the Waters-Pierce Oil Company was picked from the Fifteenth street pier and carried to Thirteenth street. The old Union Depot, in recent years used as the office of the superintendent of the wharf yards, was dashed to pieces, as were numerous small frame buildings along the wharf front. Men were sent out Sunday morning to report the condition of the bridges across Galveston Bay, but were unable to reach them.
“Telegraphic communication was also cut off on Saturday. The linemen who went out Sunday reported that the railroad bridges were all washed away, and there was not sufficient material in Galveston to rebuild the telegraph lines. The cables under the channel are gone. The lines will have to be built to the city from the mainland. Strenuous efforts were made on Sunday to repair the damage to the Mexican cable, but on account of the sea being high it was impossible to pick up the lost end of the cable.
“Thousands of telegrams were filed at the telegraph office during the day, with the expectation that they would be sent to Houston for transmission, but the captain of the only small tug available would not venture on the trip with a new crew, his engineer and fireman having been lost, while tugs which might be hired were of too deep draught to go up the bayou.
IN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT.
“In the business district not a building escaped injury. The Grand Opera House is caved in, and the fourth story of the Hotel Grand, a part of the same building, was blown off. The third story of the City Hall was blown away. The three story building of the Ritter Cafe was demolished, and crashed into the rear of the News Building. The fourth story was torn from the Moody Building, at Twenty-second street and the strand. The Masonic Temple was partially unroofed and the tower torn away. The upper stories of the Harmony Club Building were caved in, and the frame building across the street was demolished.
“Among other buildings damaged or destroyed was the Galveston Orphans’ Home, all the children being reported unhurt. The Sacred Heart Church, one of the largest churches in the city, is a total wreck. St. Mary’s University, adjoining it is considerably damaged, and the athletic building was destroyed. The First Baptist Church is a wreck. The parsonage adjoining St. John’s Methodist Church was wrecked. The Ball High School building is badly damaged.”
“Over thirty persons were rescued from St. Mary’s Infirmary but quite a number perished. A mother and child, a Mexican woman and child and an elderly lady, while going to the cotton mills, were drowned. While the mill was crowded with people the tower fell in, killing and injuring several persons. Over one thousand persons sought shelter in the County Court House. A lady and child from St. Louis, names not ascertained, who were visiting the family of police officer John Bowe, were lost. Mrs. Burns, mother of motorman Burns, and daughter, also perished, motorman Parker, wife and children, were killed. Mrs. Benhill and child were drowned.
“Three undertaking establishments are all being utilized as morgues, and a fourth morgue was opened in a large building on the Strand. Some of the draymen at first refused to haul more than one body at a time, demanding the price for a full load for each trip. On Sunday evening, however, the few who made this demand agreed to bring as many bodies as their carts would hold. Owing to the streets being full of debris it is only possible to use the two-wheeled carts.
CARING FOR THE DEAD.
“Many of those who escaped tell of thrilling experiences. Mr. and Mrs. James Irwin got out on the roof of their dwelling. They were seated on the side of the comb, and when the building blew over they floated off separately on sections of the roof. Mrs. Irwin was on the raft alone all night. Mr. Irwin, who had found refuge at the Ursuline Convent, and who despaired of seeing his wife again, heard a cry for help. Hoping to rescue a human being, he pulled off through the water, and was surprised and overjoyed to find his wife still afloat on the roof.
“The city is not without a water supply, but it is in total darkness. The city street railroad has suspended business, much of its track being washed out. It will be a month before cars can be operated by electricity, but horse car service will be substituted at the earliest possible moment. The plant of the Galveston Gas Company is partially demolished, and is out of commission. Those who use gas for fuel are helpless. Fire wood was swept away, but there is plenty of drift wood to be had.
“Several members of the police force were lost, and others lost their families. The force is greatly reduced in numbers, and at present is insufficient to meet the demand upon it.”
The foregoing is a horrifying account, truthful and not over-drawn. In fact, the picture is far short of the reality.
RESISTLESS POWER OF THE HURRICANE.
It is a misnomer to call the violent revolving storm which devastated the city of Galveston and the adjacent coast of Texas a cyclone. It was in reality a hurricane, and more specifically what is known to meteorologists as a West Indian hurricane. A hurricane has a much smaller centre or diameter than a cyclone, travels with far greater rapidity, and its blasts often reach a velocity of 100 miles an hour. The hurricane of the West Indies, which is really born in the heated waters of the South Atlantic, and which as a rule curves when it reaches the Yucatan Channel and follows the course of the Gulf Stream, decreases in intensity as it travels further north, broadens in diameter, and becomes the cyclone of the North Atlantic.
It is a curious feature of the Galveston hurricane that, like the great hurricane of September, 1889, which devastated Vera Cruz, it did not follow the course of the Gulf Stream, but curved westward instead of eastward, after passing the Yucatan Channel, and rushed in upon the Texan coast. Galveston was not up to this time considered as within the hurricane belt, and its awful visitation is proof that the laws of storms have exceptions to their rules.
The late Padre Vines, of Havana, the venerable and learned Jesuit priest, who made a lifelong study of the birth and course of West Indian hurricanes, was accustomed to warn by cable the many friends that he had among the captains of the vessels plying to and from West Indian ports of the approach of hurricanes and their probable course.
In September, 1889, he cabled to Captain Joshua Reynolds, commanding one of the Ward steamers, and who was just leaving Vera Cruz for New York, that a hurricane was approaching from the eastward, and that he would better steam slowly to and past Progresso and let the great storm pass up and along the Gulf Stream. Captain Reynolds acted in obedience to the warning, but this particular hurricane, like the one that struck Galveston, curved to the westward instead of to the eastward, after passing the Yucatan Channel, overcame an area of high barometer that, hung over the Mexican coast, and rushed into Vera Cruz, carrying death and destruction in its wake. Captain Reynolds and his ship safely weathered the hurricane and were received at Havana with great rejoicing, where it had been thought they were lost.
It was in 1859 that still another West Indian hurricane curved the wrong way and swept the waters of the Gulf over Last Island, then the great summer resort of Southern society, situated a few miles west of the mouth of the Mississippi off the coast of Barataria. Those who wish to obtain some conception of the horrors attending the Galveston hurricane should read Lafcadio Hearn’s story of “Chita: The Romance of Last Island,” in which that skilled word painter depicts the scenes of the awful tragedy which decimated the households of the South.
STIRRING
