The 1806 Great Coastal hurricane was a severe and damaging storm along the East Coast of the United States which produced upwards of 36 in (91 cm) of rainfall in parts of Massachusetts. First observed east of the Lesser Antilles on 17 August, the hurricane arrived at the Bahamas by 19 August. The disturbance continued to drift northward and made landfall at the mouth of the Cape Fear River in North Carolina on 22 August. The storm soon moved out to sea as a Category 2-equivalent hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, persisting off of New England before dissipating south of Nova Scotia on 25 August as a markedly weaker storm. Several French and British military ships were damaged out at sea. In the Carolinas, salt, sugar, rice, and lumber industries suffered considerably, an