Exploring Block Island | Hidden History, Pirates, and Amelia Earhart

<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:01:41</time>
<p>Welcome to Talk with History. I'm your host Scott, here with my wife and historian Jen.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:02:00</time>
<p>Hello.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:02:00</time>
<p>On this podcast we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there. Man, I have done that intro probably hundreds of times and I still mess it up real quick.

Before we dive into our topic, want to say a quick thank you for the patience to our regular listeners. We missed a week last week. This is busy season for me in the Navy and yesterday was my first day off in like two or three weeks.

So, so I am exhausted. But this podcast, recording this podcast with Jen and for, for our audience, for our listeners brings me energy.

So I'm very excited to, I think it's been a few weeks since we've actually recorded cause we batch record. So with that, we're talking about kind of a very, a relatively unknown place in America, unless maybe you're from the Northeast, Block Island.

So Block Island's pretty unique. Well, one, you got to go up there with American cruise lines.

Two, there's actually some, some pretty well known pieces of history that have come out of there, whether it's the whaling stuff that we've been talking about in the past, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard. Right. You know, some Jaws stuff that's, that's adjacent to Block Island. A little bit of Amelia Earhart, a little bit of pirates.

So we're going to go through this, we're going to talk about the history and we're going to talk about some of these very interesting pieces of this lesser known kind of tourist destination that's off the east coast up, not too far from Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard area. So Jen, tell us a little bit about Block island, the, the background of, of that and then we'll, we'll dive right into it.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:03:52</time>
<p>Yeah, and like you said, I never really heard of Block island before either. It's kind of right off the coast of Long island and before you get to Martha's Vineyard. So Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket belong to Massachusetts.

This is Rhode Island's little island. And so basically it's like Long island off the coast of Long island is Block Island.

And then if you keep going to the north east, you're going to hit Martha's Vineyard in Nucket and everyone knows Martha's Vineyard in Nantucket. They're kind of popular, popular tourist destinations. I would say Block island is more like an insider location. Like people know it.

If you're from that area, but it's kind of not well known outside of there. Of course it's part of Rhode island. So it's Rhode Island's little island. And Rhode island is the smallest state.

It's the first to call for the Continental Congress to denounce the Crown. It's the 13th state admitted into the Union.

But it's as you know, it's the smallest state, small estate in New England and just this like a little, little roadie is what they call it.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:04:52</time>
<p>So interesting story background for me when my first kind of Rhode island experience. Right. So Navy. I've talked about this on the podcast before.

I've been up to the Rhode island area, to Newport, Rhode island, multiple times throughout my career. I think the first time we went there was probably 2005, so 20 years ago.

I remember going up there for some surface warfare officer school training stuff and one of the, one of the briefs they gave was they would ask, they asked the audience a bunch of lieutenants or actually ensigns and jgs at the time who had a rental car. So a few of us raised our hands and they're like, okay, in Rhode island, people don't really care about the left green arrow, right.

They'll cut in front of you if you pause once the light turns from red to green and they're getting ready to turn left and you're getting ready to go straight. Normally the person going straight gets the right of way.

They would, they told us straight up if you pause, they're going to cut in front of you or make eye contact or if you make eye contact, they're going to cut in front of you. And we were like, is this for real? And sure, it happened like to me multiple Times back in 2005. And so ever since I've always remembered that.

So driving around Rhode island, it's, it's a little bit like driving in California, but the roads are smaller, you know, because it's just older out there. So just a fun kind of anecdotal personal story for Rhode island for me.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:06:12</time>
<p>And you're such a sailor. We're going to talk about sailors. But your, your mouth. So. Yes. So this is like you said, this is like the little island off of Rhode island.

And it's, it's a pork chop sized island. Now. It dates back to 1614.

They say that Verrazzano from the Verrazano Bridge, one of the first Europeans to explore the area, noted Block island in his existence. So he wrote it down. I'm passing this Little island in 1524. But it really wasn't until the Dutch navigator, Adrian Block, stopped there and in 1614.

Now, remember, we talk about New York, Hudson river, this is all, it's all the Dutch, right? It's the Dutch who are the first explorers there. It's the Dutch who kind of found all this area.

The Dutch found New Amsterdam, which is going to become New York. It's all a Dutch area. And so Adrian Block, the Dutch navigator, will rediscover it in 1614, and it's that it's named for him. Block Island.

Adrian Block. Sixteen families from the English colony of Massachusetts are going to settle Block island. And they do this between 1661 and 1664.

And that's how it becomes part of the colony of Rhode island, the English colony and then part of one of the 13 original colonies.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:07:29</time>
<p>And it's interesting to me that they decided to sell this island and I assume I was. Was the whaling stuff still prevalent then? Or like, is there a reason that they kind of picked this kind of off the coast type location?</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:07:40</time>
<p>So it was just the same thing. It was just a good port, like you say, a good place to, you know, put pull in ships because of the harbors there.

But it was just a, a good location before you hit the land mass.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:07:53</time>
<p>Okay.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:07:54</time>
<p>Although Block island, we talked about Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket during the Revolutionary War, Block island actually stays neutral during the Revolutionary War. They don't take a side. And they do that for their own protection because they're invaded by privateers over and over again.

And so the only way they can really protect themselves, because you see this happen on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard where they're ransacked by the other side because they've taken a side. This is the only way Black island was able to protect themselves and their people was to just not take a side.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:08:26</time>
<p>Yeah, I guess if you're not attached to the mainland, it's really hard for whatever side you would pick to defend you.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:08:32</time>
<p>Yes.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:08:33</time>
<p>So, yeah, that makes sense.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:08:34</time>
<p>Yes. But Black island, you know, it gets, it starts to get known for the seafaring life and then you get a lot of strong women energy there.

And people always ask me, why is strong women energy go hand in hand with the seafaring life? It's because the jobs, the seafaring jobs, whaling, fishing, are male dominated jobs. So you have to get on a ship and sail.

And it's not like these are day jobs, these are month jobs, year jobs. And so who's left behind are the women. And so the Women run the town.

They're going to vote, they're going to set up commerce, they're going to sell goods, they're going to run the taverns. And you're going to get a lot of this when the temperance movement starts. And we've talked about this in our Prohibition Museum podcast.

If a male in your family was to succumb to alcoholism, you'd lose a lot of your income because men made the money for the family. And if they're drinking their paycheck away, everybody's suffering. The wife, the children, sometimes they're taking care of their mother.

And so nobody is able to make a living if they're not bringing home the money.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:09:47</time>
<p>Yeah. And. And you showed video, the Rebecca at the well statue, and that was kind of. That was put up in the town, Right.

In this little kind of trafficky kind of main area as. As kind of a call to keep the men from drinking. Right. It's for horses, I think I saw somewhere online, it's for horses, for dogs and for men. Right.

And so there's. There's different spots, and horses, you know, back in the day, could drink straight out of it, but it's also.

They would encourage the men to drink water instead of drinking alcohol.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:10:16</time>
<p>Yeah. So it's. Right. Think men pull into port and they go right to the tavern. Right. Have some beer, have some ale.

So it's right there on that main road of Block island, and it was put up in 1896.

So you can imagine, like, right at the turn of the century, this is when whaling is at its highest, and it's put up by the local women's Christian temperance movement. So these women who are having a lot of informal power, are putting up this statue, Rebecca at the well.

It's a story from the Bible, but it's a water fountain. It's basically to drink water instead of beer. And so they're trying to give it option instead of the beer. And now.

Now it's just a historic statue in the middle of Block Island. They have replaced the water fountains with flowers and things like that, but it's still pretty cool.

And it ties back to this whole idea of women having a lot of influence here in Block island, because women have a lot of influence in faring life.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:11:21</time>
<p>Yeah. Now, one of the things that unfortunately, you didn't know when you.

When you went out and visited Block island the first time was that a famous woman from history, and especially a famous woman in aviation spent some time there.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:11:34</time>
<p>Yes. So I. It wasn't until my second Time there, because the first time we pulled into Block island, we pulled into Old harbor, which is that main side.

The second time we pulled into New Harbor.

New harbor is a little way from that more popular area of Black island, if you can say that, because Block island only has a thousand residents and about 20, 000 visit a day. But it's still not very popular. The Narragansett Inn in July of 1929, hosted a very famous female aviator.

Amelia Earhart had come to Block island, and she was invited there by the U.S. navy, and they wanted to test out their diving suits. So when you think of the diving bell, the big helmet and the suit, they wanted to test them out on smaller people, right?

So she's not as big as a male, so they wanted to make sure it can still fit. And so they had to adjust the. The wristbands for her and things. But she was able to walk on the floor of the Great Salt Pond, is what they call it.

That's that big opening there on Block Island. She was able to walk on the bottom of that and bring up a seashell and test it for them. So pretty famous. She got that.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:12:45</time>
<p>And you can actually, like, obviously we didn't have it in the video because you're. When you made the video the first time, you didn't know about it, otherwise you probably would have talked about it. But you can.

You can just Google Amelia Earhart, Block Island. And there's pictures of her, and it looks she's sitting in the. In the kind of dive suit, you know, with that helmet nearby and all that stuff.

It's really cool.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:13:01</time>
<p>Yeah, they say she stayed out for 12 minutes. She brought up a clam to prove that she was on the floor. And, yeah, they're very famous photographs of her.

This is before she makes her, you know, some of her bigger flight expeditions. But she says to reporters it was absolutely nothing. Many women have gone deeper and stayed longer. So I like that she's kind of humble about it.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:13:22</time>
<p>Yeah. Well, and I think about it, too, what's cool about the background and the history of that area.

It's a little bit of like the prequel to Rosie the Riveter, right? You think about World War II. The men went off to war and the women went to work. They had to make it happen and this and that.

That first kind of prime example for that, at least here in the States, is the whaling history, is Nantucket, is Block island, and all that stuff.

Now, talking about Amelia Earhart, a little bit of a rebel, and we alluded to Kind of how Block island tried to protect itself from marauders, from people coming through. So there actually is some pirate history on the island as well.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:14:08</time>
<p>Yeah. So they do a very neat job, Block island of bringing tourists to in by doing a search for these glass globes.

The locals will hide 500 glass globes all around the island. They are free for you. If you find it, you can have it. And so kind of alludes to this old history of pirates bearing their treasure there.

You're coming there to hunt for treasure. So Captain Kidd, you would know him as a Scottish privateer. So privateers are kind of balancing on that pirate.

And being a part of the Royal Navy, they're not either. Right.

What happens is the Navy will pay pirates to privateer, which means you kind of represent the Navy, but you're allowed to take your plunder, and that's how you fund yourself.

But you represent us, you defend us, and you're still trying to fight the enemy, but if you meet the enemy and you can plunder what they have, you can keep it. So that's kind of how you get paid. So that's why privateer is a little bit on that. That gray area. And Captain Kidd was a very famous one.

They say that he landed in Block island, hid some buried treasure in the late 1790s. And. And people still look for it today, so you never know.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:15:22</time>
<p>Yeah, it was really cool when you mentioned the. I think. I think Block island on their website, they've got like a city website. They call it the Glass Float Project or something like that.

And it's cool. There's. You can just. Again, another thing you can Google. But there's. There's, like, very colorful glass globes.

They call them glass floats, and they're just kind of about the size of a baseball, hollow glass. So I imagine that most of them would float in water. Some of them are plain, just clear glass. Some of them are very colorful.

And that's kind of a cool thing that they do.

And I'm sure it's a way to entice people to come back out to revisit if they want to come and look for, you know, collect another glass, a glass float for that summer, for that season. Because you can keep them.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:16:04</time>
<p>Absolutely. And I. I misspoke. Before, Captain Kidd hid his treasure in the late 1690s because he.

He's actually executed by London in 1701 because he was bad, and he actually captured a British captain. And so they were like, wait, you're just running. You're running around. So in the late 1690s, he hid treasure.

Now they, there's a story that someone had found some of it in the 1790s and there's still more out there. But no, Captain, Captain Kid was definitely gone by the 1790s. So this is the 1690s.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:16:33</time>
<p>And then with pirates, a lot of times come ghost ships and the lore around, you know, just being a sea focused location.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:16:43</time>
<p>Yes. And because this is so isolated, they have this five major shipwrecks that happened here at Block Island.

They have two lighthouses north and south of the island. And again, when we talk about females having these dominated jobs, a lot of times females worked in lighthouses because it's really just a couple.

And if the man gets sick or if the man has to go away, I mean that light has to be manned from dusk all the way to dawn. And so women would do that a lot of times. And if somebody, if a ship wrecks, one of you has to man the light and one of you has to go out and rescue.

So women sometimes would go out and rescue. That's very famous in Newport. But there's these five famous shipwrecks that happen around Block island. And one is called the Palatine Light.

And, and it's this famous ghost ship that you can see burning because the legend is there was a wreck of a Dutch immigrant ship. Again, this is time of the Dutch. The Princess Augusta in 1738 caught fire and sank near Block Island.

And so these German immigrants on the ship were from the Palatine region. So they call it the Palatine Light.

And so people will say on a Saturday between Christmas and New Year's Eve, they get reports of seeing a burning ship out off the coast of Block Island. And so people still talk about that today. There's famous ghost lore around there. I saw some books about it while I was there.

So kind of neat to visit.

It was not on my list, but I had learned more about it and since going there, it is neat because I don't think it's as touristy as Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. It seems to be the real sailors that go there because they're stopping there along the way. So it's super neat place to visit.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:18:39</time>
<p>Now one of the last things, because we've done a bunch of Jaws stuff and those videos are doing well because 50th anniversary and all that stuff. I think you had mentioned that the gentleman that inspired Quint in the movie Jaws, what was his name?</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:18:55</time>
<p>Mundus. Frank Mundus.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:18:56</time>
<p>Frank Mundus. Okay, so the.

So Frank Mundus who inspired Quint's character for the book and then ultimately the movie actually I think caught his largest shark just off of Block Island. Was that right?</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:19:09</time>
<p>So, yes, Frank Mundus Quint, like you're talking about, in 1986, he and another man caught a 3,500 pound Great White, 28 miles off of Montauk, 18 miles from Block island, still holds the record not only for the largest shark, but the largest fish of any kind ever caught by Rod and real.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:19:30</time>
<p>That's crazy.

And so obviously for those watching the video, I'll put up a picture of him and I think there's actually a picture of him after his catch because it was that 1986. 1986. So there's a picture because I've, I did it for some of our other videos, but I just thought that was so neat.

So there's Block island is this kind of tiny little, not as well known destination spot in the area, but there's a lot of history there.

And as we kind of discover throughout the podcast throughout us, getting to travel around Amelia Earhart and pirates in whaling history and some Jaws history. So it's, it was really fun to see you get to go there and just kind of like you said, wasn't on your list.

But if you're kind of considering it or if you're doing an American cruise line cruise, like this is an opportunity that you could have and go do.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:20:14</time>
<p>Yeah, it's, it's. The island is 7 miles by 3 miles. It spans a mere 10 square miles.

So there's not a lot there, but there's a lot of trails, a lot of places to walk, some great old historic hotels that you can sit at and look at the water. It really was a relaxing place. I did enjoy being at Block Island. It was like a little jewel you don't really know about.

And so it was super neat to go and visit.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:20:41</time>
<p>And so for those listening, thank you again to our regular audience. We're back at it, back recording again.

So busy season has passed and we've got some, some fun topics coming up, some fun opportunities that have opened up in the future for, for us. So for those listening, thank you for supporting us.

Please reach out to us at our website, talkwithhistory.com but more importantly, if you know someone else that might enjoy this podcast, please share it with them. That really is the best way to help us grow and we appreciate you all every day. We'll talk to you next time.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:21:08</time>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:21:09</time>
<p>This has been a Walk with History production. Talk with History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk with History is supported by our [email protected] our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug McLiberty, Larry Myers, Patrick Benny, Gail Cooper, Christy Coates, and Calvin Gifford. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player there and we'll talk to you next.</p>