1713 — Sep 16-17, Hurricane, Charleston and vicinity, South Carolina — 70

Lorna September 1, 1713

–70 Rappaport/Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995. p. 23.[1]

–70 Rubillo. Hurricane Destruction in South Carolina: Hell and High Water. 2006, p. 39.

Narrative Information

Rappaport and Partagas: [No.] “164. South Carolina 16-17 Sep 1713 70 [deaths]”

Rubillo: “The storm of 1713. Seventy people died on September 5-6, 1713,[2] along the Carolina coast. During those two days a savage wind ‘raged so furiously that it drove the sea into Charles-town, damaging much of the fortifications whose resistance it is thought preserved the town. Some low situated houses not far from the sea were undermined and carried away with the inhabitants; ships were drove from their anchors far within land, particularly a sloop…was drove three miles over marshes into the woods.’[3]

“From available accounts, it appears that the eye of the storm made landfall around Charleston or a little north of the colonial town. Port Royal to the southwest of Charleston barely felt its effects.

“The few surviving eyewitness accounts of the storm are vivid. Thomas Lamboll wrote that

On September 5^th came on a great hurricane, which was attended by such an inundation from the sea, and to such an unknown height that a great many lives were lost; all the vessels in Charleston harbor except one were driven ashore. The new lookout on Sullivan’s Island, of wood, build eight square and eighty feet high, blown down; all the front wall and mud parapet before Charleston undermined and washed away with the platform and gun carriages, and other desolations sustained as never before happened in this town. To the northward of Charleston the hurricane was more violent.[4]

“Dr. Francis Le Jau thought that it was ‘miraculous how any of us came to escape from the great Hurricane.’ He reported that the storm lasted twelve hours and that the Ashley and Cooper rivers ‘joined for some time.’ Seventy people drowned in Charleston and houses, barns and plantations were destroyed according to him. ‘God in his Goodness has preserved us,’ he wrote.”[5] [p. 39]

Sources

Rappaport, Edward N. and Jose Fernandez-Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994 (NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-47). Coral Gables, FL: National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, January 1995, 42 pages. Accessed 8-14-2017 at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/NWS-NHC-1995-47.pdf

Rubillo, Tom. Hurricane Destruction in South Carolina: Hell and High Water. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006.

[1] Appendix I. Cites: Ludlum, D. M., Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870. Boston: American Meteorological Society, 1963, 198 pages; and, Miami Metropolis and The Tampa Morning Tribune (12 and 14 October 1909).

[2] FN: “The date is from the Julian calendar. On the Gregorian calendar, it would be September 16 and 17, 1713.”

[3] Rubillo cites: Mark Catesby. Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. London, 1731, ii (in Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, p. 43.)

[4] Cites Ramsey, History of South Carolina, 175-176n; and Ludlum, Early American Hurricanes, p. 43.

[5] Rubillo footnote: “Letter from Le Jau to the Secretary of St. James Parish dated January 22, 1713, as reprinted in The Carolina Chronicle of Dr. Francis Le Jau, F. J. Klingberg, ed. (University of California Press, 1956), 136.