Despite the reputation of the Outer Banks as being in the bullseye for hurricanes, the fact is they don’t come ashore along this stretch of coast all that often. When they do strike, the power and fury of Mother Nature is on full display, but it certainly is not an annual or even biannual event.
Nonetheless, historic hurricanes have ravaged the Outer Banks, perhaps none as horrific as the San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899.
It was first identified as a tropical system on August 3, southwest of Cape Verde. By the time it reached Puerto Rico on August 8, sustained winds of 140 miles per hour were recorded.
The storm turned north, paralleling the southeastern coast, making landfall at Cape Hatteras on August 17. The National Weather Service Station at Hatteras reported sustained winds of 100 miles per hour, with gusts reaching 140. And then “the station’s anemometer was blown away, and no record was made of the storm’s highest winds,” John W. McCain wrote in the September 1941 edition of the US Naval Institute Proceedings.
“The barometric pressure was reported as “near twenty-six inches” (880 MB), which, if accurate, would suggest that the San Ciriaco Hurricane may have reached category five intensity,” McCain went on to write, but added, “Though that’s not likely, it’s understood that this hurricane ranks as one of the most powerful ever seen on the Outer Banks.”
Ocracoke Village was decimated.
“Not since the awful storm of 1846 has Ocracoke been the witness of such scenes. The whole island is a complete wreck,” the Raleigh News and Observer reported on August 22. The 1846 storm was the hurricane that carved out Hatteras and Oregon inlets.
According to news reports, more than 30 homes and a church were destroyed. Another church was moved from its foundation and severely damaged, and ships at dock in Silver Lake sank at their moorings with the loss of two lives.
But it was at sea where the full fury and horror of the storm struck.
The Aaron Reppard was a 459 ton three masted schooner sailing from Philadelphia for Savannah, Georgia with 700 tons of coal. Master of the schooner Captain Wessel was at sea off the Delaware coast on August 13 when the Weather Service issued a warning to mariners to avoid the Eastern seaboard because of the storm. The invention of ship-to-shore radio or telegraph signals was years away, and Wessel knew nothing about the warning.
Wessel’s last chance to avoid disaster came on August 15 as he passed the Virginia Capes and the relative safety of Chesapeake Bay. Still, he chose to sail on, even as the wind grew to gale force, the seas became ever more dangerous, and the ship’s barometer fell.
On August 16, he was sighted by Surfman William G. Midgett, who was patrolling the beach on horseback near New Inlet.
“I sighted her masts through the murk for the first time when she was about a mile and a half off the beach. The schooner was heading north, now making a little headway, then dropping back. She came into the breakers in a few minutes, and I left immediately to notify my station,” Midgett wrote in his official report.
The journey back to the Gull Life-Saving Station, which was two miles away, took him almost 30 minutes as he fought the wind, blowing sand and waves breaking far up the beach.
Gull Station Keeper David Pugh telephoned Little Kinnakeet Station to the south and Chicamacomico Station to the north, asking for help. He immediately put his crew into action, hauling their rescue equipment to where Midgett had seen the Reppard.
The situation was more dire than Midgett’s original report when they arrived.
“The schooner was by this time about 700 yards offshore, stern toward the beach, riding two anchors, but slowly dragging shoreward,” he wrote.
Pugh noted in his report that launching a rescue boat was not possible.
“It was my opinion…that the use of a boat in these conditions was clearly beyond all realm of possibility. No number of men, however skillful, could have launched a boat in those seas,” he wrote.
Two attempts to fire a line using a Lyle gun were unsuccessful, but on the third attempt, the line made it to the ship. However, the crew, clinging desperately to the rigging, could not get to it.
The Reppard was breaking up.
There was one passenger aboard the ship—Mr. Cummings—who, according to McCain, was the first to be taken by the sea.
“Cummings, the passenger, aloft in the mizzen shrouds, was caught by one leg in the ratlines and slammed back and forth against the mast until his life was beaten away. Suddenly, the mast fell, and Cummings was not seen again,” he wrote.
The raging sea swept away Captain Wessel and two other crewmen.
There were three crewmen still clinging to the rigging of the ship. One of the crewmen, too weak to hold on any longer, fell into the sea. “A surfman promptly tied a line around his own waist, braved the waves and floating timbers, managed to get hold of the exhausted sailor, and both were pulled ashore,” McCain wrote.
On shore, the Life-saving crews donned cork life vests, attached lines, and swam to the doomed ship, saving the last two crewmen.
The official Life-Saving Service report on the rescue made it clear all that could be done was done.
“There is no doubt that the surfmen did everything humanly possible under the adverse conditions to save the lives of the people on the schooner,” the report found.