An image of the Taylor cottage, near Westerly native Jean McCrosky’s home at Weekapaug Beach, tells the story.

She was just shy of her 12th birthday, but Jean S. McCrosky remembers September 21, 1938, as if it were yesterday.

An angry sea crashed whitecaps on the shore, a dark sky hovered overhead and a gale wind blew. McCrosky looked across the fields and river to Pawcatuck, Conn., and noticed that the roof had been ripped off a large textile factory.

“Then the wind swooped down and soon there was no power,” recalls McCrosky. “The telephone line went dead.”

Seventy years ago today, the Hurricane of 1938 made landfall along Rhode Island’s southern coast. The winds swept cottages and houses into the sea, killing 262 people in the state.

It was Rhode Island’s worst tragedy; more than twice as many perished in the storm as in the Station nightclub fire, which in 2003 killed 100 at the West Warwick rock-and-roll venue.

Coastal areas of South County bore the brunt of the storm: 59 deaths were recorded in Westerly and 50 more in Charlestown. Two tidal waves of almost 30 feet in height destroyed buildings as if they were matchsticks. Trees blew over, blocking roads.

The devastation began at 3:30 p.m. It was over in about 30 minutes. Whole families were drowned.

“I remember that night,” recalls McCrosky. “There was a makeshift morgue set up at the Westerly High School. There were scores of bodies there.”

Martial law was imposed in Westerly; McCrosky remembers the National Guard troops stationed at intersections and businesses in downtown Westerly, thwarting looters.

Her family owned a home in Weekapaug, one of Westerly’s picturesque oceanfront neighborhoods, and lived in town in the winter. The Weekapaug summer home was west of the Weekapaug breachway on barrier beach and sand dunes of a saltwater pond. It was 1 of just 10 summer homes — out of a total of about 500 — along the five miles of sandy beach between Watch Hill and Weekapaug that survived the storm. Most of the Misquamicut summer colony rolled into the sea.

“There was almost nothing left in Misquamicut,” said McCrosky. “A lot of elms on Elm Street fell.”

“Downtown Westerly was just blanketed by water, everywhere,” said McCrosky.

IN DOWNTOWN Providence, a tidal surge came up Narragansett Bay at high tide and dumped almost 14 feet of water into the city. People drowned trying to escape, cars and trucks submerged and buildings, including the Providence Journal building downtown, were flooded to the first-floor ceilings.

Throughout New England, 20,000 miles of utility lines fell, leaving seven-eighths of homes in the region without electricity. Hundreds of bridges were flooded out and about 9,000 homes were destroyed. Of the nearly 500 New Englanders who lost their lives, more than half were from Rhode Island.

In those days, weather forecasters did not have the high-tech instruments available today, such as advanced radar tracking or satellites. So it came as a surprise; residents had scant advance warning and few buildings were evacuated.

And the hurricane hit at the month’s highest tides, which led to the flooding in Providence. The Journal presses were flooded, so the newspaper used the presses of the Woonsocket Call and the old Boston Post to print emergency editions of the paper.

In a front-page editorial, Journal owners thanked the readers for patience and understanding. And employees were cited for working “long hours with little rest” under the most demanding conditions.

The Journal did not resume normal production until Oct. 4, when the front page brought news of a different, and more ominous, gathering storm. That week, Hitler’s German troops marched into the Sudetenland, the first spark of World War II.

Much of Rhode Island, outside Providence, was still a rural state of small farms and fishing villages. The hurricane destroyed about 900 boats and ripped down nearly 2,000 buildings, including about 180 barns. Almost 150 cattle, 41 work animals and nearly 19,000 chickens and turkeys perished.

The American Red Cross stepped in to help and provide food and shelter for more than 3,000 families.

McCROSKY IS now 82. She lives in Harvard, Mass., in a pleasant 19th-century farmhouse on seven acres, with her husband, Richard McCrosky. The couple raised 4 children and they look forward now to visits with their 8 grandchildren.

Yet, the 1938 hurricane returns to her consciousness, sometimes in the middle of the night. In the 1980s, after her family sold the Weekapaug summer place, she began having nightmares.

“I remember that for years after that, people were exhausted. It was years before people could do anything more than take care of themselves,” said McCrosky. “I would have nightmares; I would think of the waves and the women of Christ Church [in Westerly] who died in the storm.”