Part 6

"Nothing indeed can more clearly show," Piddington continued, "how this may, with a well appointed and managed vessel be done in perfect safety--performed by mere chance by a fast-sailing colonial brig, manned only as a bullock trader, but capitally officered, and developing for the seaman and meteorologist a view of what we may almost call the internal phenomena of winds and waves in a hurricane."

But this was only the beginning. Learning the secrets of the hurricane proved to be far more difficult than Redfield, Reid and Piddington had imagined. The world looked in amazement at the tremendous labors of a few men who collected enormous quantities of reports, interviews, and observations from mariners and tried to put the bits together, but there was a prevailing suspicion that the real facts were locked in the minds of men who had gone to their doom in ships sunk in the centers of these awful storms and the lucky ones who came back had seen only a part of their ultimate terrors. In these days of relatively safe navigation at the middle of the twentieth century, our minds are scarcely able to grasp the seriousness of this scourge of tropical and subtropical seas which destroyed so many ships and drove busy men, working long hours for a living, to such tremendous labors, at night and at odd times, to learn the truth. We may get some light from the stories of desperate sailors who, by some strange fate, were thrown exhausted on the rocks that finally claimed the broken remains of once-proud vessels of trade and war.

3. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

"Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon: Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea." --Shakespeare

Two hundred years ago, scientists were beginning to chart the winds over the oceans and the currents that thread their way across the surface of deep waters. Until this work was finished, the mariner was almost completely at the mercy of the atmosphere and the sea. He would come to uncharted places where the winds ceased to blow and sailing vessels might be becalmed for weeks. Day after day, the burning sun climbed slowly toward the zenith and while the unbearable heat tortured the crew, descended with agonizing slowness toward the western horizon. At night, relief came under unclouded skies but the stars gave no indication of better fortunes on the morrow.

In these places it seldom rained. Drinking water, as long as it lasted, became putrid, but the crew preserved it as their most precious treasure, drinking a little when they could go no longer without it--holding their noses. The food became so bad that every man who had the courage to eat it wondered if it wouldn't be better to starve. This happened often in the North Atlantic in the days when sailing vessels were carrying horses to the West Indies. If they were becalmed and fresh water ran short, the crews had to throw some or all of the horses overboard. In time this region became known as the "horse latitudes." Because it lay north and northeast of the hurricane belt, a long spell of rainless weather for a sailing ship here could be succeeded suddenly and overwhelmingly by the torrential rains of a tropical storm.

At long intervals, a slight breeze came along, barely enough to extend a small flag, but it gave the ship a little motion and brought hope to the men who were worn out with tugging at the oars. In this circumstance, it might happen that a long, low groundswell would appear. Coming from a great distance, it would raise and then lower the vessel a little in passing. Others would surely follow--low undulations at intervals of four or five to the minute--bringing a warning of a storm beyond the horizon. Here was one of the ironic twists of a sailor's existence. Even while he prayed for water, the atmosphere was about to give it to him in tremendous quantities, both from above and below. At this juncture the master was in a quandary. For the safety of ship and crew, it was vital that he know exactly what to do at the very instant when the first gusty breezes of the coming storm filled the sails.

From the law of storms, the mariner eventually learned--and it was suicide to forget it at a time like this--that if he could look forward from the center of the hurricane, along the line of progress, the most terrible winds and waves would be on his right. Here the raging demons of the tropical blast outdo themselves. The whirling velocity is added to the forward motion, for both in these few harrowing hours have the same direction. All the power of the atmosphere is delivered in this space, where unbelievable gales try to blast their way into the partial vacuum at the center. But the atmosphere is held back from the center by a still greater power, the rotation of the earth on its axis. No shipmaster should ever be caught between these awful forces with the huge bulk of the storm drawing toward him.

Here we find horrors that were never disclosed to the early storm hunters. It is doubtful if any sailing ship or any man aboard survived in this sector of a really great hurricane. But even more dangerous are the deceitful motions of the sea surface, which can trap the mariner and drag his vessel toward the dangerous sector, even while he thinks he is fighting his way out of it.

In those uneasy hours when the groundswell preceded the winds, the master had to watch his barometer and the clouds on the horizon, to get the best estimate of the storm's future course. If it gave signs of coming toward him or passing a little to the west of him, he had to run with the wind as soon as it began, every inch of canvas straining at the creaking masts to get all the headway possible. He would do better than he thought, for the surface of the sea was moving with the winds and his vessel was plowing through the waves while the sea was swirling in the same direction. It was a race for life, and if he was not unlucky, he would find himself behind the storm, sailing rapidly toward better weather.

If he made the wrong choice and tried to go around the center on the east side while the storm moved northward, he might have thought that he was making headway. But the sea surface was carrying him backward while the horrible right sector rushed forward to encompass the ship. Now we see why Redfield, Reid and Piddington, when they came to a realization of some of these facts in the logs of sailing vessels, were so eager to give the world a law of storms. Their work was only a beginning, for the so-called law is not as simple as they imagined. But some shipmasters took their advice and survived, whereas any other course would have taken them to the bottom of the sea. And untold numbers had gone down in big hurricanes.

Among the logs and letters collected by Redfield and Reid in their work on the law of storms were many which referred to a fierce hurricane in 1780. For more than fifty years it had been talked about as "The Great Hurricane." But the stories didn't all seem to fit together. The storm was said to have been in too many places at too many different times to suit Redfield. When he had finished putting the data from ships' logs on a map in accordance with his law of storms, he saw that there had been three hurricanes at about the same time and that they had been confused and reported as one.

In the year of these big hurricanes there were many warships in the Caribbean region. The American War of Independence had started with bloodshed at Lexington and Bunker Hill in 1775, and by 1780 England was in a state of war with half the world. Her battle fleets controlled most of the seas along the American Coast and roamed the waters in and around the West Indies.

The first of the three hurricanes struck Jamaica on the third of October. Nine English warships, under the command of Sir Peter Parker, went to the bottom. Seven of his vessels were dismasted or severely damaged. From the tenth to the fifteenth of October a second--and even more powerful hurricane--ravaged Barbados and progressively devastated other islands in the Eastern Caribbean. This one has been rated the most terrible hurricane in history by many students of storms. It wreaked awful destruction on the island of St. Lucia, where six thousand persons were crushed in the ruins of demolished buildings. The English fleet in that vicinity disappeared. Neither trees nor houses were left standing on Barbados. Off Martinique, forty ships of a French convoy were sunk and nearly all on board were lost, including four thousand soldiers. On the island itself, nine thousand persons were killed. Most of the vessels in the broad path of the storm as it progressed farther into the Caribbean, including several warships, foundered with all their crews. It drove fifty vessels ashore at Bermuda, on the eighteenth.

Before this terrible storm reached Bermuda another one roared out of the Western Caribbean, crossed western Cuba and passed into the Gulf of Mexico, on October 18. Unaware of the approach of this hurricane, a Spanish fleet of seventy-four warships, under Admiral Solano, sailed from Havana into the Gulf, to attack Pensacola. They were trapped in the eastern section of the Gulf and nineteen ships were lost. The remainder were dispersed, several having thrown their guns overboard to avoid capsizing. Nearly all the others were damaged, many dismasted. The Spanish fleet was no longer a fighting force.

Within three weeks most of the battle fleets in and around the Caribbean had been put out of commission. Both Redfield and Reid were impressed by the power displayed by these hurricanes. In his search of the records, the former succeeded in getting a copy of a letter written by a Lieutenant Archer to his mother in England, giving an account of the first of these terrible storms. The following story is condensed from Archer's letter.

Archer was second in command of an English warship named the Phoenix. It was commanded by Sir Hyde Parker. Before the first of these three hurricanes developed, the Phoenix had been sent to Pensacola, where the English were in control. Late in September, she sailed to rejoin the remainder of the fleet at Jamaica. On passing Havana harbor, Sir Hyde looked in and was astounded to see Solano's Spanish fleet at anchor. He hurried around Cuba into the Caribbean, to take the news to the British fleet.

At Kingston, Jamaica, the crew of the Phoenix found three other men-of-war lying in the harbor and they had a strong party for "kicking up a dust on shore," with dancing until two o'clock every morning. Little did they think of what might be in store for them. Out of the four men-of-war not one was in existence four days later and not a man aboard any of them survived, except a few of the crew of the Phoenix. And what is more, the houses where the crews had been so merry were so completely destroyed that scarcely a vestige remained to show where they had stood.

On September 30, the four warships set sail for Port Royal, around the eastern end of Jamaica. At eleven o'clock on the night of October 2, it began to "snuffle," with a "monstrous heavy appearance to the eastward." Sir Hyde sent for Lieutenant Archer.

"What sort of weather have we, Archer?"

"It blows a little and has a very ugly look; if in any other quarter, I should say we were going to have a gale of wind."

They had a very dirty night. At eight in the morning, with close-reefed topsails, the Phoenix was fighting a hard blow from the east-northeast, and heavy squalls at times. Archer said he was once in a hurricane in the East Indies and the beginning of it had much the same appearance as this. The crew took in the topsails and were glad they had plenty of sea-room. On Sir Hyde's orders, they secured all the sails with spare gaskets, put good rolling tackles on the yards, squared the booms, saw that the boats were all fast, lashed the guns, double-breeched the lower deckers, got the top-gallant mast down on the deck and, in fact, did everything to make a snug ship.

"And now," Archer wrote, "the poor birds began to suffer from the uproar of the elements and came on board. They turned to the windward like a ship, tack and tack, and dashed themselves down on the deck without attempting to stir till picked up. They would not leave the ship."

The carpenters were placed by the mainmast with broad axes, ready to cut it away to save the ship. Archer found the purser "frightened out of his wits" and two marine officers "white as sheets" from listening to the vibration of the lower deck guns, which were pulling loose and thrashing around. At every roll it seemed that the whole ship's side was going.

At twelve it was blowing a full hurricane. Archer came on deck and found Sir Hyde there. "It blows terribly hard, Archer."

"It does indeed, Sir."

"I don't remember its blowing so hard before," shouted Sir Hyde, striving to get his voice above the roar of the wind. "The ship makes good weather of it on this tack but we must wear her (to turn about by putting the helm up and the stern of the boat to the wind), as the wind has shifted to the southeast and we are fast drawing up on the Coast of Cuba."

"Sir, there is no canvas can stand against it a moment. We may lose three or four of our people in the effort. She'll wear by manning the fire shrouds."