Deserted Villages Haunt History

Everyone knows about the ghost towns of the west, abandoned locations bypassed by the railroad, stricken by natural disasters, obliterated by their own lawlessness. Not everyone is aware, however, that certain locations in our own neighborhood, now silenced, were once vibrant centers of bustling life.

Cases in point are North Sea in Southampton and East Hampton’s Northwest, both once busy ports that were the lifelines of their respective towns.

In her East Hampton History, Jeannette Edwards Rattray calls Northwest a “deserted village” and notes that its wharves were busy from 1663 to 1770, its farms prospered until around 1885, and the community had its own public school.

During roughly the same period, according to a history published to commemorate Southampton’s 325th anniversary in 1965,  a lively settlement thrived around North Sea Harbor, which was “full of pinks, snows and schooners” carrying on a brisk trade with Boston, London and Barbados.

Then, in 1770, was built in Sag Harbor and the two smaller ports were no longer needed. Today the charm of both Northwest and North Sea resides rather in their relative tranquility. Pleasure boats ply the waters now and the farms have largely disappeared.

More cataclysmic was the demise of Montauk’s fishing village, which was nearly annihilated by the 1938 hurricane. Prior to that fateful day in September, the fishing village had been a thriving hub of activity, at a time when downtown Montauk, as it exists today, was still in the future.

Small houses, many made from the fish boxes used to ship the fishermen’s catch to New York’s Fulton Street Market, lined the road that ran parallel to the Fort Pond Bay shoreline. There were restaurants and a post office, and, as one resident put it, “This was town.”

When the hurricane struck, the ocean breached the narrow strip of Napeague, cutting Montauk off from the mainland and flooding Fort Pond. The washout at Napeague forced a trainload of stricken residents, whose homes in the fishing village had been destroyed, to return to Montauk, where the was opened to accommodate them. For several terrible hours Montauk parents whose children were students, were without news of each other, while rumors of total destruction and loss of life in the fishing village were rampant.

At the first opportunity, East Hampton Supervisor Perry B. Duryea sent the following urgent appeal to the American Red Cross and federal relief agencies: “Montauk fishing village practically destroyed. Number of boats lost, Residences destroyed, several lives lost and missing. No water, light or phone connections. Fishing industry wiped out. Immediate and necessary.”

Initial reports that the entire fishing village had been swept away and that the itself was in danger turned out to be exaggerated. The lighthouse was apparently never seriously threatened and the fishing village was not destroyed, but the damage to houses and vessels was devastating and the bayfront community never regained its former vigor.

Sources from the Archives: “Hurricane Memorial Booklet” published by The East Hampton Star; “Southampton Long Island 1640-1965”; “Hurricane in the Hamptons, 1938” by Mary Cummings; “East Hampton History” by Jeannette Edwards Rattray; Image courtesy Southampton Historical Museum.