EFFECT OF THE EASTERN STORM.
Great Havoc Done in Massachusetts and Rhode Island,
A Score of Persons Drowned and Two Million Dollars’ Loss Inflicted.
The Loss in the City of Boston Alone Estimated at Nearly a Million and a Half Dollars – New York City Experiences Her Coldest Day of the Season.
BOSTON, February 3, 1898 — A score of persons were drowned and $2,000,000 loss inflicted by the storm that swept Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island Monday night and Tuesday morning;. Four unidentified bodies lie in the Coroner’s office in Gloucester. Five more are at Lynn, brought over from Little Nahant, where the schooner Charles H. Briggs was wrecked. Twelve unidentified corpses are reported to be at Baker’s Island, in Salem Harbor. They, too, must have manned some of the schooners which were lost in Gloucester Harbor. That there are others in the waters of the bay seems almost certain.
Wreckage is strewn up and down the coast, from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. Thirty schooners were wrecked in Massachusetts Bay. On land the loss by the storm seems to have been confined entirely to property.
Twenty-four hours elapsed before direct telegraphic communication was restored between Boston and the rest of the world. The electric car service in the vicinity was restored by noon, but in most of the smaller towns the trolley lines are still crippled.
The loss by the storm in this city is estimated at $1,428,000.
The steam railroads have succeeded in running most Of their trains, although few were on schedule time this afternoon. The street railway service is still badly crippled. The Boston Elevated Railway Company, successor of the West End Street Railroad. lost about $225,000 by the storm. To-day the company has nearly 7,500 men at work clearing the tracks.
Reports of stranded vessels along the coast continue to come in, and it is thought that at least fifteen lives were lost by wrecks at various points. The loss to the smaller fishing craft of Gloucester and vicinity is particularly heavy.
A feature of the storm was the large number of fires in the city and surrounding towns while it was at its high;. The Uphams Corner Universalist Church an old landmark in the Dorchester district, and St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church at Taunton were burned. Serious fires also occurred in Lowell, Peabody, Newton and other places. During the blockade of the railroads many trains were derailed, and a large number were either stuck fast or lost, owing to the collapse of the wires.
* Noteworthy
1690 – The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in the Americas.
1918 – The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begins service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet (3,633 meters) long.
1943 – The SS Dorchester is sunk by a German U-boat. Only 230 of 902 men aboard survive. The Chapel of the Four Chaplains, dedicated by President Harry Truman, is one of many memorials established to commemorate the Four Chaplains story.
1959 – Deaths of rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
1961 – The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.
1971 – New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption.
1995 – Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.