When the 80-foot tugboat, “Ease Point,” was washed ashore and across Highway 90 by Hurricane Camille in 1969, it found a new name and a second life. It became the SS Hurricane Camille, and a roadside gift shop that prospered until it was battered and swept off its foundation by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. During its 36-year life, it became a metaphor for both the force and the favor of Mother Nature.
I’ve always thought it was a rather macabre attempt at humor, but it’s true: when weatherman Jim Cantore shows up in your town, you’d better start paying attention to the weather. More to the point, I’ve about worn a trail to my “safe spot” lately, hunkered down between the washing machine and the dryer, what with all the “yellow warnings” being painted on my tv screen during the evening news.
If you feel like the frequency of tornadoes is increasing, it’s not your imagination. According to statistics kept by the National Weather Service, Mississippi is now dead middle in the tornado center of the United States. Based on 2021 data, the states with the highest risk for tornadoes are Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. Statistics also show that, on average, a total of 72 percent of all tornado-related fatalities in Mississippi are in homes, and 54 percent of those fatalities are in mobile or manufactured homes. If you try to ride out a tornado in your mobile home, you are 10 to 20 times more likely to be killed in comparison to when you are in a “stick built” home. Regardless of how well built the mobile home is, anchor system failures are the primary cause of most fatalities, causing the homes to break apart and become airborne.
It gets worse. From June 1st through November 30th, a resident of the Gulf Coast South could very well think of themselves as living in America’s “hurricane alley” as well. While Mississippi has only been hit with 19 hurricanes since the inception of the Saffir/Simpson Scale (Tropical Depression, Tropical Storm, Category 1, Category 2, etc.) in 1851, ranking it 8th, well behind such states as Florida (120), Texas (64), North Carolina (55), and Louisiana (54), the “ladies,” such as Camille and Katrina, were memorable when they came to call.
For the record, the projected names of the 2023 Atlantic hurricanes are Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, and Whitney. These names have been provided by the National Hurricane Center since 1953, and different names are provided for Pacific typhoons. The practice of naming hurricanes and typhoons solely after women ended in 1978. Meteorologically speaking, hurricanes and typhoons are the same weather phenomenon: tropical cyclones. A tropical cyclone is a generic term used by meteorologists to describe a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has closed, low level circulation.
We all tend to remember where we were when auspicious events happened. For this generation, it’s probably 9/11. For me, there are several. One was the death of President Kennedy. My ship was making that right hand turn into the entrance to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and I was on the surface search radar, sending distance and direction readings to the navigation team on the bridge. The message announcing his death came over the encrypted radio, and nobody wanted to believe it. I remember, too, the foggy morning in 1970 on the airfield at Fort Benning, Georgia, when I lined up to board the airplane for my first parachute jump. Even though I was confident in my training, I figured I was going to die, and I had made my peace with the Man upstairs. I’m pretty sure it was all those “Hail Mary’s” that saved me.
Likewise, those of us of a certain generation can probably remember exactly where we were the night Camille came ashore. My wife and I were living in a very small house out from Purvis, while I awaited my quota to go back on active duty as an officer after completing college, and we decided to ride out the storm. Soon after dark, after Camille hit Gulfport and wiped out the infamous “hurricane party” being conducted in their apartment building by some unfortunates, the electricity went off, and our little house began to shake. I’m sure it was bobbing up and down on its foundation. I had visions of us taking to the air like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz.” We got into the hallway and covered up our heads with a mattress, and the sound outside was like the proverbial “freight train.” I had a portable, battery powered radio, and we listened as, one by one, the radio stations between Purvis and the coast went off the air as their broadcast towers were blown down. We obviously survived, and it was somewhat anticlimactic after that, as I soon went back to sea; however, I do remember that we were without power for over a month and took our baths in the nearby creek.
Speaking of the “Wizard of Oz,” did you know that the “snow” dusting that Judy Garland’s Dorothy character received in the 1939 movie was asbestos? Hollywood struggled with filming snowy scenes as the real stuff was hard to come by in sunny California. Other filmmakers had tried painting cornflakes white to imitate snow, but the crackling sound that actors made while walking on them was too loud. Asbestos threads were used as an alternative. It would be interesting to know if any cast members ever suffered any ill effects from that exposure. I know that on one of my ships, every time they fired the big, 16-inch guns, asbestos fibers would come floating down from the overhead insulation and turn everything white, including my hair. Not to worry, though. Since I’ve also been covered with Agent Orange twice, I figure I’m a walking dead man, anyway.
As a sailor, I’ve always been interested in anything related to the weather and to storms at sea.
Take European wind names, for example. Did you ever notice how many automobile manufacturers appropriate the various names of the wind for their cars. Volkswagen is a prime example. Their “Golf” model refers to the Gulf Stream; “Jetta” is German for “jet stream,” “Passant” means “trade wind;” “Scirocco” is named after a hot Mediterranean wind off the desert; and “Polo” refers to polar winds. Isuzu named their Geo the “Storm;” Lamborghini has a “Huracan,” which is Spanish for “hurricane;” Maserati’s “Ghibli” is named after the hot, dusty wind that blows across North Africa, and their “Mistral” recalls a seasonal wind that blows in the south of France. Renault even has a “Wind” on the market today. I once owned a Mercury “Cyclone” myself.
Back in 1976, the Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot cut a record that was very popular around my home port about the time of the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes iron ore freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched in 1958, she was the largest ship on North America’s Great Lakes , and she remains the largest to have sunk there. No bodies were ever recovered. The ship was apparently broken in two in one of the sudden and violent storms that often appear on the Great Lakes. It now sits on the bottom at 530 feet, 17 miles from its destination of Whitefish Bay. It was an eerie feeling to listen to that song on the radio as we got underway in the winter for three months off Nova Scotia where we had to deal with 40-foot waves pretty much all the time. I hated that ship. We would always run out of decent food and end up living on bologna, Kool aide, and jello. Plus, it was Sooo cold. I often had to climb up the 60-foot mast to do maintenance on the radar and radio antenna, and I usually couldn’t feel my hands.
Some of you might remember the sinking of the SS El Faro near the Bahamas in 2017’s Hurricane Joaquin. All 33 crew members died in a catastrophe which has never been understood. Hopefully, the ship’s voyage data recorder will someday be found, but I don’t need a water-logged black box to tell me what happened. Taking on water though the cargo holds on the main deck, the freighter’s engine room flooded; it lost power, including all auxiliaries. Consequently, losing steering, the helmsman was unable to keep the bow into the wind, and it was broached by a succession of huge waves.
Thinking of the individual crewmen, including several women, one would hope that “an angel whispered in their ear, held them close, and took away their fear in those last long moments.” Metaphorically, the ship might even help in its own eventual discovery beneath the waves as “el faro” in Spanish means beacon or light house. You can’t help but wonder what the ship’s master was thinking when he chose to sail directly into the eye of the storm, for you can be assured that he was receiving the latest weather reports.
Thankfully, there are no hurricanes in the Atlantic this time of the year, and the typhoon season doesn’t begin in the Western Pacific until July, but there are many instances where storms at sea have changed the course of history. For example, the Japanese Kamikaze (“Divine Wind”) suicide planes that wreaked so much havoc on American ships off Okinawa in World War II were named after two storms that saved Japan from invasion by two fleets under command of the Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, in 1274 and 1281. More recently, England was saved from invasion in 1588 when many ships of the Spanish Armada sank in storms in the Atlantic off the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. More than 15,000 embarked soldiers and sailors lost their lives, with their bodies washing ashore for weeks. Incidentally, it’s a little-known fact, but Germany was also preparing its own “suicide” fleet of airplanes during the last days of World War II, but the war ended before they could use them.
One of the largest storm losses of Navy ships and personnel occurred on 9 October, 1945, when an unnamed typhoon struck the island of Okinawa. A total of 12 ships were sunk, 22 were grounded, and 32 were severely damaged. Personnel casualties were 36 killed, 47 missing and presumed dead, and over 100 seriously injured. These losses would have severely impacted the planned invasion of Japan (Operation Olympic), which was cancelled after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
I was on three different ships out of San Diego, and I once owned a house out on the edge of the desert in El Cajon (“The Box” in Spanish). It was hot in the summer, but cold in the winter, especially when the “catabolic” wind (one that blows down the slopes of the mountains) came through, rattling the windows and stirring up the dust devils. The singer, Tom Russell, summed it up pretty well in his 2009 song, “Santa Ana Winds,” which I will share a verse or two with you in closing:
When these old adobe walls
Turn to dust and finally fall
And the creatures of the night
call out your name
Mother Nature, she’ll grab hold
Of all the things that we let go
Here comes an ill-intentioned
wind that knows your name.
In the desert it begins to build
Near Gila Monster Hills
A whisp of dust, then a whisper,
then a curse
Soon it’s 90 miles an hour
Near El Centro water tower
Look out, El Cajon, you’ll be the first.
If you think a picture is worth a thousand words, you should have seen it in color.
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
