The Portland Gale was a storm that struck the coast of New England on November 26 and 27, 1898. The storm formed when two low pressure areas merged off the coast of Virginia and travelled up the coast; at its peak, it produced a storm surge of about ten feet in Cohasset harbor and hurricane-force winds in Nantucket. The storm killed more than 400 people and sank more than 150 boats and ships. It also changed the course of the North River, separating the Humarock portion of Scituate, Massachusetts, from the rest of Scituate. Loss of the SS Portland On November 26, 1898, the steamship SS Portland left India Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, for Portland, Maine, on a regularly scheduled run. She never made it to port. None of the 192 passengers and crew survived the massive storm that wreaked havoc on New England's coast — a storm that was later dubbed "the Portland Gale" after the tragic loss of the ship. For years, controversy reigned as to the location of the ill-fated ship. In the summer of 2002, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, joined by the National Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut (UConn), solved the mystery surrounding the Portland'''s location. Using data from American Underwater Search and Survey, they brought back images from the sea floor that conclusively identified the remains of the steamship Portland. Researchers from NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, along with the NOAA-UConn team and filmmakers from [The Science Channel], returned to the wreck of the famed 19th-century steamship from September 13–18, 2003. Kicking off the expedition to peer into the vessel's past and plan for its future, the team conducted the first surveys of the Portland since its location was confirmed in August 2002 within NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the Massachusetts coast. In addition to documenting the Portland, the expedition team investigated the wrecks of the Louise B. Crary and Frank A. Palmer, a pair of Boston-bound coal schooners that collided and sank in 1902 as a result of a navigational error. Like the Portland, the Crary and Palmer'' lie within the boundaries of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Side-scan sonar images obtained in 2002 during a joint mission between NOAA and NURC-UConn revealed that the two large vessels plunged to the sea floor simultaneously, their bows locked together in a deadly embrace. Schooners Columbia and Delaware also