The Great Gale of 1848 in Tampa, Florida

The Great Gale of 1848 was a late September 1848 hurricane that NWS Tampa Bay credits with a 15 foot tide on Tampa Bay.

The NWS Tampa Bay fact sheet on the Great Gale of 1848 gives the event date as September 23 to 28, 1848, the estimated maximum winds as 135 mph and the minimum pressure as 28.18 inches, or 954 mb. It estimates the population of the whole Tampa Bay area at the time at about 1,000 people, which is why the storm is remembered through a small number of eyewitness letters and recollections rather than through instruments.

The water is the clearest measure of the storm on Tampa Bay. The NWS summary states that the water, which at one time rose five feet in fifteen minutes, stood fifteen feet above the mean low watermark. A 2012 Bay News 9 retrospective gives the same 15 foot surge.

In September 1848 Tampa was an Army post settlement on Tampa Bay that had no civil government of its own.

The City of Tampa Archives incorporation history dates the settlement to orders issued in November 1823 for Col. Brooke to establish a military post on Tampa Bay, and to January 18, 1824, when Col. Brooke, along with James Gadsden and four companies of infantry, arrived in Tampa Bay. The same timeline records no village, town or city government until after the 1848 storm.

The mouth of Tampa Bay had just gained its first light. The U.S. Coast Guard Historian lists Egmont Key Light as a station established in 1848, with Sherrod Edwards as its first keeper, and Bay Soundings reports that the light was first lit in April 1848, when the Edwards family moved in. Bay Soundings describes it as the only lighthouse between the Panhandle and Key West at the time, marking the entrance to the port of Tampa.

The storm arrived in a matter of hours: NWS Tampa Bay records the barometer falling from 30.12 to 28.18 inches between 11 a.m. and about 2 p.m.

The NWS fact sheet quotes the contemporary reading directly: at 11:00 a.m. the barometric pressure stood at 30.12, and three hours later it bottomed out at 28.18. By then the water stood fifteen feet above the mean low watermark, after rising at one point five feet in fifteen minutes. A drop of almost two inches of mercury in three hours is the clearest instrument evidence of how intense the 1848 hurricane was at Tampa Bay.

Sources differ on how to express that low Tampa Bay reading. NWS converts 28.18 inches to 954 mb, while the 2012 Bay News 9 retrospective writes it as 28.18 inches or 945 mb. The NWS figure is the one that matches the inches reading, and it is the one used in the table above.

Survivors quoted by NWS Tampa Bay describe houses giving way, a home swept down the bay and families wading through rising water.

The NWS Tampa Bay summary collects several of those accounts from around the bay. A resident named Mr. Allen remained in his house until the lower story gave way, sliding the upper one down to the level of the water, and then had to wade up to his armpits for some distance to reach dry land. Nancy Jackson snatched her baby in her arms and was steadied down the steps by a man so she would not be blown off her feet; before he could re-enter for a trunk of money and valuables, the house was struck by heavy timbers, knocked off its foundation and carried out of sight down the bay.

Juliet Axtell, another survivor quoted in the same NWS Tampa Bay summary, recalled that her house was blown down in part and that the waters from the bay swept around it with fearful violence. She wrote that the family escaped in the midst of the tempest, with roofs of buildings flying around them, and that the wind was so strong they could not keep their feet or wear even a shawl against the piercing rain.

Another firsthand account surfaced in 2023, when the Tampa Bay Times published a letter in which Robert Jackson described the effect of the 1848 hurricane on his place on the Hillsborough River, which he called the pleasantest situation on the river before the storm.

The Egmont Key keeper and his family rode out the 1848 gale in a boat tied to palmettos, and the official record and later accounts disagree on what the storm did to the tower.

The NWS fact sheet says the tide rose so quickly on Egmont Key that two feet of water surrounded the home of keeper Sherrod Edwards before he realized he had to act. Quoting pioneer John A. Bethell, it says Edwards placed his family in his boat, waded with it to the middle of the island and secured it to the palmettos until the gale was over. NWS names his son, Marvel Edwards, as apprentice lighthouse keeper.

The U.S. Coast Guard Historian states that the original Egmont Key tower was built for $7,580 and survived a powerful hurricane just five months after being officially certified. In the Coast Guard's account the tower was later struck by lightning and cracked, efforts to stabilize it failed, and the current tower was built in 1858 for $16,000. Bay Soundings gives a different version: it puts the first tower's cost at $10,000 and says the September hurricane left it damaged beyond repair, and Bay News 9 likewise reports that the lighthouse was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Both versions agree on the 1858 replacement and its $16,000 cost.

NWS Tampa Bay calls the October 25, 1921, hurricane the most destructive to hit the area since 1848, which keeps the Great Gale as the benchmark storm for the bay.

Civil government in Tampa began a few months after the gale. The City of Tampa Archives record that on January 18, 1849, 14 men voted unanimously to establish Tampa Village with a trustee form of government, and that on January 25, 1849, the Village of Tampa elected 5 trustees with M.G. Sikes as president. Citizens voted to abolish the village government on October 10, 1852, and on September 10, 1853, voted to organize as the Town of Tampa.

The NWS Tampa Bay 1921 hurricane page describes a storm surge of up to 11 feet in 1921, with the highest surge inundating downtown Tampa and Tarpon Springs, while the storm statistics table on the same page lists the maximum Tampa Bay surge as about 10.5 feet. The NWS 1921 anniversary sheet uses the 11 foot estimate. Either way, the 1921 water fell short of the 15 feet NWS gives for 1848.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the NWS Tampa Bay 1848 fact sheet, the NWS 1921 hurricane page and anniversary sheet, the Coast Guard Historian's Egmont Key Light record and the City of Tampa Archives incorporation timeline, with the Bay News 9, Bay Soundings and Tampa Bay Times accounts re-read for comparison.