Chapter I: Preface

Thousands of men, women and children swept to sudden death. Millions of dollars worth of property destroyed. Scenes of suffering and desolation that beggar description. Heroic efforts to save human life. The world shocked by the appalling news. Such is the thrilling story of the Galveston flood, and in this volume it is told with wonderful power and effect.

There have been many disasters by storm and flood in modern times, but none to equal this. In the brief space of twelve hours more persons lost their lives than were killed during a year of the war between the British and the Boers or during a year and a half of our war in the Philippines.

The calamity came suddenly. Galveston was not aware of its impending fate. News of an approaching cyclone produced no alarm. Suddenly word was sent that the hurricane was bending from its usual course and might strike the city. Even then there was no sudden fear, no hurrying to escape, no thought of swift destruction. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the city waked up to the awful fact that it was to be engulfed by a tidal wave, and buried in the flood of waters.

The news of the overwhelming disaster came as a shock to people everywhere. Bulletin boards in all our cities were surrounded by eager crowds to obtain the latest reports. Many who had friends in the stricken city were kept in suspense respecting their fate. With bated breath was the terrible calamity talked about, and in every part of our country committees of relief were immediately formed. The magnitude of the disaster grew from day to-day. Every fresh report added to the intelligence already received, and it was made clear that a large part of the city of Galveston, with its inhabitants, had been swept out of existence.

This work furnishes a striking description of a great city of the dead. It depicts the terrible scenes that followed the calamity, the fate that overtook the victims, and the agony of the living. It tells of the heroic efforts of the survivors to save their homes and families, and recover from the terrible blow.

It tells of a thousand of the dead towed out and buried at sea and of many hundreds cremated on shore; of the vandals who rushed in to strip lifeless bodies, unterrified by the scenes of horror on every hand; of United States soldiers shooting the robbers on sight and putting an end to their horrible sacrilege.

The story of the appalling horror, the oncoming of the cyclone, the rising waters threatening the city, the inhabitants overtaken by the flood and cut off from escape, thousands hurried to death, chaos everywhere, recovery of bodies ravaged by thieves, all this is vividly told in this volume.

The work contains thrilling stories by eye-witnesses. In this volume the survivors speak for themselves. They tell of the sudden danger that paralyzed thousands and made them helpless against the onslaught of the tempest.

They tell of separation from those who were attempting to afford relief and how futile all efforts were against the fury of the waves. They tell how their homes and places of business, their hospitals, school-houses and churches were swept away as in a moment.

There were splendid examples of courage and heroism. The graphic description of the great disaster contained in this book thrills the reader. Amidst the alarm, the threatening death, the overwhelming flood, he sees how nobly men struggled to save their families and their fortunes. He seems to ride on the crest of the waves and witness with his own eyes the terrible tragedy.

Our Government at Washington was quick to come to the rescue. It ordered tents to be provided and issued rations by the tens of thousands for the survivors. The chords of sympathy which make all men akin vibrated through every part of the civilized world.

Thousands of helping hands were stretched out toward Galveston. Millions of dollars were given for the relief of the sufferers. This volume is a complete and authentic account of the great calamity told by the survivors.

Introduction

BY RICHARD SPILLANE.

[RICHARD SPILLANE, editor of the “Galveston Tribune,” was chosen by the Mayor and Citizens’ Committee to seize any vessel in the harbor and make his way as best he could to such point as he could reach, so as to get in touch with the outside world, tell the story of the tragedy and appeal to mankind for help. He crossed the bay during a squall, the little boat in which he sailed being in imminent danger of swamping, having been stove in during the hurricane. He reached Texas City after a perilous trip, then made his way over the flooded prairie to Lamarque, where he found a rail road hand-car. With this hand-car he managed to reach League City, where he met a train coming from Houston to learn what fate had befallen Galveston. On this train he reached Houston, where after sending messages to President McKinley and Governor Sayers, he gave the news in detail to the newspapers of the nation.]

In the world’s great tragedies, that of Galveston stands remarkable. In no other case in history was a disaster met with such courage and fortitude; in no other case in history were the people of the whole world so responsive to the call for help for the helpless.

There prevails a belief that Galveston is subject to severe storms. That is a mistake. There have been heavy blows, and there have been times when the waters of the bay and the Gulf met in the city’s streets, but the storm of September 8, 1900, is without parallel. The best proof of this statement is furnished by the old Spanish charts of three hundred years ago. They contain as landmarks of Galveston Island the sign of three great trees—oaks—that stood three hundred years ago in what is known as Lafitte’s grove, twelve miles down Galveston Island from the city. These oaks withstood the storms of three centuries. They were felled by the fury of the storm of September 8.

The storm of September 8th did not, as has been supposed, come upon the city without warning. The same storm, less ferocious perhaps, had swept along the South Atlantic coast several days before. It had its origin in that breeding place of hurricanes, the West Indies, and, after swirling along the Florida and Carolina shores, doubled on its tracks, entered the Gulf, came racing westward and developing greater strength with each hour, and centered all its energies upon the Texas coast near Galveston.

On September 7th there was official warning of the approach of a severe storm, but no one expected such a tempest as was destined to devastate the city. Such warning as was given was rather addressed to mariners about to go to sea than to those living on shore.

Simultaneously with the approach of the hurricane was a great wind from the north, known locally as a “Norther.” This developed at Galveston about 2 A. M., on September 8th. The approaching hurricane from the east and southeast had been driving a great wall of water toward the shore at Galveston. The tremendous wind storm from the north acted as a counter force or check to the hurricane element.

The north wind blew the water from Galveston Bay on the one side of the city and the storm in the Gulf hurled its battalions of waves upon the beach side of the city.

Early in the day the battle between these two contending forces offered a magnificent spectacle to a student of scenery of nature. As long as the north wind held strong the city was safe. While the winds dashed great volumes of water over the wharves and flooded some streets in the business portion of the city and the waters of the Gulf on the other side of the city encroached upon the streets near the beach there was no particular fear of serious consequences, but about noon the barometer, which had been very low, suddenly began to drop at a rate that presaged a storm of tremendous violence.

Following this came the warning that the wind would, before many hours, change from the north to the southeast and to the fury of the wall of water being driven upon Galveston by the approaching hurricane would be added all the tremendous force of the wind that had previously acted as a partial check to the Gulf storm.

To those who previously had no fear, the certainty that the wind would change came as the first real note of warning. With the first shifting of the wind the waters of the Gulf swept over the city. Houses near the beach began to crumble and collapse, their timbers being picked up by the wind and waves and thrown in a long line of battering rams against the structures. Men, women and children fled from their homes and sought safety in higher portions of the city, or in buildings more strongly built. Some were taken out in boats, some in wagons, some waded through the waters, but the flood rose so rapidly that the approach of night found many hundreds battling in the waters, unable to reach places of safety. The air was full of missiles.

The wind tore slates from roofs and carried them along like wafers. A person struck by one of these, driven with the fearful violence of the storm, was certain to be maimed, if not killed outright. The waves, with each succeeding sweep of the in-rushing tide, brought a greater volume of wreckage as house after house toppled and fell into the waters. So tremendous was the roar of the storm that all other sounds were dwarfed and drowned. During the eight hours from 4 P. M. until midnight, the hurricane raged with a fury greater than words can describe. What height the winds reached will never be known. The wind gauge at the weather bureau recorded an average of 84 miles an hour for five consecutive minutes, and then the instruments were carried away. That was before the storm had become really serious. The belief, as expressed by the observer, that the wind averaged between 110 and 120 miles an hour, is as good information as is obtainable.

Nothing so exemplified the impotency of man as the storm. Massive buildings were crushed like egg shells, great timbers were carried through the air as though they were of no weight, and the winds and the waves swept everything before them until their appetite for destruction was satiated and their force spent.

A remarkable feature about the storm is the disparity in the depth of water in different portions of the city, and the undoubted fact that the waters subsided on the north side of the city hours before they did on the south side.

These peculiarities are explained by the topography of the island. Broadway, which marks the center, or middle of the city, proper, is on the ridge, from which the land slopes on one side, toward the bay and on the other, toward the Gulf. The waters from the Gulf passed over this ridge and swept on toward the bay during the most furious stages of the storm, but the full energies of wind and water were directed upon that portion of the city between the Gulf and the Broadway Ridge. Of the lives lost in the city, 90 per cent. were in the district named.

How many lives were sacrificed to the Storm King will never be known. The census taken in June showed that Galveston had a population of 38,000. Outside the city limits on Galveston Island there were 1,600 persons living. The dead in the city exceeded 5000. Of the 1600 living outside the city limits, 1200 were lost. This frightful mortality—75 per cent.—outside the city is explained by the fact that most of the people there lived in frail structures and had no places of comparative safety to take refuge in. In the mainland district swept by the storm, at least 100 persons perished. It is safe, therefore, to state that at least 7000 lives were lost.

Of the property damage no estimate can be considered accurate. The estimates range from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000.

Of marvelous escapes from death, of acts of supreme heroism, of devotion and courage beyond parallel, the storm developed many instances. In some cases whole families were blotted out, in others the strong perished and the weak survived. Of the various branches of one family, 42 were killed, while in one household 13 out of a total of 15 were lost.

Such a scene of desolation as met the eyes of the people of Galveston when day dawned Sunday, September 9, has rarely been witnessed on earth. Fifteen hundred acres of the city had been swept clear of every habitation. Every street was choked with ruins, while the sea, not content with tearing away a great strip along the beach front, had piled the wreckage in one great long mass from city end to city end. Beneath these masses of broken buildings, in the streets, in the yards, in fence corners, in cisterns, in the bay, far out across the waters on the mainland shores, everywhere, in fact, were corpses. Galveston was a veritable charnel-house. To bury the dead was a physical impossibility. Added to the horror of so many corpses was the presence of carcasses of thousands of horses, cattle, dogs and other domestic animals.

To a people upon whom such a terrible calamity had been visited, now devolved a duty the like of which a civilized people had never been called to perform. To protect the living the dead had to be gotten rid of with all speed, for with corpses on every side, with carcasses by the thousands, and with a severe tropic sun to hasten decomposition, pestilence in its most terrible form threatened the living if the dead were not removed.

The tumbrels that rumbled over Paris streets with the gruesome burdens that came from Robespierre’s abattoir had little work compared with the carts and wagons of Galveston in the days that followed the awful storm. It was at first determined to bury the dead at sea, but the procession of the dead seemed neverending, and the cargoes that were taken to the deep and cast upon the waters came back with the tides and littered the shores. Then it was decided to burn the dead.

Ye who know not the horror of those days, who took no part in the saddest spectacle that man ever witnessed, may well shed tears of sympathy for those whose human tenement blazed on the funeral pyre in street or avenue, or whose requiem was sung by the waves that had brought death—but shed tears, too, for the brave men who faced this most gruesome duty with a Spartan courage the world has never known before.

The dead past has buried its dead.

For a week Galveston was under martial law. There was no disorder. There was some robbing of the dead by ghouls. This was checked by a punishment swift and sure.

The city rose from its ruins as if by magic. Street after street was cleared of debris. A small army of men worked from early morn until the shadows of night descended, to lift the city from its burden of wreckage. Then, when danger of epidemic seemed passed, attention was turned to commerce. The bay was strewn with stranded vessels. Monster ocean steamers weighing thousands of tons had been picked up like toys, driven across the lowlands, and thrown far from their moorings. One big steamship was hurled through three bridges, another, weighing 4,000 tons, was carried twenty-two miles from deep water, and dashed against a bayou bluff in another county.

The great wharves and warehouses along the bay front were a mass of splintered, broken timbers.

But the mighty energy of man worked wonders. Marvelous to say, under such conditions, a bridge 2⅛ miles long was built across the bay within seven days and Galveston, which had been cut off from the world, was once more in active touch with all the marts of trade and commerce. An undaunted people strove as only an indomitable people can strive, to rehabilitate the city.

The signs of the cripple are still upon the city, but every hour brings nearer the day when the crutches will be thrown away and Galveston, which by nature and by man was chosen as the entrepot for the great West, will rise to a loftier destiny and a more enduring commercial prosperity than seemed possible before she was tried in the crucible of disaster. Longfellow says:

Our lot is the common lot of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

The dark and dreary days were crowded into Galveston’s life with horror unspeakable. It is an inexorable law of nature that after the storm comes the radiance of a glorious sunshine.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE

First News of the Great Calamity—Galveston Almost Totally
Destroyed by Wind and Waves—Thousands Swept to Instant Death 17

CHAPTER II.

The Tale of Destruction Grows—A Night of Horrors—Sufferings of the
Survivors—Relief Measures by the National Government 29

CHAPTER III.

Incidents of the Awful Hurricane—Unparalleled Atrocities by
Lawless Hordes—Earnest Appeals for Help 42

CHAPTER IV.

The Cry of Distress in the Wrecked City—Negro Vandals Shot
Down—Progress of the Relief Work—Strict Military Rules 61

CHAPTER V.

Vivid Pictures of Suffering in Every Street and House—The Gulf
City a Ghastly Mass of Ruins—The Sea Giving Up its Dead—Supplies
Pouring in from Every Quarter 86

CHAPTER VI.

Two Survivors Give Harrowing Details of the Awful
Disaster—Hundreds Eager to Get out of Galveston—Cleaning up the
Wreckage 107

CHAPTER VII.

Not a House in Galveston Escaped Damage—Young and Old, Rich and
Poor, Hurried to a Watery Grave—Citizens With Guns Guarding the
Living and the Dead 129

CHAPTER VIII.

Fears of Pestilence—Searching Parties Clearing away the Ruins and
Cremating the Dead—Distracted Crowds Waiting to Leave the
City—Wonderful Escapes 146

CHAPTER IX.

Story of a Brave Hero—A Vast Army of Helpless Victims—Scenes that
Shock the Beholders—Our Nation Rises to the Occasion 167

CHAPTER X.

Details of the Overwhelming Tragedy—The Whole City Caught in the
Death Trap—Personal Experiences of Those Who Escaped—First
Reports More than Confirmed 191

CHAPTER XI

Galveston Calamity—One of the Greatest Known to History—Many
Thousands Maimed and Wounded—Few Heeded the Threatening
Hurricane—The Doomed City Turned to Chaos 212

CHAPTER XII

Thrilling Narratives by Eye-witnesses—Path of the Storms Fury
Through Galveston—Massive Heaps of Rubbish—Huge Buildings Swept
into the Gulf 234

CHAPTER XIII

Refugees Continue the Terrible Story—Rigid Military Patrol—The
City in Darkness at Night—Hungry and Ragged Throngs 257

CHAPTER XIV.

Dead Babes Floating in the Water—Sharp Crack of Soldiers’
Rifles—Tears Mingle With the Flood—Doctors and Nurses for the
Sick and Dying 273

CHAPTER XV.

Family in a Tree-top All Night—Rescue of the Perishing—Railroad
Trains Hurrying Forward With Relief—Pathetic Scenes in the
Desolate City 293

CHAPTER XVI.

Startling Havoc Made by the Angry Storm—Vessels Far Out on the
Prairie—Urgent Call for Millions of Dollars—Tangled Wires and
Mountains of Wreckage 318

CHAPTER XVII.

Governor Sayres Revises His Estimate of Those Lost and Makes it
12,000—A Multitude of the Destitute—Abundant Supplies and Vast
Work of Distribution 340

CHAPTER XVIII.

An Island of Desolation—Crumbling Walls—Faces White With
Agony—Tales of Dismay and Death—Curious Sights 360

CHAPTER XIX.

Thousands Died in Their Efforts to Save Others—Houses and Humans
Beings Floating on the Tide—An Army of Orphans—Greatest
Catastrophe in our History 371

CHAPTER XX.

The Storm’s Murderous Fury—People Stunned by the Staggering
Blow—Heroic Measures to Avert Pestilence—Thrilling Story of the
Ursuline Convent 391

CHAPTER XXI.

Unparalleled Bombardment of Waves—Wonderful Courage Shown by the
Survivors—Letter from Clara Barton 416

CHAPTER XXII.

Galveston Storm Stories—Fierce Battles with Surging Waves—Vivid
Accounts from Fortunate Survivors—A City of Sorrow 440

CHAPTER XXIII.

Heroic Incidents—Arrival of Relief Trains—Hospitals for the
Injured—Loud Call for Skilled Labor 461

CHAPTER XXIV.

One Hero Rescues Over Two Hundred—Traveler Caught in the Rush of
Water—Report of a Government Official—How the Great Storm
Started 477

CHAPTER XXV.

Storms of Great Violence Around Galveston—Wrecked Cities and Vast
Destruction of Property—Appalling Sacrifice of Life 497

Imprisoned by the Storm 509

Names of the Victims of the Great Galveston Horror 517

HOTEL GRAND AND ITS ENVIRONS—GALVESTON]

BRINGING THE INJURED TO THE HOSPITAL FOR TREATMENT]