THE SEA ISLAND HURRICANES

In August 1893 a major hurricane, known as the "Sea Islands Hurricane" struck the offshore barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina. Over 1,000 people were killed (mostly by drowning); and 30,000 or more were left homeless as nearly every building along the barrier islands was damaged beyond repair. After the disaster, a 10-month relief effort was run by the American Red Cross.

from Scribner's Magazine, February 1894 

The year of our Lord eighteen hundred and ninety-three will long be remembered as the year of storms. Inland gales rose and blew furiously southward. Cyclones rushed out of the tropics and raged northward. Hurricanes plunged through the Mexican Gulf and shook the southern region. Tornadoes crashed along the Atlantic coast, carrying death and destruction with them. The memory of the oldest inhabitant fails him when he tries to recall such another year of storms. The records show no parallel to it. And the storms themselves have wrought unprecedented destruction to life and property.

These elemental disturbances are confined to no particular area, as the oldest inhabitant will tell you. Their feeding-grounds are in the tropical seas, the treacherous West Indian waters - but when they gather strength and gain bulk, they rush madly forth, describing vast circles, or tearing straight ahead until they exhaust themselves. They sweep along the coasts, or go raging inland, sometimes in the shape of a whirling cyclone, and sometimes in the shape of a roaring hurricane. And the effects of them are felt hundreds of miles in all directions, even when they fail to break across the coast-line barriers; for the inland winds that are roguishly playing rock-a-bye baby in the tree-tops are keen for a frolic, and no sooner do they feel that preparations for one are going forward in the tropics than they hurry to join and feed the monstrous riot of the elements. And so wildly do they rush and tear along in their haste to become part of the whirl and swirl in the tropics, that trees and houses fall before them. This sweep of the inland winds to the central disturbance, or to the mad vacuum behind it, is usually described as a storm, but the frolicsome gales that form it are merely feeders of the real storm.

On the morning of the 28th of last August, a heavy gale arose in Atlanta, coming out of the northwest. It increased steadily until its velocity reached fifty miles an hour.  

"Savannah was more directly in the path of the storm, and the Sea Islands, that lie between that city and Charleston, were exposed to the full fury of the tempest."

With less steadiness this gale would have been dangerous to life and property, but it rose slowly, maintained its greatest velocity for some hours, and then gradually subsided. The heel of the weathervane, veering slowly from the southeast to the east, pointed in the direction of the great disturbance, central in the Bahamas, and heading for the Atlantic coast. The gale that passed over Atlanta was rushing to that center and feeding the tremendous hurricane that swept up the South Atlantic coast during the night and fell upon the Sea Islands.

II

A YEAR of storms! The August hurricane - the October tornado that followed in the hurricane's track - the October cyclone that swept down upon the Gulf coast! It is a record full of the horror of death and devastation! Of the Gulf cyclone not much need be said. It may be disposed of as it disposed of its hundreds of victims, briefly. It was the intention of this investigating expedition to treat of the great Gulf whirlwind at some length - to unravel some of the storm-twisted details -  but little was left to treat of. The record of the cyclone is as brief as it is awful. It swept down upon the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and the island homes of the fishermen, wiped out the population, swallowed the boats and the luggers, stripped the land bare, and so disappeared. That is the whole story shorn of its ghastly particulars.

Scarcely a bush or a tree was left for charity to hang her gray hood upon, and it is said of those who were swift to carry succor there, that they wandered about aimlessly in the waste places, finding only a few lonely and heart-broken young men to call upon them for aid. The Chandeliers, Cheniere Caminada, and Grand Island were struck with the force and fury of a titanic explosion, and when all was over the few cripples that crawled from the dire wreck, and the fewer who had saved themselves in rafts or by clinging to trees, were not able to bury the dead that lay in ghastly and festering heaps around them. That is the brief record of the storm. Even now, those who have had an opportunity to measure its results, say that in that region there has never been anything comparable to this awful calamity since the country was settled. It stands unparalleled in its completeness. In the track of the cyclone everything was wrecked. Nearly two thousand people were killed and five million dollars worth of property blown as it were from the face of the earth. A similar disaster on the Gulf coast caused the death of 286 persons, and six years ago 220 lives were lost in the storm that struck Johnston's Bayou. But in the October storm that fell on the coast and islands of the region that lies between Lake Borgne and the Gulf, 1,972 lives were lost.

Continued ...

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |Next>>