Sudden Sea (31 page)
Chapter 6: All Aboard
The letter to Fred Moore is reprinted from
The Search
by his son Paul.
Chapter 7: A Bright Young Man
Charles Pierce wrote about the storm in the
Monthly Weather Review
in the summer of 1939. Additional information comes from a number of weather books, including Longshore’s
Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones.
Regarding the advanced meteorology in Europe: Adopting World War I terminology, Norwegian meteorologists pictured the atmosphere as a vast battleground with distinct fronts and warring weather systems. The Norwegians showed that most storms develop along the boundaries, or fronts, between huge air masses with different temperatures.
Information on the Great September Gale of 1815 comes from David Ludlum’s
Early American Hurricanes 1492 – 1870
and Sidney Perley’s
Historic Storms of New England.
Chapter 10: A One-Hundred-Year Storm
“The plane flew through bursts of …” quote from “Hurricanes” by Robert Simpson in
Scientific American
, June 1954; “A unique and strangely tinted day …” quote from Howard E. Smith Jr.’s
Killer Weather;
“In the morning it was beautiful, …” “I had to crawl …,” and “It’s a hurricane …” quotes from
In the Wake of ’ 38.
Chapter 11: How Do You Lose a Hurricane?
Regarding Cole Porter’s new show, Richard Watts spoke for all the critics who braved the night when he wrote in the
Herald Tribune:
“The first musical show of the new season hardly adds distinction to that interesting branch of the dramatic art.”
Chapter 12: The Long Island Express
Letter from Gerald Murphy from
Letters from the Lost Generation
, edited by Linda Patterson Miller.
Chapter 13: Crossing the Sound
The storm at Tabor Academy comes from
The School and the Sea: A History of Tabor Academy
by Joseph J. Smart.
Chapter 15: The Dangerous Right Semicircle
The history of the state is drawn from
A Short History of Rhode Island
by George W. Greene and from publications of the Jamestown Historical Society. It should be noted that Rhode Island is a small world. As one notable local historian put it, “Every Yankee in the state is related to an Arnold.” The same family names turn up repeatedly. The Cottrells sold their Jamestown land to Philip Caswell. Members of the same family were living at Fox Hill Farm in 1938 and rented the meadows to Joe Matoes, and Violet Cottrell, who was playing golf with Harriet Moore on the afternoon of the hurricane.
Regarding barrier beaches: Early settlers were quick to recognize the instability of barrier islands, and few of them were foolhardy enough to build a permanent settlement on these shifting piles of sand. In 1838, however, a group of investors formed the Galveston City Company and began dividing the real estate of Galveston Island, a barrier island near Houston, Texas. By 1900, when the terrible Galveston hurricane struck, a single five-block span of mansions boasted twenty-six millionaires.
Chapter 16: Providence
David Cornel de Jong wrote his description of the hurricane for the September 1939 issue of
Yankee
magazine. The damage to the original Brown University charter was described in an article in
Brown University Alumni Magazine
, November–December 2001. Hartley Ward’s account of the storm is taken from a privately printed pamphlet in the collection of the Newport Historical Society.
Chapter 17: The Tempest
C. W. Magruder’s “Everyone expected …” quote was drawn from a document in the Jamestown Historical Society; “with three blasts of her horn …” quote also taken from a document in the Jamestown Historical Society.
Regarding the Colonial Hurricane of 1635: Besides the accounts of Governors Winthrop and Bradford, I drew from two nineteenth-century books, Increase Mather’s
Remarkable Providences
and Sidney Perley’s
Historic Storms of New England
, and from David Ludlum’s
Early American Hurricanes 1492 – 1870.
A couple of interesting historical notes: Many of our Founding Fathers were keen weather watchers. The early colonial governors Winthrop and Bradford filled their journals with detailed notations about the weather; Washington and Jefferson kept weather journals; and Benjamin Franklin’s observations were significant. Also, when the
James
out of Bristol lost her anchors and sails and was blown within a cable’s length of the rocks off Pastacaquack in the Colonial Hurricane, there were 100 passengers aboard, including the Reverend Richard Mather, who would father Increase Mather, who would recount the tale of Thacher’s Woe in his book
Remarkable Providences.
Chapter 18: Cast Adrift
“They came neck deep …” quote from the September 1939
Yankee
magazine.
Chapter 20: The Reckoning
Statistics compiled from the figures of the National Weather Service, the Red Cross, the WPA, the New England Power Association, the Southern New England Telephone Company, and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company. “Devastation everywhere …” quote from
The 1938 Hurricane As We Remember It
,vol. 1.
Chapter 21: The Last of the Old New England Summers
Letter from Katy Dos Passos from
Letters from the Lost Generation
, edited by Linda Patterson Miller. Statistics compiled from the figures of the National Weather Service, the Red Cross, and the WPA. Quote from the vice chairman of the Red Cross appeared in the
Newport
(R.I.)
Daily News
on October 1, 1938.
Appendix: A Nickel for Your Story
The stories were recounted in interviews or published in contemporary newspaper accounts of the hurricane.
Photograph Credits
Beach Erosion Board Archives, courtesy of the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg, MI.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Photo Library, Historic National Weather Service Collection (pp. 3, 12, 13 bottom .
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Photo Library, Historic National Weather Service Collection, photo by Steve Nicklas (pp. 10, 13 top, 14).
Southern New England Telephone Company Records, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.
_____ BOOKS
Allen, Everett S.
A Wind to Shake the World.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.
Baker, Paul R.
Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White.
New York: Free Press, 1989.
Baldwin, Charles C.
Stanford White.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1976.
Barlett, Donald L., and James B. Steele.
Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.
Bennett, Jackie Parlato.
The 1938 Hurricane As We Remember It.
Vol. 2. East Patchogue, N.Y.: Searles Graphics Inc., 1998.
Bowditch, Nathaniel.
Waves, Wind, and Weather.
New York: David McKay, 1977.
Bradford, William.
Of Plimouth Plantation, 1620 – 1647.
New ed. New York: Knopf, 1952.
Brickner, Roger K.
The Long Island Express: Tracking the Hurricane of 1938.
Batavia, N.Y.: Hodgins Printing Co., 1988.
Brown, Peter Harry, and Pat H. Broeske.
Howard Hughes: The Untold Story.
New York: Dutton, 1996.
Calder, Nigel.
The Weather Machine.
New York: Viking, 1974.
Chenoweth, James.
Oddity Odyssey.
New York: Henry Holt, 1996.
Clowes, Ernest.
The Hurricane of 1938 on Eastern Long Island.
Bridgehampton, N.Y.: Hampton Press, 1939.
Conforti, Joseph A.
Imagining New England.
Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Conrad, Joseph.
Typhoon and Other Tales.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Denison, Rev. Frederic A.
Westerly and Its Witnesses.
Providence: J. A. & R. A. Reid, 1878.
Dunn, Gordon E., and Banner J. Miller.
Atlantic Hurricanes.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960.
Edwards, Anne.
Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Gordon, Bernard L., ed.
Hurricane in Southern New England.
Watch Hill, R.I.: Book & Tackle Shop, 1996.
Greene, George W.
A Short History of Rhode Island.
Providence: J. A. & R. A. Reid, 1877.
Hack, Richard.
Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters.
Beverly Hills: New Millennium Press, 2001.
Hendrickson, Richard G.
Winds of the Fish’s Tail.
Mattituck, N.Y.: Amereon Ltd., 1996.
Hepburn, Katharine.
Me: Stories of My Life.
New York: Knopf, 1991.
Higham, Charles.
Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.
Howard, John M.
100 Years in Jamestown: From Destination Resort to Bedroom Town.
Jamestown, R.I.: Jamestown Historical Society, 2000.
Hughes, Patrick.
A Century of Weather Service: A History of the Birth and Growth of the National Weather Service, 1870 – 1970.
New York: Gordon and Breach, 1970.
Kahl, Jonathan D.
Weatherwise.
Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1992.
Laskin, David.
The Stormy History of American Weather.
New York: Doubleday, 1996.
Lippincott, Bertram.
Jamestown Sampler.
Flourtown, Pa.: GO Printing Corp., 1980.
Longshore, David.
Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons, and Cyclones.
New York: Checkmark Books, 2000.
Ludlum, David.
Early American Hurricanes, 1492 – 1870.
Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1963.
Manchester, William Raymond.
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932 – 1972.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.
Mather, Increase.
Remarkable Providences: Illustrative of the Early Days of American Colonisation.
London: Reeves and Turner, 1890.
McCarthy, Joe.
Hurricane!
New York: American Heritage Press, 1969.
Miller, Linda Patterson, ed.
Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
Minsinger, William Elliott, M.D., ed.
The 1938 Hurricane: An Historical and Pictorial Summary.
Randolph Center, Vt.: Green Hill Books, 1988.
Moore, Paul J.
The Search: An Account of the Fort Road Tragedy.
West-erly, R.I.: Sun Graphics, 1988.
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Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1998.
Peck, Reginald.
Early Landholders of Watch Hill.
Westerly, R.I.: Utter Company, 1936.
Peirce, Neal R.
The New England States.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.
Perley, Sidney.
Historic Storms of New England.
Salem, Mass.: Salem Press Publishing and Printing Company, 1891.
Reynolds, Ross.
Cambridge Guide to the Weather.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities and South Kingstown High School.
In the Wake of ’ 38 : Oral History Interviews with Rhode Island Survivors and Witnesses of the Devastating Hurricane of September 21, 1938.
Wakefield, R.I.: n.p., 1977.
Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.
Historical and Architectural Resources of Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1995.
Rhode Island Historical Society.
What a Difference a Bay Makes.
Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1993.
Sheets, Bob, and Jack Williams.
Hurricane Watch.
New York: Vintage Books, 2001.
Shirer, William.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
Shuttleworth, Patricia D.
The 1938 Hurricane As We Remember It.
Vol. 1. East Patchogue, N.Y.: Searles Graphics Inc., 1998.
Smith, Howard E.
Killer Weather: Stories of Great Disasters.
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1982.
Stevens, William K.
The Change in the Weather: People, Weather, and the Science of Climate.
New York: Delacorte Press, 1999.
Tannehill, Ivan Ray.
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Rev. ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.
U.S. Weather Bureau Records, Record Group 0027, National Archives Building, Silver Spring, Md.
Ward, A. Hartley G.
The Hurricane in Newport.
Privately printed, 1938.
Watson, Benjamin A.
Acts of God: The Old Farmer’s Almanac — Unpredictable Guide to Weather and Natural Disasters.
New York: Random House, 1993.
Whipple, A.B.C.
Storm.
Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1982.
Wilder, Thornton.
Theophilus North.
New York: Avon Books, 1973.
Winthrop, John.
The History of New England 1630 to 1649.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1853.
Wright, Catherine Moore.
The Portuguese of Conanicut Island: History through Memories.
Privately printed, 1980.
Zebrowski, Ernest Jr.
Perils of a Restless Planet.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
_____ 1938 NEWSPAPER SUPPLEMENTS AND PRIVATELY PRINTED BOOKLETS
Complete Record of New England’s Stricken Area. New Bedford
(MA)
Standard Times, Morning Mercury.