USA > Texas > Galveston County > Galveston > The great Galveston disaster : containing a full and thrilling account of the most appalling calamity of modern times. > Part 11
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THERE are many people who are composed of the material
that constitutes a hero, but the majority pass through the time allotted to them on earth without having the opportunity of demonstrating the fact to the world. On the night that the awful catastrophe visited the city of Galveston few were those who had not this opportunity presented to them.
Of course there were some who failed to develop this quality. The every effort of these was directed with the one supreme purpose of self preservation. Others there were who devoted their services unreservedly to the helpless and in consequence their names will never be forgotten by those whom they preserved from a watery grave.
Some of the deeds of this nobler class will never be known- not even after the relentless sea gives up all its dead. There is one name, however, which will be recorded and preserved in the memory of some as long as that never to be forgotten night of the hurricane at Galveston is remembered by the sons of mien. That name will be taught by mothers to their children in the age to come as the name of one possessed of undying courage and heroism.
The name is that of Zachery Scott, a young medical student who was at St. Mary's Infirmary at Galveston on the fateful night. Alone and single-handed Mr. Scott rescued over 200 souls from the very jaws of death. St. Mary's Infirmary is composed of a large brick building and several wooden structures, and the latter were entirely destroyed by the fury of the wind and the water. In the wooden buildings were nearly 200 patients who were too sick and weak to battle against the elements and the raging storm,
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CHAPTER XXV
Storms of Great Violence Around Galveston-Wrecked Cities and Vast Destruction of Property- Appalling Sacrifice of Life.
A CLOSE observer and correspondent who is familiar with' every part of Texas and is capable of sizing up the situa- tion, writes as follows concerning the disaster which has left Galveston a scene of death and ruin :
" At first glance it would seem that the population of Gal- veston had been endowed by a thoughtlessness which invites the calamities it has suffered. Three times in twenty-five years storins of great violence have swept over the island on which it occupies a position exposed to every energy of the elements, and on the two occasions whose history is complete the survivors rebuilt their city, as they probably will do again, and the storm broke upon it, as most likely it will once more, with death and destruction in its blast.
" Apart from the deep sympathy which one feels for the peo- ple the situation may awaken a philosophic inquiry whose con- sideration is of less importance than the interest the subject awakens and which is reinforced by parallel cases in the history of disaster since the world began, and I propose to show in a few great cases how the citizens of Galveston are only repeating history when, even as they gather their dead, they plan a new city whose foundation shall be enduring and which shall stand defiant and permanent, a triumph of man over antagonistic nature and a civic crown of glory to their efforts. It is 110 ignoble purpose.
THE DYKES OF HOLLAND.
" The sturdy Dutchmen who threw their dykes across the sea, the Sicilians who terraced Aetna's lava sides with vineyards, the people of San Francisco who rebuilt their city when it was cast down by earthquakes until at last they found a structural design that would resist the seismic influence that hold the Pacific coast
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prevail, and when the southerly winds bank up the waters of the northern gulf, the streets of the city are flooded, the sewers deliver themselves the wrong way and the uncertain foundations of the city are weakened and prepared for the fall which follows close upon the weather conditions when they are intensified.
THE CITY A PREY TO THE STORM.
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"We have now the situation of Galveston fairly before us, and can understand how it easily succumbed to the violence of the late storm. It is true that the cyclone was of a potentiality which might have razed a more firmly built city, but probably in no other city in this country could it have caused such complete devastation.
"In twenty-five years the city of Galveston and the coast line of Texas have had three visitations of tropical hurricanes, bearing death and destruction in their blasts. Every year about the equi- noctial season storms of greater or less fury occur and never, on account of the fragile materials and loose methods of building, have they failed of doing damage, but these three occupy thrones of mark above all others. In September, 1875, the coast of Texas, from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the Sabine Pass, was swept by a cyclone that followed with its central zone the curve of the the coast, the wind varying at different times in its journey to southeast to southwest.
" The town of Indianola was blotted out of the world in an hour. Not half a dozen of its 1,200 inhabitants escaped, and the sea swept away the island on which it stood, and its site has no other mark than that which the waves rolling over it can offer. There were not enough of people to ask for help. And as there was no longer a place to rebuild, the little remnant moved else- ' where. The storm swept over Galveston, raising a tidal wave that changed in its impetuous flow the whole shape of the island. From the western end nearly two miles of land was cut off and carried around to the north side. The city was unroofed, houses toppled and fell, the water flowed in resistless currents along the levees, floating off to sea thousands of bales of cotton and destroying in
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AROSE LIKE A PHOENIX.
"But the city, although cast down, was not discouraged. It began to rebuild itself, and by Christmas of that year almost every trace of the awful calamity had disappeared. The question natur- ally arises why a population which had received such an awful warning of its exposed condition should not abandon what in a military term would be called an untenable position. The answer is obvious. They had something left there. Even the island, although distorted and out of shape, was still there and theirs, and they had nothing elsewhere, nor means to go to another place. "So, with hopeful philosophy they rebuilt their city, restored its commerce and, encouraged with such empty precepts as ' Better luck next time,' 'Lightning never strikes twice in the same place,' went forward to meet their next blow, in 1893, when another hurricane visited them. It was not so terrible in its effect, but differed only in degree. The late severe storin gives further emphatic warning, more terrible and heart-breaking in its losses of life and vaster in its destruction of property. But they will, of course, rebuild their city and seek to establish protective barriers of breakwaters and seawalls to maintain it in existence. In all likelihood they will succeed, for the history of these efforts is of final security after trial and loss, and the firin resolution of inan rises over every obstacle.
ASLEEP OVER A VOLCANO.
"Perhaps the persistency of the people who dwell on the slopes at the foot of Mount Vesuvius offers the most striking illustration of disregard of danger against which no human provision can be made. With a volcano boiling on the verge of eruptions that are forever imminent they pasture their flocks and press their grapes, careless of the menace which familiarity has taught them to de- spise. The whole kingdom of Naples is marked by the same dis- regard of natural and uncontrollable danger. The statement is accepted by the encyclopedias that in seventy-five years - from 1783 to 1857-the kingdom lost 111,000 inhabitants by the effects
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such a rythmical obedience as it would seem to appear at given places and times. In this case the weather bureau was accurately alert to the approaching disturbance. Four days before its arrival on the coast its formation in the Caribbean Sea was noted and its probable course northward chartered and proclaimed as a danger to the Atlantic States. The meteorological phenomenon was cor- rectly defined and watched in its development until on Thursday night it reached the Florida coast and struck a rude blow at Tampa. Up to this moment the weather office had made no mistake and its predictions lifted its utterance to the domain of verified prophecy.
FREAKS OF THE HURRICANE.
" Then the behavior of the storm with reference to its move- ments becomes almost fantastic. It was as if its controlling spirit had received a notice of the warning that had preceded it and the preparations of commerce to defend itself from its attacks. There- fore it made a feint demonstration upon the Atlantic Ocean, and suddenly turning fairly about in its course flew westward out of barometric supervision to seek a more vulnerable spot. Galveston was open to it, and sweeping across the gulf, from which no herald of warning could hasten in advance, it struck the Texas coast on Saturday and went howling with demoniac fury over the Missis- sippi plateau, across the lakes and down the St. Lawrence Valley out to sea again, to be chilled to death in the frigid air currents of the polar seas.
" When the West India Islands and the ports of Mexico are equipped with weather observing stations from which prompt and frequent reports shall be made, no storm can draw nigh on shores to effect a surprise. Commerce can in a measure protect itself, but ill-built cities and crops must at intervals suffer. The lesson of the last one is of warning, but how to profit by it outruns prevision that seeks absolute security. There can be no such thing, 'for as the pestilence walketh in darkness and destruction wasteth at noon still a thousand shall fall and ten thousand at thy right hand, for the hand of man cannot stay the tempest.' This is according to all human experience."
THE GREAT Galveston Disaster
CONTAINING A Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times
Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Thousands of Human Lives ; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds ; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.
Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death
Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors ; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead ; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy ; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers
By PAUL LESTER Author of "Life in the Southwest," Etc.
PROFUSELY EMBELLISHED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DISASTER
T HOUSANDS 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.
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.
CONDITIONS The work is printed from clear, new type, on good paper, and is comprised in one Octavo Volume of over 500 pages. It is embellished with many Beautiful Engravings. This magnificent work will be furnished to subscribers at the following prices :
Bound in Fine Cloth, Marbled Edges, - - - $1.50 Bound in Morocco Grained Keratol, Gilt Edges 2.50
Sold by subscription only, and cannot be had except of our regularly authorized Agents. Subscribers will not be obliged to take the book unless it corresponds with the description in every particular.
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THE GREAT GALVESTON DISASTER
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