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In the years after Hurricane Hazel hit the Carolina Lowcountry in 1954, visitors to Brookgreen Gardens often asked about hurricanes and the experiences of those who had lived through them. Cousin Corrie served as the expert on hurricanes and other natural disasters. She could talk at length about big storms from first hand experience.
My father used to say, "Every sixty years. A bad storm hits here every sixty years." Of course, along our coast we have so many bad storms that it is certainly true we have a bad one every sixty years, with plenty of others in between for good measure!
In my younger years, some of my elderly aunts still remembered the terrible Storm of 1822. Waters swept away hundreds of people when they covered North Island at the lower tip of the Waccamaw Neck. Survivors told of seeing whole houses floating out to sea with lamps burning brightly in the windows—and some still see them floating along today, but that’s another story.
Gales and tidal waves have always struck up and down our coast every few years. We call them "hurricanes" today and give them names. Weathermen study them and send out airplanes to track their paths, so we have plenty of warning nowadays. Even so, we are not always prepared for the fury they bring.
When Hurricane Hazel came not too long ago, 1954 it was, my sister Mamie and our friend Lina—we three live together in our house on the creek through the marsh at Murrells Inlet—had plenty of warning. Our sister Dell had come visiting for the week, so she was there too. We talked about all of us going inland to stay at her place in Florence, but we decided to ride out the hurricane at the Inlet.
We prepared for the storm as best we could with stocks of food, water, and flashlight batteries. We brought our lawn chairs and hammock inside the house. Our hired man pulled the rowboat as far up on shore as possible and even moved our heavy birdbath into the garage.
That morning dawned gray and rainy. Brookgreen Gardens had closed in anticipation of the storm, so I stayed home. As the day progressed, wind and rain grew worse and worse. Soon, leaves, branches, and Spanish moss were flying everywhere. Horizontal rain felt like needles pricking my face when I went outside to check on the rowboat.
As usual, ocean water filled the creek channels throughout the marsh on the rising tide. Then, instead of emptying back out to sea, the water kept rising. Soon seawater covered the mud banks at the base of the marsh grass, just the way it often does when the alignment of sun and moon makes tides especially high. A little later, we could only see a wide expanse of water with just the tips of marsh grass sticking out. Finally, even those tips disappeared! A vast expanse of white-capped rollers extended out to sea as far as we could see through shifting curtains of rain.
Even then the tide did not turn. Rough waves began surging right up and over banks of oyster shells forming the shore in front of our house. By the time we decided we should leave, water had started running sideways through our yard, front and back, flooding our sandy drive all the way to the highway. We weren’t going anywhere.
Fortunately, our house stands about four feet off the ground on brick pillars, but we rapidly became an island in the swirling water. Of course, electricity and telephone were long since out. We could do nothing but sit and talk, sit and think, sit and pray, sit and watch water moving ever higher up the brick porch steps that led down into what had once been our front yard. Now, it was the Atlantic Ocean!
My thoughts went back to the last century, to the last big storm I had known at Murrells Inlet, the one that hit about 60 years earlier—really 61 years earlier—in October 1893. Local folks called that storm the Flagg Flood. Suddenly, I was five years old again. Mamie was nine at the time and my brother Rob was seven. Our baby sister Dell was just three. Big brother Clarence was fourteen.
We lived across the way at the house called Woodlawn then, not one hundred yards from the house I live in now. Dr. Heriot, a Sandy Island rice planter, long gone by the time we lived there, had built Woodlawn as one of the first summer homes on the Murrells Inlet seashore, back in the 1830s. We young ones loved playing on its large front porch while Mama sat and rocked. That lovely home still overlooks the marsh today.
Murrells Inlet provided wonderful experiences for children when we were growing up. We all had such grand times there in the creeks and marshes and woods, enjoying the fishing, crabbing, boating, and sea bathing, as well as get togethers with other Inlet families.
Papa was a wholesale merchant but spent as much time as possible at the Inlet with us. When he needed to attend to his mercantile business, he could ride his horse three miles directly across the Waccamaw Neck to Wachesaw Landing on the Waccamaw River. There, he caught the steamboat headed upriver to Port Harrelson, Bucksville, and Conway, or downriver to Georgetown.
Mama supervised the household, of course, including the children, the garden, the animals, the local women who helped with cooking and cleaning, and the hired man who did outside chores. Papa left frequently, but usually for only a day or two at a time. Mama got used to being home alone with us children and the household help.
September and October were always a time for storms. We didn’t call them hurricanes then, but cyclones or tidal waves or just big storms. Nobody knew when they might arrive, so everybody watched for signs. Changes in the clouds and winds or the way birds flew gave some hints. The calling of rain crows—our name for mourning doves—or hogs running around picking up sticks meant a storm was coming, but no one ever knew how severe it would be.
Down at Pawley’s Island, people say the ghostly Gray Man warns them of bad storms—but that’s definitely another story. Along this part of the coast, we simply had to take our chances and trust to Providence.
One terrible storm had already hit our coast that year in August but it didn’t bother us much at the Inlet. I do remember being worried about Mama’s sister and her family who lived in Charleston, where hundreds of people died. We finally got word they were safe, however. Surely, we wouldn’t have another bad storm so soon!
That morning sixty-one years ago also started out gray and rainy, and only got worse. Papa was away on business and our big brother Clarence had a job in Florence that fall. Mama was alone with us four little ones. We were all inside the house tending to morning chores when suddenly the hired man came banging at the back door.
"The water is over the creek bank, running in the yard!" he cried.
Mama showed no fear at all, which kept us from being frightened. In her calm but authoritative voice, she directed the hired man, "Set the barrel of flour on the stove top and the lower dresser drawers on the bed."
She told us children, "Sit on the stairs going up to the second floor. Pick a stair step not too high and not too low. Mamie, you mind little Dell. Rob and Corrie, sit next to each other."
Mamie sat on a step about halfway up with her arm around Dell. Rob and I sat below them and held on to the hound dog between us. Mama stood on a lower step surveying everything. It seemed like hours we sat there, listening to the wind get louder and louder, but I don’t suppose it was really that long.
Water began swirling around the house. Soon it covered the porch, surging against the door. Mama called to the hired man, "Open the front and back doors, before the water breaks them in." When he did, dark water rushed through the hall and covered the downstairs floors.
Once we could see outside through the open doors, we children began laughing at the antics of our barnyard animals. Our poor milk cow tumbled every which way in the currents, but always regained her footing.
My mother’s black and white Plymouth Rock hens flapped and squawked and bobbed around. Currents swept some into the house. Whenever Mama or the hired man could grab one, they would hand her to us children. We would set her above us on the stairs, so we soon had a row of soggy and disgusted old hens clucking down at us.
The storm must have been letting up by then because I remember the animals’ struggles as being more entertaining than frightening. Perhaps I was just too young to recognize our danger. Or maybe, because Mama kept us all calm, we felt secure. The house trembled occasionally, but held solid.
The water finally began going down. It drained out of the house and began flowing faster and faster back toward where it belonged, sweeping all sorts of debris with it. By mid-afternoon, our yard had cleared, although puddles and soggy, beaten down vegetation covered everything.
The Bucks, our neighbors just along the creek, also weathered the storm in their old plantation summer house. Water flooded their downstairs too, and rose almost to the second floor, but their old house also stood firm. When the water retreated, all were safe, including the Beaty family who had joined them from their own low-lying house next door.
The Bucks did get a humorous story out of the ordeal. After a quick inspection, Buck servants sadly informed the family still inside that, although the house looked sound, all their outbuildings were gone. A workshop with all its tools and the henhouse with all its chickens had simply vanished. When the stunned family finally stepped outside to survey the damage for themselves, cackles and squawks immediately drew their attention to the roof. There sat their missing poultry, lined up along the ridgeline—unhappy but safe!
In spite of the storm, the riverboat Mitchell C made its way steadily upstream from Georgetown. Papa arrived at Wachesaw Landing that night, sick with worry about us. He had to lead his horse the entire three miles home because of fallen trees and washed out areas, but what a homecoming! We were all safe and together at last.
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Back in the 1954 present, we three sisters were now facing another storm at Murrells Inlet. As we sat in our living room waiting out Hazel’s rising fury, my thoughts went back to Mama’s calm, sure confidence during that last bad storm. And once more, her strength soothed my fears, just as it had sixty one years earlier. I truly believe her spirit came to us again that morning to comfort her frightened children.
As we sat and waited, a commotion suddenly rose above the howl of the storm. Someone was banging on the porch door! Voices called out from the front steps. A motorboat! Our rescuers had arrived!
We grabbed a few necessities, then allowed ourselves to be assisted from the top step into the wildly rocking boat, as if we were helpless little old ladies. Our rescuers took us to the schoolhouse to spend an uncomfortable but safe night.
The next morning, water had retreated but destruction remained. Hurricane Hazel carried off homes and motels all along Myrtle Beach. The storm swept Garden City Beach across the marsh from us completely clean. Many beach houses there had simply disappeared. Others sat at crazy angles, half-buried in the marsh.
Our own wooden pier broke into three pieces. The open sided, shingled shelter at the far end remained in place on its pilings, isolated out in the marsh. The plank walkway leading to it had broken in half. Its two sections, with their wooden supports still attached, rested upside down in our front yard.
Our rowboat reappeared one morning several weeks later. Someone from up the coast had returned it.
Brookgreen Gardens was lucky. The storm damaged none of the statuary. We only lost a few large branches from the oaks, and lots of Spanish moss, of course. It did blow down several smaller trees along the edges of the Gardens.
Cleanup there took several months, but that didn’t matter. Few visitors wanted to brave the devastation to visit the Lowcountry that fall. New growth and blooms restored beauty and serenity to the Garden’s winding pathways when springtime came. Perhaps because of all the unintentional pruning, we had the most luxurious flowering of any spring in my recollection.
So, anyhow, remember, another big storm is coming. We always need to stay vigilant here along the coast, but keep a close eye out sixty years from now. That will be in another new century. Like my father always said, "Every sixty years."
(Note: Hurricane Hugo was the next big storm to hit the Waccamaw Neck. It arrived in 1989, only thirty five years after Hazel.)