0:03 [SPEAKER_00]: It's one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, in September 1938. 0:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Ms. John McKesson Camp is hosting a luncheon on the rocks at Wikipag, just east of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, her guests gather in their summer finest, linen dresses, straw hats, the kind of quiet elegance you'd expect from old money families who've summed here for generations. 0:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone mentions that the sea looks restless today. 0:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Another guest points to a strange yellow light hanging over the water. 0:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It's odd, they agree, but nothing to worry about, surely. 0:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Within three hours, 42 people will be trapped in collapsing mansions along Fort Road. 1:01 [SPEAKER_00]: 15 won't survive. 1:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The lucky ones will write house wreckage across the bay, cleaning to debris while massive waves crash over them. 1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: 112 year old boy will say he saw sharks circling below. 1:20 [SPEAKER_00]: By nightfall, the Fort Road, with its Victorian cottages, its yacht club, its old money summer colony, will simply cease to exist. 1:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, friend, to hometown history. 1:36 [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world. 1:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters. 1:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And today, we're exploring the September 21st, 1938 disaster that struck Watch Hill, Rhode Island. 1:54 [SPEAKER_00]: When the Long Island Express Hurricane, obliterated one of New England's most exclusive 2:05 [SPEAKER_00]: To understand what was lost that afternoon, you need to understand what Watch Hill was. 2:12 [SPEAKER_00]: By 1938, this exclusive summer retreat had catered to wealthy New York families for nearly half a century. 2:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The New York Times once described it as having a strong sense of privacy and discreetly used wealth. 2:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike new port-screen castles, Watch Hill had rambling Victorian summer houses with wide piazas and rolling lawns. 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Families passed these houses down through generations. 2:44 [SPEAKER_00]: It was quite a special place. 2:47 [SPEAKER_00]: And the crown jewel was Fort Road, a mile and a half sandy spit called Napatri Point. 2:55 [SPEAKER_00]: 39 summer cottages lined at the doom crest, just feet from the ocean. 3:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Survivors would later call it their heaven on earth. 3:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's what made it dangerous, that same geography that made it paradise, also made it a death trap, because on September 21st, 1938, a category three hurricane was racing toward them at 16 miles an hour. 3:24 [SPEAKER_00]: and almost nobody knew it was coming. 3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about the world that was about to end. 3:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Watch Hill sits at the southwestern tip of Rhode Island where the state meets Connecticut. 3:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Fort Road Extended West from the Village Center, a long-napotry point. 3:45 [SPEAKER_00]: A narrow barrier beach with the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and little narrow gates 3:53 [SPEAKER_00]: The 39 colleges weren't modest, they were three story and Victorian houses, with names like Holiday House and Seabreeze, the wealthy families who owned them employed full staffs, butlers, cooks, maids, caretakers, gardeners, chauffeurs. 4:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Historical accounts describe footmen, standing behind every chair at dinner parties in the years before World War II. 4:22 [SPEAKER_00]: These were real people with real lives. 4:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Jeffrey and Margaret Moore had four children. 4:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Jeffrey Jr. 12 and 10. 4:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Kathy 8 and Little Margaret just four years old. 4:38 [SPEAKER_00]: The Burns family had two daughters, Barbara 20 and Betty 17. 4:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss Helen Joy Lee, daughter of the founder of Packard Motor Car Company, 4:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Fort Road was where these folks went to escape the heat of New York City, where children played on the beach, where families gathered for generations of summer traditions, but understanding this tragedy requires understanding something else, the technology gap that killed them. 5:14 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1938, there was no radar, no satellites, no computer models, no 5:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The US Weather Bureau tracked hurricanes by reports from ships at sea and weather balloons when they were lucky. 5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: On September 4th, a storm had formed near the Cape Verde Islands of Africa. 5:37 [SPEAKER_00]: By mid-September, it was a category 5 near the Bahamas. 5:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The Jacksonville office broadcast warnings for Florida. 5:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Then the storm turned north. 5:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It spared Florida and started racing up the coast at 60 to 70 miles an hour. 5:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So fast they nicknamed it the Long Island Express. 6:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what makes this different from modern hurricanes. 6:03 [SPEAKER_00]: The Washington weather bureau, staffed that day by 28-year-old Junior Forecaster, Charles Pears, because senior meteorologists were at a conference. 6:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Predicted the storm would blow itself out, I cape atters. 6:19 [SPEAKER_00]: According to weather bureau records, they actually downgraded it to a tropical storm at 10 o'clock that morning. 6:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1130 A.M. advisory mentioned only gel-force winds. 6:31 [SPEAKER_00]: No hurricane warning, no evacuation orders, no preparation. 6:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The storm hit at an astronomical high tide during the Atominal Equinox and a full moon. 6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The worst possible timing 6:47 [SPEAKER_00]: sustained winds reached 120 miles per hour. 6:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Storm surge estimates vary, but contemporary accounts described waves reaching 50 feet. 6:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And the people on Fort Road, they were going about a normal Wednesday afternoon. 7:06 [SPEAKER_00]: September 21 started like any other late summer day. 7:11 [SPEAKER_00]: The postman delivered mail. 7:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss Camp planned her luncheon. 7:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Bob Loomis was mowing the lawn at a cottage on Larkin Road around to a clock. 7:22 [SPEAKER_00]: It was sunny and pleasant, maybe a little windy. 7:27 [SPEAKER_00]: This was New England in late September, of course it was windy. 7:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But the wind kept getting stronger. 7:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Loomus went to the Coast Guard station to ask about the weather. 7:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The barometer have been falling all morning. 7:42 [SPEAKER_00]: They told him might be bad. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Bob Loomus is mowing a lawn on a beautiful September afternoon. 7:50 [SPEAKER_00]: The wind picks up, his ears start feeling strange, an unusual pressure from the incredibly low barometric pressure. 8:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The sea looks different, that yellow light over the water is getting more pronounced. 8:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Around 230, a heavy 8:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Wind and Rain came with such force that Loomus used the C-wall for shelter as he made his way down for it. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: He reached Rodman Griscum's cottage, just as the some porch windows blew out, and the chimney crashed to the ground. 8:31 [SPEAKER_00]: By this point it was obvious something bad was happening. 8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But there was nowhere to go. 8:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Fort Road was a peninsula. 8:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The only way off was back toward the village. 8:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And the storm was between them and safety. 8:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The fire station began flooding. 8:51 [SPEAKER_00]: According to historical records, within 15 minutes, it would be under six feet, four inches of water, sweeping fire engines onto the road. 9:03 [SPEAKER_00]: At the more summer house, water started washing across the road. 9:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Andy Pupillow, a young man helping close the house for the season, had just brought Nancy to disco, a 16-year-old mother's helper, from Pocka-Tuck, to help pack up. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But now, there were 10 people inside. 9:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Deftory and Margaret Moore, their four children, and elderly relative, 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: They raced to the 2nd floor, but the 2nd floor was collapsing beneath them. 9:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Missed more would later describe running, with lightning speed, as a unit. 9:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Down the hall and up the stairs to the 3rd floor, just in time, for the 2nd floor had gone down, like an elevator, only with a sideways motion. 10:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Now they were in the attic. 10:06 [SPEAKER_00]: four-year-old Margaret was praying, then the roof blew off the major room, that roof became their raft. 10:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Ten people on a floating roof section, two iron pipes sticking through the floor, the only handholds, huge waves crashing over them as they cling for dear life. 10:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's true or his terrified imagination, the fear is real enough. 10:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss Moore looks back across the bay. 10:47 [SPEAKER_00]: She later shares, we glanced over at the place we loved so much, the place we had often called heaven on earth. 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: The storm sweeps them across little narrow gants at bay, nearly a mile toward the Connecticut shore. 11:04 [SPEAKER_00]: The wall of the cooks room acts as a sail, speeding them along through debris-filled water, while wreckage from other houses swirl around them. 11:16 [SPEAKER_00]: They land on the Connecticut shore near Barn Island, though shoes, they fight through bull barriers and blockberry vines until they find a collapsed barn with hay. 11:29 [SPEAKER_00]: all 10 survive, but not everyone was so lucky. 11:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. and Miss Ronald Burns tried to escape. 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss Burns cut an artery, breaking through a glass door. 11:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Burns applied a turn of cut. 11:46 [SPEAKER_00]: When their house crashed into the bag, Miss Burns and their daughters Barbara and Betty were all lost. 11:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Burns was thrown into the water barely conscious, somehow carried across a wreckage. 12:00 [SPEAKER_00]: One of their maids, Ms. Irma and Nurmy, survived. 12:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Another servant, Ms. Omassimica drowned. 12:10 [SPEAKER_00]: wealth and poverty, employers and employees. 12:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The storm made no distinction. 12:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss Helen Joyley, daughter of the Packard Motor Car Founder, was alone when the wave hit. 12:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Her watch stopped at 430. 12:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Something broke her left arm. 12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: She and her dog were washed into the bay, as if on a roller coaster. 12:36 [SPEAKER_00]: She undid the dog's leash, the dog floated off on her door, missily grabbed a fallen pole and hung on with one arm, floating debris hit her repeatedly. 12:50 [SPEAKER_00]: she survived, alone, clinging to that pole. 12:56 [SPEAKER_00]: All across Fort Road, the same horror was playing out. 13:00 [SPEAKER_00]: By the time the wind died around 6 o'clock that evening, Fort Road had ceased to exist. 13:08 [SPEAKER_00]: All 39 cottages on Fort Road completely demolished. 13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The Yacht Club, the beach club, the bathing pavilion, destroyed. 13:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The road itself had washed away. 13:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Sandy Point at the tip of the peninsula had been severed from the mainland. 13:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It remains an island to the stay. 13:30 [SPEAKER_00]: 42 people had been in their Fort Road homes when the hurricane struck. 13:36 [SPEAKER_00]: 15 died, 27, miraculously survived. 13:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Bodies of 11 victims were found in wreckage, thrown across the Connecticut shores. 13:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Some were never recovered. 13:52 [SPEAKER_00]: The families didn't rebuild. 13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: How could they return to the place where they lost so much? 14:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Where their children had been terrified, 14:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Rhode Island got the worst of the storm, statewide between 300 to 600 people died. 14:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Historians still debate the exact number. 14:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Across all of New England, 6 to 700 deaths. 14:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But the Fort Road Massacre, as locals recall it, held a particular horror 14:30 [SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't just a natural disaster, it was the end of an entire world, a way of life that existed for generations, erased and less than an hour. 14:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Around six o'clock, the wind abruptly died. 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The air grew minimally cold. 14:50 [SPEAKER_00]: A pale, half-dressed man in shock appeared at the Westerly police station. 14:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Watch Hill is gone, he said. 14:59 [SPEAKER_00]: It's all washed away. 15:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Police reports indicate they didn't believe him at first. 15:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Bob Loomis walked through the storm, all the way to the Westerley Police Station to get help. 15:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The next morning, a fisherman arrived in a boat, searching for the more family. 15:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, this was 1938, the Great Depression wasn't over. 15:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Recovery was complicated by economic hardship, 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: After Providence flooded with 13 feet of water downtown, mobs, looted stores before the waters even subsided. 15:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The federal government had to mobilize WPA workers in this civilian conservation corps for clean up. 15:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Against that backdrop, the folks who lost everything on Fort Road, faced a choice 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1945, seven years after the hurricane, the watch-hill fire district purchased an aptitude point for $10,000. 16:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They made a decision that still stands. 16:10 [SPEAKER_00]: They would never allow rebuilding. 16:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Fort Road would become a nature preserve, a memorial. 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: A place where the natural 16:24 [SPEAKER_00]: This was 1945, decades before we routinely talked about preserving barrier beaches. 16:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But the community seemed to understand instinctively that some places shouldn't be rebuilt. 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, Napatri Point is an 86-acre conservation area in wildlife preserve, home to 16:54 [SPEAKER_00]: The federally endangered piping plover, rest there. 16:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The US fish and wildlife service monitors the site. 17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: If you visit, you can walk where those Victorian mansions once stood. 17:08 [SPEAKER_00]: The only evidence of the 39 homes are foundations covered by beach grass and vegetation. 17:16 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1938 hurricane led to massive improvements in weather forecasting. 17:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The hurricane tracking and morning systems we take for granted today grew from this disaster. 17:29 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1966, Providence completed the Fox Point Hurricane barrier. 17:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Coastal building codes were strengthened throughout New England. 17:39 [SPEAKER_00]: The survivors' ordeal wasn't meaningless. 17:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Lives were saved by the lessons learned. 17:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Napa Tree Point today, the wave's break on the same shore. 17:51 [SPEAKER_00]: The wind carries the same saltare, but the Victorian mansions are long gone. 17:59 [SPEAKER_00]: The laughter of children playing on private beaches, gone. 18:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Fort Road itself is gone. 18:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Miss more ended her letter to her brother with these words. 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I sometimes feel we have had a preview of the end of the world. 18:16 [SPEAKER_00]: For some, it was the end. 18:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It might easily have been we. 18:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The 1938 hurricane remains the most powerful and deadly to hit New England in recorded history. 18:30 [SPEAKER_00]: watch Hill rebuilt its village, but Fort Road stayed gone, and maybe that was the right decision. 18:40 [SPEAKER_00]: A recognition that some places belong to nature and that remembering the lost matters more than reclaiming the land. 18:49 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of Fort Road, of heaven on earth, in the afternoon, 18:57 [SPEAKER_00]: If you found this story as moving as I did, share it with someone who loves New England History. 19:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story. 19:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Tonight it's the story of 39 cottages, 15 souls and a barrier beach that nature took back. 19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Good night, friend.
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