p. 122 | TWO GREAT STORMS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1877

TWO GREAT STORMS.

[Perhaps some of the readers of the Review will be interested in the following from the Cornhill Magazine. It seems more remarkable, as the first of the great storms occurred in 1780, the same year with the Dark Day. These remarkable signs of the end of time were only five years, or about that time, from the date of the great earthquake in Lisbon. W. P.]

The most terrible storm which has, perhaps, ever occurred is that which has been called the Great Storm. It occurred, or rather its worst effects were experienced, on October 10, 1780. Generated probably in mid-Atlantic, not far from the equator, it was first felt in Barbadoes, where trees and houses were blown down. Capt. Maury, in his “Physical Geography of the Sea,” gives a rather exaggerated account of the effects produced by this storm in Barbadoes, apparently from memory, some of the details being like, but not quite the same, as those actually recorded.

He says, “The bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed; the very bottom and depths of the sea were uprooted—forts and castles were washed away, and their great guns carried in the air like chaff.” The bark of trees was removed, but, it is believed, rather through the effects of electric action than by the power of the wind. Cannon, also, were driven along the batteries, and flung over into the fosse, but not “carried in the air like chaff.” At Martinique the storm overtook a French transport fleet, and entirely destroyed it. There were forty vessels, conveying 4,000 soldiers, and the Governor of Martinique reported their fate to the French Government in three words: “The vessels disappeared.” Nine thousand persons perished at Martinique and 1,000 at St. Pierre, where not a house was left standing. St. Domingo, St. Vincent, St. Eustache, and Porto Rico were next visited and devastated, while scarcely a single vessel near this part of the cyclone’s track was afloat on Oct. 11. At Port Royal, the

cathedral, seven churches, and 1,400 houses were blown down, and 1,600 sick and wounded persons were buried beneath the ruins of the hospital. At the Bermudas fifty British ships were driven ashore, two line-of-battle ships went down at sea, and 22,000 persons perished.

Perhaps the most remarkable effects of the storm in this portion of its course were those experienced in the Leeward Isles. The hurricane drove a twelve-pounder cannon a distance of 400 feet. Those who lived in the Government Building took refuge in the central part, where circular walls, nearly a yard thick, seemed to afford promise of safety. But at 11:30 o’clock the wind had broken down parts of these walls, and lifted off the roof. Terrified, they sought refuge in the cellarage, but before long the water had risen there to the height of more than a yard, and they were driven into the battery, where they placed themselves behind the heavier cannons, some of which were driven from their place by the force of the wind. When day broke, the country looked as if it had been blasted by fire; not a leaf, scarce even a branch, remained upon the trees. As in great floods a common terror preserves peace among animals which usually war upon each other, so during the great storm human passions were for the time quelled by the fiercer war of the elements.

Among the ships destroyed at Martinique were two English war-ships. Twenty-five sailors who survived, surrendered themselves prisoners to the Marquis of Bouillé, the Governor of the island. But he sent them to St. Lucie, writing to the English governor of that island that “he was unwilling to retain as prisoners men who had fallen into his hands during a disaster from which so many had suffered.”

The great storm of 1780 must not be confounded with the storm remembered for many years in Great Britain as the Great Storm. The latter occurred November 26, 1703, and its worst effects were experienced not as usual in the tropics, but in Western Europe. The reader will remember Macaulay’s reference to it in his essay on the “Life and Writings of Addison.” In his famous poem, “The Campaign,” Addison has compared Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind. “We must point out,” writes Macaulay, “one circumstance which appears to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary effect which this simile produced when it first appeared, and which to the following generation appeared inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis:

‘Such as, of late, o’er pale Britannia passed.’

“Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of The Storm. The great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest which in our latitude has equaled the rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses, still attested, in all the Southern counties, the fury of the blast.”

He strangely omits to mention one of the most striking events connected with the terrible storm,—the destruction of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Winstanley, the architect of the first Eddystone Lighthouse, was confident that it could resist the fiercest storm which ever blew, and expressed a hope that he might be in it when such a storm raged. On November 26 he arrived with a party of men who were engaged to repair the building. The great storm soon after began to blow, and raged throughout the night. On the morning of the 27th no trace of the lighthouse was to be seen.