The Oil Drum

The waters between the US and Europe have been covered with shipping for centuries. I am from the Liverpool area, and my mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather all worked in the shipping industry. Record keeping was generally excellent by the last decades of the 19th century - passenger lists, crew lists, bills of lading, all significant events during the voyage were logged. Trade between European ports (especially Liverpool) and the US South and Carribean (hurricane country) was extremely extensive because those trade links became established during the slave trade, which was extensively facilitated by Liverpool ships. Sugar, tobacco, cotton both were major imports to Europe from the South and Carribean, and manufactured goods were extensively exported (Liverpool was known as the Cast Iron Shore at one period).

I would be surprised if many major Atlantic storms were not noted and recorded by Victorian society (let alone twentieth century society). And while I don't agree with NOAA's current official position on the cause of hurricane upsurge (which I assume has to pass muster with their political bosses), I do think they've made very extensive and thorough efforts to find and document past hurricanes. I think the low years are low because the basin was quiet, not because of missing data. Here's an example of the kind of data that they has been able to reconstruct for the period of interest (tracks for the first year of the LA Times map). You can see there's coverage of a number of storms that did not make land - even tropical depressions.

Here's 1884 - a quiet year in which nonetheless, two of the known tracks don't make landfall.

And here's 1887, the busiest year in the 19th century.

Sorry for the long comment, but I think it's a very important point.