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

IMPOSSIBLE TO DISPOSE OF THE DEAD.

While the matter was under discussion, the committee was informed that there was no time to waste in deliberation, that some of the bodies were already bursting. It was impossible to bury them, and they could not be incinerated in that portion of the city without endangering more life and more property, as there was no water to extinguish a fire once started. It was decided to load the bodies on a barge, tow it out to sea and sink them with weights. That was the only thing to be done.

Men were called to perform this awful duty, but they quailed at the task. And who could blame them? They were told that quick action was necessary, or a pestilence might come and sweep off the balance of the living. Still they were immovable. It was no time for dallying.

A company of men with rifles at fixed bayonets were brought to the scene, and a force of men were compelled, at the point of the bayonet, to perform this sad, sad duty. One by one the dead were removed to the barge, everybody as naked as it had come into the world—men, women and children, black and white, all classes of society and station and condition, were represented in that putrid mass. The unwilling men who were performing this awful task were compelled to bind cloths about their nostrils while they were at work, and occasionally citizens passed whiskey among them to nerve them to their duty.

Who can conceive of the horror of this?

After awhile the seven hundred dead were piled upon the barge and a tug pulled them slowly out to sea. Eighteen miles out, where the sea was rolling high, amid the soughing white caps, with God’s benediction breathed in the moaning winds, all that was mortal of these seven hundred was consigned to the mystic caves of the deep.

And yet, this was but another incident of the sad tragedy of which we write.