JPG Magazine: Stories: Photo Essay: Watch Hill Wanderings

Watch Hill Wanderings

The Harkness "summer cottage" watches over one of its new neighbors

By John Linton

16 April 2008

Watch Hill is one of Westerly's beach communities that stretch out along that part of the Atlantic know as the Block Island Sound. It was a sleepy little village until the end of the 19th century when the well to do who couldn't get into Newport, RI's exclusive setting discovered it. Down came the hotels and up went the "summer cottages." In time they even built "cottages" on Napatree Point, a narrow dunes that separated Little Narragansett Bay from the Atlantic.

As I walked along the dunes taking pictures I thought of that day in the late summer of 1938 when the hurricane hit and washed what was left of the Napatree Point "cottages" across Little Narragansett Bay and onto the shores of Stonington, CT. All but the plumbing, which settled in that part of Little Narragansett Bay that is still called the Kitchen Sink.

As the sun sank in the sky I finally tried taking my camera off auto and switching to AV. I seemed to vaguely remember my photography instructor once saying it might be a good idea to try taking some pictures on a high f setting so I cranked it to f22-as far as it would go-and took some shots of the setting sun, but I digress. Actually, I don't get the whole f thing, I mean tiny lens opening, big number, big lens opening, tiny number, who ever dreamed this system up must have suffered from a form of Dyscalculia, but I digress about my digression. Now where was I?

Oh, yes, back to the filthy rich and their immaculate "cottages." Being the off-season I could wander the beach by the private cabanas, across the perfectly green lawn of one of the immaculate "cottages" and down the narrow winding road to Watch Hill Lighthouse, a photographer's wet...er...perhaps I shouldn't go there.

After a few shots of the Watch Hill Yacht Club and shops, I took a few more shots of the setting sun and called it an evening. If it was summer the little cannon located on the Watch Hill Yacht Club premises would have fired.

When I got home and uploaded the pictures into iPhoto I soon realized that photographing at the beach can dirty your sensor.