The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 392
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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392 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 phosphorescent.
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 terrer
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 gauge
at the office of the Weather Bureau showed eighty-seven miles an
hour when it went out of business. They believe it blew Ioo
miles an hour after that. The people, before their houses fell
about their ears, nailed up their window shutters and doors because
no 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 direction.
No o::e fought against the water. It was the wind they put
their feeble efforts against
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The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times (Book)
This book covers the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the United States' deadliest natural disaster. It includes accounts from survivors and eyewitnesses, and photos of the devastation.
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Lester, Paul. The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times, book, 1900~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth26719/m1/450/?rotate=90: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.