It’s odd how sometimes two seemingly different events suddenly merge into a single story.
Two weeks ago I wrote about some family stories to treasure. One of them was a story about a trip to Biloxi my grandparents took around 1915. There was an old photo of a ship that I did not use in the article. It was a Norwegian sailing ship that sank off Ship Island in a 1916 hurricane. I also have an old photo of an unidentified Tombigbee or Alabama River steamboat that sank at Mobile during a hurricane.
With Hurricane Barry leaving its trail of destruction I became curious about the old photos and the storm of 1916. What I found was another story.
It started with a social column in a July 1916, Biloxi newspaper. My grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. T.C. Billups, my great-grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. T.W. Hardy, and my great-uncle and -aunt, Mr. and Mrs. T. Bailey Hardy, had motored to Biloxi in a National and a Hudson automobile. They were “spending a week at Judge Kimbrough’s house… fishing, boating and bathing.” They departed Biloxi for Columbus about a week before a major hurricane hit.
On July 5, 1916, a storm struck the coast, causing major damage from Pensacola to west of Biloxi. At Pensacola a wind gage broke after registering wind speeds of 104 mph. A Montgomery, Alabama paper reported that: “Unprecedented rainfall causes havoc throughout Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia; Birmingham District flooded; Meridian business man reports big buildings unroofed and great damage in Mobile.”
Tornadoes and floods were reported to have caused at least six deaths in Alabama, including two who drowned in the flooded Warrior River near Tuscaloosa. Birmingham experienced more than 10 inches of rain in 48 hours and its fire department was called out to rescue people trapped by flood water.
Mobile was said to be “in a state of havoc” with “scores of ships piled on wharves” and the “government docks destroyed.” On the Mississippi coast two schooners were lost off Ship Island and their crews feared drowned. The four-masted barkentine John Meyers and the pilot boat E.E. Barry were both beached on Ship Island.
Flooding also occurred in rivers and streams across east Mississippi and a train engineer and his fireman died when their train hit washed-out tracks at Bond. The effects of the 1916 storm were even felt in Columbus. On July 7, The Columbus Commercial reported: “A severe rain and wind storm swept over the South Atlantic coast during several days of the last week and this section got the ‘drippings,’ rain having fallen here almost incessantly for more than 60 hours, with a total precipitation of 6.98 inches for the period. … Luxapallila creek, already at flood-tide, is rising rapidly, and people living near the stream are moving out in search of higher ground.”
There was also a report of a Southern Railway passenger train being water bound near Steens.
With all of the heavy rain the Tombigbee was also rapidly rising. Reports received from north of Columbus indicated that upstream the river was expected to rise 10 to 15 feet overnight. Elsewhere it was said the rapid rise of the Tombigbee was “something like 17 1/2 feet.” There was also extensive damage to cotton and corn crops both from wind and water. The wind was said to have blown down standing corn. Like present day Barry, the hurricane of 1916 cut a wide swath of damage from the coast through northeast Mississippi and Alabama.
The ship that showed up in my grandparents’ photo from late June of 1916 was the large Norwegian bark Ancenis which sank off Ship Island. She had just loaded a million feet of lumber when the storm hit. The winds “demasted” the ship which sank after springing leaks. Fortunately all the crew were rescued.
That 103-year-old vacation photo speaks to us this weekend with the story of a peaceful vacation where nature was about to unleash all its fury.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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