REPORTER AT LARGE about the 1938 hurricane. The anemometer at the Watch Hill Coast Guard Station recorded a velocity of 121 m.p.h. This region saw the most impressive demonstration of what a hurricane can do. Misquamicut, Quononcontaug and the Napatree Point section of Watch Hill all have the same kind of shoreline- 23-mile strip of land backed by salt marshes. On this strip were a concrete highway, grass, shrubbery, trees, and some seven hundred houses. When the wind died down, and the water receded, there was nothing left but a sandpit. The Red Cross workers, attempting to locate the bodies of missing residents, found it necessary to use the telephone company's diagram of the region; there was no other way of telling where a house had stood.