay Voyage. The others had been abandoned or razed. Still, summers were lively. The island had a casino, movie theater, country club, yacht club, tennis courts, and an eighteen-hole golf course said to rival St. Andrews in Scotland, the Yankee Stadium of golf. At Mackerel Cove there was a handsome bathing pavilion-two stories high and almost three hundred feet long, with one hundred bathhouses downstairs and a ballroom upstairs. Jazz bands played in the gazebo on Shoreby Hill in the long cool evenings. The navy's Atlantic Fleet summered in the bay, and there was the...