Aug
24
This Day in History · 1927
The Gale of August, 1927
The 1927 Atlantic hurricane season opened with the deadliest Canadian storm of the century. Though strong cyclones are rare due to the colder Canadian waters, the August Gale struck the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, maintaining Category II winds and causing widespread crop and infrastructure damage. On August 24-25, the fisheries were caught by surprise and decimated, with more than twenty boats and two hundred fishermen lost at sea.
The storm is memorialized in The Gale of August, '27, a song to the tune of “The Death of Floyd Collins”.
Featured · Fishing song · Roud 9431
The Gale of August, '27
Good people, come and listen, a sad story I will tell,
Of Eighty-seven fishermen, good men we all know well,
Who left their homes in April to sail the raging seas,
To reap the ocean's harvest that feedeth you and me.
Their hearts were light within them to hoist those fleecy sails,
And soon they left the harbor to catch the pleasant gales,
But down on Sable Island, where those angry waves do rage
Those eighty-seven fishermen all met their watery graves.