The Fuller Rock Light was a lighthouse in Providence, Rhode Island. Destroyed in an explosion, it was replaced by a skeleton tower on the same foundation.

Fuller Rock Light

1914 postcard image of Fuller Rock Light
Location	Providence River south of Kettle Point
Coordinates	41.7941°N 71.3797°W / 41.7941; -71.3797[1]
Tower
Constructed	1872
Foundation	granite pier[2]
Construction	Wood[2]
Automated	1918
Height	14 feet (4.3 m)[2]
Shape	hexagonal pyramidal tower[2]
Light
First lit	1872[3]
Deactivated	1923[3]
Focal height	28 feet (8.5 m)[3]
Lens	sixth order Fresnel lens[3]
Characteristic	Iso R 6s

History

Fuller Rock sits adjacent to the channel in the Providence River, and as shipping traffic grew in the 1800s attention was drawn to improving navigational aids for the port.[4] An 1870 congressional appropriation provided for three lights in the area: one for Fuller Rock, another further upstream at Sassafras Point, and a third downstream at Pomham Rocks.[4] The last reused the design of the Colchester Reef Light in Vermont, but the other two were built to a much simpler plan for a short wooden tower resting on a granite pier.[4] These lights lacked dwellings; the keeper lived on shore and had to approach the lights by boat in order to tend them.[4] Funds were provided for a keeper's dwelling but property nearby could not be secured.[2]

Maintenance of the structure was a problem from early on, and 1879 the Lighthouse Board reported that the tower showed "considerable evidence of decay."[4] A request to appropriate funds to replace it with an iron tower, however, was not heeded.[4] In 1889 some repairs to the foundation were made including repointing of the pier and dumping of additional riprap at its base.[4]

Staffing this light was difficult and at least three keepers served no more than a year, so it was an early candidate for automation.[4] In 1918 it was converted to an automated acetylene beacon, with responsibility for its maintenance passing to the Pomham Rocks keeper.[4] This beacon would prove its undoing. On February 4, 1923, the tender Pansy brought a crew to replace the acetylene tanks. In the course of the work the old tanks exploded, injuring five of the men, though with no fatalities.[2][4] The tower, however, was completely destroyed. A skeleton tower was erected on the old pier; this was replaced in 1997 with a shorter tower on the same foundation.[4]

References