Examples of storms named after ships are “Racer’s Storm” in 1837, named after a British sloop of war which was caught in its hurricane winds in the Yucatan Channel. Another one of great violence was called “Antje’s Hurricane,” because it dismasted a schooner of that name in the Atlantic in 1842.
In Puerto Rico, a hurricane may be given the name of the saint whose feast is celebrated on the day on which it strikes the island. The most famous are: Santa Ana, July 26, 1825; Los Angeles, August 2, 1837; Santa Elena, August 18, 1851; San Narcisco, October 29, 1867; San Felipe, September 13, 1876; San Ciriaco, August 8, 1899; and the second San Felipe, September 13, 1928.
Doubtless the worst hurricane during the twentieth century was the one in 1928, “San Felipe.” It caused damage estimated at fifty million dollars in Puerto Rico, and later struck Florida, causing losses estimated at twenty-five million dollars. Puerto Rico lost three hundred lives, Florida nearly two thousand.
One of the well-known storms of the West Indies was the “Padre Ruiz Hurricane,” which was named after a priest whose funeral services were being held in the church at Santa Barbara, Santo Domingo, on September 23, 1837, when the hurricane struck the island, causing an appalling loss of life and property destruction.
Before the end of the nineteenth century, a weatherman in Australia named Clement Wragge had begun giving girls’ names to tropical storms. Down in that part of the Southern Hemisphere, hurricanes are called willy-willies. They come from the tropics on a southwest course and turn to the south and southeast on approaching or passing Australia. Their winds spiral inward around the center in a clockwise direction—the opposite of the turning motion of our hurricanes.
Wragge was the government meteorologist in Queensland, and later ran a weather bureau of his own in Brisbane. A tall, thin, bewhiskered man who stammered, he was known all over Australia as a lecturer on weather and similar subjects. Australians of that time said that, as likely as not, when due to talk about big winds, he would arrive at the lecture hall with “too many sheets out” and fail to keep on his feet during the lecture. Though his name was Clement, he was better known in Australia as “Inclement.”