Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi Hurricane, Aug 1860 - Letter from Biloxi

The Daily Picayune
August 16, 1860 Afternoon edition

Letter from Biloxi
The Late Storm
[Correspondence of the Picayune.] Biloxi, Miss., Aug. 14, 1860

We were visited on Saturday night last by one of the severest gales which our coast experienced since 1852. Saturday morning, the day broke gloomily amid dark and angry masses of storm clouds, which scudded across the heavens from the N. E., as if marshaling their forces for another attack of the sons of Titan. The thermometer indicated a fall of 20 degrees below the mercurial point of the preceding day, a fact which was sensibly felt by everybody, with out the barometrical aids of scientific instruments. The seekers of health and pleasure from your city began indulging ideas of returning home, and to dream of cozy firesides and comfortable easy chairs hid away amid the multitudinous streets of the Crescent City. While overcoats shawls and blankets became suddenly indispensable to personal comfort. The wind veered form N. E. to N. W. and N., and back to N. E., increasing in violence every hour, until sundown of Saturday, when a night of pitchy darkness set in after a day of incessant rain, and from the time until 4 o’clock A. M., of Sunday morning, the storm raged in all its fury, nothing being heard save the rushing of the mighty wind, the remorseless dash of the agitated billow, and the hard howling of Storm King, as amid torrents or rains, and Erebusean darkness, he ordered the elemental carnival. After 4 o’clock, M. N. Sunday, the wind shifted gradually to the S. W., decreasing in violence until it subsided into a fresh breeze.

We strolled over town Sunday morning, and although the streets of Biloxi bore evidence, in the debris of sundry shade trees, broken down fences with there and there a dilapidated wharf, or mutilated bath-house, stranded schooner, or broken skiff, of the severity of the late gale, yet the amount of damage sustained, was by no means equal to what we anticipated, from the fury of the preceding night’s storm – an agreeable evidence of the eligibility of the site of Biloxi for a seacoast city, and of the safety and shelter afforded by our harbor to vessels during high and dangerous winds. While hardly any thing, in the shape of a wharf or bath-house was left standing anywhere else along the coast, during the night of Saturday, but two small wharves and bath houses were blown down in Biloxi, and no very material injury sustained by any of our citizens, in either the bath of dwelling houses belong to them.

The most serious incidents of the late disaster were experienced by those “who go down to the sea in ships.” A pleasure yacht, whose name, as our informant states, was the Ariel, hailing from Pottersville, Louisiana, was capsized in our bay, in the early part of Saturday night. Upon righting her the next day, one of her crew, a negro boy, was found dead in her cabin. The remainder of her crew, who turned up at Pascagoula, betook themselves to her boat after the occurrence of the accident, were driven out to sea, and when the wind shifter the boar drifted into Pascagoula. They state that another negro boy was drowned before they left the schooner.

The steamer William C. Young, loading lumber some three miles east of this place, having been chartered by Hon. J. B. McRae, for the purpose of furnishing a cargo of lumber for an English ship, lying at anchor off Ship Island, is a total wreck. Seven of her crew met with a watery grave. Mr. McRae was aboard when the steamer went down. He was drifted ashore on Ship Island on a raft, to which he had lashed himself, some twenty miles from the wreck. The Voltiqeur, a pleasure schooner, belonging to Mr. J. W. Belfour, of Mississippi City, Mr. J. R. Young, of this place, captain, was capsized at the former place, and drifted out to sea, going ashore on “The Keys”, southeast of Ship Island. Mr. Young endured great hardship, having been exposed on the wreck for sixty-three hours.

The English ship, referred to above, is also a wreck; she went ashore on Ship Island, where she was found with her masts cur away. It is presumed her crew are safe.
We are hourly receiving intelligence of loss of life and property at other points along the coast.

Our town is healthy and weather delightful.
Au Revoir Mac.