Bay St. Louis Hurricane

Southern United States, July 27–28, 1819 

Touted as one of the most destructive tropical cyclones to have affected the fledgling United States during the first half of the 19th century, the Bay St. Louis Hurricane unleashed pulverizing winds and a deadly five to six foot storm surge on the coasts of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi between July 27 and 28, 1819. In Mississippi, where the tightly coiled eye of the 24-hour hurricane made landfall just before midnight on September 28, nearly every house, warehouse, and wharf along the banks of Bay St. Louis was destroyed.

Eyewitness accounts state that the entire coastline from Pass Christian, Mississippi, to Mobile, Alabama, was littered with the remains of shattered buildings, uprooted fences, and snapped trees. Dozens of human bodies, along with the carcasses of several hundred head of cattle, festered on the beaches, in the swamped bayous, in the piles of wreckage that in some places formed an almost impenetrable wall. In Alabama, where the hurricane’s broad surge was funneled inland across Mobile Bay’s narrowing shores, deadly alligators, snakes, and snapping turtles were washed into the city’s clogged streets, causing a number of gruesome fatalities. Several vessels—from small boats to 60-ton brigs—were driven ashore by the enormous six to ten foot (2–3 m) surge, one of them coming to rest with its bowsprit piercing the side of a quayside warehouse on Dauphin Street. At Cat Island, located 11 miles (18 km) to the southeast of Bay St. Louis, 39 sailors from United States sloop-of-war Firebrand were killed when the burgeoning storm first capsized their swift, 12-gun craft and then deposited it, overturned, on the shore. Farther inland, in the midst of the pine forests that blanketed Mississippi’s midlands, the Bay St. Louis Hurricane overtook a contingent of U.S. soldiers who had encamped for the night in a shallow valley. 

First surprised, then terrified by the sudden tempest of wind and flooding rains that fell upon them during the evening hours of July 27, the soldiers fled to higher ground, into woods where trees were falling like nine-pins. At least one man was killed and twenty others seriously wounded as the hurricane shredded tents, scattered provisions, and showered the stricken party with arrowlike splinters. In Louisiana, where the hurricane’s track first took it ashore just west of the lower Mississippi Delta, minimal but sustained winds buffeted New Orleans, running three ships aground at the mouth of the river and flooding many farms along the rims of lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain. Before dissipating over the cooling reaches of the continental United States on July 29, the Bay St. Louis Hurricane had claimed between 100 and 175 lives and caused untold thousands of dollars in property damage to the Mississippi Sound’s budding trade and industry.