Within minutes, two chimneys on the Hepburn home had collapsed, windows were smashed and as Ms. Hepburn would recall in her autobiography, ''Me'': ''We began to realize that we were in for something special. The screens on the porch began to blow like a lady's petticoat. Then there was a rip and a crash and the big laundry wing fell off the back of the house.''

In the house with Ms. Hepburn were her mother, her brother Richard, a family friend and the cook. The five tied themselves together, climbed through a window and fought their way to higher ground and safety. Then, looking back, they watched the house disappear into the Sound. ''It just sailed away easy as pie and soon there was nothing at all left,'' Ms. Hepburn wrote. ''Our house -- ours for 25 years -- all our possessions, just gone. My God, it was something devastating and unreal, like the beginning of the world or the end of it.''

To the east, it looked for a time that it would also be the end of New London. A tidal surge drove the 500-foot sailing ship Marsala into a warehouse complex along the docks, causing explosions and six fires that burned out of control for more than seven hours. A quarter-mile of the business district was destroyed and the entire downtown area was threatened before a timely shift in the wind enabled firefighters, sometimes working in water up to their necks, to control the fires.

Herbert Janick, a history professor at Western Connecticut State College, wrote: ''Ships torn from their moorings slammed around the New London harbor, wrecking wharfs before sinking or beaching themselves. The lighthouse tender Tulip draped its frame across the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad tracks behind the Custom House.'' The Tulip, a 300-foot Coast Guard ship, sat on the tracks for 17 days and, according to a report issued later by the railroad, ''proved very difficult to move.''

Stonington, which had a fishing fleet of more than 50 boats when the hurricane hit, was left with just two as boats were tossed onto the beaches, across roads and onto the New Haven Railroad tracks. The Bostonian passenger train, with 275 Boston-bound passengers, was halted by a danger signal outside the town when rushing waters undermined the rail bed. As frightened passengers watched water-borne debris, then parts of houses sweeping past them, Harry Easton, the engineer, ordered everyone to the front of the train.

''One couple was in the middle of dinner,'' R.A. Scotti wrote the book ''Sudden Sea,'' an account of the hurricane published this year. ''Although the dining car was tilting dangerously, the diners objected to having their meal interrupted. They had paid for it, and they insisted on finishing it.''

When the passengers finally crowded into the engine, tender and first car, Ms. Scotti reported: ''Brakeman Bill Donoghue plunged into the water. First he had to turn off the air compressor so the train could build up enough pressure to start again, then he had to uncouple the engine, tender and first car from the rest of the train. After several futile attempts, he finally managed to shut off the compressor and pull the pin.''