Footage from home movies shows Hurricane Carol as she howled her way across Martha's Vineyard 60 years ago this week. Longtime Islanders recall that summer morning in 1954 when forecasters said Carol would weaken and turn out to sea, but the hurricane had other plans.
The film was shot at the Edgartown bathing beach on Chappaquiddick back in the summer of 1927. And it turns out that people swam, splashed, sunbathed, smiled at one another and flirted with the camera exactly the same way they do now, nearly 90 years later.
The last heath hen disappeared from Martha's Vineyard in 1932 and the species declared extinct in 1933.
This short public service announcement describes the Vineyard Gazette's Historic Movies of Martha's Vineyard Project. If you have home movies you think would be appropriate for this project, please email us at historicmovies@mvgazette.com
The Gazette presents a local film clip on monarch butterflies as ecologists around the country raise a cry over the fate of the monarchs, whose numbers have fallen off perilously in the last few years.
They doubted her before she arrived, scorned her while she served and forgot about her after she left.
But the ancient Hudson River ferry Hackensack — which adopted the name Islander and sailed bravely if not always reliably between Woods Hole and Vineyard Haven for three years right after World War II — turns out to have been one of the most consequential vessels ever to steam between Martha’s Vineyard and the mainland.
