As the Lowcountry braces for whatever Ian brings, how about a bit of hurricane history?
Hopefully there won’t be anything historic about our weather the next 48 hours, but Torrence Sullivan passed on some hurricane history via the always interesting Charleston Time Machine.
“The South Carolina Gazette of 19 September 1752 reported the loss of nearly every sort of watercraft that happened to be in Charleston Harbor during the storm. While some vessels sank and others were smashed to pieces, some were blown ashore and later recovered. The idea of lifting or towing a large, wooden, three-masted ship from the streets of urban Charleston back to the harbor, or extracting such a vessel from the muddy marshes of Wappoo Creek, sparks my curiosity. Seeking information about the methods used in this work, I noted that Peter Timothy’s published description mentioned the fate of two British warships in Charleston during the hurricane of 1752—the Mermaid and the Hornet. I’ve spent some time delving into the archives of the Royal Navy in London over the past few years, and I wondered if the surviving records of those two warships might shed some new light on this old story. During a recent research trip, I located and examined a number of logbooks and letters written by the officers who survived great Carolina hurricane of 1752, now held at The National Archive, Kew, and at the Caird Library and Archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. This program represents my efforts to narrate those records, which definitely augment our understanding of a seminal chapter in Charleston’s natural history.” CLICK HERE for the rest of the article.
And for some more hurricane history from the same source CLICK HERE