Hurricanes the Northeast and Living History

On the morning of August 15, 1635, off the coast of Pemaquid, Maine a ship thrashed at anchor.  The 250 ton Angel Gabriel was a big ship with heavily gunned decks and a reputation for successful transport of immigrants and cargo.  It had arrived at one of the most beautiful harbors on the east coast of the New World the day before and on this morning the crew and passengers were busy off-loading people, possessions and livestock.  While those with a weather eye may have known that trouble was brewing, none could have guessed that the Angel Gabriel was about to be set upon by a storm that history would call the “Great Colonial Hurricane.”

The hurricane is the first great storm recorded by the Europeans who were steadily populating New England and the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard. The hurricane was probably a Category 3. The eye passed between Boston and Plymouth with winds approximately 115 miles per hour.  As the men, women and children at Pemaquid frantically sought shelter with whatever possessions they had been able to take from the ship that morning, a storm of what must truly have seemed like “biblical” proportions closed in on them.

The Angel Gabriel was torn from its moorings and dashed onto the solidly pre-Cambrian rocks of Maine. It was completely destroyed. Among the immigrants huddled on shore, watching as their only link to the old world sank beneath the gray waves, were Ralph and Elizabeth Blaisdell, and their three year old son, Henry.  Ralph and Elizabeth were my great-great-great…(keep going) grandparents. They had risked all, left the family and home they knew in England, and traveled to a primitive land, burning every bridge behind them.

After a relatively uneventful ten week voyage, falling prey to the Great Colonial Hurricane must have seemed like a cruel reminder of how perilous their leap of faith truly was.  Yet this tenacious family not only survived, they thrived. Ralph was 43 when he sailed for America. He must have married late in life as his son, Henry, was 3 years old. One can presume that his wife, Elizabeth, was a much younger woman.

There is indication that Ralph was both intelligent and industrious, or perhaps the New World brought out the best in him. During his short stay in York, Maine he was named an attorney for the town.  Ralph’s family did not stay in York, but instead, moved to Salisbury, Massachusetts where he was one of only eight men who earned the honorific of “Mister.”  Ralph packed a great deal of enterprise into the 15 years he had in America before his death in 1653.   His line, the Blaisdell’s, went forth and multiplied.  Ralph and Elizabeth could not have imagined me or my life in modern America; yet I owe so much to their choice and resolve.   I would like to talk to Elizabeth, because the immigrant women were so often the last to have a say in the ebb and flow of their lives, but the first to bear the burden of those sea changes. Even more than that, I would like them to meet me and make a judgment on whether or not they thought their sacrifice was worth it. I hope they would say, “Yes.”

I am following the news of the Hurricane Sandy with both concern and interest.  Hurricanes attack the Northeast rarely, but when they do it is with a ferocity that chills the soul.  Today, I have both history and friends in harms way.

Lord, give them both strength and wisdom.  Keep the faith.