Due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, suddenly everyone is interested in Hurricane History and everyone knows that the 1900 Galveston Hurricane was the deadliest hurricane in history, with 8,000 to 12,000 deaths.

But sometimes what everyone knows is wrong.

According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the October 1780 hurricane that hit Barbados, St. Lucia, Martinique, Domonique, Sint Eustatius, and Puerto Rico, killed 20,000 to 22,000 people and was the deadliest hurricane in recorded history.

Given that the next four on the NHC list after Galveston (which is number 2), Fifi in Honduras in 1974, Dominican Republic in 1930, Flora in Haiti and Cuba in 1963, and Guadalupe in 1776 never seem to get mentioned, either, one might conclude that Latin American or Caribbean hurricanes don’t count with U.S. news reporters.

However, there are reasons even the U.S. might want to remember this hurricane. As Wikipedia points out:

The hurricane struck the Caribbean in the midst of the American Revolution and took a heavy toll on the British and French fleets contesting for control of the area. The fleet commanded by British Admiral George Rodney, sailing from New York to the West Indies, was scattered and damaged by the storm. Arriving at Barbados, Admiral Rodney found eight of 12 warships he had left there a total loss and most of their crews drowned.
—Great Hurricane of 1780, Wikipedia

In other words, this storm had an effect on there even being a United States.

And that hurricane did hit Florida and Georgia, leaving records in pine trees. The British were in control of both colonies at the time.

For that matter, one would think a hurricane that leveled apparently every building on Barbados would be of interest to know what a hurricane can do. As Admiral Rodney wrote to his wife about Barbados:

"The strongest buildings and the whole of the houses, most of which were stone, and remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of the wind, and were torn up to their foundations; all the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried upwards of a hundred feet from the forts.  Had I not been an eyewitness, nothing could have induced me to have believed it.  More than six thousand persons perished, and all the inhabitants are entirely ruined."
— Sir George Rodney to Lady Rodney dated at St. Lucia, December 10, 1780

Other eyewitnesses corroborated Adm. Rodney’s observations. And some observers noted that bark was stripped from trees, which didn’t happen in another hurricane with 163 mph winds. Speculation is that it would take 200 mph winds to do that. A category 5 hurricane has at least 155 mph winds, so this one was at least a cat 5.  One wonders if it might not be called a cat 6.

The inhabitants of these islands were not used to such storms.

"There had been nothing that could be called a hurricane felt at Barbados for more than a century before 1780, so that the inhabitants began to think themselves exempt from such calamities and accordingly had no edifices of sufficient strength to withstand the force of a hurricane".
— Dr. Gilbert Blane in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Nonetheless they lived in stone houses, and even the stone fort was blown apart.

Just because a risk hasn’t happened here yet doesn’t mean it won’t. And when even solid stone isn’t enough, risk transfer is needed.

-jsq