about four o’clock in the
evening of the 23rd of March, 1865
It can not be more than 500 feet from us ! '' `` Overboard with every weight ! ... everything ! '' Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air , above the vast watery desert of the Pacific , about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March , 1865 . Few can possibly have forgotten the terrible storm from the northeast , in the middle of the equinox of that year . The tempest raged without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March . Its ravages were terrible in America , Europe , and Asia , covering a distance of eighteen hundred miles , and extending obliquely to the equator from the thirty-fifth north parallel to the fortieth south parallel .