NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

Tony Williams doesn't consider himself a revisionist historian, but his first book, "The Hurricane of Independence," does correct the record.

The hurricane of Sept. 2, 1775, which smashed ashore in Hampton Roads, grounding much of the British fleet and prompting colonists to loot and fire the ships and reclaim runaway slaves near the start of the Revolutionary War, was not the same storm that went on to Newfoundland and killed 4,000 codfishermen.

"Two things struck me during my writing and research," Williams told a Reid Conference audience Tuesday at NASA Langley in the 37th anniversary Colloquium lecture.

Tony Williams, who speaks at Tuesday's Colloquium in the Reid Conference Center, uses his books about events to tell larger stories about history. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

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"One is that the (first hurricane) left American shores by September 3. There was at least a week and maybe as long as 10 days between the hurricane hitting Maine and the hurricane hitting Newfoundland. The second is that the (first) hurricane didn't do much damage in Boston. It was a weakened tropical storm by then, a rain event that made the soldiers miserable but didn't do much damage.

"How could it have raised a 30-foot storm surge in Newfoundland and killed 4,000 guys?"

Williams, who lives in Williamsburg with his wife and two children, was researching a chapter in "The Hurricane of Independence" in some Sept. 10-11, 1775, New York newspapers when he stumbled onto information from captain's logs about a "monster" storm at sea.

He piece together a theory that there were two storms, one a Category 2 or 3 hurricane that came ashore in Virginia and North Carolina, the other a Category 4 or 5 that trailed the first, about 200 miles offshore, until it devastated Newfoundland.

The discovery was gratifying.

"It all made sense," he said. "It put the pieces of the puzzle together. And it feels good to revise mistakes and, as a historian, just as a scientist, we want to get the facts straight."

So does a teacher, which Williams was, first in Ohio, then in Newport News, at Hampton Roads Academy, before he opted to try his hand at writing. To do so required changing his mind after an earlier declaration that he would never be a writer or a professor doing research because of its solitary nature.

He enjoyed the classroom but admits that he despaired of the way history is taught.

"It's a national tragedy. We're losing our sense of history," he said of the ambivalence he saw among students. "We're losing the principles that founded this country. And we're losing any sense of our traditional heroes in our country to political correctness."

Williams talks of the stories of those traditional heroes – Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, both Roosevelts -- being taught in traditional ways, rather than torn down by revisionism and 21st century standards being applied to historical times.

"Jefferson is the author of the Declaration of Independence, and I think we should get back to that," Williams said. "We have given the world a system of government. If we lose those principles, I think we're going to be rudderless, to lose our sense of freedom."

He recommends that everyone read the letters of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

"Read what the founders of this country believed, what they thought," Williams advises. "I believe the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, should form our debate today. Reading the principles on which the country was founded, I think, would restore some civility to public discourse."

And, certainly, he recommends "The Hurricane of Independence," which is not just about two storms, but which uses the storms to tell the story of the birth of a nation.

It's much the way his second book, "Franklin and Mather's Pox," uses the 1721 Boston smallpox epidemic to discuss the downfall of Puritanism. The book is due out next spring.

And the way he's planning a third book, on the founding of Jamestown, to trace American enterprise from its beginnings in Virginia to today's entrepreneurship of Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey.

It's Williams' way of staying in the classroom.

"I see myself as a writer, but still as a teacher," he said. "Rather that educate 50-60 children a year in our nation's heritage, maybe I could reach 10,000 cittizens and they could share the story with other citizens. Or I could share this story with other educators and they could teach it."

And they can see how the historical record has been corrected.


 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Lineberry