IN A HURRICANE

Dunstan Times, 13 March 1933, Page 6

IN A HURRICANE

WHAT IT FEELS LIKE A horse sailed over a cliff like a seawhizzed out of the churchyard and skittered along tire beach. , A big stone house, with fourteen persons in it, suddenly collapsed. All this he saw as the hurricane screamed and lashed and played its fiendish tricks, while 500 helpless humans cowered and hung on tor then lives. ~ , “ You can’t describe a hurricane. The wind is simply an incredible force, and the rain strikes you so hard that it left inv back black and blue and skinned my face as you’d skin an amTerrence Keogh, youtliful, inddyfaced world rover, “one of the last of a long line of Irish fihbusterers.; sat in a room in his aunt’s home in New York and told of the hurricane that came as a smashing climax to the thrilling trip he made in the Snug a twenty-foot sloop, from Cape tod to Jamaica. , . , ■ , On that voyage lus only companion was a one-volume edition of Shakespeare. , , “ Things always seem to happen to me,” says Mr Keogh, whose father was a New ‘ York Supreme Court Justice and whose great-groat-uncle was Robert Km met. the Irish patriot of immortal memorv. And after reading the story he told to a reporter for the New York ‘ Herald-Tribune ’ one is ready to agree that things do, indeed, happen to him , ~ “ I had vile weather all the nay down from Cape Cod,” he said. “ Southerly head winds that meant tacking constantly and six bad storms. It was cold the first day or so, but after T crossed the Gulf Stream it was all right.” The management of his cockleshell did not seem troublesome. Thus we read; . He described how he treated the storms, which he called “ little dangeious in a boat as small as that. He would take all sail off. lash the tiller, put on a sea anchor, and retire to hicabin with his pipe and Shakespeare until the wind had gone down enough to make sailing sensible again. <• One of them lasted for three days and nights.” he said. “ and one of them fooled me. “ Of course, the only difficult thing in such a small boat is staying on it. Sometimes that's something of a P l °- blem. About 200 miles south of Bermuda when I was twenty-five days out of Wood Hole, a bad blow came up. Nothing would have happened, except that the calm centre passed right over us. and therefore the wind changed. “ Supplies were getting lowish, so i wanted to run before it. I .went up and set the mainsail, and while I was at it I slipped, tripped on something, and went over. , , , , “ Fortunately I had hold of a rope. In those circumstances you hang on pretty hard, and I was able to pnil myself in.” The rest of his trip to Kingston was, he said uneventful. He ran into the worst storm he has ever seen at sea, and onlv saved himself from being blown on to the lee shore of a small island by stripping all sail and hiking the Snug over a bar into a harbour. The storm past, he put in at Nassau for supplies, and was feted theie lot ten days. , Arrived at Kingston on August lb, lie found himself penniless and raised the wind by selling the Snug. On Sunday, September 4, we read, he was in the courthouse at Green Turtle Bay, a settlement of 500 whites on an islet off Abaco, one of the smaller Bahamas. Then came the hurricane, and here wc pick up the nanatne again: , , , “ That Sunday night we had our first warning,” he said. “Of course, before I left Nassau there had been storm warnings from Washington or a hurricane brewing by Turks Island, but that was so far away no one paid any attention. . , , , , , “ On Sunday night the whole eastern sky was pitch black. “ Monday morning there was a good gale and rain in squalls. At noon decided we were going to have rea trouble, so 1 started for the general store to get some kerosene, so that I could lock myself in the courthouse which was a stone building, and read till it was over. Bv that time it was so had you could barely walk, and shingles and bits of porches were getting kind ol active. “ i got to the store and ten minutes later if started.” . , ~ . There were five others in the bunding with him. two men and three women, and their immediate reaction. Mr Keogh tells ns, was to throw themselves face down on the floor and pray. Later: J . “ J looked out,” ho went on. and the first thing I saw was a big stone house across the street that 1 knew bad fourteen people in it go down before inv eves. It went in like a spokeless umbrella. 1 tried to go out to rescue some of them, but I could hardly hold on to the side of the store. So i went hack into the store. “ That didn’t do much good, since the minute 1 got into it it took off like an aeroplane and sailed lor what seemed like an hour, actually about a hundred fact, to land on some rocks with the floor boards bursting like an explosion.” , . . . . He crawled out on lus hands and knees, with his head well down, trying to find another place. , “Getting about was quite a businrs„,” be added. “ 1 passed two or three corpses and any amount of wreckJ?crc. , “ I looked up once and saw two boats flying along overhead. '“ ] readied a house, where there were n man, bis wife, and two children, and as soon as I got there the roof took off. The man had a broken leg. so the woman grabbed one child and J Hie other, and wc started again, with the man crawling after. “ We were out fifteen minutes that time, but we finally got to a stone house which scorned to bo standing up well. It had thirty people in it, all with hysterics.” Tuesday dawned, with wind and ram still strong, and the rescue work began. Every house on the island was down except the stone house in which Keogh had taken refuge. Three persons had been blown off the island. The wind had lifted the tombstones in the churchyard and deposited them on the beach. A horse had been dropped over a cliff “ like a seagull.” An iron washtub was found seven miles away on

another island, and three houses bad been taken across the channel to Aba co. Eighteen persons had been killed and most of the live stock was buried in the ruins. Coming to the official record : The velocity of the wind as registered Monday morning was 160 miles an hour. “ In point of fact,” said Mr Keogh, bringing the attention back to the quiet dining room by pausing for a moment to light the pipe that had accompanied Shakespeare, ” the island was a complete, absolute wreck.”