The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 501
xiv, 17-536 p. : front., plates ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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GREAT STORMS AND VAST DESTRUCTION. 501
its .vild swirls the contents of stores and houses and many lives.
The number never will be known but estimates place it at 800.
For a week telegraphic communication was cut off.
SPILES WRENCHED FROM THEIR PLACES.
" It was my fortune to be in Texas as a correspondent at the
time and on tie day of the' storm at Houston, some sixty miles
away, built at the head of Buffalo Bayou, and I was ordered to the
wrecked city. At that time there was only one railroad, the Hous.
ton and Galveston, and it was utterly destroyed for over thirty
miles of its length. The top structure on the spiling across Galveston
Bay was, of course, swept away, but it was a remarkable
fact as showing the violence of the storm that about one of every
three of the great spiles, 50 to 55 feet long and driven down 25
to 30 feet in the sand, was wrenched from its place and swept
away.
" Others had resisted, but wvere twisted and split by the fury
of wind and waves. Two small boats, stern wheelers, drawing
from 28 to 30 inches of water, built on the Mississippi steamboat
model of ancient times, with a cabin over the cargo and engine
deck, a texas or officers' cabin on top of that, and a glass wheel
house on top of that-more fragile things you could not imaginewere
moored at the mouth of the bayou, where the sluggish stream
enters the bay.
" Strange to say these escaped with the loss of their smokestacks,
and were available to send aid, which was not lacking,
to the desolate city. It was impossible to transport the quantities
of food and clothing that poured in from the North, and more rotted
and was lost on the levee at Houston than reached the distressed
inhabitants of Galveston.
" That part of the city which was not blown down was imbedded
in sand. The Strand, a street in Galveston, whose name
is now familiar to the world by reason of the awful scenes that so
recently have been witnessed there, was four feet deep in sand, and
the Tremont, Cosmopolitan and Great Southern Hotels were filled
with sand and hotel was kept on their second floors.
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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/m1/559/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.