120 Years Ago: The Portland Gale

Looking toward the South River in the Rexhame Dunes (2018).

Friday morning, November 25th, 1898: sunny and clear. Thanksgiving now over for another year, the citizens of Marshfield and Scituate begin their days. Not too cold, not too windy, it is the kind of weather in which people are glad to be outside, soaking up a last few warming rays of sun before the biting chill of winter sets in.

Friday evening: a low pressure area is noted to be moving northward from the Gulf of Mexico along the eastern seaboard. Other reports show a similar weather system moving eastward from the Lakes Region. As these are not unusual conditions for a seaside New England town at this time of year, no special precautions are taken. 

Saturday morning, November 26th: a gray day, strangely quiet. 

Saturday evening: the temperature drops. Snow flurries begin, and there is talk of an oncoming squall. 

The gale comes on quickly and severely, and lasts through Saturday night, its winds churning the waters, bringing on floods that destroy ships and houses, bridges and roads. The eye passes over Marshfield and Scituate around 6 o'clock Sunday morning, offering temporary relief from the relentless snow and winds. After another 24 hours of storming, the sun of Monday, November 28th rises to reveal death, disaster, and drastic change.

Under normal circumstances, the Portland Gale would have gone down in history as another characteristic Nor'easter, its fierce winds and waters causing the usual damage along the coast. However, in the towns of Marshfield and Scituate, a storm surge washed away the land between Third and Fourth Cliffs, at Humarock. This cut in the beach created a new outlet to the sea, redirecting the course of the North River, and adding three miles to the length of the South River.  

Until the Blizzard of 1978, the 1898 Portland Gale was known as the most intense storm ever to pass through New England. Its fierce, icy winds blew throughout the weekend, generating huge breakers that pounded the shore steadily, day and night. Cape Cod was hit the worst, but there was destruction up and down the coast. From Maine to Massachusetts, 141 shipwrecks were reported. A total of 100 bodies were found along the South Shore, from Nantasket to Plymouth. 

Along the South Shore, electric and telegraph poles lay among fallen fences and uprooted trees. Many houses displayed toppled chimneys and broken windows. Brant Rock resident Carrie Phillips wrote, “Sea walls are all gone. There is hardly room to drive a team. . .  the bank has washed away so. . . . The roads are full of wreckage of all kinds, lobster traps, boats and furniture, I can look out my window and see a nice bed lounge and stoves, etc. scattered around.”

The steamer Portland, which had set sail from Boston on Saturday evening, was wrecked at sea, sparing not a single passenger. Clothing, cabin furnishings and merchandise -- boxes of tobacco, cheese, and oil, barrels of whiskey, tubs of lard --  were among the salvage found up and down the shore. 

In earlier times, the town of Marshfield was known as Missaukatucket -- "At the large mouth of the river." The North and South Rivers flowed together and emptied into the sea at what is now Rexhame Beach. Until the Portland Gale, the peninsula of Humarock ran south from Scituate's Third Cliff, extending far past Fourth Cliff to the river mouth. What is now the mouth of the river, was then a narrow shingle beach connecting the cliffs. 

A 2018 view of the Rexhame Dunes, the former location of the mouth of the North River.

When the new mouth of the river broke through, three miles north of its original inlet, Humarock was suddenly detached from the mainland. It became, if only for a few years, an island. Despite the efforts of a group of divinity students, armed with shovels and determined to keep the mouth open, the inlet at Rexhame filled in with sand, and Humarock was once again a peninsula, attached to Marshfield now, instead of Scituate.

It may not have been entirely nature's choice to cut a new river mouth. In 1831, Samuel Deane, in his History of Scituate, observed, “The beach between the third and fourth cliff, is composed of sand and pebbles, . . . it is slowly wasting, and the river probably will eventually find its outlet between these cliffs.”

This was likely music to the ears of North River shipbuilders. The river was so shallow that large ships could only be brought downstream during high tides. It often took a full week to navigate a newly-constructed vessel to the sea. 

An attempt to relocate the mouth of the North was made in 1843. Citizens drew up a petition requesting a cut between the cliffs. After a local hearing, the state decided against the proposal, concluding that such a cut would damage the meadows upstream. Despite the state's rejection of their plea, proponents of the cut set out one night with picks, shovels, hoes, and axes, driving ox and horse teams, using only dim lanterns to light their way. 

Working through the night, they managed to dig all the way across the beach, only to discover a rock-hard meadow bank beneath the sand, dense enough to prevent the completion of their mission. Water flowed through the newly-dug channel temporarily, but the beach soon filled back in. There is speculation, however, that because of this initial effort, the land between Third and Fourth Cliffs was weakened, and thus more vulnerable to the Portland Gale’s tidal wave. 

The mouth of the North River in the 1990s.

Please join me for a walk to commemorate the 120^thAnniversary of the Portland Gale. We will meet at the Rexhame Beach parking lot (at the end of Standish Street in Marshfield) at 11am on Saturday, November 24^th, and spend some time touring the riverbank and dunes. I’ll discuss the storm, how it received its name, and the damage it wrought, and also talk about what life was like on the South Shore in the 1890s. No dogs please. The walk is free, but please register by visiting http://www.nsrwa.org/nsrwa-events/the-1898-portland-gale-the-storm-that-changed-the-rivers-mouth-walk/

by Kezia Bacon

November 2018

A trail through the Rexhame Dunes.

Kezia Bacon's articles appear courtesy of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, a local non-profit organization devoted to protecting our waters. For membership information and a copy of their latest newsletter, contact NSRWA at (781) 659-8168 or visit www.nsrwa.org. To browse 20 years of nature columns, visit http://keziabaconbernstein.blogspot.com

Another View of the 1898 Portland Gale

The Rexhame Dunes, which was the location of the mouth of the North River prior to the Portland Gale of 1898.

Local lore is full of tales about The Portland Gale, the November 1898 storm that relocated the mouth of the North River. These accounts tend to focus on Humarock, the Seaview section of Marshfield, and the lower portion of the North and South Rivers, where the storms effects were most dramatic.

But the Portland Gale wreaked havoc up and down the shores of New England. What follows is a letter dated December 2, 1898, less than two weeks after the storm had hit. It tells how the village of Brant Rock endured The Portland Gale. The letter was originally published in the South Shore Mirror newspaper on November 23, 1967, in a column entitled “Marshfield Matters” by Mrs. D.B.

Times change, but storms continue to pound our coastlines year after year. This year (so far!) we have been lucky. I think it’s useful to be reminded how powerful Mother Nature can be.

The letter is not signed. Originally, it continued for a few more paragraphs, but my copy is faded and truncated, so I can’t share the rest of it with you. (A note to local historians: if you have a copy of the rest of this letter, I’d love to see it and publish it here!)

Brant Rock, Dec. 2, 1898.

Dear Friend:

Your letter received and will try to give you a little account of how we are left at Brant Rock. I cannot tell you just how many houses are wholly destroyed (I have only looked over one beach as I caught a cold taking a sea bath out of season, and have not been able to get out of doors much), but a great many, nearly all are damaged to some extent.

Walter P’s store and Ocean House are not damaged to any great extent. Our large Stetson cottage was the only one out of our five that was damaged much. Walter P. had four houses nearly destroyed, one barn and his large stable damaged considerably.

Mr. Bryant was the greatest loser. Nearly all his houses are wrecked, six or seven I think, and his dwelling house burned, leaving them with only the clothes they had on when they fled to the church. Mr. Houghton’s and Whiting’s and Tribur’s nice cottages are damaged badly. Edgar Phillips’ house is gone entirely, and the roof is at my back door.

Millis Brigg’s house at the corner on Dyke Road has sailed over to ‘Cut River.’ “Twilight” cottage has been obliged to move back out of the street nearly on to the back street.

Sea walls are all gone. There is hardly room to drive a team by Churchill’s, the bank has washed away so, but the hotel was not hurt much, or the houses up the street. The roads are full of great rocks and wreckage of all kinds, lobster traps, boats and furniture. I can look out of my window and see a nice bed lounge and stoves, etc. scattered around.

Webster Park (this is now Fieldston) is a thing of the past: the sand hills are flat. Scarcely a house remains to tell there ever was a settlement there. Mr. Foster and Mr. McLaughlin must be losers by thousands of dollars.

Duxbury beach is nearly destroyed. A great many houses are destroyed and others are badly damaged. In the height of the storm a schooner was driven over the beach into the bay safe. H. says your house seems to be all right. Our own dwelling only had some glass broken.

I have tried to give you an idea how things are, but I cannot describe things half as bad as they are, and now I will give you a little of my own experience. There are others who had just as narrow escapes, but I can only give you mine.

Saturday we felt there was a storm brewing, but the water was very calm. Towards night it commenced to thicken, and at 6:30 it commenced to snow and blow. The southeast wind changed to northeast. We did not sleep much for the wind was something fearful. At 8 a.m. Sunday the breakwater gave way and seas broke through on the street.

At 8:30 the street was full of water, and H. said Mr. Bryant’s family had gone to the church and must get the children dressed to go. So the men took Mr. C’s three little ones, Mr. Landry’s two, and my two little ones to the church; also Mr. Peterson’s two youngest. It was all they could do to get there.

We went into the station (Coast Guard) and I thought I was wet and uncomfortable then, but it was nothing compared to what I got later on.

We had only been in the station a few minutes when Mr. Cahoon’s house and one of the station hand’s houses went down with the ‘Clifton’ the second house from the station next to ‘Melrose.’ Mrs. Cahoon just escaped with her four children, the youngest five months old. They only had what clothing they had on.

Then we thought the station was going, but they ordered the men to break down the doors on the street side to let the water and rocks go through, and that was what saved us. They did not dare for us to go upstairs. They ran a line over to the church and fastened it to the stone porch, thinking we might get over on that, but Mr. Harris, who carried it over, nearly lost his life getting back. The rope slackened up and the rocks knocked his feet from under him and the rope got around his neck. Henry and Baker went to his rescue.

So you can see what danger there was to get into the street and off your feet. They ran the lifeboat out and strapped life preservers on us, even to the little baby. When we found there was a chance for the station to stand, and we were drenched through, and the rocks were coming in by carloads, the men said we better get up stairs.

It was full sea at 10:30 and about 11:10 Bryant’s house caught fire and burned down. At that time the tide had ebbed so the men fought their way down with the wind blowing a gale, but the fire was confined to Mr. B’s dwelling and his house next to it he used as an ‘office.’ The office was only partly destroyed. He only saved a few papers however.

We came back to our house thankful to escape with our lives and find a dry house. If we had only known, we could have stayed in our house, safe, but there are houses piled up all around us.

Mr. P’s houses all came down on us. Mr. P, Leslie, Annie and Mrs. P left and went to The Ocean House when their house got so full of water the kettles washed from under the sink. They thought the Ocean House was built stronger, as the piles it rested on were driven by a pile driver very deep in the mud.

Mr. Peterson’s family and mine left our homes at night and went up on the hill and stopped in a house of Mr. Flavell’s over night. Others, about 30, stopped in the church. We were afraid of the night tide, but the wind changed and we were saved. I consider we were fortunate, compared with Mr. P. and Mr. Bryant, but have lost enough.

by Kezia Bacon-Bernstein
October 2008

Kezia Bacon-Bernstein's articles appear courtesy of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, a local non-profit organization devoted to the preservation, restoration, maintenance and conservation of the North and South Rivers and their watershed. For membership information and a copy of their latest newsletter, contact NSRWA at (781) 659-8168 or visit www.nsrwa.org.