Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/563

Rh part of the beach surrounded by water for hours. Fortunately, the waters were quiet in the protected bay, and the damage here was slight compared with that on the exposed outer shore, where for a couple of hours a large building collapsed on an average every fifteen minutes. North of Seabright the waves broke through the breakwater which protects the railroad, swept part of the tracks out to sea, and buried other portions under masses of heavy stones.

On February 14 and 15 occurred the third and least destructive miles per hour. At this time the waves completed the destruction of the Seabright Beach Clubhouse and certain other structures badly damaged by the earlier storms. In the unprotected state of the shore some further damage has been subsequently accomplished by normal wave erosion during comparatively calm weather, at least one valuable summer residence being demolished in this manner.

The portion of the New Jersey coast which suffered most from the storm waves lies south of Sandy Hook and north of Long Branch. (See Fig. 1.) At the latter place the waves of the sea are attacking the mainland of New Jersey and have cut a marine cliff some 20 feet in height in the seaward edge of the coastal plain. The débris eroded from this cliff has been carried northward by longshore currents and built into a narrow bar which has extended across the mouth of Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers, and out into the Bay of New York to form the Sandy Hook spit. Monmouth Beach, Seabright and Highland Beach are small towns built upon the bar, and are therefore but a few feet above high-tide level. Formerly the sea broke against the mainland just back of Seabright and at Navesink Highlands; and old marine