Newport’s early shipping hero

Lolita Harper

He has been called a protector of the city’s beauty. A folk hero. A

legend.

He was Thomas Rule and his tale has left its mark in Newport

Beach’s history.

Rule was the right hand man of Robert McFadden and kept the books

and handled the cargo, according to excerpts from “Newport Beach, The

First Century.”

Newport Beach’s poet laureate T. Duncan Stewart memorialized the

legendary Rule in a poem, fittingly titled, “The Legend of Thomas

Rule.”

In the second stanza, Stewart describes Rule as “a hero from the

Civil War, a Christian man, devout and fair, for strength few men

could reach his par, few weights were more than he could bear.”

Rule was immortalized for his courage, as he embodied that trait

to his death. In fact, he died while bravely risking the hazardous

bay channel in preparation of the ship, the Newport.

The Newport would come into the harbor faithfully every two weeks,

crossing the sand bar only at high tide, Ellen K. Lee wrote in the

first chapter of “Newport Beach, The First Century.” When the boat

was teeming with supplies, lighters or barges were floated out to

unload the boat when it was too heavy to enter the bay.

On July 26, 1887, Rule drowned while marking the bay channel for

the next arrival of the Newport. It has been often said that the

tragic drowning of Rule was the last straw in convincing the McFadden

brothers to move their shipping wharf from the inner shores of the

bay to the oceanfront.

And so, the construction of the famous McFadden Wharf began,

complete with a railway inland to Santa Ana, and the city’s rich

enterprise took off.

“Rule was known for his courage, his feats, his strength, his love

of cider and his genial nature,” Lee wrote.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a legend as, “a notable

person whose deeds or exploits are much talked about in his or her

own time.” Looking back at Rule, it seems the stalwart reaches the

benchmark in Newport Beach.

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