On Oct. 4, 1869, a hurricane-force storm swept into the Bay of Fundy region overnight, driving tides far above normal and flooding communities across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It became known as the Saxby Gale, named for the British naval officer who had warned of it months in advance.
The storm struck on the night of Oct. 4 and into the early hours of Oct. 5, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the event, which describes it as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum winds of about 105 miles per hour. The same entry says at least 37 people died across Maine, New Brunswick and New York. It lists damage in Saint John, Moncton, Sackville, Amherst, Windsor and Truro, along with Calais, Maine, and St. Andrews, N.B.
What set the storm apart was the warning. Lt. Stephen Martin Saxby, a Royal Navy instructor and amateur astronomer, published a notice in London’s The Standard in December 1868 (Wikipedia gives the date as Dec. 25). He predicted a gale of “frightful violence and unprecedented tides” on Oct. 5, 1869, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, based on the positions of the Moon and the Sun. The Almanac says his forecast was good to within about 100 miles and 12 hours. Wikipedia adds that Saxby repeated the warning on Sept. 16, 1869, and that Halifax meteorologist Frederick Allison told readers on Oct. 1 that a heavy gale was expected on Tuesday, Oct. 5.
The timing proved unlucky. According to Wikipedia, the storm surge of roughly two metres arrived alongside perigean spring tides, which occur when the Moon is closest to Earth. That combination breached dikes in the Minas Basin and the Tantramar Marshes and destroyed miles of the newly completed Windsor and Annapolis Railway.
The Albert County Museum in southeastern New Brunswick describes residents being awakened in the middle of the night by the roar of the gale. Wind gusts at sea reached 200 kilometres per hour, the museum says, and breakwaters were destroyed, docks damaged and many vessels lost. Dikes protecting marshland from salt water were breached.
In Hillsborough, low marshland briefly became a lake of seawater, according to the museum. A store owned by John Lewis had its windows and front door driven in before it filled with water and mud, and a warehouse and two houses were lifted from their foundations and floated inland. The museum reports that a young couple in a horse-drawn buggy tried to cross the flooded ground. The woman drowned, while the man survived by clinging to wreckage. Near Coverdale, the O’Brien family lost four of their six children to the flood, the museum says. At Riverview, a tidal bore estimated at ten feet high destroyed the bridge to Moncton.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac says the tide left its mark on buildings in Parrsboro, near the head of the bay, at 57.5 feet, and quotes a traveller in Maine who counted 90 houses blown apart or badly damaged over a 30-mile stretch. Sources differ on some details, and figures for tide height and casualties vary by account, so the numbers above are best read as reported estimates.
Saxby’s forecast did not rest on sound science by modern standards, and the Almanac notes that the prediction was close largely because it correctly pointed to a period when the astronomical tides were exceptionally high. Even so, the gale is remembered as one of the earliest major storms to be forecast in advance. Wikipedia ranks it among the deadliest hurricanes in Canadian history.
The Bay of Fundy still has the highest tides in the world, and the Saxby Gale remains a reminder of how a storm arriving on top of a very high tide can overwhelm even well-built dikes and docks.
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Sources: Wikipedia (1869 Saxby Gale), Old Farmer’s Almanac, Albert County Museum.
