IN SEPTEMBER 1813, a major hurricane destroyed US gunboats and ships that were defending St Mary’s, Georgia, from the British. Fifty sailors drowned. In a letter to the US secretary of the navy, the commodore of the naval task force wrote that a privateer named Saucy Jack had been deposited so high on the marshes that the sea must have risen nearly 6 metres above its low water mark. Other letters of the time accurately described the passage of the eye of the storm and the timing of events.
Such historical records are proving invaluable to researchers trying to understand…
