Many of the buildings had also suffered very severely. Some had had their verandahs and sides blown in, and others had had corners literally cut off where the fury of the storm had struck a particular angle. Amongst some others that had fared so badly was unhappily St. James's Theatre in Circular Road, the home of the "CATS." All the members at once felt that it had become a thing of the past, as the owner, Mr. Jimmy Brown, who had built it at a cost of Rs. 30,000, could never afford the expense of repairing it. The picture will show the wreck it had become. But bad and distressing as all this appeared to be, it absolutely paled into insignificance in comparison with what I Was to witness on arrival at the river bank. The sight that there greeted me was truly appalling and beggared description. Of the whole of that grand and superb array of vessels which had been seen the day before gracefully riding safely at their moorings, decked out in all their pride and glory and lined up alongside the Strand, three and four abreast from the Pepper Box to the Eden Gardens, one alone was left, all the others having been violently torn adrift and swept clean away to the four winds of heaven. Besides these were all the country traders moored to the south of the Pepper Box known as Coolie Bazar, extending as far as Tackta Ghât, which shared the same fate.
Remains of St. James's Theatre, Circular Road.
Remains of Col. Turner's House, 2, Wood Street.
They had all been driven helter-skelter in every direction, some as far north as Cossipore, and one vessel, the Earl of Clare, was landed high and dry on the present site of the assistants' bungalow of the north mill of the Barnagore Jute Company. One of the P. & O. boats lying at Garden Reach was deposited for some distance inland on the opposite side of the river close to the Botanical Gardens, and the Govindpur was driven helplessly in a crippled state close to the river bank just opposite to the Port Office on Strand Road, and was lying for hours almost on her beam ends on the port side facing the river. The crew had in desperation sought refuge in the rigging, from which eventually and with extreme difficulty they were happily and safely rescued. One of Apcar & Co.'s China steamers, the Thunder, was driven well inside Colvin Ghât and on to the Strand at the bottom of Hastings Street.
But the majority of ships seemed to have been flung together in a confused tangled mass close to the Howrah Railway Ghât. Many were sunk; others in the act of sinking; and the remainder so battered and hammered about as to defy description, rendering it extremely difficult to determine whether most of them would not become a constructive loss. My eldest brother was in Calcutta at the time, in command of a vessel called the Vespasian. He had been spending the previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen. At last he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home overland minus his vessel. He afterwards joined the service of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore of the fleet, a position which he held for a great number of years, until his final retirement.
In order to convey some slight idea of the force of the wind I will just mention that there was in command of one of the vessels in port a man of great weight and bulk who had been spending the night on shore. When he attempted to cross the maidan on foot the next morning he was thrown violently down, flat on his face, two or three times, and he had to scramble back again the best way he could. Another striking evidence of the violence of the storm was to be seen in the myriads of dead crows lying about all over the place, and it really seemed as if there was not one left alive. But unfortunately it was not long before we were undeceived, and they soon appeared to be quite as numerous as ever. As I have already stated, the destruction of trees and shrubs was very great—a loss that the city could ill afford, more particularly on the maidan, which at that time was very bare of trees and foliage generally. The various topes dotted about that we now see had not then come into existence, and the avenue of trees lining the sides of Mayo Road had only been recently planted.