Losses and Insurance
THE total tornado insurance written in the Miami district, which includes Pompano, Fort Lauderdale, Dania, Hollywood, Hallandale, Ojus, Little River, Lemon City, Buena Vista, Miami, Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, and Hialeah was $55,484,685. The companies will pay on that amount from twenty to twenty-five per cent. that being the average amount of damage in proportion to the face of the policies. The amount of damage wrought by the storm in the Miami district as described is estimated by insurance authorities to have been $165,000,000. This probably is the most reliable estimate that has been made.
Shipping authorities agree that it will be many months before it will be possible to ascertain what the marine losses amounted to. The only way in which that could be obtained would be to find and interview the owners of the several hundred vessels that were sunk, destroyed or stranded. I interviewed the dockmaster, Capt. Schollenberger and others who generally are possessed of knowledge of marine affairs but I could get no definite information. They simply had no idea as to what the losses would amount to. Some of the vessels in the harbor went down with all on board. This was true in the case of the Nohab, the former Kaiserein's yacht, which was built at the Krupp works and was presented to the Kaiserein by Bertha Krupp. This yacht had been in Miami harbor all winter. For awhile it was used as a kind of dinner club, the lure being chiefly the silver bath tubs in which German royalty had bathed. The vessel had been purchased by a corporation with the purpose of putting it in passenger service between Miami and Nassau, but there were some financial difficulties and the vessel still was inactive at the time of the storm. Only one member of the crew was saved, the engineer, who happened to be ashore. Five were lost when the Nohab went down. The vessel was not sunk, but is down on its side and waterlogged. It is probable that it will be salvaged. Some of the wrecks were picturesque. The five-masted schooner Rose Mahony from San Francisco was stranded at the foot of Ninth street and viewed from a distance has the appearance of being in the middle of the street. While as a matter of fact she is not, the schooner is quite a distance from the Bay, and it will cost a pretty penny to launch her, to say nothing of the damage she has suffered. A survey of wrecked
