Cape Cod and the Portland Gale of 1898, Disaster

Name: Cape Cod and the Portland Gale of 1898, Disaster
Author: Donald Wilding

On the night of November 26, 1898, with a killer storm of historic proportions approaching, the steamer Portland set out from Boston. By the following night, the winter hurricane sent the vessel to the depths of Massachusetts Bay off Cape Cod, claiming nearly two hundred lives. On the Cape, a few dozen victims of the Portland disaster washed ashore, while ships piled up in harbors, high tides swept away railroad tracks, and the landscape and beaches were changed forever. Several Cape Cod mariners went to sea and never returned, caught in the gale's evil clutches. Local author Don Wilding revisits this disaster and the heroic deeds of the U.S. Life-Saving Service and the Cape's citizenry in what came to be known as "The Portland Gale."

Donald Wilding

Since the start of the millennium, Don Wilding has been telling stories of Cape Cod history through lectures and the written word. An award-winning writer and editor for Massachusetts newspapers for thirty years, Don contributes the "Shore Lore" history column for the Cape Codder newspaper of Orleans and is the author of the book Henry Beston's Cape Cod: How the Outermost House Inspired a National Seashore and A Brief History of Eastham (The History Press, 2017), as well as Shipwrecks of Cape Cod (The History Press, 2021). His Cape Cod history lectures are a popular draw on Cape Cod and across Massachusetts. Don is a cofounder of the Beston Society and is on the board of directors for the Eastham Historical Society.