{"id":944,"date":"2016-09-23T18:23:07","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T23:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/?p=944"},"modified":"2017-09-22T21:51:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T02:51:08","slug":"the-great-tampa-gale-of-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/23\/the-great-tampa-gale-of-48\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering The Great Tampa Gale of 48"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Possible<\/a>

Possible Tracks for the 1848 Tampa Hurricane. image courtesy of James B. Elsner, Department of Geography Florida State University<\/p><\/div>\n

It has been quite a while since a major hurricane has made a direct landfall in the Tampa Bay area but back before the Civil War\u00a0two hurricanes hit the Tampa Bay area within about 2 weeks of each other.<\/p>\n

In 1848 \u00a0Tampa\u00a0was a small village of fewer than 200 people, outside of the military garrison located at\u00a0Fort Brooke<\/a> (now down town Tampa). \u00a0Earlier that year, the county of Hillsborough had appointed Louis Covacevich and Samuel Bishop as the first pilots of the port of Tampa.\u00a0 In May, the lighthouse at Egmont Key started operations and just two weeks before the first hurricane hit, Tampa\u2019s first school opened on September 11th.\u00a0(1)<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>

Fort Brooke (Image Credit – The Tampa Bay History Center)<\/p><\/div>\n

The first of the two storms was probably the most intense hurricane ever to affect\u00a0Tampa and occurred on Monday, Sept. 25th.\u00a0 It came to be known as\u00a0\u201cThe Great Gale of 48\u201d and was described by survivor,\u00a0William Henry Whitaker<\/a>, as \u201cthe granddaddy of all hurricanes.\u201d\u00a0(7)<\/p>\n

The September 1848 storm was an intense hurricane with estimated maximum winds of between 101-135 mph at landfall.\u00a0(2)(5).\u00a0 The storm\u00a0moved north-northwestward\u00a0off the west coast of Florida causing damage at Charlotte Harbor before it turned\u00a0toward the northeast and then east-northeast making landfall near Clearwater during the early afternoon of Sept. 25th \u00a0with an estimated minimum pressure of about 945mb.(4)<\/p>\n

Storm Accounts
\n<\/strong>The evening before, the winds began to gust from the northeast with occasional showers. It was reported by residents that the bay \u201cglowed with phosphorescence almost bright enough to read by\u201d<\/strong>. By 9am Monday morning the increasing southeasterly winds began to veer southerly and later southwesterly as the tide rose rapidly and the \u201cwind blew with unprecedented violence<\/strong>\u201d.<\/em> The violent winds continued through the afternoon only subsiding sometime between 6 and 8 PM that evening. The maximum winds in Tampa (Ft. Brooke) occurred between 1 PM and about 4 PM on the 25th as the wind veered southerly to southwesterly.\u00a0(1).<\/p>\n

The barometer at Ft. Brooke fell from 1013mb at 9 PM on the 24th to a minimum of 954mb during the peak of the storm on the afternoon of the 25th.(3)\u00a0 A letter form Maj. R.D. S. Wade at Ft. Brooke stated that \u201call the wharves and most public buildings at the fort were destroyed and that flooding was exceptionally great but no lives were lost\u201d<\/em>.<\/strong> The post surgeon reported that the tide rose to 15 ft. above low water and that the \u201c<\/strong>water rose very fast between 1000 and 1400\u201d<\/strong>. <\/em>It was also reported that all of the vessels in the port were driven up the river and destroyed by the high winds and storm surge. (2) \u00a0Other accounts stated that great waves covered most of the islands within the bay and that the garrison at Fort Brooke was almost completely inundated by water and waves pounded and destroyed the barracks, horse shed and other structures and only the tops of the trees could be seen.\u00a0 The recently opened lighthouse at Edmont Key was badly damaged and had to be rebuilt.<\/p>\n

\"Fort<\/a>

Fort Brooke was one of the largest military establishments in the United States when this map was made in January, 1838. Image Credit Tampa Bay History Center<\/p><\/div>\n

After passing Tampa the hurricane moved east-northeast across Florida passing off the Florida East Coast just north of Cape Canaveral. Many of the navigation routes were reported filled with sand and closed to traffic making any charts created prior to 1848 useless.\u00a0(2)<\/p>\n

Every building on the bay and river was destroyed except for the Palmer Hotel which was badly damaged. At the Garrison the church on the beach, the soldier\u2019s barracks, the Indian agent\u2019s office and the Ferris residence, store and warehouse were wrecked.\u00a0 According to Juliet Axtell, the wife of the Army Chaplain, \u201cthere were not more than four or five buildings left standing<\/strong><\/em>\u201d and she concluded in a letter that \u201cTampa was no more<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d(1)<\/p>\n

Just two weeks after this major hurricane nearly destroyed Tampa, a second hurricane visited the Florida West Coast\u00a0on October 11-12th.\u00a0\u00a0A ship 20 miles southeast of Cape St. George reported northeast hurricane force winds causing its lee rail under water for eight hours.\u00a0 In Tampa this storm was not as intense as the earlier one; however, it\u00a0did cause\u00a0a storm surge to about 10 ft in Tampa Bay.(2)<\/p>\n

An interesting legend regarding the 1848 Hurricane is that it created a new pass through a barrier island which was discovered by a reformed pirate named John Levique. Today the pass is known as John’s Pass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Brown, Cantor.\u00a0Tampa Before the Civil War<\/a>;\u00a0The Tampa Bay History Center<\/a>, 1999<\/li>\n
  2. Barnes, Jay. Florida\u2019s Hurricane History, The University of North Carolina Press, 1998<\/li>\n
  3. Ludlum, David M. Early American Hurricanes 1492-1870, American Meteorological Society.<\/li>\n
  4. Ho, F. P. (1989),\u00a0Extreme Hurricanes in the Nineteenth Century<\/em>, NOAA Tech. Memo. NWS HYDRO-43, 134 pp., National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, Washington, D.C.<\/li>\n
  5. Dunn, G. E., and B. I. Miller, 1964:\u00a0Atlantic Hurricanes<\/em>, Louisiana State University<\/li>\n
  6. Bossak & Elsner\u00a0Plotting Early Nineteenth-Century Hurricane Information<\/span><\/em><\/li>\n
  7. Grismer, Karl,\u00a0The Story of Sarasota.<\/em>The Florida Grower Press. Tampa, 1946<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It has been quite a while since a major hurricane has made a direct landfall in the Tampa Bay area but back before the Civil War\u00a0two hurricanes hit the Tampa Bay area within about 2 weeks of each other. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,10,15],"tags":[47,18,27,9,5,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oceanweatherservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}