On September 28, 1837, a British sloop-of-war, the HMS Racer encountered a severe hurricane in the western Caribbean near Jamaica. The ship would run with the hurricane for four days, until it reached the Yucatan Peninsula. Named for the ship, the hurricane would become one of the most famous and destructive hurricanes of the nineteenth century. Its eventual path across the Gulf is one of the most erratic on record. The storm crossed the Yucatan Peninsula and emerged over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, moving on a westward course. It had top winds of at least 115 mph, and may have been a category four hurricane at its peak intensity.
Steering current collapsed, and the powerful hurricane stalled near Matamoros on the 2nd of October. When movement resumed, it was to the north, and the storm drifted past Brownsville. The next landfall occurred near Matagorda Bay on October 4th. But t he system reversed course, and moved back out over the Gulf, reminiscent of Tropical Storm Allison from 2001. Racer’s Storm then moved slowly northeast, curving along the entire Gulf Coast until it made final landfall between Mobile and Pensacola on the morning of October 7th. Damage was extensive all along the track, including Galveston and New Orleans, with damage reported a far east as St. Joseph. Nearly every home on Galveston Island was destroyed.
Racer’s Hurricane would add another footnote of infamy as it passed offshore into the Atlantic on October 8th. The rejuvenated hurricane wrecked the paddlewheeler “Home” off of Cape Hatteras. Ninety of the one hundred and thirty passengers, including many women and children, were drowned in the huge waves of the storm. Only two life preservers were on board the ship. The disaster would lead to a law requiring all American vessels to carry one life preserver for each passenger.
