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Close your eyes and imagine it: you wake up disoriented, covered in sand and seaweed, hand shading your eyes as the blinding sun beats down. Squinting, you look out to see the ocean stretching out endlessly on all sides. The only sounds you hear are waves softly dissolving on the shore and the cries of birds circling nearby.
You are … ( cue the dramatic music) … STRANDED on a desert island!
It’s a fantasy we’ve all flirted with after a long day of traffic, work, small talk, doomscrolling and all of the other stressors of modern life — what would it be like to be alone and unreachable, unavoidably surrounded by nature and the sea?
This is the inaugural column of Treasures, a celebration of all things that make the New Bedford area special. If you have a place or event that you’d like us to explore, send an email to tips@newbedfordlight.org.
For a small taste of this romantic whimsy, there’s Palmer’s Island off the entrance to the New Bedford Harbor in the city’s South End, our own little nod to the strangeness of the sea.
There’s nothing particularly unique about an island off the coast of Massachusetts — we have well over 1,000 of them, and there are at least 2,000 up and down the Northeast shore.
But Palmer’s Island has a nifty little hook — it is accessible by a small sandy strip from land, but only during the two hours around low tide.
As the water rises, the sand disappears below, so if you’re not prepared, or if you linger too long, you’ll wind up, you guessed it …
STRANDED!
Sort of. The edge of Palmer’s Island is only a few feet from a paved road, and even at high tide it’s certainly crossable in a pinch. And as for solitude, there’s not much of that either — you can hear sirens and the beeping of heavy machinery from the New Bedford waterfront and there are signs of human life everywhere you look. So it’s a pretty soft battle for survival.
Still, no one wants to have to wade through ice cold ocean, hence the first step in planning your visit is to consult the tide chart. If you know next to nothing about tides, you learn that they are predictable but variable. You can know exactly when low tide will be at a specific coordinate on a specific day, but the actual time of day changes throughout the week/month/year/etc.
After checking the weather and the tides, a pleasantly cool fall Wednesday morning visit with a 9:07 a.m. tide estimate seems smart. You park at the bottom of Gifford Street in New Bedford and walk on the access road beneath the wall of the hurricane dike, getting a look at the absolutely massive equipment at the wind turbine facility looming to your left.
After a short walk, there you are, and sure enough the sandy area in question is intact and ready for adventurers.
The beauty of Palmer’s Island
A small sign greets you at the base of the island’s small hill, a mix of welcome and warning. It mentions the issue of the tides, along with the presence of rash-inducing plant life and the poisonous quality of the shellfish thanks to PCB contamination.
There are a couple of benches to sit on and ponder what it would be like to live here.
As a plot point in literature, the desert island story dates back at least 1,000 years, peaking with “Robinson Crusoe” and “Lord of the Flies,” enhanced by many canonical entries in TV and movies; “Gilligan’s Island,” “Lost,” “Cast Away,” etc.
Whether you’re with a group of sitcom misfits or alone with only a volleyball for company, how to survive your situation is top priority. What do you eat? Where do you sleep? How can you protect yourself from the elements?
Walking up the path to the top of Palmer’s Island on this particular November day with those questions on your mind, you see that someone has already figured that out.
As you climb the rock face toward the apex of the hill with the assistance of a series of ropes, you see some unexpected sights. First, a small grill, then several trash bags of clothing. Then, tucked between bushes, invisible from sea level, a blue tarp.
PLOT TWIST!
You freeze and ponder the possibilities of the situation. Clear your throat loudly and see if someone emerges? Backtrack quietly back down the hill and depart the island altogether in hopes of avoiding an unpredictable situation?
In the end it’s a compromise — you walk past the tarp to the peak to take a few pictures of the island below, not hiding your presence but not announcing it. Then you head down the side trail to explore the rest of the terrain, leaving it a mystery in keeping with the theme of the day.
The side of the island facing the Fairhaven waterfront has a thin strip of beach and several large pockets of mussels — they would be awfully tempting after a few days stranded, toxic or not.
The beach on the New Bedford side is much larger, but the search for aesthetically pleasing shells, rocks and sea glass is a bit of a bust. More interesting is the variety of weather-beaten trash that has found a permanent home stuck in the thick brush.
There are a mismatched pair of fisherman’s gloves that look surprisingly intact, various beer cans, soda bottles, blunt wrappers and marijuana preroll tubes. America runs on Dunkin’, but discarded Cumberland Farms coffee containers outnumber Dunkin’ by an unofficial count of 5 to 3.
There are enough oddities that it’s reasonable to wonder if you’ll stumble upon some unique treasure, but there’s no resale market for the two most interesting items found — an oversized green comb and a plastic bag full of paper clips.
A rock wall leads you to the small 24-foot lighthouse on the northern tip of the island, built in 1849. This was an important landmark in the whaling era, and the island housed an amusement park and living quarters during the boom times. But the lighthouse went dark with the building of the hurricane wall in the 1960s; its front door is now covered with graffiti and locked to the public.
At only six acres, it’s less than a mile of walking to see the whole island, although if you brought a lawn chair and a lunch it’d be a nice place to enjoy the ocean without much interruption.
Exploring the island
Click photos for captions
Because the rising of sea levels is a well-known worry, it’s a bit surprising that the Palmer’s Island of today probably isn’t too different from what it was in 1925 — or in 1825, or 1725, for that matter.
According to our own New Bedford Light reporting, the sea level here has risen less than a foot in the last 100 years, and probably only two feet in the last 300.
The future Palmer’s Island, however, is likely to be changed more drastically. If the rate of rise is significantly higher over the next 25 years — which is quite likely according to the much smarter people that study such things — it will likely be up another foot.
That would probably result in more urgency to get on and off during the lowest tide, but at worst you could get from the edge of land to the island with rolled up pant legs.
As for 50 years after that, in the impossible but inevitable year of 2100, it’s pointless to even hazard a guess as to what the state of humanity and the earth will be.
But here in 2025, a trip to Palmer’s island is uncomplicated and unpretentious. You just have to wear a comfortable pair of shoes, consult the tide chart and the weather map, make sure you check the time, and see what happens.
And if what happens is absolutely nothing?
All the better.
Jonathan Comey is a decorated newspaper editor and columnist and a contributor to The New Bedford Light. Please send emails to him at jcomey@newbedfordlight.org.
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Palmer’s Island should have been acquired by the city and sold to a developer for a hotel and marina.
That was a great article! Fro someone who’s been raised in new Bedford I’ve never been but will soon go now! Ty for that Jonathan comey!
Loved this!
Wonderful to learn about this somewhat accessible spot. Thanks for the interpretive tour!
Your article in New Bedford Light didn’t mention any of its past history. In a Standard-Times article of October 22, 1944, it mentioned that the island got its name from William Palmer who was scalped by the Indians back when the area was being settled.
About 1868 a house and a dance hall was erected, with a wharf extended out from the west side of the island to accommodate access. In the course of time the resort “gained an unsavory reputation” and was given up as an amusement center.
In 1890 the island was revived with the addition of bowling alleys and tents set up in order to host clambakes. Numerous organizations, including some of the early unions, held meetings there.
When that venture eventually failed, the island was sold to a gentleman named Abbot Smith who renovated the house and made it his summer home until it was sold in 1903 to the mill corporations located in the area.
An attempt by the Standard-Times to purchase the island and connect it to the mainland with fill for possible use as an airfield in 1944 came to no avail.
And, of course, the famous story of the lighthouse keeper’s wife, Mrs. Arthur Small, who died during the 1938 hurricane, swept out to sea.
The tile patio of Small’s house remains and is surrounded by flowers in the spring
Thank you to Donald Saulnier for your history fill in! The William Palmer you referred to was actually my 11th ggfather! Yes, he was scalped by the Indians on his way back from a meeting in Plymouth. He was trying to get with his wife and kids, who were at John Cooke’s garrison in what is now Fairhaven. He and John were good friends. They were both kids of prominent Plymouth Newcomers. King Philip’s War was breaking out at the time, and William was being pursued. It is said that he hid out on the Island on his way to his family, and that he barely got to the Fairhaven area when he was ambushed. Maybe that’s why the island ended up being used for captured Indians. It is also said that Palmer’s Island was a wedding gift to William and his wife from John Cooke, as he liked to acquire islands. I believe John was Francis Cooke’s son. John had started to preach, and he believed in full immersion baptism as he interpreted the Bible, and he and William left the Pilgrim way to become “Baptists”. My family have been Baptist Protestants ever since.
Glad you enjoyed the tour. Operation Clean Sweep has removed debris off Palmer for over 7 years and will continue to do so. It’s a beautiful island.
Been to Palmers many times, even before the dike was built. Clams ,quohogs could be eaten right out of the water because the water was so clean back then. Great memorys of the dike being built then when you could look down and watch workers building the foundations and the huge doors below the water line. They also built a tunnel so you could go from one side to the other and as kids we would sneak across when the workers went home, great memorys.
There’s a tunnel there?!
My family is from New Bedford, although most have passed or left. I spend late summer into fall at a cottage in Fairhaven and enjoy these local places and “nooks and crannies”. Palmer Island is a place I would love to explore. Thanks for this article!