page_title: 1889 Apia cyclone
section_title: The cyclone
hierarchical_section_title: 1889 Apia cyclone / The cyclone
caption_attribution_description: Engraving from the Illustrated London News. Artist's conception of USS Trenton being passed by HMS Calliope during the Apia tropical cyclone at Samoa on 16 March 1889. The crew of USS "Trenton" is cheering HMS "Calliope" as the latter steamed seaward to safety at the peak of the hurricane. Calliope actually passed to Trenton's port, very close aboard.
context_page_description: The 1889 Apia cyclone was a tropical cyclone in the South Pacific Ocean, which swept across Apia, Samoa on March 15, 1889, during the Samoan crisis. The effect on shipping in the harbour was devastating, largely because of what has been described as 'an error of judgement that will forever remain a paradox in human psychology'.
context_section_description: When the cyclone struck the result was catastrophic. The local people had taken themselves to safety well before the storm struck, but the ships in the bay only began to evacuate at the very last minute, and thus were crowding towards the entrance to the bay when the hurricane hit. Only HMS Calliope escaped, making less than one knot against the oncoming wind and sea; she dragged herself to the open sea, despite being less than six feet from a reef at one point. Once out at sea she was easily able to ride out the ensuing winds. Her survival is attributed to her size (2,227 tons) and her more powerful and modern engines, built only five years before, as compared to the ten or twenty years for many of the other ships.
  As for the other ships, chaos reigned in the harbour. USS Trenton was tossed against the beach in the afternoon, dragged back into the sea and wrecked on a reef at 10 p.m. that evening, although the majority of her crew survived unhurt and were able to participate in the ensuing rescue operation. USS Vandalia was smashed into the same reef in the early afternoon, and her surviving crew spent a miserable day and night clinging to her rigging before being rescued, by which time 43 of her complement had drowned. USS Nipsic was thrown high on the beach with eight of her crew missing or dead and her internal systems totally wrecked. She would however later be refloated and eventually reconstructed in Hawaii.
  The German ships fared much worse: SMS Olga came off best, thrown high onto the beach where she was wrecked but many of her crew survived, escaping onto higher ground. SMS Adler and SMS Eber were less fortunate, because they were caught at the harbour mouth by the initial blow and were bodily picked up and smashed together. Eber sank in deep water, while Adler came to rest on her side, on the reef. In total, 96 men from their crews drowned in the storm, and both ships were totally destroyed. All six of the merchant ships remaining in the harbour were wrecked, and the death toll was well over 200 sailors from several nationalities.
  The incident is often cited as a clear example of the dangers of putting national pride before necessity, especially in the face of natural disaster. The incident did not blunt the Pacific ambitions of any of the imperial powers involved in the disaster. However, the Germans and British continued to make territorial gains amongst the Samoan islands and New Guinea, whilst the United States focused on the Philippines and Micronesia, although more care was taken to respect the weather phenomena of the Pacific from this point on.
caption: Illustrated London News for 27 April 1889; artist's conception of  HMS Calliope being cheered on by the crew of USS Trenton as Calliope escapes from Apia Harbour (Calliope actually passed to Trenton's port).
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