As the storm made its way across the Atlantic and up the eastern seaboard, there was little warning. Radar had not been invented. The National Weather Bureau predicted it would blow itself out at North Carolina, but it didn't. No one had ever seen a storm like this.
In September of 1938, a great storm rose up on the coast of West Africa and began making its way across the Atlantic Ocean. The National Weather Bureau learned about it from merchant ships at sea and predicted it would blow itself out at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, as such storms usually did. The coastal forecast from New York to Maine called for "fresh southerly winds" with some cooler, rainy weather. Out on the eastern end of Long Island, fishermen set their lobster traps as usual and prepared for another tough winter. At wealthy summer homes in the Hamptons and in Newport, Rhode Island, families continued with plans to entertain their friends.
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But the storm didn't blow itself out at Cape Hatteras. It suddenly began an unexpected sprint north along the coast, surprising even the Coast Guard. No one had ever seen a storm like this; radar had not yet been invented.
The Hurricane of '38 chronicles the lives of fishermen, residents and vacationers on the day before the storm, following their stories through one of the greatest natural disasters ever to befall the eastern seaboard.
Narrator: On September 4, 1938, a French meteorologist in the Sahara noted winds moving west toward the African coast and the Atlantic Ocean. Two weeks later, these winds -- now at hurricane force -- were seen again northeast of Puerto Rico. The Jacksonville office of the U.S. Weather Bureau broadcast hurricane warnings for southern Florida on the 19th of September, but by the next morning the hurricane had turned. Florida was spared. The storm was now headed north.
Milton Miller: I was born to be a fisherman. I was born right on the beach in back of a sand dune there not over 300 or 400 feet from the ocean. And you know, I used to hang around and be down there when I was a little boy just to get -- well, we used to have to open bait and to bait these codfish lines. I'd probably make 25 cents a day, but 25 cents them days were a lot of money and the family needed it.
Narrator: There was nothing unusual in the forecast, Wednesday September 21st -- fresh winds from the south, overcast, a chance of rain. Among the fisherman, the talk was of clams -- $2.50 a bushel, $5 for a hard day's work; not bad wages for the depression. There was no mention of the hurricane, now 60 miles off Virginia and moving north toward Long Island.
Ed Ecker: The morning was kind of a mild day. Nobody talked about hurricane. Nobody even talked about a storm, and nobody heard that there was anything coming, not even the fisherman.
Milton Miller: There's no such thing as weather reports, and you know, they'd stand around and say, "Well, Cap, what do you think the weather's going to be?" And he'd look around, maybe light up his pipe, looking around, sniffing around. "Well, you know, we might make it today. We'd better hurry. Maybe we'll only get a half a day in, but we better be back by noon." I think it was more instinct than anything else.
Narrator: The village of Montauk projected out into the Atlantic at the eastern tip of Long Island. For its fisherman, the weather was an unending struggle. The summer months meant butterfish and porgies, also the chance of sudden squalls that could swamp their small boats and tear their traps. Come winter, the fisherman would row out before dawn, their cotton coats painted with fish oil to seal out the freezing wind. But this was September. Winds from the northwest eased the surf and gave the best fishing of the year.
Milton Miller: During the summer, I fished the bay. By September, we'd go on the ocean and start hauling for striped bass. And when I say hauling, I mean that I -- we used a boat with a net, and this is the oldest type of fishing in history, to haul seine.
Narrator: Each day, the men would cart their fish to the Promised Land dock, where it was loaded onto the train for New York's Fulton Street market. Children would give the engineer a codfish. In return, he'd lurch the train so that handfuls of precious coal would spill onto the tracks. That year, 1938, the WPA finally brought sewers to the eastern end of the island. It was also the year dial phones came to Montauk. The local paper complained of "curious buzzes and clicks." But the fisherman missed out on most of these modern miracles. They lived on the beach, in houses made from fishboxes and tarpaper, insulated with seaweed.
Milton Miller: The night before the hurricane -- I'd been fishing all that night and that next day, yeah, I had sort of a sense. I knew by the weather it was getting bad. I mean, I knew a storm was coming over on the ocean side. We could see the sky is getting darker, the wind is breezing up stronger, so by the time I get to Promised Land, I see Captain Burt there, and he says, "Well, Milt," he says, "this barometer's falling so fast." He says, "We're going to get a blow somewheres." Plus they figure this was going to be a three-day northeaster.
Ed Ecker: You know, we had northeasters and that type of thing. Never heard the word "hurricane." Never heard the word "hurricane" while I was running around, never heard the word "hurricane" in school. And I think I was in the third grade at that time, in 1938. The word "hurricane" was foreign to us.
Patricia Shuttleworth: Every year, in June, we would pick up and pack the car and set off for Westhampton Beach from Newark, New Jersey, where we lived. It was always a cook and what we called a chambermaid-waitress. Over the weekend, we would go to the beach. At each side of the beach clubs were long ropes that went out to barrels, which floated out there, which showed you the limit of where you could swim. A lot of people would go and hang onto these ropes and as the waves broke over them, they would dip or bathe.
Stuart Bartle: The ocean was really a big part of our life. We spent a tremendous amount of time in the ocean, going through the waves. The most fun we ever had was when it got rough. It was really important that we master the water. It was important to my stepfather, and it became very important to me. It was sort of becoming man. I guess I was -- I mean, I was a kid then, of course, and it was one of the things that made me a little better than the other kids, 'cause I couldn't run as fast as they could. You go with the flow, so to speak. You don't ever swim against the current. And the biggest thing you keep in the back of your mind is you're not going to be carried out to sea, you're going to be washed in. I grew up sort of foolishly fearless, I think, about the water.
Narrator: When the residents of the Hamptons woke up to their newspapers that September 21st, the headlines were of Hitler and his threats against Czechoslovakia. Britain and France were caving in to Hitler's demands. Buried at the bottom of page 27, The New York Times ran a story about the relieved residents of South Florida. The paper praised the, quote, "admirably organized Weather Service" that had enabled New York and the rest of the world to have been so well informed.
Patricia Shuttleworth: That morning was dark and gray. It was raining. People on the beach said later that they had been planning, for instance, to do some outdoor things that day. They decided to stay home and watch the surf. That was the reason they had bought and built on the beach, so that they could watch the ocean, and this was going to be a very exciting, rough day on the ocean. So this is what people were doing.
Narrator: Servants were closing up the estates. Beds were stripped and covered with newspapers, summer clothes packed away in trunks. By mid-morning, there was already a furious wind. Near the beachfront, windowpanes blurred from the salt spray and sand scraped against the skin.
Stuart Bartle: Around noon or maybe before noon, I went up to the dunes to look at the water, and I saw it was really fabulous. It was absolutely beautiful. As far as the eye could see, you could see these waves, I mean, white water going out as far as the eye could see. It was wonderful. It was a little scary, but you know, if you're a kid you can't imagine that anything bad is ever going to happen.
Anne Moore: When you face something like that -- an impossible situation -- there is no way out. It's just not possible that you're going to survive this, and yet you do. You know, what will be will be. When your time comes, it comes and nothing can happen to you before it's time.
Narrator: Anne and Cathy Moore lived with their family in Napatree Point, a community of 150 built on a sandbar at the southern tip of Rhode Island. A single narrow road ran from the mainland through Napatree Point down to the ruins of the old fort where children liked to play.
Catherine Moore: We were in the bay, playing. We were allowed to go to the ocean side when someone went with us -- that was a big thrill -- and we played games in the water, of course.
Anne Moore: You really want to get a sense of the swimsuit, woolen swimsuits which itched and scratched and -- and we were constantly chafed right through here on both -- it really hurt. I mean, it just did.
Catherine Moore: As I recall, my mother -- they did laundry that morning because they hadn't been able to for the previous dull days. And it was nice, spanking wind and it would dry them, though I believe they did have to use clothespins and double-clip the laundry. I mean, it was that much wind.
Narrator: The Rhode Island beachfront stood dangerously exposed. Houses were built on shifting sand, too close to the sea. Bridges were too flimsy, roads too low. Still, on mid-morning on the 21st, evacuation would have been possible -- if the Weather Bureau had put out the word. 152ee80cbc