The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, first…
August 1635 CE
The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635, first mentioned on August 24, 1635, in Jamestown, Virginia, strikes Narragansett Bay as a possible Category 3 hurricane, killing over forty-six people.
Much of the area between Providence, Rhode Island and the Piscataqua River is damaged by the hurricane; some damage will still be noticeable fifty years later.
A letter from Governor William Bradford says that the storm drowned seventeen Native Americans and toppled or destroyed thousands of trees; many houses were also flattened.
From an account by Antony Thacher, there were twenty-three people aboard a little bark named the Watch and Wait owned by a Mr. Isaac Allerton.
The boat sank, and Thacher and his wife were the only ones to survive the shipwreck.
Thus the island off Cape Ann—where Thacher survived—is named in his honor and is still known as Thacher's Island.
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