LITTLE COMPTON — Briggs Beach manager Ron Bogle got word about 10 days ago that a dead humpback whale was bobbing toward Rhode Island.

On Saturday, Bogle said, his brother-in-law reported seeing the whale from a boat in Rhode Island Sound, and on Sunday bathers on the private beach that Bogle said has been in his mother’s family since 1683 watched the carcass drift across the cove between Briggs Point and Warren Point.

The whale, which Bogle estimated to be 25 to 30 feet long and to weigh between 2 and 3 tons, floated in shallow water Monday, its head pointing out to sea.

Bogle and the stranding team from the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration had hoped that Monday’s midday high tide would deposit it on sand, but high tide came and went without beaching the whale.

Ted Wardell, a Little Compton resident who works as a carpenter for the Briggs Beach association, predicted that it would take a heavy surf at high tide to lift the behemoth onto dry sand.

Wardell remembered the last time a whale washed up on the beach, about five or six years ago, he said. They tried dragging the beast with their biggest piece of earth-moving equipment, but it didn’t budge. The best they could do, he said, was to dig a hole next to the whale until the sand collapsed and allowed the carcass to roll into the hole. Then they covered it with sand.

Peter McKendall, 11, and his mother, Kathleen McKendall, of Providence, arrived to take photos for their Little Compton beach house. The Moses Brown student was astonished at what the ocean had delivered. “It’s so graceful and beautiful,” he said. “It’s a life opportunity for me.”

He said he hoped the whale would find a peaceful resting place.

Four little girls in pink arrived, holding their noses. They had walked the a half-mile stretch of beach with their mothers, a little brother who was interested in everything but the whale, and a little sister who had to be carried. As they regrouped upwind of the stink, Sophie Yates, 8, stood at the water line and made entries into her notebook. Jack Campbell, 60, has spent the last 37 summers as a lifeguard at Briggs Beach. He took a long look. “Better now than next week,” he said.

The summer crush begins on Saturday, when the beach officially opens. With any luck, the carcass by then will be measured, buried and transformed into a fresh tale.

dnaylor@projo.com