The storm came roaring through the lines,
And set them all a flying;
I saw the sheets and petticoats
Go riding off like witches;
I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,—
I lost my Sunday breeches.”
Holmes entitled the poem The September Gale and so this became the name of the storm. Actually, it was a hurricane quite like those that struck New England in 1938, 1944 and 1954. Years afterward, a New Haven man named Noyes Darling became interested in the storm of 1815 and traced its course by a collection of newspaper accounts from many places and by the logs of ships which had been in the western Atlantic when the hurricane passed. In 1842, he plotted all this information on a map and was able to figure its course. This was rather remarkable, for a study since that time shows that the tracks of hurricanes which do great damage in New England must adhere closely to one path—far enough eastward to clear the land areas as they go northward and far enough westward so that they do not go out into the ocean before they reach the latitude of Nantucket. Those which strike shore to the southward may reach New England but passage over land causes them to lose much of their fury on the way. Darling’s plotted path was correct according to experiences since that time.
The “Lighthouse Storm” of 1851 commenced in the District of Columbia on Sunday, April 13, reached New York on Monday morning, and during the day struck New England. It came at the time of the full moon and so the storm-driven waters joined with the high tides, and the sea, rising over the wharves at Dorchester, Massachusetts, came into the streets to a greater height than had ever been known before. All around the coasts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire there was much property damage. The event which gave the storm its name was the destruction of the lighthouse on Minot’s ledge, at Cohasset, Massachusetts. It was wrecked and swept away. At four o’clock the morning after the storm some of the wreckage was found strewn along the beach. Two young men, assistant light keepers, were killed. Since this was a very dangerous rock and many vessels had been lost there, a new lighthouse was erected at the same point soon afterward.
One of the most noted storms of the nineteenth century was “Saxby’s Gale,” which caused a great amount of destruction in New Brunswick on October 4, 1869. The amazing fact was that this storm was predicted nearly a year before by a Lieutenant Saxby of the British Navy. In November, 1868, he wrote to the newspapers in London, predicting that the earth would be visited by a storm of unusual violence attended by an extraordinary rise of tide at seven o’clock on the morning of October 5, 1869.
Saxby wrote the following explanation of his forecast to the newspaper: