3-021-292 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Port Louis, Mauritius, 1868. 'The tremendous hurricane which visited the British colony of Mauritius on the night of March 11 drove twenty vessels ashore in the harbour of Port Louis, and destroyed, wholly or partially, many buildings in the town and in the adjoining district. Even stone buildings, the walls of which could resist the force of the wind, were stripped of their roofs, commonly made of zinc or galvanised iron; and for the wooden houses there was much less chance. Hundreds of tons of sugar in the storehouses, and probably a fourth of the growing crop, are estimated to have been lost'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.