WESTPORT - Lynn Carter tied the rowboats up before leaving for work on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1954, the day that Hurricane Carol struck. He and his wife, Sue, who live on Westport Point, had heard there was a storm, but it wasn't described as a hurricane.
"They didn't say it was a hurricane. They said a storm," Mr. Carter said at a Hurricane '54 party at Westport Point on Saturday. "I tied up the rowboats. Fortunately, I tied some knots my wife couldn't untie. It probably saved her life."
"My husband left for work at 8 a.m.," Mrs. Carter said. "The New York station that we listened to said to prepare for heavy winds. That's all they said."
Before long, without warning, the hurricane hit. The Carters had several sailboats tied up in front of their place, including a Catboat and Beetlecat that belonged to Mrs. Carter's brothers. She and her husband had just bought a new sailboat on Aug. 1.
Suddenly, Mrs. Carter saw some of the boats coming loose and drifting off. "I was going to try to get out and bring them in, but I couldn't untie the knot on the rowboat. I did pull up the boats that my brother, Dick, had left." One of her brother Dick's boats, a sailboat, was there for repairs.
"At 10 a.m., she called me and said, 'The boats are slowly and surely going up the river,'" Mr. Carter said. "Thank goodness my wife couldn't untie the rowboats because she would have gone out to try to save our sailboat. We had a brand new wooden boat. It ended up on Leach's wharf upside down."
Mrs. Carter sent her three children, ages one, four and six, up to her sister-in-law's place but she stayed behind. She spent all morning pulling the family boats that she could reach into the yard. Mrs. Carter said she was able to pull some of the boats onto dry land because the tide was so high, she could get the boats over a wall.
"It's hard to believe how powerful the wind and the water were," Mrs. Carter said. "I was sopping wet from the beginning of the morning. I gave up changing clothes."
In the midst of Mrs. Carter's effort to save the boats, the neighbor's 30-foot guest house started floating in the water by their property. Mrs. Carter was afraid the DeNadal's guest house would smash into their house, but it didn't.
"It didn't hit the house, but it came over our yard," she said.
Mr. Carter took a circuitous route back from Providence because so many roads were blocked. When he arrived at noontime, the winds were close to 100 miles per hour.
Although many boats were damaged, they didn't make it too far. "The bridge was a barrier," Mr. Carter said of the old Westport Point bridge. "The sailboats crashed up against the bridge and their anchor lines tied up other sailboats.
After the hurricane struck and paused, it hit again from the backside. Mrs. Carter remembered vividly seeing the eye of the storm rage through Westport Point and then return with another blast from the opposite direction.
Laura's Restaurant
What everyone who was on the Point remembers most that day is that Laura's Restaurant was blown into the river. Laura's was a popular place where people went for lobster and chowder. Hurricane Carol swept Laura's off shore in two pieces around 10:30 a.m. The bartender, Jim Hickey, 64, was in one side. Floating away in the other half were a 20-year-old waitress, Natalie Silvia of North Dartmouth, and a kitchen worker, Harry Macomber, 64, of Westport Point.
"Laura's drifted out to the sandbar," Mr. Carter said of the part Mr. Hickey was in. "The bartender didn't believe there was going to be a storm and he stayed in there."
"My good friend Buddy Squire arrived on the scene with ropes and helped rescue him," Mrs. Carter said of Hooten "Buddy" Squire. "I was there when they saved him." Mrs. Carter said Mr. Squire always showed up just at the right time to help rescue people in an emergency.
Mr. Carter said there were rats in the restaurant when it floated away. The bartender went into the attic and stuck his head out a window. While Mr. Squire lent his ropes, Paul DeNadal and William White, both of Westport Point, went out in a boat to rescue Mr. Hickey.
The rescue operation took nearly five hours. Mr. Hickey struggled to keep his head above water. Luckily, Laura's stayed stuck on a shoal while Mr. DeNadal and Mr. White chopped a hole in the roof and smashed a window. Mr. Hickey was finally pulled to safety around 2:30 p.m.
About the same time, Ms. Silvia and Mr. Macomber were rescued from the other half by Roger Reed, first mate on the fishing boat, Nora S., and Augustus Robillard.
As a side note, Mr. Carter recalled that all the bar bills were destroyed. A few residents had built up quite a tab and they were glad afterward to hear the bills were lost.
Other than Laura's, most of the damage at the Point was to boats, but when the storm changed course, the steps from the Paquachuck Inn ended up in the Carter's yard.
Others also remember that day. Marie Hadfield, who was at the '54 event on Saturday, was living in Fall River but had a cottage next to Laura's. When she and her husband, Sam, went back the next day, their cottage was fine, "But when Laura's went, it took our boathouse with it."
The Hadfield's cottage was full of water. Sam pushed Marie through a window so they could get in. Later, when they were driving up Route 88 near Drift Road, they saw their boathouse on the side of the road with everything still in it.
At a recent selectmen's meeting, Mike McCarthy, the town's emergency management director, also recalled Hurricane Carol. Mr. McCarthy said the water was three feet adeepat Westport Point by around 3 p.m. At the same time he was knee deep in water, Dave Garroway was saying on TV that the hurricane hadn't reached the Northeast yet.
Mr. Carter said it took two weeks for the electricity to be restored on Westport Point. The families used well water and cooked over a fire. While most of the buildings were spared, there was a great deal of water damage.
Less than two weeks after Hurricane Carol struck, Hurricane Edna arrived. "We said, how can we face another one?" Mrs. Carter said. "But it wasn't as bad."
No, it wasn't as bad. After the Hurricane of '38, Hurricane Carol did the most damage in this region of any hurricane in the 20th century.
by peggy aulisio
paulisio@eastbaynewspapers.com