The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-02-12 00:00:00

T

Y AND WEDNES.

)n Tuesday r

and Wednesday morning this town
1 its-vicinity, including the outward channels, were
visited by a severe gale of wind, amounting, at times,
almost to blasts of a hurricane. Happily we have few
-7! - -

disasters to record so far as human life is concerned, but
several vessels were wrecked or otherwise damaged, and
" houses and other buildings were denuded of

.an indication of the coming
_day, by the declining state of the
the wind throughout the morning was at
- 1- in the afternoon, after a short inter-

omey pots

given on Tue

arometer

,-south-west,

val of calm, the draft came from due west, but afte
in heavy puffs,—a sure presage that a gale of some violence
was approaching. The puffs increased by six or seven
o'clock to violent gusts, and at length, towards midnight,
it blew a steady gale from almost due west, or perhaps a
point or two to thg northward of west. About two o'clock
the wind became very violent, and so continued, generally
in gusts or squalls, until four in the morning with little
abatement. Many parties in houses exposed to the storm
were under great alarm during the night, relinquishing all
idea of sleep, and congregating for mutual comfort and
allayance of alarm in one or more apartments of their
respective dwellings. Strange to say, in many other
houses less exposed from their position, or otherwise
sheltered by higher buildings to windward, the inmates
slept on soundly, and were surprised in the morning to
find that so much alarm had been excited amongst some
of their near neighbours. The gale was severely felt
about the Old Church, especially upon Tower Buildings,
which face the Churchyard. Some of the lead was stripped
off, like paper, from the roof. From one of the windows
of Trinity Church, St. Anne-street, nearly all the glass
was blown in. A chimney was blown over at the Crooked
Billet, in Exchange-street East, but the roof fortunately
resisted the weight of the fallen materials, otherwise a
female servant in the attic would probably have been
killed.

swards

In the river the accidents were numerous. The sloop
Duchess of Kent in attempting to make the entrance of
the Nelson Dock for shelter was, through the force of the
gale, rendered unmanageable, and sank from concussion
on the walls. She was from the Tsle of Man, and the
crew were happily saved. A flat from Runcorn, laden
with grain, sank opposite the Collingwood Dock. The
few parties on board, including a female, were saved by
the active exertions of boatmen. There were, however,
comparatively few large vessels lying in the river, and
these mostly nearer to the Cheshire than the Lancashire
Soveral of them dragged their anchors. Amongst
was the fine new New York packet-ship, the Man-
Aich bad arrived only the morning before. She
rs to be in jeopardy of running
. peen the landing-stage and the
Luckily she held on, by two anchors,
_ great exertions by the active management of the
captain and others on board. The life-boats were all
Ictive, and succeeded in saving lives of persons on wrecks,
le outward banks. The Woodside boats, which
generally every hour during the night, found it neces-
sary for safety to knock off from one o'clock till five in
the morning. No great inconvenience to parties was
occasioned by this cessation, for few or no passengers
would have " tempted the stormy frith." The great
landing-stage had to undergo a test, though not a very
severe one, on this occasion. The " jabble" of the sea
and the force of the tide had, however, an effect upon
her. She worked very heavily during the most violent
part of the storm. Her buts were slightly started and
opened at the north eltd. But the general structure, in-
cledi • 'he lirirh7e9, stood it out well, as did the moorings.
uii tue Birkenhead side of the river the damage was
greater than on the Liverpool side, especially in parts
exposed to the draught of wind soughing down Wallasey
Pool, which was a leading hollow or valley in the line of
the gale, which commenced from the W.S.W., was at its
severest at about W., and hauled to N.N.W.
Much of the glass in the windows of the S.E.._
Hamilton-square, Woodside, was blown in, and a consi-
derable portion of it in round or oval holes, without frac-
ture of the remaining part round the framework. All
the houses in the locality facing the gale were equally
injured. The covered market at Birkenhead was also
damaged. The cast-iron frames, or sash-work, of the
roof windows were in many places torn off, and fell
directly down, or were carried to a distance on the top of
the roof and broke the slates, or otherwise damaged the
building, and by the fall of materials much of the pro-
perty in the stalls. Luckily, no person was injured, and
the general framework of the roof, all of beaten iron on
the tension principle, remains entire. Christ Church, at
Oxton, recently erected, suffered severely from the gale,
about three yards of the top of the handsome spire being
blown down. The belfry of the Scotch Church, in
Grange-lane, was also overturned, and fell through the
roof of the building. Great damage was done to private
houses and other buildings all over the district of Oxton-
on-the-Hill.

ppeared for many ho

lber t Doc

or on ti

side of

Two flats were sunk in George's Dock Basin, and one
of the quarantine hulks off the Rock Ferry was driven
from her moorings to the Lancashire side.
At Egremont Ferry, the south slip was much injured,
large portions of the stonework at the bottom being
hurled in ruins on the beach. This, however, does not
disturb the transit, as the main slip and stage, stretching
to the eastward, remain in good workable order.
At Seacombe, the moveable landing stage was lifted by
the force of the tide from the rails on the slip, across
which it lay fractured, in the form of a bridge. The
steam engine attached to the stage was thrown down, but
is recovered, and may be readily repaired. The injury to
this ferry was done by the back set of the up-coming tide
against the north wall of the Birkenhead docks, which at
all times causes sanding up at Seacombe slip, and threat-
ens, in fact, to annihilate the ferry. The tide, both here
and at other points of the river, did not recede for a long
time after high water by the almanac, so great was the
force of the wind in pointing it up.
Most of the suburban villas, and numerous houses and
seats in the country, have suffered more or less damage ;
and the furious assaults of the tempest on detached and
unsheltered houses in the country caused extremeanxiety
and terror to the inmates.
From a signal made soon after nineo'clock on Wednes-
day morning, it was ascertained that the Diana steamer,
from Waterford, bad gat upon Great Burbo Bank. A
steam-tug, with a life-boat in tow, proceeded to the spot.
She is got off. The passengers were saved.
In consequence of the breaking down of the Seacombe
stage, by the force of the tide and gale, and the Egremont
boats necessarily running but seldom in the day, in Sea-
combe, Egremont, New Brighton, &c., many parties
wishing to cross to Liverpool (or return home) had to