Until this week the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. was the storm of September 8, 1900 in Galveston. The 1900 storm was weaker than Katrina; Galveston was less populated than New Orleans; and the topography of Galveston allowed the water to drain after the storm had passed. The damage nevertheless was stark. In a city of 36,000, about 6,000 were dead. Half the buildings were demolished.
There were too many dead to bury. They tried to weigh the bodies down and bury them at sea, but they washed back to shore. They cremated them.
Then, as now, there were looters. Vigilantes shot hundreds of them. Galveston was under martial law for one week.
The Red Cross began a relief effort, headed by the Red Cross' founder Clara Barton. On Monday, September 10, she received word of Saturday's storm. On Tuesday, she and nine companions sponsored by the New York World set out from Washington, via Atlanta and New Orleans, for Galveston, arriving Thursday September 13 with $2000 in relief funds from that journal.
The records of that storm and the recovery are available in great wealth on the web. I have extracted a few passages and photos below. The scale of devastation is at once dwarfed and made vast by the stories of Katrina. On the one hand, New Orleans 2005 was a greater city than Galveston 1900 and the destruction of Galveston seems small by comparison. On the other hand, the storm of 1900 took a far greater toll in lives: if a comparable number of deaths had occurred in New Orleans, we would now be witnessing over 150,000 dead.
The storm of 1900, like Katrina, is a story of humans fighting wind, water, each other, and death to restore order where it's been lost to chaos.
Following the storm, Galveston was cut off from the world for around 24 hours:
TELEGRAM
Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Manager, Western Union
Houston, Texas
Do you hear anything about Galveston?
Willis L. Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
TELEGRAM
Houston, Texas
7:37 p.m.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Willis Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau Washington, D.C.
We have been absolutely unable to hear a word from Galveston since 4 p.m. yesterday...
G. L. Vaughan,
Manager
Western Union, Houston
TELEGRAM
Houston, Texas
11:25 p.m.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Willis Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
First news from Galveston just received by train which could get no closer to the bay shore than six miles, where Prairie was strewn with debris and dead bodies. About two hundred corpses counted from train. Large Steamship stranded two miles inland. Nothing could be seen of Galveston. Loss of life and property undoubtedly most appalling. Weather clear and bright here with gentle southeast wind.
G. L. Vaughan
Manager,
Western Union, Houston
These images are provided at Random House's 1900 storm web site, courtesy of the Rosenberg Library in Galveston.
Isaac Cline, the senior Weather Bureau employee in Galveston, filed this report (reprinted on the NOAA web site) on September 23 recording the measurements he took of the storm, and chronicling his wife's death following the collapse of their house. He was likely still in shock as he wrote it.
"Mr. [John] Blagden looked after the instruments during the hurricane in a heroic and commendable manner. He kept the wires of the self-registering apparatus intact as long as it was possible for him to reach the roof. The rain gauge blew away about 6 p.m. and the thermometer shelter soon followed. All the instruments in the thermometer shelter were broken, except the thermograph which was found damaged, but has been put in working order.
"Mr. J. L. Cline went to the telegraph offices through water from two to four feet deep, and found that the telegraph wires had all gone down; he then returned to the office, and by inquiry learned that the long distance telephone had one wire still working to Houston, over which he gave the message to the Western Union telegraph office at Houston to be forwarded to the Central Office at Washington...
"I reached home and found the water around my residence waist deep. I at once went to work assisting people, who were not securely located, into my residence, until forty or fifty persons were housed therein. About 6:30 p.m. Mr. J. L. Cline, who had left Mr. Blagden at the office to look after the instruments, reached my residence, where he found the water neck deep.
"He informed me that the barometer had fallen below 29.00 inches; that no further messages could be gotten off on account of all wires being down, and that he had advised everyone he could see to go to the center of the city; also, that he thought we had better make an attempt in that direction. At this time, however, the roofs of houses and timbers were flying through the streets as though they were paper, and it appeared suicidal to attempt a journey through the flying timbers. Many people were killed by flying timbers about this time while endeavoring to escape to town.
"The ground was 5.2 feet elevation, which made the tide 15.2 feet. The tide rose the next hour, between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., nearly five feet additional, making a total tide in that locality of about twenty feet. These observations were carefully taken and represent to within a few tenths of a foot the true conditions....
"By 8 p.m. a number of houses had drifted up and lodged to the east and southeast of my residence, and these with the force of the waves acted as a battering ram against which it was impossible for any building to stand for any length of time, and at 8:30 p.m. my residence went down with about fifty persons who had sought it for safety, and all but eighteen were hurled into eternity. Among the lost was my wife, who never rose above the water after the wreck of the building.
"I was nearly drowned and became unconscious, but recovered through being crushed by timbers and found myself clinging to my youngest child, who had gone down with myself and wife. Mr. J. L. Cline joined me five minutes later with my other two children, and with them and a woman and child we picked up from the raging waters, we drifted for three hours, landing 300 yards from where we started. There were two hours that we did not see a house nor any person, and from the swell we inferred that we were drifting to sea..."
He mentions at the end that the names of 3,536 dead have been ascertained. Because Galveston was full of vacationers when the storm struck, many more missing and dead were likely unidentified.
"About three thousand homes, nearly half the residence portion of Galveston, had been completely swept out of existence, and probably more than six thousand persons had passed from life to death during that dreadful night," Cline wrote. "The correct number of those who perished will probably never be known, for many entire families are missing. Where 20,000 people lived on the 8th not a house remained on the 9th, and who occupied the houses may, in many instances, never be known."
The Galveston Daily News was published on September 13, writing that the "thousands of tragedies" of the storm were too many to recount:
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 must forever remain mysteries until eternity shall reveal all.
Perhaps it were best that it should be so, for the horror and anguish of those fatal and fateful hours were mercifully lost in the screaming tempest and buried forever beneath the raging billows.
Only God knows, and for the rest let it remain forever 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 incompleteness to convey the merest impression of the saddest story which ever engaged the efforts of a reporter.
By midnight September 8 the storm had passed; the next morning most of the water had receded. Galveston was in ruins. Some citizens were in panic, others mourning, others seemed to have lost their humanity in the winds and rain.
George MacLaine, who was visiting Galveston when the storm struck, wrote:
"On Sunday morning, immediately after the storm and as soon as daylight appeared, the scene on the streets was one I shall never forget. There were drunken women, almost nude, with their male companions, also under the influence of liquor, parading the streets and laughing and singing as if returning from a prolonged spree."
"There were some of the best citizens of Galveston hurrying to and fro, asking this one and that one if they had heard anything of their sisters, wives or some other member of their families. There were others who had been present when their families had perished, weeping and wailing over their losses, young children crying for their parents who had perished, parents crying for the loss of their children, and others walking aimlessly about or standing around as if they were stunned."
One account tells of the immediate clean-up effort before outside help could arrive.
For a week Galveston was under martial law. There were no disorder, although there was some robbing of the dead by ghouls. This was checked by a punishment swift and sure, as marshals were granted permission to carry and use guns. One hundred and twenty-five men were shot to death for robbing the dead.
Every able-bodied man was pressed into service. Volunteer gangs continued their work of hurried burial of the corpses, but many groups were forced into labor at bayonet point, and watched carefully by gun-bearing marshals and soldiers. Whisky by the bucketful was carried to these men, and they were drenched with it. The stimulant was kept at hand and applied continuously. Only in this way was it possible for the stoutest-hearted to work in such surroundings.
Even after the bodies had been disposed of, the danger of an epidemic threatened the survivors. Many of the people gave way to physical exhaustion. They had been compelled to subsist upon unwholesome food, drink, polluted water, and breathe the foul air of their unsanitary surroundings. Consequently, the death toll continued to mount from disease, and injuries sustained during the storm.
In oral histories collected in the 1960s and 1970s, individuals who were children in Galveston during the storm recounted how they survived and what they saw.
Emma Beal was 10 at the time of the storm:
Q: Now you said that uh you saw the burning of the bodies. Was this all the way between here and the beach? Was it on the beach or was it on the...
EB: No it was right up across the street, on that corner.
Q: Uh huh.
EB: One of the houses over there, you know.
Q: Corner of 37th and P?
EB: Yes.
Q: Uh huh. They didn't even bother to take them away huh?
EB: Well they had sent 'em out...in the bay, you know; put weights on 'em and took 'em out. They all floated back.
Q: Oh.
EB: So then they tried to bury some of 'em; just so many they ...went ahead and burned 'em.
Q: Yeah.
EB: I'd stand out there and watch 'em burn the bodies and then I'd have nightmares and scream and holler.
Q: I'll bet your mother wondered why you ever stood out there watching 'em in the first place.
EB: She didn't, she didn't, didn't hesitate; she spanked. She had a big hand, she just turned me over and spanked.
Q: Because you were watching?
EB: Yeah.
Q: Uh huh. She wanted to have you at the other end of the house when they were doing that huh?
EB: Oh it was a terrible thing, you know...Something crazy about you when you watch anything like that.
Louise Hopkins tells of her mother cutting holes in the floor of their house so it wouldn't be floated away by the rising water:
Kenamore: Was anyone there to help your mother? Any man?
Hopkins: My sister, she was eight years older than I, and my two brothers had gone. Left early that morning because they didn't anticipate anything like this, on their bicycles. They both had jobs like little altar boys or something. They .. came home and they helped my mother. We got as much as we could out of the cabinets. I even helped with the lighter things.
Kenamore: You moved things up.
Hopkins: To get things up to the second story. Our house by that time had been raised maybe two stair heights. We all got upstairs and I looked out of the window and saw I could see that the water was over the ballister of the house next door. I don't think I was frightened until then and I thought, if it's that deep in their house, how deep is it my house? I thought of all the things that had to be left behind --the beds and the heavy pieces of furniture and the other sort of things. Course selfishly my things that I had to leave behind.
Kenamore: Well at age seven that's what you think about.
Hopkins: It was a very harrowing experience to go through. I saw my brothers coming home. They got home, the older one was there early and the other one. I remember seeing him wading in water this high.
Kenamore: Up to his chest.
Hopkins: Holding his arms out like this to walk against the wind and the water. It frightened me too. I didn't know it was that bad. But I wanted to tell you, my mother, when she realized that the water was going to come in the house, that it was coming under the door in the house, the first floor. How she knew this I don't know, I wouldn't known it as old as I am and as long as I've lived. She went out to where she chopped kindling wood for the stove, you know there's no gas, no electricity, and got an axe. She chopped holes into every floor of every room downstairs in the hallway and the kitchen and he dining room --in the two bedrooms that were downstairs. So the water would come up into the house and held the house on the ground...
Kenamore: ...right, and not float it off the foundations.
Hopklns: Yes.
Kenamore: There are a number of houses in Galveston, I believe, that still have holes in the floor.
Ellen Nilson saved herself and her baby in the storm:
Nilson: We were in this house with some of the neighbors. I have forgotten just how many. Suddenly the window blew in and so they took the wardrobe and put it up against the window. That blew down like a little piece of paper.
Echols: The wind was blowing that strong.
Nilson: It was so strong. Then the gallery went. There was a front gallery there. It was a two story house and we were upstairs. It was a house that was just built, straight across. There were two rooms down and two rooms up. Then the gallery went. Then in a few minutes, the house began to go. I was sitting by a table just like that and on that table was a watch. It was six o'clock. I looked at that watch. It was six o'clock and I had the baby. I had a quilt wrapped around him. He'd been sick. He'd had fever all day.
Suddenly the house went. Just collapsed. We were underwater. I never moved. I was sitting on a chair, but when the house came up I was sitting on the floor. I had the baby, but he had slipped out of my arm and I just had him this way with his head this way. I said to one of the women, "Where's the baby? Help me quick, I'm losing him!" They helped put him back in my arms. We just sat there and drifted.
Echols: The house floated.
Nilson: Yes.
Echols: What about Johnny's mother? Did she ever. ..?
Nilson: [Very softly] No, she went and the other child. We had left then home. We drifted into a house that had an "L" and that rain was like needles. It hurt so bad. This house had two big cisterns with good foundations. My brother said, "I don't want to be in another house that goes down. Let's get under these cisterns."
I said, "Jim, I've got to get out of this rain. I've got to get Johnny out of this rain." Because every once in a while the quilt would blow off of him, but he never said a word. Just put his little hands up to his face. So we crawled into the window of this place. There was some mules in the bottom of this house. They had gone there for safety. I don't know what happened to them. I wasn't interested in mules then. As we went in there was a woman and her two grown sons. The people that owned the house had gone over to the Denver Resurvey school that was a brick building there. They had abandoned their house. That night there was fifty souls killed in that school. It went to pieces. I never did meet them afterwards. We got in with her and these people were in the bed. They had taken off all their clothes, they were so wet and the bed was dry.
I said to them, "Will you take the baby and warm him. He's got such a chill." They did and somebody took my clothes and wrang the water out of them and I put them back on. I was hit --oh there wasn't any place on my body as big as your hand that wasn't bruised. I put my hand up and said, "My head's spinning." One of the men there said, "I thought the top of your head was gone the way it was bleeding."
We stayed there all night and poor little Johnny cried for water. The only water we had was what was leaking through the roof and the house was plastered. So you know how it tasted, but it was the only we had. Remember I was nineteen, I wasn't very old. I had always heard that at twelve o'clock it would be better or worse. So there was an alarm clock. Man I watched it. I could go to a window that looked out at the east.
About twelve o'clock I couldn't see anything but the tops of the coffee beans. It was just a sheet of water. I went back and I said, "Oh I see the ground." They said, "You're crazy." I said, "Come see." So that's the reason it was a tidal wave that we had, because it was. As soon as it got daylight we got out of there and walked on dry ground."
After the immediate problems of burying the dead and providing food and clothing for the living, came the rebuilding. In her report Clara Barton reprints the following appeal that was issued:
A P P E A L
TO THE MANUFACTURERS OF, AND DEALERS IN LUMBER, HARDWARE, BUILDERS' MATERIALS AND HOUSEHOLD GOOS, AND TO THE BUSINESS MEN IN GENERAL IN THE UNITED STATES.
GALVESTON TEXAS, OCTOBER 5, 1900
GENTLEMEN: By the conditions which surround us, conditions which only those seeing them would be likely to conjecture, and none so likely as yourselves to comprehend, we are constrained to address you.
This unfortunate seaport island had four weeks ago a population of about forty thousand persons. In one day and one night it is estimated that approximately ten thousand of these were either drowned or killed by the fury of the storm. The buildings were largely slate or metal roofed; this broken rock must have been hurled through the air like cannon shot. The bodies found are badly mangled.
We believe it is reliably stated that there is not one house in the area of the storm undamaged by it. A large proportion of the persons formerly occupying them are entirely without homes, or even shelter, save such as people nearly as destitute as themselves can offer them temporarily, to their own great inconvenience and cost.
The number of this homeless class is estimated at eight thousand or more.
The appeal goes on to ask for lumber, door frames, window frames, hinges, nails, and staples to build shelter for "eight thousand people in the most ordinary, one-story, weather-proof houses, built singly or in blocks of tenements." They ask that the lumber come from Texas and Louisiana and the "other building material and household goods must come from those states which produce such articles.":
Isaac Cline, who recorded the height of the water and the falling of the barometer shortly before the loss of his wife and nearly himself and children in the storm, wrote in his September 23 report:
Notwithstanding the fact that the streets are not yet clean and dead bodies are being discovered daily among the drifted debris, the people appear to have confidence in the place and are determined to rebuild and reestablish themselves here.
Obviously, they did. No doubt they will yet in New Orleans.
I knew almost nothing of the 1900 storm before I began Googling it last night. I am indebted to the wonderful web sites that make free and public the survivor's accounts. I refer you to them for further reading:
The Manuscript Exhibit at the Galveston and Texas History Center has scanned and put on-line handwritten and typewritten letters from survivors recounting their experiences in the storm, as well as Clara Barton's 94-page typewritten report for the Red Cross.
The Oral History Exhibit at the Galveston and Texas History Center has transcripts of interviews with survivors of the storm.
Isaac's Storm site at Random House, this site extracted from The Great Galveston Disaster, the NOAA site on the storm, and The Galveston County Daily News' 1900 Storm site were all valuable resources.
My only awareness of the 1900 storm before researching this piece last night came from an Eric von Schmidt recording of the old song, "Wasn't that a mighty storm," whose title I have appropriated. You can hear his performance of it in
this RealAudio stream of a radio broadcast by skipping to time marker 17:20.
(Full lyrics are posted by Rolfyboy6 in a comment below.)
