—By Tiffany Amber Stockton
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August always makes me think about storms. There's something about this time of year — the heavy air, the way the light changes before a weather system moves in — that feels charged with possibility, and not always the good kind. For the communities along Virginia's Eastern Shore, August has historically been the month when everything could change overnight.
The Storm That Changed Everything
On August 23, 1933, a hurricane hit the Eastern Shore and continued battering the coast for two days. By the time it moved off, the town of Broadwater on Hog Island was practically destroyed, as were houses on Assateague. The resort on Cobb Island was totally destroyed.
Locals still call it simply "the '33 storm," and older families along the Shore speak of it the way people speak of a turning point. A before and after that reshaped everything. The storm ended what historians call the Golden Age of Virginia's barrier islands. Prior to that August, people actually lived year-round on several of these islands. After it, most never came back.
The storm produced 100-year flooding from its surge, setting records that stood for 70 years, and caused at least 47 deaths across the region. In Virginia alone, storm surge reached nearly ten feet above normal water levels in Norfolk, destroying boats in harbors and washing out roads and bridges.
A Town That Refused to Simply Disappear
Broadwater was a thriving waterman's community of about 300 people. Houses, a school, a church, a cemetery. The 1933 hurricane inundated the entire island. The pine forest that had sheltered the town for generations was killed by saltwater. The lighthouse was eventually swallowed by the sea.
But the people didn't simply walk away and leave everything behind. Many of the houses and other buildings were loaded onto barges and moved to the mainland, where they still stand today in the towns of Willis Wharf and Oyster, Virginia.
Read that again. They put their houses on barges.
These weren't people who gave up easily. They took what they had built, loaded it onto the water that had just tried to destroy them, and carried it somewhere safer. The community didn't disappear. It relocated. Schools closed. Churches emptied. Stores vanished. What had once been functioning island communities slowly became ghost landscapes of marsh grass, cedar trees, and collapsing pilings. But the people themselves, and the things they had made? Those survived.
What You Do When the Waters Rise
So, what sustained these communities through that kind of loss?
They weren't strangers to hardship. Life on a barrier island was never easy. Isolation, unpredictable weather, work that was physically grueling and economically uncertain. The storms of 1896 and then 1933 weren't the first time the sea had tested them. But the faith tradition that ran through these communities was the thing underneath everything else.
After the hurricane, immediate emergency relief was organized through local Red Cross chapters. Materials to rebuild homes, furniture, household goods, issued family by family according to need. That kind of mutual aid only happens in communities held together by something more than geography.
Psalm 46 says God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble, and then immediately: "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea." The people who wrote those words knew exactly what it felt like to watch the ground beneath them literally shift and give way. So did the watermen of Hog Island who floated their houses to safety on barges.
The Shore Remembers
One of the things that strikes me most about researching this stretch of coastline is how long the memory runs here. Along the Eastern Shore, older families still speak of the storm in ways that sound like a turning point in local history.
Formative events become part of how a community understands itself. The '33 storm is in the Eastern Shore's bones. A shared reference point for what it means to face something enormous and find a way through it anyway.
Most of us aren't going to face a hurricane that washes away our town. But we all face seasons that feel like the ground is giving way. Circumstances that seem designed to take everything we've built. When the waters rise, what do you put on the barge? What is worth carrying to the other side?
Those island folks chose their homes, their community, their faith. They started again on the mainland with the bones of the old life still intact around them. I don't know about you, but I find that more than a little inspiring.
NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:
* Has your family or community ever faced a loss or disaster that required starting over? What did you carry with you?
Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.
** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.
Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.
* Is there a piece of local history in your area that serves as a "before and after" the way the '33 storm does for the Eastern Shore?
* What does Psalm 46 mean to you personally? Has there been a season in your life when those words had a significant impact?
Leave answers to these questions or any comments on the post below.
** This note is for our email readers. Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.
Come back on the 9th of each month for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.
BIO
Tiffany Amber Stockton has embellished stories since childhood, thanks to a very active imagination and notations of talking entirely too much. Honing those skills led her to careers as an award-winning and best-selling author and speaker, while also working as a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help them get rooted in truth and live a life of purpose.
Thanks for posting today. My hometown has had floods which fairly dramatically changed the landscapes, and adjustments had to be made. But thankfully I don't remember that we had any loss of life. Psalm 46 is one of those anchors for our faith that reminds us we are not forgotten nor hopeless. It is especially precious to me now, not far from the year anniversary of the passing of my husband into his eternal rest.
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