On the evening of November 26, 1898, a light but strengthening wind swept across the New England coast. Within hours, wind speeds had reached hurricane magnitudes. They raged all through the night and the following day before finally subsiding after 36 hours on November 28, bringing with them churning seas, massive floods and a trail of destruction spanning from Maine to Connecticut.
The infamous Portland Gale formed when two high-energy, low-pressure systems—one from the Gulf of Mexico and one from the Great Lakes region—converged off the coast of Virginia and migrated northward. When a high-pressure zone from Ohio brought clear, cloudless skies to Boston on the morning of the 26th, nobody could predict such a treacherous storm was just on the horizon. The sky began to darken later that evening, and as the night progressed, Boston’s Blue Hill Observatory recorded wind gusts up to 90 mph. Storm surge peaked at 10 feet in
Cohasset Harbor and the gale buried much of New England in more than 2 feet of snow. In the morning, New England residents woke to a battered countryside.
Cape Cod and the south shore of Massachusetts were hit the hardest. The storm severed telegraph and telephone lines, buried railroad tracks, washed away coastal buildings, eroded beaches and destroyed dozens of homes. In the town of Scituate, it permanently altered the coastline by cutting a new inlet from the sea to the North River, closing the old river mouth and reversing part of the river’s flow. A total of 141 shipwrecks were reported from Maine to Massachusetts, including the partially wrecked schooner in Hingham Harbor pictured here. However, the most notorious shipwreck and the storm’s namesake was the steamship SS Portland.
While many boats remained in port on November 26 as a precaution, Hollis Blanchard, captain of the Portland, decided to stay on schedule for the ship’s regular run from India Wharf in Boston to Portland, Maine. As the ship departed, Boston’s high-pressure system collided with the Gulf’s low, sending many smaller ships racing for shelter in Boston Harbor. It was too late for the Portland to turn around, however, as steering the tall, narrow paddlewheeler perpendicular to the wind would capsize it. Blanchard had no choice but to weather the storm at sea.
The Portland never arrived at its destination, and when bodies and lifejackets from the ship began to wash ashore the following day, it became clear that none of the estimated 192 passengers and crew had survived. (The only copy of the passenger list sank with the ship, leaving many families wondering if their loved ones had been aboard.) It was more than 90 years before the wrecked ship was finally located off of Cape Ann.
The Portland Gale claimed more than 400 lives, and it remained the most intense storm on record in New England until the Blizzard of 1978. Following the tragedy, propeller-driven ships began to replace paddlewheelers on the Boston to Portland route, and it became customary for many captains to send a passenger list ashore in case of disaster.
December 2024
