The deadliest ever Atlantic hurricane

First there was Harvey (see my blog of Sept 4). Now we have Irma, and soon there will be Jose. Hurricane Irma is the fiercest Atlantic tropical storm in a decade. It has caused more than 30 deaths across a number of Caribbean islands, including Barbuda which is now said to be ‘barely habitable’. Next in its path is Florida.

But the deadliest Atlantic hurricane of all remains the Great Hurricane of 1780, which made landfall in Barbados on 10 October. Most buildings were destroyed or severely damaged and ‘a luxuriant fertile island’ turned into ‘the dreariest winter.’ The number killed was put at 4,500.

Next the storm moved on to St Lucia, where only two houses survived in the port city of Castries. Five Royal Navy ships that had been fighting in the American War of Independence were sunk and nine others severely damaged. The island’s death toll was estimated at 6,000.

On St Vincent, more than 580 out of 600 houses at Kingstown were destroyed. At Grenada, 19 Dutch ships were sunk, while off Martinique, 4,000 French sailors were drowned, and perhaps 9,000 people lost their lives on the island. The total death toll from the storm was put at around 30,000.

For the full story, see Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books).

Caribbean catastrophe

On this day....107 years ago, the volcano Montagne Pelée erupted above the town of St Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Apart from a minor eruption in 1851, there hadn’t been a peep out of the mountain for a long time, but in April 1902, it started to grumble, and on the bright sunny morning of May 8, 1902, it went berserk.

As people gathered in the churches of St Pierre - the “Paris of the West Indies” – for eight o’ clock mass, smoke blotted out the sun, and boiling lava poured down the hill into the town killing everyone in its wake. More than a dozen ships were destroyed in the harbour; one having its masts and funnel sheared off “as if they had been cut by a knife.”

Of St Pierre’s 26,000 inhabitants, only a handful survived. One was a convicted murderer awaiting execution who was saved thanks to the thick walls and tiny windows of his prison. He was reprieved, and began a new career with Barnum & Bailey’s circus – sitting in a replica of his cell as the “lone” survivor of the “Silent City of Death”.

St Pierre would be partially rebuilt, only to be hit by another eruption in 1929, and would never again recover its colourful and rather racy reputation. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.