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:: Exploration
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San Ciriaco
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Life Saving
Reports
San Ciriaco....The Great Hurricane of 1899
Experience the storm, the shipwrecks she caused, and the heroic
acts of the US Life-Saving Service.
 A high and troubled surf pounded the shore at Cape Hatteras,
the sky became overcast, and the wind, normally light and from the
southwest at that time of year, went around to the east and got down
to serious business of blowing. By noon it had reached fifty
miles per hour.
The next day -August 17, 1899- San Ciriaco loosed its full fury
against the narrow string of sandy reefs and islands which constitute
the North Carolina Outer Banks. At 4 A.M. the wind at Cape Hatteras
was blowing at 70 miles per hour; at noon it was between 84 and 93 miles
per hour; at 1 P.M. it was recorded at 120 miles per hour and throughout
that afternoon and night winds of more than 100 miles per hour prevailed.
"There was no more than four houses on Hatteras Island into which the
tide did not rise to a depth ranging from one to four feet," the government
reported; and Hatteras Island, even then, included more than half a dozen
separate communities.
So intense were the winds and so high the tides accompanying San Ciriaco that it was impossible for lifesavers to maintain their patrols,
with the result that most of the vessels wrecked on the coast were not
reached -were not even discovered- until the morning of the eighteenth,
when the winds had begun to subside.
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 Ships
Out To Sea - 9 Shipwrecks in 72 hours!
Bergen
Dasey
Lighthouse 69
Priscilla
Randall
Reppard
Sharpie
Walton
Willis
Other Ships Lost
Along with the ships that came ashore along the
coast, six other vessels encountered the wrath of
San Ciriaco and disappeared forever.
They include:
The schooner, John C. Hayes, 1346 tons, from Port
Tampa, Florida, to Baltimore, with a cargo of
phosphate rock and 9 crewmen; the schooner, M. B. Millen, 336 tons, from New
London, Connecticut, to Brunswick, Georgia, in
ballast with 7 crewmen;
the barkentine Albert Schultz, 498 tons, from
Baltimore to Savannah with coal and a crew of 8;
the schooner Elwood H. Smith, 439 tons, from New
York to Jacksonville in ballast with 7 crewmen;
the brig Henry B. Cleaves, 389 tons, from Haiti to
Stamford, Connecticut, with logwood and 8 crewmen;
the schooner, Chas. M. Patterson, 834 tons, from
Philadelphia to Savannah with coal and 8 crewmen;
San Ciriaco took more than fifty lives, inundated
hundreds of homes, destroyed fishing nets, sunk
small boats and drowned livestock all along North
Carolina's Outer Banks.
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