The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

A MARVEL OF BRIDGE BUILDING.

The construction of the bridge across Galveston bay has been a marvel of hustling, and the dispatch with which it has been done reflects the indomitable energy, good judgment and skill of the men who had it in charge. The work was not started on the bridge until Thursday of last week, because the material could not be gotten to the place, but when it was started Vice President Barr and General Superintendent Nixon said: “We will run trains into Galveston next Thursday.” Not many people expected that they could make good the promise, and almost everybody said they would be satisfied if the trains came within a fortnight. But the men who directed the work said that trains would cross on Thursday, and they stuck to it.

No work was ever beset by such difficulties as the work of restoring the tracks on the island and the mainland and the building of the bridge. The men on the track had to bury dead humans and animals, strewn by the hundreds over the prairies. They toiled in mud and water under a blazing sun. They had to remove hundreds of wrecked cars and twisted and tangled steel rails. They worked in the stench of dead flesh and the horrible odor of rotting grain and other wreckage. They built the track over a wreck-strewn prairie torn by the angry sea. It was difficult to get supplies to them and difficult also to get material.

The men who rebuilt the bridge worked the first day without dinner. It was difficult to get boats light enough in draft to bring provisions or materials or pile drivers to Virginia Point. When the boarding camp was pitched it stood in a new made cemetery, where hundreds of victims of the storm lay unidentified, unshrouded and uncoffined.

For the first four days after construction was commenced, the bridge timbers were rafted down Highland bayou and West bay, a distance of seven miles, to Virginia Point. When the track on the mainland had been restored to Virginia Point, the delivery of material by rail began. The storm swept away most of the pile drivers around Galveston. One marine driver was sent out and put to work on Sunday closing the gaps aggregating about 1000 feet of trestlework, where the piling had been carried away. The next day another marine driver was sent out, and Assistant Engineer Boschke, of the Southern Pacific, built two skid drivers and sent them out to the work.