1740 — Dec, gale, approximately 36 vessels grounded/wrecked along coast of MA    — >11

Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 9-8-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

Blanchard note: Though Snow, our only source, notes exactly eleven fatalities on one vessel, he also notes there were strandings and wrecks of thirty-five other vessels. This is why we have chosen to employ the sign “>” meaning eleven or more, or at least eleven. From the scant information we have below from Snow on the severity of the storm and the number of vessels involved it seems to us that there may have been one or more additional fatalities.

— 11  Snow. “The 1749 Gale.” Great Storms and Shipwrecks of New England. 1943, p. 241.

Narrative Information

Snow: “The December 1740 storm was of outstanding violence around Boston Harbor. Captain Underwood’s craft hit the rocks at Rainsford’s Island and bilged, Captain Tilden’s vessel ran aground at Scituate, while two Newburyport sloops went ashore at Lynn Beach. There were twenty vessels wrecked at Marblehead. Captain McCloud and his entire crew of ten perished when their ship hit the rocks off Scituate. At Nantucket Captain Griffith’s ship was wrecked. A sloop belonging to Captain Lowell was wrecked down Massachusetts Bay, but all were saved. Five ships were ashore at Cape Cod, three from the Vineyard, one from North Carolina, and Captain Higgins’ vessel bound for Connecticut which came ashore near the Highland.”

Source

Snow, Edward Rowe. Great Storms and Shipwrecks of New England. Boston: Yankee Publishing Company, 1943.