Editor’s note: This interview was conducted by email.
Thanks, Sean and Michael for joining us at Ocean State Stories. Sean, you are the executive director of the Rose Island Lighthouse & Fort Hamilton Trust, so we are essentially neighbors! Let’s start with an overview of the island and lighthouse today. To familiarize the unfamiliar, we’d like to note that the island is located in the East Passage of Narragansett Bay, just south of the Pell/Newport Bridge. Here’s a video you provided us:
Guests can visit the island for the day during the high season. Some details please, Sean.
O’Connor: Absolutely! From mid-May thru Mid-October the Jamestown-Newport Ferry includes Rose Island as 1 of the 5 stops on their hop-on/hop-off ferry service. The other stops are Jamestown (East Ferry Wharf), Fort Adams, and Anne Street Pier and Perotti Park in Newport.
In addition to the ferry fare, visitors pay a $12 landing fee to come on to Rose Island where they can take a guided tour of our grounds and historic lighthouse and Fort Hamilton Barracks. Kids 5 and over and adults also have the option to climb the lighthouse tower. Some people are repeat visitors and rather than a tour, they prefer to picnic on the beach or sit in our Adirondack chairs or some other kind of relaxing with incredible views of Newport Harbor and the Pell Bridge.
People can also bring small watercraft onto the island (kayaks, dinghies, etc). They can pay the per person landing fee in our island gift shop. We can’t allow tie ups to our dock, as we have our own launch boat and the ferry coming in and out. But touch-and-go drop off/pick ups of people are okay. And if pulling your watercraft onto the beach, just do so just east or west of the main dock.
Much of the island’s 18 acres is closed for bird nesting season (March 1 – August 15), but after August 15 visitors are welcome to walk the full perimeter of the island.
Guests can also overnight in the lighthouse, the adjacent Foghorn Room, and the nearby Fort Hamilton Barracks. Again the details, please, Sean.
O’Connor: Staying overnight on Rose Island is such a unique, special experience like no other. All of our guests are given a tour of the property and learn about our island systems and really become the keepers for the night. Groups can stay on the first or second floor of the lighthouse, or the adjacent foghorn cottage. We also have a room in the historic barracks. Often a group of family and friends will rent all 4 island accommodations at one time for a special experience.
There’s a lot of ins and outs of what you need to bring for an overnight stay, what you should leave behind, etc., so I recommend reading through our webpage for more information. We pick up overnight guests from Fort Adams most times of year for the 12 minute boat ride out to Rose Island.
It’s also important to note that we are completely “off the grid” on Rose Island, meaning we’re not connecting to an outside electrical network or water / sewer system. We produce our own electricity on the island with a solar panel installation and occasionally use our backup generator when needed. And we collect rainwater for use in our plumbing in 3 different cisterns (including one in the lighthouse basement, an original part of the design).
Newport This Week recently published a story about a research project titled “From Forts to Feathers: Rose Island’s Past, Present, and Future.” Tell us how it started and give us an overview, Michael.
Simpson: The “From Forts to Feathers” project emerged from the desire of the Rose Island Lighthouse and Fort Hamilton Trust (RILFHT) to tell the full story of the island, one that encompasses not only its more traditional military and maritime past, but also its lesser-told Indigenous presence, environmental significance, and current role as a site of education and conservation. This research seeks to connect the island’s layered history with its present-day responsibility as both a wildlife refuge and heritage destination. The ultimate goal is to create a cohesive narrative that reflects centuries of human and natural interaction with the island.
Who is involved in the project?
Simpson: The project is being managed by a team of historians and preservationists, led by RILFHT’s Executive Director, Sean O’Connor. Following the successful award of a grant from Rhode Island Commerce, the Trust was able to hire two additional staff members to research, conceive, and implement the project’s deliverables.
Trinity Kendrick, M.S., holds a Master’s in Preservation Practices from Roger Williams University and currently serves as Special Projects Coordinator for the Newport Historical Society. She was hired as the Trust’s Museum Research Coordinator. Michael Simpson, M.A., A.M., holds graduate degrees in History from New York University and Brown University and currently teaches U.S. History at Johnson & Wales University. He was hired as the Trust’s Public History Program Coordinator.
Additionally, the Trust is partnering with a range of educators and institutions, including the Public Archaeology Lab, Newport Historical Society, Naval War College, Fort Adams Trust, and the Tomaquag Museum.
Where is the research being conducted?
Simpson: Primary research is being conducted at local archives across Rhode Island, especially at the Newport Historical Society and, more recently, the Naval War College. Online research is facilitated through digital collections maintained by the Rhode Island State Archives and Newport Public Library.
To ensure an ethnohistorical approach, and with the help of additional grant funding we hope to receive, archaeological research will be conducted in collaboration with the Public Archaeology Lab. The most recent formal archaeological survey of the island dates back to 1985. RILFHT hopes to begin a new phase using ground-penetrating radar and metal detectors to identify sites of significance for future excavation, an effort that may provide critical context often absent from traditional historical sources.
When will it conclude?
Simpson: The project will roll out in phases through the end of 2025, with public exhibits and educational content launching in the fall. However, as with any living site of historical and ecological significance, the work of interpretation and stewardship will extend well beyond this research cycle. Good history takes time, like the difference between fast food and fine dining. Ideally, the project will continue with the support of ongoing grant and donor funding. The possibilities for preserving and expanding Rose Island’s historical narrative are limited only by the resources available to support them.
What is the Indigenous history of the island?
Simpson: The Narragansett name for the island is Connockonoquit, and part of our research this summer includes working with Narragansett and Wampanoag language experts to formally translate the name. Indigenous naming practices often reflect the resources or characteristics of a place, unlike English settler traditions of naming sites after people or places in Europe. A translation may reveal how the island was used by Native peoples for generations.
Let’s drill down into some of the specifics. We write regularly about Native Americans at Ocean State Stories (and Lorén M. Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum, recently elected to the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, is on our Advisory Board). What is the Indigenous history of the island?
While the 1985 archaeological survey uncovered no Indigenous artifacts, the Trust hopes that a new survey, conducted in consultation with Indigenous cultural specialists, may help address this absence. Historical evidence indicates that the island and its surrounding waters were used seasonally for fishing, shellfishing, and gathering. Although no large settlements have been found, the island’s proximity to Narragansett and Aquidneck Islands suggests it was part of a broader cultural and subsistence landscape that long predates Dutch and English colonization. We are honored to work alongside institutions like the Tomaquag Museum to ensure these histories are shared with accuracy and respect.
And the early colonial history?
Simpson: In the mid-17th century, the island changed hands through a series of land transfers involving colonial figures such as Peleg Sanford, Caleb Carr, and Benedict Arnold (grandfather of the later Revolutionary general). The island was referred to using both English and Narragansett names and became part of the contested colonial landscape of early Rhode Island.
One notable land deed documents a transaction between Narragansett Great Sachem Pessicus and Peleg Sanford on May 1, 1675, just as King Philip’s War was beginning. In the 18th century, the island was owned by Daniel Goddard, a Jamestown-born shipwright and ancestor to one of the Goddard-Townsend furniture making families of Newport.
What was the island’s role in the Revolutionary War?
Simpson: Rose Island was fortified during the Revolutionary War. In 1778, British forces constructed a small fort on the island to defend Narragansett Bay from the French Navy. After the British abandoned it, the French established their own fortifications there in 1780 during their occupation of Aquidneck Island. These were later followed by American efforts to construct what became Fort Hamilton as part of the First System of coastal defenses, initiated by President John Adams. The fort included the first bombproof barracks built in the United States, completed in 1798.
Today, Fort Hamilton remains in its original 18th-century form—one of the few surviving examples of a site successively fortified by three nations: Britain, France, and the United States.
What about the more recent military legacy?
Simpson: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Rose Island became part of the U.S. Navy’s coastal defense network. The bombproof barracks were repurposed as part of the Naval Torpedo Station headquartered on nearby Goat Island. During World War II, the island was used for torpedo storage and munitions. Just as it had been in earlier centuries, the island remained integrated into a larger regional defense system, this time industrial as well as military.
What is the environmental history?
Simpson: The environmental history of Rose Island predates all human presence. Thousands of years ago, what is now Narragansett Bay was a network of rivers; rising sea levels eventually submerged the landscape and created the islands we know today.
In the modern era, Rose Island has become an important nesting site in the region for sea birds, especially gulls, glossy ibis, and oystercatchers. In fact, it was the presence of these birds and the need to protect their habitat that sparked the movement to preserve the Fort Hamilton barracks and wildlife refuge section of the island. As we often say on the island, “It was the birds who saved it.”
Today, the island serves as a living laboratory for conservation, and recent studies by graduate students from Salve Regina University continue to expand our knowledge of local bird populations and ecological dynamics.
Newport This Week notes that the fruits of this labor will be shared through public exhibitions, digital content and educational programming. Can you please elaborate?
Simpson: Beginning in fall 2025, the Trust will unveil a new interpretive exhibit in the Barracks Museum titled In Peace and At War, which explores the island’s diverse roles, not only as a military post but also as a 19th-century cholera quarantine hospital. The exhibit will feature both analog and digital elements to ensure accessibility to both on-island visitors and online audiences. We are planning a series of public lectures that will share our findings as they emerge.
Anything else you want to share?
Simpson: Rose Island can be thought of as a microcosm of Rhode Island’s history and its layers of conflict and cooperation, exploitation and conservation, resilience and renewal. Through this project, we hope to honor all who have shaped the island’s past and invite the public to help imagine its future.
Earlier this year, we were awarded a grant from the RI Council for the Humanities to work more with local educators to integrate Rose Island history into their classrooms and to keep our temporary staff on through the end of the year. Unfortunately due to unforeseen cuts at the federal level from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), that grant award was rescinded.
More support is needed to continue this research and work beyond early fall 2025, so we invite those interested to reach out to learn more or donate by visiting roseisland.org/donate
