Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  John J. Moody, a member of the committee sent from Houston to take charge of the relief station at Texas City, reported to the mayor of Houston on Tuesday as follows:

  To the Mayor—Sir: On arriving at Lamarque this morning, I was informed that the largest number of bodies was along the coast of Texas City. Fifty-six were buried yesterday and today within less than two miles, extending opposite this place and toward Virginia City. It is yet six miles farther to Virginia City, and the bodies are thicker where we are now than where they have been buried. A citizen inspecting in the opposite direction reports dead bodies thick for twenty miles.

  The residents of this place have lost all—not a habitable building left, and they have been too busy disposing of the dead to look after personal affairs. Those who have anything left are giving it to the others, and yet there is real suffering. I have given away nearly all the bread I brought for our own use to hungry children.

  A number of helpless women and beggared children were landed here from Galveston this afternoon and no place to go and not a bite to eat. Tomorrow others are expected from the same place. Every ten feet along the wreck-lined coast tells of acts of vandalism; not a trunk, valise, or tool chest but what has been rifled. We buried a woman this afternoon whose finger bore the mark of a recently removed ring.

  The United States government furnished several thousand tents for the Houston camp, which was under the supervision of the United States Marine Hospital authorities.

  General McKibbin, who was sent to Galveston by the War Department to investigate the conditions prevailing there, made the following official report on Wednesday, September 12:

  Houston, Texas, September 12, 1900—Adjutant General, Washington—Arrived at Galveston at 6 p.m., having been ferried across bay in a yawl boat. It is impossible to adequately describe the condition existing. The storm began about 9 a.m. Saturday and continued with constantly increasing violence until after midnight. The island was inundated; the height of the tide was from eleven to thirteen feet. The wind was a cyclone. With few exceptions, every building in the city is injured. Hundreds are entirely destroyed.

  All the fortifications except the rapid-fire battery at San Jacinto are practically destroyed. At San Jacinto every building except the quarantine station has been swept away. Battery O, First Artillery, United States Army, lost twenty-eight men. The officers and their families were all saved. Three members of the hospital corps lost. Names will be sent as soon as possible. Loss of life on the island is possibly more than one thousand. All bridges are gone, waterworks destroyed, and all telegraph lines are down.

  Colonel Roberts was in the city and made every effort to get telegrams through. City under control of committee of citizens and perfectly quiet.

  Every article of equipment or property pertaining to Battery O was lost. Not a record of any kind is left. The men saved had nothing but the clothing on their persons. Nearly all are without shoes or clothing other than their shirts and trousers. Clothing necessary has been purchased and temporary arrangements made for food and shelter. There are probably five thousand citizens homeless and absolutely destitute who must be clothed, sheltered, and fed. Have ordered 20,000 rations and tents for 1,000 people from Sam Houston. Have wired commissary general to ship 30,000 rations by express. Lieutenant Perry will make his way back to Houston and send this telegram.

  McKIBBIN

  Captain Charles S. Riche, USA, corps of engineers, when seen after he had completed a tour of inspection of the government works around Galveston, made the following statement:

  The jetties are sunk nearly to mean low tide level but not seriously breached. The channel is as good as before, perhaps better, twenty-five feet certainly.

  Fort Crockett, fifteen-pounder implacements, concrete all right, standing on filling; water underneath. Battery for eight mortars about like preceding, and mortars and carriages on hand unmounted and in good shape. Shoreline at Fort Crockett has moved back about six hundred feet. At Fort San Jacinto, the battery for eight twelve-inch mortars is badly wrecked, and magazines reported fallen in. The mortars are reported safe. No piling was under this battery. Some of the sand parapet is left. The battery for two ten-inch guns badly wrecked. Both gun platforms are down and guns leaning. The battery for two 4.7-inch rapid-fire guns, concrete standing upon piling, both guns apparently all right. The battery for two fifteen-pounder guns, concrete apparently all right, standing on piling.

  Fort Travis, Bolivar Point—Battery for three fifteen-pounder guns, concrete intact, standing on piling. East gun down. Western gun probably all right. The shoreline has moved back about one thousand feet on the line of the rear of these batteries.

  Under the engineers’ corps are the fortifications, built at a considerable expense; also the harbor improvements, upon which more than $8,000,000 had been expended.

  “I fear Galveston is destroyed beyond its ability to recover,” is the manner in which Quartermaster Baxter concluded his report, made September 12, to the War Department at Washington. He recommended the continuance of his office only long enough to recover the office safes and close up accounts and declared all government works were wrecked so restoration was impossible.

  This gloomy prophecy for the city’s future was reflected in an official report to Governor Sayers of Texas by ex–state treasurer Wortham, who spent a day at Galveston, investigating the situation. His statement claimed that 75 percent of the city was demolished and gives little hope for rebuilding.

  Mr. Wortham, who acted as aid to Adjutant General Scurry, Texas National Guard, during the inquiry, said in his report:

  The situation at Galveston beggars description. I am convinced that the city is practically wrecked for all time to come.

  Fully 75 percent of the business of the town is irreparably wrecked, and the same percent of damage is to be found in the residence district. Along the wharf front, great ocean steamers have bodily bumped themselves on the big piers and lie there, great masses of iron and wood, that even fire cannot totally destroy. The great warehouses along the waterfront are smashed in on one side, unroofed and gutted throughout their length, their contents either piled in heaps on the wharves or along the streets. Small tugs and sailboats have jammed themselves half into the buildings, where they were landed by the incoming waves and left by the receding waters. Houses are packed and jammed in great confusing masses in all of the streets.

  Great piles of human bodies, dead animals, rotting vegetation, household furniture, and fragments of the houses themselves are piled in confused heaps right in the main streets of the city. Along the gulf front, human bodies are floating around like cordwood. Intermingled with them are to be found the carcasses of horses, chickens, dogs, and rotting vegetable matter. Above all arises the foulest stench that ever emanated from any cesspool, absolutely sickening in its intensity and most dangerous to health in its effects.

  Along the Strand adjacent to the gulf front, where are located all the big wholesale warehouses and stores, the situation is even worse. Great stores of fresh vegetation have been invaded by the incoming waters and are now turned into garbage piles of most befouling odors. The gulf waters while on the land played at will with everything, smashing in doors of stores, depositing bodies of humans where they pleased, and then receded, leaving the wreckage to tell its own tale of how the work had been done. As a result, the great warehouses are tombs, wherein are to be found the dead bodies of human beings and carcasses, almost defying the efforts of relief parties.

  In the pile of debris along the street, in the water, and scattered throughout the residence portion of the city are to be found masses of wreckage, and in these great piles are to be found more human bodies and household furniture of every description.

  Handsome pictures are seen lying alongside of the ice-cream freezers and resting beside the nude figure of some man or woman. These great masses of debris are not confined to any one particular sect
ion of the city.

  The waters of the gulf and the winds spared no one who was exposed. Whirling houses around in its grasp, the wind piled their shattered frames high in confusing masses and dumped their contents on top.

  Men and women were thrown around like so many logs of wood and left to rot in the withering sun.

  I believe that, with the best exertions of the men, it will require weeks to secure some semblance of physical order in the city, and it is doubtful even then if all the debris will be disposed of.

  I never saw such a wreck in my life. From the gulf front to the center of the island, from the ocean back, the storm wave left death and destruction in its wake.

  There is hardly a family on the island whose household is not short a member or more, and in some instances entire families have been washed away or killed. Hundreds who escaped from the waves did so only to become victims of a worse death by being crushed by falling buildings.

  Down in the business portion of the city, the foundations of great buildings have given way, carrying towering structures to their ruin. These ruins, falling across the streets, formed barricades on which gathered all the floating debris and many human bodies. Many of these bodies were stripped of their clothing by the force of the water and the wind, and there was nothing to protect them from the scorching sun, the millions of flies, and the rapid invasion of decomposition that set in.

  Many of the bodies have decayed so rapidly that they could not be handled for burial.

  Some of the most conservative men on the island place the loss of human beings at not less than 7,500 and possibly 10,000, while others say it will not exceed 5,000.

  Chief Willis L. Moore, of the United States Weather Bureau at Washington, being asked his opinion of the idea of rebuilding Galveston on some other site, replied as follows:

  Weather Bureau, US, Washington, DC, September 13, 1900.

  I should not advise the abandonment of the city of Galveston. It is true that tropical hurricanes sometimes move westward across the gulf and strike the Texas coast, but such movement is infrequent. Within the last thirty years, no storm of like severity has touched any part of the coast of the United States. There are many points on both the Atlantic and gulf coasts, some of them occupied by cities the size of Galveston, that are equally exposed to the force of both wind and water should a hurricane move in from the ocean or gulf and obtain the proper position relative to them. It would not be advisable to abandon these towns and cities merely because there is a remote probability that, at some future time, a hurricane may be the cause of great loss of life and property.

  We have just passed through a summer that, for sustained high temperature, has no parallel within the last thirty years. Records of low temperature, torrential rains, and other meteorological phenomena that have stood for twenty and thirty years are not infrequently broken. There does not appear to be, so far as we know, any law governing the occurrence or recurrence of storms. The vortex of a hurricane is comparatively narrow, at most not more than twenty or thirty miles in width. It is only within the vortex that such a great calamity as has befallen Galveston can occur.

  It would seem that, rather than abandon the city, means should be adopted at Galveston and other similarly exposed cities on the Atlantic and gulf coasts to erect buildings only on heavy stone foundations that should have solid interiors of masonry to a height of ten feet above mean sea level. Rigid building regulations should allow no other structures erected for habitations in the future in any city located at sea level and that is exposed to the direct sweep of the sea.

  But Galveston should take heart, as the chances are that not once in a thousand years would she be so terribly stricken, and high, solid foundations would doubtless make her impregnable to loss of life by all future storms.

  WILLIS L. MOORE,

  Chief US Weather Bureau

  The courage of Galveston’s businessmen under the distressing conditions was shown by the utterances of Mr. Eustace Taylor, one of the best-known residents of that city, a cotton buyer known to the trade in all parts of the country. Mr. Taylor was asked on Thursday succeeding the flood for an opinion as to the future of Galveston.

  “I think,” he said

  that what we have done here for the four days which have passed since the storm has been wonderful. It will take us two weeks before we can ascertain the actual commercial loss. But we are going to straighten out everything. We are going to stay here and work it out. We will have a temporary wharf within thirty days, and with that we can resume business and handle the traffic through Galveston.

  I think that, within thirty or forty days, business will be carried on in no less volume than before. I am going to stand right up to Galveston.

  If it costs me the last cent, I will stand up for Galveston. With our temporary wharf, we shall put from one thousand to two thousand men at work loading vessels, while we are waiting for the railroads to restore bridges and terminals on the island. We shall bring business by barges from Virginia Point and load in midstream. In this way we shall not only resume our commercial relations, but we shall be able to put the labor of the city at work.

  This port holds the advantage over every other port of this country for accommodating ten million producers and will accommodate millions of tons, and in inviting these millions, as we have, to continue their business through this port, we must in our construction do it on the same lines employed by the communities of Boston, New York, Buffalo, and Chicago, the stability of which was plainly illustrated in some structures recently erected in our community.

  The port is all right. The ever-alert engineers in charge of the harbor here have already taken their soundings. The fullest depth of water remains. The jetties, with slight repair, are intact, and because of these conditions, which exist nowhere else for the territory and people it serves, the restoration will be more rapid than may be thought, and the flow of commerce will be as great and, for the courage and fortitude and foresight to look beyond the unhappy events of today, as prosperous and secure as in any part of our prosperous country.

  J. C. Stewart, a well-known grain elevator builder, arrived at Galveston on Thursday in response to a telegram from General Manager M. E. Bailey of the Galveston Wharf Company. He at once made an inspection of the grain elevators and their contents and then said not 2 percent of the elevators had been damaged. The spouts were intact, and elevator “A” would be ready to deliver grain to ships the following Sunday.

  The wheat in elevator “A” was loaded into vessels just as rapidly as they arrived at the elevator to take it. As soon as the elevator was emptied of its grain, the wheat from elevator “Q” was transferred to it and loaded into ships. Very little of the wheat in elevator “B” had been injured, but the conveyors were swept away, and it was necessary to transfer the grain to elevator “A” in order to get it to the ships. Mr. Bailey put a large force of men to work clearing up each of the wharves, and the company was ready for new business all along the line within eight days.

  Pestilence could only be avoided here by cremation. That was the order of the day. Human corpses, dead animals, and all debris were therefore to be submitted to the flames. On Thursday upward of four hundred bodies, mostly women and children, were cremated, and the work went rapidly on. They were gathered in heaps of twenty and forty bodies, saturated with kerosene, and the torch applied.

  A conflict of authority, due to a misunderstanding, precipitated a temporary disorganization of the policing of the city of Galveston on Thursday. When General Scurry, adjutant general of the Texas National Guard, arrived at Galveston on Tuesday night with about two hundred militia from Houston, he at once conferred with the chief of police as to the plans for guarding property, protecting the lives of citizens, and preserving law and order. An order was then issued by the chief of police to the effect that the soldiers should arrest all persons found carrying arms, unless they showed a written orde
r signed by the chief of police or mayor of the city giving them permission to go armed.

  Sheriff Thomas had, meantime, appointed and sworn in 150 special deputy sheriffs. These deputies were supplied with a ribboned badge of authority but were not given any written or printed commission. Acting under the order issued by the chief of police, Major Hunt McCaleb of Galveston, who was appointed as aide to General Scurry, issued an order to the militia to arrest all persons carrying arms without the proper authority. The result was that about fifty citizens wearing deputy sheriff badges were taken into custody by the soldiers and taken to police headquarters. The soldiers had no way of knowing by what authority the men were acting with these badges and would listen to no excuses.

  General Scurry and Sheriff Thomas, hearing of the wholesale arrests, called at police headquarters and consulted with Acting Chief Amundsen. The latter referred General Scurry to Mayor Jones. Then General Scurry and Sheriff Thomas held a conference at the city hall. These two officers soon arrived at an understanding, and an agreement was decided upon to the effect that all persons deputized as deputy sheriffs and all persons appointed as special officers should be permitted to carry arms and pass in and out of the guard lines. General Scurry suggested that the deputy sheriffs and special police—and the regular police, for that matter—guard the city during the daytime and that the militia take charge of the city at night.

  General Scurry was acting for and by authority granted by Mayor Jones and promptly said he was there to work in harmony with the city and county authorities and that there would be no conflict. When General Scurry and Sheriff Thomas called upon the mayor, the mayor said that he knew that, if the adjutant general, the chief of police, and the sheriff would get together, they could take care of the police work.