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Joseph De Martini, The Wreck of the St. Christopher, 1949. Oil on canvas, 30 × 40 in.. Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

A study against the weather record

Joseph De Martini

The Wreck of the St. Christopher

1949 · Monhegan Museum of Art & History · Accession 5745

A shipwreck on a dated evening. Does the weather record establish a storm behind De Martini’s scene?

16kilometres was the lowest visibility reported at Portland, 18:00–23:00 EST on 5 August 1949. The museum’s wreck date, not a verified painting hour.

Event date attributedPainted weather unresolved

The records The holding museum

The Nephos method

How this study was read

The method in full

1
What is written
The catalogue year and the depicted event are separate dates. The museum supplies a wreck date of 5 August 1949, but no day or hour for the scene De Martini painted.
- The St. Christopher wrecked at Lobster Cove on the evening of August 5, 1949.Jennifer Pye, Director, Monhegan Museum of Art & History, email to Vedang Sharma, 13 October 2026
2
Records of those days
- NOAA ISD, Portland airport, 999999-1476448 hourly reports over two full EST dates, 81.4 km from the Monhegan lighthouse reference. Visibility, wind, temperature and sky coverage; regional context.
Not found or not yet searched
- No island meteorological log or sea-state record has been recovered for this comparison.
- No verified object-specific account of the painted sky or of the painting sessions.
- The exact wreck date lacks independent contemporary confirmation here. A secondary gallery history names Squeaker Cove, unlike the museum’s note.
3
Each claim tested
- What happened to visibility at the airport? Portland’s six evening reports on 5 August give 16000–19200 m visibility and 1–1.5 m/s wind. These cannot establish conditions at the St. Christopher or date De Martini’s scene.
- Does this establish a weather cause or the painter’s accuracy? No. A regional observation cannot establish visibility at a vessel, wave height at the shore, or what the artist retained or changed.
4
Verdict
Portland’s six evening reports on 5 August give 16000–19200 m visibility and 1–1.5 m/s wind. These cannot establish conditions at the St. Christopher or date De Martini’s scene.
- UnknownWeather at the St. Christopher grounding The museum’s date has usable airport context, but no linked local weather account or instrument record.
- UnknownThe painted sky and sea No verified sky description, local measurement or documented change by the artist.

What this cannot tell you. The archive’s zero visibility encoding is not a literal zero optical range. Wind averaging periods and historical exposure remain unresolved. All displayed hours are fixed EST (UTC−5). Summaries describe sampled hours, not continuous conditions. No artwork reproduction is shown because an explicit open licence was not established.

Step 1 · The picture and its date

A wreck date does not date the painted moment

Monhegan Museum’s catalogue identifies Joseph De Martini’s The Wreck of the St. Christopher, 1949, oil on canvas, 30 × 40 inches, accession 5745, an anonymous gift. Museum object record. Jennifer Pye’s email of 13 October 2026 places the wreck on the evening of 5 August 1949. Museum date attribution.

The correspondence does not say that this picture shows the grounding itself or the next morning. The two-day weather window below is context for the reported event, not an assigned painting session. No object-specific account of the painted weather or of De Martini’s working sequence has been verified.

Step 2 · What remains to establish

The event still needs its original record

No contemporary newspaper or Coast Guard account confirming the exact August date was recovered in this search. The date is therefore retained as the museum’s attribution. A separate place discrepancy also remains: the museum’s note names Lobster Cove, while a secondary gallery history names Squeaker Cove. Gallery account. That is a reason to check the casualty or object file, not to replace the museum’s location silently.

The museum’s accession identifies the requested canvas; other works by De Martini with similar wreck titles are not substituted. Fog, a gale, poor navigation and mechanical failure are not assigned as causes without an event record.

Step 3 · The instrument record

Two days at Portland airport

The NOAA archive contains all 48 hourly reports for these two EST dates. The observing location in the reports is 81.4 km west of the Monhegan lighthouse reference. No values are transferred to the island. All displayed hours use fixed EST (UTC−5); an EDT clock is one hour later. The original UTC timestamps remain in the downloadable data.

Portland’s six reports from 18:00 to 23:00 EST on 5 August show 16–19.2 km visibility and 1–1.5 m/s wind. The full day’s sampled wind range is 1–3.6 m/s. The airport record does not supply evidence of a local gale or thick fog there during those sampled hours.

The following morning’s six reports show 24 km visibility and sky coverage of 0–1 eighths. These are airport observations, not an assertion that De Martini depicted a clear morning. The missing present-weather groups are not interpreted as proof of no weather.

Hourly visibility at Portland. Each dot is a report. Shaded bands identify the evening and morning comparison windows. No conditions are filled in between observations; a zero is the archive’s low-visibility encoding, not a literal optical range.

Ranges within named sets of Portland reports; these are not continuous extrema.
EST interval	Reports	Visibility · km	Wind · m/s	Air · °C
5th · all 24 hourly reports	24	11.2–19.2	1–3.6	16.7–28.9
5th · 18:00–23:00	6	16–19.2	1–1.5	19.4–25
6th · 06:00–11:00	6	24	0–2.1	18.9–30
6th · all 24 hourly reports	24	16–24	0–4.1	16.7–31.1

Read all 48 hourly observations

Portland airport. Direction is degrees from true north; sky cover is eighths of the sky, including obscuring phenomena. A dash is missing or rejected, not zero.
Day · EST	Visibility · km	Wind · m/s	From · °	Air · °C	Cover · /8
05 · 00:00	12.8	2.1	315	20.6	0
05 · 01:00	12.8	1	338	19.4	5
05 · 02:00	11.2	1	315	18.9	0
05 · 03:00	12.8	3.6	315	18.9	2
05 · 04:00	11.2	1	338	16.7	6
05 · 05:00	11.2	1	270	16.7	6
05 · 06:00	12.8	1.5	315	18.3	6
05 · 07:00	16	1	23	20.6	7
05 · 08:00	16	1.5	23	24.4	6
05 · 09:00	16	1.5	135	26.7	8
05 · 10:00	16	2.1	135	26.7	8
05 · 11:00	16	1.5	90	28.3	8
05 · 12:00	19.2	1.5	203	28.9	8
05 · 13:00	19.2	3.6	180	28.9	7
05 · 14:00	19.2	2.6	180	28.3	7
05 · 15:00	19.2	3.1	225	27.2	7
05 · 16:00	19.2	1.5	225	26.1	8
05 · 17:00	16	1	360	25	7
05 · 18:00	19.2	1	135	25	7
05 · 19:00	19.2	1.5	225	23.3	8
05 · 20:00	19.2	1.5	248	21.7	6
05 · 21:00	19.2	1.5	248	20	5
05 · 22:00	19.2	1	270	20	5
05 · 23:00	16	1	270	19.4	6
06 · 00:00	16	1.5	360	19.4	2
06 · 01:00	16	1.5	293	18.3	0
06 · 02:00	24	1.5	315	18.9	0
06 · 03:00	24	1.5	293	18.3	0
06 · 04:00	24	1.5	293	16.7	2
06 · 05:00	24	1.5	293	17.2	2
06 · 06:00	24	1.5	338	18.9	0
06 · 07:00	24	1	293	22.2	0
06 · 08:00	24	1.5	270	25.6	0
06 · 09:00	24	1.5	360	27.8	0
06 · 10:00	24	2.1	315	29.4	0
06 · 11:00	24	0	—	30	1
06 · 12:00	24	3.1	158	31.1	2
06 · 13:00	24	3.6	180	30.6	2
06 · 14:00	24	4.1	203	31.1	2
06 · 15:00	24	4.1	180	28.9	2
06 · 16:00	24	3.1	203	26.7	3
06 · 17:00	24	1.5	225	27.8	2
06 · 18:00	24	2.1	225	25	2
06 · 19:00	24	2.1	225	23.3	1
06 · 20:00	24	1.5	225	21.1	2
06 · 21:00	24	1.5	248	20.6	0
06 · 22:00	24	1	270	18.9	0
06 · 23:00	24	0	—	17.8	0

Only values that passed all NOAA quality checks are used. Missing values, original fields, flags and source lines remain in the JSON. The wind record does not specify an averaging period; its speeds are neither gust maxima nor wave measurements. No climate rank, modern normal or station average is needed to answer this event question. Field definitions.

Step 4 · Back to the picture

What the comparison can carry

A shipwreck subject does not by itself establish a storm. The selected airport reports show good visibility and modest wind speeds around the museum’s event date, but conditions could differ at Monhegan. Without the casualty record, a dated description of this scene and local observations, neither the weather’s role in the grounding nor De Martini’s treatment of the sky and sea can be determined.

The museum can strengthen this study with the object’s making history, a specific description of its sky and sea, and the archival source behind the event date. Local fog or swell can differ sharply from an airport inland. Neither a painted rough sea nor a quiet airport wind, by itself, proves the weather caused a vessel’s loss.

Sources

Every source on this page

Weather values are decoded from NOAA files checked against their sha256 fingerprints. The receipts distinguish downloaded files, extracted metadata, short saved newspaper excerpts and an email from the museum’s director. The original newspaper scan was not inspected. Fingerprints preserve the evidence used; they do not independently validate the interpretation.

NOAA ISD station history, 999999–14764US government meteorological data/documentation; public domain. · retrieved 15 October 2026 · USAF 999999, WBAN 14764; historical report coordinates retained separately.sha256 1994747ab4af1b97e63adb434b4d0d022f2daee76f0c144ea9ab46be2d906604
NOAA Integrated Surface Data formatUS government meteorological data/documentation; public domain. · retrieved 15 October 2026 · pp. 5, 8–10, 63–64, 103–107: UTC, wind, visibility, sky coverage and present-weather codes.sha256 1be604b08b5f7c2429e6aef178ff8893019c234bc7bc51bfb7ec1e16a6682f04
US Lighthouse Society, Monhegan Island locationCopyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 2c5db4cf87433d0d9d6e47e7e3a188d9af3666a74db556b075cf4c691ab94ca3HTMLParser text derivative of the separately fingerprinted page; latitude 43°45.9′ N, longitude 69°19′ W. Island reference, not the painter’s viewpoint.
US Lighthouse Society, original location pageCopyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 248666edcfe0da8ee9c7804a7a331c858eb7ba338565fab5a578f518bd25cd3f
NOAA ISD, Portland airport, 1949, 999999–14764US government meteorological data/documentation; public domain. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 dd2ea7c0061a50f25002b186bec9fe66847f64eb8f4cdb44aa19ed99220ea695
Jennifer Pye, Director, Monhegan Museum of Art & History, email to the author, 13 October 2026Private correspondence, quoted with attribution; no image reuse permission. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 8577bc0945f8c2d41a45be19a573dcedc0ae493cabd9804d088dfc0b421e4dccThe email is not public; the link is to this study’s data, which reproduces the quoted passage.
Monhegan Museum collection, The Wreck of the St. Christopher, 5745Copyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 72f543d647252c4224f846feb5978b3edf4af05eb1596457b01190db17bca3dbJSON decoded from the object’s HTML data-attributes. The full collection page has a separate fingerprint; image not downloaded.
Monhegan Museum collection page, original HTMLCopyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026 · Anchor with Title The Wreck of the St. Christopher, Accession Number 5745.sha256 671d95e49a7dafd8664d821e181eef87120bbd00307e068ea3558b602e6ed8d2
Maine Art Collectors, Joseph DeMartini on MonheganCopyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 c8de6344326d030fcdf66213d3adc324164d48c5c2ca2f2b87a9287a87ed4788HTMLParser text derivative; secondary gallery history gives Squeaker Cove. Retained as an unresolved place discrepancy, not proof of a different object or of a wreck date.
Maine Art Collectors, original gallery pageCopyright retained by source; short evidence excerpts and factual metadata only. No artwork reproduction licence. · retrieved 15 October 2026sha256 b228df6739cdd1d9eb4132502d3a866766ea6b4da9d36a75762793889fcb5b2a

The numbers on this page, as JSON The method card, as JSON

The Wreck of the St. Christopher

What is written

Records of those days

Each claim tested

Verdict