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

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 terrier 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 100 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 one fought against the water. It was the wind they put their feeble efforts against.

It will be remembered that the storm began to become serious early in the afternoon, and hence no one had undressed for bed when the climax came. The female survivors, or at least those who were upon the waters, came out naked. I asked a lady whether it was the waves or the flying timbers that did it. She said it was the wind. “Why, on the raft with me and my baby was a colored woman. The raft seemed to me to be the ceiling of a house because it was white. We had to lie as flat on it as we could without placing our faces in the water. The colored woman became tired and raised in a half-sitting posture. The moment she did it the wind stripped her of every stitch of clothing.”