Probably no of htkr single even! u as so
cruelly destructive of A'orth Caro¬
lina's heritage* as the Hurricane off
I7CJ».
By TOM PARR AMOR E
The
Day
Colonial
New
Bern
Washed
Away
New Bern had a rainy morning but
no cause for alarm until around mid¬
day when a great wall of black clouds
formed on the eastern horizon,
threatening a severe storm. A brisk
early afternoon gale brought a respite,
driving back the clouds and raising
hope for clear skies by nightfall. But
the gale subsided in late afternoon and
the cloudbank returned, this time
quickly engulfing New Bern and un¬
leashing a tremendous rain. Ship own¬
ers sent around urgent notices to their
crews calling for attention to anchor
cables and mooring lines. But one crew
after another gave it up as useless, as
stinging rain and heavy seas made the
work intolerable.
It was Thursday. September?. 1769.
At six p.m. the hurricane struck,
churning the Neuse and Trent into
cauldrons of angry currents. Anchor
cables snapped like so much cotton
thread, loosing ships to thrash wildly
about, splintering one another or
sprawling forlornly onto the shore.
The wind, in the words of Anglican
Pftrson Alexander Stewart, was "so
violent nothing could stand against it."
"Every Vessel. Boat or Craft." he
wrote, "were drove up in the woods
and all the large Oaks. Pines etc. broke
cither off or torn up by the roots. . . ."
The fall tobacco crop for many miles
afound was shredded and almost ma¬
ture stands of Indian corn, the staple
food of the region, were ruined in the
driving rain and wind. Advancing tides
trapped and drowned hundreds of
sheep, hogs and cattle in low-lying
pastures. Long before morning, not a
grist mill, a wharf or a bridge would be
left standing anywhere in the region.
Wiped Out
The villages of Brunswick and
Beaufort had already been decimated
by the storm before it reached New
Bern. Brunswick's court house and
other buildings were in ruins and not
more than four or five houses remained
standing in Beaufort. But nowhere in
continental America did a thickly
populated neighborhood come so di¬
rectly under the raging center of the
storm as did the eastern portion of
New Bern. Here, a few hours sufficed
to wipe out the architectural heritage
of more than half a century.
The howling tempest roared in over
the mouth of the Trent and bore
northward directly along Craven and
Water (now East Front) streets. It
ripped away Ellis’s wharf and store
and Col. Leech's tan house, crunching
whole clusters of buildings owned by
John Clithcrall and others so brutally,
said Thomas Clifford Howe, collector
of the port, that "not one stone (was)
left upon another." John Green’s store
and distillery. Mayor Thomas Haslin’s
tan yard. Christopher Neale’s tavern
and the adjacent Neuse ferry, with
Richard Caswell's store and some fifty
more commercial and residential
structures were battered down. James
Davis's print shop, the only one in the
colony, was. in Howe's words, "broke
to pieces, his papers destroyed, and his
types buried in the sand."
A fragment of a memoir, composed a
few days afterward by Thomas Sit-
greaves. depicts a heart-rending scene
of "Houses tumbling about." rain
pouring down "as if another deluge
was going to (come)", pitiful refugees
"spent with strugling against the
wind." and "besmeared with blood."
"many with nothing but a shirt", "a
scene", he wrote, "of misery and dis¬
tress". Sitgrcavcs himself, wrote
Thomas Clifford Howe, was left by the
storm "with a family of small children
(and) not a second shirt to his back."
Giant Tide
It was the waterfront merchants who
bore the gravest losses. The riverside
wharves and warehouse of merchant
John Smith were undermined early in
the storm, breaking at length into
pieces and dumping his stock of com.
14
THE STATE. JANUARY 1979
