Mary Ferrazzoli (1928-1994) founded the Friends of the Waterfront in 1982 and became a leading advocate for public access to Newport’s waterfront, opposing commercial overdevelopment that blocked public rights of way, while the organization continued working to protect access and pursue a Harbor Walk. Long Wharf and the wharves south of it were a center of expanding commerce from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century, helping make Newport one of colonial America’s top five ports before the War for Independence; Long Wharf itself once extended westward into the harbor until the basin on its north side was filled by 1907, creating the filled land there today. At Gravelly Point on July 19, 1723, a gallows was erected and 23 pirates from the Ranger were hanged after the ship’s capture by HMS Greyhound on June 14, 1723, following an eight-hour battle east of Long Island, and after a July 10, 1723 trial in Newport; these executions were the largest mass public execution in American history, and the mostly teenage and young adult pirates were buried between high and low water marks. On March 6, 1781, George Washington arrived at the head of Long Wharf to meet Comte de Rochambeau, whose troops had been brought to Newport by a French squadron under Admiral de Ternay on July 11, 1780; after Washington’s formal reception, the allied American and French forces later joined with Admiral de Grasse’s fleet at Yorktown, trapping Cornwallis and forcing his surrender in October 1781, effectively ending the American War for Independence. In the early 1800s, steamboats began replacing sailing sloops for freight and passenger travel, and with the completion of the railroad from Boston to Fall River in 1845 and the maiden voyage of Bay State in May 1847, the Fall River Line became an important fast passenger and freight route; by 1885 Metropolis set a speed record on the Fall River to New York run, and after the Old Colony Railroad reached Newport in 1862, Long Wharf became a busy transfer point, especially when winter ice from 1918 to 1936 forced the line’s terminus to Newport, until the line ended after a 1937 labor strike during the Depression. To the west, State Pier #9 was rebuilt and renamed the Louis Jagschitz State Pier on October 20, 2002; it serves commercial fishing boats as the Newport area’s only state-owned commercial pier and honors Louis Jagschitz, “Louie the Lobsterman,” who died on June 30, 2001 at age 80 after a life spent working the waters of Narragansett Bay.
