All this talk about Hurricanes reminds me of Hurricane Carol which hit where we lived when I was a kid.
At the time we lived in Pawcatuck, Connecticut, right on the line with Westerly, Rhode Island. Luckily, we also lived on a small hill.
My Mom said “let’s go down and see the waves” so we drove to Misquamicut Beach, about 15 minutes away.
Our car got stuck in the rising tides and we probably would have washed out to sea had we not been blocking the path of a truck who wanted to get out of the area fast. That truck pushed us to safety.
We lived on a small embankment and when we got home, we could see that the road directly below us was flooded and people were going by in rowboats.
Carol, the first named Hurricane to impact the northeast arrived Tuesday, August 31, 1954. 10 days later another hurricane struck on September 11th. Edna caused more localized damage including the Cape Cod area. This promotional feature is from the photo album Hurricane! – published in 1954 by The Standard-Times.
From http://www.thewesterlysun.com/news/latestnews/5294584-129/remembering-hurricane-carol.html
WESTERLY — Carol Nash and Joe Potter were cheerfully preparing for their wedding during the summer of 1954 when they were hit with a double whammy.
Days before the wedding, on the morning of Aug. 31, Hurricane Carol, the most destructive hurricane to strike Southern New England since the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, came crashing ashore in coastal Rhode Island and Connecticut, causing significant flooding, knocking out power for weeks in some areas, and leaving 65 people dead. The hurricane would forever change the face of Misquamicut.
On the Potters’ wedding day, 10 days later, Hurricane Edna, which followed a track slightly east of Carol’s, barreled into southern New England with hurricane-force winds of 75 to 95 mph, buffeting all of eastern Massachusetts and coastal Rhode Island and claiming 21 lives.
Their stormy beginnings may have brought the Potters good fortune. On Sept. 11 they will celebrate 60 years of marriage. The parents of two daughters, and grandparents of two grandsons and a granddaughter, the Potters have traveled widely and now divide their time between Weekapaug and southern Arizona. Earlier this month they sat on their back deck overlooking the Weekapaug Breachway, recalling the two hurricanes of 1954.
Hurricane Carol destroyed much of Atlantic Avenue, they said, noting that the section now called Misquamicut State Beach was once dotted with summer homes. Joe Potter, who was living with his sister in Ashaway, was working for a man who owned the old Sunoco Station on Granite Street.
“He had some houses and a boat in Matunuck,” Potter recalled, and one of his houses was washed into a field.
Carol, who worked in data processing at the Pawcatuck-based Cottrell’s Printing Company in 1954, remembers how she had to travel to New Haven by train for work since there was no power on Mechanic Street where the company was located, and all the machines were shut down.
The traveling time cut into her last-minute wedding tasks, so she had to enlist her mom, Lillabeth Nash, who took the bus to Providence to pick up one very important item.
“I bought my wedding dress at Shepard’s Department Store,” recalled Carol as she described the rigors of travel to Providence in the pre- I-95 days. “And thank goodness they kept the dress upstairs because the entire basement of Shepard’s was flooded.”
The Shepard Company Department Store was once the largest department store in New England. Hurricane Carol was not kind to Providence, its surge submerging much of the downtown in 12 feet of water.
But Carol Nash’s wedding dress survived, and her mother was able to retrieve it and lug it back to Westerly on Sept. 11, the same day that Edna came roaring into town.
There was a good supply of raincoats and umbrellas on hand that morning for the bridal party and guests, and when Carol and Joe made it halfway down the aisle of Our Lady of Victory Church in Ashaway, the power went out.
The Potters were not only married by candlelight, but their wedding reception was also a candlelight affair.
****
Susan Sullivan Brocato, a longtime library assistant and guidance office secretary for the Westerly School Department, was a child when Hurricane Carol hit the coast. She remembers the day before the hurricane, driving to Watch Hill where her family had a cabana at the Watch Hill Yacht Club, taking her WoodPussy sailboat, Skip-It, out of the water and cleaning out the cabana.
“There seemed to be a lot of concern about the storm,” she said. “It was scary, but there was also excitement.”
Brocato said that back in 1954, the cabanas were sitting right on the sand, level with the beach.
“We waited out the storm at our home in Bradford only to find, when we returned the following day, that the cabanas were destroyed,” Brocato recalled. The Sullivans spent the next summer at Seaside Beach Club while the Watch Hill cabanas were rebuilt.
When they were completed, the cabanas were raised on stilts.
****
Although Stonington native Joe Rendeiro wasn’t in the states when Hurricane Carol slammed coastal New England, he remembers well the stories his father told about the storm and the damage it caused. Rendeiro, like his father before him, is a retired commercial fisherman. On Aug. 31, 1954, he was in the Mediterranean serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Salem. As a member of the shore patrol, his job was to keep an eye on the sailors. He remembers walking into a shore-front hotel on Sept. 1, 1954, and noticing a woman reading The New York Times. When he glanced at the paper, the headline caught his attention.
“The headline said ‘Hurricane Carol hits New England,’” recounted Rendeiro. “For two days I tried to call home and finally I got through.”
When he reached his home in Stonington, his mother, Rosa Rendeiro, gave him another kind of headline: Stonington had been hit hard. There had been an incoming tide, and boats had been lifted up and thrown upon the grassy area of town owned by Tony Longo.
“They told me that boats were spread all over town and that there were sailboats up against the railroad tracks,” Rendeiro said. “It caused a lot of damage to the fishing fleet.”
Rendeiro said his father’s boat, America, pretty much survived, but needed a lift from Chet Perkins, the owner of the local crane operation. His dad’s car did not fare as well.
“My father had a 1952 Pontiac from Joe Brustolon’s,” Rendeiro recalled. “He and Joe played poker together so he got all his cars from Joe.”
Rendeiro said his father thought he had parked the Pontiac far enough away from the rising tides, but he was mistaken.
“It was totally destroyed,” Rendeiro recalled. “When I came home that November he had a brand new Pontiac.”
****
Misquamicut resident Don Gentile, a self-described weather junkie and author of several local history books, including the Arcadia Publishing Company’s “Misquamicut,” was a young boy in late August 1954.
“I remember riding down Atlantic Avenue after the hurricane and seeing all the cottages that ended up in the pond, cottages that had been lifted off their foundations,” said Gentile. “They were there for a long time, too.”
When the Great Hurricane of 1938 destroyed most of Westerly’s waterfront, demolishing structures from Weekapaug to Napatree Point, people were reluctant to rebuild, Gentile wrote in “Misquamicut.” But by the early 1950s, people were less apprehensive, he said, and cottages and smaller buildings like hot dog and ice cream stands began to reappear by the beach. Lenny Malagrino, a local entrepreneur, brought in so-called “Groton Cottages,” small houses that had been used to house military personnel during World War II, and sold them for $500 apiece. People could buy a house and a lot for as little as $1,000, Gentile said.
By 1954, more than 50 cottages dotted the beach in Misquamicut, Gentile said.
“Little did people realize as the rebuilding continued,” he wrote, “a tropical entity in the South Atlantic would again have a say in Misquamicut’s future. Hurricane Carol would soon be visiting Misquamicut and it would not be pretty.”
One of the property owners, the late Henry Morris, Gentile reported, owned a cottage on lower Crandall Avenue (“Hurricane Alley”) that was moved off its foundation and up the street by the hurricanes of 1938, 1944 and 1954.
In total, more than 4,000 homes, 3,500 cars and 3,000 boats were destroyed and 65 lives were lost as a result of Hurricane Carol, according to the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. With damages totaling over $460 million, Carol was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history until Hurricane Diane surpassed it the following year.
In 1955, Rhode Island Gov. Dennis Roberts introduced legislation to condemn the one-mile stretch of beach and secure it for the state by right of eminent domain. The legislation passed, and in 1959, Misquamicut State Beach was opened to the public.
****
Patty McKinney, whose family has owned property in Weekapaug for generations, was a little girl at the time of Hurricane Carol but vividly remembers the hubbub surrounding the event. On the day after the hurricane, Patty was in the family car with her mother, aunt and sisters, driving down Weekapaug Road to check on the cottage, when suddenly her mother let out such a sound that Patty was startled and scared until she saw what her mother’s exclamation was all about.
“There was a house in the middle of Weekapaug Road,” McKinney recalled. “We later heard that the house had floated across the pond and landed there, right in the middle of Weekapaug Road.”
McKinney said she also heard that the house was moved to Chapman Road, where it sits to this day.
“It’s the second house on the right,” she said. “It’s still there.”
nbfusaro@thewesterlysun.com
A few years ago we had some run-ins with a couple hurricanes while on a cruise. This is adapted from a post on my Travel Blog MaryOut and About:
September 18, 2017
The ship is really rolling tonight – I’m having trouble sleeping due to the closet doors opening and shutting themselves. The chairs on the balcony have rearranged themselves to be right up next to the door.
From Cruise Critic:
Jose is projected to be directly between NYC and Bermuda on Sunday when we are scheduled to sail.
As of the latest run of the GFS Jose would be due west of Bermuda half way to SC coast on Sunday the 17th. [I will attach the map of this.] After that Jose is projected to slide north then recurve out to sea heading NE. Late on Wed. the 19th Jose is forecast to be 350-400 miles SE of Nantucket.
IMNHO, the Breakaway will sail to Bermuda heading a bit more out to the east than its normal straight line course. Going to the North or to the South would take the Breakaway into Jose direct influences. There may be a bit of a swell, but by going [fast] to Bermuda will avoid most of the winds of the storm.
All this said we are talking about events 6+days out. A lot can change in that time
~~~
I had trouble flushing the toilet about 4 am – at 6:59 it flushed itself!
Wave height 14.5. normal is 8
~~~
After lunch people out on deck were huddled under towels in rain.
I shared this on Cruise Critic:
They’re reporting that the waves are 14.8 and have been most of the day. The TV calls them “rough mounting” but I’m not sure what that is.
The upper decks are closed but there are hopeful folks in deck chairs wrapped in towels – and it’s raining.
We used my backpack to stop the doors from crashing so much.
Internet is working fine – it’s all good for me as long as I can get online. LOL
Our path keeps changing and we’re going further north and west, then heading back to Bermuda. I’ve been taking screenshots of the TV and I’ll post them in a bit.
Here’s an image I edited this morning as an overview for the folks back home.
6:21 Waves 21.3
Sea state Rough
September 19, 2017
The wind is blowing quite loudly
We’re heading home on Thursday at 5:00 PM instead of Friday due to the hurricane 😦
Posted on Facebook
Update, for those interested… We’ve had to go further and further around the storm (Jose) and the waves have been buffeting us around a bit.
We’re doing ok and I have lots of books on my Kindle so I’m good for a long time. The people who wanted to lie out by the pool are out of luck. The pools are closed and drained, often the decks are closed so everyone is eating and shopping – and in the casino, I guess.
The captain just announced that we’re going to have to cut our time in Bermuda short by a day because we’re going to have to skirt a hurricane (the same one?) on the way back.
I had a snorkel trip planned for that day so I’m a bit unhappy about that but it’s better to be safe…
Posted on Cruise Critic
We’re still trucking along, due to be in Bermuda tomorrow morning at 5:30 am as planned.
The pools have never been opened, as far as I know, and the decks are usually closed due to high winds.
Earlier today, the captain said we might have sun by Thursday.
Tonight he announced that we would be leaving Bermuda early, on Thursday afternoon at 5 instead of Friday at 4 to continue sailing around whatever hurricane is out there now.
I was able to reschedule the shore excursion I had lined up with an outside tour company, so that’s good. We did an excursion, but not through NCL, although the same one was offered through them. We were supposed to go out on Friday, on the Rising Son but, when we learned that our ship was leaving port on Thursday afternoon, I contacted them to cancel. They offered us a Thursday morning snorkel trip, which I accepted. Had we been on the same excursion as offered by NCL, it would have cost us more money at the outset but it would have been automatically canceled, so we would have missed out.
~~~
Response to above post on CC:
Wow, thanks for the live update – been looking at ship webcam off-and-on, looked like ship is still sailing in large swells w. bits of small whites, guessing it’s 10′ to 12′ seas & windy. we ran into that for a day last year coming back from Dockyard … a bumper.
Must be one packed atrium lobby with all the displaced outdoor chair hogs unable to sunbath …
Hurricane Maria doing major damages down in the Caribbean, expected to hit Puerto Rico directly & hard starting tonight, then continue its path as a Cat-5, possibly missing some of the Bahamas islands … and maybe weakened somewhat – turning north/northeast in the direction of Bermuda. This latest forecast model is probably what prompted NCL is modify your time on the islands, sorry – it’s mother nature – 2 full “fun” day at sea to sail around & outrun Maria next.
From BDA’s local forecast office: Bermuda will maintain showery and thundery conditions into Wednesday. Moderate to strong winds gradually ease light to moderate by Wednesday evening. Thursday is a mix of sun & clouds, high of 82 degree. (Seas outside the reef for arrival, 6 to 10 ft.)
September 20, 2017
Made it to Bermuda! If the hurricane does turn around, it makes this sound like the book – The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome:
Sadly, the Windjammers have gone out of business. In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch was responsible for the loss of the s/v Fantome, a four-masted schooner operated by Windjammer. All 31 crew members aboard perished; passengers and other crew members had earlier been offloaded in Belize.
The ship, which was sailing in the center of the hurricane, experienced up to 50-foot (15 m) waves and over 100 mph (160 km/h) winds, causing the Fantome to founder off the coast of Honduras.
If so, I sure hope there’s a better ending here. The Fantome was important to me because we’d sailed her many years ago.
When I told the snorkeling company about us leaving early, they were able to change us to tomorrow so we don’t lose out on that trip at all. Hooray!
Message from NCL
Weather Updates 2017
September 20th at 11:30 AM (4:30 PM UTC)
At Norwegian Cruise Line, the safety and security of our guests and crew is of the utmost importance. The company is closely watching Hurricanes Maria and Jose in the Atlantic, and will be slightly modifying the itinerary for Norwegian Breakaway, to ensure that our guests have the best vacation experience possible.
To avoid the storm’s path, Norwegian Breakaway will sail a longer route back to New York for her cruise that departed on Sunday, September 17. Norwegian Breakaway will now spend two days in port in Bermuda and depart a day early at 6 p.m. on Thursday, September 21 and will arrive back in New York on Sunday, September 24, as scheduled. Norwegian Dawn will sail as scheduled and return to Boston on Friday, September 22.
We are saddened by the devastating impact Hurricane Irma has had on several islands in the Eastern Caribbean, ports that we have called on since the start of our 50 years in business. We are working with our partners on the ground to provide assistance to ensure these spectacular destinations are up and running and ready to welcome guests again very soon. In the interim, due to the destruction caused by the storm, we have altered the itineraries for Norwegian Escape’s Eastern Caribbean cruises for the remainder of 2017. Travel Partners and guests booked on these sailings will be receiving updated itinerary information shortly.
Should there be any further updates, guests will be advised and updated information will be posted on www.ncl.com.
Hopefully, I’m done with hurricane encounters for a while.
