BI?s noteworthy pilot, Tal Dodge
By Robert M. Downie

A proud Captain William ?Tal? Dodge in 1926 at the age of 65.

American Heritage Dictionary: "Pilot ? One who, though not belonging to a ship?s company, is licensed to conduct a ship into and out of port or through dangerous waters."

Few Block Islanders, particularly crusty old ones, are likely to be mentioned in the polished writings of the famed New Yorker magazine. But Tal Dodge was in 1936:

"Tal Dodge sits in a chair up on the dirt sidewalk, about 10 feet from the statue. Tal is small and bent and brown, with white-tufted eyebrows and a dash of tobacco juice on his thrusting chin. When you jump to evade the rotary traffic, you land right by Tal ...

"If you are new to the island, you pause to chart a course. Then Tal has you."

Tal Dodge?s former home on High Street. Photo by RMD

The noted writer for the New Yorker, A. J. Liebling, was describing the way mainlanders often ended up being shanghaied to stay at Tal?s home, the small bed and breakfast behind the theater, that is still called Dodge Cottage.

Tal was just as adept, though, at snagging passing ships ? acting as their official pilot to escort them up Narragansett Bay to the port of Providence. That was his game, and that eventually was his fame.

In those days, the first licensed pilot to flag down a ship would "win" the job of taking it into harbor and for Tal any maritime trick he might think of would be used. Once, spotting an incoming three-masted schooner, Tal jumped off the Block Island ferry he was riding and swam over to get the fat commission.

On his 70th birthday in 1930, he led a steamer carrying 6,000 tons of coal to Providence in the dark and in the fog, well before the invention of radar.

One day he and son Truman each led their own Standard Oil Company tanker from Block Island up Narragansett Bay ? an unusual spectacle in the world of piloting. Even more uncommon was that Tal was the oldest active pilot in Rhode Island, and Truman, then 22 years old, was the youngest pilot in the world.

Pilots were paid according to the depth of water a ship drew. As the New Yorker put it: "Tal would go halfway to Europe for deep-draught vessels." He and other pilots played a guessing contest, calculating the tides and winds from a ship?s last known position, and trying to intercept it first to get the job. Tal usually did it best. He and Truman would often motor out in their fishing boat on the prowl, far to sea. If he was in search of a French ship he?d take a basket of lobsters, and invariably receive an extra-special welcome of Roquefort cheese and sardines.

For several years Tal?s dog Mutt traveled along too, to be hoisted in his own sling up the sides of ships that were several stories high. Then Truman would take the fishing boat back 40 or 50 miles to Block Island.

A competitor tried to beat him at the game once, heading out early on a stormy night. No one has seen him or his boat since.

Another competitor who had been out-smarted many times at getting to a ship first grumbled about the fact that Tal?s dog was also getting to ships ahead of all the other pilots: "Mutt just adds insult to injury."

The mainland pilots formed a pool and had Rhode Island politicians make a rule that only members could take piloting jobs, and that those jobs would be apportioned on a rotating basis. Not-so-strangely, the six-member pool did not include Tal. Why should he join and be limited to only one out of six ships, when once he had gotten five out of seven ocean liners?

As for experience and moral right to continue piloting, Tal had taken more ships in and out of Narragansett Bay than all six of the pool pilots combined. He had a license, so he just ignored the pool.

Instead of seeming to be the big bully picking on the less-talented, Tal won the admiration of Rhode Islanders ? and those elsewhere who read the New Yorker ? as the little guy standing up to the big meanies.

In 1926, when Tal was 65, the headline at the top of a page in the Providence Journal blared "Tal Dodge Declares War on Jamestown ?Mud Pilots.?" Jamestown is in Narragansett Bay and as islands go isn?t much of one, being connected to the mainland by bridges. Though the exact meaning of "Mud Pilots" is lost now, it was surely a disparaging term. The sub-headline read "Old-Timer coming back to show ?em." Another name for his mainland competition was "River Pilots" ? presumably also uncomplimentary.

Tal?s maritime legacy was long, and he would not be pushed around. By 1926 he had been piloting for 47 years. His father, Joshua, had brought ships into the bay for 56 years, and had received the very first Rhode Island state pilot?s license in 1867. Tal?s brother, Darius, had piloted for 40 years. And another brother, Uriah, put in 35 years. Beside Truman, Tal had another son, Earl, a Brown University graduate in civil engineering, and former ensign in the Navy, who was a licensed master of any size ship, on any ocean, anywhere in the world.

Did someone from a town in the nearly land-locked Narragansett Bay think he was going to tell the Dodges they couldn?t pilot a ship? Of the 27 licensed pilots in Rhode Island in 1896, eight were from Block Island ? and of those eight, six were named Dodge.

Tal told a Providence Journal reporter in 1926 that if necessary he?d take a submarine to reach an incoming ship first. And he would show anyone the more than 200 recommendations from ship captains vouching for his prowess in knowing every inch of the bay.

At the age of 72, Tal was, for a time, confined to a wheelchair. Although he could still hold forth with guests on the Dodge Cottage verandah, his piloting trips ceased for five years. But he couldn?t be restrained, and with the help of a cane went back to sea at 77 ? the lure of beating the pool pilots, and doing the job, being more important to him than all else.

In 1940, shortly before his 80th birthday, Capt. Tal Dodge died in bed.

But, as Tal?s life was measured by the sea, you might instead say that he died 71 years after his first piloting experience when, at the age of nine, he was put aboard a whaler with his father, bound for a safe harbor.