1890 SEVERE ATLANTIC COAST STORM.

SEVERE STORM OF SEPTEMBER 1890

ATLANTIC COAST

At Ocean City, Maryland the damage and destruction wrought by this storm is great. The porches of most of the ocean front cottages and hotels were washed away, doors and windows broken, furniture is seen floating about the beach. The seas were breaking into the second story of the Atlantic Hotel and Congress Hall and running six feet deep throughout the hotels leaving the furnishings floating about the rooms. .

A railroad train was sent last night to rescue the beach dwellers and a large number of men were seen joining hands and wading through waist deep water to bring the women, one by one, to the cars seated on their joined hands.

In New York City Port , nine authority pilots were carried to sea on steamers they were guiding as they could not find pilot boats to bring them ashore and will need to take involuntary trips to Europe and other southern ports.

Incoming steamships arriving today from the east and south report passing through a storm of almost unexampled severity.

New Jersey shore reports the steamer trip from Somers Point to Atlantic City was abandoned due to the storm. Postmaster Chester of Sea Isle City reaching the mainland today told of that place being in very bad shape, the sea walls being destroyed and fifteen house washed away, including the New Land, The Star and the Shakespeake hotels. The Continental, the larges hotel there, is safe and no lives were lost. West Jersey Railroad has reestablished communications with Atlantic City this afternoon and the fire reported there proved to have consumed only a half dozen shanties of small value at the south end of the island.

At Lewes, Delaware, on the 11^th, the pilot boat, Thomas A. Bayard, dragged her anchors and came ashore with her keel gone, but the eleven man crew was safe. A schooner, J & L Byron, Captain L. L. Risley master, with cargo of coal from Philadelphia went to pieces on fourteen Foot Bank last night. Here, the crew came ashore on pieces of the wreck, with four members evidently lost.

The Lewes Life Saving Station was partly washed away and the Breakwater fog bell was found washed ashore at Lewes. The beach between Lewes and Rehoboth is strewn with wreckage and it is thought that at least fifty lives were lost on Delaware Bay. Men were seen clinging to the top rigging, calling for help which the life saving crews were powerless to provide owing to the fury of the gale and many of their bodies were washed ashore and buried in the sands along the water.

Damages may reach well over $5,000,000 to vessel property at the Breakwater as reported by the Decatur Daily Dispatch of Illinois , Friday, 12 September 1890..