Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1893 — WORST GALE IN YEARS [ARTICLE]

WORST GALE IN YEARS

A TERRIBLE TEMPEST SWEEPS OVER THE LAKES. Heavy Lois of Life Is Known to Have Occurred Enormous Damage Done Stanchest Boats Are Driven to Shelter— Worst Not Yet Known. Disasters Unprecedented. The entire chain of lakes was swept Saturday and Saturday night by a northwest gale whose severity has not been excelled during the season of navigation for the past ten years. The same wind which drove vessels on the beach on every lee shore also leveled telegraph wires, and reports of wrecks are somewhat slow in reaching the outside world, particularly from out-of-the-way localities. The list of wrecks, in proportion to the number of vessels which were out in the gale, is larger perhaps than in the history of the latter-day marine. That there has been a large loss of life now seems. certain, but it may be several days before it is known just how many sailors perished. Eighteen persons, the entire crew of the propeller Dean Richmond, are given up lor lost in the storm on Lake Erie. The corpses of three men have been washed ashore off Van Buren Point, near Dunkirk. The shore of the lake is strewn with wreckage and merchandise, and, according to Buffalo dispatches, the waves are hourly yielding up further evidences of the fate to which the Richmond has gone. On one of the bodies papers were found which showed it to be that of Logan, the engineer. The others were deck-hands. The signboard of the Richmond washed ashore about the same time and other pieces of wreckage were cast upon the beach, leaving no doubt of the fate of the boat. The Richmond was the property of the Bottsfords, of Port Huron. She was built in 1864. She had. on board a cargo of merchandise consigned to Buffalo. The storm was the severest known to the seamen of Buffalo in twenty-five years. The rain fell so heavily that pilots. could not see 100 feet ahead of their vessel. All incoming vessels have stories to tell of the violence of the storm.

Big Schooner Goes Down. The four-masted schooner Minnehaha went ashore in the gale at Arcadia, twenty miles north of Manistee. All on board —six persons—except the captain, William Packer, were lost. Capt. Packer swam ashore with the help of a plank, a distance exceeding a mile. The sailors also attempted the perilous journey, but became exhausted and were drowned. The Frankfort lifesaving crew made three unsuccessful attempts to rdach the Minnehaha, but the boat filled with water each time. The fourth effort was successful, but there was no one aboard, all having then been washed overboard. The wreck was first sighted by a man on the bluff at Starke, who jumped on his horse and rode at a furious pace through the storm to Onekama, in order to notify the life-saving crew at Manistee. A telegram brought the life-savers on a special train from that place, and in the afternoon the lifeboat, mortar and other life-saving apparatus was loaded on wagons and started through the woods to the scene of the wreck. The rain was blinding, and numberless trees had fallen across the narrow roadway through the forest. The progress of the life-savers was exceedingly slow, and it was nearly midnight when they reached the high sand bluff overlooking the lake at Starke. The lifesaving crew from Frankfort gained the bluff at dark, but even then it was too late.

Dispatches from all points along the west shore of Lake Huron and the eastern end of Lake Superior indicated that the storm increased greatly in violence as night came on, and at midnight the storm was at its height. At numerous places the wind registered from fifty-two to sixty miles an hour at the United States signal station. By that time the lake fleets had generally succeeded in getting into shelter. Wind and Tide in the South. The town of Georgetown, on the coast of South Carolina, caught the full fury of the storm, which left death and destruction in its track. Owing to the wreck of telegraph lines but meager reports of the great damage have been received. At least nineteen persons are now known to have been drowned at Magnolia Beach, where eyery house was swept from its foundation, penning in the inmates until death relieved their tortures. At Pauley’s Island, a summer resort twelve miles from Georgetown, the tide rose three feet, sweeping away most of the residences, the inmates saving nothing but the clothes they had on. No lives are reported lost on this island nor on Debordean, but several houses were washed from their foundations and drifted to sea.