A reconstructed graphic novel of storm damage from the ship’s logs in the British Admiralty Records, PRO, London. 20 Houston History Volume 5, number 3 summer 2008 8004640_UH.indd 20 10/13/10 8:56:35 AM RACER’S STORM The Benchmark Hurricane of 1837 by James L. GLass* 24, 1837, the storm Racer’s storm in 1837 is remembered by meteorologists affected Hispaniola as one of the most famous and destructive hurricanes of the (Haiti), Jamaica, nineteenth century “partly due to its apt name, but more Cuba, and the so as a result of its extreme duration and the immensity Yucatán peninsula. of its path of destruction.”1 Despite its extraordinary size On September 29 and duration and the devastation it caused from Cuba it encountered the to the Gulf coast to Cape Hatteras, it has largely been British sloop-of-war forgotten by today’s residents along the Texas coast. Racer and caused Early accounts of the storm came from Lt. Col. William so much damage Reid of the British Royal Engineers in 1838, and William C. to the ship that Redfield of New York City in 1846.2 Since then, additional an aroused public information on the storm has been added by Samuel Wood clamored for details Geiser2 in 1944, Ivan Ray Tannehill in 1955,3 and David of its survival and for 6 M. Ludlum in 1963.4 This paper presents new historical souvenir engravings. information about the storm from newspaper reports, It swept across the tip of Yucatán to descriptions of damage to HMS Racer from its logbooks; William C. Redfield (1789-1857) and the notebooks of a Swiss scientist residing in Matamoros strike the eastern about the disastrous impact of the storm in that city. coast of Mexico. The Houston Telegraph & Texas Register of August 22, 1837, reported that “The Mexican fleet is lying When it first hit, the storm was thought to have been at Vera Cruz unmanned.” After the storm the Telegraph two storms because it had raked the southern coast of further reported that “The crew of the Caldwell, which has Cuba about two weeks before it did the same thing to just arrived at Velasco, state that they were informed by the the northern coast. Not until William Redfield, who was officers of a revenue cutter. which had recently left the coast studying the storm’s course in the southern U. S., read the of Mexico, that nearly every vessel of the Mexican navy had published reports of Lt. Col. Reid in London, who had been destroyed by the late severe gale.” The fleet would have analyzed the logbooks of British ships stationed in the consisted of more than a dozen ships of war. Surely such a Caribbean, did Redfield—the professional meteorologist spectacular event must be taken with a heavy dose of Texas of the pair— realize that they had been working on wishful thinking, for no corroboration has been found. the same storm. They corresponded and connected the details about the path taken by this unusual storm. The storm went on to flood Tampico and Matamoros, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, where a high pressure front After entering the Caribbean through the historical forced it to recurve to the northeast. It continued along the spawning grounds of the Windward Islands on September southern coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, where it turned on a straight course across Georgia, through the southeastern tip of South Carolina and into the Atlantic Jim Glass is a founder of Houston’s Kelvin Group Ocean near Charleston, South Carolina. It lasted for about 7 Design Office and the Society for Environmental sixteen days and covered a distance of approximately Graphic Design in Washington, D. C. An 4,150 statute miles.8 It was so large that its winds and rains avocational historian, he has designed museum stretched on the same day, October 6, from Galveston to St. exhibitions and been published in the Houston Joseph’s, Florida.9 Its effects were felt initially from Barbados Review, North Carolina Folklore Journal, New to southern Cuba, a distance of about 1,300 miles, to about Handbook of Texas, Houston Chronicle and various corporate communications. He has a diameter of 800 miles in the Gulf, and one of about 160 10 researched Racer’s Storm, off and on, since 1984. miles across in Texas. The total number of dead and injured and the amount of property loss cannot be estimated. The following will present a brief review of storm-related events Houston History Volume 5, number 3 summer 2008 21 8004640_UH.indd 21 10/13/10 8:56:35 AM Track B: Racer’s Storm, September 27- October 10, 1837. Courtesy: Museums of Mobile, Alabama. in the Caribbean and Gulf, its Texas track in more detail, The temblors spread across the Caribbean and the and a summary of subsequent events in the United States. Gulf from the edge of the Caribbean tectonic plate, The storm was the tenth of eleven storms in “The Great and ruptured many of the undersea domes, or pockets, Hurricane Season of 1837,”11 and the islands of the Antilles of natural gas, basalt, asphalt, sulphur, hydrogen sulfide gas (H S), and other natural products.15 chain already were in shambles from previous storms when 2 it arrived. The so-called “Barbados Storm” had struck The H2S gas, with its distinctive “rotten egg” odor, set Barbados and Santa Lucia on July 9. A larger storm, the off events that dumbfounded average people and frightened “Los Angeles” or “Antigua-Florida” storm, followed a month superstitious inhabitants into fleeing to higher ground. later on August 2 and compounded the desolation. It has A silvery dew appeared on the leaves of plants, providing been rated as one of the seven most destructive storms to hit “. the most brilliant and strangest scene. a spectacle Puerto Rico in the 103-year period from 1825 to 1928.12 of the Thousand-and-One-Nights.”16 Silver coins turned To make matters worse, the islands suffered the twin black in workers’ pockets, as did dyes and ferrous metals. disasters of a severe hurricane with earthquakes on August Buildings painted with al fresco egg-tempera-based coatings 2. Bridgetown, Barbados, was “totally destroyed by fire turned a dark, roasted-red, and people perspired with no and. all ships that had been in the port perished.”13 increase in temperature. Most visible were the results of the The government newspaper in Mexico City also gas creeping slowly along the sea floor, stealing the oxygen, published a report from a correspondent in Havana who turning the bottom black while killing the flora and fauna, described the misfortunes at St. Thomas (now Charlotte but leaving the water clear. On the morning of September 15, Amalie) as he received them from Spanish relatives: two weeks before Racer’s Storm, a captain of the National Guard in Sisal, Yucatán, marveled at an “immensity of fish Of 33 ships that were in the port, only 3 will be able [that] was floating over the waters, as if stunned, and tried to save themselves with much damage, accounting to submerge. [they] were pushed by the current and the for 70 people drowned in the peak force of the waves, coming out upon the beaches to die where, after a few hurricane, a fire manifested itself to which all the men hours, they had formed great mounds of dead fish.”17 Captain of the village responded and continued to cut away William Seymour of the brigantine Judith and Esther, near at even after various men were burned, resulting in Jamaica, reported that: “For nearly an hour we could not approximately 40 dead and 1500 injured. In the same observe each other or anything but merely the light, and grim night, three earth tremors were experienced in most astonishingly, every one of our fingernails turned quite such a manner that the four elements set themselves black, and remained so nearly five weeks afterwards. Every to playing. the tremor was felt here too [Havana] one of the crew were affected in the same way.”18 to the extent that the house in which I live shook for several hours.14 22 Houston History Volume 5, number 3 Summer 2008 8004640_UH.indd 22 10/13/10 8:56:36 AM Racer’s Storm began between St. George’s, Granada, and I would hear the next day of some new revolution; they are so the island of St. Vincent in late September, and was “first frequent in Mexico.”23 The roaring turned out to be the storm observed southeast of Jamaica” on September 24.19 It struck surge crashing on the beach at Brazos de Santiago, eighteen the southern coast of Jamaica as well as the towns of Merida air miles to the east. The little village of twenty-five or thirty and Sisal on the Yucatán peninsula. As it began to cross plank structures at Santiago was entirely destroyed except for the tip of the peninsula it intercepted HMS Racer, which three buildings. The “often battered Mexican customhouse had stopped at Belize, British Honduras, on September 21 on the sand spit lying across the river was swept away”24 to ferry a group of discharged artillerymen to Port Royal, and coastal floods extended “for many miles inland.”25 Jamaica, together with the wife of one of the soldiers and According to Berlandier’s account, “On the 2nd of their child. On the night of September 29 the ship was twice October towards 10 P. M. a frightful wind from N.