Dreadful hurricane at New Orleans

The headnote to Dreadful Hurricane at New Orleans describes a destructive hurricane on August 19-20, 1812. This passage is taken from the earliest report that appeared in many newspapers beginning on September 25, 1812, usually with the same headline (Boston Pilot, September 25, 1812; Spooner’s [Windsor] Vermont Journal, September 28, 1812). Much of the description here is accurate: the levee was destroyed and fifteen feet of water covered southern parts of the city. Nearly one hundred people were killed and losses were estimated at six million dollars. Although the broadside does not mention it, public panic set in after the storm as word spread that the British had taken Fort St. Phillip. The War of 1812 had just started and the British fleet had been spotted approaching the area. The rumor was untrue. The fort itself went underwater and the fleet was widely scattered by the storm.

Beneath the prose account is a poem in ballad meter that is part prayer, part description. It was probably written by an educated, perhaps Anglican, clergyman in a rather formal style using familiar literary and religious phrases. The requisite moral closes the poem, addressed here to God, not the reader.