USA > Texas > Galveston County > Galveston > The great Galveston disaster : containing a full and thrilling account of the most appalling calamity of modern times. > Part 9
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A tale of self sacrifice comes from the western part of the city. A young man by the name of Wash Masterson heard the cries of sollte people outside. They were calling for a rope. He had no rope, but improvised one from bed sheets, and started out to find the people who were calling. The wind and water soon tore his rope to shreds and he had to return to the house, where he made another and stronger rope.
THE CRIES OF THE PEOPLE.
The cries of the people still filled his ears. He went out a second time and after being gone for what seemed an hour or more to those who were waiting he returned with the people. They had clung to the branches of a salt cedar tree. Mr. Masterson was not satisfied with that, but went out for other people immediately, the water having begun to fall about that time, and worked all night.
A little black dog stood barking over a sand hill in the west end beyond Woollam's lake. Those who endeavored to stop his barking by driving him away did not succeed for he returned as soon as they ceased their attempts. It was suggested that he was guarding a body, but others scouted the idea.
Finally they dug beneath the spot where the dog stood, and there they found the remains of a young girl whom they identi- fied by the rings she wore as Miss Lena Everhart, a popular little lady, well known both in Galveston and Dallas. This whole family, with the exception of one son, Elmer Everhart, and a daughter, Mrs. Robert Brown, who lives near Dickinson and was there at the time, was lost. The father ran a dairy just south- west of Woollam's lake.
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At Twelfth and Sealy avenue there lived a colored man and his wife. There was a grocery on the corner and those who
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GOVERNOR REPORTS TWELVE THOUSAND DEAD.
weathered the storm report that he stood near the beer keg in the bar room of the grocery drinking steadily until he was swept away, his idea evidently being to destroy consciousness before the storm did it for him. His body was picked out of a pile of debris between Twelfth and Thirteenth on Sealy avenue.
The Catholic Orphans' Home on the beach at the west end of the city went some time after 5:30 o'clock Saturday evening. Mr. Harry Gray, who lived in Kinkead subdivision, just beyond . the city limits, was compelled to leave his house at that hour and says the home was standing then. Now not a vestige of it remains. Eight nuns and all but one of ninety-five children were lost. This child, a little tot, was found on the north side of the island in a tree. "I'se been 'seep," he lisped. "My head was in de water."
MR. GRAY'S STORY.
Mr. Gray's story is interesting. His house fell and he fought his way out with a wife who was just out of a sick bed. He managed to get to the next house with her. This was the home of Ed. Hunter. That house went between 6.30 and 7, and the Hunter family was lost. Mr. Gray caught a transom, put the arm of his wife through it, and soon found that the transom belonged to the side of the house, about 20x20 feet in size. It was nothing but the side of the house made of ordinary siding and studding. He swung onto this and even now does not under- stand how it stood'up under then.
All the time he kept telling his wife to hold onto him, and this she did. Along in the night the raft struck a tree and was swept from under them. Gray caught a limb with his wife still clinging to him. By this time he was almost completely exhausted but he managed by a hundred successive efforts to get his wife into the tree.
A little later a colored inan was seen coming through the water. Gray called to him to take to the lower limbs and not come higher, for he was afraid the tree with three people on it would be made top-heavy. When daylight came he took his wife in his arms and told the negro to go ahead for a house they saw 23
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GOVERNOR REPORTS TWELVE THOUSAND DEAD.
anything to eat because the woman in the house had nothing herself.
So they came on toward the city, but it was a long, hard pull through wet sand, and hungry and faint for the want of fresh water and food. They brought up at a house that had gone through the storm, was partly demolished and at the back of which was another house supporting it. There they remained during Sunday night, and were afraid every minute that the force of the little blow that came up during the night would demolisli the place of refuge. But it stood, and in the morning they started on, reaching the home of young Muiney during the day. There they got food and dry clothes. The other two boys were taken to the infirmary, where they are being cared for.
NEW FEATURES OF THE CALAMITY.
Another account is as follows and contains new pictures of the scene :
The elements, which had been cutting up didoes and blowing every which way during the preceding twenty-four hours, got down to it in earnest fashion Saturday morning, when a strong wind, accompanied by rain, which first came in great splashing drops which one could almost dodge, but afterwards became a hard, driving rain, began to get in its work.
Along the bay front the waves rose higher and higher and tossed about the small craft anchored in the slips like cockle shells. Striking the bulkheading of the wharves with mighty force the waves broke into clouds of spray, which leaped over the wharves and drenched the men whom duty or curiosity caused to be in that neighborhood.
Although the wind was in the north, a heavy sea was run- ning and the breakers rolled up the beach with angry roars. The little bath houses on wheels scattered along the beach were picked up by the great waves and dashed against the row of little, flimsy structures along the Midway and piled up against them in uneven stacks. Early in the forenoon the Midway presented a picture almost of desolation, filled as it was with debris from the small
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GOVERNOR REPORTS TWELVE THOUSAND DEAD.
platforms, stairways and landings along the beach front, which had been carried away and washed up by the sea. At times the waves would recede, leaving the beach almost bare of water, and then, as if gathering force anew they would sweep in, rolling several feet high, passing over the shelving beach, lapping over tracks of the street railway and gushing the water into avenue R.
Early in the forenoon the waves were leaping at times over ? the trestle work of the street railway along the beach front, making it impossible to operate the cars around the belt, as the water would have burned out the motors. The cars were therefore operated between town and the Gulf on the double tracks of either side of the belt line. A little later in the forenoon the waves under- mined the track at Twenty-fourth street and avenue R. They washed under the little Midway houses on the south side of avenue R, which were built on piling, and in places carried away the sidewalks in front of the buildings, which were not thus supported.
THE ANGER OF THE SEA.
The platform which supported the photograph gallery at the Pagoda bath house was washed away. This was not a part of the original structure, and was not as strongly built as the remainder of the bath house. The bath house proper and its pier, extending out to sea, were not at that time (Saturday 110011) disturbed by the waves, although the high rollers at times dashed so near the flooring of this and the other bath houses that it looked like a rise of a few inches would punch up the flooring.
The scene at the beach was grand. The sea in its anger was a sight beautiful, though awe-inspiring, to behold. Notwith- standing the wind and the driving rain, thousands of people went to the beachi to behold the maddened sea, and the street cars were kept quite busy. Down town, during the early morning, when the rain was not so heavy, there seemed 110 apparent necessity for getting into rainy day garb is make this trip to the beach, and many people went out in their best bibs and tuckers, to their sorrow. Well dressed men and women disembarked from the cars at the beach and picked their way amid swirling pools of
CHAPTER XVIII.
An Island of Desolation-Crumbling Walls-Faces White With Agony-Tales of Dismay and Death-Curious Sights.
O NE of the most graphic and thrilling accounts of the over- whelming calamity is contained in the following pages. It is from the brilliant pen of a visitor to the city and eye-witness of the awful ruin :
The story of Galveston's tragedy can never be written as it is. Since the cataclysm of Saturday night, a force of faithful men have been struggling to convey to humanity from time to time some of the particulars of the tragedy. They have told much, but it was impossible for them to tell all, and the world, at best, can never know all, for the thousands of tragedies written by the storm minst forever remain mysteries until eternity shall reveal all. Perhaps it were best that it should be so, for the hor- ror and anguish of those fatal and fateful hours were mercifully lost in the screaming tempest and buried forever beneath the rag- ing billows. Only God knows, and for the rest let it remain for- ever in the boundlessness of His omniscience. But in the realm of finity, the weak and staggered senses of mankind may gather fragments of the disaster, and may strive with inevitable incom- pleteness to convey the merest impression of the saddest story which ever engaged the efforts of a reporter.
Galveston ! The mournful dirges of the breakers which lash the beach can not in the remaining centuries of the world give expression to the sorrow and woe which throbs here to-day ; and if the sobbing waves and sighing winds, God's great funeral choir, fail, how can the weak pen and appalled imaginations of men perform the task? The human heart can merely feel what i. language will never be able to express. And in the case of Gal- veston, the heart must break before it can begin to feel.
I struggled all nay Tuesday to reach this isle of desolation.
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AN ISLAND OF DESOLATION.
The stores were ruined and deserted, and the blight of destruction was visible as far as the eye could reach. As horrible as all this was, it was as nothing to the hopeless faces of the miserable men, women and children in the streets.
I will not undertake to describe them, but as long as I live I will never forgot them. Many I knew personally, and these gave greeting, but God, it was nothing but a handshake and tears. It seems that everybody I had ever known here had lost somebody. The tears in their eyes, the quiver of their voices, the trembling of lips ! The brand of agony was upon their faces and despair was written across their hearts. I would plunge a dagger through my heart before I would endure this experience again.
The readers of this must pardon the personal nature of this narrative. It is impossible to write without becoming a part of the story this time. I met Elma Everhart, formerly a Dallas boy. I had known him from childhood, and all his people. Indeed, I had once been an inmate of their home in Oakcliff. I hardly knew him when he stopped me, he had grown so much. He said : " Katy and her baby are at Dickinson. That town was destroyed, but they are alive. I am going there and leave Galveston forever."
A TERRIBLE FATE.
I knew he had woe in his heart, and I queried.
"I am the only one left," he answered. "Papa, mamma, Lena and Guy-they are all gone."
I remember the last time I saw this family before they left Dallas. I remember Lena, one of the most beautiful children I ever saw. I recall her beautiful eyes and long, dark curls, and I remember when she kissed me good-bye and joyously told me she was coming to Galveston to live ! And this was her fate.
With all my old fondness for the ocean, recalling how I have lain upon the sand hour after hour, looking at its distant sails and lis- tening to its mysterious voices, recalling happy moments too 1 sacred for expression, when I think of that sweet child as one of its victims, I shall hate the sea forever.
And yet, what can this grief of mine amount to in the pres-
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AN ISLAND OF DESOLATION.
ence of the agony of the thousands who loved the 5000 souls who took Jeave of life amid the wild surging waters and pitiless tem- pest of last Saturday night ?
After surveying the dismantled business section of the city, a cabman made his tortuous way through the residence sections. It was a slow journey, for the streets were jammed with houses, furniture, cooking utensils, bedding, clothing, carpets, window frames, and everything imaginable, to say nothing of the numer- ous carcasses of the poor horses, cows and other domestic animals.
HOUSES COMPLETELY CAPSIZED.
Some of the houses were completely capsized, some were flat upon the ground with not one timber remaining upon another, others were unroofed, some were twisted into the most fantastic shapes, and there were still others with walls intact, but which had been stripped of everything in the way of furniture. It is not an uncommon thing for the wind at high velocity to perform miraculous things, but this blast, which came at the rate of 120 miles an hour, repeated all the tricks the wind has ever enacted, and gave countless new manifestations of its mysterious power. It were idle to undertake to tell the curious things to be seen in the desolate residence streets ; how the trees were uprooted and driven through houses ; how telegraph poles were driven under car tracks ; how pianos were transferred from one house to another.
More ominous than all this were the vast piles of debris, from which emanated odors which told of dead victims beneath, men, women and children, whose silent lips will never reveal the agony from which death alone released them.
More sorrowful still the tear-stained faces of the women, half- clad, who looked listlessly from the windows, haunted by mem- ories from which they can never escape-the loss of babies torn from their breasts and hurled into a maelstrom of destruction, to be seen no more forever.
What were those dismantled homes to the dismantled hearts within ? How can it be described ? Will the world ever know
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CHAPTER XIX.
Thousands Died in their Efforts to Save Others-Houses and Human Beings Floating on the Tide-An Army of Orphans-Greatest Catastrophe in Our History.
"W HEN did you first realize that you were in danger ?" That, ordinarily, would seem to be a foolish question to put to a man who had escaped death as it rode on the storm, and yet it was not a foolish question, but the natural one. For the Galveston people had for years argued out the question of the danger attending the living on the island. True, Indianola, awful even now in memory, stood out as an alarm to those who live down by the sea. True, there had been storms and storms in Galveston. True, their were people on the great mainland who contended that wind and water would bring disaster to Galveston whenever the two acted in concert and from the right direction.
But the answer to the Indianola alarm was that the situation of that unfortunate town exposed it to a storm fury ; that it was a fair mark ; that it was almost level with the water and all that. The fact that there had been storms and storms at Galveston only confirmed the people in their security. For as each had passed away without carrying any great number of lives with them, why should not this do the same ?
As to the people on the mainland who had prophesied disaster, why, they were merely timid and ignorant people. Therefore the question "when did you realize that you were in danger " was a reasonable one. And the answer was the same in nearly every case. There might have been a difference as to the moment when these people, penned like rats in a cage, first felt the terror of impend- ing death, but invariably the answer was that the storm was almost at its height before the realization came. In many cases only the. falling houses brought the realization.
One little girl at a grocery store out on avenue P, from which street to the Gulf, the storm swept the island like a broom, 371
CHAPTER XX.
The Storm's Murderous Fury-People Stunned by the Stag- gering Blow-Heroic Measures to Avert Pestilence- Thrilling Story of the Ursuline Convent,
W HILE the story of Galveston's woe can never be told, yet the demand naturally should be that as much shall be told as the human mind is capable of telling. The man does not live now, and the man never lived who could draw the picture in all its horrible details. The greatest of poets sang of the destruc- tion of Troy. Tacitus, and later other historians, have told of the deeds of the madman Nero. The contests between Marius and Sulla have filled pages through all time. The destruction of Pon- peii has been vividly described by novelists and historians.
The French revolution, with its September and August mas- sacres, its ravages, and its other fiendish details, have been in the hands of Carlyle and a score of French writers; the Gordon riots have been described by Dickens-but never a poet or historian or novelist has drawn anything near as shocking a picture of any event in the past as this stern and frightful reality .
Nearly every event of the past which has shocked humanity came about through contests between men. But men tire and men, however bitter, at last will abate their anger. In this case it was helpless humanity on the one side. In this case it was terrible nature in all its fury and strength on the other. There could be 110 appeal for mercy, because the winds have no ears. There was no resistance, because the arms of the waters were those of a giant demon. There were appeals, but they were directed above the storn1. There were struggles, but they were simply those of the drowning. Those who survived were incoherent to a great degree.
The wind shrieked ; it did not whistle as winds do. They all agree on that. The air was filled with spray, a blinding spray which affected the nostrils and throat and begat an inordinate thirst. It was dark. Yet it was light. They all agree on that.
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THE STORM'S MURDEROUS FURY.
Was there a moon ? No one saw it. Yet even late at night they could see the clouds in the sky. The light, they say was a silvery one-a sort of sheen-a strange, and yet to all a fearful kind of light. Only one person ventured an explanation. She said the air was filled with the finest spray, and that this was phosphor- lescent. There is something in this idea.
HOUSE ROCKED LIKE A CRADLE.
Did the wind blow straight away or come in gusts ? Here they differ again. One man told me that his house rocked as a cradle rocked by a mother getting her half-sleeping child to sleep. Dr. Fly described how it blew in a way to be understood. He was in the Tremont Hotel, a brick structure. He said that while it blew hard all the time gusts would come every few seconds and the wind took the strong building in its teeth then and shook it like a ter- rier would shake a rat.
There is sitting out on the mainland, not far from Texas City, a dredger which was employed about the wharves at Galveston. This vessel is a mile and a half or two miles from the water now. One of the men aboard told me that the boat was anchored with a steel rope. The Kendall Castle, a large iron steamer, dragged her anchor across this steel rope and cut it as a thread.
"On my word," said the man who told me this, "the moment the steel rope was cut the dredger seemed lifted in the air, and it appeared scarcely a minute till she was where she is now."
The vessel had been carried for miles in that short period. And there is nothing unreasonable in the story. The wind gange at the office of the Weather Bureau showed eighty-seven mniles an hour when it went out of business. They believe it blew 100 miles an hour after that. The people, before their houses fell about their ears, nailed up their window shutters and doors because 110 door latch and no windowpane ever made could stand the strength of the wind. Every one knew that once the wind entered the house, that moment the walls would be blown in every direc- tion. No one fought against the water. It was the wind they put their feeble efforts against.
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THE STORM'S MURDEROUS FURY.
But how get the bodies to the sea? Then it was that the law was laid aside.
Martial law was declared in fact, whether according to law or not. Men armed themselves and went on the streets in posses. They captured negro men and forced them to take hold of the bodies. Whisky was poured into them -- argument was made to them. They were nauseated with the work, but more whisky was poured into them. They piled the bodies on floats and drays and every kind of vehicle and thus took them to the wharf.
A GHASTLY SPECTACLE.
Here they were placed on barges. The poor living creatures, wild with liquor, beastialized by it, because they could not have done it, embarked with the putrifying cargo. The white men retched and vomited. The negroes did the same. Yet more work had to be done and now they pleaded for whisky to dull them more for their horrible work. It was given them. No man in all the world can tell of the horrors of this trip. Those who were not wild shrunk in agony from it. Those who were mad stumbled over the corpses and laid with them in drunken stupor-but be- yond the jetties the cargo was tossed into the sea.
It is claimed that they were sunk with weights. This may be partly true. This disposition of the corpses was found imprac- ticable. The work was too slow. The sea would give up its dead. As time passed the difficulty of transporting the bodies became greater. Then the burning began. The corpses wherever found were burned on the spot. If the fire might be dangerous they were pulled to an open space.
Where several were found in close proximity they were placed together for the final act. Kerosene was poured over them. Planks, lumber, anything combustible were placed upon them and the torch! applied. The incineration was never complete enough to com- pletely destroy the bones. But the flesh, breeding a pestilence, was gone. Many were buried. But the graves were only deep enough to receive the bloated bodies. The sand was full of water. Graves could be dug no deeper than as mentioned.
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THE STORM'S MURDEROUS FURY.
about seventy years of age. Around Hero's neck is a stout black collar; to this the old gentleman clung. Hero did the rest, he swam pulling along his old master from Seventh to Fourteenth streets, where they found a house standing with veranda piled with debris but intact, and into a sheltered corner of this the dog dragged the man for safety. Botlı were alive, the old gentleman was much bruised, but his mind was active, and his only grief was for the loss of his wife and daughter, for save the dog he had no one.
A DOG'S DEVOTION.
Kind hands did for him all that could be done, and while feeble and heart-broken he appeared to suffer no pain. The dog never left him there, the two throughout that fateful Sunday clung together. Toward 3 o'clock in the afternoon the old man, still sit- ting in a rocking-chair, covered in blankets, no dry bed being avail- able, appeared drowsy. This was only natural from fatigue and age, but when the head gently bent forward it was the sleep of death. However, such a gentle passing away of the soul could not be termed by such a harsh name; it was more a caress, in which the transition of the soul was wafted from the body.
The dog all these hours had nestled close to the old man's feet under the blanket, never sleeping, but guarding carefully the master. When the feet became cold, then the four-footed liero scented trouble. He tried to lie on them with his body. This not answering, he licked the cold feet; still no warinth. Then he sprang into the rocking-chair in which the corpse sat, carefully covered in sheets, tried to warm the body by covering it as much as possible with his own shaggy hair. By force the dog had to be taken away and locked up, for in his instinct he scented something wrong with the old man and strove to make things right by supply- ing the warmth of his own body. Such scenes as this old man's beautiful death and the dog's deep devotion are among the sublime lessons.
Photographers are hourly taking views of the ruins. How- ever, there is a picture about the debris which demands a sketch to
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THE STORM'S MURDEROUS FURY.
" Men strive for the art of remembering-lo, now we beg that some great magician may teach us how to forget. To forget the hor- ror of it all ; and the sobbing and the prayers. To forget the wail of the mother bereft of her young, and women's prayers that came echo- ing back from the flinty sky. To forget the death struggles of the legion of the dead, and the cries of 'Mamma ! Mamma!' as the screaming little ones were sucked into the throat of the tide. To forget that the sweet-voiced nuns bound the charity orphans together in lots and committed them to the care of God-to forget that the reaper came with the storm in his heart and the salt spray in his beard and gathered them by sheaves. Do not talk of conso- lation-there is none. Try to forget. Muffle your clamoring church bells-their noisy songs blend illy with the screams of despairing mothers beating their breasts and calling to their dead. To-day your prayers are useless, and the solemn organ's mellow tide can be freighted only with a requiem for the lost. O, for the sadness of it all; and the sobbing and the tears; for the cries of women and the thunder of the tide; for the shouting of inen and the burials in the sea.
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