It certainly wasn’t the only one, but it was often called “The Big One.” It was also nicknamed “The Great New England Hurricane” or “The Long Island Express” and it came ashore in New England as a category 3 hurricane in late September of 1938. It boasted sustained winds of 125 mph, topping out at 186 mph, and brought along torrential rains and rising tides. (A storm tide of 10 and a half feet above normal is still a New London record.)

A few years ago, I remember sitting on the floor in my aunt’s house and reading those same statistics as I thumbed through the tragic photos and accompanying articles of that historic event from a stack of local newspapers she had collected. Theodate Bull Lockhart, my mother’s younger sister, had passed a few months earlier, and her house on Grand Street in Niantic had to be cleaned out and sold. A few of the relatives were asked to look through things and sort out what was to be kept and what should be thrown away.

The 1938 hurricane material was definitely slated for the trash bin when I asked if I could take a closer look. Those pictures and graphic accountings made me wish I had paid closer attention to the personal details of the storm my parents occasionally had shared with me over the years.

After all, nothing beats first-hand testimony. I could only hope those newspaper stories and clippings would fill in a few personal blanks as I bundled them all up for the trip home.

Later, as I sorted through what I had, I could not believe my luck when I discovered a folded, handwritten account of the storm that my aunt, Thea, had penned many years ago. She had written it as a college essay on Feb. 21, 1942. A few grammatical corrections had been made to the text, but no grade was offered. She had titled it “Hurricane!” and the comment “Very thrilling,” was scribbled on it by the instructor.

This is my aunt’s personal remembrance of that terrible September gale:

“On one cool morning in September of 1938, my sometimes ‘too dependable’ alarm clock awakened me as usual, and I gradually opened my eyes and accustomed them to the sunlight. I got up and looked out of the window to ‘size up’ the weather situation to know what clothes to wear to school (Williams Memorial Institute in New London). Suddenly I was struck by the morning’s stillness and by the peculiar color of the sky. It was a dazzling pink, almost a red. However, still being in a sleepy daze, I thought no more about it and my sister and I went off to school.

Just before school was over that afternoon, there was a sudden stir in the atmosphere and a playful breeze seemed to come up out of nowhere. The grass was a startling, vivid green and it began to rustle. It was only a few minutes before the breeze became a strong wind, and I sensed the oddness of this condition. I had never known a wind to come up so suddenly, yet I still did not anticipate anything important happening.

A group of us girls hopped into the car and went downtown (New London). We got out as we rounded a street corner, when part of the tiling on the outside of the building shattered before us. We decided, then, that the wind was too strong to walk around in and that we should get home to Old Lyme as soon as possible.

We first started down towards Ocean Beach to see how rough the water was, but the storm was getting worse and telephone wires began falling. We let the girls out and headed for home.

When we came to the little town of Niantic where we buy our groceries, I told Jan, my sister, to hurry with the shopping. She ran into the grocery store while I sat in the car and as I was wondering what was happening at the beach where we live, trees began to fall, branches fell on the roof of our car and the car started trembling.

I was quite frightened by that time, so I leaped out and struggled into the store. I say ‘struggled’ because the wind would have knocked me down had I not used all my strength against it. The clerks were excited also and we all realized that this was more than an ordinary storm…this was a hurricane!

Everyone told us it would be dangerous and probably futile to try to get home then, so we tried to telephone the family. The wires were down, and we couldn’t make connections. All we could do then was to wait until the storm was over.

We went over to the store window and looked out. The sky had become darker, and it had started to rain hard. The streets were deserted. As we watched, the copper roof on the hotel across the street rolled up from the force of the wind. Trees were uprooted and blown over, blocking the streets and tearing up the pavement. Neon signs swung on their hinges and then fell with a crash. Plate glass windows shattered. The water on the other side of the railroad tracks rose to such a height that it broke over them and flooded the streets.

Inside the store, the water came pouring down through the ceiling and the clerks hurried around finding containers to catch it.

“I could not believe it! The whole town was being torn up before our eyes. I had no conception of the damage that wind could do. We stood bewildered for about three hours and then came a slight lull and we thought it was over. But soon it returned with greater force than before and continued equally as long. When it was finally over, we wrapped ourselves in the clerk’s aprons and ran out into the street. I was stunned! Was this the same place that I had known only a few hours before?

Now we thought we could go home. Fortunately, our car had not been damaged. Two of the clerks volunteered to drive us there and we started out. One drove, while the other got out when it was necessary to test the depth of the puddles to know whether or not the car could go through. Each time we thought we were making progress, we would have to turn back and try another road, for the one we were on would be blocked with fallen trees or flooded. It took us three hours to go six miles.

When we were nearly home, we came to a new bridge that had not yet been cemented and was a mass of mud and we were forced to leave the car and walk up the beach road to our house.

The “Bull Shack” stands directly on the (Hawk’s Nest) beach front and it is the last house on the point. We walked up the road, wading through water and mud. As we came up to the shore front cottages, a sudden pang of fear took hold of me and for an instant everything went black. Reality soon returned and there was no mistaking the tragedy that had occurred. All the cottages that had been there on the waterfront for so many years were gone! The beach road was completely demolished, and water was now on both sides of us.

We stumbled through the sand, over collapsed houses, over beds and chairs and sinks and bathtubs. It was pitch black and I stumbled blindly with only one thought going through my mind. Was my family safe? Was our house still standing?

We continued to make our way up the beach and after what seemed like hours, we were able to make out the dim outline of our house. Thank God! But the most important thought continued to pound in my brain. ‘Was the family there?’

I ran up the back steps and my father came to the door. He said “hello” and smiled faintly, with a great expression of relief on his face as he realized we were safe. My first question was “Where is Mother?” and with the answer that she was upstairs, I ran into the house but stopped suddenly. Before me, in the dim light of a candle, were about fifteen people sitting around the dining room. None spoke…they just sat with their heads bowed… a mother and her daughter, a minister and his wife, and many others.

I ran upstairs and found my mother lying on her bed. At the sight of me, she burst out crying. But soon we realized what had to be done and I immediately set to work bringing down from the attic all the blankets we owned and making up all the beds and couches in the house for the refugees. We made the people as comfortable as we could and then went to sleep ourselves. I probably would not have slept, had I not been so exhausted.

When I awoke the next morning, I felt as though what had happened the night before had just been a horrible nightmare. It was beautiful, warm, sunshiny day and late in the afternoon I walked down the beach to examine the damage. Approximately fifty cottages had been destroyed, some washed away completely and others lying in pieces on the sand. The way in which we lived for the next two weeks is a story in and of itself, so I will close by saying that in the next few summers, cottages were rebuilt and the people who returned lived normal lives once again. I had always prayed since that catastrophe that our annual September storms at the beach will never again include another such HURRICANE.”

Postscript:

My Aunt Theodate got her wish. Another storm of that magnitude would not strike our area again during her lifetime. (She died in 2014.) It turned out that the ‘38 Hurricane was THE storm of the century. But history does reveal something else, and something that is quite disturbing. There are generally 70-90 years between such devastating storms, and it has been 83 years since the Long Island Express came our way on that late September day.

Jim Littlefield is a retired history teacher in East Lyme who has written two local history books and two historical novels. His columns can also be found in the Post Road Review.