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
11th, 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..