WAVE WORK 557 



WAVE WOEK OX THE XEW JEESEY COAST^ 



By Professor DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON 



AND 



WARREN S. SMITH 



COLUMBIA rxiVERSITY 



DUEIXG the winter of 1913-1914: three unusually severe storms 

 with violent on-shore winds visited the coast of Xew Jersey. 

 The first of these^ known as " the Christmas storm," attained its maxi- 

 mum strength early on the morning of December 26, and was accom- 

 panied by winds which attained a velocity of 123 miles an hour. Pro- 

 fessor W. M. Wilson gives the following brief description of this storm 

 in the Monthly Weather Review for December, 1913. 



With 13 lives lost and millions of dollars of damage done to property, the 

 terrific wind, rain, sleet and snow storm, which began Christmas night and swept 

 over five states, abated early on the twenty-seventh, leaving a cold snap in its 

 wake. The masters of the A. C. Bose and the Undaunted, coal barges, with eight 

 seamen, lost their lives when the barges foundered off Forked Eiver, New Jersey. 

 Two men died of exposure and were found in roads near Trenton, New Jersey. 

 A workman was drowned in the East Eiver when his rowboat was swamped. 

 The full force of the storm fell upon that portion of New Jersey which reaches 

 out into the ocean like an elbow. Eecords at Long Branch show that the wind 

 attained a velocity of 123 miles an hour, the highest ever recorded by the 

 Weather Bureau at that point. Seabright, New Jersey, was the plaything of the 

 ocean. Waves whipped by the gale tore away supposedly floodproof bulkheads, 

 smashed bathhouses, washed away or undermined fishermen 's cottages, tore away 

 portions of two big summer hotels, inundated the main streets, and buried rail- 

 road tracks under IS inches of sand, brick, and rock. 



The second, or " Xew- Year's storm," was even more disastrous than 

 the first, partly because the coast had been left in an unprotected condi- 

 tion by the preceding attack. On January 4 the fury of the second 

 storm reached its maximum. Driven by a terrific gale whose extreme- 

 velocity reached 120 miles per hour, the waves broke upon the beach 

 with a thunderous roar. Bulkheads which had been destroyed or 

 weakened during the earlier storm afforded no protection for the uncon- 

 solidated sand of the beach, and every wave seemed to sweep a little of 

 it out to sea. At Seabright groups of dejected men, soaked to the skin, 

 by driving rain and salt spray, stood helplessly by the shore and 

 watched the waves remove the land from under their houses, the houses 

 tip over into the sea, and the waves pound them to kindling wood in 

 the space of a few moments. Others labored to place wooden rollers 



1 The substance of this article appears as part of Bulletin 12 of the Geolog- 

 ical Survey of New Jersey. 



