October 2010 – New London County Historical Society

Thunderstorms

[Oct. 1754] Saturd 5 fair. I was about home all day fitting up Cask for Cyder. I Rid out to Crossman Lot to water the Cattle. Thundr & Lightning in the night & a Storm of wind & Rain.

“Thunder and lightning” are fairly common with rain storms in this part of New England all through the summer and into the fall, as they were in Hempstead’s time. What has changed is our perception of them.

Well into the eighteenth century, it was the thunder that was assumed to be the dangerous part of the combination. When you think about an age without our capabilities to measure the transmission of sound and light, this makes sense. If you have ever had a tree or pole near your house struck by lightning, you know that the noise of the thunder accompanying it is impressive—and simultaneous. Looked at objectively, it does appear that the thunder is more important, since no harm came earlier from clearly visible lightning.

In the earlier parts of the diary Hempstead refers a couple of times to damage done by thunder and lightning. When the meetinghouse was struck on August 31, 1735, he records “a Terable Clap of Thunder & Lightning Came Struck ye meeting house in Divers places. . .” By July of 1743 he had changed the order to record “the malocholy News of the Death of 2 Ladds by Lightning & Thunder & the horse. . .” And in June of 1745 he records a thunder and lightning storm and says “the Lightning Struck Mr Stewarts Windmill on Townhill & Shattered the Arms & Shafts & ye Toyle & Stares.”

Hempstead had an inquiring and rather scientific mind, but it is doubtful that he actually thought of lightning as causing damage separately from the thunder. Although he does not use it, the term “thunderbolt” was in common usage well in to the nineteenth century. And we still generally refer to “thunderstorms” even now that we know what part of the storm we really need to worry about.

Being a modern person (even if I haven’t yet mastered Facebook), when indexing the diary I indexed lightning but not thunder. I assumed, of course, that lightning had struck the meetinghouse, rather than the “Terable Clap of Thunder. . .” that Hempstead and his contemporaries knew had caused the damage and injuries.

Note: The first chapter of Richard Cullen Rath’s book, How Early America Sounded (Cornell University Press, 2003), addresses the perception of thunder in the seventeenth century, along with other noises of the natural soundscape.

Search for the Northwest Passage with Anthony Brandt

Anthony Brandt, editor of the National Geographic Adventure series and author of The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage, will be the speaker at the 10 October, Second Sunday lecture for the New London County Historical Society. Brandt’s book, published earlier this year, is a spell-binding read of the 19th-century search for a Northwest Passage from Europe to the Pacific.

The search for the fabled Northwest Passage was primarily carried out by the British Navy in the period following the Napoleonic Wars at a time when they seemed to believe they were invincible. The discovery of an all-water route to the Pacific above Canada became a goal for nineteenth-century British explorers that was equivalent to the search for the Holy Grail. Today we know how futile that search was as the passage was non-existent because the waters north of Canada were essentially icebound all year long, at least at that time. That didn’t prevent a parade of British mariners from challenging the ice in that incredibly hostile environment.

This summer, a team of archaeologists from Parks Canada set out to find some of the explorers’ sunken ships. Almost miraculously, they found the 100 foot HMS Investigator fifteen minutes after they began using side-scanning sonar in the area where the ship was abandoned by explorer Robert McClure 155 years ago. Due to global warming the ice in the Arctic is receding; this summer, for the third time in the past four years, a Northwest Passage did exist. The search continues for Lord Franklin’s lost ships the Erebus and the Terror.

New London will always be connected to these stories through the rescue of the British navy ship HMS Resolute, discovered by Captain James Buddington and brought back to New London in 1855. It was the crew of the Resolute who saved McClure and his team in the Arctic. Although the Resolute too was abandoned in the Arctic, it floated free of the ice and drifted 1000 miles before it was found by Buddington in the Davis Straits.

You’ll meet all these people and these ships and more in Brandt’s presentation based on his book. In addition to several other books, Brandt has had a successful career in magazine journalism. He wrote for Esquire, American Heritage, The Atlantic, and many other magazines. A reception and book signing will follow his presentation. The program begins at 3pm at the Shaw Mansion, 11 Blinman Street, New London. It is free for members of the historical society; $5 admission is charged to those who are not members.

The Shaw Mansion, headquarters for Connecticut’s Navy during the American Revolution, has been the home of New London County Historical Society for over 100 years. Located at 11 Blinman Street, New London, it is near the intersection of Bank and Tilley Streets. For more information please call 860.443.1209 or go to www.newlondonhistory.org.