John "Al" Churchill on the Great Saxby Gale
- lura93
- Oct 21
- 4 min read
Exactly 156 years after the Great Saxby Gale nearly destroyed Eastport, John “Al” Churchill, president of the St. Croix Historical Society, gave a presentation on the gale’s impact at Eastport Arts Center (EAC).
Churchill began by setting the stage. At the time, Eastport “punched above its weight” when it came to appearing in papers across the country, to the point that people in 1800 would have known Eastport first in all the state. Eastport’s fame was centered around three facets – being very far east, being the center of smuggling in the country and for weather.
Weatherwise, the phase “Eastport to Block Island” became ubiquitous in papers across the country for denoting the coastal New England region. “Every paper in the country used that term,” Churchill said. Because of that, “The name Eastport became synonymous with the weather.” That continued for over 100 years.
In 1868, Stephen Saxby was a teacher at the Royal Naval Academy in London. He had a background in engineering, but he was most famous for making weather predictions – most of which were inaccurate, and some of which had even precipitated harm upon those following them.
“He occasionally got it right,” Churchill said. In one such case, he’d written a letter to The Standard of London on December 25, 1868 warning about how the proximity of the moon and other factors would lead to a terrible storm on October 4 the following year. “Everything was lined up for something really bad to happen,” Churchill said. Saxby wasn’t exactly sure where, however, and he warned that it would strike the North Sea.
Despite his past failures, Saxby was known by his fans as the “Weather Prophet” and his forecasts were carried in newspapers across the country. Because of that, nearly everyone was aware of the foretold danger on October 4 – but most didn’t take it seriously.
The evening of October 4 in Eastport, “the weather started to turn bad, then it turned really, really bad,” Churchill said. Arriving at 7 p.m. and departing by 9 p.m., the Saxby Gale “nearly demolished” the city, as reported in newspapers as far away as San Francisco. Eastport was ground zero for the storm’s landfall and took its full force as a result.
At the time, “Eastport was a booming town” with 38 wharves – all but one of which were destroyed or “smashed to atoms,” as reported in the Eastport Sentinel. The paper described the storm as “a perfect and terrible tornado” that struck the city with the “force of ten thousand gales combined.”
“Huge trees were torn up at their roots,” and families were huddled together listening to “crushing, creaking and crumbling” as roofs were taken off and buildings were lifted clear off their foundations, Churchill read from the firsthand accounts. “People fled their houses thinking they would crumble into ruins.” Seven schooners were piled onto Cony Beach – “total wrecks.” The Congregational Church had its steeple blown off.
“The descriptions that Eastport was totally destroyed were pretty accurate,” Churchill summarized.
One firsthand account came from a passenger on the steamship New York, which left from Saint John on October 4. Those aboard were award of the prediction but not bothered enough to change their plans. Initially, the water was very calm. Then big waves started rolling out of Eastport. Two telegrams came in, the first reading not to proceed and the other warning not to try to ride out the storm and to seek safe harbor. “The captain knew at that point that the storm was serious,” Churchill said.
The ship “rocked and plunged” with its engines running at full speed against the against to keep it stabilized. Women were kneeling on the deck, praying. 25’ tidal waves hit the boat, one after another, snapping its cables.
Thankfully, the storm did pass. The passengers had to stay on the boat, as there was no way out of Eastport by land due to the roads being destroyed. They reportedly ate everything on board and soon everything in town except for apples and soda crackers. A few days later, a local church had a service for the survivors of the storm. “It was obviously terrifying,” Churchill said.
The loss to individual families was severe. Report after report of families that lost their only barn, cow or horse with no means to replace them indicated true loss. “May God help such,” concluded one paper.
In terms of lost livestock, the worst destruction came near Saint John were thousands of cows and sheep that were grazing in low lying marshes met their sudden and untimely fate. “It was a disaster for those people up on the coast of Fundy Bay,” Churchill said.
Another major loss was to the forests. Naturalist George Boardman, a resident of Calais at the time, recorded one thousand trees fallen in the Calais cemetery. He estimated that someone could walk for 10 miles straight without touching the ground, so numerous were the fallen trees. The hemlock forests were particularly devastated owing to their heavy tops. In some areas, the lumber industry was stalled for a decade afterward.
“There certainly never was a storm that’s even come close to equaling it, although every other bad storm that we’ve had has been compared to it.” Whatever the storm in question, “it wasn’t as bad as the Saxby Gale,” Churchill said, referring to it as the worst storm on record while qualifying that the Passamaquoddy probably saw even worse storms during the preceding 10,000 to 15,000 years.
