three o'clock
Not a newspaper found its way to a home , or a single piece of mail arrived in New York , or was sent from it , or delivered within its gates . Every telegraph and telephone office was silent and the fire department was paralysed . The elevated trains crawled and slipped and stalled and fought on their steel trestles till ten o'clock , and the last wheel stopped and froze . At three o'clock a Staten Island ferry-boat ventured her nose out of her slip . The wind snapped off both flag-staffs and smokestack , hurled them into space , caught her in its mighty claws , dragged her helpless across the bay and flung her on the Staten Island shore . Wherever men could gather they talked in low , helpless and bewildered tones . The storm signal , set by the Weather Bureau , was torn to shreds and the wind-gage hurled into the sky as it registered eighty-two miles an hour .