“A Most Terrible Storm”
While they waited and prepared for the battle that was sure to come soon, men on both sides were awed by a storm that hit New York hard on the evening of August 21, 1776. There were even several casualties. Connecticut chaplain Philip Vickers Fithian said it was “a most terrible Storm of Wind, Thunder, & Lightening! So violent as I have not seen since about this time in August 1773.” Ewald Gustav Shewkirk (or Schaukirk), pastor of the Moravian Church in New York, wrote:
In the evening…a very heavy thunder storm came on. It lasted for several hours, till after 10 o’clock; an uncommon lightning; one hard clap after the other; heavy rain mixed at times with a storm like a hurricane. The inhabitants can hardly remember such a tempest…. Upon the whole it was an awful scene. Three officers, viz., one Captain, and two Lieuts., were killed in one of the Camps; they were all Yorkers; and one soldier of the New English People was likewise killed in a house in the square; several others were hurt, and the mast of one of the row gallies mash’d to pieces.
A sea captain, however — James Wallace, of H.M.S. Rose — didn’t think it worth more than a few words in his ship’s log. He wrote simply: “fresh Gales with Thunder Lightning and Rain”.
Sources
- The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence 1775-1783, 176.
- Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, vol. 3: Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn, 113.
- Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 6:267.