Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/73

Rh northward and eastward, but not without having her deck swept by a heavy sea. It moderated and cleared up the next day, and after five hours of hard work the vessel was cleared of ice, and sail set for home. She had been driven 100 miles before the storm, fighting every inch of the way, her crew without a chance to sleep, frost-bitten, clothes drenched and no dry ones to put on, food and fuel giving out, but they brought her into port without the loss of a spar or a sail, and she took her station on the bar as usual.

Do the pages of history contain the record of a more gallant fight! Nothing could show more graphically than this brief report, the violence and long duration of the storm. No wonder that this terrific northwest gale drove the ocean itself before it, so that the very tides did not resume their normal heights for nearly a week at certain ports along the coast, and the Gulf Stream itself was far south of its usual limits. The damage and destruction wrought ashore are too fresh in mind to be referred to here, and losses along the coast can only be mentioned briefly. Below Hatteras there was little damage done to shipping. In Chesapeake Bay, 2 barks, 77 schooners, and 17 sloops were blown ashore, sunk, or damaged; in Delaware Bay, 37 vessels; along the New Jersey coast and in the Horse-shoe at Sandy Hook, 13; in New York harbor and along the Long Island coast, 20; and along the New England coast, 9. The names of six vessels that were abandoned at sea have been reported, and there are at least nine others missing, among them the lamented New York pilot boats "Phantom" and "Enchantress," and the yacht "Cythera." Several of these abandoned vessels have taken their places amongst the derelicts whose positions and erratic tracks are plotted each month on the Pilot Chart, that other vessels may be warned of the danger of collision; the sch. "W. L. White," for instance, started off to the eastward in the Gulf Stream, and will soon become a source of anxiety to the captains of steamships along the transatlantic route, and furnish a brief sensation to the passengers when she is sighted. There is thus an intensely human side to the history of a great ocean storm, and to one who reads these brief records of facts and at the same time gives some little play to his imagination, there is a very pathetic side to the picture. In the words of Longfellow,—