HURRICANE OR "TIDAL- WAVES 13 



of dollars worth of damage to property, was of this sort. Again, 

 in November 1932, such a wave cost the lives of about 2,500 persons 

 out of a total population of about 4,000 in Santa Cruz del Sur, Cuba ; 

 on September 2 and 3, 1935, a hurricane wave rising 30 feet above 

 ordinary sea level overwhelmed the Florida Keys at a cost of 409 

 lives; while on September 21, 1938, a hurricane raised the water to 

 such a height along the southern coast of New England that some 

 600 lives were lost. But these tolls are insignificant compared to 

 20,000 people wiped out at Coringa on the Bay of Bengal in December 

 1789; or 50,000 lives lost and 100,000 cattle drowned at the mouth 

 of the Hoogly River in 1864; or — greatest catastrophe of the sort on 

 record — 20,000 boats destroyed, of one kind or another, and about 

 300,000 people drowned on the shores of the Bay of Bengal by 

 hurricane waves on October 7, 1737. (For a further account of 

 hurricane waves, see Tannehill, 1938, pp. 30-43.) 



It is certain that waves of this class are not ordinary waves of 

 oscillation. Probably, they more nearly resemble what are known 

 as "waves of translation" (p. 115), for the inundation is caused by a 

 tide-like movement of a vast mass of water up a shelving shore. And 

 this explanation is supported by the fact that similar inundations — 

 though on a much smaller scale — sometimes take place in shallow 

 sounds, when the water that has been "'banked up" as it were by a 

 gale on the one shore, is driven suddenly against the opposite shore 

 by a shift in the direction of the wind. Events of this sort are well 

 known, for example, in Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, when a 

 southerly gale or hurricane shifts suddenly to the northwest. Many 

 of the fish houses standing on piles in the shallow waters of the 

 eastern side of the sound, and also more permanent dwelling houses 

 on the beach, were washed down or damaged in this way by the 

 August hurricane of 1917. 



