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A 17th century hurricane that occurred during a turf war between England and Spain not only saved the city of Charleston, but helped shape the earliest ideas of when hurricane season was for southern colonists.
Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration exists to officially determine the hurricane season's timeline from June 1 to Nov. 30. But according to Nic Butler, a historian with the Charleston County Public Library, the 1686 hurricane helped English and Spanish settlers start to determine when hurricane season in the Southern Colonies was.
Anna Dennis, a meteorologist at NOAA, wrote in an email to The Post and Courier that the Spanish Repulse Hurricane is the first recorded hurricane in the United States to make landfall near Charleston on Sept. 5, 1686. She added the hurricane was nicknamed the Spanish Repulse Hurricane because it stopped the Spanish from attacking Charleston.
Spain claimed all the land from the Florida Keys to Chesapeake Bay as a territory called La Florida from 1513 to 1670. King Charles II of England granted the northern half of that same territory to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina -- the colony next to Florida comprised of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia -- in 1663, and then enlarged that grant in 1665 to include Florida's capital, St. Augustine.
Butler said Spain was outraged by this encroachment and overlap, but Spain and England reached a compromise with the Treaty of Madrid in 1670. The treaty required Spain to acknowledge the lands in America the English occupied.
The treaty did not establish a boundary between the Spanish and English colonies, leaving it up to interpretation. Butler said the Spanish believed the boundary to be Port Royal Harbor, while the English thought they could go even further south of St. Augustine. The overlapping nature of these supposed boundaries is what drove the tension between the two, according to Butler.
Because of the difference in interpretation, Butler said the people who lived in Carolina and Florida lived in a state of constant anxiety during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The Spanish made a couple of attempts to destroy English settlements in 1670 and 1671 but failed.
The English were determined to acquire the land south of Charleston and saw the Spanish as an obstacle rather than neighbors. There were times in the 1670s and 1680s where the English colonists would encourage Native American allies to raid Spanish missions in what is now coastal Georgia. The Spanish then retaliated with the same disruptive tactics.
The Spanish finally decided to take action in 1686, a couple of years after the Scots established Stuart's Town, which was on Port Royal Harbor. The move angered the Spanish because the area used to be St. Elena, the capital of Florida in the 16th century.
"It was clearly an attempt to teach the English a lesson about trespassing on Spanish territory," Butler said.
Butler said the Spanish saw it as defending their territory against encroachment, while the English thought it was a Spanish invasion.
He added the Spanish made Charleston their ultimate destination because the English in Charleston were "too friendly" with pirates. Pirates would steal boats and rob homes in St. Augustine, then sail up the coast to Charleston to sell everything, Butler said.
In early September, the Spanish made their way up the coast to Charleston, hitting Port Royal Harbor, Stuart's Town, Edisto Island and Wadmalaw Island. They never had a chance to attack Charleston, however, because a hurricane drove them away.
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Butler said following the hurricane, there was not a lot of surviving documentation to tell what happened in the conflict. The English marched throughout the Lowcountry in search of the Spanish based on "limited information" but never found them or had a confrontation since the hurricane pushed the Spanish away.
While the hurricane deterred a Spanish attack, Butler said both the Spanish and English learned a very important lesson.
"This time of year is not a good time to launch a military campaign because it's hurricane season," Butler said.
He added the English in Charleston and Lowcountry refined their knowledge year after year of when hurricane season was. England doesn't get hurricanes, but the English had some experience with the storms in Barbados, Jamaica and Antigua.
Butler said hurricanes in South Carolina are different, however, because different latitudes have different hurricane seasons. By the early 1700s, the English in Charleston determined when hurricane season was.
"If you look at year after year after year of South Carolina history from the early 1700s onward, nothing happens during that time period of mid-July to late September," Butler said. "Ships are not coming and going in the port because it's just too dangerous to sail out into the ocean. ... Part of the civilian takeaway of the hurricane of 1686 is that this is a time of year when if you get on a ship and go out to sea, you're taking a big risk."
He said the provincial government of South Carolina in Charleston passed a law in 1734 as a result, mandating where people could and could not anchor their ships in Charleston Harbor.
"Between late July and late September, you (would) have to stay well away from East Bay Street, and it's better to park somewhere farther up the Cooper River or farther up the Ashley River," Butler said.
"(The English) had learned the lesson over multiple hurricanes that if there's a ship anchored just in front of East Bay Street and a storm comes along, that ship is going to be driven into East Bay Street and could cause a lot of damage."