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This paper draws on a range of contemporary documentary evidence from the New and Old Worlds as well as from the oceanic regions to reconstruct the trajectory and intensity of an Atlantic hurricane from August 1680. In doing so, it offers the example of one of the earliest and most comprehensive hurricane reconstructions thus far attempted. The source material includes evidence from land-based observers and some of the earliest examples of instrumental barometric data from the Caribbean and from Europe; importantly, it also calls on the written accounts offered in ships' logbooks from various parts of the Atlantic. The latter provide the opportunity of tracking the system across the otherwise data-deficient areas of the North Atlantic as it recurved toward Europe. The findings are of intrinsic interest in documenting a notable historical event. They also offer a methodological model of how such a variety of documentary sources can be drawn together and used to identify, track, and reconstruct such events from the distant past and thereby improve the chronology of hurricanes and make more reliable our interpretation of their changing frequencies.

This paper documents a rare spell of severe weather in Spain that took place during the mid-nineteenth century when a tropical storm struck the southwest of the country on 29 October 1842. The use of a variety of indepen dent documentary sources has provided unprecedented scope for the analysis of this event, allowing it to be set within its wider context, and for a judgement to be made on its tropical origin. The evidence suggests that this was similar, though stronger, to the more recent Hurricane Vince, which made landfall in Spain on 10 October 2005. This case study not only places Hurricane Vince, suggested at the time to have been unique, in its more proper long-term context, but it also demonstrates how documentary sources can improve our wider understanding of climate dynamics during historical times in the Atlantic basin.