“Feels like a blaze of fire.”, winter 1917-18

Excerpt from The Block Island Times, This Week in History: January 16, 1918

By Robert M. Downie

The winter of 1917-18 was the worst one in 200 years or more; the extended cold wave creating the most frigid winter of modern times.

Anyone who first experiences winter’s northwest winds on Block Island is jolted doubly – not only by the velocity, but by the moisture packed into every gust. It is not like the mainland. Even the weather forecasters’ modern-day “wind-chill charts” fail to make an accurate comparison – they allow for the wind, but not the added discomfort of the moisture.

It began on Christmas afternoon, and no thaws occurred until February 12. Both harbors froze over, which might happen every 25 or so years. But on the mainland, Narragansett Bay was frozen too, an exceedingly unusual occurrence. The most startling fact, though, is that the open ocean around Block Island turned to ice.

The country happened to be fully involved in World War I, and a full-scale naval base had been established on the island the previous summer, headquartered at the Narragansett Inn and the adjoining Payne’s dock.

The Navy’s chief medical officer, responsible for the health of some 300 sailors and nurses stationed here, wrote a heartfelt account of that severe cold of early 1918.

“No electric lights. No theaters. No trains or streetcars. On account of storms, at times we did not receive US Mail for 10 days. Third highest wind velocity in the United States. Storms of such severity, difficult to stay on the ground – rain coats of little value, had to wear oil clothing and rubber boots … Ears frost bitten. With wind blowing 76 milse and thermometer 6.5 below, feels like a blaze of fire. Woolen socks and mufflers donated by Red Cross helped some. Saw one case of frozen hands. Ice 12 inches thick on the ocean for considerable distance, no boats could land. Sick bay isolated. Flashlight used when attending emergencies …”

I have surfed a few hundred feet off the bluffs, gazing along the promontories and precipices coming successively into view the further out I go; swum in the tumbled waters at their base, snorkeled down to the rocks a few feet under the surface; sailed all along the coast, in warm weather and snowstorms, but still cannot imagine the ocean being ice. But that winter, where I have splashed summer waves skyward a thousand times, the sea was frozen, and drifted ice piled two- to eight-feet thick around the island.

The most succince visual image, though, was left by famed island ornithologist, Elizabeth Dickens, whose farm now forms the basis of the Lewis-Dickens conservation area in the island’s southwest corner.

She viewed the sea near her house with binoculars on February 6, 1918 and recorded in her diary:

“I stand on the bluff at Dickens Point at noon and look east, west, south and north with glasses and can’t see a drop of water, just one sheet of motionless ice.”