The weather witch lives on in coastal Delaware
“The wind and tide at Lewes were the highest he had seen for 30 years, Captain David Edwards, custodian of Queen Anne’s Pier, Lewes, said on Monday Morning,” Milford Chronicle reported on Nov. 22, 1935. “Water washed over the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach, pilings were unsettled and the walk sagged in places.”
Most coastal residents believed that the storm was another late fall nor’easter, but sailors aboard the old schooner Liberty were convinced the storm was the work of a “Weather Witch.”
On May 25, 1798, the British brig De Braak arrived off Cape Henlopen fresh from a successful voyage, when a squall slammed into the British warship. The sudden wind filled the sails and tipped the brig to one side, and the warship quickly filled with water and sank.
The sinking spawned stories that the vessel was laden with an incredible cargo of gold, silver, and other treasures. The tales of riches aboard the De Braak continued to grow during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and in 1935, Charles N. Colstad led a group of New England salvagers to Delaware to search for the sunken ship.
After exploring the ocean floor off Cape Henlopen, Colstad was convinced that he was close to locating the sunken ship; and the following year, the Liberty, an old pilot schooner, was chartered and outfitted as a salvage vessel.
Searching during the summer turned up a few additional clues, but no De Braak. After Halloween, cold wind and rain enveloped the waters off the cape. Superstitious sailors concluded that the remains of the wreck were being protected by a, “Weather Witch,” and only a full exorcism of the demon would calm the seas.
An image of an old hag was drawn on cardboard; and the treasure hunters used it for target practice. When the waves failed to calm, the sailors constructed an effigy of the Weather Witch, complete with long gray hair that streamed from under a tall peaked cap.
Equipped with a broomstick and a flowing cape, the effigy was set up on the salvage ship; and the sailors paid the Weather Witch homage by setting food and drink before it. The ceremony was concluded by burning the effigy and scattering its ashes on the sea.
The sailors’ ritual may have relieved the boredom of waiting for the waves to calm; but the attempted exorcism had no effect on the weather. A November nor’easter inundated the coast, cut powerlines, tore up the Rehoboth boardwalk, and wrecked several ships. Failing to have banished the Weather Witch, Colstad suspended the search for the De Braak until the next year.
When Colstad resumed the search for the British warship, he was beset by natural phenomena that the exorcism of the Weather Witch had failed to silence.
On Sept. 10, 1936, the Smyrna Times reported, “A five-foot hammerhead shark taking a sun bath over the location of the De Braak’s grave Wednesday of last week, temporarily halted operation of the Colstad treasure hunters.”
Shortly after the shark appeared, the Smyrna Times, reported “Immense rollers, said to be 20 feet high, were sighted approaching the shore like a tidal wave. When they struck the shore line, they broke over a 700-yard stretch of beach slightly below Rehoboth Beach. 'No small boat could have survived that avalanche of water,’ declared Capt. Colstad. ‘We were lucky to escape it.’"
Having battled the Weather Witch and failed, Colstad abandoned the search for the De Braak. The Weather Witch, however, remains a feature of the coastal Halloween celebrations.
Principal sources
Milford Chronicle, Nov. 22, 1935.
Smyrna Times, Aug. 6, 1936; Sept. 10, 1936.
New York Times, Sept. 19, 1932; Nov. 9, 1935; July 7, 1936.
Donald Shomette, The Hunt for HMS DE Braak, Legend and Legacy, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1993, pp. 110-111.
This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: The weather witch lives on in coastal Delaware
