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

LARGE BUILDINGS FLOATED PAST.

“From the bay I went to the Gulf side, and found the tide very high and the water very rough. At 2 o’clock I concluded to go home and look after things there. My residence was on the northeast corner of avenue P½ and Bath avenue. As both P½ and Bath avenues were low at that point, my sidewalk had been curbed up about four feet and the whole lot raised four or five feet above the level of the street. When I got home I found about two feet of water on my lot. I sat on my front gallery and watched the water. It rose gradually until the third step was under water, when it apparently stopped rising and for over an hour remained stationary.

“My house, a large two-story frame building, stood on brick pillars about four feet high, so I had no fear of the water coming into the house. I dismissed a negro boy I had with me, went inside and proceeded to secure the windows and doors, and to make everything ship-shape before dark, for I felt pretty sure the electric lights would all be knocked out.

“At 4 o’clock the water was two feet deep on my ground floor, and was rising gradually. The wind had hauled further to the east and was blowing at a terrific rate. I moved my chair near the window and watched the water as it flowed down avenue P½ the west at a terrific rate, carrying wretched shanties, boxes, barrels, wooden cisterns and everything else that fell in its power. The flow was almost exactly from east to west, just as the streets run, for a box or barrel that passed my house, in the middle of the street, kept the same position as far as I could see it.

“Between 5 and 6 o’clock the wind became almost due east and increased in violence. The debris fairly flew past, so rapid had the tide become. At twenty minutes to 6 o’clock (I am exact because I noticed my large clock had stopped, and wound it up and set it by my watch) there was a marked increase in the violence of the wind. I went to a west window to watch a fence I had been using as a marker on the tide, and while I was looking, I saw the tide suddenly rise fully four feet at one bound. In a few minutes several houses on the south side of P½, between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth, went to pieces and floated away, and the debris from a number of large buildings began to float past from the east.