Hurricanes Past: The Collier’s First Hurricane

It was the morning of October 7, 1873. We had been on the island for over three years and were still living in our thatched huts on the shore. We had endured foul weather and many tropical storms when the wind would blow everything not nailed or tied down, all around our camp. We would find half our supplies in the mangroves, clothes in the trees, buckets in the creek behind us, and all matter of stuff stuck in the muddy swamp or floating in the Gulf.

But this storm was coming in harder and faster than any we had experienced. The wind was picking up. The girls came running home from the garden still holding the tools they had been using.

Five-year-old Barbara cried, “Old Man Marco got blown away. One minute he was just flappin’ in the breeze and the next minute he was flyin’ high up in the sky.”

Sarah put her arm around Barbara, “When he took off, he did look rather happy, and like he was wavin’ goodbye.”

I tried to comfort Barbara, “Don’t you worry none. We will find him and put him back where he belongs.”

Thomas assured her, “Yeah, Barbara don’t worry. After the storm passes, I will form a search party and go out huntin’ for Old Man Marco.”

The wind intensified, and instead of the palm trees swaying in the breeze, the fronds were thrashing about – some were torn from the trees and sent sailing through the air never to be seen again.

Early in the morning, we had been gathering up tools, nets, buckets, pots, and pans, storing them away from the storm. By mid-afternoon, the wind speed had increased. William ordered the younger children to go inside.

“Y’all go inside. Gather around the table and I will be in directly. I’ve got a story or two I’ve been saving just for an occasion like this. Who wants to hear a story while we wait out this storm?”

Little Jack tugged at his Papa’s sleeve. “I do, Papa. I do. Tell us the story, Papa!”

“You young’uns get inside, settle down, and get comfortable. This story might take a while.”

The children ran into the chickee. Mama Dog joined them but little Pup was nowhere to be seen. They sat around the table and waited for their Papa to join them and tell his story. I wondered what kind of story he would tell this time. He was always making up fanciful tales or starting with “when I was in the Army there was this funny fellow who …”

While the children waited inside, William began driving stakes in the ground from the door of our chickee to the water’s edge. He explained that with the way that storm was whipping up, we were apt to have flooding in our campsite. And when the storm was over, we would be able to use the stakes to determine where the water was receding.

As the gale intensified, the boys returned from their hunting trip empty-handed. The weather had frightened the game and they took cover deep in the mangroves. William decided that the boys should sail ‘The General’ to the leeward side of the island, safely anchor her in a cove, store away the sails, take down the mast, close all the hatches and lock them down tight.

I pleaded with him not to send the boys out in the storm on such a dangerous mission. But he insisted, “She is our only means of transportation. Without ‘The General,’ we will be marooned at least a year before we could build a replacement, and without hardwood trees on the island, we would be building her from her scraps and bald cypress. She cannot be lost. The ‘Robert E. Lee’ must be saved.”

Jimmy, Billy, and Benji headed out the door to dutifully do as their Papa directed, “Secure ‘The General’ and hurry back. Don’t make your Mama worry.”

“I’m goin’ too,” Thomas yelled as he followed his brothers out the door and into the storm.

“Stop him, William.” I urged.

“Too late, Betty. He’s gone. The boys will look out after him.”

They were gone for nearly two hours and I began to fret.

William assured me, “The boys know what they are doing. Don’t you worry about them. You and Sarah might want to keep gathering up as much as you can and get it in the hut. Put all your many pots and pans in the cooking hut and shove them right in the stove. That ole cast iron thing won’t blow away.”

As William had predicted, the boys arrived back at the hut safe and sound but soaked to their bones and shivering from the cold. They reported to Papa that they had accomplished their mission and believed the ‘Robert E. Lee’ would make it through the storm just fine. They joined us as we hurried to batten down the shutters of our house, took provisions indoors, and prepared to sit out the storm as we had done many times before. Pretty soon we were all focused on Papa and his story while the wind continued to howl.

Outside the coconuts were being blown from the trees and were flying through the air. They slammed into the hut with such force, William later told me, it felt like being bombarded with cannonballs. The sky was almost as dark as night and the rain was pouring down. Sometimes it came at us sideways and the wind drove rain through the cracks in the walls of the chickee. We set out pots to catch the leaks, but after a while, it seemed futile. The pots would fill up and we had no place to empty them. We sat there in near darkness, wet and shivering.

This storm was different from others we had been through. It was louder and the wind was stronger. As the wind roared, it lifted the roof ever so slightly, then slammed it down with the driving rain. The rain came down in sheets at gale force. It pounded against our hut which began to heave and moan. The vine straps that secured the roof to the house began to strain. We heard one pop loose and then another did the same.

This storm wasn’t moving off. It seemed to stall and hang over us for hours as we huddled together in our thatched chickee hut. It grew more fierce and increasingly violent by the hour. As time passed, we began to realize that this was not a tropical storm – we were experiencing our very first hurricane.