St. George’s Island - The Great Flood of 1933
By David Sayre
Introduced by James Ivy
Photo by Clayton Malquist on Unsplash
Originally appearing in Slackwater, Volume 1
A headline on the front page of the August 25, 1933, edition of The New York Times announces, “Flood Peril Rises; 42 Dead In Storm.” A few pages later, three photographs detail the damage caused by one of the strongest, most destructive hurricanes ever to hit the Atlantic seaboard: from Norfolk, Virgina, there is a picture of the “battered upper deck” of the steamship Madison; from Washington, D.C., there is an aerial view of the derailed Crescent Limited train on the tracks of a bridge that spans the Anacostia River; below these two images is a photo of a group of children swimming the flooded downtown streets of the nation’s capital.
I describe this picture last because it has stayed with me. The children have witnessed the effects of gale winds and raging waters, yet they wear the expressions of vacationers playing in the surf. David Sayre could have been one of those kids in the picture, save for the fact that he was born and raised on St. George Island instead of in a major city. In another, smaller headline, the Times announces that the storm took the lives of ten Marylanders; the article declares that Ocean City and other Eastern Shore towns, such as Salisbury, suffered the greatest property losses.
David Sayre, born July 14, 1916, on Ball’s Point, St. George Island, tells another story. He tells the story of a small, isolated, waterman’s community literally destroyed by crashing waves and rising waters. As it was for those children in the New York Times picture, the flood meant vacation and excitement for him and his peers; it meant struggle, heartache and loss for his parents and his parents’ parents. He tells the story of hope, cooperation and rebuilding. He tells the story of the great flood in the memoirs he began writing in the early 1980s, a story The New York Times missed because, like the rest of Maryland and the rest of the nation, they had heard neither of the tiny island nor what it endured late in the summer of 1933.
On August 23, 1933, the Chesapeake Bay area was struck by what is known to be the severest storm of the century on St. George Island, Maryland. We the people on St. George Island speak of it as the Great Flood of 1933. This great storm ravaged the Chesapeake Bay with high winds from the east and southeast, and with extremely high tides. It seems that these high winds from the east and southeast pushed the waters through the capes of the bay on up to the northwestern part of the bay, causing damages far worse than in the southern part.
I personally never before experienced such a great storm, and citizens and past generations that experienced the storm agreed that St. George Island received the worst damage of the century from the storm.
On August 23, 1933, St. George Island was hit by this storm without any warning. The reason for no warning was because we had no communications. No radio, no daily newspaper (the Baltimore Sun only once a week), no telephones. This storm struck without any advance knowledge at seven a.m, with strong flooding tides and strong winds up to sixty miles per hour from the east and then shifting to the southeast.
At this particular time my family owned a large, two-story home on St. George Island on the northeast side of the island, on a small peninsula jutting out into the St. Mary’s River. On this particular morning of the storm, we were eating breakfast in the large family kitchen that was not connected to the main house when a large wave hit the kitchen. We immediately moved to the main house and started eating again. Almost immediately again another wave came inside, broke the flooring under the table, knocking some of the dishes off the table, and by that time the water was well upon the floor. We decided to get out of the house and move to my sister’s house, Rhonda Biscoe, close by. My two brothers and I moved my mother and father to the lea side of the house and got them through the lower window, which was in a calmer area. While we were walking my parents to my sister’s house, the waves were washing at times over their heads. My two sisters were staying with us that day. Their husbands were captains on the mainland, so we were a family of seven fighting for survival. The island bridge then was washed away.
We had no idea that the storm would get so severe, so we tried to save the chickens that were in the two chicken houses. This was my job. Grabbing the chickens by wings, legs, wherever, I proceeded to get them in another house nearby, slipped in a ditch over my head, lost the chickens, got hung in a barb-wire fence, lost shirt and shoes, and when I looked around, the chicken house was going up the river with chickens flying everywhere. One Rhode Island red rooster was still riding the chicken house. I often wonder what happened to that rooster.
After this, the family tried to settle down and ride it out, but the storm continued to get much worse, winds increasing and tides getting higher. By that time, boats of all kinds were coming by, and then there came two one-story homes floating between us and the house we had left, and clothes could be seen hanging on the hanger in the attic. Then looking at the big house, we saw it move, and big waves hit and the entire thing disintegrating, and everything-house, furniture, clothing-went up the river. We had absolutely nothing left. It seemed it was time to try to leave for higher ground.
I had my mind on my eighteen-foot sailboat, which I had clocked at a fairly safe place the evening before. My brother and I managed to get to it by wading almost to our shoulders. The mast and sail were lying in the bottom of the boat. We pumped it out and brought the boat back to my sister’s house, loaded mother, father, two sisters, and other brother, and took off paddling the boat into some partially sheltered area through the woods to the church, one-half mile away. We were about the first to get to the church, but many followed shortly after. The elderly were greatly upset. We, the young ones, didn’t worry. We rather got a kick out of it. One of our greater worries was that we were hungry and had nothing to eat, so my friend and I decided we would try to get to the nearby store, about a half-mile away. We followed the road to the store, but at times we could not follow and stepped off the road over our heads, swam back to the road, finally got to Walter Wise’s store. Mr. Wise was standing behind the counter on a metal wash tub with his pants rolled up to his thighs. He said, “Where did you boys come from?” We said, “We just came from the church, and all the people there are hungry. Have we got anything to eat in here?” He replied that he had some apple butter and ginger snaps. “Everything else is soaking wet.” Mr. Wise gave us a bunch of ginger snaps and apple butter, and he loaned us his washtub so we could float them back, dry. The people were so glad to get what we had brought back. Next day we got some groceries at Thomas’ store on the island and at Swann’s store in Piney Point.
By the time the storm had abated and the water gone down; the sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day. The St. George Island bridge was gone, but we had transportation back and forth to the mainland by boat.
I would also like to mention various bits of information related to the Great Flood that may be interesting. I may mention and note that there were two places on the island that the waters did not cover, a narrow strip of land out by the Methodist church running in a northerly direction for about 700 to 800 yards, and then another narrow strip on the Potomac River side of the island, toward the south end of the island. The rest of the island was covered from three to eight feet deep.
During the height of the storm, many small boats broke their moorings and were all over the island in marshes, wooded areas, etc. One 45-foot-long Chesapeake Bay canoe stayed tied up on higher ground for about a year, and the captain seemed to be very content, greeting his friends and playing his fiddle.
As you know, the 1930s were an era of large sailboats, skipjacks, schooners, bugeyes, pungys, sloops, and also some large, oyster buy-boats driven by motor, also many Chesapeake Bay smaller canoes, 26 to 35 feet long. During the great storm, several of these large vessels were anchored on the northeast side of St. George Island They broke their mooring and were washed by the storm on the island, almost all of them in one wooded area. This area is the wooded area you presently can see, northeast of the extreme south end of the present long sea wall on the Potomac side of St. George Island. In October 1933 the U.S. Coast Guard sent a coast guard cutter there; trees were cut down and made into roller skids, and they ran a cable and pulled the boat back to the water.
The people of the island had to deal with other conditions after the storm. Most of the chickens were drowned, and the odor was terrible. The other animals, such as dogs, cats, cattle and hogs, seemed to survive. One house [Richard Thompson’s] washed off its foundations, and the hogs that they had put up on the porch were found after the storm, asleep in bed, I was told. Another incident I actually saw happen: a cow trying to get out of the water, which was almost over its back. My half-sister got the cow by its ear, and with a little coaxing and a little pull, the cow came up on the porch.
Another condition existed on the island, and I personally looked the entire island over. Mounds of oysters washed up on the land. Some of those mounds were as much as ten- to fifty-feet-long, ten-feet-wide, and five-feet-high. During the warm September that followed, they rotted, and the smell was terrific. Crabs were over the entire island in the low-lying areas and ditches. They shedded until late fall, and you dare not step in a ditch. You would be apt to get bitten.
The Red Cross was very good to the island, and the health department helped considerably to clean up the island. One cannot believe the looks of the island after the storm. The way of life was much different. We lost our home. It took quite a lot of contacts and work to get another small home built. I personally slept in a friend’s attic for about six months, and father slept at sister’s home, and brothers slept elsewhere.
I also feel I may relate a short story that may be interesting. The day after the storm was one of the most beautiful days that you ever saw. The wind was very mild. The sun was bright, and the atmosphere was very clear. I went to my sailboat, put up the mast and sail, and decided to do a little exploring, going north on the east side of St. George Island, deciding to see if I could find some of our furniture. I found four or five broken chairs, one of which we used later but the greatest shock was a red handbag hanging on a tree limb about two miles upriver. I opened it and looked inside. It was my mother’s bag with 26 cents inside (one quarter and a penny). My mother had put this in the bag three or four days before. This was her insurance money, 26 cents a month (these were the Great Depression days).
The next day I decided to go exploring again, but in another direction. The water was so clear in those days, and sailing in shallow water, it was easy to see river bottom. While sailing along I sailed over a big bunch of letters. I turned the boat around and came back immediately, took my crab net and bailed these letters up. Guess what? I could hardly believe my eyes: they were love letters. Beautiful love letters that belonged to beautiful young friends of mine. And as a boy would do, I ran my boat to the shore and read a few of these letters. These were really nice letters, nothing to be ashamed of, just lovely and exciting to a young boy. I teased these girls for a day and gave them back to them.
This is the end of my true story. I hope any who read it will enjoy it.
