Great Hurricane

Read the description here of the Great Hurricane Pieter and his friend Hendrick got caught in, that is, unless you already have. The Dutch ingenuity of saw milling really helped out the English that year. They could take the sails off the arms when high winds came up, and when it cleared, they could set the mill in whichever direction the wind came from. The English had no such mill for fifty years after 1635. The trees on Manhattan had been thinned already, by custom of the wildenfolk, to create arbors above for shade in summers – a vast ‘Central Park’ if you will, if on the rough side.  As the winds blew from the north much more than the west, the ease of transport made it an easy choice to cut up there on the cliffs over the Hudson.