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

CAPTAIN WOULD NOT RISK THE TRIP.

“I will sell you my boat,” he said, “but neither myself nor my men will risk the trip.”

By putting several thousand men at work all day Monday and Monday night one railroad line was put in condition for a train to go from Houston to Texas City, six miles from Galveston, the island being across the bay.

This, the first train out of Houston, was to leave early Tuesday morning. The news of its intended departure spread to all parts of the country. Hundreds of grief-stricken, bewildered people, nearly crazed with anxiety for relatives in the storm-swept country, stayed up all night, with the hope of getting into Galveston. The railroad men let all that they could possibly stow away in the coaches get on board, telling them in advance, however, that no one would be able to get from Texas City to Galveston.

Arriving there with the train was the special photographer of the newspaper with his camera. When this crowd of men and women reached Texas City they found no means of riding further.

The only possible way to make the perilous trip was to walk to Virginia Point, two miles away, and this was across the marsh filled with debris and bodies from the Galveston wreck. The photographer and the ten other men attempted the task. They were nearly exhausted when the two miles were finished. They had taken off their shoes and walked up to their waists in water. Their feet were bruised. The photographer carefully kept his camera from coming in contact with the water, however, and got several graphic views when he reached the place.

The ten men found a skiff that was thrown up the bay by the rush of water on that fateful Saturday night. They dragged it for many weary yards, finally getting it into the water, and managed to row to Huntington Wharf, Galveston, a distance of two miles. Worn out as they were, they walked to the city, the man with the camera being the first photographer in from the outside.

His troubles were not over, though. There were hundreds of terrible scenes to photograph; at every turn there was a graphic picture; but the people of Galveston, crazed with grief as they were, seemed to think it a desecration that he was there, and that views of their wrecked town and their dead should be thus recorded by the camera. They muttered and they threatened.

The photographer moved from one place to another. He hid himself and only took a snapshot when he knew he was safe from the scrutiny of the men and women who thought his work was a mockery of their grief. To show the real mind of the people it will only be necessary to state that many newspaper men who have visited all parts of the world as special correspondents, who have had ingress to courts and Parliament, who have traveled everywhere there has been news to find, found it impossible to get into Galveston.