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tropical weather
by Dr. Colin Depradine, the Principal of the Caribbean
Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH). (The
article was originally published in "The Advisory", The 35th Anniversary
Edition of the CIMH, 2002.)
The Great Hurricane of October
10, 1780, is arguably, the most destructive hurricane to have struck Barbados
and the islands of the Eastern Caribbean. It
is estimated that 22,000 persons lost their lives in Barbados, St. Vincent, St.
Lucia and Martinique.
The following quotation from a
book by Reclus (1873) gives an approximate idea of the violence of this storm:
“Starting from Barbados,
where neither trees nor dwellings were left standing, it caused the English
fleet anchored off St. Lucia to disappear and completely ravaged this island,
where 6000 persons were crushed under the ruins.
After this, the whirlwind tending toward Martinique, enveloped a convoy
of French transports, and sunk more than 40 ships carrying 4000 soldiers; on
land, the town of St. Pierre and other places ere completely razed by the rind,
and 9000 persons perished there. More
to the north, Dominique, St. Eustatius, St. Vincent (?) and Porto Rico were
likewise devastated and most of the vessels which were on the path of the
cyclone foundered, with all their crews. Beyond
Porto Rico, the tempest bent to the north-east, toward the Bermudas and though
its violence had gradually diminished, it sunk several English warships
returning to Europe.”
The following quotation is from
a letter from Sir George Rodney to Lady Rodney dated at St. Lucia, December 10,
1780 on the effects of the storm on Barbados:
“The strongest buildings and
the whole of the houses, most of which were stone, and remarkable for their
solidity, gave way to the fury of the wind, and were torn up to their
foundations; all the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried
upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had
I not been an eyewitness, nothing could have induced me to have believed it.
More than six thousand persons perished, and all the inhabitants are
entirely ruined.”
Some indication of the violence
of the storm can be gleaned from a letter from Dr. Gilbert Blane, in Barbados,
to Dr. Hunter in which he writes.
“.........what
will give as strong an idea of the force of the wind as anything, many of them
(of the trees) were stripped of their bark”.
Dr. Jose Millas writes that in
hurricanes in which the wind has reached 200 miles an hour in the most severe
gusts, this phenomenon has not been mentioned.
In the Havana hurricane of October 18, 1944 the maximum wind velocity was
measured at 163 miles an hour and the bark of the trees remained in tact.
He suggests that tiny water bullets would have to reach the trees with a
very, very great velocity so as to be able to strip them of their bark.
Probably that velocity must be greater than 200 miles an hour.
Major –General Cunninghame,
Governor of Barbados, in his account of the Hurricane at Barbados wrote:
“The armory was leveled to
the ground, and the arms scattered about…
The buildings were all demolished; for so violent was the storm here,
when assisted by the sea, that a 12 pounder gun was carried from the south to
the north battery, a distance of 140 yards….
The loss to this country is immense:
many years will be required to retrieve it”.
The following quotation from a
paper by Dr. Gilbert Blane in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
is instructive:
“There had been nothing
that could be called a hurricane felt at Barbados for more than a century before
1780, so that the inhabitants began to think themselves exempt from such
calamities and accordingly had no edifices of sufficient strength to withstand
the force of a hurricane”.
The Editor of “The West Indian” – a Barbados paper,
writing about the 1831 Hurricane mentions the 1780 hurricane. He wrote:
“At dawn of day (October 10th), the wind rushing
with a mighty force from the northwest…. Towards evening the storm increased,
and at nine o’clock had attained its height, but it continued to rage till
four next morning, when there was a temporary lull… Before day-break, the
castle and forts, the church, every public building and almost every house in
Bridgetown, were leveled with the earth”.
It is evident that the “lull” does not correspond to the
centre of the storm.
Coke in his History of the West Indies (1808) said:
“To
estimate, with accuracy, the damage which the colony received in all its
departments would be an impossible task. The
calculation which was made soon after the mournful occasion, estimated the loss
at little less than one million and a half sterling”.
-
At St. Christopher’s many vessels were forced on
shore.
-
At St. Lucia, all the barracks and huts for His Majesty’s troops and
other buildings in the island, were blown down, and the ships driven to sea;
only two houses were left standing in the town.
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At Dominica, they suffered greatly.
-
At. St. Vincent, every building was blown down and the town destroyed.
-
At Grenada, nineteen sail of loaded Dutch ships were stranded and beaten
to pieces.
-
At Martinique, all the ships that were bringing troops and provisions
were blown off the island. In the
town of St. Pierre, every house was blown down and more than 1000 people
perished. The number of people who
perished in Martinique was said to be 9000.
-
At. St. Eustatia, the loss was very great.
Between 4000 and 5000 persons are said to have lost their lives.
Millas
estimates that the hurricane developed in the Atlantic possibly in the vicinity
of 12°N
and 38°W.
It moved westward very slowly at little more than 6 nautical miles per
hour. When its centre was about 120
nautical miles east of Barbados, it began to curve and move between West by
North and West-Northwest. After
crossing a very short distance north of Barbados, it took a more North-Westerly
track passing East of St. Lucia, Southwest of St. Kitts, South of Puerto Rico
changing course for Mona Island, recurving and passing East of the Turks
Islands, recurving to pass South East of Bermuda, moving North-East.
The
hurricane season of 1780 was one of great activity with the first storm
occurring on June 13.
(This article was prepared from the publication
Hurricanes of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions, 1492-1800 by Jose Carlos.)
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