BAR HARBOR'S BIG STORM OF 1907

THE BIG STORM

NOV. 18, 1907
Fiercest Breeze Since March Raises Rumpus Bangor To Boston - Hits Bar Harbor Hard

Wednesdya's storm was a douser - there is no doubt about that hereabouts.  It seems to have reached its height about noon.  Old Sea-dogs are unanimous in saying "I never saw it blow any harder than it did for about an hour from 11 o'clock to 12;15."  Many boats worked adrift, one dory was split in two from stem to stern between the two steamboats docks, the tide was unprecedentedly high, the Morse was obliged to tie up for the night at Stave Island Harbor,  her pier here being altogether too exposed a berth.  Thousands of lobster traps were destroyed between Mt. Desert Ferry on the North, to Long Island eighteen miles to the southard.  In the Isleford column of this issue is a striking and convincing report of the great losses the lobstermen suffered in this section.  Before the breeze S.C. Moon had a row boat, he has the painter still, but its the only souvenir that remains.

BARGE RUNS A MUCK
The barge Christine that is hauling  rocks for the breakwater added to the interest of the situation by drifting over the ar and rubbing herself on the surf-swept rocks of Gurney's Head.  As a sort of word in passing as she jammed her way through the mosquito fleet the Christine tore William Ladd's sloop from her moorings and sent her adrift before the gale.  The sloop was swept across the bar;  lost her keel, and grounded further on.  The big barge had dropped anchor but the chain got under her forefoot and was snapped off.  A kedge anchor was rigged but could not hold the big boat with the wind and sea as it was than.

ON THE SHORE PATH
Along the Shore Path there was a good deal doing.  Multitudes of black spiders that mad a respectable showing in the flesh were scrambling over the drenched walk, driven from cover of the loosely piled beach rocks.  People whose intellectual constitution compels them to believe that the innumerable small toads sometimes seen in summer immediately after a rain must be accounted for by their descent from the clouds with the rain probably will explain the presence of those spiders in the same way.  It is to be suspected that the spiders would tell a different story.
In some places the sea made a breach of a foot of green water over the path.  Balance rock was entirely covered when the biggest surges came, and the lawn of the Maltland estate was sprinkled with rubbish and gravel driven up by the last fringes of the surf.  Stones of a pound weight were carried fifteen feet up on the lawns at this point, and sixty feet up on lawns a little further along.

FORCE OF WAVES
The furrowed rows and banks of round stones along the shore are eloquent witnesses of the tremendous force of the waves.  Some of the ledges are swept as clean of rocks as if Mrs. Partington and her broom had been at work there.  At some points there is a long slope of rounded stones, forming a natural rep-rap that overlaps the path itself by the wagon load.  Just below Balance rock four planks were ripped off the wooden sidewalk and on the grass from the plank walk to the tower that stands on the path edge there is a spread of considerable sand and some stones, clear up and under the trees 60 feet at least from the iron fence, and extending along for 175 feet.  Here and there at this place the sea plowed  up the rock filling of the path and flung it by the shovelful on to the lawns.  On the ledges great blocks of the trap-rock was broken off and tumbled about.

PROPERTY NOT DAMAGED
None of the iron drainage pipes were hurt anywhere.  The concrete seawall and lawn extention at the Kane and Newbold estates had just been completed and the wooden wooden scaffold rigs removed.  The new wall proved its ample height and solidly to resist the impact of the waves, for not even the freshly carted soil of the extensions filling was touched by the sea.  The natural formation of the ledges at this point, stretching out rather bluffly to the sea act as a buffer to the big billows.  the graceful curve of the seawall, and the broadened lawn area, created by the improvements here, greatly enhances the beauty of those two not a little to the satisfaction of a walk along the shore path.

TREES UPROOTED
Just beyond, at the boundary line of the Ketterlinus and C.J. Morrill estates, marked by a Page fence gate closing the pathway, a good cart load of rocks was cast up on the walk and grass, some of these stones weighing eight to ten pounds each.  Beyond, just at the crest of the rise of the path, 100 feet from line of the Ketterllnus estate a fine big spruce was uprooted and flung clear across the path, six feet of the top being broken off of the tree.  The tree could be righted with little trouble and saved.  On the Hardy estate, 500 feet from the shore, in The Field, a large fir tree was also toppled over.  this tree could also be preserved if pulled back into position soon.
Just before the grounds of Kanarden Lodge are reached there is a slight erosion of the path.  On the Kennedy lawns there is neither sand nor gravel, but a line of straws and float age on the grass indicates where the last spent fringe of spray was wind-blown over the stone coping.  Almost down to the Kennedy Boat landing 30 feet of the path had its surface torn away to the depth of half an inch and washed 10 feet upon the lawn.  Beyond the brook and about the boathouse across the Cromwell Harbor cove trainloads of rocks are washed up to the grass and on it, and piled up against the boat house itself.

SPOUTING HORN
A n umber of people went down to see the spouting horn at half tide in the afternoon.  The rush of spray was at least 100 feet high and was claimed by some to be the finest exhibition this famous spout has ever made.